Why does this survey said "it's not currently active"?
I really want to tell them what I think about Hermen Hulst and his hardon for live service titles that I'm pretty sure brought this game up in the first place.
In all seriousness, I think someone already mentioned this above and I completely agree with them.
I specifically buy my PS3/4/5 because Sony has always been strong in a single player platform. From exclusives to JRPG, PlayStation was my go to if I want to be immersed in a great single player games. These days, that has been taken over by my Switch 2. So anytime Sony and their out-of-touch executives tried to push these new Live Service titles, I automatically just tune them out.
I'm not their target market for these, and never will be.
Interesting, as someone who played all Yakuza games from the start, Gaiden Kiryu had the weakest combat. Yes, he got speedier, but I absolutely hated how weak he feels and how spongy the enemies were. In fact, it was probably the only Yakuza game where I skipped all the mini-games so that I can just be done with the story because I hated the combat so much.
Also what is with that screenshot? what is with that colour palette? Honestly, this is probably the first Yakuza game that I'll wait instead of getting it D1. This remake is just not vibing with me.
@Nem Because I was confused. Everything including Tecmo Koei called it a Remaster, it's literally in the title. This is the first time I heard it being referred to as a remake. If it's a remake, I'm getting it, remaster, I won't.
That's why people asked questions usually, to get clarifications.
@Nem What? it's not. Remake is a remake from the ground up like Trails in the Sky, remastered is just an enhanced graphic to make it up to the standard of modern consoles like all iterations of The Last Of Us.
If it's just an enhanced graphic with a few additional stages, that's a remaster.
If it's a completely new work with a new engine from scratches even if it's the same gameplay, that's a remake.
This is now my all time favourite football game. Being in Canada, earlier Inazuma titles never made it to our region, so this was my first exposure to the game.
And oh boy, I'm having so much fun with it. 100+ hours and I barely finished the 3rd chronicle route.
Thank you for this. Horizon is clearly designed as ultimate love letter to all the fans that has been following the stories for 10+ years, with all the heartbreak and the uncertainty that comes with it when we didn't even know if we'll ever get to see the continuation in the west.
Time Stranger was the best Digimon Stories and JRPG of the franchise. One thing that was missed from the interview was Ryosuke Hara confirming that the "Adult topics" works for Time Stranger, and they hoped to continue that. For me, that's a great news as Time Stranger deals a lot of uncomfortable and more mature subject matters like suicide and depression. If they continue this, they don't need to compete directly with Pokemon and can tap a more mature audience with their strong storylines.
Lol...really? 3 gacha games and Trails Beyond The Horizon, Sky 2nd Chapter, Grand Bazaar, and Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma (arguably the return of Marvelous farming sims into PlayStation) is not in this list? The more appropriate title for this article would be "MY personal choice of 40+ PS5 Games to Play in 2026".
@Propaperpusher a properly used GenAI that branches the narrative and resolution based on your player's agency is the ultimate RPG I wanted to play with.
He's not wrong, generative AI can and does shorten development cycle.
And as with how this technology evolves, the question will shift from whether or not to use it, to how to ethically use it (for example, 81Produce talent agency that made news lately in Seiyuu's market by partnering with AI company to store their talents voice (with their talents consent and profit sharing) and used as AI seiyuu. This works because it gets the talents' consent as well as still giving them income eventhough AI used their voices.
One of the games I'm really looking forward to next year is Starsand Island and the developers have been pretty open about using Generative AI.
I think people are just tired of reading these type of articles because it just evolved into an empty platitude or virtue signaling.
And yes, as someone has mentioned, compared to other labourers or even anime artists that literally worked grueling hours with marginal pay, these game developers had it easier. So watching them still whining about it just grating to be honest.
If you actually want to publish news like these, can you deep dive more on it? Yes, overtime has existed forever, I'm in IT and when we have an MIO, it's not surprising to work over 16+ hours to get it fixed. Or when we're trying to push new things into production without breaking the system.
But we get paid extra for it. Overtime here is 250% regular pay, so that's a lot of money when you have to Overtime.
So let's do deep dive, how much are they getting paid? is mandatory OT or crunch or whatever you wanna call it means they work unpaid? is it as bad as the anime industries? were they blindsided? was this not outlined in their employment contract that they signed? Without extra details, this is nothing more than tabloid level gossip.
This kind of news is fine, but let's stop fearmongering without getting into the details of things. News outlets are pushing fear articles with AI and crunch, and then have the audacity only reporting half of it. If the idea was to garner sympathy for these folks, well, it failed. Especially for companies like Hoyoverse who made hundreds of billions with their gacha and last time I checked, somehow still have the lowest turnover rate and lowest termination rate (which means they somehow treat their employees well with their pay structure and bonuses) in the industry.
@rawzeku That's fair, but this is the same developers that creates HSR, Genshin, and Honkai. In the end, they will still want to make money and power creeping is the easiest to do so even if they're dangling a temporary carrots to entice new players for now with buffing old characters. It's an old playbook.
With the evolving trend of this genre with cosmetic only gacha like Infinity Nikki, Where Winds Meet, Duet Night Abyss, even the upcoming Ananta, spending $$$ for characters that only will get powercrept a few patches later no longer hold any interest on me. I uninstalled Star Rail because of this.
As someone who lives during the era where Trails fandom was absolutely not sure whether or not we're ever getting a continuation to Cold Steel after the second one, this actually made me tear up.
I'm happy they decided to focus more on global release so we don't have to wait 5 years to catch up to the next series, and I'll be more than happy to buy all Falcom games to support their decision to do this.
This is a respectable score and while IGN doesn't have their final score yet (still playing the game), the vibe was also more positive there. As someone who like OT1 and absolutely loves OT2, the demo for OT0 was probably the first time I actually groaned in disappointment when the 3 hours notice flashed on my screen. I really enjoyed what OT0 offers, as it reminds me of my all-time favourite JRPG franchise, Suikoden. Yes, it's not obviously as massive as that as we're not recruiting 108 characters and rebuilding an entire kingdom, but the vibe and the theme are pretty similar from what I gathered in the demo. The recruiting, the side missions, the rebuilding, I enjoyed them all and I can't wait to actually play them tomorrow.
That being said, OT0 is a great blueprint, and I hope Square will consider creating a proper recruiting/townbuilding JRPG again from scratch. Maybe Octopath Traveller 0-2, or OT3.
Anyone in the comments thinking the $37million write off was a big disaster for Paradox, clearly has no idea what this publisher has in their portfolio. Age of Wonder, Europa Universalis, and Crusader Kings franchises alone are more than enough to offset this cost as their millions of loyal players are more than happy to pay for their overpriced DLCs and expansion packs as they usually give us thousands of hours of games, yes me included.
They'll be fine; in fact, I'll argue that the major success of their other franchises that they are strong at, is the reason why they can occasionally take risks like publishing this game.
Once again Rob is making my day with the news he's sharing on this site.
Marking my calendar for this as I truly enjoyed the 1st chapter remake. And that's coming from someone who has played the OG in 3 separate consoles and occasions.
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Re: Pokémon Dev's Gorgeous PS5 Action RPG Beast of Reincarnation Conjures a 4th August Release
They are capable on making this yet Pokemon:SV launches broken, WTF Gamefreaks??
Re: New Dead or Alive Game Announced as Dead or Alive 6: Last Round Comes to PS5
Excellent choice of thumbnails xD
Re: Poll: How Would You Rate State of Play for February 2026?
Brigandine: Abyss and the new JRPG from Konami, yes please.
Re: Here's Your Chance to Tell Sony What You Think of Horizon Hunters Gathering
Why does this survey said "it's not currently active"?
I really want to tell them what I think about Hermen Hulst and his hardon for live service titles that I'm pretty sure brought this game up in the first place.
Re: Crimson Desert PS5 Is Also a Full-On Life Sim Game, Last Deep Dive Video Reveals
Oh yeah, I probably won't touch grass again when March comes.
Re: Here's Your Chance to Tell Sony What You Think of Horizon Hunters Gathering
Very brave of them to do this.
Re: The Internet Has Not Been Kind to Horizon Hunters Gathering
In all seriousness, I think someone already mentioned this above and I completely agree with them.
I specifically buy my PS3/4/5 because Sony has always been strong in a single player platform. From exclusives to JRPG, PlayStation was my go to if I want to be immersed in a great single player games. These days, that has been taken over by my Switch 2. So anytime Sony and their out-of-touch executives tried to push these new Live Service titles, I automatically just tune them out.
I'm not their target market for these, and never will be.
Re: The Internet Has Not Been Kind to Horizon Hunters Gathering
Are we supposed to still be surprised by this anymore?
Re: Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties (PS5) - Colossal, Confident Remake Makes Controversial Changes
Interesting, as someone who played all Yakuza games from the start, Gaiden Kiryu had the weakest combat. Yes, he got speedier, but I absolutely hated how weak he feels and how spongy the enemies were. In fact, it was probably the only Yakuza game where I skipped all the mini-games so that I can just be done with the story because I hated the combat so much.
Also what is with that screenshot? what is with that colour palette? Honestly, this is probably the first Yakuza game that I'll wait instead of getting it D1. This remake is just not vibing with me.
Re: Overwatch Ditches the 2, Launches 5 New Heroes in Blizzard's Bid to Revive the Shooter
Next, they'll remove the IV from Diablo IV and just call everything, Diablo.
Re: You'll Want to Play Crimson Desert on PS5 Pro for Dedicated Enhancements
Yeah no thanks, I'll stick playing this on PC.
Re: Highguard Already Trying Something Different as Player Numbers Plummet
So what are we looking at here, before a shut down? a few more weeks? a month?
Re: Yakuza Kiwami 3's Dodgy Visuals Will Be Fixed in a Launch Day Patch
Holy *****, that looks bad...wtf
Re: Crimson Desert Deep Dive Tries to Prove Its Crazy Potential Is Reality
I'm still debating whether to get this on my PS5 or PC.
Re: Sony's Sending Messages to PS4 Players Encouraging Them to Upgrade to PS5
@Jacko11 because every little things need to be framed as a corporate conspiracies now to get clicks. Research and Journalistic integrity be damned.
Re: New Witcher Game Announced, But You Won't Play It on PS5
Not The Witcher expansion I expected. 😅
Re: Dynasty Warriors 3 Remake Hit with Indefinite Delay Just Two Months from PS5 Release
@Nem Because I was confused. Everything including Tecmo Koei called it a Remaster, it's literally in the title. This is the first time I heard it being referred to as a remake. If it's a remake, I'm getting it, remaster, I won't.
That's why people asked questions usually, to get clarifications.
Re: Dynasty Warriors 3 Remake Hit with Indefinite Delay Just Two Months from PS5 Release
@Nem What? it's not. Remake is a remake from the ground up like Trails in the Sky, remastered is just an enhanced graphic to make it up to the standard of modern consoles like all iterations of The Last Of Us.
If it's just an enhanced graphic with a few additional stages, that's a remaster.
If it's a completely new work with a new engine from scratches even if it's the same gameplay, that's a remake.
It's not that complicated.
Re: Dynasty Warriors 3 Remake Hit with Indefinite Delay Just Two Months from PS5 Release
Wait, is it a remake or a remaster? Those are two very different state of a game these days.
Re: Gacha Arknights: Endfield Launched with Arguably the Worst Bug in Video Game History
@JackiePriest
EA, Activision, Ubisoft: "wait, we can do that???"
Re: Gacha Arknights: Endfield Launched with Arguably the Worst Bug in Video Game History
It's so gacha, that even paying them has to become a gacha.
Re: Game Awards Closer Highguard Lives! PS5 Trophy List Live Now
Was the trailer supposed to invoke boredom?
Re: Marathon PS5 Officially Dated for 5th March, Up for Pre-Order at $40
"How many times do we have to teach you this lesson, old man?"
Re: Work Already Underway on Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road's Sequel
This is now my all time favourite football game. Being in Canada, earlier Inazuma titles never made it to our region, so this was my first exposure to the game.
And oh boy, I'm having so much fun with it. 100+ hours and I barely finished the 3rd chronicle route.
Re: Persona Anniversary Site Mentions 'Next Chapter for the Series'
Knowing SEGA, the "next chapter" here simply means year 31+
Not Persona 6.
Re: Trails beyond the Horizon (PS5) - Trails Takes an Impressive Step Towards the End
Yes, yes, YES!
Thank you for this. Horizon is clearly designed as ultimate love letter to all the fans that has been following the stories for 10+ years, with all the heartbreak and the uncertainty that comes with it when we didn't even know if we'll ever get to see the continuation in the west.
I absolutely can't wait to start this next week!
Re: 'PS5 Pro Gets the Short End of the Stick Again': Fans Gutted New HYPERPOP Console Covers Don't Support Supercharged System
OG PS5 owners to PS5 Pro owners: "First time?"
Seriously though, ***** Sony and their incessant support to PS5 Slim while ignoring the other two versions.
Re: Hands On: Dragon Quest 7 Reimagined Could Be the Series' Best Remake Yet
Thanks for this! I never played the OG DQ7 in any previous iterations so I'm really looking forward to this remake.
Re: Dragon Quest 7 Reimagined Demo Out on PS5 This Week, Opening Movie Is a Masterclass
This is a fantastic news!
The first three months of 2026 is absolute stacked with gaming releases, that the JRPG girl in me is really, really happy about it. 🥰
Trails Beyond The Horizon - Jan 15
Dragon Quest VII: Reimagined - Feb 5th
Yakuza Kiwami 3 - Feb 12th
Monster Hunter Stories 3 - March 13th
And we still don't even have any news on my biggest hype release yet, Fire Emblem: Fortune Weave.
This is going to be a good year for gaming. I'm so ridiculously ecstatic with this lineups that I can feel myself glowing.
Re: More Digimon Games Incoming as Time Stranger's Success Sees Dev Team Expand
Time Stranger was the best Digimon Stories and JRPG of the franchise. One thing that was missed from the interview was Ryosuke Hara confirming that the "Adult topics" works for Time Stranger, and they hoped to continue that. For me, that's a great news as Time Stranger deals a lot of uncomfortable and more mature subject matters like suicide and depression. If they continue this, they don't need to compete directly with Pokemon and can tap a more mature audience with their strong storylines.
Re: 40+ PS5 Games to Play in 2026
Lol...really? 3 gacha games and Trails Beyond The Horizon, Sky 2nd Chapter, Grand Bazaar, and Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma (arguably the return of Marvelous farming sims into PlayStation) is not in this list? The more appropriate title for this article would be "MY personal choice of 40+ PS5 Games to Play in 2026".
Re: Persona's First 30th Anniversary Announcement May Not Be All That Hype for PS5 Fans
This is just getting ***** sad.
Re: 'It Has the Power to Enrich the Creative World': Level-5 Boss All-In on Generative AI
@Propaperpusher a properly used GenAI that branches the narrative and resolution based on your player's agency is the ultimate RPG I wanted to play with.
Re: 'It Has the Power to Enrich the Creative World': Level-5 Boss All-In on Generative AI
He's not wrong, generative AI can and does shorten development cycle.
And as with how this technology evolves, the question will shift from whether or not to use it, to how to ethically use it (for example, 81Produce talent agency that made news lately in Seiyuu's market by partnering with AI company to store their talents voice (with their talents consent and profit sharing) and used as AI seiyuu. This works because it gets the talents' consent as well as still giving them income eventhough AI used their voices.
One of the games I'm really looking forward to next year is Starsand Island and the developers have been pretty open about using Generative AI.
I'm still looking forward to play it.
Re: 'No Need to Be Embarrassed About It': Zenless Zone Zero Staff Say 'It's Painfully Obvious' They're Working Tons of Overtime
@mrbone exactly.
Re: 'No Need to Be Embarrassed About It': Zenless Zone Zero Staff Say 'It's Painfully Obvious' They're Working Tons of Overtime
I think people are just tired of reading these type of articles because it just evolved into an empty platitude or virtue signaling.
And yes, as someone has mentioned, compared to other labourers or even anime artists that literally worked grueling hours with marginal pay, these game developers had it easier. So watching them still whining about it just grating to be honest.
Re: 'No Need to Be Embarrassed About It': Zenless Zone Zero Staff Say 'It's Painfully Obvious' They're Working Tons of Overtime
If you actually want to publish news like these, can you deep dive more on it? Yes, overtime has existed forever, I'm in IT and when we have an MIO, it's not surprising to work over 16+ hours to get it fixed. Or when we're trying to push new things into production without breaking the system.
But we get paid extra for it. Overtime here is 250% regular pay, so that's a lot of money when you have to Overtime.
So let's do deep dive, how much are they getting paid? is mandatory OT or crunch or whatever you wanna call it means they work unpaid? is it as bad as the anime industries? were they blindsided? was this not outlined in their employment contract that they signed? Without extra details, this is nothing more than tabloid level gossip.
This kind of news is fine, but let's stop fearmongering without getting into the details of things. News outlets are pushing fear articles with AI and crunch, and then have the audacity only reporting half of it. If the idea was to garner sympathy for these folks, well, it failed. Especially for companies like Hoyoverse who made hundreds of billions with their gacha and last time I checked, somehow still have the lowest turnover rate and lowest termination rate (which means they somehow treat their employees well with their pay structure and bonuses) in the industry.
Re: PS5's Next Big Gacha Game Wants You to Take It for a Test Drive
People are not tired of these games yet? they all just look the same to me now.
Honestly the only thing that probably make me willing to try another gacha game is Ananta.
Re: Zenless Zone Zero's Milestone Update Is One of the Most Generous in Gacha Gaming History
@rawzeku That's fair, but this is the same developers that creates HSR, Genshin, and Honkai. In the end, they will still want to make money and power creeping is the easiest to do so even if they're dangling a temporary carrots to entice new players for now with buffing old characters. It's an old playbook.
Re: Zenless Zone Zero's Milestone Update Is One of the Most Generous in Gacha Gaming History
Still a gacha.
With the evolving trend of this genre with cosmetic only gacha like Infinity Nikki, Where Winds Meet, Duet Night Abyss, even the upcoming Ananta, spending $$$ for characters that only will get powercrept a few patches later no longer hold any interest on me. I uninstalled Star Rail because of this.
Re: Western Sales Have Saved the Trails Series, Falcom Boss Suggests
As someone who lives during the era where Trails fandom was absolutely not sure whether or not we're ever getting a continuation to Cold Steel after the second one, this actually made me tear up.
I'm happy they decided to focus more on global release so we don't have to wait 5 years to catch up to the next series, and I'll be more than happy to buy all Falcom games to support their decision to do this.
Re: Two Trails beyond the Horizon Demos Out Now, and One Is Exclusive to PS5, PS4
I'll will definitely start this demo closer to the release date so that I won't have to wait too long to start the next chapter.
Re: The FIFA Video Game Will Return, on Netflix of All Places
The only true football game for me now is Inazuma Eleven.
Re: Baldur's Gate 3 Dev Announces New Divinity RPG, Its 'Biggest Game Ever'
Day 1 for me whenever it's released by 2035.
Re: Octopath Traveler 0 (PS5) - Perfectly Fine JRPG Action
This is a respectable score and while IGN doesn't have their final score yet (still playing the game), the vibe was also more positive there.
As someone who like OT1 and absolutely loves OT2, the demo for OT0 was probably the first time I actually groaned in disappointment when the 3 hours notice flashed on my screen. I really enjoyed what OT0 offers, as it reminds me of my all-time favourite JRPG franchise, Suikoden. Yes, it's not obviously as massive as that as we're not recruiting 108 characters and rebuilding an entire kingdom, but the vibe and the theme are pretty similar from what I gathered in the demo. The recruiting, the side missions, the rebuilding, I enjoyed them all and I can't wait to actually play them tomorrow.
That being said, OT0 is a great blueprint, and I hope Square will consider creating a proper recruiting/townbuilding JRPG again from scratch. Maybe Octopath Traveller 0-2, or OT3.
Re: Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter Dev Not Quite Sure Which Classic RPG to Remake Next
It's an easy path, Falcom. Finish Sky, then Crossbell. That's your remake money maker. I'll be happy with either remakes anyway.
Re: Bloodlines 2 Publisher Accepts the Blame Over $37 Million Failure
Anyone in the comments thinking the $37million write off was a big disaster for Paradox, clearly has no idea what this publisher has in their portfolio. Age of Wonder, Europa Universalis, and Crusader Kings franchises alone are more than enough to offset this cost as their millions of loyal players are more than happy to pay for their overpriced DLCs and expansion packs as they usually give us thousands of hours of games, yes me included.
They'll be fine; in fact, I'll argue that the major success of their other franchises that they are strong at, is the reason why they can occasionally take risks like publishing this game.
Re: Assassin's Creed Shadows Patch 1.1.6 Out Now on PS5, But the Cool Attack on Titan Armour Is Paid DLC
That historical accuracy though.
What a joke...
Re: Hands On: Where Winds Meet PS5 Is Vast, Visionary, and on the Verge of Collapse
I'm so starved for a proper Wuxia game since Jade Empire, I will day-1 on this.
Can't wait!
Re: Highly Anticipated RPG Remake Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter Confirmed for 2026 Release
Once again Rob is making my day with the news he's sharing on this site.
Marking my calendar for this as I truly enjoyed the 1st chapter remake. And that's coming from someone who has played the OG in 3 separate consoles and occasions.