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Finished Xenoblade 2 recently.
Good RPG held back by various issues ranging from technical (handheld mode, memory leak, etc) to fundamental (field skills, gacha, etc). The combat is currently my favorite in the franchise & the soundtrack oozed of ACE+ & Mitsuda magnificence. The action cutscenes were also stellar.
Plot had its highs & lows despite the more interesting second half picking it up, not a big a fan of what they went for during...
Overall i can definitely conclude that while its not the "essential equvilent to FF" I've seen spewed nor did it top Xenoblade 1 for me, i still had a meaningful time with the game.
I give Xenoblade 2 a solid B-.
Good RPG held back by various issues ranging from technical (handheld mode, memory leak, etc) to fundamental (field skills, gacha, etc). The combat is currently my favorite in the franchise & the soundtrack oozed of ACE+ & Mitsuda magnificence. The action cutscenes were also stellar.
Plot had its highs & lows despite the more interesting second half picking it up, not a big a fan of what they went for during...
the ending with Mythra & Pyra surviving, thus making the "sacrifice" scene prior feel almost needless imo.
Overall i can definitely conclude that while its not the "essential equvilent to FF" I've seen spewed nor did it top Xenoblade 1 for me, i still had a meaningful time with the game.
I give Xenoblade 2 a solid B-.
Likes:
Guitar (pseudo)God
Yeah, I was hoping I wasn't the only "get off my lawn" type with XC2. The more I think about it, the more I like the concepts -- just not the execution.
And I consider it a missed opportunity that Brigid slapping the hell out of Rex wasn't a Level 2 Blade Special -- 'cause I would have been mashing "B" like crazy.
Likes:
Nova
Understandable, neat ideas and cool moments but hoo boy when XB2's low points rear it's head it gets quite ugly. Speaking of which:
By the way i can't stress how poorly optimized XB2 is even with the latest patches, after beating the final boss on my first try the framerate during the ending itself tanked to slideshow levels of performance until the entire game froze, which forced me to reboot and face the fucking final boss all over again. It took more than several retries until i finally got another win while internally screaming my head off. I've also seen this bug reportes multiple times before so i'm not the only one who faced it for sure, christ....
Chapter 4 for instance, to say it was a lackluster experience would be a HUGE understatement.
That dragged out filler trite of a beginning with the bandits & kids did not need to happen in order for Roc to be Rex's new driver, period. Then when you finally reach Mor Ardain the problems just keep piling on, ranging from the encounter with Lila who i couldn't give less of a fuck about as a character to the Factory area where losing Tora and being stuck with only two party members made that section a living chore (never mind that i somehow wasted countless time getting lost at some points due the awful Compass).
Then there is Bana who is without a doubt the absolute worst side villain in the game right next to Dughall who harbors everything i hate in a cartoonish'ly evil villain (which almost makes me dislike the first half of chapter 1 even more for wasting screen time on them in the first place AND the beginning chapter 6 for bringing one of them back). Apparently one of the writers has an obsession with Noppons in general hence the focus which explains a lot, making them into an antagonist of all fuckiny things was a mistake.
I actually had to put the game down for over half a month due to pent up frustration from that horrifically written/designed chapter alone. I also feel that XB2 went a tad overboard at points with cutscene triggers to a degree where i almost feel railroaded, which makes make appreciate games like Nier that at least give me more control during various in game dialogue presentation. Didn't feel this way with XC1's honestly.
That dragged out filler trite of a beginning with the bandits & kids did not need to happen in order for Roc to be Rex's new driver, period. Then when you finally reach Mor Ardain the problems just keep piling on, ranging from the encounter with Lila who i couldn't give less of a fuck about as a character to the Factory area where losing Tora and being stuck with only two party members made that section a living chore (never mind that i somehow wasted countless time getting lost at some points due the awful Compass).
Then there is Bana who is without a doubt the absolute worst side villain in the game right next to Dughall who harbors everything i hate in a cartoonish'ly evil villain (which almost makes me dislike the first half of chapter 1 even more for wasting screen time on them in the first place AND the beginning chapter 6 for bringing one of them back). Apparently one of the writers has an obsession with Noppons in general hence the focus which explains a lot, making them into an antagonist of all fuckiny things was a mistake.
I actually had to put the game down for over half a month due to pent up frustration from that horrifically written/designed chapter alone. I also feel that XB2 went a tad overboard at points with cutscene triggers to a degree where i almost feel railroaded, which makes make appreciate games like Nier that at least give me more control during various in game dialogue presentation. Didn't feel this way with XC1's honestly.
By the way i can't stress how poorly optimized XB2 is even with the latest patches, after beating the final boss on my first try the framerate during the ending itself tanked to slideshow levels of performance until the entire game froze, which forced me to reboot and face the fucking final boss all over again. It took more than several retries until i finally got another win while internally screaming my head off. I've also seen this bug reportes multiple times before so i'm not the only one who faced it for sure, christ....
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Started Monster Hunter World last weekend.
The game is pretty overwhelming, played four hours of the game and I feel the game is in an odd position where it's in a rush to teach me dozens of mechaniques at once with boring textboxes but at the same time is no hurry to explain other stuff (like how weapons work or a bunch of exploration stuff).
At the moment I can say that hunting monster is entertaining, even if I don't quite get the grasp of combat, yet.
The game is pretty overwhelming, played four hours of the game and I feel the game is in an odd position where it's in a rush to teach me dozens of mechaniques at once with boring textboxes but at the same time is no hurry to explain other stuff (like how weapons work or a bunch of exploration stuff).
At the moment I can say that hunting monster is entertaining, even if I don't quite get the grasp of combat, yet.
In the 17 years I've been playing Final Fantasy IV (and in no way is this depressing), I got my first Pink Tail drop yesterday.
Likes:
Storm and Lulcielid
Still playing ranking matches in Dragon Ball FighterZ, I never strongly cared about the competitive aspect of fighting games but this one has been the exception, while I still don't consider myself a hardcore FG fan I have been pretty hook and this games gives me enough incentive to try improving my skills, if a little bit.
I played more of Dragon Quest XI, and oh boy, things are getting dark, in my opinion at least, I have around 52 or so hours on my play-time clock, some of that portion of time I've been grinding my main Hero character to level 44, and my other characters to around levels 41-42, and I cleared nine side quests, as well as exploring, and now I'm at chapter 10, which I'm not going to spoil, but let's just say that things hit the fan in Erdrea, and I'm looking forward to progress on with the story further, but other than that, I've been taking my time with it, and enjoying it so far, probably more so than Dragon Quests V (DS version) and VIII (3DS version) which I beat last year or so, currently.
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Likes:
Storm
I finished the main story of Dragon Quest XI, and I enjoyed it and the game, I beat it around 72 hours and 44 minutes on my game-clock. and I enjoyed the story, and exploring, and grinding, as well as the main cast, I had tears in my eyes in certain moments in the story, and that enriched it for me in the long run. I did take a peek at the post-game, and without saying any spoilers, I feel torn about it, so I might not play it, but just watch the post-game on YouTube. Post-game is what I usually do in most games I play, but this one is something that makes me feel uncertain, so I might just continue on exploring and other things, but every time I beat a main story of a game, I consider that the finale, any other time I play it, it'll just to explore, and grind, but it's still one of the best games I've played this year, and my favorite Dragon Quest game all in all. Who knows, I might do the post-game when I reach level 99 to breeze through it.
If you got to the credits, the game isn't over yet. You should spend the time to complete the game if you love it so much.
Likes:
FFChocobo18
Oh, don't worry, I think I will do the post-game after just to do the major stuff in it, I might put it on a separate save file. I'm currently going to grind my characters to around level 75 before I do it. I won't 100% the game, that's for sure, I'm not someone who goes for 100% completion rates. Even though I'm not a completionist, I really love this game, along with other games, I usually consider the main stories of games to be finale of sorts for me in my opinion. The reaosn I felt uncertain in the post you quoted is because it involves some form of
Time travel, in the games I've seen, which can be a interesting thing if done right, when I watched the Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time, even though I never played it, but it did that well, but it can also be bad and invalidate parts of a narrative, like KH3D's time travel which was utilized by Xehanort to gather versions of himself, and boy oh boy, I did not like time travel in that game one bit, that's why I was reluctant earlier.
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I finished the main events of Dragon Quest XI's post-game, and wow, I enjoyed it more than I thought, and elevated the story even more for me. Dragon Quest XI might be my game of the year this year.
Even though there was time travel, it didn't bother me as much as it did when I saw it on YouTube, and even though I Watched pretty much the entire post-game on YouTube before I played it myself, I still enjoyed playing the post-game, I even forged some powerful weapons, and beat a lot of superbosses, and got to level 99 with the party members I was mainly using.
Likes:
LeonBlade and Storm
I'm about 20 hours in with DQXI. Some observations:
- It's a LOT easier and more accessible than previous games in the series. The battling and field exploration are so much faster than any other DQ game.
- The Pep and Forge gameplay systems borrow their concepts from DQVIII -- but far more streamlined.
- Going back to the accessibility comment -- the one thing I've never liked about the DQ series is how much of an investment there needed to be to play the game. The earlier games required a fair amount of grinding. The job system in DQVI and DQVII were wide, but not deep -- and they also required a lot of grinding to see results. Any mistakes (i.e. maybe Carver shouldn't be a mage-type character) would require more grinding. This iteration is far more forgiving, which allows me to enjoy the story and setting without needing to fight hundreds of random battles.
- Interesting observation - people complain about the Final Fantasy series' "Press X (or O) to win..." Well, this game has a "Press nothing to win" setting. That's not a criticism, mind. You can still play it like any other DQ game.
- It's still the same vignette-driven style that ends up into an overarching calamity, though there are some nice surprises along the way. There's little to no character development among the main cast, but their character archetypes are so charming it doesn't really matter. (They act as bemused onlookers for the most part.)
- The game is gorgeous and fully realized. The towns are intricate and detailed. And with the removal of random battles, exploring the fields isn't tedious any longer.
- I'm a fan of the localization. The dialog, the clever word play -- I can't help but be impressed. Special mention goes to the townspeople who speak only in Haiku.
- It's a LOT easier and more accessible than previous games in the series. The battling and field exploration are so much faster than any other DQ game.
- The Pep and Forge gameplay systems borrow their concepts from DQVIII -- but far more streamlined.
- Going back to the accessibility comment -- the one thing I've never liked about the DQ series is how much of an investment there needed to be to play the game. The earlier games required a fair amount of grinding. The job system in DQVI and DQVII were wide, but not deep -- and they also required a lot of grinding to see results. Any mistakes (i.e. maybe Carver shouldn't be a mage-type character) would require more grinding. This iteration is far more forgiving, which allows me to enjoy the story and setting without needing to fight hundreds of random battles.
- Interesting observation - people complain about the Final Fantasy series' "Press X (or O) to win..." Well, this game has a "Press nothing to win" setting. That's not a criticism, mind. You can still play it like any other DQ game.
- It's still the same vignette-driven style that ends up into an overarching calamity, though there are some nice surprises along the way. There's little to no character development among the main cast, but their character archetypes are so charming it doesn't really matter. (They act as bemused onlookers for the most part.)
- The game is gorgeous and fully realized. The towns are intricate and detailed. And with the removal of random battles, exploring the fields isn't tedious any longer.
- I'm a fan of the localization. The dialog, the clever word play -- I can't help but be impressed. Special mention goes to the townspeople who speak only in Haiku.
Likes:
LeonBlade and Storm