CF-WRUP V: Good play. Nice talk.

I'm ready go tonight. There's a party, alright. We don't need the raisin for joy, oh yeah. Tick down to midnight.
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Falcon Critical
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Re: CF-WRUP V: Good play. Nice talk.

Post by Falcon Critical » Sun Feb 10, 2019 7:54 pm

Started playing Star Traders Frontiers and the loop isn't grabbing me. I went with an explorer type since that's my favourite part of Stellaris and the whole point of other space games like No Man's Sky... and yeah there were some nice looking planets I landed on but it really lacked a sense of wonder. I might be done with this game now too.

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Re: CF-WRUP V: Good play. Nice talk.

Post by DHerder222 » Mon Feb 11, 2019 4:30 pm

Hey, so getting back to Vesperia, localization aside is it a solid release overall? Notabohr and I are jonesing for a new JRPG and we were both heartened by the good-to-great reviews it got. I've never been too big on Tales (I think the art style is my biggest blocker), but Vesperia seems to be in the franchises's top tier.

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Re: CF-WRUP V: Good play. Nice talk.

Post by Delthazar » Mon Feb 11, 2019 4:39 pm

I enjoyed the 360 original a lot when I played it, uh, ten years ago. The new version is basically that with a fresh coat of paint and some more stuff, specifically all the DLC tidbits the Japanese PS3 port got, which never came here. And maybe some new bonuses, too? Blutie would know better than I.

Regardless, it's well worth getting into if the pricetag isn't an obstacle. And Tales games are technically multiplayer, maybe? Normally it's one player with three CPU allies, but I think you can Secret of Mana it if you've got another controller.

Vesperia is probably still the best Tales game. Berseria got close. The rest sound wildly hit/miss, like maybe more than any other JRPG franchise. But barely any of 'em seem to connect to each other so it doesn't really matter, I guess.

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Re: CF-WRUP V: Good play. Nice talk.

Post by Delthazar » Mon Feb 11, 2019 4:45 pm

Oh, Vesperia Definitive is actually part of a Gamestop sale right now.

https://www.polygon.com/deals/2019/2/11 ... t-gamestop

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Re: CF-WRUP V: Good play. Nice talk.

Post by DHerder222 » Mon Feb 11, 2019 4:46 pm

Hey, thanks! I might actually end up getting that.

Yeah, it's really weird when you try to gauge fans' rankings online. Unlike, say, Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest, there seems to be a lot more variability in which titles people consider the "best" or "worst".

Given that the original game is 10 years old, I was mostly wondering how the game's QOL systems have aged.

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Re: CF-WRUP V: Good play. Nice talk.

Post by Delthazar » Mon Feb 11, 2019 5:04 pm

That's a good question. For all I know the original Vesperia might still hold up fine and Definitive didn't need to modernize too much gameplay-wise, but it's been ages, the memory plays tricks.

Re: fan rankings, the best I can gauge by casual passing observation is most folks seem to like Vesperia and Berseria the most, with roughly equal nostalgia for Symphonia and Abyss, while the reaction to Xilla was mixed or meh... and regarding Zestiria, the consensus seems to be "don't even fucking bother, just read the wiki." :pac

As a whole, it sounds like Tales storylines tend to be extremely fantasy anime/JRPG traditional to a fault, so maybe Vesperia and Berseria stand out by playing around more with characterization (Vesperia) or outright flipping the script (Berseria).

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Re: CF-WRUP V: Good play. Nice talk.

Post by Bier_Engel » Mon Feb 11, 2019 5:36 pm

I think Vesperia holds up. I'm liking it as much as I did the first time around. Granted, I played the old version 4 years ago, rather than 10. The localization issues are typical with Tales. Aside from the Baker/George thing in this one, there's the whole "the subtitles don't match what the character just said" issue that every Tales game has in various degrees, but this is much better than Berseria in that aspect so far. Mostly it's Yuri saying "Judy" when the subtitles say "Judith" or vice-versa. No big deal.

If you can grab the new version for $40 when it's been out less than a month, I'd say do it.

Not sure on the multi-player aspect as I've never tried, though.

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Re: CF-WRUP V: Good play. Nice talk.

Post by Delthazar » Mon Feb 11, 2019 6:49 pm

Thinking I'll jump on the Apex Legends bandwagon later tonight, so I finally got around to setting up Origin. Y'all (or maybe just C6? Falcon?) can find me there as DelsaberActual if you wanna.

(All of Apex's cool comms features are bound to the middle mouse button by default, and mine's broken, so this'll be tons of fun if they don't have custom keybind support!)

Go figure EA still has the Mass Effect 2 and 3 DLC bundles listed at a king's ransom. Getting those would cost me twice as much as the trilogy itself. :pacdown

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Re: CF-WRUP V: Good play. Nice talk.

Post by Delthazar » Mon Feb 11, 2019 8:05 pm

Falcon Critical wrote:
Wed Feb 06, 2019 7:48 pm
You are also selling Sunless Skies to me, but I'm pulling myself in many directions haha.
Waypoint also talked about Sunless Skies a lot on today's pod so they might sell you on it too. :pac

I'm glad Austin remembers Escape Velocity and Nova specifically, not enough people played those games.

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Re: CF-WRUP V: Good play. Nice talk.

Post by Falcon Critical » Tue Feb 12, 2019 1:34 am

Well I started and finished Timespinner, got 3 of the endings (wasn't too hard since there was a savepoint right before the choices). There were a couple of times where I wasn't sure where I was supposed to go, but it does have some nice QOL improvements over SOTN, such as a run button and the straight up boost being a hold down rather than having to repeat the motion all the time.

Will have to figure out which game is next, though I've been building up a hankering for more Simsing so that might be what I jump on next.

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Re: CF-WRUP V: Good play. Nice talk.

Post by True Perception » Tue Feb 12, 2019 4:24 pm

I need "comfort food" right now, so I'm going to finally get around to playing Last of Us on PS4, on the newer hardest difficulty setting. Maybe, I should start with Left Behind, since it runs a bit easier than the main game...

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Re: CF-WRUP V: Good play. Nice talk.

Post by Falcon Critical » Tue Feb 12, 2019 4:47 pm

I like how your comfort food is the hard setting on a horror game :pac I'd be jumping on the Sims or Stardew Valley

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Re: CF-WRUP V: Good play. Nice talk.

Post by DHerder222 » Tue Feb 12, 2019 4:49 pm

I'd probably be Smashing if I needed comfort food. :pac

I did end up grabbing Vesperia, so that'll be my next playthrough.

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Re: CF-WRUP V: Good play. Nice talk.

Post by True Perception » Tue Feb 12, 2019 6:44 pm

If you guys want to watch me suffer, I'm streaming to Twitch. True_perception. No mic, no video. Just the game. It's... actually fairly frustrating after this long hiatus, and with the added frailty.

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Re: CF-WRUP V: Good play. Nice talk.

Post by Bier_Engel » Tue Feb 12, 2019 7:15 pm

Enjoy Vesperia, D!

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Re: CF-WRUP V: Good play. Nice talk.

Post by True Perception » Tue Feb 12, 2019 9:31 pm

Had to back it down to Survivor for the final battle, but that's apparently all that's needed for the trophy.

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Re: CF-WRUP V: Good play. Nice talk.

Post by Falcon Critical » Wed Feb 13, 2019 12:42 am

I downloaded the itch.io app, I figured it's going to be my platform of choice so having a front end to collect my games (ala steam) probably makes sense. It unsurprisingly looks a lot like steam.

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Re: CF-WRUP V: Good play. Nice talk.

Post by Delthazar » Wed Feb 13, 2019 12:51 am

Does their app have an import function for stuff I've already installed from their site? I bought We Know The Devil from them fairly recently, but weirdly, I can't remember if I actually rolled an itch.io account at the same time.

I still need to play Butterfly Soup so this may as well be how I do it. Get all the launchers.

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Re: CF-WRUP V: Good play. Nice talk.

Post by Falcon Critical » Wed Feb 13, 2019 11:32 am

It doesn't look like it, I have Butterfly Soup installed still and it didn't pick that up when I booted the launcher. Most of the games I've bought/played through here are tiny though, and it has excellent install location control.

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Re: CF-WRUP V: Good play. Nice talk.

Post by DHerder222 » Wed Feb 13, 2019 7:34 pm

Forgot to mention that we played through the Call of Cthulhu game on PS4 about a month ago. It was...okay, for the most part. Definitely not worth a full $60, but I suppose worth a lower price if you're fans of the genre. It's chief flaw isn't plain graphics or iffy gameplay (both of which are surmountable). The main issue is it contains 0 surprises. The plot unfolds exactly how you expect it to given the premise, which means you've probably already seen everything it does many times before.

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Re: CF-WRUP V: Good play. Nice talk.

Post by Falcon Critical » Thu Feb 14, 2019 11:31 am

It's the great irony of Lovecraftian lore that it is now so commonplace that it lost its mystique.

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Re: CF-WRUP V: Good play. Nice talk.

Post by DHerder222 » Thu Feb 14, 2019 8:30 pm

I know, right? It's especially silly because there are plenty of other situations and baddies in the mythos that can be used in stories like these. But everyone insists on using the big green guy.

e: One almost inconceivable mistake the game makes: The game uses one-chance skill checks, so if you have a 85% in medicine you'll succeed in a medical task much more frequently than if you have 15%. Early on in the game, your stats are crappy so you fail tons of skill checks. A top-tier game would include New Game+ so you can replay and find out what happens when you succeed at all these tasks. But this game does not have NG+. I'm flabbergasted they didn't include it.

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Re: CF-WRUP V: Good play. Nice talk.

Post by Bier_Engel » Sun Feb 17, 2019 9:26 am

My best friend is a Kingdom Hearts fan and she just beat 3. In doing so, she came across an in-game video that was basically a trailer for FF Versus 13 (which became 15) because I guess the same guy was working on both games, and KH has FF ties anyway.

So, curious, she decided to buy FF 15. She hated it from the start and barely played for 5 minutes, so she brought it over for me to borrow yesterday. After waiting over an hour and a half for 30gb of updates to take up space on my PS4, we could finally start the game. She lamented the lack of an epic intro. Like, literally, there's no opening movie or anything. Not before the title screen, and not when you actually start the game. The fuck? I remember the cool opening being the best part of starting FF8 on my brand new PS1 for the first time and being in awe. How do you not have an opening? And then the actual intro to the game is just, "hey son, go on this road trip and get married once you're in your destination." So, that part is FF-like with the kingdoms and royalty and shit, but the setting otherwise is just some bland desert, and there's a modern car out front... it's weird.

And then the first controlled part is you holding R2 to push the car that broke down (which, my friend noticed, is not the same car from the beginning, which was literally waiting for your party. How did they fuck that up?). I didn't even see the tiny "press R2" on the side of the screen because the text in this game is so small, I have to squint to read anything. Thankfully my friend told me, and also told me it took her a long time to figure out (the background does not make that tiny text pop out). So I held R2 for a while with one hand and... drank wine with my other. Wow, exciting gameplay! Really draws you in!

So then we reach Cindy, whose outfit is too easy to comment on, and her southern accent. We're later told to find this guy Dave who lives in a shack and also has a southern accent. At this point, I said aloud, "is this Final Fantasy or Red Dead Redemption?" Also, we couldn't get over "Dave." You know, Final Fantasy, with such characters like Sephiroth, Cloud, Yunalesca, and Dave...

I was also annoyed because the game started out with no subtitles or names to show who was speaking. I have issues with that, and thankfully there is an option to add them, but I don't understand why that not the default. So in the beginning, I missed out on some dialogue and wasn't sure who was actually speaking. Speaking of options, holy fuck, there are so many, and the text is so tiny. It's overwhelming.

I ended up quitting after meeting Dave because I wasn't clear on what to actually do after that. Also, the game autosaves, which is annoying, because what if I fuck up and want to select another option? This game has choices. So... I don't know if I'll give it another shot or not. Anyone else here play it? Does it get better?

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Re: CF-WRUP V: Good play. Nice talk.

Post by True Perception » Sun Feb 17, 2019 10:29 am

Yeah. I know there are people that really like it, but I had a hard time getting invested. And, I got to the end of that area, to the point where you meet, who I assume is supposed to be, the villain? I don't know. I couldn't be bothered to pick it up after that. There's a lot of side objectives and gathering, a la Assassin's Creed, and I don't think it works well in a Final Fantasy. And, all of the collectibles respawn, so you could spend hours hunting them down, if you so chose. The magic system is also a little weird. You have to hunt down draw points. The day/night system was a little annoying, too, but I could see it being fun late game.

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Re: CF-WRUP V: Good play. Nice talk.

Post by DHerder222 » Sun Feb 17, 2019 12:05 pm

I went through the whole game and most postgame content. I put it squarely in the category of "good games that could have been great." Plenty of the game really does work for me. I liked the combat - if I can't have a turn-based FF, at least let the combat be fast and efficient like it is here. I also definitely like the driving and landscapes. The setting maybe needed another city or two, but there's enough interesting stuff to explore without feeling too overwhelming. And the amount of sidequests was also just right to me.

I think the core quartet of characters are good, the villain is bad and the supporting cast is somewhere in between. As you both alluded to, the weak point really is the plot. When I first heard the premise - hero is sent on boring journey and everything back home goes to shit while he's gone - I thought that had a lot of potential. FF has kinda-sorta done the "heroes on the run" thing before, but they'd never made it the primary focus on the story. Unfortunately the story drags a lot and many of the events that push the plot forward feel like ass-pulls.

To me, it's definitely not in the lowest tier of FF games, where you see games like II, V and (sometimes) XIII. I peg it as ultimately very average - mostly okay, not much awesome or terrible. I think if you like FF tropes, eventually you'll find enough to make it worth playing.