shinymcshine

I've admit I'm struggling a bit with the pacing of this now ~20 hrs in.

The exploration of the tower is great, but seems like the cycle will be every full moon (4 weeks) you get an unlock and a decent event battle, and in between it's just kicking your heels a bit, doing the social stuff and revisiting tower levels - and that sort of sucks a bit, as it's all a little slow.

I'll be sticking with it a while more though !

Hit Floor 42 and saw the 'Game Over' screen for the first time !

It all got a bit slow around Golden Week, doing social activities and not too much action, then...... boom, the monorail !

That was fun !

8.5 hrs, and still at the end of April, and the tower is blocked off around Lv 22 - I assumed this is some time/event driven unlock rather than something I'm missing ?

Still enjoying things, been back to previous floors unlocking chests, picking up new equipment, fusing personas etc. Joined a couple of schools clubs too, and done a bit of karaoke and work in the coffee shop.

First time playing a Persona game - and it's clearly a bit weird, but after pushing through a couple of hours of talky intros etc I now feel like I'm getting somewhere - even thought it's still 21 April, but I'm 'freely' exploring the tower for the first real time (which feels a bit like Azure Dreams).

Not too sure quite how far I'm supposed to be going, just triggered the teleport on Lv 17, with a pending 'boss' fight - but don't seem to be having too many issues so far.

No real idea on fusing Personas together, and whether I've done the right thing - but I combined Angel & Silky to make a Forneus.

I guess it's not knowing what's a good / bad thing to do, and whether early (ill informed) choices will kick you in the ass later on, but without dipping straight into a guide, then who knows....!?!? Hopefully it'll be forgiving of a trial & error approach.

Likewise I've no idea how far I'm suppose to keep going up the tower currently, and if it's just a case of continuing until prompted to stop, or when I hit a difficulty barrier, or if I can bail out whenever.

I'm around 4.5 hrs so far, and there's still pop-up tutorials ever so often, so I don't know if the training wheels are ready to come off quite yet ?

"Giants: Citizen Kabuto" - is almost an anagram of Citizen Kane (with a letter missing, and a few extras....)

I'll predominantly play on 'Normal' but will occasionally switch down to "Easy" especially towards the end of a game, where there's nothing new to see except an increasing quantity of repetitive enemies.

I liked the variation of difficulty settings in  "The Last Case of Benedict Fox" where you could separately adjust the combat & puzzle difficulty (so towards the end I dropped down the former, and left the latter - but can understand why some might enjoy doing the opposite).

TBH most of the time it's getting that balance right between enjoyment & challenge.

"claimed their games would only be available where there was Xbox game pass"

Well I guess if they brought (Xbox) Gamepass to other consoles as the means to access those games, then it's probably a legal get out.

Gamecentral gave it a good write up (8/10) albeit noting:

"Our only real complaint with the remasters is that they offer absolutely no help when it comes to saving. There’s no auto-save system, or common remaster features like a rewind, and instead you just manually save whenever you want. That is how the PC version worked back in the day but it’s an unwelcome faff"

However IIRC that still sounds way better than the save point diamonds you'd periodically come across in the original PS games.

I really quite enjoyed DI Riptide

Capcom - playing 1942 in the acarde in the mid-late 80s

Blimey - I wondered if Train World 4 was like a Transport Tycoon style resource management game, but it is actually a train driving simulator - just like Southern Belle on the C64 (going from London to Brighton all those years ago c.1985).

Whoo-woo !!

TBF it sounds like a decision made from MS Corporate centre as they are likely fed up with the BS from Xbox management who probably kept saying "Oh but the projection of figures for next year look great....."

That sounds like they are just reinventing the 3DO !!!

Wonder if (along with the CoD to NS) it might just be that GamePass Cloud Gaming goes cross platform - so you can access & play via another console (if your connection is good enough) but for the 'premium experience' (and to download & own) then you'll still need a MS console.

That'd open up some revenue streams (and minimise any conversion costs), but also keep a performance differential.

It'll come eventually, as it has with other forms of entertainment media - and the closures of Blockbuster, Virgin Megastores, Zavvi, Tower Records etc.

In all those cases people probably said the move to streaming / download / subscription models / paid online rentals etc wouldn't happen too.

The only threshold games have is (lack of uniform) cross compatibility - but if cloud gaming eventually removes that barrier then the future of gaming will be pretty different - where console exclusivity gives way to companies being able to access wider funding streams.

I'd been quite a fan of the previous Conjuring & Insidious films (albeit the Nun one was pretty poor) and I can now say that it's well worth giving Insidious The Red Door a miss.

Barely starring Patrick Wilson & Rose Byrne - it primarily focuses instead on one of their kids going off to college, and it's just not really all that scary or even that engaging.

With all the issues associated with licencing, and games getting eventually withdrawn from sale when things like music licenses expire, I wonder how this works in terms of the actors who were motion captured / physically replicated in the original game - do they all get paid again (or perhaps they signed a waiver that allowed for their future usage) ?

Suppose in some ways it's no different in that respect to a movie getting a Directors Cut or remastered / extended version release - albeit that makes me wonder whether the additional scenes that are going to be in the remastered game were 'shot' & 'cut' from the original or if they are using computer wizardry to make the actors / characters do things that weren't previously captured...(which might be ethically dodgy)?

TBF if they release an unfinished broken mess it will truly be a sequel to the Bloodlines that Trokia released back in 2004.....

There was Cheggers Party Quiz game for the Wii.

I sort of want to say yes - but often due to the length of gameplay, and the fragmented way the story is often told over many hours, I probably don't care too much about it (esp. if it has a whole bunch of convoluted plot twists etc).

That said what I really enjoy (esp. in RPGs) is the wrap up summaries you get on game completion about what your party members did next (based on your actions during the game).

So I probably mean is that I like the stories that I create through gameplay, more than an overarching predefined story where I'm simply an 'actor' who who no real influence on the outcome.

I ended up liking Elex - but agree the PB template isn't for everyone.

It'll be interesting to read whether the sequel develops enough of its own identity to tempt me to play it.

Doubleplusgood summary !

Now go back and rewrite it in newspeak.

Credits rolling, think I got a decent ending too....

Enjoyed it - might play again sometime taking a different skills approach - albeit quite frustrating to play on NS (docked) due to a number hard crashes.

Well that just took a weird "Fahrenheit" (aka Indigo Prophecy) twist.....