@“treefroggy”#p50009 oculus eat yer heart out, that right there is the true VR
So I'm in the postgame of Death Stranding now, after blazing through the final part of the main story, because although that was a fun spectacle I am ready just to hang out in the game world with all mechanics unlocked, unbothered by any more unexpected interruptions.
I'm honestly shocked at how firmly this experience has me in its grasp and I'm curious to see how much longevity it has for me now that I'm basically in free play mode.
I think the best way now for me to make the most of this is by seeing if I can use the tools the game offers to customise the map somewhat to the experience I daydreamed about much earlier in the game - just traversal, no combat. I'm thinking about designing a discrete network of ziplines that allow me to skip over just the MULE camps and BT areas at will. I don't hate those encounters but the idea of being able to just ignore them in favour of loading up big deliveries with no weapons and just zone out with purely traversal-based challenge is pretty appealing.
Alright, I feel satisfied with the amount of time I put into Raw Danger!
I can't say that I went absolutely wild over it, but man, it's very easy to see what is great about it.
What is has very much in common with _Disaster Report_ is how HUGE and CRUNCHY everything in the environment feels. Certainly impressively for the level of tech we're talking about and looking back at it from the vantage point of 2021, Few games really manage to make you feel like you're in a building or a city, never mind that said building or city block could break apart and fall on top of you at any time. Of course, it doesn't _always_ nail that feeling of size and weight, but when it does it's great! Helping that is the other extreme there too which is how granular everything feels. The level of detail on both big and small levels is delicious.
You gotta love a game that allows you to experience and interact with the same events from different playable characters. Maybe games are uniquely well suited to this narrative structure! It almost feels like an underutilized trope these days, although, I imagine a narrative structure like that is difficult in an era where patchwork revision and restarting and decision-by-committee has become more common (actually, I'm talking out of my ass about whether it's become more common or not, so, if anyone more knowledgeable and I can confirm or deny if it has that'd be great). Following from that point, I'm more familiar with how this manifests on the K side of things and I assume there's stylistic overlap, but you gotta love that J-Drama style melodramatic excess. Again, maybe this is more on the K side of things, but all it needed was someone being revealed to be someone's long lost sibling or for an elaborate faked death. I also like how we have some choices that matter and change other things, but a lot of the dialogue choices are more in the vein of just allowing you to put your own spin on the mood of a scene. Actually, it's more like you are directing the production of _Raw Danger!_ then acting.
If an Insert Credit darling game should leave you wanting more, I'd say at least for me _Raw Danger!_ had me feeling that way in both good and not good ways. _Raw Danger!_ unfolds and grows in a way that is wonderful. It leaves you thinking that it will always be about something more next. How that ended up leaving me wanting was how that feeling seemed to stop before I wanted it to. I could have gone for maybe just one more weird n' wild twist or development, in fact, I think how it ends leaves me thinking there were story threads that got cut for time. To be honest, I think I may even slightly regret ||putting in time playing the game over again to access Keith Helms' scenario, because it really does seem like it was something that was far more substantial at some point but was mercilessly shrunk down. Just like Joshua's version of roughly the same event, it feels unnecessary.|| It's not like _Raw Danger!_ isn't a full meal but I do feel like I want dessert, if you now what I mean. Or, like, a _Raw Danger!: Director's Cut._
Further speculation on that point: ||Feels like there was more going on with Stephanie/Haruka and her father at the beginning, and she is weirdly absent from the end. Especially with how it seems like Haruka and her father had some conspiracy afoot with regards to her working as a waitress, to refresh your memory if it's been a while, when they're on the phone she says something like "but what about...?" and her father says "never mind that now, just get to safety" or something like that. Perhaps she was supposed to be spying on the Mayor or something? Also, kind of feels like there was at some point a plot thread more reminiscent of _Disaster Report's_ focus on corporate crime and how the term "natural" disaster is so often used to excuse how so many of the dangers of those events are in fact due to manufactured greed. Maybe something about how there were fundamental limitations in Geo City's design or corporate negligence at the Cascade Dam. I mean, the thing with the ecoterrorist mayor and the bioweapon is deliciously hammy and all but it seemed to kind of betray the premise of _Disaster Report_ and neglects to provide a satisfying explanation for why in this world they allowed yet another incompetent corrupt corporation build technomarvel supercity of the future. You're just kind of left to feel that no one thought of "rain" before. It's kind of like a bait and switch but with implied bait.||
Ah, well. I still thought it was great. I guess some 7/10s just make you feel the missing 3 more than how 7 is a lot out of 10.
I don't even know if I _really_ did it on purpose or not, but it seems I've been spending time catching up on Insert Credit games lately (_For Toll The Bell Frogs Whom,_ **GOD HAND,** _Disaster Report,_ and now _Raw Danger!)._
If Insert Credit-ness is a quality, playing **GOD HAND** and _Raw Danger!_ almost sequentially makes me feel they represent some duology of Pure Insert Credit-ness, like two sides of the same coin of the sort of experience or execution of ideas that is valued around here. Something that is so what it is that the relevance of it being "flawed" don't detract from one's enjoyment of it.
I think I had more meaningful connections to make between those two games when I first made that connection than I do now so I'll just leave it there.
@“LeFish”#p50007 Thanks for sharing your thoughts on Famicom Detective Club. Since they were released for the Switch, I‘ve been vacillating between wanting to give them a go and forgetting that they exist. They do look gorgeous, but the issues you’ve highlighted are exactly what‘s kept me from getting too excited about ’em. I'm glad they exist, though. I wonder how well they sold.
@“whatsarobot”#p50218 I‘d say that if you’re not too hung up on referring to a guide every so often then you‘ll be OK. I have one open that I use if things are unclear about what I should be doing and it’s helped make the game a smoother experience even if I'm mentally taken out of the sense of immersion.
@“LeFish”#p50260 I‘m a fan of old school (non-Japanese) adventure games, so this is something I’m familiar with, and something I even occasionally enjoy!
@“whatsarobot”#p50262 I should also say that I‘ve made a conscious choice to treat it a bit more like a book than a game too. The narrative is divided into explicit chapters and I’m deliberately only going through one a day and it's a pleasant experience to gently make a small amount of progress each day - and you can get little recaps when you load your save too if you want them.
I recently started playing Secret of Mana on my MiSTer and despite really liking the artstyle I think I‘m going to end up dropping it. The combat is extremely frustrating. I keep finding myself forced to backtrack to an inn to revive all of my teammates because they get snagged on a corner and just sit there, waiting to be shot with arrows until they die. It’s a gorgeous game! It‘s a shame it’s also extremely frustrating.
For the past week or so I‘ve finally been playing Breath of Fire III, which I’ve had patiently sitting on my shelf for maybe 4 or 5 years by now. I‘ve just gotten to the part in the game where ||there’s a time skip forward by a couple years,|| which my experience with the genre indicates I‘m approximately halfway through. This makes me feel I’ve seen enough of the game to start speaking about it confidently, so I'm going to talk about it!
The first thing that struck me about this game is the presentation. What a gorgeous game, huh?? I knew the words "Capcom RPG" meant it was gonna be incredibly stylish if nothing else, but I was really blown away at how beautiful the animations in particular are. I suppose it's worth mentioning this is also my first time playing a _Breath of Fire_ game in the first place - I've passively been aware of the general design sensibilities of these games just by seeing stuff online every now and then, but seeing it all in motion is really something. I just love looking at this game.
The actual gameplay is pretty rich too, to an extent...? I'm still not entirely sure how I feel about it. On one hand, there's an incredible depth to lock into and learn about where everything is very thoroughly considered and exists with a satisfyingly consistent internal logic, but also... You can just kinda not engage with it at all. Let me give an example: there's an enemy early-in called Tar Man, which is just a little monster made out of tar. If you try attacking these guys directly, it won't really do much. Think about it: these guys are made of tar, and trying to slice a sword through tar wouldn't be especially effective. In a typical game this would just equate to the Tar Man having high defense, but in _Breath of Fire III_ it means you have to think of a way to actually damage tar. Using ice magic on the Tar Man will always freeze it (because in what context would tar not freeze?) and then once it's frozen, standard attacks will start doing more usual damage number (because the tar is solid now). That's really cool! It's more "alive" than a standard rock-paper-scissors RPG strength/weakness dichotomy, and a surprising amount of the enemies have bespoke interactions like this. I suppose why I'm hesitating is because _Breath of Fire III_ doesn't quite push this far enough to make it as engaging as it could be. An overwhelming majority of fights you can still get through with the tried-and-true methods of just mashing regular attacks, and throwing in a couple party buffs or crowd control magic where appropriate. Going through these extra motions to make these interactions happen usually takes more time and Ability Points than they're worth, and it's a massive shame that engaging with all these thoughtful systems is usually the sub optimal way to play. It does, however, seem like the kind of idea ripe for an indie game to snatch up and push to its natural conclusion. (Sure would love to see at least **one** _Breath of Fire III_ inspired indie game in a world slowly filling with _Paper Mario_ clones!)
Allowing the battles to become so one-note is an especially large problem outside of the fights themselves as well, because Hoh Mama, the dungeons in this game are _bad_. Like, "the rest of the game is so gorgeous and well-considered, how did these wind up like this" bad. I have not enjoyed my time in a single dungeon in this game, which is awful because there is a *lot* of them. Just last night I played through a section where there were two dungeons back-to-back without any kind of break in between! It's also usually pretty bad about telegraphing what the goal of the dungeon even is, like what puzzle there even is to be solved or what direction "progress" might look like. They're usually pretty short at least, but the amount of battles thrown at you in them adds the tedium incredibly quickly. It's the classic RPG pitfall of "Here's this puzzle to solve in the dungeon, which exists completely separately from the random battles we keep throwing at you. Good luck remembering what you were trying to do before the battle started!" It might just be me (and thinking about how prevalent this is across the entire genre, it really actually might just be me), but bouncing back and forth between these two game modes where one requires one way of thinking and the other just randomly springs time-wasters that need a totally separate way of thinking can feel pretty disorienting. All this on top of, like I said, areas that already do not feel as intuitively-designed as other games in the genre. This game loves dungeons, and it loves random battles, and unfortunately that love isn't especially justified here for either of them.
Though somehow, despite most of what I'm saying here implying my experience has been substantially negative, I still always find myself eager to go back... Why? Can a game really be carried this hard by presentation and nothing else? The music thumps Hard, by the way. And the narrative hasn't been especially compelling, but every now and then there will be little pockets of incredibly inspired concepts. ||"Pray that nothing like me is ever born again" is one of my new favorite lines of all time from any video game.|| _Breath of Fire III_ might just be a game of chasing these little highs, these little incredible moments where you do need to engage as deeply with the battle system as it wants you to, and where the story does show glimpses of really exciting ideas, all set to the backdrop of a legendary art and sound department. I suppose I'll just have to beat the game and see if any of this changes...!!
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@“Funbil”#p50324 The music thumps Hard, by the way.
That overworld music though!!!!!!!
@“Gaagaagiins”#p50339 I just about heaped my lid ||after the time skip|| swear on my mama
@“Syzygy”#p50342
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@“Syzygy”#p50342 Surprised you would say this
It's definitely picking up by now! But the first half of the game left me mostly unimpressed (the Beyd detour in particular plummeted my enthusiasm - but, I pinched my nose and trudged through). I also think what I didn't particularly enjoy was likely an artistic decision so the tone shift in this second half holds a little more gravitas. Mostly just wasn't a fan of how so much of the early story felt frivolous and childish, which is why moments like the mutant plant stood out so much. Now that the game is taking itself quite a bit more seriously, it definitely seems deliberate looking back. Not convinced that this is necessarily the best way to handle this kind of duality, but I think I can appreciate what it's going for. Might be something I grow to appreciate more as I play through this second half as well, depending on whatever consequences may be waiting for me from the first half.
I reached the first big story dump in Shin Megami Tensei V (>!when the gang gets warped back to a Tokyo high school and finds out about bullying on the lacrosse team!<), and could not stop cringing. Really killed my desire to keep going with that game. The open world exploration and battling has been enjoyable, but has also felt kind of… I don‘t know, flimsy and timid, for an SMT game? By comparison, SMT IV and Nocturne felt to me like confident declarations of punk rock video game energy and intent. SMT V feels more like… a fan project by people who kind of enjoyed SMT in the past, but also felt pressured to make sure Persona fans could get into it. It’s lacking some essential sense of conviction, doesn‘t feel like it’s Doing Its Own Thing the way mainline SMT games used to feel (up until SMT IV Apocalypse), and I'm not sure the Unreal engine is doing the game any favours.
I think you're right 
about that, but they tell me in other thread not to worry it gets better. But I keep just kind of picking away at the game rather than getting real into it….
But lately have been playing Granstream Saga and I like it quite a lot. Don't know how it turned out this way, but it's ultra sharp and a sold 60 fps on my little rg 350 thing. Looks great and I always seem to appreciate the weirdness inherent in these early console game before "good" design is settled. And I'm pleased that it still has the quintet oddness to it
@“whatsarobot”#p50372 I‘m also not super enjoying the characters but I don’t think it‘s because the devs are trying to ape Persona, because if they are then they’re doing a really poor job of it. Persona for all the things it does wrong very intentionally deep dives on characters and makes you spend a lot of time with them, revealing lots of different facets as the games go on. They're not lazy games, there is obviously massive amounts of effort and time put into fleshing out that part of them because that is clearly what their most important goal is.
I just think this shorthand I've been seeing on this forum for what Persona is feels a bit detached from reality. SMTV can fail on its own merits, it can have generic and shallow characters, which I think it does so far. I don't even think that's exclusive to this game either! IV has a much more confident and unique setting but the characters themselves aren't exactly a masterclass in writing or Thematic Weight. If they're truly trying to reach Persona fans then they're not actually doing a good job and are super far off from what expectations would be.
It reminds me of the last 10+ years of people using "anime" as a catch all term to mean a million different things all wrapped up into one tropey package. Persona is becoming that in a smaller sense where it seems like whenever two character speak to each other it's oh no Persona is here!!! I hope we can just be a lil more intentional and nuanced in what it is we're actually not liking about something.
my disappointment with the writing in SMT isn‘t that I think it apes persona: I think it renders it’s own story/characters/vibe prosaic and flimsy rather than weird and menacing. Of course an individual game within a series can be its own thing, and I‘m certainly not arguing in favor of long running series always hitting the same beats, but, as you say, I think it’s not great on it‘s own merits. I’m certainly guilty of using persona as a broad insult, but I can be more precise: when I use that term I'm referring to the tactic of inserting (at least in my view) anti-social and inappropriate “social links” as weird, sub-adolescent brain-hooks in a manipulative way
But, no, I don't think that's the problem with SMTV. The disappointment there is that the plot makes the setting/characters/themes seem flimsy and prosaic rather then strange and dangerous. I still like the game, and it's not a total write off, but it's a bit of a misfire (IMO). And yeah, IV, and the earlier games don't have much in the way of plot and character, but what's there is suggestive and in service to the mood/atmosphere, rather than: we're an elite squad of demon operators blah blah
@“sabertoothalex”#p50387 That's a fair criticism. Let me be a little bit clearer about what I mean.
I've played Every Single Persona Game, and enjoyed several of them. I am intentionally being surface-level here, because I do not want Tokyo High School Teens with Mundane Problems to be the central focus of a mainline SMT game. If High School Teens is not a central identifying aspect of Persona games, then what the heck is, you know? So I do not dislike the story in SMT V for being shallow or generic. I dislike it for not having the courage to feature... I don't know, adult protagonists (like Strange Journey did), or a more unconventional conceit (like SMT IV did).
@"dry cleaner for dogs"#385 Yeah, SMT V feels like a big but ultimately unsatisfying iceberg lettuce-based salad with out of season tomatoes and maybe some grated carrots, served up to me when I'm really not that hungry. By comparison, SMT IV felt like a chopped kale-based salad with walnuts, feta cheese, apple, and a nice vinaigrette, and no matter how much of it I ate, I always craved more. Maybe I gotta try Granstream Saga lol.
EDIT: As @"dry cleaner for dogs"#385 so beautifully articulated, less has traditionally been more in the SMT mainline storytelling department, and that approach has allowed for a greater sense of mystery, intrigue and Unsettling Vibes. With SMT V, too much curtain is pulled back, and what's behind it is depressingly 1) juvenile, 2) boring, and 3) unfortunately reminiscent of Persona games, which I was definitely hoping this would not be.
@“dry cleaner for dogs”#p50389 Yeah, I agree with all of this! V isn‘t hitting for me the way I wanted it to where I’m at, for a few different reasons. You can see glimpses, and there are certainly entire sequences/moments, that feel in-line with that has traditionally been so good about the mainline SMT games. There‘s just a lot more limp stuff there too…I just don’t think it has much to do with Persona specifically.
I was actually thinking about a post you made about how the menacing middle distance shots that are used so well in all the pre-V games really make them feel both explosively and subtly menacing. And none of that is in here. It's one of the more disappointing things about it. It's even missing the intentional staging that a Persona game retains because you can just whip the camera around most of the time and it's kinda silly.
exactly, and I‘m not even especially attached to that middle distance thing if they’d devise some new ways of creating other potent effects. The music is still heavy though and the blue hair is a good wild choice. There's still a lot of cool stuff in V
I‘m playing SOMA (2015). it’s so fuckin scary. i keep trying to pass the controller to my partner to get them to play instead. but they always refuse so i am playing