OT: Blues Forum Lounge (Home of All Things OT) - Part 2023-2024
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117 degrees here in AZ where I am right now. It's like walking into an oven lol
I played 18 holes of golf in 119 degrees once
we would hurry up and hit the ball and rush to get back under the shade from the golf cart
I just ate dinner at a hole-in-the-wall called the Odd soul in my new home town in Arkansas. Delicious pulled pork pizza. But what was really interesting was their signature drink, the Odd Fashioned. Cognac, bourboun, tea and orange. Tasted like an old fashion but stronger and a bit less sweet. Delicious. Now I am sitting down with a Breckenridge Vanilla Porter and playing some Final Fantasy 16. Its a really good Saturday night. Hope you all are having a good one too. 
It's a dry heat though, right?
I got up to 119 today. I stop going outside when it gets to 120.It's a dry heat though, right?
How do you like 16? I'm a JRPG nerd and that game's quality will potentially speed up me getting a PS5...I just ate dinner at a hole-in-the-wall called the Odd soul in my new home town in Arkansas. Delicious pulled pork pizza. But what was really interesting was their signature drink, the Odd Fashioned. Cognac, bourboun, tea and orange. Tasted like an old fashion but stronger and a bit less sweet. Delicious. Now I am sitting down with a Breckenridge Vanilla Porter and playing some Final Fantasy 16. Its a really good Saturday night. Hope you all are having a good one too.
It's just ok so far. I am a little over half-way through by chapter list. On main mission 28 of 48. So its an incomplete opinion.
The combat is fun but way, way too easy. I've died twice. Once on a main mission boss because I just wasn't getting the timing right on dodging one of his moves. Finally figured it out, but didn't want to use my super expensive healing items So it was a legit death. But then they started me 2/3 through the boss fight with all my health and potions back. So beating it was a cake walk.
The other death was last night after several drinks when I tried to do an optional boss was higher level than me without using potions (the only way to heal) as an added challenge. I almost did it, but he caught me with the first hit of a comb that stun locked me for the whole combo and killed me.
The story which is the games main focus is just ok so far. It relies heavily on "surprises" or twists, but they telegraph them to the point you can obviously see them coming. The voice acting is solid but really, really falls apart any time a character has to be dramatic. I've cringed several times at the voice acting. And the story won't get out of your way. Its opened up a good bit now for me, but in the beginning it was very cut scene focused. I probably did like 15 fights in the first 7 hours, and fights take like 5 minutes.
The graphics are nice and the world is beautiful but it doesn't run perfectly. It can be framey at times. I don't have a way to measure but I am not sure it ever hits 60. It seems locked on the performance mode at 40 -45 fps and still has occasional dips. In a game that isn't open world and has quite narrow environments with not a lot going on, this isn't technically impressive.
That probably seems like I am majorly down on the game. But there are a lot of glowing reviews, so I wanted to focus on my issues. The combat is fun despite being easy. When you progress and get different move sets, there are interesting ways t mix it up. I really like the political aspects of the story, and they have a lot of ways to help you keep track of who is who. That allows them to tell a more complicated story without having to clutter the dialogue with reminders of who people are. You press down on the touch pad, and mini summaries of all people, places and events relevant to the conversation pop up. So aside from how they overly foreshadow their "twists", its a pretty good story with likab;e and interesting characters.
Over all. I'd give it a low to mid 8 right now, but that could change as I go forward. Worth playing for sure but not worth buying a Ps5 for it alone. Sorry for the long answer, but I had a lot of thoughts
Why is college so expensive!?!
In-state tuition should be significantly less, but what do I know...
In-state tuition should be significantly less, but what do I know...
Hell ya me too. I just started playing Dragon Quest 11 because I never got into one of those games before and it’s surprisingly great. I love that it has a traditional turn based combat system.
I've got DQ11 sitting on my monster backlog rack upstairs, glad to hear you liked it! I'm playing 5 here shortly; I'm playing Trials of Mana now, then Xenoblade X and then DQ5.
As I get older I love JRPGS more and more. I'm completely fed up and done with competitive online games, games as a 'service' are a scam and a Ubisoft-style bandit camp open world game really needs to be incredible to get me interested (like TotK and Witcher 3 pulled off).
JRPGS, on the other hand, give me a nice simple story (though sometimes stuff in like Nier Automata it's nowhere near simple), have incredible soundtracks and give tons and tons of content even if I am not grinding. Little in this world calms me down more than grinding in a JRPG while sports or a podcast plays in the background.
DQ 11 was very good but way too long to get the true ending. You basically had to travel to every city in the world 3 separate times.
That is my problem with RPGs lately. They are too long. There are just too many games to play lately to justify 100 hours on a game. But I do love them and have all the historical bona fides.
My RPG backlog is : FF Crisis Core remaster, Shin Megami Tensei 3 & 5, Soul Hackers, Chained Echoes (indie 16 bit inspired RPG with great reviews on gamepass), the entire xenoblade chronicles series (1, 2, Torna and 3), new Star Ocean, valkyria Chronicles 4, newest Valkryie Profile, Darkest Dungeon and Trials of Mana as well (both remake and original in the collection)
There are more but those are the top 1000 hours worth right there. Plus I have Zelda Tears of the Kingdom, Dead Space Remake, Diablo 3, Dead Island 3, and Street Fighter 6 just from thus year that I bought and have not touched lol That's the issue with liking all genres and wanting to play everything.
Lots of good stuff in your backlog (it resembles my backlog rack
). Chained Echoes RULES and isn't that long--I think you'd really enjoy that. Beware Xenoblades though...if we're talking about bloat, them and the Trails series are the absolute worst offenders. I really enjoy both series but Cold Steel could have been 20 less hours no problem. We're going through a JRPG reniassance right now and the amount of releases I want to play is utterly staggering. Like just for the rest of the year we've got the remake of Mario RPG, HD2D Star Ocean 2, Persona 5 Tactics, Dragon Quest Monsters, Baten Kaitos Collection, a port of Suikoden 1 and 2 so I can finally play 2, Silent Hope and some promising looking indies like Sea of Stars, Beloved Rapture, Alterium Shift, Quartet...
Lots of good stuff in your backlog (it resembles my backlog rack
We're going through a JRPG reniassance right now and the amount of releases I want to play is utterly staggering. Like just for the rest of the year we've got the remake of Mario RPG, HD2D Star Ocean 2, Persona 5 Tactics, Dragon Quest Monsters, Baten Kaitos Collection, a port of Suikoden 1 and 2 so I can finally play 2, Silent Hope and some promising looking indies like Sea of Stars, Beloved Rapture, Alterium Shift, Quartet...
Oh I forgot the trails series and Y's series for my backlog lol. I played trails in the sky Fc and SC, still have skies 3rd, zero, azure, cold steels and now Reverie. I am not a fan if skies so I hope it gets better.
Definitely play suikoden 2. Top 5 RPG of all time for me. Star Ocean 2nd is my favorite Star Ocean as well, although that's B tier series for me.
I have Mario RPG and Wonder bought already (Nintendo voucher combined with discounted eshop cards saved me $30). The demo for Sea of Stars has me sold there too. P5 tactics is gamepass so Ill play that. I'll gave to look up Silent Hope, beloved Rapture alterium shift and Quartet. Add the Hd-2d remake of Dq3 to the coming soon listas well...sigh, which reminds me I also have octopath 2 in the backlog lol
Man, Dragon Quest. They have spinoffs that have you taming monsters, and those games were part of my childhood. Dragon Quest 3 (Dragon Warrior 3 was the name it was called for the Game Boy Color, which is the game I have. Fate, I loved the plot.) was another great game. They're having a Dragon Quest Monsters game coming out this December, and I am stoked for it.
As for me, I'm also getting back into the Batman Arkham games. I forgot just how scary they can be. Killer Croc's lair in Arkham Asylum alone is frightening as hell - and don't even get me started on Scarecrow's sections. Combat and stealth are definitely fun, as usual. I have a whole backlog of games I've bought but haven't really played - and that's not even counting the numerous Nuzlockes I have.
I feel you on the length of rpg’s these days, when I played Tales Of Zestiria and Berseria it took me 90+ hours to beat those and I feel like they could trim it down a bit.
I played Star Ocean 2 and 4 and dug ‘em though I agree they are B tier games. The new Star Ocean looks rad its on my list. Never got to play Crisis Core so I’ll get to that one too. I downloaded the demo of Octopath Traveller 2 and love it so I’ll play that one eventually. I downloaded Suikoden 2 on my Ps3 and loved it tho I never finished it so I’m looking forward to playing the remaster. I am SO STOKED for the Super Mario RPG remake, i’ll buy a switch just to play it. That was the first rpg I ever played when it came out in ‘96 I f****** love that game so much.
Speaking of remakes although it hasn’t been made official yet by Square, there was a leak that theres going to be a Final Fantasy 9 remake in the future. It wont be an epic remake that requires three separate games like the FF7 remake but will be a one disc game which intrigues me. FF9 is probably my favorite one overall so I can’t wait for that one! There was another recent leak that Square is also working on a Chrono Trigger remake where it would be kind of like in the style of Octopath Traveller.
FF9 was part of the Nvidia link. Graphics card maker Nvidia has a streaming service called GForce Now that a lot of devs use to track and test their games. So it has a ton of unfinished games on it, some coming soon, some scrapped. A huge list of those games leaked, and the list is ridiculously accurate.
For Square, it nailed Tactics Orgre remaster, Chrono Cross remaster, new Tomb Raider under UE5 (Square sold Crystal and this is now being published by Amazon), Kingdom Hearts 4, and more. The only thing left from Square is FF9 and FF Tactics remakes.
I am sooo stoked for the Tactics Remake/Remaster. FFT is my favorite game of all time (along with Symphony of the Night, don't make me choose). I'd put FF9 6th or so amongst FF games (FFT, FF7 remake, FF6, FF5, FF4, then FF9). I am less excited about it as I replayed it somewhat recently, within the past couple years.
Oh ya I forgot about the FF tactics remaster! That should be amazing its one of my favorites too. I love the old school FF games so I respect that ranking bro. My top 5 would be FF9, FF7, FF8, FF6, FF10 in that order. I love 4 and 5 though too.
I loved Tactics but got hardlocked on the rooftop battle (if you know, you know) and have been too salty over the years to go back. it was an absolutely incredible game, though.
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