Topic: The PlayStation Fan Thread

Every day I am more and more tempted to replay NieR Replicant.

Stranger of Paradise is such a frustrating, experience.

I think the combat is so damn fun. I'd been away from it for a while, so there was some teething to relearn, but they present a very simple control scheme to access a lot of depth, which is how the best combat systems should be designed. It is all very intuitive and there is a real tangible satisfaction as you get better with weapons and your combos expand. There is some cross over between weapons, but they do manage to make each weapon feel unique enough from each other and some weapons present really unique styles over others. I have gone for a hybrid mage and melee, using spells to attack from afar and then switch to my melee class when my mana runs out and I need to get in close and personally to rebuild my meters.

The game makes you feel very powerful and while it isn't the prettiest game on PS5 (although I am playing in performance mode), the animations are so cool from finishers, to special moves, to just general attack animations.

I also think while loot is overload is very much a real thing here, making builds, playing around with the class and advance class system and spec'ing out your AI partners (which thankfully they don't force you to micromanage, as I really hated that stuff in like Tales or Xenoblade games) is again very rewarding, really giving back what you put into it, which is what I love about loot games like this.

Where the frustration comes in, are the bosses and I guess general difficulty design? But mostly difficulty design in relation to bosses specifically.

The game has three difficulties (and then I guess a forth at end game? And I guess technically 5, as you can also access an assist mode on top of the easiest difficulty) and the divide between each difficulty setting is astronomical. At the middle difficulty, moment to moment gameplay might be a little on the easy side, but the combat is so much fun it all balances out, that easyness just allows you to have fun messing around with combos, not making you stress about being brutally punished because of experimentation, but not so easy it feels like the game is just playing itself.

However, the difficulty spikes for every boss are absolutely astronomical basically every time. They spam attacks like a bullet hell game, can quite easily kill you in two hits - and that is more like one hit, as you have this whole break gauge thing and if the enemy breaks yours you get stunned, so they tend to break your gauge on the first hit and then kill you on the second while you can't defend yourself.

I know some people love being curbstomped by a game over and over again making slow crawls of progress until they beat a boss hours later, but I do not. I do enjoy the satisfaction of overcoming a challenge as much as anyone else, but there is a line for me between satisfaction and frustration which is very quickly crossed. Plus, if anything, inching closer just amplifies my frustration rather than increases my thrill, because I get so damn close, then know I have to go back and work through all the phases again.

The game does, after so many defeats, suggests you turn the difficulty down - something you can basically at any time anyway (you have these little checkpoint things, which allow you to access various things like the difficulty options, and they tend to stick these right next to bosses). There also isn't really any noticeable punishment for doing so, as you might get worse loot or whatever, but you are being flooded with it so quickly, you never hold to any loot for very long anyway.

The problem comes from the fact that difficulty between the bottom and the middle difficulty on the bosses is so massive, all achievement of beating the boss is lost. I'd rather they rebalance it to make the moment-to-moment gameplay slightly harder and smooth down the sharp spike that comes with the difficulty of bosses, or just give me more granular options rather than giving me the choice of being two shotted by the boss or me two shotting the actual boss.

I have accumulated 50 PS3 games until November 2022 with 7 of them are requiring PS Move to play.
I build my PS3 games collection pretty fast for almost 3 years. Woohoo...!
And I will get the PS Move set + Navigation controller at the end of year 2022.
I have been waiting patiently for 3 years to not playing my PS3 games with PS Move required until I get the PS Move set.
Now it's the time to get them.

Finally put some proper time into Miles Morales. I remember people really loved the original Spider-Man game, I thought it was fine but overrated, but MM feels like a significant improvement in almost every way.

So far, no crappy stealth sections - thank Christ. It has a really charming human story (albeit with some obvious twists and turns) - captured with really excellent performances, too. The performance plus RT mode on PS5 is just nuts, I am pretty sure my PC can't pump out visuals this high while remaining this smooth. Web swinging and doing tricks is a joy, and the number of unique animations for movement, swinging and combat is borderline nutty. Combat just looks so ***** awesome when it starts flowing, even if some things have less impact than I would like. Oh, and the set pieces moments? Just bonkers. Especially as they are delivered at such an impressive clip.

Only things I am not loving right now are Miles being made of paper. Fights are really chaotic and I kinda wish they'd just let them flow, but a gun user can melt Miles faster than I can say 'Miles', so you have to constantly break your own flow to prioritise targets, and it just feels really punishing whenever you notice one too late and just get instantly disintegrated.

I also think while combat looks really excellent, the controls sorta feel more convoluted than was maybe necessary, and especially given Miles has basically zero survivability. You get flooded with so many moves, but absolutely no time in the heat of battle to remember any of them and trying to remember the right combinations is quite literally a death sentence at times, so I had to get rid of basically 90% of the moves they taught me, so I could commit to memory the few things that reliably work in this unnecessarily sweaty combat sandbox.

Oh, and I thought the original Spider-Man had some crazy overrated open world design, and in some ways Miles may be even worse, they absolutely flood you with open world busyworld crap practically from the opening moments of the game, and nothing makes me want to do these tedious actives less than just absolutely drowning me in them.

Yay....!
Ankora + Deiland will get physical release on both PS4 & Switch according to play-asia. 😃
But I will get the PS4 version instead.

Also...

Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life will get physical version on PS5. 😄

Used the Miles Morales upgrade to get Spider-Man remastered on PS5. Boy howdy, when using that Raytracing Performance mode, it looks more "next gen" than many big games that came out this year. And my PC certainly can't produce visuals that strong while staying so smooth. Really makes you wonder how Miles Morales and Spider-Man can both look and feel so good, while games are coming out this year that don't look nearly as good and offer only 30 fps modes with no raytracing. I guess both Spider-Man games are just running on an incredible engine, with really well optimised code.

I hope it is like the old Wolverine Origins tie in game, that game was unironically excellent (unlike the movie it was based on).

After I tweeted that I actually thought about grabbing it myself to replay it again and found out what you said above about it being delisted. Sad.

I somehow managed to 99% percent Miles Morales, rather than 100% it, but either way, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this. I'd happily put it up there as amongst my favourite games ever.

It seems like it is basically just a glorified tech demo to show off the "Next-Gen" power of the PS5, and if that was all this was doing, then not only did it nail the assignment, but it also absolutely exceeded all expectations in that regard. The performance raytracing mode is just insanity, really putting people to shame who release checkboard 4k 30fps games for consoles in 2022, when this exists. But it goes beyond just the performance, the animations, the facial capture, the virtual tourism aspect, the attention to detail. Just pure mind blowing madness at times.

But then on top of that you just have a really excellent story, told with wonderful characters. I remember the original Spider-Man's story being really unfocused and poorly paced, which robbed some of the biggest moments of their impact, but I thought every beat here was tuned to near perfection. Emotionally resonate character exchanges, grand set piece moments and quiet moments of peace and reflection all structured together to create a really refined flow through the narrative beats. Plus, if you include the post card hunt at the end, I cried multiple times during this game and I can count the number of games that moved me that much on my hands.

I do wish the game wasn't quite as difficult as it was as I do think that spoils some things and robs some momentum from the otherwise near pitch perfect story. I played on the amazing difficulty, and it was nuts like how quickly Miles would just be absolutely disintegrated if you engaged in open combat. Like you had all these incredibly animated moves, but you were kinda forced in every engagement to try and stealth takedown as many enemies as you could first and I think that was a shame.

I guess this is somewhat on me, as I could have just turned the difficulty down, but the Amazing difficulty felt like it was in a really good place when it came to bosses or set pieces, it was more like taking out enemy bases and stuff which had me wanting to snap my controller in frustration.

But yeah, given I didn't really love the original, I was amazed (sorta half pun) at how much this one really blew me away.

@Pizzamorg, congrats on finishing Miles! Just cleared it myself last week and it was an amazing experience, as you state.

BTW, I can almost guarantee that the thing locking you out from 100% is one of those tech caches. Each of the 6 enemy bases has one hidden away somewhere, and they can only be accessed while the mission is active, even the ones that take place on those open construction sites.

The Roxxon ones are always before the room with the enemies, hidden somewhere during the section where you have to unlock the door. Once you're in the enemy room you can't go back, so you'll have to start the base over again if you miss it.

The Underground ones are a bit more varied. I know I found one in the hidden room after you cleared all the enemies, but another one was just hidden behind a breakable wall out in the open (it still won't spawn unless the mission is active though, I believe).

Damn @RR529 you are right, looking at the map I'm missing two and one is locked behind each activity. I really don't want to do them again they are so frustrating 😭 😆

Weirdly, there are challenges set by Peter and they weren't so bad because they basically had no fail state. You couldn't score lower than bronze, so as long as you didn't like get caught during a stealth challenge or whatever, you could go as slow as you wanted, and you still get the new move or suit locked behind them just fine at the end.

I think the only thing you get less of is currency? But I had all of the suits unlocked and all of the gadgets I actively used maxed out as far as they can go outside of New Game plus, so that extra currency for sweating out gold doesn't seem worth it.

These cache things I missed, meaning I missed the 100 percent, however, are locked behind what would be like your bandit camps in an Ubisoft game, and they aren't like horrible or anything, but Miles is so fragile, it just leads to so much unnecessary frustration. They also use the really lazy AI design where the CPU is generally really stupid, like you can stealth takedown someone next to someone else and they possibly won't even notice. But then when you are spotted, every enemy within like a five mile radius can now hit scan you with 100% accuracy, seemingly sending attacks through walls and all sorts and you are dead before you can even say 'Miles' (at least on the Amazing difficulty) and if you spend however long meticulously clearing a camp, only to get spotted right towards the end and then immediately disintegrated, you have to start clearing that camp all over again. Maddening.

@Eagly It will arrive any minute now, I'll post first impressions later today.

I have played about three hours so far, just wanted to get a proper taste before I really put in a proper session tomorrow. So far, I am very happy. I am still effectively in the glorified tutorial section I think, as the true adventure hasn't yet begun, but so far it basically feels like 2018's God of War, only filled with refinements and quality of life improvements which make it feel like the game all the critics told me the 2018 version apparently was.

Speaking firstly of combat, while it is functionally the same and sadly the camera is still climbing into Kratos crack, it feels like it has been completely redesigned in terms of philosophy. Fights take place in smaller arenas, and there are less enemies spamming you off screen with attacks while stuff blocks your view in your face. Enemies just generally feel less aggressive, and slower, it feels far easier to get some space in combat to be able to actually charge up your moves.

Both dodging, and blocking/parrying feel far more generous and forgiving, you still can't block in a 360 radius, but there seems to be so much iframe forgiveness on the dodge now, stuff attacking you from behind or offscreen doesn't feel nearly as much of a nuisance.

Plus, just generally, everything feels retuned. I remembered in 2018 getting interrupted by enemy animations CONSTANTLY feeling like I was being stunlocked in a fighting game. It was like... am I the NPC or are the enemies? This seems to be almost gone entirely now, almost everything Kratos does staggers the enemy (even the act of charging that new forst awakening thing) and the game actively encourages - even during bosses - to fight your way through enemy animations to interupt them with stagger, rather than the other way around.

Likewise, whereas Kratos was a wet sheet of paper in 2018, it feels like he both takes and deals significantly more damage, so you aren't hacking away for what feels like hours on redbars that can for some reason kill Kratos in like two hits. It never made any sense and clashed with the cutscenes, so I really hope this is remains the balance philosophy of the entire game to be honest.

They've also created systems which give Kratos' weapons more of a purpose and identity. In the first game, I never understood why we really needed three forms of attack, but there are now enemies who are more susceptible to one element or another, and you can spec into bonus damage for fighting them, some also have element matching shields you need to break first. Again, I obviously have no idea if this will change, but in the first game you only changed weapons really when they introduced an enemy who was just immune to that weapon for some reason and it absolutely sucked, but so far they haven't done that once. There are enemies who are weaker to one element or another, but so far no enemies that are just immune to one weapon and force me to change to another.

I also just feel like they've added things to really make the two weapons feel unique from one another, like they did in 2018 too, but I dunno, the Blades just felt like a firery way to deal extra damage without the recall gimmick, but now I feel like both weapons play with a very distinct personality from one another.

Hand to hand still has a bit of an identity problem, but you combo it with Atreus and it is a shortcut to the very brutal, very awesome, finishing moves, so it can be fun to mess around with.

Oh, and there is also these new environment moves where you can like swing tree branches and stuff, it is kinda nothing, but still kinda fun to do.

In terms of everything else, I guess they assumed they couldn't outdo the magic of the original Stranger moment, so the opening three hours just launch set piece moment after set piece moment at you and all of them are absolutely excellent.

Interestingly outside of a little traversal (which is also massively improved now Kratos can just jump off ledges or use the Blades to vault up things. Never understood why the dude could just into space in cutscenes but wouldn't drop a couple of feet or just jump to the top of a climb, rather than slowly shimmying around) there are almost no puzzles during the opening hours at all. It is just set pieces, bosses and action. I did feel there was maybe a little too much focus on puzzles in the first game, they got really repetitive and really slowed the game down for me at points, so I wouldn't be against a lower portion of puzzles. But maybe they'll do balances differently in different realms.

I didn't even realize this game was already mentioned from play-asia.

Gotta say, I love it when other devs do this! Positivity is, er, idk what to rhyme with that.

@Eagly God of war is another series I have never played, but even I’m hype/happy, everyone is just so positive about it, I love being apart of that.

If you have PS Plus mid-tier or above, I think God of War 2018 is included, that is how I replayed it.

Feel like I've got my money's worth already to be honest between Ghost of Tsushima, Miles and God of War 2018. Plus, I got Spider-Man remastered through that 20 quid PS Plus upgrade thing. Really offsets the steep entry price for all of the retail releases Sony puts out.

@Eagly I will definitely get to it at some point, when I get the games I want to finish finished, gonna take some time lol.

Honestly, I'd try the new God of War, but I heard both 2018 and Ragnarok are extremely gory. The extent that I can deal with considering gore is mostly like NieR Replicant or Persona 5 levels of it. I can't really deal with characters having their limbs severed, or guts pulled out of their body.

It's odd since the original God of War games were games I grew up on, and they don't really feel that brutal to me, despite it being pretty brutal. I guess it's because the graphics were more dated on those games, where as the blood and gore here is more graphic and detailed.