Topic: The everything Xbox thread

@BlueOcean Haha, I'm the first to admit I'm glad I was wrong on both counts. I wanted to be wrong. I actually got hyped when they announced XIII (does this count as winning E3 in November?) went to the store to buy immediately, and forgot until I tried that I'd looked into it before and discovered it wasn't for sale. So this made my month (which is strange since I hated XIII the first time, but I've been waiting almost a decade to try it again.)

Regarding all this FF love, I read recently that Sony in fact was a stakeholder in Square-Enix. Apparently 6 months or so ago they divested their remaining shares. I'm not sure how much control they wielded over the day to day, but as both a major client/partner and as a stakeholdey tr it's easo imagine they had a disproportionate influence over decision making which might explain the history of FF & KH tied to Sony, as well as various other seemingly self destructive behavior at Square.

Chain of Memories: I'm glad you are starting to like it. I lack the fortitude to push through it. Someday I'll give it a try again. Like XIII after a while sometimes a game plays better once you know what to expect. My first attempt was enough to turn me off for a while

FFVII-R: I never knew what to make of that. The reveal footage seemed to scream "we have no idea what to do with this" and what we did see, I wasn't sure I wanted to see. Not long before, Square said in several interviews that they weren't going to remake VII because they felt that there was no way they could please everyone. If they changed it it would upset fans, and if they didn't change it it wouldn't reach new audiences. And that's a pretty wise choice. I was stunned and confused when they announced the remake....and dismayed when what we saw tried to make it this modern FFXV looking realistic thing that may or may not be an action game. Part of me was curious about it, and part of me is glad that it's dead. VII is a classic, and shouldn't be altered (Advent Children and Crisis Core did enough to "reinvent" it negatively.) That's a game I'd love to see remastered rather than remade. The graphics and controls have aged poorly. The original pre-rendering is lost to the ages. They need to rebuild the graphics in a modern engine, update the art, but keep the game the same, and streamline parts that don't. work. It's a classic that will keep re-selling, but I don't know that the cost of just updating and remastering it is worth it to them given the sales volume Square seems to expect from everything. Trying to make a new game of it seems like trying to remake Gone with the Wind for newer audiences starring Vinn Diesel and Taylor Swift. Or trying to make a Monster Hunter movie featuring fatigues and Humvees.

@Dezzy In the US it's $16, $20, $20..... I'm sure those prices are "priced for sale reduction" so they can, by February, put them on DwG sales. I'm just impatient and needed to pre-order by one day, a game that was released almost 9 years ago.... Technically the games, with their age are really worth $20 (heck they're charging that for 8-bit Undertale....) it's just it's old and nobody liked it so it's $3 used Plus since BC is all digital only, it's $3 for a manual unlock dongle or $20 for not needing one....I wonder if you still have to switch discs with the physical edition since it's not reading off the disc?

@BlueOcean FF: Yeah, I both like and dislike how all the FFs are different. Story and environment wise it makes each one stand out. On the other hand I think they've played too fast and loose with the formula and world building in a way that becomes nonsensical as it increasingly goes more for visual "wow" than a coherent world. Even the Fabula Nova Chrysalis was this pretentious but ambitious world construction idea, but they later admitted that presenting it through XIII alone was insufficient and lead to a confusing story that was poorly explained (it took him 7 years but Toriyama finally did admit it rather than blaming the fans and critics for "being used to Western open world games" and "not understanding the Japanese approach to games" That was a low point when that was the response to negative criticism, as though "being used to Western games and not understanding Japanese games" was a valid explanation for people not liking that it's less open than FFIV on the SNES. )

And yet, as you say, that's what makes each one a memorable journey. I can easily say that virtually any DQ is a far superior video game to any FF. The mechanics are more honed and refined, and they just play perfectly. In part because they're always the same. FF is always this odd mishmash of experimental systems. In that sense, DQ is a far superior engineered product, and FF is artwork. Controversial but timeless. With the exception of DQVII. That's a piece of art right there, and entirely unforgettable. The mood in that game is so heavy and dark despite seeming so light.

The culture clash between the engineers of Enix and the artists of Square probably explains a lot of their budgeting problems, too

@DarthNocturnal You know, I love Dissidia NT. It's such a weird game, but so wondeful. I loved the demo in January and didn't get enough time to play it since it was the same weekend as MHW demo. I finally bought it on sale last week, but I'll never play it. I just don't see booting a PS4 to play it. Sure, old Dissidia was basically MH with FF characters, and this one is this weird 6-way team game, but it's cool. And it's just wasting away on PS4. Honestly what it needs is a Switch port. I can't imagine it doing well on XBox bu Japan alone with Switch would make it shine. And Nintendo wants to (for unimaginable reasons given Switch's mobility) focus on online........it's a perfect fit.

Unfortunately don't know how involved Sony was in creating/funding that game. The original arcade cabinet uses a weird modified DualShock controller.....not sure if they have any claim to the game or not. The original design was a standard fight stick setup. Obviously something prompted a change to a custom DualShock type controller to be licensed from Sony instead, and I'm sure that "something" wasn't "because it plays better that way"

@NEStalgia Definitely, any old unwanted game will be cheap on eBay but digital all the way for me, especially with backwards compatible games whose disc is used as a licence key. Does Xbox have more Final Fantasy games than PS4 now (counting 2019)? Isn't it ironic.

I agree, I think that if Square Enix remakes Final Fantasy VII they should just update the visuals but not making them realistic and respect the general gameplay although it can be polished and updated. When they saw the project in action they probably felt that it was just a flashy action film game and refused keep funding it, especially considering the huge budget that was required and the cult status of the original game. It was said that it would be a series rather than just one remake.

I have played the Dragon Quest games released on DS (not IX) but I haven't played the two ones on 3DS (VII and VIII) but I definitely will. I liked IV quite much but it was the first I played, it's polished gameplay but even the story and characters were quite interesting. By the way, would you recommend me to play the DS version of Final Fantasy IV or the SNES version? Because III and IV were remade in 3D for DS. I assume you'd recommend the DS version of III (originally a NES game) but IV being a SNES game it's more difficult to tell.

Don't feel too bad if you don't play Chain of Memories. The assets, worlds and most monsters and boss battles are recycled. The card mechanics take too long to click and they don't suit the boss battles anyway. I suspect that the GBA version is much simpler in 2D. After this I'll play KHII and Dream Drop Distance for the first time (probably much better than the 3DS version) and then I'll be ready for Kingdom Hearts III, which should help Square Enix to recover from their recent huge expenses.

@DarthNocturnal That helped me with Riku. I tried but it doesn't work with Vexen. I run out of cards if I keep using sleights. Besides, I can avoid the ice needles sometimes but not when he rushes and freezes me. It's so annoying to have super fast battles in a game like this.

@Yosheel The $100 off on Xbox One consoles start on Sunday and include "participating retailers", I assume it includes Xbox.com. What starts on Thursday is the digital sale for Xbox Gold members, people without Gold can get digital deals on Thursday next week.

Yes you mentioned that before. I was just confirming that the current discount they have in Amazon Mexico is exactly 100 dollars off.

Reading about rumored offers other stores will have, and what they did on previous years, I do expect it to go a bit lower.

@Yosheel Yes, I was just clarifying that because I was a bit confused by the dates. By Sunday all deals should go live, not long until you get one!

@BlueOcean Yep. I bought the X to be digital-only, and I'm sticking to that. (Only DX:HR Directors Cut makes me waver....I can't emphasize just how ugly the standard edition is, yet I adore the game. I played it originally on 360 and didn't notice it was that bad. Now that it's upscaled on X it somehow looks worse...)

Yeah, I think XBox officially has more FF than PS4! XBox (by next year) has FFVII, FFVIX, FFX, FFX-2, FFXII, FFXIII, FFXIII-2, FFXIII-LR, FFXV, WoFF, Type 0. PS4 is missing FFIII, FFXIII-2, FFXIII-LR, though it does have Dissidia NT and FF XIV Online (if that counts?) So X1 technically leads PS4 by one. (maybe that's one the One stands for? ) Sadly, it seems like FF interest on XBox is really really (really) low going by Amazon ranking compared to Switch which is itself really really low compared to PS4, even when these games have been on PS4 for ages. Could be more digital buyers on XBox though.

Speaking of 13, according to the website the X360 download is 14GB. The X360 release required two DVDs so that makes sense if they were both DL. But the PS3 release supposedly used nearly all 40GB of the BD. What on earth did they do with that thing? Supposedly 360 had a much more compressed version to fit on the discs (I'm sure the X1X download is larger than 14GB, but I'm eager to find out.) But that can't be all of it. I also noticed Deus Ex Director's Cut is digitally on PS3 but never was on X360....how odd.

VII-R: Given square's current trends I would think a flashy action film is what they kind of want from such games. But their teams are often at war with each other. I swear the inside of Squeenix must operate like a Yakuza district. Technically the original FFVII compilation story is no less a nonsensical mess than XIII trilogy. The core is great, but man it went off the rails in so many directions (and no surprise the guy behind Crisis Core is the guy behind XV....) That's why I still love IX the best. It was a straight forward, self contained, complete fantasy story that had great twists without just going into the nonsensical bizzarre territory VII, XIII, and XV do. I never loved VIII a lot but that was also straight forward. In some ways I'm not sure if everyone loves VII because of what it is, or what it seems like it is. In reality it's a seriously messy story with endless deus ex machina, and then in the pre-sequels just goes into space magic. Yet, like everyone else, I love it.

FFIV: I'd go with the DS version. Some people are purists that want the true original experience, but in most cases, the later editions just fix all kinds of little annoyances. I love SNES, but it's "raw", and especially for lengthy RPGs, "raw" can get tedious if you're not playing for retro purism. Same for Chrono Trigger. It just cleaned up some of the rough patches here and there. (Edit: And back then the ports kept a very "FF" art style in the ports, before they tried to make it all too realistic.)

KH: DDD I have very conflicted thoughts about. I adored it on the 3DS, but going back to it now, it feels...off. I compared it to a worse Sunset Overdrive, which is a weird stretch but the Flowmotion feels like the Sunset Overdrive grinding, except you can't see where you're going half the time I can get back into that easily enough...it's a cool, but flawed idea. But add that to the random splicing between "save states" of the two characters on a timer and I want to hit something. The world, game, scenarios are awesome, but I hate when "clever" game mechanics get in the way of enjoying the game.

All that being said, I can enjoy it a lot more now that TWEWY released on Switch. I thought "Joshua" was this weird enigmatic god-like that they created just for DDD and I thought it was an FFXIII level of story disaster where you're supposed to accept this character as this important being of this world with no explanation. I had no idea he's a main character in TWEWY, which I hadn't played before. Makes a lot more sense now that he's one of the crossovers. Neku and Beat make more sense, too, but I gathered they were crossovers I didn't know...I didn't realize that about Joshua. The story feels a lot more "together" with that detail added!

The DS version of IV introduced annoyances that the original didn't have; for starters they bumped the difficulty up to twelve, so you need to grind but the game is not any more interesting to play.

I'd say the best version is the PSP one.

@NEStalgia laughing at you? Nope. But my eyebrows did go up in surprise. I think I share some of your hang up but with 13-2. Put my two least favorite characters in the spotlight but move the mythology forward. Why do you torment me squeenix?!

@Ryu_Niiyama Wait, so you don't like Snow? I mean at first I was like "WHOA!" but then I was all like "Whoaahh" and then I was all "Whoooooaaaaaahhh.....". Cha...like, totally.

But you should feel better. I mean Hope is an important character in it! I mean that would make any game better right? Right? Right.....

@DarthNocturnal FFXIII is bigger than FFXV on Steam? Geeze. And it's 14GB on X360. I'll find out tonight what it is on X1X.

@Yosheel The difficulty of 12 is just Japanese 1. Our SNES version was just FF for the mentally incapacitated. I admit, I do favor the simpler difficulty to the masochistic Japanese levels in most games though. These days, so do the Japanese.

Anyone planning on picking up Hitman? It’s always been a series i’ve enjoyed but the timing of release and the fact they always seem to be heavily discounted so soon after launch has me sat steadfast on the fence.

Sad thing is that if we don’t support these types of games then I can see them disappearing, but can’t really blame people with a full price release during the busiest time of year? It’s been such a strange & bumpy road for the series & now the devs are back solo... If their future hangs on the sales of this then I fear the worst as there is just so little buzz about it?

@BrainOfGrimlock

Unfortunately I think both Tomb Raider and Hitman will be added to Squenix's $30 million loss this quarter.

I think Just Cause 4 will do OK though because that's a bit more distinct.

Don't forget, those with Gold get the Black Friday deals starting tomorrow.

@BrainOfGrimlock I already picked up three free ones with Games with Gold: two on the Xbox 360, and one on the Xbox One, so I'm well provided for where Hitman games are concerned...

@NEStalgia Sorry for the late response, I was otherwise occupied. Life and all that...

Anyway, yeah... "biggest Inside Xbox show ever" was probably just about the duration of the show, but over the whole, I found it rather underwhelming. Too little games footage, too much bla bla, and no offense, but all the Mexicans jumping and hooting on queue made me think of jumping beans...

And I detest scripted audiences. It makes it all seem so fake. At least get some actors in there that can do a more convincing job if you must have scripted audiences...

As for the games shown: I thought the amount of games shown was decent enough, but besides missing the whole "biggest ever" point, they also have a very weird understanding of the word "surprises". But having said that, I liked Just Cause 4, although I never finished any of the previous ones, and I really liked Hellblade, so that goes on the "to watch" list.

Then there was another possible little gem in the form of Thieve of Thieves, and I was kind of interested in Agents of Mayhem, Pathologic 2 and Void Bastards (sorry mods, but that's the actual name of the game),
but I saw no great surprises that they themselves thought they had in store for us.

Don't care much for the 16 (or was it 15?) "amazing" Game Pass titles, since half of those are smaller/simpler games, and besides that, I don't really use Game Pass anyway, so...

I guess I'm just glad that it didn't turn into the Crackdown 3 show, something I somewhat (for lack of a better word) feared it would end up being.

As for ineXile and Obsidian: I don't agree with you on that one. These studios have been apart for so long, have each gone their own way, developed their own working ethos, methods and skill sets, so trying to put them back together again is like trying to mend a broken marriage with two people that have become total strangers to each other.

So, keeping them apart and letting them both play to their own strengths is actually the best thing that Microsoft can do. And both of these studios have become big and good enough in their own right to come up with enough interesting titles. And two studios means more games than one studio, obviously, so that is also a good thing.

On a side note: what the hell happened here? I've been gone for a couple of days, and all of a sudden, the Xbox One/Xbox 360 thread has turned into a three page long Final Fantasy thread...
Always disliked that series, ever since it moved on to 3D games. Not because of Sony, mind you, but simply because I don't like how continuously more bloated and self-gratifying it became as a series and as an IP.

@Ryu_Niiyama Sorry for never replying to you concerning the whole gender and/or history topic that we were discussing, or rather you and NES were discussing and where I butted in...

Long story short: I got your point, so I understood how you see it, but my point was simply that games don't always need to have a female protagonist, unless of course it fits, otherwise it's just bolting one on for the sake of appeasing the crowd, but it will do nothing special for the game itself. And that probably led to me mentioning the whole historically correct thing, because games like Assassin's Creed heavily lean upon that, and unfortunately for women, a lot of leading characters in history were men, and most societies were male-oriented. Of course there were plenty of women around, and also plenty of famous and/or important women, but in general, it was mostly a male environment.

It all kinda reminded me of the request or rather demands to have a female character in Zelda, which I personally found ridiculous. Unless of course it was Zelda herself, and you could play the story from her perspective. But she is a part of the story, so I wouldn't have any issues with that. But just copy/pasting a "Linkle" into the story because girls want to play as the hero too, but just not with a male one...

Well, I'm probably not going to make many friends with this, but it's how I feel about it, and I'm just no fan of that idea and/or concept. Once we go down that road, the next step will possibly be demanding a gender-neutral character as well, because we also need to cater to these kinds of gamers...

I don't mean to offend anyone, but suffice to say that I strongly feel and believe that gender neutrality simply doesn't fit and/or apply in games based upon ancient history, UNLESS the characters that are a part of that historical setting in the game actually were of a certain predisposition and/or gender conviction in real life as well.

But perhaps I should drop it here, since we've already moved on to other topics, and this discussion was more than 10 pages ago...

I just felt I still owed you a reply, one way or the other, so there you go.

Today one of the xbox one s bundles is 235 dollars. That's a really nice discount already, but I must be strong. Just two more days. Of course, it also looks cheaper in dollars today because mexican pesos decided to take a nosedive this morning.

Keeping a tab open for these bundles and checking them every now and then is almost zen. Like bird watching.

@Yosheel Or like stalking...

But in all seriousness: sounds like a pretty good deal already. However, I honestly don't think it's gonna go down much further than that, considering the original price and how far it has been reduced already. Maybe they'll add one more game to the Black Friday bundles, but if that's a game that you won't like, then that difference isn't going to be too interesting.

Yeah I don't expect it to go much lower, but I do hope there will be other things to sweeten the deal a bit more.

For starters I don't particularly care about battlefield v, so I guess just lowering the price of other bundles would be nice enough...

@BrainOfGrimlock You know I was all tempted to. I loved the first reboot. Amazing game. I have a little shopping list, some of which is preorders for 2019 games that I bought prepaid cards to pre-pay form them already so they just "arrive" (DMC5, Sekiro.) Hitman 2 was on my list (pun unintended), but...they way IOI releases these games makes it seem like a terrible purchasing decision. The first one with the seasons was a terrible way to release it. And now with 2, for $60 you get some of the scenarios. Then for another $40 you get the rest. Or the weird silver version that has half of the rest. But then they also sell the Legacy Pack....that's not actually for sale yet...that includes full remastered versions of the original reboot with the new mechanics. But wait, there's more! Then there's the GOTY Legacy Pack that contains the remastered versions of the "Full, complete, this time it's all of it, really, honest" original game with the new mechanics....which is also not yet for sale.

So in one release they've both told you that the complete game with all scenarios (you only get a few in the box) is $100 minimum, and then they tell you for an additional fee, you can play a better version of the original game. And you get to chose whether you want to rebuy the original base version of the complete season, ore rebuy the whole actual complete season a second time, giving a giant foam middle finger to everyone who already bought parts of the first game more than once as they kept updating it already.

I want the game, I want to like it, I'm sure I'll get it and love it. But I think I'd rather wait until it's less than $100 to get the actual complete game. Maybe when Hitman 3 launches I can buy the proper up to date remastered version of this one as DLC for it.... I do hope there's loot boxes next time! #disappointedinwarner.

There are some games I don't mind buying the $100 gold edition to get all the extra campaign stuff I know I want. But I don't like being forced into buying it simply to get the complete game.

@Dezzy Hitman isn't Squeenix anymore. Warner has the publishing rights now. IOI broke from Squeenix after the first season of Hitman reboot.

OTOH if Tomb Raider is losing money....again...despite dominating charts....again....Squeenix needs to massively think of restructuring their budgets even beyond FF.

@DarthNocturnal So FFXIII is 30GB on X1X, a little over double the size on 360. Weirdly, the two sequels are around 7GB. Less reliant on FMV maybe?

@Dezzy @BlueOcean I have to say the FFXIII remaster is GORGEOUS on X. It looks like a brand new 2018 game. Stellar work aside from the "XBox 360 Memory Unit" text in the save UI. It actually says "Disc 1" on the saves. That said, revisiting it, I'm enjoying it more than the first time, knowing what to expect from it, but I'm also re-remember how terribly monotonous and repetitive it is. The first time I went through the beginning thinking "ok this is just the tutorial, it'll open up into a real FF soon. And then when it got to Hope in the ruins I thought "ahh, this feels like FF now, this is when it opens up"....and got progressively disappointed as it went on and never did that, realizing that was all there was.

It's hard to place why it's just so terribly repetitive versus, say, FFX, or even Octopath. They both involve following narrow trails, in a straight line, fighting battle after battle. Why does it feel so different? I think the main things are, like Dezzy said, X and Octo have towns. you feel like you're journeying from endpoint to endpoint as destinations and origins, leaving one place to go to a new place, and there's a trip between. In XIII there's no destination, nor origin, it's just an endless straight line to an unknown final end. And that's the other part: It moves in very tight, very narrow straight lines. No real turns, very few forks in the road. X, Octo give you choices, do I go right, or left. Do I risk going for that treasure and taking a longer route, or skip the treasure and follow a safer path? You have that tension of risk/reward. XIII simply tells you to always hold forward through the 5 foot wide, ruler-straight hallway until the credits roll. No risk/reward, or path selection. Not really even stairs to add verticality. Just non-stop forward movement. You might go down a tiny side corridor for a perfectly safe "hidden" treasure that shows up on the map. But it's no more than 3 steps away, because the whole hall width is 3 steps. It's not really different from X minus NPCs, and X was already criticized for linearity and lack of quests. But it feels different because X had twisting winding pathways. Even if you could only go one way it was still a sense of the unknown around corners. Here it's just "proceed down hall to next visible monster.)

That said, the producer comparing it to a shooter makes sense. If viewed as a weird turn based Halo or DOOM it makes a lot more sense. One long hallway stopped every 5 seconds by a wave of enemies to take out to advance another 5 seconds to take out another wave of enemies, it fits that theme more. If you view it more as a turn based corridor shooter than an RPG, it's a repetitive, but better game.

I also realized, thematically, style wise where the story fell apart. We were talking about VII and how it's technically a broken mess of a story but somehow loved. But Square's obsession with duplicating VIIs success shows clearly in XIII. Cocoon exists simply to be New Midgar. That's its entire purpose. Lightening exists to be "New Cloud Strife." Sanctum exists to be New SOLDIER. NORA exists to be AVALANCHE. They really just wanted XIII to be VII-R without having to break VII. And that's why it has a hard time standing on its own. It's a kind of generic replacement for VII made "modern."

Recognizing the details of where it falls flat makes it a lot easier to enjoy what it is though, I think. We all expected something really different the first time around.