Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
- 145
- 1
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I started playing Rogue Trader this week, as I'm on vacation. For some reason people call it a CRPG, but it's as much an RPG as Final Fantasy Tactics or Paradise Cracked were: it's just a fight after a fight after a fight. I hope it gets better in Act 2, I really miss a proper hub with factions and quests that don't always require you to murder everyone.
I am enjoying it more than BG3, though. Still lots of "why would I ever pick that" abilities, but there are enough abilities that turn everyone into a murder machine. Except the Sister of Battle, whose bolter is laughably weak and won't shoot straight.
Guess this is the "what are you playing" thread for this week.
I'm almost done with Persona 3 Reload (PC). I started playing it 5 weeks ago. I don't usually get this hooked on a game. I've put in almost 3 hours per day on average. :o
It's been a good journey. Enjoyable and satisfying. A bit too much grinding involved, given I'm playing on Hard and didn't want to super-cheese anything. But this is known as the grindy Persona game. :)
I like what they did with this remaster. They've combined some of the best elements from later games while keeping most of what made the original P3 great, and it looks and sounds good. Only thing that disappointed me a little is that "The Answer" is not included. They'll release that as a big DLC/secondary game late this year. So I'll have to pay up again. Atlus are pretty damn greedy, I've come to realize.
I played P3R last month, and I think that both its strongest and weakest point is that it's a very faithful remake. They didn't fix what wasn't broken, which is great. But the problem is, they also didn't fix what was broken. Namely:
I wouldn't say I hated the game, but I do think Atlus missed the mark. People didn't clamor for a P3 remake because they wanted prettier graphics (though those never hurt), they did it because P3 has serious issues that needed a remake to fix. But Atlus chose not to address those things and just gave us a facelift.
I've finished it now. I think they hit the mark quite well. It's not the perfect Persona game, but it's a great one IMO. I only expected, and clamored for a facelift while sticking close to the original, and I got a bit more than I hoped for. Judging by the steam score, most people seem to agree. Don't really care about the lack of femc personally. Tartarus wasn't improved? It is, somewhat. At least you can control all your characters now, and there's Monad stuff, which I think is new? It's still a bit boring, but passable, and improved from the original. They couldn't have drastically changed it without making this not-P3. The need for grinding got a bit boring, but the grind was almost worse and just as gamey in some palaces in P5.
It's still a cash grab while also being a good remake. I didn't like the price they put on it. Should have been at least 10-15 lower. I'll probably be annoyed again when the Answer price is revealed. I kinda expected that part to be included in this release, to be honest, like it was in FES.
Tartarus is only tolerable because they made it faster (smaller floors, a decent sprinkling of "skip to the next floor" opportunities). And unlike in portable (the version I played before), you won't fall behind the level curve if you just go through floors as quickly as you can. But it's still bad. They really needed to cut the number of Tartarus floors in half, and give each full moon operation its own lengthy gameplay segment similar to P5 palaces. To be honest I don't really care if purists would say "but that's not P3", because it's necessary. Sometimes you have to break with the old to fix bad design.
And the point of the FeMC thing is that we are still lacking a definitive version of the game. The single biggest reason people wanted a remake was because if someone new wanted to try the game, they would go "which version do I play", and the answer was "it depends what you want". And the answer is somehow still "it depends what you want", even though they did a remake. It's just stupid. Compare this to P4 or P5, where it's easy - you play Golden/Royal, and those are the most complete versions of each game. People wanted them to do the same thing for P3 (and also to fix Tartarus), but Atlus was too faithful to fix the real glaring problems P3 has.
On the pricing of the answer, the three waves of DLC cost $35 all together. If we assume that the music pack and the costume pack will cost $5 each, that means the answer will cost something like $25 on its own. So now you're talking $95 to get the full story, which is.. not good. I'm not super upset because I knew damn well there's going to be another P3R version with all the content (and maybe finally FeMC) in 5-6 years, so I used game pass to play it. But if I had spent $70 and then needed to pay another $25ish to get the full story, I would be pretty mad.
I guess I don't currently feel that a definite version has to include FeMC. Maybe if I were a woman or someone who had played and loved P3P as FeMC I would share your opinion, but I'm not, and I haven't. As for Tartarus, getting through the levels of each block once didn't take very long, and the gatekeepers along the way were somewhat fun. I liked the full moon fights. It's the grinding of needing (at least on Hard) to go through the Tartarus levels over and over to gain XP and spawn gold hands to get money/gems that got too gamey and grindy for me.
I paid nearly full price via a key site to have it on Steam, and I didn't like that, but I'm Atlus' favorite type of sucker, someone who gets so much joy out of the Persona experience that I pay full price on day 1 to own it and be able to replay it whenever instead of just using Game Pass... I was miffed again at finding out I have to pay for The Answer too - if it's worth playing? If it's just combat and no life sim, I'm not overly interested.
For me, a definitive edition needs to have all the previous content. I haven't played FeMC (because P3P recommends you do the male route for your first time, and after that I had zero desire to ever play again), but it does exist so I think it has to be there to have a definitive version of the game.
As far as the answer goes, I haven't played it (because it wasn't in portable), but my understanding is that there's zero life sim. It's just a Tartarus-like dungeon and a story. I watched a video with all the story scenes and I remember it being 2-3 hours, so pretty light on story too. Who knows what they'll do for P3R, though.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link