What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

[Stevens]

ARC Raiders pretty much all weekend and this morning.

Hey me too. It's not my first pvpve game (I put about 80 hours into Dark and Darker), but it is so much more forgiving. Honestly love that wipes are optional.

I've had it for like a week - only have about 8 hours in it so far. I really like it.

[AGermanArtist]

ARC Raiders pretty much all weekend and this morning.

Hey me too. It's not my first pvpve game (I put about 80 hours into Dark and Darker), but it is so much more forgiving. Honestly love that wipes are optional.

I've had it for like a week - only have about 8 hours in it so far. I really like it.

I've logged 48hrs since release and 7hrs on the server test on PS5. It's a great, great game. Obviously the more time spent with it, the more I'm figuring it out. Get the Hullcracker and its ammo, as soon as you can. It costs 30K and 10K for its ammo, and the risk is losing it on a run, but it's worth it. Another downside, is that it's on a cooldown, so you can only buy one every 12hrs. It trivialises a lot of the small/mid-size ARC - Wasps/Hornets/Rocketeers - they all provide high value loot. I'm essentially going on loot runs to get cash to pay for one when available.

Edit - the gun merchant gives you a quest with Hullcracker ammo and Blueprint as its reward, and for some reason, from then you are able to craft the Hullcracker too. I've been using it to hunt Rocketeers for sport. They were once the bane of my ARC Raiders existence.

[Lemnear]

Returnal and Stellar Blade (Complete Edition).
Stellar Blade appears more action-packed than it actually is. Visually, it's very polished, not over the top, but the rendering is remarkable.

Returnal is simply superb; I have a feeling it will set the standard for a whole new wave of similar games in the future. Impressive how it is "shmups" but at the same time it is a Third Person Shooter AND a roguelike. Technically it's nothing special, but the DualSense feels great in your hand, and I love how there's technically an extra button in this game (L2 with two clicks).

[1000Eyes]

Playing the '84 Pac-Land arcade game, and I've got to say, it's much stronger when you only focus on the fruit and the timer as scoring elements. The pac-pill, while cool to execute and look at, adds little to the overall game design. The place you collect them are often these flat, detached spots that have no influence by the level design, they introduce a slight RNG waiting game for the ghosts to align, and they undermine the level timer because 1) if you collect them in a certain order, your timer gets replenished and 2) just even collecting 2 ghosts gives you a much larger bonus than your timer, so its advantageous everytime just to wait around, which kills the pace imo.

Pac-Land in general has this thing where the direction of the game is to make it feel like this whimsical fantasy land where anything can happen, which is a big plus and minus. The plus is that it is an immensely charming game, filled with fun visuals and setpieces, but this bled into the scoring and they add a bunch disparate elements that don't always complement each other. Beyond the pac-pill, you've got the weird jumping rhythm game at the end of the level that can give you an absurd score for a skill not used anywhere else in the game, or the milking possible by using the hard hat to collect mini ghosts. It just feels like they prioritized a bunch of funny, stylish looking levers over a focused balance. I dunno, maybe ive been playing too much Wonder Boy or Alex Kidd Lost Stars (AC). Still a great arcade platformer, but the scoring is a bit diluted by dint of being unfocused.

[davyK]

Utopia Must Fall

Balatro

[it290]

Utopia Must Fall is superb, especially with the new update.

[ExitPlanetDust]

I bought an Ed-0 Zombie Uprising disc for cheap as a curiosity. I remembered seeing an overview for the game awhile ago when it was still in early access, but I didn’t realize the final version had been released on consoles. It looked like my kind of b-tier jank.

It turned out to be a surprisingly solid roguelite dungeon crawler with distinct classes and strong character build potential. The game doesn’t hold the player’s hand and you have to pay close attention to stat stacking through equipment. The RNG is heavy enough that each run feels very unique (at least in the early game). Solid PS2 era combat too, feeling like it’s squarely in the genre before everything followed DMC or GOW. The ninja has a killer Izuna Drop too.

[XoPachi]

Lumines Arise - I love Lumines ever since the PSP original so I was very excited to see a new one announced this year. Having played it, I think it mostly lived up to what I want and was a decent pick up at it's $40 asking price ($35 on Steam when I grabbed it). This has to be the smoothest Lumines to date with a perfect frame rate and really cleaned up controls. I went back to the very first one and was surprised that it has these ever so subtle delays in input. This one is just smooth as butter. I do think it sacrifices visibility and pacing for it's "emotional experience" though. That sort of play at trying to tear jerk through beauty is only novel for a few hours. Then the seams begin to show and it sort of just gets in the way. Thankfully, it doesn't kill the game. The OST is not my taste though. Much preferred the first two (minus their shitty pop inclusions) and Electronic Symphony.

Yooka Replayee - I actually liked the original Yooka Laylee, but it was very very flawed. This new one cleans up the game, but I feel like that's all it tried to do. It's a fine game and it is nice to get something from childhood devs. But it's a little TOO clean and doesn't offer much in the way of challenge. I know Banjo and DK 64 are not hard games nor are they supposed to be, but hurdles be they enemies or platforming challenges are a total non issue in Replayee. You are extremely overpowered having all of your moves from the start, which thank God, but the game does not account for that. I even have an insta-death tonic and I forget I have it sometimes because nothing should really kill you. You mash attack and enemies just die because they all attack the same. It's fun enough but this goes in the "cozy game" bin. It's not something I could really feel I want to push and I'm over completionism today.

Pipistrello - Saw this and saw it was made by the guys that did Ninjin Clash of Carrots which was a flawed but interesting auto scrolling beat em up with a funny artstyle and cast. I'm not too far in it yet. This is going to be very VERY similar to Mina the Hollower for some at least based on the demo of that game. For me, it's very reminiscent of Star Tropics. It's kinda got that quirky indie dialogue I'm getting tired of, but the main character is kind of a confident loser which is funny to me. Combat seems like it's going to get really cool because your yoyo has a number of ways in can interact with obstacles and walls to reach enemies at weird angles and distances. It's kind of like CrossCode in a way where Lea had her charged spheres she could throw but it's not twinstick. You just aim in 4 directions. If you hit angles, your yoyo goes further and you can also throw it at these angles and meet it where it will stop to catch it. Otherwise it goes on a cooldown. It's fun so far.

Mega Man 11 - This game fucks. I wish it was harder but coming back to it after a few years, they really seriously nailed this. I actually do not remember all these extra modes and content. All these challenges and leaderboards for each is crazy. It also feels SUPER good. The only issue I have with it is that there's too many cushions. You really have to do a lot of self imposed challenges, ignore a lot of content, and avoid a lot of mechanics to get a decent challenge. To this day I've never even touched the Gear system. Day 1, I unbound their buttons and just use the rapid fire and one-button slide on triggers with Rush Jet/Coil on my bumpers. But even with that, this has the most broken special weapons in the series, the shop is terribly balanced, you get a shit ton of upgrades, Jet/Coil can already skip some hazards and platforming, and even SuperHero difficulty does not do anything to put more pressure on you. Health and ammo pickups no longer dropping doesn't mean anything when you finish a stage with 900+ bolts and Energy Tanks (an action pausing, zero commitment, FULL heal you can hold 9 of) only cost 100. This could have used a 5th difficulty but honestly, it's still a good ass damn game.

[LordHypnos]

I ended up getting back to Bram Bloodmoon, with the intent of going over the map and seeing if there was anything I missed (and hand drawing it to help with that. The manual has an already started map that you can fill in). Sure enough, I found the stuff that I needed to to find the rest of the dungeons and help deal with the harder enemies, and now I’ve made it to the final dungeon (haven’t started it yet).

I’m definitely enjoying it quite a lot, and can recommend it as a Zelda-like that is more challenging like the original, but still fairly simplistic in terms of controls.

Note however that it doesn’t really have puzzles. The difficulty comes from enemies that can do a lot of damage and take a lot of hits to kill, especially early on, and nothing does less than a whole heart. Some of the enemy behaviors are also hard to avoid.

Also no in game maps. It does have a lot of hints throughout to try to help you find items. Some are hidden, but there’s a chime to let you know if there’s a secret on the current screen.

[Sumez]

Yooka Replayee - I actually liked the original Yooka Laylee, but it was very very flawed. This new one cleans up the game, but I feel like that's all it tried to do.

Kinda curious on both statements. What makes you think Yooka-Laylee was flawed?
Also, what specifically does the new one "clean up"?

[XoPachi]

Kinda curious on both statements. What makes you think Yooka-Laylee was flawed?
Also, what specifically does the new one "clean up"?

Oh Jesus, it's a lot. Like a LOT, man. I literally could not list everything to you. You'd have to watch a video or play it yourself. If it weren't the same worlds/characters/story, this is basically Yooka 2. They overhauled this game massively. I'll share the biggest ones for me...

Ignoring a lot of the technical and aesthetic shortcomings, the original had a lot of time wasting, abrupt pacing halts, tedious progress gates, and obtuse ambiguity.
Remember how people used to criticize 3D Mario games for making you constantly leave a world after completing a mission even though in most cases there was no reason for it? Yooka did something similar requiring Pagies to unlock additional parts of every world even though functionally, there was no reason to do so other than to make things feel larger. To do this, you had to leave the Grand Tome physically and use your collected Pagies to expand it, then go back in and resume what you were trying to do but just couldn't for no reason. Each world needed this multiple times. Now you just have full access to each world as long as you meet the Pagie requirements to unlock the full Tome in the main Hivory Towers hub. I think there could have been something in the form of a gauntlet or miniboss seamlessly checkpointing the once cordoned areas, but it's ultimately a far more seamless experience.

While they could have done a WAY better job balancing this for enemy interactions, you just have all of Yooka's moves from the beginning. Trowzer is no longer this additional, progress check where you need to farm quills to buy a specific move that isn't terribly exciting on it's own. He now sells other optional goodies that are different from Vendi. That makes a lot of the early game go *way* faster. And there's more stuff to do with a lot of new layouts to compensate how quickly you'll be able to complete objectives with a full kit.

Kartos and Rextro had their minigames significantly overhauled to be less obnoxious with Rextro having completely had his redone whereas Kartos just...functions now a lot more consistently. Which is good because while cute novelties and throwbacks, you're not trying to spend that much time on them. Kartos was genuinely frustrating because the physics were extremely ambiguous for something autoscrolling with strict requirements for success.

THEY GOT RID OF DR. QUACKS STUPID FUCKING QUIZZES.

There is a dramatically overhauled camera system. Like....surprisingly so. I think this might have had the most work put into it because it's the difference between night and a point blank nuke when it comes to how much better this is. Before, there were almost no areas where the camera automatically fixes itself for an optimal view of a specific area's task. You had to control it in almost every area manually and especially with a lot of OG Yooka's poor lighting, it made a lot of places annoying to interact with.

The worlds were changed up fairly noticeably. They still have familiar layouts, but there's new objectives, new interactables, some like the marsh world were completely visually revamped. The new lighting solution makes the worlds a lot less dead looking (I played Yooka OG on Switch so maybe it was better looking on PC?) and it also helps with navigation considerably. Terrain was also made cleaner. You can't exactly just climb and cheese everything but if you can reach something and it's a reasonable incline, you can just stand on it. This makes for more fun platforming and quicker backtracking/progression through some areas without actually trivializing everything (Mario Odyssey).

It's a shit ton. I could honestly be here all day. I think it lost some charm in certain areas and some challenges I personally liked were straight up removed, like some stuff in the ice world. But it's a fuller more seamless and less frustrating game. I think the net positives outweigh it's shortcomings. My only real issue is even by 3D platforming standards, it is VERY easy. I'd love a difficulty bump. It doesn't really have a lasting appeal if you are not a completionist, but it's still fun to go through if you like stuff like this. I wish they could have done more beyond just FIXING the original. But I guess that's not a fair expectation for the studio.

[Sumez]

Oh wow. Now I'm curious about playing it, and also curious whether I'd like the changes, too.

I really enjoyed Yooka-Laylee when it came out (or a bit after - I think it had a patched camera when I played it, compared to the release version - there was a setting for it). It really felt like going back to the Rare at their strongest, completely on the level of Banjo-Kazooie I think.

Streamlining the game "for modern sensibilities" sounds like something that could most definitely be a double edged sword.

[AGermanArtist]

COD Black Ops 7
Haven't touched the campaign, I only did the first mission in Black Ops 6's campaign despite clocking 645hrs on the MP/Warzone.
I'll get around to both campaigns at some stage. Although there is a greater incentive to complete the new one because there's an unlockable game mode involved. Currently playing MP with Double XP tokens running to unlock the perks I like. I know it gets a hard time, but it's still an FPS if Sega made 'em. I've been having a pretty great time with it so far, but ARC Raiders really is the online thing for me right now.
When I'm not playing it, I want to be playing it.
I kind of feel bad for the fact I own Elden Ring Night Reign, Hunt Showdown and Helldivers 2 and never really touch them. There's only so many hours in the day.

[XoPachi]

Streamlining the game "for modern sensibilities" sounds like something that could most definitely be a double edged sword.

It can definitely be criticized. I think it's mostly for the better, but things are certainly lost and even the most casual of fans noticed and lamented the exceedingly low difficulty in an already easy game. You have to unlock and piece meal anything that can even pretend to put some kind of pushback on you, but by the time you get all of those, you're halfway to fighting Capital B. At least I was.

[Steven]

Finally done with Tales of Xillia after over a decade. As I played it more, I increasingly had no idea what to say about it. Its cool battle system is marred by some critical flaws, mostly pertaining to combos being detrimental against bosses, which is a stupid design decision for a game like this. No idea WTF happened with the story in the second half of the game; it's largely just some disjointed technobabble nonsense about 黒匣, which they gave the reading "jin" for some reason. I feel like I missed a dozen important scenes somewhere, as the story left me behind entirely at the 2/3 point, which apparently happened to lots of Japanese fans too from what I have seen, but I really don't care. It's a Tales game, so I'm here for the battle system and not the story or whatever. On that note, Jude is awesome to play as. He's probably one of my favourite characters to play as in the whole series now. This game was super rushed and feels unfinished. The devs apparently felt so too because that's why they made the sequel.

So that last boss is fucking idiotic on hard difficulty. At least, I thought it was until I tried a different strategy and won on my first try with only two or three items used, none of which was an All-Divide, although it took 42 minutes and 52.81 seconds. Now I kind of like it. It's still most likely possible to say that it's poorly designed, as are boss fights in general in this game, but it's done now. Not doing Milla's story. Fuck that, I don't want to play this game again right now.

PC version has some problems, so I ended up jumping and backstepping a lot when I didn't want to, which was annoying as fuck. It's playable, but it's very, very annoying. Between this and Graces earlier this year, the Graces port is MUCH better. Graces is a much better game, too. Both had some oddness with the AI upscaled cutscenes, but I think those turned out a little better this time, which is nice because holy shit the cutscenes in this game are beautiful. Too bad these cutscenes couldn't have been in a better game! Production I.G suited the series much better, but I'm not going to complain about the switch to ufotable too much.

Since I'm apparently in the mood to play mediocre Tales games, I decided to play Tales of Symphonia for the first time in like 20 years, so I picked up the Japanese PS3 version about a month and a half ago and I played it for about 5 hours today, and on normal so I can get it over with faster and maybe play a better game. This game is WAY easier than I remember it being, but I keep trying to free run even though that hasn't been implemented yet... I wonder what my opinion of this game will be once I am done, unless I drop it. I can't believe how incredibly slow the PS3 is. It took so long for it to install Knight of Ratatosk (which I'd never played before I got this) that I went to the convenience store, waited to use the ATM, bought some stuff, came back, and it STILL wasn't done installing yet. I know the PS3's BD read speed is very slow, but damn, this was almost impressive. I guess I'll suffer through Knight of Ratatosk if I finish Symphonia since I have never played it before, but I don't really want to...

[AGermanArtist]

I think the studio(s) behind Black Ops 7 really have taken inspiration from RE7 & 8. All the dickheads who do little else but play COD hate it, but I think it's fantastic. Perhaps they should take a break like I was forced to 12 yrs ago when they came along and ruined it for the original players and pushed it mainstream.

[Sima Tuna]

I'm curious to see what you think of Symphonia after all this time, Steven. What your, I guess you could say "adult final opinion" would be.

To me, Symphonia has always been the game I think of when I imagine "Tales." It was a big part of my childhood. One of the few jarpigs on the gamecube, and one that had co-op so I could play with my sibling, *and* it was a fairly long game.

In a lot of ways, when I look at the new Tales games, I kinda wish they were a little more simple like Symphonia is. You know, simpler graphics. Simpler camera control. Little boxy dungeons. The story is anything but simple though. I think it's still one of the better Tales stories, because it's willing to let the characters address some pretty deep subjects. To the point you might come to dislike a few of your companions for being racist dicks.

I never forget the first scene with the old woman either, where the guards are whipping the SHIT out of her. I always see that scene and think to myself, "they were really allowed to put that in the game, huh?" I love it. I wish more RPGs just went for it. What's the point of a "racism bad" or "slavery bad" message if you don't SHOW us all the depths of the horribleness of the thing you are saying is bad? Anime stories excel when it can go ham.

My big problem with Symphonia these days is I don't believe the gamecube port is available anywhere easily, and it seems to still be the superior version of the game. I played the hd version on my switch and it was ok but it has some weirdness due to being a port of... I think either the ps3 or ps2 version. Or maybe it's a port of the ps3 PORT of the ps2 version??? I don't know.

One of these days, I will actually emulate the older games. I played Phantasia quite a bit when I was young, but the other pre-Symphonia games I have not played. Phantasia is alright, although for action rpgs of the SNES era, I'll take Illusion of Gaia and Star Ocean 1 over it.

[XoPachi]

I got an XBox One S for free so I bought Ninja Gaiden Black, Ninja Gaiden 2, and Dead or Alive 4.
I was playing Black most of the morning after work today. I actually own this game physically and have so for like 10 years, but despite being a new copy I found on eBay, the disc would not read on my 360 and for some reason despite being told it was on the shop, it NEVER appeared for me digitally even with a complete, exact search. So the copy just sat on my shelf with Ryu staring at me.

[Steven]

I'm curious to see what you think of Symphonia after all this time, Steven. What your, I guess you could say "adult final opinion" would be.

I could tell you my general opinion of the game, the one that I've had since 2009 or so, but I think I'm going to finish the game before I make up my mind. I could say stuff now, but... nah. Not yet. Maybe I'll even change my mind halfway through the game... which is not likely because that part of the game is when it becomes a giant miserable slog from what I remember, but you never know. I am planning on and currently playing the entire main series plus some spinoffs in Japanese, and having the original, untranslated scripts, full voice acting when available, and other stuff cut from international releases may change my opinions of some games. That's part of why I specifically got the PS3 version of Symphonia; Unisonant Pack (yes, unisonant is a real word, apparently) has Knight of Ratatosk, which I'd need a Japanese copy of eventually, so might as well get the best version of it and get Symphonia done at the same time. I did find my PS2 copy a while ago, but I really don't like the PS2 version.

Anyway, I'll talk about the general game design and story and stuff once I'm done with it. This game is pretty long, so while I got Xillia done in I believe 16 or 17 days, this might take a bit longer. Right now I will say that oh god magic takes forever to cast. I was simultaneously replaying Destiny remake (Stan's side) along with Xillia the other day and Fire Ball takes about half a second to cast there, just long enough for you to see the casting animation and then it comes out. Here you gotta wait like forever WTF? It's just Fire Ball! It's not like it's Indignation, which... also comes out in under half a second in the Destiny remake if you play properly, but that's maybe just because Destiny remake is fucking awesome at everything. Anyway, magic kinda sucks in Symphonia. I'll get to the other stuff later, or maybe as I go. I don't know, I've not decided yet lol.

My big problem with Symphonia these days is I don't believe the gamecube port is available anywhere easily, and it seems to still be the superior version of the game. I played the hd version on my switch and it was ok but it has some weirdness due to being a port of... I think either the ps3 or ps2 version. Or maybe it's a port of the ps3 PORT of the ps2 version??? I don't know.

From what I understand, every rerelease of the game is a port of the version immediately prior to it, so the PS2 version (which runs quite poorly BTW; there is literally no reason to ever play this with the PS3 version around, especially because Starry Heavens is the better OP song anyway~) is a port of the Cube version, PS3 is a port of PS2, PC (region locked and not available in Japan) is a port of PS3, and the modern console versions are a port of the PC version. At this point, it's most likely that the PS3 version is probably safe to call the best version of the game. Someone will complain about 30 FPS everything, especially because I'm pretty sure PS2 has 60 FPS menus while PS3 does not, but then they'll go and say that 3DS Abyss is better than the PS2 version despite the 3DS version struggling to run at 30 FPS, so yeah lol. PS1 Eternia also has 30 FPS battles and that's one of the best games in the series.

One of the problems with Symphonia is that almost all of the non-Lloyd/Kratos/Zelos playable characters completely suck ass to play as (Phantasia has the same problem, honestly, with Cless being the only fun character available for about 70% of the game), and part of this is because in the Gamecube version several of them don't even feel like they are finished characters, especially Regal. Apparently the devs thought so too because they filled out several characters' movesets somewhat in the PS2 port, with Regal being the standout. I think they added so much to Regal that somewhere around 1/3 of his moveset in the PS2 version simply didn't exist at all on Gamecube, which is a huge increase. Don't know if this game was rushed, but given how much stuff they added in the PS2 version, it wouldn't surprise me if a lot of that stuff was planned for Cube but cut. Free run is something that was absolutely cut because they didn't have time to balance it, so there is definitely the possibility that some of this stuff was always supposed to be there.

Might as well mention that Colette (or Collet, if you prefer the official Japanese spelling lol) is good on paper and is capable of massive damage, but her moveset is massively disjointed as hell and not much of it synergizes even with the rest of her moveset, so despite her being extremely good, playing as her feels very, very bad even as you're doing crazy damage. The whole game is janky as fuck and seems poorly or barely designed, basically. I know I said I wasn't going to talk about this stuff yet, especially because I knew I'd end up with a massive wall of text, but uhhhhhhhhhh too late lol. Spoilers: as you can tell, I don't think very highly of this game's mechanics because it's a giant mess of dysfunction. This is mostly based on old memories and my playtime yesterday with it, so maybe I'm wrong. I kind of hope so. I don't want to trash this game, especially because I really really really liked it before I played the rest of the series, but it's got so many glaring problems that it's hard to avoid accidentally bumping into them. This game would clean up very nicely with a complete overhaul of its battle system. All you'd have to do to create a top-tier Tales game is to give it the Graces battle system, assuming you want to keep it 3D, and then fix the jank leftover from the poorly designed characters. Everything else could be completely identical and it would still be excellent. I could do without the strange talking animations outside of battle, but they don't ruin the game or anything.

Anyway, before I got derailed, I was going in the direction of saying that you've essentially got a choice of the kind of unfinished-feeling 60 FPS Gamecube version or the more finished 30 FPS other versions, including the glitchy PS4/Switch versions. I was considering buying the PS4 version the other day because I don't trust my PS3s to not die, but then I found a Google Documents thingy that lists the problems with the Switch version, some of which also apply to the PS4 version. It looks like the Japanese PS4 version is the most problematic version after the Switch version, so I'm glad I avoided it. The list has spoilers for a bunch of things including the final boss, so anyone who hasn't played the game should not read it. With that warning out of the way, here it is: https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/ ... 7URn3-o8Y/

I have also heard that the Switch version is borderline completely unplayable on Switch 2, with frequent crashes. Don't have that version or a Switch 2, so maybe it's not true, but I've heard that it is extremely terrible.

One of these days, I will actually emulate the older games. I played Phantasia quite a bit when I was young, but the other pre-Symphonia games I have not played. Phantasia is alright, although for action rpgs of the SNES era, I'll take Illusion of Gaia and Star Ocean 1 over it.

Definitely should play Eternia and Destiny 2. Both of those were frequently cited reasons for Symphonia's cold reception in Japan, especially Destiny 2 with its finely-tuned, deep, and complex battle system. There really isn't much of a point in playing the original version of Destiny unless you are planning on playing Destiny 2 because the Destiny remake creates some continuity problems. The PS1 version of Destiny is not very good, and I think it's one of the bottom 3 to 5 absolute worst games in the series, but that's the game Destiny 2 is the sequel to, not the remake. It's still a decent enough game and you might be able to get some enjoyment out of Destiny PS1 version, but I couldn't. My tolerance for old RPGs is extremely limited and PS1 Destiny is not something that I found enjoyable. BTW Destiny 2 PS2 the Best ugly silver + yellow box budget rerelease version is actually the bugfix version, so if you aren't interested in the PSP version (and therefore Majin Rengokusatsu on loop 2 instead of loop 3), you may want to consider playing PS2 the Best version. Don't remember what the bugs were, but they fixed some stuff for that version.

Problem with Eternia is that you either play one of the excellent Japanese versions or get a cut-down English version of the game with really bad voice acting. The first revision of the European PSP version also has an unavoidable game-breaking glitch, so don't play that first PSP revision if you want to actually be able to finish the game. Eternia is a super important game for the series, as it's the first game where they basically figured it all out and the rest of the series is built on what Eternia established. It's also just a damn good game in general. You definitely shouldn't skip Eternia. It's pretty 2D fighting game-ish, with strict timings for inputs and the combo command is there and all of that, so if you want to play it with fighting game inputs to get access to your entire moveset at once, you can. The series was always supposed to be a beat-em-up/fighting game thing disguised as an RPG, and it's pretty apparent with Eternia (and Xillia!).

As for Star Ocean 1, you know why that game exists, right? That game was made by the original Tale Phantasia devs who quit Wolf Team halfway through development after Namco made a bunch of demands that they didn't like, including changing the title to Tales of Phantasia, leaving Namco to finish the entire second half of the game's development. Kind of sad that the only guy from the original dev team who didn't quit and actually stuck around for the entire rest of the series was Sakuraba, especially because eventually something similar started happening to him too. It's not really his fault that he made a bunch of bland soundtracks later in the series; he was apparently directed to "make more Tales music" instead of being allowed to experiment.

[Gamer707b]

I've been on Mario 64 on OG hardware. The camera sucks big time in spots, but boy is it still fun to play. Love the level design. Do miss my shoot em ups. Haven't played them in quite a while. Once I get all 120-star completion, I might play some PC-Engine Ordyne.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

I wish more RPGs just went for it. What's the point of a "racism bad" or "slavery bad" message if you don't SHOW us all the depths of the horribleness of the thing you are saying is bad?

If you've not played Tales of Rebirth yet now that it has an English patch, you really should. It addresses the racism themes the hardest of any game in the series.

playing as [Colette] feels very, very bad even as you're doing crazy damage. The whole game is janky as fuck and seems poorly or barely designed, basically

Yeah, her moveset revolves almost entirely around Para Ball spam stunlocking due to it having crazy damage for the TP cost. Sheena's probably the worst of the melee characters due to having unbelievably short range and moves that feel largely uninteresting to play with. I mean, you eventually get Cyclone Seal I guess. And there's occasional summons? But most of the melee characters can't get out of being cornered by a large enemy. At times the battlefield feels even smaller than the 2D games in terms of how much space you have to reposition.

Lloyd and Regal can get over the enemies with Tempest / Mirage / double jumping, Kratos/Zelos/Presea/Colette can't. Abyss at least addresses this with Free Run but struggles with balance as enemies don't respond well to Free Run and it goes from being too weird and hard at times to simply too easy. Vesperia exists but almost everyone runs really damn slowly even in a straight line and Overlimit dominates the game. Graces I think handled 3D battlefields the best with the sidestepping thing.

[Sima Tuna]

As for Star Ocean 1, you know why that game exists, right? That game was made by the original Tale Phantasia devs who quit Wolf Team halfway through development after Namco made a bunch of demands that they didn't like, including changing the title to Tales of Phantasia, leaving Namco to finish the entire second half of the game's development. Kind of sad that the only guy from the original dev team who didn't quit and actually stuck around for the entire rest of the series was Sakuraba, especially because eventually something similar started happening to him too. It's not really his fault that he made a bunch of bland soundtracks later in the series; he was apparently directed to "make more Tales music" instead of being allowed to experiment.

I actually didn't know that, but the games play so similarly from Phantasia to Star Ocean 1 to Star Ocean 2 that it makes complete sense to me.

Star Ocean is a really weird series. I personally think the series peaked at 2 and never got back to those heights. So Tales as a franchise is in the much stronger position overall. But on a per-game basis, Star Ocean 1 and 2 sit above the majority of other action RPGs I have played. I just really like them, even if the boss fights in 2 can be a bit bullshitty at times.

I do plan to play the older Tales games, but it's just a shame that there isn't an easy way to do this outside of emulation. I will get emulation set up on my steam deck eventually. I've been dragging my feet because I already have hundreds of hours worth of games I need to play on the Deck JUST based on what's already in my steam library. For example, the Ys games went on sale recently and I picked up Ys1 and 2 Chronicles, Oath in Felghana and Ys VI.

Symphonia definitely has some character weirdness with movesets. I personally have always enjoyed playing as Lloyd, Kratos, Zelos, Presea, Regal and Sheena. The rest feel bad to play. Sheena is fun imo but very disjointed, because she's a weird split of caster and fighter, and the two things don't mix and match in Symphonia's battle system. You never want to be standing next to an enemy when you start summoning. So what I usually do is slot her attack techs (not spells) and play her as a fighter except for boss fights, when I run away and spam summons.

As far as combat systems go, Symphonia isn't the best of them but I do like the back hop/guard and I have generally found combat to be fairly responsive in the version I played, which was mostly the GC version. Again, Switch has some issues. 30FPS is the least of its problems. Load times were also increased from gamecube IIRC.

I think Lloyd is definitely intended to be the player-controlled character, because characters like Collette and Genis feel like absolute shit to use. I have taken the majority of characters through the Arena though (years ago,) so it is POSSIBLE. It just sucks.

But anyway, about battle system: Obviously Abyss and Vesparia improved it dramatically in some respects. The line movement in Symphonia is inevitably going to feel weird to new players who aren't familiar with the old line combat from Phantasia. They're going to think, "the game is in 3d, so why can't I move in 3d?" Which is fair. The combat of Abyss is probably closer to what the Tales team would have come up with for Symphonia if they'd had more time.

[Steven]

I wish more RPGs just went for it. What's the point of a "racism bad" or "slavery bad" message if you don't SHOW us all the depths of the horribleness of the thing you are saying is bad?

If you've not played Tales of Rebirth yet now that it has an English patch, you really should. It addresses the racism themes the hardest of any game in the series.

Is that finally out now? Sure took long enough. Really need to resume playing Rebirth because it's awesome. It's pretty famous for going pretty hard on its anti-racism message, which is saying something considering like half of the main series deals with racism as either the main thing or a pretty important thing in the story, starting all the way back with Phantasia. This is one of the biggest problems with Symphonia's story, as that game happens several thousand years before Phantasia and yet the racism situation hasn't changed very much, so Symphonia ended up sort of taking a crap on Phantasia, which I do not appreciate. I can think of few to no prequels that didn't need to be prequels as much as Symphonia didn't, especially because Symphonia has literally no impact on Phantasia at all that I can remember.

But yeah, Rebirth is cool. Definitely gotta read the tutorials for the battle system, though!

Sheena

Oh man. I intentionally avoided talking about her because I have few positive things to say about how she is in battle. The best thing I can say about her is at least she doesn't have to wait for 1/3 of the game to become able to use items on other characters in battle like most of Vesperia's cast. Is that a good trade-off for not being able to use nearly half of her moveset (the summons) under normal conditions? I don't think so, but...

But most of the melee characters can't get out of being cornered by a large enemy. At times the battlefield feels even smaller than the 2D games in terms of how much space you have to reposition.

I forgot about this entirely. It's a huge problem for most of the cast during some boss fights. It's funny that they can just run the hell away in the 2D games but here they can't and get stuck, probably with an inescapable boss that wants them dead. At least back attacks can't be guarded against in this game so you can still sort of help trapped characters, but it still probably shouldn't happen at all.

While I've got you here, any thoughts on Xillia's final boss?

I actually didn't know that, but the games play so similarly from Phantasia to Star Ocean 1 to Star Ocean 2 that it makes complete sense to me.

Yep, same dev team. SFC Phantasia is very much its own thing with its own art style that none of the other Tales games have. You know what has the same art style? SFC Star Ocean, and now you know why. I haven't played it, but I remember seeing screenshots of it for the first time and my first impression was "this is SFC Tales of Phantasia".

Again, Switch has some issues. 30FPS is the least of its problems. Load times were also increased from gamecube IIRC.

Did you see what having Colette in your party does to the framerate during the last boss on Switch? If not, here it is: https://youtu.be/vyzXR1RS6NU?si=l4WrgaAGUrM5emHa

Holy crap that is bad. Also a pretty good example of what can happen when you tie game speed to framerate and why you should probably not do that. I'm kind of amazed this supposedly passed some sort of QA check.

But anyway, about battle system: Obviously Abyss and Vesparia improved it dramatically in some respects. The line movement in Symphonia is inevitably going to feel weird to new players who aren't familiar with the old line combat from Phantasia. They're going to think, "the game is in 3d, so why can't I move in 3d?" Which is fair. The combat of Abyss is probably closer to what the Tales team would have come up with for Symphonia if they'd had more time.

I actually kind of prefer Symphonia to Vesperia overall. Vesperia feels really sluggish in comparison to almost everything except for being only mildly better than PS1 Destiny. It's been a while since I played SFC Phantasia, but I'm pretty sure even that feels more responsive than Vesperia. But yes, they had free run fully implemented in Symphonia about halfway through the project but didn't know how to balance it, so they cut it and left it for the sequel... which has the opposite problem. I've been thinking about doing a no-free run playthrough of Abyss to see how it is, but I'm sure that will probably end up being completely miserable because the game's designed specifically to be played with free run. I don't think many people know this, but in Abyss getting hit while free running is a guaranteed critical and criticals do massive damage in that game. You'll probably die in one or two hits on hard difficulty if you get hit while free running.

Well, I thought it was just an incorrect memory, but I just played the game for a little while and I discovered that I was actually right; friendly AI characters are absolutely capable of free run when they want to. I just caught Kratos doing it like five times. I thought that it might be the AI switching targets rapidly and changing movement based on that, but then he did it with only one enemy on the field. So, yeah, this game is weird.

Edit: holy shit Berseria is getting rereleased in February. Uh... why? Was this really necessary? I just bought this game for the first time like two months ago and haven't played it yet. At least it's actually going to exist on PC in Japan now, and presumably without shitty Denuvo this time. Guess I gotta go suffer through Zestiria now because I never finished that either. I mean I guess Berseria is still technically a very late PS3 game, and it's going to be very nice to actually be able to buy it on PC now, but really??? I wonder if this is just a glorified excuse to release it on Switch, where it's almost certain to to run way worse than it did on PS3 just like the other PS3 -> Switch Tales ports (lol), with the other versions just being a bonus. I guess my newly bought PS4 copy is gonna eternally collect dust now while I play it on PC instead. I spent like 10 minutes carefully examining the boxes in the store to decide which copy I liked, too...

[BareKnuckleRoo]

But yeah, Rebirth is cool. Definitely gotta read the tutorials for the battle system, though!

Rebirth is by far the weirdest of the games in terms of combat system since using attacks is how you heal, but once you get the hang of it it'll flow pretty naturally. Setup your strategy formation so party members heal each other with attacks, and your offensive spellcasters will double as healers. When you start playing it I can get more tl;dr into the mechanics of it if you'd like.

While I've got you here, any thoughts on Xillia's final boss?

Haven't finished that one yet, sorry!

Well, I thought it was just an incorrect memory, but I just played the game for a little while and I discovered that I was actually right; friendly AI characters are absolutely capable of free run when they want to.

Yep, that's the frustrating part. There's actually a hack for the PC version that restores free run functionality for players, so it may be that it was initially a part of the combat system then deemed to make to too easy and they disabled it? It's weird not to have full movement on a 3D field though.

If you need to get out of being cornered you can, if you're lucky, switch to AI control and hope they move in a way that gets them out of the corner, but it's not super likely to happen because of how they tend to change direction then run briefly in a straight line. They're unlikely to actually circle around whatever's cornering them.

[Steven]

Oh god right now I am just like "WTF Scamco?" Berseria, really? How about all of the games that are stuck running in interlaced resolutions? You know, the ones that need to NOT be stuck running in interlaced resolutions? I checked out the Japanese website for the new port and it looks like they censored it, too, so maybe I will just play my Japanese PS4 copy. At least it wasn't a complete waste of money! Maybe I should go get some of the PS4 version DLC costumes in case they get delisted. I hate that I even have to consider these things. Remember when costumes were in the fucking game and you didn't have to buy them separately?

There are 3 PS3 Tales games left that haven't been ported yet. One is Xillia 2, but Tomizawa apparently already said that they're working on that. The others are Zestiria and... lol Knight of Ratatosk, which itself is a Wii port so maybe it doesn't count, but so was Graces, so we'll see. At this rate, I wouldn't be surprised if they rerelease Symphonia AGAIN but this time give it a native PS5 version and finally let people in Japan buy it on PC... which, I realized as I finished typing that, is exactly what is happening with Berseria. I don't know what else to say. My exasperation is... yeah.

But yeah, Rebirth is cool. Definitely gotta read the tutorials for the battle system, though!

Rebirth is by far the weirdest of the games in terms of combat system since using attacks is how you heal, but once you get the hang of it it'll flow pretty naturally. Setup your strategy formation so party members heal each other with attacks, and your offensive spellcasters will double as healers. When you start playing it I can get more tl;dr into the mechanics of it if you'd like.

lol that was more advice for Tuna-kun than anything else. Rebirth is a cool game for sure. There is nothing else with a battle system like that anywhere as far as I know. Except for kind of Tales of the Tempest which everyone wants to forget about for a reason.

While I've got you here, any thoughts on Xillia's final boss?

Haven't finished that one yet, sorry!

Okay. I'm sure you already know about it, but it's one of the most horridly designed and frustrating things in the entire series... maybe. It's also, again maybe, harder than the Destiny remake final boss. Maybe. Non-spoilers description, as much as possible, anyway, in the spoilers thingy in case you want to know about the mechanics of it.

Spoiler

So basically it's you vs 2 enemies. You can probably guess who they are, but I won't say just in case. They can use the link thingy just like you can, and they can spam the shit out of their link artes because of course they can. Unlike you, they seem to be able to go overlimit any time they want, so hi-ougi spam is potentially a problem.

One of them recovers massive HP when blocking attacks, which is the sole reason this fight sucks horribly, especially because there is no indication at all that that is what causes the HP regen, so if you're not paying attention, suddenly the boss will go from 40% HP to 100% HP and it's your fault. Said boss also revives once when defeated, has Raise Dead, has a Strong Treat that will be used to heal both bosses until you use Leia to steal it, and is extremely fast (by fast I mean like Guy Cecil fast) and can teleport. Like damn, just one of those things alone is annoying as hell, but the combination of all of those is just... shit.

The other boss is just kind of there, but will perform linked arte spam and hi-ougi spam. If you take out this boss before the other boss, this boss will eventually get hit by Raise Dead and come back to life. Fortunately, Raise Dead only seems to happen once.

Yeah, if that sounds like it sucks, you're right! It took almost an hour for me to win on hard, and on one previous attempt I sat there for an hour and half in a stalemate before I Alt+F4ed. Once I figured out a strategy and won, I... kind of... liked it...??? Well, not sure what to think about it yet, but it was a hell of a thing. Not sure what that thing was, but it was a thing.

BTW if you have not played the new Xillia port, it is weird and has some problems. It's playable and you can definitely work around the issues, but it does have those issues, mainly the frequent unintentional backstepping and jumping, which are very annoying, but you may encounter infinite loading and strange framerate problems that shouldn't happen. Otherwise, it looks a hell of a lot better than it used to because no more dark filter. It's a surprisingly beautiful and colorful game with that filter gone. Fortunately, once/if they clean up the problems, the PC version will unquestionably the best version of the game. I'm very tempted to call it that even in its current state.

Yep, that's the frustrating part. There's actually a hack for the PC version that restores free run functionality for players, so it may be that it was initially a part of the combat system then deemed to make to too easy and they disabled it? It's weird not to have full movement on a 3D field though.

If you need to get out of being cornered you can, if you're lucky, switch to AI control and hope they move in a way that gets them out of the corner, but it's not super likely to happen because of how they tend to change direction then run briefly in a straight line. They're unlikely to actually circle around whatever's cornering them.

Yeah, I noticed that they tend to free run in a really weird pattern, so I was wondering if they were actually capable of using free run to get unstuck or just to attack. I'm not going to count on it happening.

Well, played a little bit more before I went to do laundry. Not much progress, but I'm getting there. Might as well finish the game. I actually lost some progress because I took the hard path, forgot what to do after I got to the border checkpoint, and didn't feel like walking all the way back, so I ended up reloading my save to save time... and my last save was before I beat up the Clumsy Assassin or whatever it was that they named her in English for that boss fight. Oops. Is it even a spoiler to say who it is? Eh, who cares. You know exactly who I mean anyway.

[Sima Tuna]

I actually didn't know that, but the games play so similarly from Phantasia to Star Ocean 1 to Star Ocean 2 that it makes complete sense to me.

Yep, same dev team. SFC Phantasia is very much its own thing with its own art style that none of the other Tales games have. You know what has the same art style? SFC Star Ocean, and now you know why. I haven't played it, but I remember seeing screenshots of it for the first time and my first impression was "this is SFC Tales of Phantasia".

Again, Switch has some issues. 30FPS is the least of its problems. Load times were also increased from gamecube IIRC.

Did you see what having Colette in your party does to the framerate during the last boss on Switch? If not, here it is: https://youtu.be/vyzXR1RS6NU?si=l4WrgaAGUrM5emHa

Holy crap that is bad. Also a pretty good example of what can happen when you tie game speed to framerate and why you should probably not do that. I'm kind of amazed this supposedly passed some sort of QA check.

But anyway, about battle system: Obviously Abyss and Vesparia improved it dramatically in some respects. The line movement in Symphonia is inevitably going to feel weird to new players who aren't familiar with the old line combat from Phantasia. They're going to think, "the game is in 3d, so why can't I move in 3d?" Which is fair. The combat of Abyss is probably closer to what the Tales team would have come up with for Symphonia if they'd had more time.

I actually kind of prefer Symphonia to Vesperia overall. Vesperia feels really sluggish in comparison to almost everything except for being only mildly better than PS1 Destiny. It's been a while since I played SFC Phantasia, but I'm pretty sure even that feels more responsive than Vesperia. But yes, they had free run fully implemented in Symphonia about halfway through the project but didn't know how to balance it, so they cut it and left it for the sequel... which has the opposite problem. I've been thinking about doing a no-free run playthrough of Abyss to see how it is, but I'm sure that will probably end up being completely miserable because the game's designed specifically to be played with free run. I don't think many people know this, but in Abyss getting hit while free running is a guaranteed critical and criticals do massive damage in that game. You'll probably die in one or two hits on hard difficulty if you get hit while free running.

Well, I thought it was just an incorrect memory, but I just played the game for a little while and I discovered that I was actually right; friendly AI characters are absolutely capable of free run when they want to. I just caught Kratos doing it like five times. I thought that it might be the AI switching targets rapidly and changing movement based on that, but then he did it with only one enemy on the field. So, yeah, this game is weird.

Edit: holy shit Berseria is getting rereleased in February. Uh... why? Was this really necessary? I just bought this game for the first time like two months ago and haven't played it yet. At least it's actually going to exist on PC in Japan now, and presumably without shitty Denuvo this time. Guess I gotta go suffer through Zestiria now because I never finished that either. I mean I guess Berseria is still technically a very late PS3 game, and it's going to be very nice to actually be able to buy it on PC now, but really??? I wonder if this is just a glorified excuse to release it on Switch, where it's almost certain to to run way worse than it did on PS3 just like the other PS3 -> Switch Tales ports (lol), with the other versions just being a bonus. I guess my newly bought PS4 copy is gonna eternally collect dust now while I play it on PC instead. I spent like 10 minutes carefully examining the boxes in the store to decide which copy I liked, too...

Well, my praise of Vesparia's combat system was meant more as, like, "yeah it has fully 3d combat and that's pretty neat." I actually bounced off Vesparia pretty hard. I did beat the wolf boss but the decision to remove a bunch of your abilities (from previous games) to hand back to you piecemeal later sucks ass, as does the snail-like speed of combat. Symphonia is a lot snappier, although again the lack of full 3d is going to hurt.

It's been a while since I played Abyss, but I don't remember any issues with the combat in that game. Phantasia combat was FINE.JPG but nothing more. Kind of jank but that's expected too.

A rerelease of Bersaria IS really strange... But if it means they put the game on out Switch with decent performance (they won't,) then I'd be happy for that. But as you said, switch performance of Bersaria is destined to be bad, especially given past performance of both PS3 Namco ports and the performance of similar ps3-ps4 action RPGs on the system. Ys 9 had awful performance on switch last time I checked that one.

Speaking of poor performance, and totally unrelated to anything else, but if anyone wants to play Rogue Trader on steam deck, just be warned that I couldn't figure out any way to get the framerate above about 25-30, and most of the intro it was around 15. It's shocking this got the green checkmark "approved" for steam deck, while Kingmaker and Wrath, which both perform more stably on Deck, have only the yellow caution sign.

I would recommend Star Ocean 1 and 2 to anyone who hasn't played them. I haven't played the newest hd-2d version of Star Ocean 2. I played the psp era remakes and also the ps1 original of Star Ocean 2. Enjoyed all of those versions of the games, and First Departure R is available on everything. Yes, the psp era pixel art IS worse than the SNES era darker aesthetic, but the game itself is good. They changed some things around with the gameplay, so First Departure R is using Star Ocean 2's engine and combat system, kind of like how Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition put BG1 into BG2's engine. I wouldn't say it's a negative or a positive, just a thing to be aware of. If you care about preservation and want to play the OG versions of everything then I guess you'd want the SNES for Star Ocean 1 and PS1 for Star Ocean 2. I personally think the star ocean 2 combat is less jerky than star ocean 1's original snes engine, but your mileage may vary.

Speaking of switch performance, I've been very disappointed in the current trend of "well switch 2 exists so it's ok to release broken switch 1 ports because the plebs just need to consoom the new console."

Also, I'm all over the place today, but why the fuck are they releasing Bersaria in February instead of Xillia 2 in February??? They just released Xillia 1 and they are a pair. Newbies won't be able to play Xillia 2 now. I know you said it's coming but they should have released Xillia 1 and 2 in a double pack at the same time or Xillia 2 within a couple months of Xillia 1. It also goes without saying they should port more of the PRE-PS3 ERA stuff to modern systems instead of games like Bersaria.

[Steven]

Well, my praise of Vesparia's combat system was meant more as, like, "yeah it has fully 3d combat and that's pretty neat." I actually bounced off Vesparia pretty hard. I did beat the wolf boss but the decision to remove a bunch of your abilities (from previous games) to hand back to you piecemeal later sucks ass, as does the snail-like speed of combat. Symphonia is a lot snappier, although again the lack of full 3d is going to hurt.

I don't care for Vesperia much either. It's... fine, I guess. That initial playthrough was pretty miserable, but I finally finished it this year after 16 years of having the game! I do actually want to do a second playthrough, as I think the game is probably going to be better on the loop with all of the stuff I got on the first playthrough. Not now, though. I gotta do everything else first before I go back to Vesperia.

It's been a while since I played Abyss, but I don't remember any issues with the combat in that game.

The only real problem with the game is that it's either way too easy when played on Normal/Hard/Mania or way too tedious/boring on Unknown, and even that might not be a problem, like for people that suck at action games and still want to play it. Other than that, and maybe the obtuseness of the AD Skill system, it's good!

Phantasia combat was FINE.JPG but nothing more. Kind of jank but that's expected too.

Try Cross Edition! You won't find it on its own because it's included in Narikiri Dungeon X (that's read as Cross, not the letter X, BTW). Cross Edition has some weirdness and some new stuff that people don't like (Rody), but you may find it improved. You will definitely find it in only Japanese, however.

Speaking of poor performance, and totally unrelated to anything else, but if anyone wants to play Rogue Trader on steam deck, just be warned that I couldn't figure out any way to get the framerate above about 25-30, and most of the intro it was around 15. It's shocking this got the green checkmark "approved" for steam deck, while Kingmaker and Wrath, which both perform more stably on Deck, have only the yellow caution sign.

Yeah, best to ignore Steam Deck's verified thing entirely. It's not very helpful at all and sometimes it makes you wonder why games got the rating they got. protondb is better, but the only way to really see how stuff works is to try running it in high-stress places. Death Stranding is a great example. It's fine for the first five to ten hours or so. Then, when you get to the second area, you're running at 8~12 FPS with regularity. Naturally, this game has the green verified checkmark even though it barely functions in the primary area of the game. It's playable if you want to suffer through that, but it's not recommended.

I would recommend Star Ocean 1 and 2 to anyone who hasn't played them.

I have been considering playing SFC Star Ocean 1 for over 20 years now, solely because it was made by the SFC Phantasia devs. I'll probably get around to it eventually, but good to hear that it's a good game.

Speaking of switch performance, I've been very disappointed in the current trend of "well switch 2 exists so it's ok to release broken switch 1 ports because the plebs just need to consoom the new console."

Yeah, about that... it seems that the many devs that they have doing these ports seem to be following very specific, identical instructions from Scamco. Unlocked FPS on Switch, even as an option, to take advantage of Switch 2 seems to not be one of those instructions. That's kind of ultra dumb, I think.

I also think it's kind of dumb to have 60 FPS PS3 games running at 30 on Switch in general, even if only in docked mode, and to not support 120 on PS5, which might actually be even worse than 30 FPS on Switch if you think about it. Leave the resolution at 1280x720 on Switch if needed. The Switch ports are definitely downgrades, which is not enticing. Switch Graces in particular has pre-patch City Connection Cotton/Guardian Force input lag. It's not like they are adding meaningful stuff to make up for the worse performance like they did with PS2 Symphonia. The Switch versions are just worse than the PS3 versions.

Also, I'm all over the place today, but why the fuck are they releasing Bersaria in February instead of Xillia 2 in February??? They just released Xillia 1 and they are a pair. Newbies won't be able to play Xillia 2 now. I know you said it's coming but they should have released Xillia 1 and 2 in a double pack at the same time or Xillia 2 within a couple months of Xillia 1. It also goes without saying they should port more of the PRE-PS3 ERA stuff to modern systems instead of games like Bersaria.

Tomizawa (he's the series producer in case you didn't know) talked about this recently, after Xillia was announced. He said that they are putting these ports out immediately upon completion in the order in which development finishes, and I think I saw him say somewhere that this is primarily for game preservation rather than for money. Berseria just happens to be finished next after Xillia, so it's the next release, and it's very close to Xillia because development finished/will finish very shortly after Xillia. Xillia 2 is taking a while, so it's not coming until it's finished. That's the official explanation, anyway. I kind of want to applaud them for doing it this way, as they're focusing on making stuff available immediately when it's ready without really caring too much about the financial penalties they're likely to incur from flooding the market with a bunch of budget-priced (lol not in Japan though, of course) ports of old games in a very short amount of time, and, arguably most importantly, on PC. This is a very strangely customer-focused strategy!

At the same time, they're definitely going to confuse the hell out of normal consumers who are like "WTF is the difference between Berseria and the Xillia thing that just released literally two weeks ago? Are these related? Why are there so many of them? Do I have to play Xillia first? How the hell do you even pronounce Xillia?" and also probably hurt sales by doing so. They're also going to piss off the people who want the games that actually would benefit the most from this rescued from the PS1/PS2/PSP/DS/etc. Like what about Hearts DS? That game is pretty cool and would benefit greatly from having much higher audio quality, which is a perfect example of why enhanced ports are good in the first place. They'd probably just stick that in an emulator and call it good instead of bothering to recode it, but you know what I mean. It might be better for them to make a statement like "over the next few years, we are releasing [names of games] in the order in which development finishes" and I think people would take that much better. That might be a bad business move, but the fans would be happier.

They've also obviously been planning this for years now, and there is proof of this: Inomata-sensei died almost two years ago, but before she died, she did some new artwork for the rerelease of Xillia and the 30th anniversary art book. Wouldn't be surprised if they had her do some new art for Xillia 2 or some other stuff that hasn't been announced yet, but anyway, they possibly anticipated that this project might not make a whole lot of money quite some time ago and said "fuck it let's do it anyway because these games deserve it", and I have a massive amount of respect for them if they did indeed come to that realization and decide to do it anyway despite the risks and potential consequences.

My frustration is not the timing of Berseria getting a new release but rather the necessity of it. Was this really necessary? I could see the case for the Switch port, especially in Japan, and ideally a Switch 2 port. Those make sense. But did we really need a native PS5 version when the PS4 version runs fine on PS5, and did we really need a second Windows version when the only things they'd have to do to clean up the existing one would be to remove Denuvo, remove the region lock, and patch Japanese text in?

[Sima Tuna]

Tomizawa (he's the series producer in case you didn't know) talked about this recently, after Xillia was announced. He said that they are putting these ports out immediately upon completion in the order in which development finishes, and I think I saw him say somewhere that this is primarily for game preservation rather than for money. Berseria just happens to be finished next after Xillia, so it's the next release, and it's very close to Xillia because development finished/will finish very shortly after Xillia. Xillia 2 is taking a while, so it's not coming until it's finished. That's the official explanation, anyway. I kind of want to applaud them for doing it this way, as they're focusing on making stuff available immediately when it's ready without really caring too much about the financial penalties they're likely to incur from flooding the market with a bunch of budget-priced (lol not in Japan though, of course) ports of old games in a very short amount of time, and, arguably most importantly, on PC. This is a very strangely customer-focused strategy!

At the same time, they're definitely going to confuse the hell out of normal consumers who are like "WTF is the difference between Berseria and the Xillia thing that just released literally two weeks ago? Are these related? Why are there so many of them? Do I have to play Xillia first? How the hell do you even pronounce Xillia?" and also probably hurt sales by doing so. They're also going to piss off the people who want the games that actually would benefit the most from this rescued from the PS1/PS2/PSP/DS/etc. Like what about Hearts DS? That game is pretty cool and would benefit greatly from having much higher audio quality, which is a perfect example of why enhanced ports are good in the first place. They'd probably just stick that in an emulator and call it good instead of bothering to recode it, but you know what I mean. It might be better for them to make a statement like "over the next few years, we are releasing [names of games] in the order in which development finishes" and I think people would take that much better. That might be a bad business move, but the fans would be happier.

Well, that does make more sense then. I do applaud ANY attempts to preserve these games, but it's still a bit strange they aren't starting with (or at least telling us they will get to) the ones that are most in need of preserving. The pre-HD era Tales games are the ones that need preservation the most, especially given the number of Tales games just in this thread that you or Roo have told me are japanese-only unless you have a fan translation, or which technically have an English version that's complete shit.

The only English version of Phantasia is the one with the hilarious voice acting/bitcrushed audio and the weird Chibi art style. For a Tales anniversary, you'd think they'd be taking a long, hard look at their FIRST games and trying to preserve those.

When Star Ocean started getting remakes, what did they start with? Star Ocean 1 and 2 of course. I understand starting with Symphonia because it was the most popular English Tales game, but that's also partly because Symphonia was the most accessible one for many people.

I'm willing to allow that Berseria needed preservation *eventually.* I mean, if the port performed well on Switch (stable framerate, all extras/quality of life stuff, 3x movement speed toggle, decent resolution) then I would be happy about the thought of playing it portably. But I know it's not realistic to expect that level of quality on a Switch 1 port of a ps4 game. Sometimes you strike gold and a switch port of a ps4 era game is actually good, even on switch 1. It's rare though.

I did eventually find a settings toggle for Rogue Trader (immediately after bitching, of course) that sets the framerate to more like 30fps instead of 15fps. But I am pretty sure the cutscenes are still a 20fps jaggy mess of nonsense. It's still silly that games which perform better on steam deck and have no flaws other than "you might need to call up the steam deck virtual keyboard once in character generation" get the yellow warning sign compared to Rogue Trader. If you try to run Rogue Trader on default settings then it's a complete steaming pile.

All this talk about Tales games has me wanting to boot some up. But I'm already kinda juggling a bunch of game "projects." I'm currently playing the two KotoR games. KotoR 1 is just for fun, but for KotoR 2, I'm trying to check and see if Aspyr FINALLY patched KotoR 2 to be possible to finish on switch without calling up console commands. When KotoR 2 initially launched on switch, it was impossible to finish normally, the audio would glitch constantly, conversations would fast-forward randomly, crashes were frequent/repeatable and the experience overall was a buggy mess. That all SEEMS to be fixed now. Of course, Aspyr's broken promises about adding the Restored Content mod to the official release later down the line still sting, since that was an important bit of game preservation they COULD have potentially done to "finish" a famously unfinished game. But if the game is running at 60fps on Switch 1 relatively stable and fairly bug-free, that does constitute probably the strongest official port of the game in existence to date. KotoR 1 on Switch is fantastic. Far superior to either the xbox original port or playing old versions unmodded on PC. Not that anyone ever did the latter. In addition to KotoR 1 and 2, I'm still not done with Wrath of the Righteous and I'm fiddling with Rogue Trader now too.

I am, however, JUST exactly the kind of sucker who would bitch about Tales ports all day and then still buy one on Switch because "it's Tales and portable." Although, I guess I can buy it on the Deck now instead and have decent performance.

[ryu]

Silent Hill: Homecoming
wtf this game is actually good. The combat works (if you're open to it and adapt instead of insisting to play it like SH1-3) and the game is incredibly scary with better sound design and atmosphere than most horror games. I hated this game the first I played it 12 years ago, but now I'm glad that I gave it another chance.

[Steven]

Played Tales of Berseria for the first time for about 90 minutes last night. I see what they were going for with the battle system, but I don't think I like it very much at all. Hard to believe that this was made by the same guy who made the awesome battle systems for Eternia, Destiny 2, Rebirth, Destiny PS2, and Graces. Maybe I'll like it more as I play it more. This definitely looks like a very shiny PS3 game ported to PS4 instead of something that began its existence as a PS4 game. I don't really care about graphics in general, but I was still hoping it would have been improved more than this for the PS4 release.

Tales games just in this thread that you or Roo have told me are japanese-only unless you have a fan translation, or which technically have an English version that's complete shit.

Oh you mean these?

Spoiler

Lol this isn't even close to all of them. I forgot to put my Japanese Hearts R in there but that counts as one with a shit translation for sure. Obviously I'm cheating here quite a bit, but it's still kind of funny. That is the bugfix version of Graces, unfortunately. Really do want to get the bug version eventually and have it shut my Wii off mid-game. I think Destiny 2 and some others got Korean and Chinese releases, but I don't remember and I don't know if those actually got translated or are still in Japanese. Yes, VS really is that terrible. You'd think a Smash clone with Tales characters would be nearly impossible to completely fuck up, but that is exactly what happened.

The only English version of Phantasia is the one with the hilarious voice acting/bitcrushed audio and the weird Chibi art style. For a Tales anniversary, you'd think they'd be taking a long, hard look at their FIRST games and trying to preserve those.

Phantasia's pretty old. Unless they do a complete remake, I doubt they'd do much beyond grab whatever the cheapest PS1/PSP emulator to license is, stick the disc image in that with maybe some new button prompts, and call it good.

I'm willing to allow that Berseria needed preservation *eventually.* I mean, if the port performed well on Switch (stable framerate, all extras/quality of life stuff, 3x movement speed toggle, decent resolution) then I would be happy about the thought of playing it portably. But I know it's not realistic to expect that level of quality on a Switch 1 port of a ps4 game. Sometimes you strike gold and a switch port of a ps4 era game is actually good, even on switch 1. It's rare though.

Berseria isn't really a PS4 game. It's PS3 game with a PS4 port, as PS3 was the lead dev platform. I don't think the Switch should be struggling to run PS3 games. It does a decent enough job with Vesperia most of the time, and because the framerate on Switch Vesperia is unlocked, it supposedly runs gloriously on Switch 2. I think that's what they should have done with the rest of these.

I am, however, JUST exactly the kind of sucker who would bitch about Tales ports all day and then still buy one on Switch because "it's Tales and portable." Although, I guess I can buy it on the Deck now instead and have decent performance.

Absolutely do Steam Deck for these. Graces runs better on Steam Deck than it does on PS5, after all~♪

16:10 support is broken (though this should theoretically fix it: https://github.com/Lyall/TalesOfGracesFFix) and it'll drop to only about 70 FPS during the final dungeon at the Steam Deck's internal screen resolution, but it runs at 90 for basically the entire rest of the game at max graphics. Increasing the resolution will cause it to struggle a bit at times, but the PC version of Graces is absolutely the best version of the game.

Xillia is great on Steam Deck too. I unintentionally ended up beating the game on it. This version of Xillia is kind of messed up and has weird FPS problems when it shouldn't, but otherwise it's 60 FPS most of the time on Steam Deck. Don't bother trying for 90 FPS on the OLED with Xillia because it will make the game run in slow motion. 16:10 support does work here, fortunately.