Playing Octopath Traveler II!

Lots of progress. I'm working the final chapter for each of the protagonists, finished Scholar and Thief yesterday and will do Cleric next. I'm rather overleved/overgeared since I did a LOT of exploration, so I didn't have any trouble at all with the bosses so far.

It's a "TP-less" system using a new resource called CC ("Chain Capacity").

Different attacks or skills use different amounts of CC, and it recharges naturally after standing still or blocking for a short time. However... there's different actions that also recharge CC such as sidestepping enemy attacks, meaning that if you're playing properly you get the chance to attack again faster or extend your combo. The combo system is also more flexible with less strict ordering of skills, you can even chain combos into spells to reduce casting time. Overall it feels more like a traditional fighting game than your usual Tales battle system.

Also, there's some very unique characters to play. Like Pascal, which is a mage with a gun-staff with most of her spells being AOE around her. Combos with her involve melee into ranged, into dashing and casting short-range spells. If you don't mind spoilers here's a video showing a complex late-game combo using her: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtfWlLga20k

One important thing to mention is that the game has a very slow start, the first couple hours have you play an extended prologue of sorts during the main cast's childhood, and the battle system only starts unlocking past that.

The review chart is hilarious.

Doubt Sony or the developer expected this would happen.

Edit [May/04, 14h UTC]: Updated chart. More than 70k negative reviews already.

So if it were clearly written on the Steam page, I don’t really get the complains.

It was optional for several months and the info on the PSN page contradicted that, so there was a lot of room for confusion.

Not surprisingly that PSN page was edited earlier today, but there's a million screenshots floating around already, plus you can check the previous version in the Wayback Machine.

And even if it was clearly written on all places, it's still a "too bad you didn't read the fine print, now you're past the limit time for a refund, so either let Sony track you or lose access to the game" situation which is very shitty. There's also the fact that they sold the game to people in countries where is PSN is not available, which should not have happened if that requirement was going to be enforced in the future.

Not hard to see why people would get pissed and lose trust in the developer. I also think that players have been annoyed for a while with this type of requirement (not specifically in this game), and they are now getting a good outlet with a lot of publicity around to vent about it.

Not surprising considering that most 3rd party games are:

1. Ports of old games so anyone who has a PS5/Xbox/PC can get them for cheaper.
2. Overpriced ports as well, and in a system that is already rather expensive.
3. Game Key Cards which won't appeal to collectors who could still buy them despite #1 and #2.

There's a lot of videos and articles like this one discussing how Stage 1-1 of Super Mario Bros for the NES is a cleverly designed tutorial for the core game mechanics.

This controversy is pretty much "You're having fun in a different way from what we intended. This is not allowed so we blocked it.".

Which is a very "Nintendo" thing to do. But hopefully they'll change things in the future and give a "classic" option or something similar.

That's a massive improvement in some games for those who play handheld. Probably should've been there from the start, but it's good that Nintendo finally implemented it.

Hilarious timing for a 6h+ downtime/instability, with all the controversy about them killing physical games and lack of response from Sony.

The Switch 2 launch felt oddly rushed.

Lack of details, initial backward compatibility list having only ~20% of games with basic testing finished, the need for SD Express cards that are hard to find. Even the GCK situation is probably due to cost/availability issues that will improve over time.

This DevKit situation looks to me like another example of this.

Like others said, it's not just Gen-Z.

Funny enough, the main reason I'm spending far less is not the shitty economy, but rather the gaming industry's push to kill physical copies.

I used to buy a lot of physical games at full price because they would be much harder to find later on, but if I'm forced to go with a digital copy this is no longer an issue, so I just let them sit on my wishlist until they're massively discounted.

There's also the problem that they're clearly rushing this without much thought, they don't even have an answer to the obvious question of "what happens to people in regions not supported by PSN".

There's many reasons, here's a few examples:

• See how easy/hard it is to repair it
• See how easy/hard is is to mod it (say, add a bigger battery)
• Understand the internals, see which components are being used and their quality

As an example of the last one, I'm really curious to see a Joycon teardown so we can find out what kind of sticks they used and how likely it is for them to show drift problems in the future.

Played a lot of these in the last two years, with Ender Magnolia and Nine Sols being my favorites among them.

All-time I think I'd still go with Super Metroid, despite its age and having completed multiple playthroughs I still end up playing for hours anytime I boot it.

Honorable mentions for Rabi-Ribi (don't let the cutesy anime artstyle fool you, this is a fantastic non-linear game with some of the best boss battles in the genre), the recent Momodora games and the Team Ladybug games (with Touhou Luna Nights being my favorite of the three).

If you didn't like Hollow Knight you probably won't like Silksong either.

The game is good, and incredibly polished, but feels aimed at the people who 100% the first game and wanted more.

Crossover sets like Marvel, Final Fantasy or Assassin's Creed.

A lot of people dislike those sets, but so far you could ignore them depending on the format you played. From now onwards it'll likely be impossible to stay away from those if you want to play competitively.

Besides the overall dislike of this new "Fortnite the Gathering" world, there's also concerns of pricing, these sets so far have been more expensive than regular sets, and also even more product burnout - we're up to 6 major sets/year from the 4 we used to have not too long ago.

It's a reasonable replacement/alternative for "code in a box" games.

The problem is that it's effectively replacing physical games on the Switch 2 - so far we have 80%+ of 3rd Party releases are using this model, and it's a significant downgrade for "true" physical - forces the customer to pay the "storage cost", requires internet access to install the game (not great from a handheld that should work everywhere), is bad for preservation since the game is not on cart.

Also, despite this being a low-cost alternative to carts some publishers are being extra-scummy and INCREASING the price - the Switch 2 version of Trails Beyond the Horizon is a good example, being $10 more than PS4/PS5/Switch 1 despite being effectively an "empty" cart.

Nice, I love my Ultimate and I'm glad it will also be usable if/when I get a Switch 2.

The company said more updates are coming soon.

Also nice to hear. Hope the Micro gets an update, I often use it for "low interaction" games like VNs and it's also good for small kids, my nieces really like it.

No, I'm the same. But I've been underwhelmed by most Switch 2 news. 🙁

Asides from the prices and the overuse of Game Key cards by 3rd party publishers there's nothing really negative on what they've announced.... but I'm also having a hard time naming something about it that really gets me hyped.

Nintendo probably uses more than one screen manufacturer.