Blog Comments

Good calls. I'd add Gris to the list.

I actually don't think there will end up being as much intersection with traditional sports. The ecosystems are so different and the revenue streams are wildly different. It's definitely not a bad thing, just two largely exclusive sets of spectators.

I thought you were writing a very delayed view of Shawshank Redemption.

This is disappointing.

FFXI?

Bruh.

Breath of the Wild has to be the most overrated game of all time lmao.

FFXI!

Originally Posted by Cail

I think it would be a lot of fun if they added a PvP planet, where if you go on the planet, you can kill other players as well as PvE, similar to The Division

Rate down.

I think it would be a lot of fun if they added a PvP planet, where if you go on the planet, you can kill other players as well as PvE, similar to The Division

Should be noted that Lucky's Tale was formerly an Oculus Rift exclusive.

Played 1hr and wanted my money back, too far off track with this game. Gimmie my RE2 remake.

Brill, i completely forgot the second one was dropping soon. brb buying now

FFXI forever

I need to join a crew Sath, hoock me up.

Hey I saw your reddit comment. I'd be interested. ID: 12604923. Just started (rerolled for zooey), but I've been making really fast progress.

...(god damn keyboard) into the crew.

Last caveat: Much of the early game you are on your own, so there won't be as much interaction in game. We will be here to answer questions in thread or on discord though!

This was a really good write-up Serra, thanks.

I would like to add/emphasize a few points relating to FFXI since this is a FFXI forum after all, as well as add one or two deeper comments to Serra's points.

1: The grind really is like FFXI. Things take a while and if you want to complete them in less time it is going to require time commitments. That said, you always feel like you are working towards something and making progress on it - like Serra said. Some quests are reminiscent of the FFXI relic style quests where you can incrementally power up a weapon and at the end you get something that is so much more powerful than alternatives you can't help but chuckle.

2: Endgame and guilds. I've only just recently started end game, but the change from the rest of the game (raid style battles with 30 people) is that the difficulty spikes and the number of people you can bring drops to 6 or 18 people from 30. This means that a lot of fights are done all or mostly within guilds, just like linkshells in XI. One or two people go tank jobs, someone goes healer, someone goes enfeebler, etc. You communicate and have to work as a group to do a lot of the endgame stuff in this game. However, unlike XI, no single group activity is really too time intensive. Pops are farmed solo, no queue to fight something, just show up at specific time and blow through your fights as a team. It really is nice.

3: Longevity, this game has it. I played both FFRK and BF for many months, hell I even maxed out on content in Brave Frontier pretty early and found myself sitting on my hands waiting for 1 week of new content every 5 weeks (more like 3 days worth). This game...I've been playing for I don't know, 6-7 months? and I only just hit end game raids this week. I will probably have to play for another year or more to get to rank 150+ (currently rank 101). Much of the content currently in the game never becomes trivial at that level, except in certain niche situations.

4: Lack of gacha necessity. In other freemium games you cannot do some content without some SSR (highest rarity) characters. In this game the weapons you farm for, not spend money for, determine your progress. It is entirely possible (possible, not easy) to do something like 90% of the content in the game with a fantastic weapon grid and just SR characters. SSRs are icing on the cake, and yes some of them are so powerful they trivialize certain parts of the early and middle game, but not having them doesn't STOP you from doing anything. You can always make progress, even if you're horribly unlucky and F2P.

That's all from me. If you check out the game drop Serra or I a PM and we'll get you

Perfect, succinct review, for the a near perfect television show. I'm still waiting for the "Leon and Bear Misadventures" spinoff.

As the years go by, I become more and more cynical about what's shown off at E3. Not much in terms of the flood of sequels and stuff, but more that everything on display is more or less not indicative of a final product. CG trailers don't show off anything about the game itself. Gameplay trailers similarly don't necessarily translate into hopes: Aliens: Colonial Marine still burns to think about. The Days Gone trailer at the end of Sony's show felt... Wrong to me somehow. It's gameplay? But it's also clearly a tech demo designed to show off, considering the complete lack of UI, almost no prompting in-game and the way the demo ended.

That's not even touching on the fact at one point the player runs plainly into one of the oncoming hordes and nothing attacks him. That's not gameplay, that's interactive CG.

VR feels like a fad for me. Hardware is expensive, moreso than either the Kinect or the Move before them, and it's again hard to feel like this isn't going to be a priority for development after the initial rush is over. Semi-relatedly, I was irritated to see Killing Floor 2's VR demo on display when the game's been in Early Access for over a year, already missed its release date by six months and is still missing promised classes (we only just got Sharpshooter last week, something people have wanted since May 2015.)

I'm also all-in on Zelda, which doesn't surprise me at all. I was happy with the depths of the game they showed off, and I feel like it IS an indication of how the game will play, as opposed to showing off for the E3 crowd. I admit my personal bias though, since I've grown up with the Zelda series and am definitely a homer for it.

Resident Evil 7 was the other pleasant surprise, even if the demo is self-contained. It was a unique taste of the series and very welcome after the unceremonious end of PT's development.

First thing I thought of when I saw the title:
"Life before death. Strength before weakness. Journey before destination."
Stormlight Archive book 3 can't come any sooner.

Just the other day was reminiscing the journey I had in FFXI with friends. Can never forget the MPKs, the AF1 farming, and all that other random stuff back in RoZ/CoP era.

The really neat thing about Rhapsodies of Vana'diel is it tells a story that really allows the player to journey through their own memories of their first experiences. I found myself continually recalling when I first experienced these zones and NPCs.