Lord of the Rings was massively successful, and I’ve been seeing even more buzz for Final Fantasy than there was LotR. Universes Beyond is certainly here to stay.

Steam’s investment in UI and store features are part of the onus of hardware platform growth. Steam isn’t just a storefront anymore. GOG has no such interest.

I do think indicators are good for the future of Linux gaming, but it’s just not good business right now to go chasing it.

Action RPGs, especially the ones with a heavy focus on loot, suffer the most for me. Trying to play through Vagrant Story now is brutal. MP for fast travel!

CT doesn’t feel quite as wacky as Woolsey’s earlier scripts–the lighter tone of the game helps with that–and most of the problem with the original stems from Nintendo of America’s censorship and a handful of localization choices that won’t land with everyone (for example, a main character speaks like Cyan).

Unless you hated the FF6 revision in the GBA games or later, I’d say the DS or PC versions of Chrono Trigger do what you’re looking for by revising but not completely rewriting the original.

It’s tough because I’m sure people that grew up playing games with map markers could certainly get lost in it, but at the same time Chrono Trigger is one of the most straight-forward games of its era/genre. There are JRPGs that came out two generations later that had a real rough time with the “find the NPC to advance the story” problem.

Depending on the version you’re playing, the post game content isn’t quite as sharp as the original stuff (it was added years later by a different team). The New Game+ mode, on the other hand, was in the original and is good stuff.

At this point it’s one of those things that comes down to taste rather than authenticity. Pixel-art games have continued on and had their own development arc between indie gaming and the remastering trend, and they’ve all had different approaches to it. Even people like me that grew up with CRT displays have had their tastes shaped by years of gaming on different tech.

I haven’t gotten my hands on a CRT since I left my last one behind 15-ish years ago, but I do get a bit of a nostalgia buzz from the CRT-Royale package on a 4K display. When that’s not available I tend to use one of the scalers because I really don’t like aliasing, and high resolution displays really bring out the blockiness. That sort of thing is sacrilege to some people. Everyone’s a little different.

Album seems likely considering how active Mitsuda has been on that with Xenogears lately.

Could also try crossposting in !jrpg@lemmy.zip.

I don’t think it’s a super common opinion, but I really liked Starfield’s main story. That said, it completely fails on the dynamic world front. You might be better off with Cyberpunk for now.

Western-style ones, yeah. High-effort side content is CD Projekt’s specialty at this point.

It’s like the super bowl champs giving the next decade to the Bears.

nowhere is safe 😫

Some of us have favorites that arrived well after starting the series.

That said, I feel the need to tap the sign: if anyone thinks mainline Final Fantasy games are bad, they need to play some genuinely bad games for perspective. There are plenty available even within the genre: Beyond the Beyond, Ancient Roman, Lunar Dragon Song, etc.

The series is constantly reinventing itself, and that’s going to leave people behind. SQEX still manages to retain consistently high production quality despite that.

Yeah, I don’t think I realized how much nostalgia I had attached to the movie’s music.

The trailer had all the elements that felt good about movie games from back then, but there was a lot of actual trash put out back in the day.

Hopefully the gameplay is good on this.

Thanks. For those that don’t read Japanese (and want to drop it in their favorite MTL or what have you), here’s the relevant interview answer from creative director Jonathan Dumont:

――ネタバレは避けますが、ゲームのオープニング時の映像はちょっとびっくりするような、怪しげな感じでした。本作をクリアーするころには、その謎は解決するのか、あるいは謎に近づくことができるのでしょうか？

ジョナサン 　これは現代編の新しい出発点です。時間とともに発展するストーリー部分があるため、今後の複数のシリーズでも続きのストーリーが語られることでしょう。ここで目にするのは、長年のファンにとってすばらしく感じられる部分であり、新しい物語を予感できるはずです。また同時に、新しいプレイヤーにとっても非常に期待を持ってもらえるようなコンセプトになっていると思います。

Can we get a link? If you mean https://www.gamedeveloper.com/, they’ve only had one article specifically on Shadows this year and it’s about a service platform for the series, not the story.

What’s the source for this?

If it makes any difference, I don’t have major compulsions/FOMO to do open world content. I even regret doing as much of the Enemy Skill farming as I did. So it felt well and truly optional to me. I set most of it aside.

I had major problems with Remake myself, mostly stemming from punishing encounter design and them padding out a 6+ hour section into a full game. The catwalk lights, the lab, and other stuff obliterated the pacing, and it was painfully obvious how much better the dungeon design based on the original content was when compared to the new stuff.

The good news is, in Rebirth, that 1:1 remake feeling is front and center if you want it, instead supplemented this time by optional content. I felt like I had much more room to put together materia builds, and it has one of the best video game soundtracks I’ve ever heard. I’d be over the moon if they did a version of Final Fantasy VI that felt like most of Rebirth did.

Except for the limit breaks. Why they didn’t give those full target tracking and allowed them to whiff is an outright bizarre design decision (along with the constant splitting of the party).

Had the same thought. Plus, according to some of these reviews, there’s no information age units, so that gives them a possible fourth era to work with in upcoming DLC.

Civ7 does indeed use Denuvo. Concerning for a game like this with far more CPU usage than your typical game.

For me, Civ6 at launch felt like a couple steps forward and a couple steps back. I really appreciated the increased transparency with diplomacy, but the AI was aggressively bad in mid and late-game, something they never ended up getting right.