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Have to admit I really struggled with Hollow Fragment, the load times between absolutely *everything* were killing me, and I wasn't a fan of the menus either. I seemed to have got stuck at a boss fight too where my companion would keep getting killed, ending the mission, even though I was doing fine.
 
Lutga said:
Have to admit I really struggled with Hollow Fragment, the load times between absolutely *everything* were killing me, and I wasn't a fan of the menus either. I seemed to have got stuck at a boss fight too where my companion would keep getting killed, ending the mission, even though I was doing fine.
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Yeah the menus were rather a mess and it looks like that returns for the next game. >>

I suffered the same thing with boss fights as well. Keeping Asuna alive was a pain and I lost a lot of battles simply because she died :/ I can't say I noticed the load times but then I don't play much else on the Vita so I just don't have a frame of reference. Lost Song wasn't great for load times either, despite being on the PS4, so I guess it's going to be something that plagues the series.
 
Yeah Hollow Fragment is much harder than Lost Song. If you want the Platinum on Lost Song, a tip is to make sure someone has the best dark magic attacxk spell ranked up pretty high, as it will make a certain neccesary fight a ton easier *smile*
 
Started playing danganronpa 2 on the PC the other day , just done the first class trial . Wasn't sure if I was going to like it at first but once I hit the class trial I really started enjoying it .
 
Still been playing Street Fighter V now that Juri is out, really gutted as I'm really not having much fun with her in SFV :( I love the character though so I'll push on in the hopes that she will just click with me at some point but I don't see it happening and that honestly makes me really sad as she's one of my favourite Street Fighter characters and the one I was most looking forward to.

I've also been playing a mobile game, Final Fantasy Brave Exvius. It's very simple but it's a great er....toilet break game lol also one of my first summons was Kefka and while I dunno if he's actually any good in that game, he's one of my favourite FF characters so that's nice. Also got Fran, who I also like a lot.
 
Played a decent amount of Mirror's Edge Catalyst today and I'm finding it a lot of fun. The freerunning mechanics seem to flow a lot better than I remember them doing so in the original game, and as a whole it's very nice to have that style of play back for another spin. The story so far though has been pretty... ehhhhh... and the cast of characters are mainly dicks for the most part. (One of the characters is literally Dante from DmC.)

There's two things that have really stood out to me so far though. Whilst the game has made the switch to being somewhat open world, the world you explore is pretty bare and lifeless for the most part. Sure there's collectibles to find, but there's no enemies on the overworld and there's very few NPCs in general too, even then they mostly only give you a mission or don't speak/do anything at all!

I'm also somewhat disappointed in it graphically. Don't get me wrong, I like the visual style and I wouldn't say it looks especially bad, but the game is pretty taxing on hardware without having much to show for it IMO. I'm running this maxed out (Hyper settings) on a GTX1070 @1080p60 with drops. Considering Hyper actually requires you to have over 6gb VRAM I was expecting a lot more.
 
Another game completed. I spent the entire week (at least 49 hours of playtime) going through one game.

Tales of Xillia is the fourth Tales game I bought and completed, and the first major PS3 instalment in the franchise (Graces f was an updated port of the Wii version). Going to make this post short since I don't have much to say.

Xillia follows two different protagonists, with the story being the same for both (during certain parts of the game you'll see what's going on from one perspective to add some replayability) and both are fun characters to get along with. For my playthrough I went with Milla as I felt Jude could end up being annoying (thankfully he was alright in the end). Milla's battle gameplay is with a sword and in my opinion she plays way better than Jude (during Act 1 you end up playing Jude regardless for a certain segment) and her abilities are fun to use. The rest of the characters are all great to tag along with and they play well in the battles. My main issue is with the villains, I feel they were pretty daft at times and was not satisfying enough. With the other Tales games there was a clear villain that makes you want to stop him but in this one it's just not what you would expect (I don't want to go into spoilers basically).

Xillia is one of the shorter games in the franchise and the pacing is solid. Acts 1 and 2 are very long but the story does get somewhere after that point and you get hooked a fair bit to see what's going to happen next. I do think it feels anti-climatic in a sense (like Graces had, which thankfully was fixed with the epilogue) but overall the story as a whole was pretty good, thanks to its main cast of characters. I am disappointed that the world map was modified compared to the previous instalments (the flying ship navigation is gone and instead you have quick map navigation so you'll instantly get to another zone without wasting time).

So. Do I recommend Tales of Xillia? Pretty much yes. The game does hold well on its own and is a great addition to the Tales franchise. There was a lot of hype for this game so I ended up assuming one thing but personally it had the best visuals and one of the better gameplay mechanics in the series (the Final Fantasy X/XIII style level up system is great and titles were surprisingly pushed aside as just 'achievements'). Symphonia is still the superior one in terms of story progression in my opinion.

Format:
PlayStation 3

Overall grade:
B
 
I really enjoyed Xillia but it wasn't up to the standard of Vesperia for me (that does stand as one of my top RPGs though). I also felt that the latter half of the game/plot was poorly implemented & there wasn't enough context or hints earlier in the game so it was too out of the blue & it did seem a bit daft. The later jazz scores in the game are awesome though.

I have Xillia 2 as well but haven't completed it yet. It's one I played 15hrs or so of then just stopped for whatever reason. I hate going back after all this time especially when I need to get used to the battle mechanics again (I remember weapon switching.)
 
I do find the Tales games somewhat interesting but I also find that I get tired of their real-time battle systems more quickly than most. To be honest, I find myself playing less RPGs than usual and I think that's often a factor. I appreciate that many games have a "just the story" difficulty these days but I think the issue for me isn't the difficulty so much as the time spent on essentially meaningless fighting. It's probably also a side effect of the way I play RPGs, I tend to end up overlevelled due to doing any and all side quests and bonus missions so that means getting into more battles and having more of them be inevitable but time consuming victories. Lower difficulty levels make this worse, while higher difficulties can often feel unrewarding and slow the story down a little too much.

I do enjoy games like Skyrim/Fallout where there's plenty to explore but I also like to get more deep and detailed storylines that tend to be less common in those kinds of RPGs. I think one of the reasons that The Witcher 3 worked quite well was that there were plenty of stories to experience (even in the sidequests), although even then there were times when I felt things getting a little bogged down with the combat or in the more repetitive sections.

I should maybe just play more visual novels and adventure games, though I do quite enjoy RPG combat systems and character building. I just find that they don't always balance well and the level dependence can throw things off if you're either overlevelled or underlevelled (though level scaling can take away from the satisfaction of building up your characters). I guess it's something that's difficult to get just the right balance on and, to be fair, it's probably at least partly to do with my own preference anyway.
 
Grinding for loot boxes on Overwatch as I want that damn Tracer skin with the Union Flag >_> It's a limited time thing so you need to get it to drop before the promotion ends. Just let me buy it god damn it!!! I'll give you real cash money for it and the Zarya one too! I know I could buy loot boxes, but buying random loot boxes doesn't sit right with me as I could buy 50 boxes and still not get the one thing I want. I think it's quite a manipulative business model actually.
 
Played and finished The Last of Us. Gorgeous graphics, but everything else about it was underwhelming. The story was okay but nothing special and was not remarkable in any way. The gameplay is a bit tougher to judge since I'm rubbish at stealth games, but it seemed functional enough when I was undetected. When I inevitably was spotted and all hell broke loose I found the game really tough to get through, even on the easiest difficulty, and nearly quit more than a few times. I'm glad I stuck with it to the end but I'll never play it again, it's just too stressful to be fun.

Next I will continue with Dragon Age Origins, which I'm also having a tough time with. Maybe I'm just getting worse at games in my old age...
 
BanzaiJedi said:
Played and finished The Last of Us. Gorgeous graphics, but everything else about it was underwhelming. The story was okay but nothing special and was not remarkable in any way. The gameplay is a bit tougher to judge since I'm rubbish at stealth games, but it seemed functional enough when I was undetected. When I inevitably was spotted and all hell broke loose I found the game really tough to get through, even on the easiest difficulty, and nearly quit more than a few times. I'm glad I stuck with it to the end but I'll never play it again, it's just too stressful to be fun.

Next I will continue with Dragon Age Origins, which I'm also having a tough time with. Maybe I'm just getting worse at games in my old age...
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I've actually started and dropped The Last Of Us quite a few times for the reasons you mention. I picked it up on PS4 as I didn't get a chance to play it on PS3 and was pretty excited about it but I've just struggled to get much out of it. The opening really was fantastic imo but it really failed to keep that momentum for me, although I guess I dunno how far I'm actually into in, not far I would assume (I'm currently running around a city with a grumpy dude called uh, Bill? I think that was his name). It's a game I wanna finish sometime, but anytime I play it I make very little progress before getting bored of it.
 
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You're only about <20% through the game, it's one of those games that just seems to keep going forever, and not necessarily in a good way. I did find that about halfway through something clicked in my mind and I found it much easier from then on, but the first half was very frustrating. As far as the story goes the best is still to come, and the story is really the only reason to play the game at all.
 
Damn, not far at all then o_O perhaps it just feels long as I kept redoing stealth parts when I messed up at first lol. I'll probably give it another go soon, truth is I rarely finish anything I start now days :/ never mind.
 
Getting excited. Mankind Divided, the only game I've been hyped for this new generation (3 years after launch lel), is just around the corner.

BanzaiJedi said:
Next I will continue with Dragon Age Origins, which I'm also having a tough time with. Maybe I'm just getting worse at games in my old age...
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What about it are you finding tough? I thought Origins was a fantastic game, despite the subpar graphics and samey environments.
 
Jatz said:
BanzaiJedi said:
Next I will continue with Dragon Age Origins, which I'm also having a tough time with. Maybe I'm just getting worse at games in my old age...
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What about it are you finding tough? I thought Origins was a fantastic game, despite the subpar graphics and samey environments.
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I was having a tough time in Redcliffe, kept getting overwhelmed by the mob of enemies attacking the town. Turns out I had the difficulty turned up too high without realising, and now that I've adjusted it I'm having a much easier time. It now feels like I'm playing KotOR actually.
 
BanzaiJedi said:
I was having a tough time in Redcliffe, kept getting overwhelmed by the mob of enemies attacking the town. Turns out I had the difficulty turned up too high without realising, and now that I've adjusted it I'm having a much easier time. It now feels like I'm playing KotOR actually.
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Haha that's good. Dragon Age can be a tough game to play on higher difficulties. I'm guessing you might end up playing Dragon Age 2 and Inquisition (if you like Origins)?
 
Super Mario World - Halfway through world 5, my favourite 2D Mario so far just love the music and art style so much

Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest - I'm up to chapter 17 but I have been playing the dlc maps just to level up a few characters so they don't fall behind
 
Jatz said:
Haha that's good. Dragon Age can be a tough game to play on higher difficulties. I'm guessing you might end up playing Dragon Age 2 and Inquisition (if you like Origins)?
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Yeah, that's what I'm thinking, I'm certainly enjoying the game enough to be interested in the franchise as a whole. Though I'll be replaying Origins a few times for achievements before moving on.
 
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