Finished Red Dead Redemption 2. The game finally caught my interest in the last 20-25%. Started to care about the story and some of the characters. It was also nice to play the epilogues, it connects the game with Red Dead Redemption 1. There are also some very cinematic moments in the game, enjoyed those too.
Overall, not a bad game, just not for me. I recall loving the first game when I played it on PS3, so maybe it's just me who has changed.
Didn't play too much of Splatoon Raiders, but I think I am nearing the end. Most of the may have been revealed, so there shouldn't be too much of the game left. Also, changed my main tank from Speed to Power. It has the better combination of gadgets that I want.
Played some more Final Fantasy XII - The Zodiac Age. I am finally in mid game. Got access to second license board, and spent over an hour agonizing over which combination of classes to go with, and that's when you can reset them (almost) anytime, imagine how long it would take me decide if the choices were permanent.
Happy with most of the combinations. One characters has Melee + Melee combination, most of the others are Melee + Magic, and 2 are Magic + Magic. So both set of parties have one pure mage, and two melee users with magic for healing or certain cases where it is required.
Currently at a boss which applies tons of debuff for my whole team, and I don't have any magic to dispel that. The last shopkeeper was selling Esuna (magic to remove all debuffs from a character) but I was tight on money and hadn't had a need for that yet, so didn't' buy it, will probably have to go back and get it. The boss isn't too difficult but when your characters can't even hit it, or do any damage, or case any spell, you can't really do anything no matter how easy the boss is otherwise.
Started Hogwarts Legacy on PS5. Objectively, the game is probably not as good as RDR2 (they are so different that we shouldn't even compare) but going from a slow game like that I instantly fell in love with character movement of Hogwarts Legacy and how fast everything is in the game. The game isn't bad, but I think I wouldn't have liked it as much I did if I hadn't played it right after RDR2. Not to mention as a Harry Potter fan it's great to see a modern game in Hogwarts and the wizarding world.
The game has it's bugs though. Around 4-5 hours in, it refused to start the next main mission, and turned out it's a known bug, you have to start this mission right after finishing the previous one, without doing anything else in-between, otherwise it has a chance of getting stuck. Only solutions are loading a previous save or restarting the game from start. I almost gave up then, cause while you can get to that mission in around an hour and half if you only do the main missions, I had spent hours exploring, solving puzzles and collecting stuff. Didn't want to do all that again.
Eventually decided to load a previous save from couple of hours ago and play again. Hope there isn't anything like that further in the game, I am saving before and after every main mission just to be safe though.
What about all of you? What have you been playing and/or plan to play?
I was hoping for the opposite reaction, so that I could tell them how they don't know what good games are 😀
Thanks for the review though. I still have a few Tales games to play before Arise, so will decide whether to play it or not then.
My usual recommendation for Tales games is Graces F. Story is standard "power of friendship", but has the best battle gameplay in the series and a great cast with hilarious interactions (in particular in the "Lineage & Legacies" extended epilogue).
I also have to include some praise for Berseria, the gameplay is not as good (very "button mashy") but the cast is amazing, honestly one of the all-time best "band of misfits" teams in gaming.
Could you go into more detail on the combat in Graces F? It looks similar to Vesperia which I mostly liked towards the end, after unlocking most stuff, although TP sometimes felt too limiting. I see Graces F has an artes gauge like Berseria and Arise.
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.
Thanks. Sounds cool, I'll check it out.
Tales of Graces F was probably the first Tales game I played. It has been quite a while since I played it on PS3, but I don't think I played the Lineage & Legacies prologue, as I don't have the trophy for it. According to trophy guide: "After the main story, you will want to start Chapter 9: Lineage & Legacies from the Extras menu to complete the entire story." I apparently didn't do that.
I don't remember the story, just the main protagonist and some gameplay bits, so it won't be an issue to replay the game, but with so many games yet to play I doubt I'll go back to it anytime soon.