I was excited for Persona 5, but not FFXVI. I think they’ve headed a bit too far down the road of Western imitation - going full medieval look, action combat (which I’m sorry, they’re not good at and it’s still confusing), etc.

The main thing I’ve expected from JRPGs is having a story and world that surprises me. There was something signature about the look of a guy with an oversized sword in a steampunk grungy city that pulled me into those games.

I know they poured a lot of budget into FFXVI, but it feels unplanned and vision-less. Like they could have been making the eikon fights in one team before writing the rest of the story, like how studios will film a car chase in one country and then work it into their action movie’s plot however they want.

They also at least highlighted the platform locking was not a good idea for them, which I suppose most people will agree with.

Interesting to see a review of an older game in the series. I’d always found it interesting from its steampunk appearance. My only real exposure was the recent PS4 game, which very depressingly checked off some tired anime tropes:

• One guy in a house of ladies
• Women are all incapable without their big strong male leader
• Bizarre plot occurrences like warping to another dimension, with little acknowledgement from the cast
• Requisite hot tub misunderstandings scene

There’s some other bits that didn’t make sense to me, but basically it didn’t feel like such a fleshed out world either, even if the characters are meant to be fun.

Downloads on my Surface for the sake of my vacation were the reason I resubscribed. Seems fitting it should be the reason I unsubscribe. I only worry about finding a good point of communication to let them know about this reason.

No matter how poorly thought Sony’s international release plan is for PC, that’s far easier to assume brief incompetence than malice around. Firing people who made a GOTY is a whole different level of evil.

No no no…

Support techs do not have access to insider industry information. They deal with dozens of region-blocked game support issues a day, and in 95% of cases that block was placed by the publisher. The tech is likely just using that term out of assumption and familiarity.

I’m not saying it’s impossible that Sony are the culprit, but a random support reply to an individual is not how we’d find out. It’s happened before that a Valve official puts out a correction to something support says.

EDIT: Seems like I was right.

They should have been part of the original restriction and it was noticed when the restriction was put in place for Tsushima. This was noticed and executed independently by Valve.

They were not misleading or miscommunicated terms. They literally banned negative subjective reviews.

So now they’re guilty of both controlling reviewers, and lying.

I’m wondering if better AI could save this genre. I always hated the fragility of any soldiers I wasn’t actively controlling, having idle workers, workers trying to chop wood in the middle of enemies, etc.

If the computer can take your high level commands but also put out logical low level ones, and maybe also punish high APM, it might restore some of the moderate-paced feel of the game.

I sort of saw it that way, but the last bit about “subjective negative reviews” seems unusual even for contracts.

There’s enough lazy rage bait “Turns out X is DOGSHIT?!?” videos out there that I don’t think it’s unreasonable to put some terms in expecting some professional effort. But disallowing even polite criticisms definitely seems too far.

So, someone in my Discord channel posted a tweet that maybe alters perspective a bit;

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/575881390999207956/1236869629008412714/not-surprised-but-damn-v0-jjr7xh7eqlyc1.png?ex=663a3cdb&is=6638eb5b&hm=3f4ff94b3a29dceb2e973e1e61abcf84c92220571d32a7b05c2966b74ccb241b&

To summarize or if the link breaks, one of the devs “knew beforehand” they’d have to require PSN accounts post launch, but disabled them for a smooth launch. That’s interesting, but as long as Sony was acting as publisher I feel like the blame still goes on them for selling the game to non-PSN countries initially.

Valve can remove games from sale for any reason they like - it’s been a point of consumer contention when they are accused of censorship for certain risque anime games, too.

• They can completely remove a game from sale if it turns out to be bricking people’s computers or function terribly. (Sony did this with Cyberpunk on PSN, without CDPR’s approval)
• There may be suspicion the game is not legitimate for sale, for instance it illegally uses someone else’s work.
• Going country-specific, if a game is revealed to be slightly less than universally positive to the perfectly infallible, totally-not-genocidal Chinese Communist Party, they may want to stop sales in China.

If a game lets you buy it in Tanzania, download it in Tanzania, and then to play, has you sign an agreement that says “I truthfully state that I do not live in Tanzania”, then that bone-headed agreement reflects poorly on Valve, so they have almost a legal need to take it out of sale in that country.

Basically, each country has its own laws of sale. Having those switches to turn off sales in certain places is important for the store’s own safety. While 60% of the blame for selling a faulty product goes to the manufacturer, 40% still goes to the storefront that chose to stock and sell that faulty good. In this case, the fault was specific to the country of play.

There was a theory that the purchase restrictions were put in place by Valve, not Sony (because those countries couldn’t make an account without violating TOS). If so, Valve might shortly remove the restrictions.

There’s a Smash Bros mechanic called Stale Moves where repeating the same move many times causes it to deal less damage. It feels like a worthwhile topic to delve on for more interesting fights, but given the way knockback works there could be a better target than just damage adjustment.

There’s such thing as consumer-driven censorship.

Let’s say that I’m a game developer, and also a terrible person. After beating my game, it shows a victory screen that says “You know, Hitler might have been right!” Everyone will shit on the game; and that’s just normal player reaction.

Now, it’s easy to predict that no one would be so negative towards giant exposed breasts - except yes, plenty of people are. For all the porn-obsessed pervs out there, tons of people just want to enjoy an action adventure game without cringing distractions.

Don’t believe me? Look at Xenoblade Chronicles 2. The game lost a bunch of its potential sales to players that might enjoy a sweeping JRPG, but couldn’t stand frequent boob/butt shots of its overendowed and subservient female main character.

Summarized it much better than I could.

If you’ve ever seen isometric pixel sprites, authors often draw those first “naked” to get the shape right. If they show an in development model that’s naked, and later have added clothes, is that then “censorship”? No of course it fucking isn’t.

Not to worry birds, we have taken care of your task of killing all the bugs in the forest. Now your summer is open for watching Netflix.

Columbo, however, had just one more thing to ask before arresting a murderer.

Finds the nearest drain
“Hello, Georgie! Do you want your boat back?”

So fucked up that the town wouldn’t pay for a human position and instead has a PlayStation 4 handing out the meter fines.

Man, I shouldn’t have even fixed my doorbell cam when it broke. It sounds like it’s basically a deterrent.