Ashtear

Whoa, not every day you see Ys II in the wild!

Yes, there are going to be opinion pieces like this one filling the space for a major news story like this one, but there's still room for proper journalism right now. I recommend folks check out PC Gamer's interview with an IP attorney that worked in Tokyo (which was also the second link in this posted article).

Software patents are a thorny topic, and it's worthwhile for enthusiasts of the industry or those interested in IP law to read up on the concept in general. There's risk for Nintendo here, and I found Sigmon's offhand comment about how Nintendo's ramped up legal hiring to be particularly interesting.

The most likely reason is, in short, forced arbitration was a way to prevent consumers from collectively taking legal action, and attorneys ended up doing that anyway in a way that's even more costly to companies like Valve than class action lawsuits.

It's also caused some ugly press recently, and the US has already passed legislation prohibiting it in certain agreements. I'm not expecting it to be in terms of service agreements much longer.

Definitely one of the most somber games I've ever played. Agreed on the music; I'm generally not big on Motoi Sakuraba, but I think this is one of his best soundtracks. The overworld is a vibe, and the theme is a big part of why.

The undub is worth looking into unless one's really opposed to Japanese audio. Fifth-generation localized games were notorious for poor English voice direction and this game is no exception. Even the voice track quality isn't as good as the original.

I kinda doubt proper antialiasing is going to be ready in time, so this might be the first time I really try Reshade for a game. Even at 200% a lot of it is still rough. There's so much motion, even in quiet scenes.

Yeah, there's a bizarre amount of particles in the world. I guess I'll hear more about that later but combined with the usual busy Persona-style UI, I'm expecting to hear complaints, lol.

About 90 minutes in, I'm enjoying the gameplay so far (still super simple) and already 100% hooked by the story. English voice acting is also phenomenal. I think the people who haven't been thrilled with Persona's slow starts are going to like this.

I'm not sold on the visuals. The handcam-style screen drift in dialogue scenes is a bizarre choice, especially with this game being on consoles and more and more people playing on Steam Deck. The vast majority of players are going to have aliasing issues on their hardware, and that's not going to be pretty with constant screen movement on a static scene with an anime style (and then it's not in the animated scenes either). It just feels so weird to me in a game without a realistic style.

Steam reviews are also mixed right now complaining of frame drops, and I did get some bad performance in the very early outdoor area. Haven't been to an area with that kind of draw distance since, and even in town I was able to maintain 60 FPS, so that's a good sign if the expansive areas are few and far between in the game. A lot of little things are telling me it's unlikely we're going to see substantial performance improvements in the full game, and it's going to have to overcome the Denuvo performance hit there, too.

Edit: finished the demo just now. I'm a little more used to the visual quirks (and I have a strong hunch that an interesting explanation is coming for one of them) and think this is going to be really good. I'm understanding now why Atlus is investing so much marketing into it.

More details on the Playstation blog.

Considering it's Yoko, it'd worry me if it wasn't random!

30 plus minute show.

Kidding aside, I agree, probably nothing earthshaking coming ahead of TGS.

Sid Meier and Firaxis in general are probably the only ones that have been consistently great for me over the years. I still think about Alpha Centauri a lot, and I've played so much Civ over the years. His studio's XCOM games and Midnight Suns are all great, too.

Pretty much all the others I could name closed up shop or have declined in recent years.

I also kinda uh, forgot FF16 actually existed since I don’t do consoles and wasn’t even aware it had come out on PC until I read this article, heh.

This is what I keep coming back to with FF16. As the article hints at, you probably would have heard about it if word-of-mouth on the game was better. Instead, they make the controversial decision (even for a series as experimental as Final Fantasy) to go full action, Yoshida was perhaps a bit too honest with it in interviews, fanning the flames; and then stagger the releases. That's a lot of hubris between changing the genre and betting on the PS5. Even if the game, major changes and all, was a bigger hit with the fandom, it sure feels like the ceiling was already set for this game by waiting a year on PC.

Now, given the lack of fanfare on the PC version's sales, I'm left wondering just how bad they are overall. Is FF16 not even going to reach Persona 5's numbers? That would mark a huge shift in the competitive landscape. If nothing else, FF16 ending up with a huge decline in mainline series sales could end up serving everyone by sending a message to the rest of the industry that exclusivity is too risky today.