This sums up a ton of my feelings about the game, even down to the arte buttons (which I’m surprised that I don’t see mentioned more). Boss battles feel like you’re doing ‘chip damage’ in a fighting game (I’m playing on moderate), even when you manage to hit a weakness. Boss battles against ‘human scale’ enemies are…

Those memory cards... any system that used an idea like that pretty much deserved to die.  The Vita could have been flawless and it wouldn’t have survived something like that.

I’m thrilled with this lineup, actually.  Most years, there’s only 1 game I’m really feeling, but between Metroid, SMT and the Advance Wars re-release (not normally big on re-releases, but at least it’s a fairly deep cut of a game from quite some time ago).  For a year that’s still finding its sea legs after Covid, it…

Persona 4 looks better than most current gen games because of creative design and smart aesthetic sensibilities. I’d rather look at its menus than some games’ cutscenes. They knew they couldn’t lean on resolution and tech specs, so they put in a ton of elbow grease to make it look good. That’s all stuff that carries…

Hell, Switzerland isn’t even the only country that makes and exports the cheese itself.

Pizza Hut is bad pizza, but it’s really good “solid block of grease” cuisine.

While i can understand your arguments against the boycott, you have no other options with any potential of making a difference. Money talks. Everything else stands their stammering and pointing its finger weakly.

This is still around?? Holy cow. I remember a friend of mine actually found one of these unopened next to a dumpster around 2010 or so.

I did play through the demo with the pole user (don’t even remember his name) and it did feel fine. I look forward to trying Shionne since ranged attackers in Tales games are always interesting and they tend to play in very unique ways

I always wonder if development times would get shorter if console generations lasted longer... and if so, by how much? Instinctively, I just presume this is true, but I guess I have no real proof that it is.

you’re probably better off going backwards in the series and trying something like Abyss or Symphonia.  The only one after Vesperia that has any sort of similar feel is Xillia, which is ok but not spectacular.

Berseria was the first Tales game I flat out lost interest in. The systems were frustrating, the characters mostly sucked, the darkness was phoned in and the much ballyhooed modern combat system was so bad it almost left me dreading battles. So much of it was centered around the main character’s weird abilities that…

Symphonia was great, but I think Vesperia is probably my favorite. This was still the point in the series when the battle system was getting better with every release, rather than just more ornate (hello, Zestiria) so fighting felt better in Vesperia.

artes can’t be on shoulder buttons. That’s Tales code 302(y). You’re in violation.  And you definitely shouldn’t split them up between control methods.

I played most of Control. It’s fine, but I found it a bit overrated. It felt a little conventional with its gameplay mechanics. The ‘90s Lynch atmosphere and surreal platforming kept me going for the first half... then I realized that for how creepy the story was, all I was doing was killing humanoids with firearms in…

I didn’t like the combat nearly as much as the first GoW games, but for the most part, I feel like Sony pretty much got this latest one right. With the way it ended, I feel like it’s maybe the only game I’ve ever played where I wanted a sequel right off the bat. Even just looking at these screenshots, I want the third…

That would be a gameplay change that would even make sense thematically, so I’d bet on that.

The original trilogy (yes, I know there were more, but they don’t matter :), were more like small upgrades on their respective predecessors than revolutionary changes and the games didn’t suffer for that. Plus, one of the things that I liked about this latest one is that it didn’t wear out its welcome and wring every…

I watched the entire first season and if anything, the last few episodes were even worse.  Patrick Stewart’s charisma must have been doing some serious weight training because it was being forced to carry the entire show.

Yeah.  I agree with everything said about how great their “gaming infrastucture” is.  There still isn’t a single game exclusive to the Xbox that would motivate to take a chance on their console.