I think you misunderstood me, I’m not trying to say that this is as bad as games that use these models as part of some whale economy. I recognize that Diablo 4 isn’t a destructive game like Diablo Immortal was.

because literally any repeating gameplay loop gets reduced to that as if it answers any and all questions about what a game is.

This sounds more like a self-control/neurosis thing than a how they designed the game thing.

The original trilogy was definitely in the Forgotten Realms campaign.  I think they mean the actual gameplay was inspired by D&D, as it wasn’t a full turn-based game that directly copied the 2E ruleset at the time.

Then what am I missing here?

Eh, I’ll wait for the customer reviews once it gets released. So long as the first act is fun like you predict, I still might pick this up sooner rather than later. But damn, I usually do prefer for the whole game to be polished before I start playing.

But the issue some Square fans had with FF XIV is because it is so very, very different from previous titles.  Meanwhile Octopath Traveler is very, very similar to previous entries like Final Fantasy VI.  How is that not throwing fans a bone?

Wait, is all the stuff you mentioned normal for Larian games? I’ve never exactly bought a Larian game at launch, and instead purchased them many months after release.

I doubt the previous two games will even matter much in Baldur’s Gate 3.  It’s a different character in a different time period and using a different ruleset, so if you go into this blind you really shouldn’t be missing much.

I was definitely in the camp of people who saw the close releases of Baldur’s Gate 3/Starfield/Phantom Liberty as a conundrum of what to play first. I was leaning towards Baldur’s Gate 3 anyway so this is great news that it’s coming out earlier on PC! This also still gives me enough time to finish up my replay of…

Yeah I agree, this is nothing like buying a ticket for a football game and getting a curling game instead. I can understand people having expectations for the announcement of this title, but since then Square’s been pretty upfront with the details including gameplay trailers and playable demos.

“No one said this!”

“I like football. If I go to an NFL game and they play Curling, that’s the issue.”

Sorry, but people are making this out like some bait and switch when it is not. It is perfectly fine if people are dissapointed in the combat system for a Final Fantasy game, god knows it’s happened to fans before. Personally I can’t stand the changes that were in FF VIII. That doesn’t mean that XVI is any kind of…

On the prebuilt comment, it actually really depends. If someone manages to find a quality prebuilt with the specs they want at a good price, then absolutely that should be a valid option.

But even Sega was kind enough to throw those fans a bone with the Judgement series!

More like ESPN saying “We’ll now start showing curling instead of NFL games”, and yeah so long as you can get NFL games from other sources it should be easy enough to accept.

I wish more people had your take. Like I get turn based fans skipping XVI, that’s fine. Personally I skipped VIII since I couldn’t stand that one’s combat system, but I have no problem with fans who obviously love VIII.

Except in this case they’re letting fans know it’s a curling game ahead of time.  Square was pretty open about letting people know about the combat system before FF XVI released.

First one is on Switch and Steam, the second one is on Switch, Playstation, and Steam.