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Back for another round! Mass Effect and RDR2 were total impulse purchases. Can't wait to finally check out The Quarry, though. I love that kind of 80s horror movies, so the trailers made it look right up my alley. Just couldn't justify paying full price for it.

I've picked up a few things since last I posted here: All of them were sub $5 though, so I think I did pretty well. I've actually already finished both Yes, Your Grace and That Which Gave Chase.

Final Fantasy XVI This is quite a departure from the traditional FF experience, but one thing I always respect in this franchise is that they try new things. It doesn't always work out, but they aren't afraid to take risks, which is admirable. In this case, they sure did do a lot of things that will probably piss off purists. Clive is the only controllable character, the combat is purely action based, there are no airships, the world is made up of large hub areas instead of one seamless map, the story is firmly rooted in medieval times, there is significantly more gore and swearing, and there are several series staples missing such as cactuars, tonberries, and status effects. But let's say you're okay with all these changes. How does it hold up as a standalone game without the FF legacy to live up to? Well, pretty decently, I'd say. While the combat was clearly inspired by games like Devil May Cry, it also isn't as complex or as difficult as a true character action game, which is by design. There is a hard mode, but you only get access to it in NG+, which I think was a mistake because the game is kind of easy in normal mode. You get access to a sword, magic that you shoot like a projectile, a handful of command abilities, and equippable special abilities granted by the game's summons. Once you're fully decked out it's got a decent amount of depth without being overwhelming, but it'll take you a while to get there because Clive's combat abilities unlock over the course of the story. The first few hours are pretty simple and button-mashy. Normal enemies you can just whack to death but for large enemies and bosses you will need to use the right abilities to quickly fill their stagger meter and then unload on them with your hardest hitting moves while they're down. The game also has a LOT of cutscenes. Apparently 11 hours worth, according to Youtube, and I could definitely see some people getting put off by this if they're not used to Kojima-like storytelling. Fortunately, I found the plot rather engaging and the characters pretty likable. In fact, this game has what is now my favorite Cid in the franchise, even more than FFVII's Cid. It had shades of Final Fantasy Tactics and Final Fantasy IX to me, which are two of my favorite games in the franchise, but of course your mileage may vary. One thing pretty much everyone can agree on is that the voice acting is probably the best it's ever been in a Final Fantasy game. A really nice feature is the Active Time Lore. At just about any time, including during a cutscene, if you're having trouble following the story you can hold down the touchpad and it will pause the game and bring up a small menu of relevant people and places that you can quickly read to bring yourself up to speed. As many people and countries as there are getting constantly discussed, this is a big help in making sure you don't get hopelessly confused. My main criticisms of the game are its easy difficulty and the fact that most of the sidequests boil down to "go here, kill this." You don't want to skip them though because some of the sidequests unlock important upgrades or even gameplay features, like a rideable chocobo. If you play it, I recommend not using any of the auto-dodge or auto-combo rings that you are given in the beginning because they turn the game into a brainless button masher and also hold you back from using the most efficient combo strings. Think of this as something like Metal Gear meets Devil May Cry meets Asura's Wrath.

Yakuza 4 Remastered I put this one off for like a year because of how utterly miserable of an experience Yakuza 3 was but that turned out to be a mistake. This one is actually pretty great! I played on hard again, because I don't learn from my mistakes. Fortunately for me, the combat in this one is nowhere near as obnoxious as in Yakuza 3. There's still some bullshit with boss enemies attacking or blocking in the middle of your combo string, which might be deliberate but seems fucking insane to me. And some large groups of enemies in some chapters will sometimes decide to all try to hit you at once and you end up getting stun-locked for a solid minute, which seems like incredibly sloppy combat design to me but what do I know? Anyway, the game overall was super fun so unlike the miserable slog that was Yakuza 3, here it's a minor complaint. The story is actually pretty good. At its best moments I was reminded of Yakuza 0, which is basically the highest praise I can give to one of these games. And at one point Majima referenced something that happened to him in the 80s and I got really excited that the game would have some kind of retroactive tie-in with 0 but it turned out to be some other event that happened 2 years before 0. I went into the game fully prepared to complain that there wasn't enough Kiryu (and he does play a disappointingly minor role in the game) but I ended up loving the new characters way more than I expected, so it turned out to not be such a huge deal. Akiyama is just a great character and Saejima is a fucking badass brick shithouse of a man that lifts dudes over his head and throws them into walls. What's not to love? That being said, most of the combat issues I described happened with the other characters. Once I finally got to play as Kiryu, it was like turning the game's difficulty down. I guess normal people just can't compare to the Dragon of Dojima. I was kinda meh on Tanimura as a character but apparently he doesn't come back in future games because his voice actor quit or something. The best part of his section was the gameplay because it kinda felt like proto-Judgment but we have Judgment now and Yagami is a much better character, so I guess that worked out in the end. Speaking of Judgment, maybe it's because it's the last one I played before this but I kinda felt the game's age while playing Yakuza 4. The textures on non-main characters are just a blurry mess and Kamurocho feels way more artificial by comparison. It's really tempting to jump right into Yakuza 5 so I can get the PS3 games out of the way and only have the more modern Dragon Engine games left but I'm worried about getting burned out on the series. Think I'll probably give it a month or so to play something else and come back to it in the near future.

I already owned Yakuza 7 since a friend gifted it to me a while back but rebuying the Legendary Hero Edition was the cheapest (and only) way to get all the DLC. If only Steam had features to help in cases like this like, idk, complete-the-bundle or upgrade paths for game editions... Normally, I'd say I'm not planning on buying anything else of the remainder of the sale but at this point I know better than that.

I've been waiting over a decade for this All that's missing is MGS4...