toxicitizen

Oh. Well this is an SRPG so the structure is you basically have a small HQ with all the shops and talk to a guy in it to select missions from a menu. Grinding is minimal if all you're interested in is playing through the main story. You often hear about insane level 9999 characters but that's only for the post-game hidden uber bosses. But even if you do need to grind a little, the game is kinda made for you to exploit in that regard. There's always at least one map where the enemies are conveniently placed on XP boost panels in just the right pattern for you to kill a bunch of them with a single attack. And there are ways for you to make the enemies stronger, so by the time it'll no longer be useful, you'll have access to much better post-game grinding maps.

The PSP versions of the first two games are on the Vita store if you want to give the series a shot without having to drop 40 bucks on a new release. And fair warning, the gameplay is refined with each new release, even more so the handheld ports since they come much later and usually include improvements from subsequent games. So, if you start with the Vita version of 4 it might be difficult going back to the previous ones should you want to. For example, D4 Vita allows you to retry and quit out of maps without having to reset the game. That wasn't possible before and basically killed my habit of saving after every single map, which will most likely backfire when I eventually go back to D3... Eh, I'd have to go with... a lot. It's super fucking corny and very much "We're demons but we can still be good! Friendship and love ftw!". Basically, play this for the gameplay, not the story. It has a style of meta humor that I really enjoy (the characters are kinda self-aware that they're in a videogame) and D4 had a MUCH better story than D3, but it's not meant to be taken seriously. Not even a little.

This hasn't been moved to multiplatform yet? Vita version is coming Sept 23rd! Really pumped for the Vita version, I never finished it on PC so I'll definitely double dip day one. I love that it's more of a remake than a port. I wonder if it's using the Frozen Cortex engine, kinda looks that way.

I didn't bother posting it because I didn't think there were many Disgaea fans left around. Did they actually mean 100 of your own units out at a time? That would be kind of insane. I wonder if they'll finally ditch the sprites and move on to proper 3D models for the characters. If they actually skipped the PS3 to draw more from the PS4, I guess that means a Vita version is much less likely, though. Disgaea is great, you should definitely give it a shot if you enjoy the genre. It plays a bit differently, though. You can set your units' moves and attacks just a few at a time and activate their attacks without ending your turn, then do others and so on. It gives you a lot of room to strategize and find the optimal way to pick the enemies off. Most of the systems in the games are meant for you to abuse them, i.e. move your unit close to your healer, use the healer's action to heal them, cancel the first unit's move (only possible if they haven't attacked) and then move them again where you actually want them to go. Fun times!

Yeah... It's either this or no Vita games. I made my choice.

Thank fucking God for online shopping... Not really sure what to expect from the first two, to be honest. All I know is that Akiba's Trip is supposed to be a really fun brawler and Hyperdimension Neptunia has a style of meta humor similar to Disgaea, which I enjoy a lot. I'm kinda meh on the fan service but I'm not exactly phased by it either. Let's hope I don't regret this... I was on the fence about Senran Kagura since I currently have no means of playing the 3DS game it's a sequel to. But then I realized that it's coming out in October and there's literally nothing else coming out that month that I want to get. Plus, the physical run is actually a limited edition and I didn't want to risk missing out on getting one. Might even be able to sell it for a profit if I end up not liking the game.

P4 does have some small references to P3 but they're completely inconsequential and have no bearing on the story whatsoever. They're easter eggs more than anything, really. Like, during the school trip in P4, you're not really missing out on anything if you don't realize that the school you're visiting is the same one the P3 cast attended.

Yeah, I meant their respective narratives are self-contained. The games still take place in the same universe. I wasn't sure about P1 and P2, though. Persona 3 might as well have been a reboot for what little in common it had with previous games. What part of P4A are you talking about? I don't remember it acknowledging the first two games. It's hard to say for sure considering how little we know but if P5 is anything like 3 and 4, then it should be its own thing with a new cast of characters and everything, yeah.

Wait, do you mean the actual in-game assets? I'm talking about the designs here. I don't really expect a completely new compedium but I'm sure they remodeled them and everything. Otherwise, yeah, it would stick out and look like shit. I mean, from what I can tell based on screenshots and footage, SMTIV actually uses sprites instead of 3D assets and I'm pretty sure they were made specifically for that game, not lifted from somewhere else. It made sense to re-use assets going from Nocturne to the other PS2 SMT games but not when you're making a platform/generation jump. I expect the game to have graphics comparable to Catherine. I mean, it's not like Persona 3 and 4 are huge games. Only half a dozen locations in towns and the dungeons are procedurally generated. There's no excuse for it to look like a PS2 game.

Considering most of them were lifted straight from the Shin Megami Tensei games and (afaik) were still in SMTIV, I wouldn't get my hopes up on that one.

Only in the spin-offs like the fighting games, where the casts of P3 and P4 meet. Otherwise, P3 and P4 have completely separate, self-contained stories. I expect P5 to be no different in that regard,

CounterSpy. Fun little game. It gets a bit repetitive but the gameplay is fun enough and it's too short to overstay its welcome. I'll probably replay it on the higher difficulties and go for 100% trophies. Not sure if it's worth 15 bucks, though. Maybe wait until it's 50% off, it's definitely worth that much. I guess I should mention that I played it on Vita and there were some slight issues. The loading times for missions were kinda long, usually a solid minute if not more, and occasionally there would be noticeable framerate drops when entering a larger room. It never got in the way of enjoying the game but I thought it was worth mentioning. If that's the kind of stuff that bothers you then maybe play it on PS3 or PS4.

Well, like I said, it's been a few years since I played the original so memories are a bit foggy. And I haven't played the second game yet so I don't know much beyond which ending is canonical and I'm not going to go digging for spoilers. But if I'm getting what you're saying right, then

The weird stuff ties into the "true" ending, which I'm assuming you didn't get. It's incredibly annoying to even unlock it. Basically, you need to make the correct hidden choices at various points through the story (i.e. give money to the kid, save such and such NPCs, etc..). It's been a while but it's something along the lines of

Earlier this summer, I noticed that no sound was coming out of the left side of my current in-ear buds. I was tempted to just get the same ones since they're pretty cheap now but I felt like upgrading and getting proper headphones. Those seemed good enough and weren't too expensive.

At this point I don't think anyone does anymore. The massive success of the NDS and Wii confused the shit out of them and now they don't seem to know what the fuck they should be doing. They're like that old uncle whose mind you suspect is starting to go but you can't be sure just yet. In a few years, we just might get a call from the grocery store because Nintendo has been wandering the aisles confused for hours with their pants around their ankles.

Yeah, I just found out that Velocity X2 is going to be 20$ for non-Plus subscribers. That's not a bad value at all. I've said it before but cross-buy has made the past few months amazing for Vita owners. But still, it's kinda sad that the only two games I'm legitimately excited for this month are a port of an older game I've already played and a cross-buy Vita version of a game that's technically not even on the line-up (Don't Starve).

Oh, I'm not annoyed. I'm all for an actual hardware upgrade. It just sucks having to wait because I really don't want to cancel my Persona Q pre-order. And I was really looking forward to playing Fire Emblem Awakening and Shin Megami Tensei IV. But really, I'm just glad I haven't bought my 3DS yet. If they'd announced this new version after I'd just bought it, I would've been livid.

Yeah, they clearly haven't learned anything from the Wii U brand confusion. This feels like half new system, half new model. Like they couldn't fully commit to bringing a completely new handheld, so it's this instead. Oh well, so much for me getting a 3DS this month. Makes no sense to get the old model now. Goddammnit...

So, the official release of Incognita Invisible, Inc. on Steam Early Access made me want to fire it up to see how it's coming along. Turns out the answer is "very fucking nicely"! I was sold on the idea of "Stealth XCOM" from the very start but the initial alpha build I played a year ago basically loaded you directly into a single procedurally generated map with no context whatsoever. Once you cleared it, all you could do was go back and try again. It was little more than a polished prototype and there was very little content in it. Now it feel much more like a real game. It also plays a lot better. In the initial build, you couldn't even rotate the camera. Really glad that's implemented now. I don't know if it's feature complete yet but there is a story mode now. Basically, it's a bit of a roguelike-ish structure where the game isn't very long but you're going to fail a lot before you manage to make it anywhere near the end. You start out with two units and two hacking abilities (you can unlock new ones and choose which ones you start with) and you select your missions from a world map. The missions' objectives are things you want to retrieve, such as cash, intel, gear and even new agents. The twist is that you only have 72 hours to prepare for the final mission and each location has a travel time associated to it. Oh and ammo doesn't refill after a mission, if you run out then you need to find/buy a new clip during the next one. So it's essentially a whole lot of time and resource management. And it's glorious. On my first attempt, I failed on the very first mission. I got progressively better with each new attempt and eventually managed to get a third squad member and some decent gear. I'm at a point where I have a good grasp on the mechanics so I started taking more risks and as a result I haven't had a decent run all day. Things can go wrong so very fast if you get careless. As it is right now, it feels maybe a tad too difficult. I think it could definitely benefit from being balanced towards the player if only a little bit but otherwise it's a pretty solid game. Really glad I jumped in early.

Disgaea 4: A Promise Revisited. Beat the main story last night and man, this game is fucking great! I mean, it's the same insanely deep Disgaea gameplay but the story is a huge step up from Disgaea 3. I never really understood why D3's story got as much hate as it did but now I kinda do. D4's actually makes it look bad by comparison. Disgaea has always been super corny but D3 layed it on way too thick. Maybe it didn't bother me as much because I never played D2, so I only had the original to compare it to. Here. you start out as a bunch of demons (led by a vampire) fighting their way out of Hades but by the end you're fighting robots and aliens on the fucking moon. There's also a giant robot that fits into this somehow. This series has never really taken itself too seriously but this is a whole new level of ridiculous, even the original wasn't quite as silly when it introduced similar elements. Probably the funniest game I've played all year. But Disgaea is all about that deep gameplay and here it's largely the same but with a lot of key improvements. There is still a metric fuckton of shit to do and systems you can use (and abuse). Or you can ignore it and just enjoy the story. At first I was really disappointed to see the skills team attacks from D3 were gone but after a few hours I forgot all about them. Overall, I really can't complain. It really feels like the "next-gen" leap that D3 wasn't. And I don't just mean how they finally fucking got HD sprites (I still don't know wtf they were thinking with D3 there...). There's tons of small details and refinements that makes it a better experience. The character sprites look great, especially on the Vita's screen, and they actually turn their heads to look at each other during cutscenes. Also, finally being able to retry or quit out of a mission without having to reset the game is so fucking useful. I lost the habit of saving after every single mission less than 10 hours in. Losing this feature is gonna be hard if I ever go back to one of the previous games. I don't think I'll touch any of the post-game stuff for now. That's a hell of a time sink and I'm technically not done with D3 in that area. But yeah, if you own a Vita and love Disgaea, you really can't go wrong with this one.

September's line-up is, uh... not the greatest. Velocity 2X (PS4, Vita) Sportsfriends (PS4, PS3) Playstation All-Star Battle Royale (PS3, Vita) Hoard (PS3) Joe Danger (Vita) TxK (Vita) Velocity 2X is a new release so I guess that's nice? I got the original through Plus, I think, but never bothered to try it. No idea what the fuck Sportsfriends even is. PABR feels like it should've been on there months ago but eh, at least I didn't grab it one of the fifteen times it was on sale for less than 5 bucks. And Hoard?? Really? That game is like 5 years old. I tried the demo way back when it first came out and it looked fucking terrible, too. Joe Danger Vita is nice, I was already thinking of double dipping. Sounds like it's only the first game, though. That'd be a shame because the second one is so much better. Both games merged into one would be fucking amazing.