toxicitizen

Nah, like I said, we knew to expect an announcement from them today. Now that the bad news has started to sink in, I'll wait to see if they release more details tomorrow. But damn, the more I think about it the more I realize that the scenario where I start feeling optimistic again is super fucking unrealistic lol. And even if they somehow got all the right people, it's still entirely possible that the main problem with NISA is at the management level... Also, hire Durante to port the damn game to PC, you cowards! We're probably stuck with a NISA translation but that doesn't mean we have to suffer a NISA port.

Is it? I thought they had teased an announcement for today. There's been PR material released and everything so I don't think this is just some leak. I'm also having a hard time coming up with any one person whose involvement could give me a change of heart here. Even within XSEED, the series changed hands quite a few times. Even if they somehow specifically hired the person(s?) who translated CSI and CSII, I don't expect they'll still have access to the series bible that was compiled at XSEED and it's kind of necessary here. edit: Actually now that I think about it, they may have hired Jessica Chavez. She's been tweeting vaguely about being back to work and I saw some posts on ERA where people assumed she was back at XSEED. She worked on Tokyo Xanadu for Aksys and I was pretty okay with that translation. There were some weird decisions here and there but overall there certainly wasn't anything as distracting as a big hole.

NISA and PS4 exclusivity. Lmao holy shit, Falcom really don't give a fuck and it's getting really hard for me not to feel the same way. I'm not expecting a quality localization nor am I expecting them to make any effort whatsoever to maintain consistency with previous titles. Even their vague mention of a "longer discussion" with Falcom about Crossbell just pisses me off. I'm also wondering what the fuck XSEED are doing at this point. If they were simply outbid then that really sucks but with the recent firing of Hatsuu I'm honestly wondering if they even tried to get it. I actually kinda regret getting invested in this series now...

This is one of those series I never got around to trying out, so I'm really glad they're releasing a remaster. Hopefully they're planning on doing the sequels, too.

You've already beaten those two unreleased games??? As for me, I just realized I forgot to post Vanquish, which I beat like a week ago. I played it on PS3 years ago and it didn't really leave much of an impression. Then it came out on PC and I just kinda bounced off of it after a couple hours. Ended up going back to it while I was waiting for the port of Catherine to come out and it finally clicked for me. I'm almost done replaying the campaign on hard and after that I'll only have the challenges left to do to get the final achievement. It can be kinda frustrating at times but then you'll rocket boost up to a robot, backflip off of it while kicking it in the head and finish it off with a shotgun blast to the face in slow-motion before you even touch the ground again. Then you just go "Holy shit, FUCK YEAH!" and forget about all the frustration from earlier. When the gameplay comes together, it's some of the most ridiculously satisfying bullshit ever.

That would be the most Atlus thing ever, so probably not a bad guess. Given the way things are looking on PC lately, though, I'd say it's not bleak enough. Persona 5 Classic coming out right before whatever P5R ends up being, exclusively on the Fortnite store!

Well, there it is. Weird but I loved Catherine, so I'll take it. My optimistic take on this is that they might've started work without knowing about the remaster but IIRC it was announced a while ago so fuck if I know what to read into this. At the very least, there's now some legitimate reason to think that the chances of Persona (and other Atlus games) coming to PC aren't zero, which is an improvement. Prediction: Persona 5 will be announced by the end of the year! edit: !!!!!!!!!!!! Coming from the mouth of John Sega himself!

Admittedly nothing completely definitive, but something called "Catherine Classic" showed up not too long ago. The ESRB rating is for the original as platforms are PC, 360, PS3 and Xbone (BC, I'm assuming). And finally the last few games SEGA teased like this came out fairly quickly after (like 2-3 weeks tops) but the remaster is only coming out in Japan next month with the western release date still unknown. edit: Wait okay I just got caught up and this is getting interesting. The sheep images had Steam keys hidden in them and those that managed to activate them uncovered a secret message! So far it says "Get ready for something sexy" and we know there's 8 keys in total. So we know to expect three more. And in 3 days? Might be an unfortunate coincidence, though lol. Especially since I wouldn't expect a port announcement coming from the Japanese twitter account. Also, each key points to a different app on steamdb. So this could potentially be teasing multiple games, although my guess is they're probably just empty listings made solely for the purpose of the tease message.

Atlus is pretty much the last major Japanese holdout at this point. That's why this could be huge, though I'm personally skeptical until they prove otherwise. There's still some companies that are kinda weird and don't port everything or do late ports (*cough* Square-Enix *cough*) but most of them have some titles on Steam by now. The Atlus situation is really weird, though, because of the rumors I mentioned and the fact that they're owned by SEGA. SEGA's EU branch has a strong PC focus, they own studios like Relic and Creative Assembly and are responsible for most of their late Japanese ports like Valkyria Chronicles and Yakuza. The JP branch seems like they couldn't give less of a shit, though. In the case of Atlus, it's been assumed up until now that something got in the way of ports happening but that might turn out to not be the case anymore. Which means there might still be a chance for Persona 5 (and other Atlus titles) on PC.

So, it looks like Catherine might be getting a very late PC port. Both the Bayonetta and Valkyria Chronicles 4 Steam pages are teasing something with sheep and an ESRB rating appeared. This can be interpreted as a big deal and as a good sign for further titles like Persona or Shin Megami Tensei also getting ported. What's interesting here is that all signs point to this being a port of the original release, not the upcoming remaster with new content. It's unclear what role (if any) Atlus played here but it seems kinda weird to port the old version when a remaster is in development. Another interesting thing is that Atlus have long been believed to have some kind of strong (and idiotic) dislike of the PC as a platform, so it's unclear what their involvement here was (if any). It's safe to assume that this is another SEGA EU port, but I have to wonder if they went above Atlus' heads or if they actually had their blessing. Perhaps Atlus didn't give a shit since they're working on a new version of the game. I've wanted Catherine on PC for a while so I'll be there day one but I'm actually more excited to see if this leads to anything further or not.

Made one last round of purchases before the sale ends. I was tempted to get more but decided to stick with stuff that was either cheap or that I know I'll want to play in the near future. That's the Ancestral Edition for Darkest Dungeon. I already owned the base game but getting the bundle gave me a little more of a discount on all the DLC. It's one of the games on my "To Play in 2019" list, so it seemed like the right time to get all the content. Also went ahead and made the new thread because my laziness got me a slap on the wrist last year. ?

Didn't play as many games this year. I usually shoot for 50+ but that's kinda hard when you spend half the year playing nothing but Warframe. And I've already managed to not finish Grim Dawn by the end of the year because of Rainbow Six Siege, so it doesn't look like things are gonna go back to normal next year lol. I also kinda forgot about my spreadsheet this year, so I'm pretty sure there's at least one or two games I forgot to log. I already converted my backlog into Steam categories so that I can keep better track of it next year. Anyway, here it is. 23 games, all of them on PC and nearly half from my backlog. My only goal for 2019 is for the backlog ratio to get even higher. Italics are games that came out this year. I usually mark them to keep track of GOTY candidates but I honestly don't know if I even have one this year. With all the major releases being console exclusives, I felt pretty out of the loop and stopped giving a shit. Yakuza 0 is the one that surprised me the most by how freaking good it was and EXAPUNKS was the most sheer fun I've had with a game. So I guess those two.

I am seriously kicking myself for not getting Rainbow Six Siege earlier. I had heard that it was great and I thought it looked really fun but I'm always hesitant when it comes to MP-only games. Turns out it's pretty much the perfect MP game for me: slow and methodical, no running around and no need for twitch reflexes. The correct way to play is to find a good spot to camp, cover a narrow angle with your crosshair and shoot anything that walks into it. I've only been playing for a few days and I'm already able to make a difference in matches and win rounds. I still screw up but it's always clear where I went wrong and I learn from every death. This might actually become the first competitive MP game to keep me hooked.

It's almost like this was a quickly slapped together, cynical cash grab!!!

Still in a backlog mood, so I haven't felt the need to buy much this sale. I've been playing Grim Dawn lately and enjoying it a lot, so the expansion was a no-brainer. Same goes for Vermintide 2 as my friends and I are almost done playing through the first one and we've been having a blast with it. I also grabbed all the DLC levels for the first Vermintide because all rats must die. I've been curious about Siege for a while now since I keep hearing about how great it is and the standard edition finally dropped to a price where I was willing to bite. The Division was the only impulse purchase. I never really paid any attention to it before but I randomly felt like giving the trial a shot the other day and it seemed like something I would enjoy. I still have some money left in my Steam wallet so I'll probably grab something else but I have no idea what. Nothing is really tempting me all that much right now.

I'm fine with a lesser focus on Adol, Origin is one of my favorites of the entire series and he wasn't in it. I expect he'll be in the game to some extent, though. Apparently fans weren't too crazy about his absence in Origin. I'm really surprised they're already going ahead with Ys IX, though. I figured another Tokyo Xanadu or something new was gonna come first. I also expected the next Ys to be a remake of Ys V, so I was doubly wrong. I'm guessing with the next Kiseki being a few years away, they wanted their next project to be more of a safe bet. Also, fuck everything. Kondo acknowledged NISA's fuck up but says the financial impact wasn't significant. Please be excited for Ys IX coming via NISA!!! Between this and XSEED having essentially lost and/or fired their main Falcom/Trails people, the future suddenly feels very bleak for western Falcom fans.

We were wrong, @Mal ! This reminds me that I still haven't played Ys VIII. I actually kinda forgot it even existed, tbh...

Damn, sounds like that would've made my initial playthrough more enjoyable hahaha. There were a few really frustrating combat difficulty spikes on Apocalyptic.

Honestly, even for technical help it's still a dumpster fire. PC Gaming Wiki is a far more useful alternative most of the time. In related Steam/Valve news, CS:GO has gone free to play and has added a Battle Royale mode. I was never really into Counter-Strike all that much but I'm reinstalling it to check it out. Hopefully it's a decent alternative because I enjoyed what I played of Radical Heights before Boss Key went under but I'm not interested in buying PUBG and I'm not installing the Epic launcher, so Fortnite's out too.

Yeah, I don't remember the original having any serious issues either. Kinda makes you wonder how the remaster turned out the way it did. Considering the Crucible thing has a workaround, I wouldn't say it's bad enough to stick with the original over the remaster, though. But Darksiders III being made by the same studio makes me think waiting for a few patches before jumping in probably isn't the worst idea lol. I was kinda bummed out when I realized that even by reaching the level cap in NG+ you only end up with enough skill points for one tree. I was tempted to respec to necromancer in NG+ to try it out but I expected Deathinitive difficulty to be much more challenging than it turned out to be, so I decided to stick with the playstyle I was already comfortable with.

I remember thinking this game was flawed but pretty great the first time around but I think my opinion of it went down a bit after this replay. I still love it but now I kinda wish it was a better game. There were a lot of small things I found annoying throughout but ultimately it was the bloat that soured me on it the most. I did one playthrough on Apocalyptic doing all the side-quests and collectibles and then another on Deathinitive difficulty where I mostly just beelined the main objectives the entire time. I actually enjoyed the second run more than the first one, mostly because it was NG+ and I could ignore most of the following. There are a lot of pointless fetch quests here that don't really add anything of value. The loot system feels tacked on and unnecessary. The combat system is clearly inspired by games like Devil May Cry and Bayonetta but it lacks the depth you'd expect from it and the dodge just kept fucking me up because of how chaining multiple ones in a row works. I still like the Prince of Persia platforming, though. It's also one of the buggiest games I've played in a while. I don't know if it was just the PC port but it kept crashing on me at the most random times. Sometimes the game would just shut down after I alt-tabbed out. Sometimes it would freeze for a couple seconds and not actually crash. Then I went to tackle the Crucible (basically an arena where you fight 100 waves of enemies) and it just kinda went apeshit. There's checkpoints every 25 waves and I couldn't even make it to the first one. Turns out the damage indicators actually crash the fucking game if you deal too much damage. Thankfully you can turn them off but holy shit. Ironically enough, after I unlocked the very last achievement and tried to quit the game, it just locked up and refused to shut down. I had to hard reset my PC. This was initially supposed to be a replay in anticipation of Darksiders 3 but it had the opposite effect. I've kind of had enough for now, so I'm gonna wait a while before getting Darksiders III.

Geez, what's so time consuming about it? I never bothered with them on PC because Blizzard's achievement system is weird and there's just too much shit going on with time-limited stuff or whatever.

Yeah, I'm also getting Xanadu vibes here. Would be interesting if it turns out to be a completely new title, though. Last I heard, Kondo said they wanted Tokyo Xanadu to become their third main IP along with Ys and Trails. So with Ys VIII and Sen IV both out, I just kind of assumed Tokyo Xanadu 2 was probably next.

Yeah, the aggregated score is about where I expected it to be. I was hoping it would be higher but this was never exactly a critically-acclaimed series and this one's clearly done on a smaller scale/lower budget. I'm still about halfway through my replay of Darksiders 2, though, so I won't be getting it right away. Hopefully by the time the winter sale rolls around, it'll be discounted a little (or a lot, since this is probably going to bomb).

Sure, gift me a copy on Steam and I'll play with you.