toxicitizen

The tank mission seems like a crazy difficulty spike at first but once you figure out what you need to do (and that you can save mid-mission), it's really not that bad. It's a shame because it seems to have caused a ton of people to have dropped the game and it's really just getting started at that point. Seriously people, save scum the shit out of that mission and play the rest of this fantastic game!

Sega have owned Atlus for a few years now.

I'm honestly not so sure. If a PC release is planned, then there's no reason not to announce it alongside all the other versions. The chance of a port isn't zero but I think it probably depends on whether or not SEGA EU decide to port it down the line. The fact that it's not a no-brainer for the Japanese branch says it all, I think. Just leave it to SEGA to find a way to sour such a great announcement lol. I'm happy we're getting a new proper VC but it's kind of insane to think that Koei Tecmo are actually better at supporting PC than SEGA now.

Lol no mention of PC. That's pretty much what I expected. SEGA Japan don't give a fuck. It's actually a little insulting that even Xbox is getting it, though. But yeah, at this point I have zero expectations from SEGA. It took years just to get Bayonetta and Vanquish. After how well the late port of VC1 sold, if we're not getting VC4 then the people still hoping for Persona and Yakuza are kidding themselves.

Yeah, I can't remember his name but it's in a small grassy area. If he's the hardest than that's... actually not too bad. I almost had him one time but he just kills me way too quickly so there's very little room for mistakes. If I just had a higher damage output I could probably deal with him relatively easily. That spoiler sounds like fucking hell, though. Jesus.

Yeah, I already ran into one sub mission that's just a boss fight and it's crazy hard. I gave it a good shot and I could probably do it if I kept at it but I ended up just going "fuck this and fuck you" and decided to come back in like 30 levels or so. Are there a lot of sub missions like that? I intend to do everything in the game, so I'm gonna have to fight them all anyway.

Total impulse purchase. I've wanted to play it since launch but I kind of expect Nioh to keep me busy until Okami in December. Hopefully I'll be able to squeeze it in between the two.

Hahaha, maybe I should do that. I tried summoning help but no one ever showed up. Maybe I was doing something wrong. Usually once I beat a boss in Souls I can look at it with hindsight and realize what I was doing wrong but she still feels like her moveset was legit fucking bullshit. She's just a terrible boss fight. If it wasn't for someone on ResetEra telling me spears make her way easier, I might actually still be stuck on her.

Still working my way through Nioh, just made it to the second region. I hit a pretty crazy wall on the second mission's boss (no boss in any Souls game has ever frustrated me this much, no joke) but it's been going pretty smoothly since I managed to beat her. The more I play the less it feels like a Souls games, even though there's definitely some core mechanics that are Souls-inspired. I have to say, I think I like the combat in this more than in Dark Souls. There's way more depth to it, it's kind of halfway between Dark Souls combat and PlatinumGames combat. I'm really glad I took a chance on it because I'm loving the hell out of it. Oh and it seems like Koei Tecmo are actually improving! Nioh got a patch that improved performance for the one setting I had to turn down, so I can max it out now. Still get the occasional framerate drop but it never dips low enough to affect gameplay (usually stays above 50). And I don't think it's just because Nioh is a decent seller because apparently they finally fixed the lower res 2D/menu assets in Atelier Firis. Doesn't look like they did the same for Sophie, though, but apparently there's been some activity on SteamDB so we'll see.

I told you the DLC fills in a lot of huge blanks. But basically

I want to say yes but I'm not sure if I agree with some of these complaints, so it could be that they simply don't bother me as much as you. Or it could just be that I don't remember my first playthrough all that well, I was pretty overpowered in my replay. But like I said, TEW2 is unarguably the better game of the two. It's nowhere near as uneven as the first one. As for the story, having just replayed it, the Kidman DLC isn't just a nice complement to it. It's straight up necessary. It fills in some pretty big blanks, answers some questions I still had after playing the main game and even sets some things up for the sequel. Fair warning, though. It's way more stealth-focused. You don't have a gun for most of it and The Assignment (the first one) has my least favorite "boss fight" of the entire game. If one hit kills and trial-and-error bothered you in the main game, that fight might actually give you an aneurysm.

The Evil Within + DLC. After I was done with TEW2, I felt like revisiting the first one and doing some achievement hunting. I ended up playing the main campaign twice, one of which was a <5 hours speedrun. I still have to do a no upgrade playthrough as well as one on Akumu difficulty (you die in one hit) but I really don't feel like tackling that right now. At least the "bullshit" difficulty of the DLC isn't as bad, so I was able to clear them all right away. Instead of one hit kills, you just have to play in complete darkness except for your flashlight. It's really more of an annoyance than a challenge. Also, I stand by what I said last month. TEW2 is the better game. It doesn't just have a better story, it's also way easier to get into and play for long sessions. Mainly because it's nowhere near as stressful and does a much better job of giving you spaces where you can catch your breath. TEW1 has better production values and feels more like a big budget game but I remember it being too stressful to play more than a couple hours at a time on my first run a few years back. I mean, even the save room is super creepy and feels unsafe. This time I jumped right into NG+ and already had an entire playthrough's worth of upgrades, so I just cheesed the fuck out of it. Having a fully loaded magnum saved specifically for the Keeper fights removes a LOT of the tension from the game lol. Anyway, now that I'm done with this one for nowI can finally focus all my attention on Nioh.

Can Devolver win E3 two years in a row?!

Yeah, I wouldn't wanna risk it lol.

Yeah, from what I've seen the quality really does feel like a first rough pass that somehow was deemed good enough. The crazy thing about "Big Hole" is that the Japanese version has an English name for that area that actually sounds better. Unless they were working from a spreadsheet that only had the Japanese text in it (which, to be fair, is entirely possible), this goes beyond rushed or shoddy work. And even then, if you can't tell that "Big Hole" sounds kinda stupid and probably needs to be changed, then maybe localization work isn't for you...

Just goes to show how utterly fucked it was if even they felt the need to rework it so much. I seriously wonder wtf happened here. It was likely a rush job but was the translator also not up to the task or something? Did they assign the game to an intern?? We need Jason Schreier on the case! I'm not getting my hopes up, though. I never had issues with their localization work until this incident (Disgaea and Danganronpa both seem fine to me) but they don't exactly have XSEED's reputation either. I don't expect it'll be up to the series' usual standard. Hell, I wouldn't be completely shocked if it somehow turned out even worse. And that's not even taking the port into account...

Re:RTSS I messed around with it a bit more today and the newest version of Precision seems to be fucked, which is why the OSD wouldn't show up. I switched back to Afterburner, so I was able to test capping the framerate with RTSS and I can confirm that it does make the frame pacing more stable. Nioh still didn't feel good at 30fps, though, but I can confirm that even without RTSS it's pretty solid in Evil Within. That and the fact that it's a slow survival horror game is probably why it feels way better.

Doing the bonus dungeon is what broke the game?

Huh, a single year is much faster than I was expecting. I guess it's gonna be your typical Trails sequel where it reuses a lot of locations. At least, I'm assuming Cold Steel 2 is like that all the way through. I didn't get very far on Vita. But yeah, given the bump in graphical fidelity, I can't imagine they'll be creating a lot of new 3D assets if they actually think they can get it done it so quickly. Also, I guess it's likely that XSEED have begun working on CS3 by now. Would be nice to get some kind of hint so that we can stop worrying. I'm not as worried after how monumentally NISA fucked up Ys VIII but still. Falcom have proven themselves to not be above making incredibly stupid decisions.

Yeah, there are tools that will give you those numbers. It's impossible to tell just by looking at it. MSI Afterburner and EVGA Precision are good because they allow you to monitor other stuff like GPU and CPU temp, memory usage, etc. But like Mal said, if all you want is the framerate, Steam has a built-in counter now. It's what I use most of the time because it's less noticeable and distracting but I'll turn on the Precision display if I want to monitor temps or whatever else.

I wanted to look at the frametimes of Evil Within when I was playing just now but the EVGA Precision overlay wouldn't show up, for some reason. :/ Also, I've never tried it myself but apparently using RTSS to set a framerate cap can do wonders for frametimes. If you use MSI Afterburner, you should already have it installed. Maybe give that a shot and see if it feels any better next time you can't get a game to run at 60.

Yeah, I generally feel the same way. I played a lot of games with framerates bouncing between 40-50 because it looked smoother than 30. But I don't think it's something inherent to PC. Frametimes definitely play a role, I think. I don't know if id Tech simply has good frame pacing or what but when I tried locking to 30 in the Evil Within games I instantly went "hey that's not TOO bad". It obviously didn't feel as smooth but after a while it stopped bothering me. It was a little cathartic to realize I could stop obsessing about that shit for once. From now on I think whenever I can't get something close enough to a consistent 60 I'll just lock to 30 and stop worrying about it.

Played a bit of Nioh today. Made it to the first non-tutorial boss and got promptly splattered against the floor. Seems about right. So far I really like it even though I'm terrible at it. It's been a while since I've played a proper Souls game (that piece of shit Lords of the Fallen doesn't count!), so I'm a little rusty. The speed of the combat is also throwing me off a bit. I keep wanting to just run in there and cut everything to pieces like you would in a Platinum game but the game doesn't seem to want you to do that. I keep trying to dodge-cancel into a slash but there's a short pause between the dash and the attack where I often get fucked up. It's way faster than Dark Souls combat but there's still a crucial need to be careful with your dodge and attack timing. If I can get good at it, it might actually be more fun than the slower, weightier combat of Dark Souls. Oh and the port is actually somewhat decent! Serviceable, even, depending on what's important to you. It doesn't run as well as it probably should but I built this PC on a budget knowing I'd end up with a console-like experience, so it doesn't bother me all that much. I was able to turn some things down and get something close enough to a solid 60fps. I recently said fuck it with Evil Within 1 and 2 and locked them to 30fps just so I could max them out but with a fast-paced action game like this 60fps takes priority.

I'm a weak-willed dumbo and the current pre-order discount + VIP voucher deal on GMG looks too good to be true (almost 10 bucks cheaper than even on CDkeys), so just on the off chance that it's a pricing error... Now I just have to hope that this will be the game where Koei Tecmo surprise us all with a stellar port. I mean, there's no way in hell that's gonna happen but Durante's had access to it (presumably writing a port report for PC Gamer) and he talked about it without hinting at any issues. So, I'm assuming that it's at the very least not catastrophically bad or anything...

The Evil Within 2 confirmed for game of the year. I'm a little sad that I missed it in my two playthroughs. I would've lost my shit lol.