The Backlog Check-in Vol. 27: 7/7/18: Octopath Traveler Edition

[jfissel]

Anyone have a Switch and picking up Octopath Traveler? Sounds like a fun, old-school RPG.

Finished: Yakuza 6: The Song of Life (platinum #55)

Now Playing: Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles

Added to Backlog: Nothing

Current Backlog: 29 games

Yakuza 6 was pretty good, but not in my top 3 games of the series. The Dragon engine looks amazing and I know they enhanced it even more for Kiwami 2 coming out next month. But there were definitely trade-offs for the new engine - less things to do overall for seamless building entering. Kamurocho looks quite a bit different due to a lot of building changes and it being a few years after 5. They constricted the Kamurocho map by about 10%, having "construction" up North and also blocking off the Champion District. The new city of Onomichi is decent sized and interesting. New minigames include the baseball simulation I've talked about, spearfishing (in place of regular fishing), Puyo Puyo, Internet Live Chat, working out, bar chat, the Troublr phone app where you solve various small crimes, and Clan Creator. Most of those are good and fun, but they also took out things as well. Definitely worth a play if you like the Yakuza games simply because it finishes up Kazuma Kiryu's storyline for the series (no spoilers, you'll have to play to find out what that means).

[canedaddy]

Congrats on the plat! So how would you rank the Yakuzas?

Played this week: Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask, this and that

Finished this week: nothing

Added to backlog: nothing

Current backlog: 37 (12 PS4, 10 Vita, 7 PS2, 5 3DS, 2 PS3)

I'm having a great time with the professor and his crew. Very fun.

I've just been farting around on the PS4. Played some PS+ stuff and a little GTA San Andreas and some Dark Cloud 2 (a lot of great memories in those two games for me). Not sure if I'll continue on this path or start Nier Automata.

[jfissel]

Congrats on the plat! So how would you rank the Yakuzas?

I knew you would ask that. I'll have to get back to you after Kiwami 2 since I don't remember a whole lot about Y2 except punching a tiger in the face, doing a substory where men are wearing diapers and have baby rattles, and who the main story antagonist is.

But a general order is 0, 2, 4, Kiwami/1, 5, 6, 3. I also don't remember a lot of 3, so I could be giving it the short end of the stick there. I previously had 1 towards the bottom, but the Kiwami version pumped it up to the middle.

[Phaseknox]

Played: Nier: Automata, Wolfenstein: The Old Blood, Wolfenstein: The New Order

Finished: Nier: Automata

Playing: ?

I finished Nier: Automata, and was a little disappointed overall. I was expecting a bigger and meatier action RPG experience, but instead got a somewhat short and repetitive open-ish action game with barebones RPG elements. I liked the story, characters, combat, environments and music, there just needed to be more of it. It's designed to be played through three times as different characters to get the full story, but once was enough for me.

I decided to play the Wolfenstein games and I started with The Old Blood since it takes place before The New Order, but it failed to grab me since it's a fairly standard old school FPS that's basically a shooting gallery. I started The New Order and it was better starting off with a bang and offering good gameplay and impressive graphics that move at a smooth 60fps, but after the impressive prologue it kind of turns into a somewhat open-ish stealth game and as soon as an enemy sees you they set off an alarm and wave after wave of enemies rush you and it turns into a shooting gallery. I stopped playing it since I like my arcade-y first person shooters to be linear with lots of set pieces and scripted events (which is how it begins), I don't like open-ish arena type levels especially when stealth is involved and you don't have a map showing where the enemies are.

Anyone have a Switch and picking up Octopath Traveler? Sounds like a fun, old-school RPG.

I think that argyle is the only one of us who has a Switch. Speaking of argyle, he appears to be MIA again.

Yakuza 6 was pretty good, but not in my top 3 games of the series.

I knew that you weren't enjoying Yakuza 6 as much as the other games in the series because you hardly talked about it, usually when you really like a game you talk about it a lot.

a general order is 0, 2, 4, Kiwami/1, 5, 6, 3.

Yakuza 3 is my favorite. I haven't played 5, 6, or Kiwami yet. Sega needs to release 3, 4 and 5 for the PS4.

[canedaddy]

Congrats on the plat! So how would you rank the Yakuzas?

I knew you would ask that. I'll have to get back to you after Kiwami 2 since I don't remember a whole lot about Y2 except punching a tiger in the face, doing a substory where men are wearing diapers and have baby rattles, and who the main story antagonist is.

But a general order is 0, 2, 4, Kiwami/1, 5, 6, 3. I also don't remember a lot of 3, so I could be giving it the short end of the stick there. I previously had 1 towards the bottom, but the Kiwami version pumped it up to the middle.

Interesting. They're very hard to rank, all great games. But 3 is probably my favorite, like Phase. I loved orphanage, Okinawa and this guy: