"As much as I've enjoyed FF7 Rebirth, its Platinum requirement was insane and downright frustrating, something I wish not to see repeated," says Hanzala from eXputer.
Some of the best PS5 games are exclusives like God of War Ragnarok and Astro Bot, but there are some indie highlights as well.
Discounts on the likes of Dynasty Warriors: Origins, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and more for a limited time.
VGChartz's Mark Nielsen: "Halfway into the decade and the 2020s has been an interesting one for gaming in both good ways and bad, with the restructuring of the industry, a mix of innovation and the same old, and of course many, many long waits. But there have also been many quality titles, to be sure; the last three years in particular have seen a number of critical darlings. Something the most acclaimed ones have had in common (with the obvious exception of Astro Bot) has been an absolutely massive scope, easily boasting 100+ hours of content.
In my own experience that massive amount of content hasn’t always been a positive; in fact I would go so far as to call their slightly overeager strive for quantity a shared flaw of these games. I’ll be looking at four titles in particular here and going over the different ways in which these otherwise solid experiences became victims of having just a bit too much fluff."
To much unimportant content and bloat is mote likely to cause me to stop playing or never revisit it. Especially when it feels like you're forcing the player to do side quests to pad out your game length just to make it long enough so you won't have the player trade the game in to fast
One recent example for me is Hogwarts I enjoyed the story but despised the level gating there was no real reason to lock missions behind a leveling system it was just forcing the player to fly around doing side quests and puzzles so they could advance to the next chapter
omg hogwarts
i love every second of it but damn, does it feel like a chore to play haha.
Hogwarts Legacy should have stuck to what other games couldn’t do: Let us be a Hogwarts student. The open world aspect was just like any Ubisoft game.
Honestly wish it had more of a Bully feel. It was clear that 90% of the attention went to the school and town and the rest felt like the northern chunk of Just Cause 3's map. Almost like they had to justify the flying mechanic by spreading things out.
Yeah agree the Hogwarts castle and grounds is ripe for exploration. Look at the PS1 Argonaut game i felt like that old game did a better job with relaying what it's like to be a student at Hogwarts than what legacy did.
Legacy was like ok you've done a few classes learnt to ride a broom go spend the next multitude of hours exploring nearby towns and killing hundreds of goblins and spiders I don't think they did enough with the school grounds.
I appreciate them including Hogsmeade but I felt like it didn't need to expand past that point
Why don't we have more 12-15h single player stories for $45 is beyond me.
My guess is I recall around the late 2000s game trades were a big issue which resulted in publishers shifting away from standard single player campaigns that could be beaten in a month and we started to see more expansive open worlds that would take longer to see everything to keep the player invested long enough that they wouldn't trade in the game when it was going to be the most profitable retail window e.g the first month
With the rise of all digital games I can see those games making a comeback as there is no second hand market
Expecting a 12-15h game to be $45 is part of the problem. These games don't sell well at full price anymore and relatively speaking it takes a lot fewer resources to stretch it into a 30-40 hour game that can be sold for full price.
We can complain about padding all we want, but most people simply pay more for padded games.
Eternal Strands $48. 18 hours
Citizen Sleeper 2 $23 10 hours.
AstroBot (got as a gift) 16 hours and they keep adding levels.
Totally agree. I'm tired of the same bloated fluff that games present as 'content.'
Act 3 is massive. I think I finished the game 4 times for the platinum and I know I must have missed at least half the stuff in that city
i feel like Rebirth only really had Costa del sol as a bloat. but its a long game, so i dont blame the author
I’m glad the platinum is difficult to get. Makes it all the more worthwhile to unlock it. Separates the skilled from the scrubs.
Only thing I think in the trophy list that will be hard to do will be the s rank piano. Everything else seems mostly doable on the first run. I have been taking my time and exploring everything the game enables to me before completing a chapter so I’m sure the hard mode run after if I choose to do it will be all I have to worry about.
Knowing me I won’t do it though lol
The only thing that I didn't like so far were the advanced 6 person bouts at the musclehead collosseum. The battles are fun to figure out at first, but 5 out of the 8 challenges feature the exact same enemies in every possible configuration so it gets a bit repetitive. I've still got the hardest VR challenges ahead of me, but I'm currently taking a break and waiting for the patch to fix the bugged side quest. I'm definitely intending to platinum it and so far I haven't encountered any serious roadblock yet.
I already know I won’t get it due to the piano one. I’m simply not good with anything related to rhythm or music. I can time button presses, but moving the joy stick? Nah.
I think I maaay get all Johnny’s side quests BS ones. Everything else seems pretty do able once you get strong enough and max out characters and materia.
Is it that much worse than in Remake? I haven't played Rebirth yet, but I did Platinum Remake (including Intergrade) and was both very difficult (Weiss, Bahamut), annoying (smashing crates), and very tedious (had to re-do ch9 way too many times). I don't think I have it in me to go through something like that again.