mrmivo

Oh boy. I wish they addressed that before release. I suppose I'll wait a little before I start the game, at least until we know what that "edge case" is.

Since you had a chance to play it, is it likely that any collectibles (or any of the trophies) are permanently missable? Or would you say this can be played blindly and then later on look up what's missing?

I really enjoyed this beta and played more than I expected. Got a barb to 23, sorcerer to 25, and a melee rogue to 25. Rogue engaged me the most, though it was the least likely class I thought I’d enjoy. Felt really great with the controller. The game ran smoothly on the PS5 and looked very good, no issues. Cross-play with people on PC was flawless, even across regions. I had a key for PC also and cross-progression was enabled. That too was a seamless experience. I wasn’t sure which platform I’d play this on, but after the beta and the very positive crossplay experience with PC friends, I settled on the PS5. That’s where I preordered it anyway. Looking forward to next weekend’s beta and the release.

The game is fully cross play and cross progression on all platforms, PS4 and PS5 included. Crossplay will be enabled for the beta too.

Did you preorder it digitally from the PSN store? If so, just go to the product page and select the “…” button. One of the menu options should say “Open beta” (only available if you preordered, otherwise it will become available next Wednesday). The beta client is treated as a different edition of the game.

I don’t think it’s likely, but being able to reset a trophy list (which would achieve the same goal) is a feature I’d welcome. It would probably not be equally welcomed by players who put effort into high completion rates, though.

I started this game in 2014 and decided to finish it up now (working on those old E rank games). Unfortunately, the Vita version crashes all the time for me, usually when using the "gift scanner". And just now it crashed when summoning. I'm on the third planet and had about seven or eight crashes so far. It's an OLED Vita, most recent OS version (no CFW, all original). No idea what to do about this.

Remasters/remakes of older games are in Premium, even if they are for PS4 or PS5. I don't feel Premium is particularly attractive, but it's also only 20 dollars/euros more than Extra per year, so less than 1.70 per month (or less if you use discounted PSN cards). I get enough value from the occasional Premium only game that it's worth it to me. I agree with the trails, though, and feel these should be free to anyone and not require a PS+ Premium subscription.

"The Handsome Collection" is also on PS+ Premium, which includes BL2 + all DLCs + The Presequel. This collection is also currently 9.99 US dollars/euros, until March 16. There is a "Legendary Collection" also that in addition includes BL1 GOTY that's currently on sale for 19.99.

I did this in local coop with a second controller. You don't need another person for this, just a second controller.

It's more basic than Diablo 2 or Diablo 3 and has a different feel to it. The gameplay is less complex overall. You have a melee weapon and a ranged weapon (with limited arrows per dungeon/run) and three slots for artifacts. These artifacts can summon pets, provide extra healing, do AoE damage, etc. Think of these mostly as active skills with cooldowns. Your three pieces of gear (melee weapon, armor, and ranged weapon) have up to three enchantment clusters with up to three enchantments per cluster. You can pick one enchantment per cluster, for a maximum of three enchantments for each of your three enchantable equipment pieces. These enchantments are essentially passive skills such as life leech, corpse explosion if a mob dies, pushback, ricocheting arrows, etc. There is a large pool of different enchantments and they basically form the core of a build. There is no skill tree and there are no distributable stats. Items have the enchantments (passives) that they have, and this is often (always?) random, unless it's a unique item that may have a fixed passive in addition. If a passive you want is not on an item, I don't believe you can add it. You get one enchantment point whenever you level up and the cost (in enchantment points) of the enchantments depend on their tier and their power level. So a build consists of up to 9 passive skills, 3 active abilities, and effects provided by unique gear. Every map or dungeon you visit has a small number of possible loot drops. Their power level depends on the power level of the zone (you can scale the difficulty when you enter a zone). If you complete the zone, you get one of the items listed in the reward sections. There is another "loot table" for things that can drop in each zone, too. You can recover enchantment points ("skill points") by either destroying (salvaging) an item that you enchanted or by giving it to the blacksmith to upgrade it. Upgrading requires completing three zones during which you won't be able to use the items currently being upgraded. You basically need two sets of gear to swap between. This also requires emeralds (gold). Drops get better the higher difficulty is set. It's a nice game to play while watching a movie or a stream, and I can see it being entertaining to play in coop while voice chatting with a buddy (I haven't played with anyone and just used a second controller for the one coop trophy). There is also a "tower mode" that I haven't tried yet and that looks somewhat promising. The more I level up and the more interesting gear I find, the more the game grows on me. I unlocked the platinum in the base game and since I have the DLC already, I'll play more and see what DLC trophies I can get. I'll say that Diablo games are more interesting to me and more complex, but since it's free this month with PS+ Essential, there's no harm in trying it out. Even if you don't end up playing it excessively, the plat is easy. It's the DLC content that seems to be much harder and time-consuming.

In my case, it is because I like statistics. I collect playtime, purchase prices, discounts, and some other data in a spreadsheet that processes the information and spits out various stats and graphs. Accessing the playtime data directly on the console, in one nice list, would be easiest. I fixed the problem by using PS-Timetracker, but I’d still prefer to get accurate data from the system directly instead of having to rely on a third party service.

The melee pits were my least favorite part of the game. I did complete them eventually, but it was solely a “just for the trophy” thing that I didn’t enjoy and would not have done in an organic playthrough. I felt the whole combo button melee system was reminiscent of fighting games and didn’t fit in well with the rest of the combat system. On the upside, the requirements for the hunting grounds trophy were lower in Forbidden West than in Zero Dawn. It was still a memorable game, though.

I have a follow question: When should I buy the DLC? I just started MD and quite like it, so I will buy the DLC while it’s on sale for another week. I googled a bit and found older Reddit posts where people recommended to buy the DLC only after reaching apocalpyse difficulty. Is this still sound advice? Does it actually matter when I buy the DLC?

No, just PlayStation, and I’m fairly new to it still. I had been a computer/PC gamer for decades and only moved to PS a year ago (I did get a Vita nearly ten years ago, but had no PS home consoles since the PS1 and before the PS5), and Steam achievements never pulled me in. There was no structure to them, with some games having three achievements and others featuring literally thousands. When I played WoW, I did go for achievements and had fun doing so, but that was the only game where I tried for them. I also have a Switch, and some older handhelds besides the Vita, but none of these have achievement or trophy systems, so it’s just PlayStation for me. I’d be entirely happy with only one gaming platform anyway as there are always more games that I want to play than I have time for.