ExHaseo

Has the writing always been this bad? It' so cringe.

Oh, the load times were significantly worse in the original. I couldn't even get past the first area it was so painful. I was spending more time waiting on loading than actually playing the game. It's the same reason I never beat FFIX. PS1 games are generally a pretty painful experience if there's no speedup function available.

Yeah the writing is pretty bad. It's also hilariously badly translated. It's honestly more funny than anything to me. Games were just like this though. Especially JRPGs. They had limited space and resources, so they had to make everything as brief as possible. Making for some pretty bad moments.

I'm still kinda used to subpar loading times given I still play PS1 games pretty regularly (pretty much all emulated now mind you, but still). That being said, for some reason, load times on a lot of Switch games really get to me sometimes. I think because I expect them to be on par with other current/last gen consoles, but they really aren't... at all.

Congrats

I feel like most older open worlds have that privilege. Nowadays when you play an open world, you get to the point A, so they get you to B, and viceversa. The first ones felt so fresh that people just roamed around and discover new things, easter eggs, side missions, without knowing the hardware limits that made it impossible to progress more than that without doing the main missions.

Gaming expectations can ruin a lot of old games, unintentionally.

Before Shenmue, I remember being blown away by the original Resident Evil, the pre rendered backdrops on a CRT TV, it looked like a real location, and seeing 3D characters moving around and all the music and horror. I thought wow gaming couldn't get any more realistic than this, and these days people criticize the remake of that game, and even the original RE4 because of the control system and because many other games have more refined controls / more added fluff.

I still also remember being absolutely blown away by the original Final Fantasy VII, game on 3 discs, hundreds of hours, an entire theme park of mini games. Shenmue also had an arcade of mini games, like literal arcade games from Sega, that seemed like a big step up from even Final Fanatasy VII seven years later.

Now if a game has mini games sometimes people can hate them, despite the fact that most games have mini games now. I wonder if people would think Shenmue was THAT dated if Yakuza hadn't come along on PS2 with (first of all) Resident Evil style camera angles, and then fully 3D world like Shenmue and then multiple sequels refined the Shenmue formula perfectly.

Back in the day on Dreamcast the biggest complaint for me with Shenmue was the loading times, they were sooo long.

I played Shenmue I and II a few years ago on PS4, they had certainly aged, but I still had the fun gameplay I remember from back in the day, nostalgia is honestly a huge factor when enjoying older games.

I think that's why I hate Shenmue III, well aside from the fact 5 minutes of story are spanned over what I can easily call the grindiest and most pointless of adventures. In some ways the Shenmue III is worse than Shenmue I and II. I mean it takes out the heart that the original game had, NPCs that you could follow around, NPCs that actually walked around and went home at the end of the day etc.

There's also the issue with the trophy and achievement world we live in. I had so much fun literally spending hours investigating every nook and cranny, opening every drawer in the house etc. For the fun of doing so, but now a days, we have "the next game with trophies" to look forward and wandering around aimlessly without a gamefaqs guide for fun, it feels more of a waste of time.

This is also elevated by the fact in Shenmue I you're walking around an awesome place set in Japan, Shenmue II, awesome place set in Hong Kong and in Shenmue III, some weird village and other town mish mash which kinda doesn't feel like a Shenmue location at all (at least in my eyes anyway)

I wish they had properly ended Shenmue in the 3rd game. Honestly, as a fan of the game, for me it's unforgivable.

Who likes having their childhood adventure never finishing? Nobody.

The problem is my favorites are the most valuable. Everything else isn't really worth much.

Given I'm planning on moving to Japan, everything is going to be difficult and expensive to get back too. Which is what really sucks. I could probably find Japanese versions cheaper, but it wouldn't be the same. Since it's more about the memories associated with the items than the actual games. Especially when it comes to classic stuff. Like I have a Sonic the Hedghog Genesis model 1 complete in box. I also have all three Xenosaga games complete. I have too much to list here, but it's stuff from the Genesis, Dreamcast, PS1, PS2, PS3, PS4, PS5 PSP, Vita, Xbox, 360, DS, 3DS, Gamecube, Wii, Wii U, and Switch. It sounds more impressive than it is. Most of it really isn't worth that much. Which is why I would have to sell most of it. 

I'd be interested in browsing your PS3/PS4/PS5/Vita games.

Good luck

What's really weird to me, is that I had no expectations. I never played Witcher 3 or anything and I knew nothing about it aside from that it was super broken at launch and that Keanu Reeves is in it. But it's still just... nothing. Usually a game is at least notably good or bad in some way, but this isn't. I'm only a couple hours in, so maybe that will change, but right now I just really have absolutely no feelings about it. I really don't understand it.

Yeah it was kind of confusing. My issue is more so that they should really have just done a game where you play as Silverhand. Now they've mentioned a sequel, so i hope they've learned from this. But i also think a movie could work if you have Silverhand played obviously by Reeves haha.

I think youd enjoy Witcher 3 much more

I felt the same way the first time I played GTA5.

I have a feeling i finish up LAD ishin over the break, I got trails to azure coming out next week but I'm playing kuro 2 so I'm not going to get to that right away. 

Spring Break?! It's snowing here xDDD

I don't really understand that. I mean, they're effectively the same. Same types of stages, similar note paths, same types of modes. MoM is just from a 3D perspective. I was about to replay it because it's really the only other game like this.

I feel like the combat makes it really confusing, also the notes sometimes are harder to play (like jumps) making it not a standard rhythm game. The "RPG" aspects of FF make it more complete, you have a lot more of characters to use and combine however you like, and you can also choose which music you want to play first. MoM is a lot more restrictive, it feels like a less pulished game.

Anyway, I still like both games, and the devs did a great job with the franchises.

That's fair. I enjoyed the incorporation of different buttons and things that made it feel like more of a game than just pushing buttons on a path. I get how it could be confusing though.

Yeah, theatrhythm definitely has a lot more, but it's also the 4th game in the series (two on 3DS, one in the arcade, and now FBL). All of them build on each other and use the same assets, so it had way more time to add stuff to it. And while it is less restrictive at first, it also doesn't have any kind of narrative.

I like both games and think they both do different things better. And I do agree that Thearhythm is overall better. I just would say MoM is like a 7, and Thearhythm is like an 8. It sounded like you were saying MoM was just total trash or something and I got confused lol. 

Other than Rikku, would you say it's entirely doable with our favorite FF characters?

It's entirely doable with anyone. Using Rikku as early as possible is going to cut down on grinding later on though.

It really is a shame that they're shutting down, especially when there isn't a way to currently get a lot of those titles outside of over paying extremely to 3rd parties

Many are just going to disappear too. There's a lot of download only games. Stuff like Liberation Maiden and Harmoknight. What's worse, is that you won't even be able to re-download. At least you can easily archive the contents of an SD card on a PC though.