Tag: PS4

Posted in Old Games

Dark Cloud

Posted on by Hobbit Of Hyrule

This game was another of my all time favourites as a child. My first memory of this game is my mum renting (YES, renting!!) this for me as a random little surprise – I simply was not able to stop playing it until we had to take it back! Although at that age, I wasn’t very good at it and so didn’t get very far!

The main protagonist is called Toan, and he is a classic mute, sword-wielding character (I wonder if you can guess who he reminded me of as a child ..). During the night of a festival in his village, the world is attacked by the Dark Genie, and this is what kicks off the game.

You are saved by a divine power, who also saved all the other inhabitants of the world, but sealed them away I’m spheres for you to collect and then rebuild.. this isn’t as complex as it sounds!

Each village has it’s own corresponding dungeon where these spheres will be found, and the dungeon mechanic itself is quite simple but enjoyable.

Your weapons have stats which will go up as you level them up with certain stat-boosting attachments, as well as elements which you increase in the same way. Eventually your stats will be high enough to “build up” your weapon into a new one, which is key for surviving in the later dungeons.

You will gain allies as you progress through the world, until you eventually end up with 6 playable characters – all very unique with their own weapon of choice and special abilities which will be used to help progress in the dungeons.

The dungeons themselves actually hold plenty of challenges. First there’s the obvious, the monsters. Then you actually have to be wary of your thirst meter – once it depletes you will start to gradually lose health. Certain monsters can inflict status effects on you which will be detrimental in different ways, you will need to either leave the dungeon or use an item to remedy the status.

The layout of the dungeon will change every time you enter, so although the enemies found on that floor will be the same, you will still be finding your way around the floor. Each dungeon floor will also have an access point to the “Back Room” … these are darker areas of the dungeons where the monsters have buffs, but give extra experience for your weapons, and great treasures can be found in these areas.

The last major challenge is the “Limit Zones“. Certain floors of the dungeons will have special restrictions put on them, such as only a certain character having access to them, not being able to change your weapon and losing experience points on your weapon, and thirst occurring at a rapid pace.

There is also a post-game dungeon which is particularly gruelling, and it takes a lot of high end weapons for all your characters, and a lot of skill to be able to make progress here. It is not something I have completed, but it is certainly on my gaming bucket list.

I really recommend this for anyone who enjoys a dungeon crawler, and it’s very easy to get these days! It was originally a PS2 game, and has since appeared on the PSN store for both PS3 and PS4. I frequently see it half price, so it’s easy to get this great game at a low price!

  • Platform: Playstation 2, Playstation 3, Playstation 4
  • Release Date: 14/12/2000 (Japan), 29/05/2001 (US), 21/09/2001 (EU)
  • Genre: Fantasy RPG, Adventure, Dungeon Crawler

Posted in Recent Games

Dragon Age: Inquisition

Posted on by Hobbit Of Hyrule

I have got a LOT to say about this game.

I would day that the only fantasy RPG that has had more of my time dedicated to it would be Skyrim, and this is bearing in mind that Skyrim is currently 8 years old.

I had never played a Dragon Age game before (or even heard of the series to be quite honest!), but my friends were quite excited when this game was announced, so I looked into it. The premise seemed like something I could get behind so I decided to give it a go, but I was not prepared for how much I was going to enjoy this game.

The story is phenomenal, and there is a huge amount of story to get through, and with so many side missions as well, you are not going to run out of things to do any time soon.

The character creation is mostly good – you will pick your race, gender and class, and then you will create your character, and while the creator does have a fair amount of choice. Unfortunately one thing that I don’t like is the green atmospheric setting that the creator is in. I have sometimes found that when fiddling with various skin tones, hair colours and complexion options, the end result can sometimes look different when you get into the game.

The characters are all so wildly different, there will no doubt be characters that you like and dislike, as they all have such unique personalities. You are given conversational choices when speaking with your party members, which will often shape what they think of you, and this is also the case with many of the in-game actions and choices that you will make. Everyone will have an opinion on what you do, and you will find that some party members like your way of thinking more than others.

You also have the option to romance certain people, as long as you fit the bill with regards to who they like .. for example, one character will only be interested in human or elvish females. There isn’t a romance that I haven’t enjoyed so far, all the ones I have attempted have been well-crafted, and display a different side to the characters in question, a vulnerable side which you would not get to see otherwise.

Crafting is a big deal in this game. You will not be using a lot of the armours or weapons that you find in this game – not if you’re a thing like me. There are many resources to be found and gathered in the world, which can in turn be used to craft equipment for you and your party, and this is the best method of kitting yourself out as you can create something that best suits your playstyle, as different materials give different bonuses.

The game has several different provinces for you to explore and journey across, with your base acting as a hub world for you to do all your crafting, socialising, and choosing which province to head off to. All of the provinces you will visit are vastly unique, each one acting like a separate open world, without too much restriction on where you can go besides the level of the enemies in that area.

I have created many characters on this game to play different options and styles, as there is certainly a lot of replay value here. There are a lot of variations within the story and the social aspects between different races and classes, a testament to how much thought has gone into creating the mindset of the characters.

Something I must mention is the soundtrack – there are very few games that have a soundtrack as excellent as this. Dramatic battles, heart wrenching cut scenes, vast open worlds .. all of these things are perfectly complimented with the corresponding tracks.

The DLC for this game is possibly the best that I have ever played, Trespasser in particular. I frequently see the GOTY edition for sale for less than £10, and I always think about what a ridiculous bargain that is. If you haven’t played this game and you’re fan of fantasy worlds, you should definitely give it a go.

  • Platform: Playstation 3, Playstation 4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PC
  • Release Date: 18/11/2014 (US), 20/11/2014 (Aus), 21/11/2014 (EU)
  • Genre: Fantasy RPG, Adventure

Posted in Recent Games

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey

Posted on by Hobbit Of Hyrule

Now this is an interesting one. Like many avid gamers, I bought the very first Assassin’s Creed game, and I really enjoyed it, it felt very different to anything I had played before. Then with Assassin’s Creed 2, I felt that it was even more enjoyable, with a more interesting main character, but there was a point where it felt like it was just the same game in a different setting with no huge changes or innovative features. I believe Brotherhood was the last one that I played. By this time, I felt like I had played enough of the franchise, and lost interest in it.

For some reason, after all this time Assassin’s Creed Odyssey caught my eye. I do enjoy Ancient Greece and their mythologies, so that was already enough to pique my interest. It features a huge open world which is another massive plus for me, and it also has an equipment setup that you would expect to see in an RPG. All these things put together were more than enough to make me want to check this out and see what it’s about, and I ended up making my first Assassin’s Creed purchase in a long time.

For me, it is such a breath of fresh air compared to the older games – the format has been completely rejigged, and it really has paid off. You can pick to play as either Alexios or Kassandra, so having the choice to play as a male or female is another nice change to the series.

There hasn’t really been an element of this game that I haven’t enjoyed yet – the story that I have completed so far has been interesting, the actual gameplay is excellent, I like the changes that have been made to the combat since I last played Assassin’s Creed, and I do love the seafaring so far! Having your own ship and crew and sailing around Greece, bombarding pirate ships, boarding them and plundering their treasures – it’s all good fun! The game world is simply stunning, it really is something to behold.

This is the kind of game that makes me want to take my time to slowly make my way through the story and various missions, so I can really take in the world that has been created for us gamers. It has certainly restored my faith in the series, and I shall be keeping an eye on future releases from now on.

  • Platform: Playstation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch (Japan only), PC
  • Release Date: 05/10/18
  • Genre: Action, Adventure RPG, Stealth

Posted in New Games

Dauntless

Posted on by Hobbit Of Hyrule

As someone who loves to save money, I often find myself trying out Free To Play games, and most don’t find their way into my regular gaming rotation … but Dauntless has certainly ignored that trend.

Dauntless is primarily a squad based game where a team of up to four slayers are tasked with defeating behemoths. There is a hub area where you can craft and upgrade your weapons, armour and consumables, accept and hand in quests, access the store to browse and purchase premium designs and items, and view your progress towards the “Hunt Pass” (think of Fortnite’s battle pass).

The combat is quite in depth, with quite a lot to learn very quickly. Firstly there are the different weapons – all with their own benefits. You have swords, axes, hammers, chain blades, war pikes, aether strikers and repeaters. All of these have different combos and special abilities for you to master, and on top of that there are also different kinds of damage.

You have basic damage, part damage, wound damage and stagger damage. You need behemoth parts to craft and upgrade your weapons and armour, and you get those mostly by breaking them off of the behemoths after you’ve done enough damage to the part in question. Wound damage will eventually expose wounds which then allow you to cause extra damage, and stagger damage will cause the behemoth to fall over, presenting an opportunity for you to get some easy hits in.

Then you also have the elements to add into the mix. Neutral, Fire, Ice, Lightning, Terra, Radiant, and Umbral. Every behemoth has an element, and all of them are weak to another element, with the exception of neutral. The best way to approach these elemental beasts is to have a weapon of the opposite element, and then armour of the same element, so if you were fighting a fire behemoth, you would want to take an ice weapon with fire armour. The element of the equipment you craft corresponds with the element of the behemoth that the parts came from.

Lastly, every weapon and armour piece have their own individual perks, as well as slots for you to add other perks that you will collect as you level up. These have a wide array of benefits, so you can choose which ones best suit your current needs.

I have really enjoyed playing this game, and at the moment I’m liking the challenge of trying to collect lots of behemoth parts so I can craft all the weapons and armours as I level up.

There are a number of different areas that you could end up in when entering a hunt. The weathers and and environments change depending on the elements of the behemoth, but all areas you arrive in appear battle-torn, with huge spears poking out of cliff sides, presumably from airships attempting to attack the beasts.

I really like the designs of the behemoths themselves – it’s clear that a lot of thought has gone into creating the creatures, and that’s only made more obvious as you start to aim your shots for certain parts of the monsters in an effort to collect the drops you need.

One of the best things about this game is that it is cross platform! As a console gamer, I often can’t play with some of my friends as a fair few of them favour PC gaming, but I have been able to play Dauntless with these friends which has made it all the more enjoyable.

But Dauntless isn’t quite finished yet, there are still some tweaks and changes to expect, and the website even includes a road map for us to have a look and see what is going to be implemented in the future. Here is a link to the page for anyone who wants to check that out: https://playdauntless.com/roadmap/

All in all, this is definitely worth you downloading and having a go, see what you make of it! The game is free after all, so there isn’t much reason to not try it!

  • Platform: Playstation 4, Xbox One, PC (Nintendo Switch release expected)
  • Release Date: 26/09/19 (Official release)
  • Genre: Action RPG, Squad-Based, Hunting

Posted in Old Games

Final Fantasy VIII

Posted on by Hobbit Of Hyrule

In light of the new remaster that has just hit the current generation of consoles, I figured I would talk about one of my favourite games from one of my favourite franchises .. Final Fantasy VIII!

I never actually owned this on the Playstation, but got this when it hit the Playstation 3, and I was simply enthralled. It is unlike any other Final Fantasy game that I have played with it’s unique junctioning system, where you enhance the members of your party by assigning the various GFs (Guardian Forces) to them, along with magic which you must “draw” from the monsters around the world.

As with any game in the series, the characters are all wildly unique in their own way, with a variety of weapons and personalities. The new remastered version brings us refreshed character models, so the party have never looked better!

The characters are in fact some of my favourite throughout the whole series – in particular, Squall Leonhart, Quistis Trepe, and Seifer Almasy. Squall is my favourite of all the Final Fantasy protagonists, and Seifer is a fantastic rival character in my opinion.

The character development that takes place as you progress through the story is very deep and emotional, though I won’t mention anything specific to avoid spoilers for the sake of the people who may not have played this game yet.

This is a long game, one that you will need to sink many hours into if you want to complete the story, let alone complete everything. The original Playstation version had 4 game discs as it was such a large game. There are lots of optional areas to explore, particularly in the second half of the game, lots of enemies to fight, cards to collect and card games to win, and there are GFs for you to find.

There are some interesting themes that are tackled in the story, personal growth, memory loss, love and fate, not to mention the controversial nature of a school dedicated to training teens to become an army of elite mercenaries!

The remastered version has actually added a few features that help you blitz through the story, which I would say have been added specifically for those of us who have already completed the challenge of the game, and simply want to experience the story again. There is a fast forward setting which allows you to play x3 times faster (but keeps the music at the regular frequency thankfully), a boost mode which gives the party full health and full limit break, and a no encounters option which of course turns off random encounters. Personally I am definitely making use of the x3 mode, as one of my favourite parts of these kind of games is grinding, levelling, all the things that most gamers would probably complain about!

This is absolutely one of my favourites, and definitely what I would consider a classic. I would say the remastered version is well-deserved, and I’m really looking forward to completing it!

  • Platform: Playstation, Playstation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PC
  • Release Date: 11/02/1999-23/03/2000 (Region and platform Dependant)
  • Rerelease Date: 03/09/19
  • Genre: Fantasy RPG, Adventure

Posted in Recent Games

Red Dead Redemption 2

Posted on by Hobbit Of Hyrule

Well, firstly I should confess that I never played the first Red Dead Redemption, but I did carry some basic knowledge of the game from what I’ve seen on the odd YouTube video here and there.

I decided to give this one a go, and that was a decision I certainly did not regret.

The story is so deep, I think there are lots of small details which could easily go unnoticed for anyone not paying proper attention (slightly guilty of this on my first playthrough) and the characters are the same really – if you interact with the camp and do all side missions, then you will get a feel for each character and quickly decide who you like and dislike – and doing this makes the story much more impactful for you as a player!

You’re also able to make decisions on how the protagonist, Arthur, proceeds with different story and side missions. The “Honour” bar keeps track of how good or bad a person your Arthur is. I feel that this is another thing which will greatly impact how you react to the story, I know for a fact that I found myself getting very emotional at certain pivotal points.

There’s plenty to be getting on with as well, very little chance of you getting bored! Besides the story and the side missions, there’s hunting for legendary animals, bounties to collect, gangs and their hideouts to wipe out, lots of secrets concealed throughout the world, and of course collectables!

You will also be able to dress up your protagonist with a wide variety of options, which is always a good thing for me! My first Arthur was a clean, well-dressed gentleman, whereas my second was a rugged, scruffy cowboy. There are so many options, made even better by the fact you have the ability to keep multiple outfits in your loadout.

Weapons are another customisable factor in the game, there are a fair few to choose from, and different materials that you can use to give them your own personal look. (As well as actual attachments that offer practical boosts)

The world itself is stunning, a beautiful open world which you will most likely be marveling at as you ride through it on horseback – it’s truly a credit to the design team.

This is definitely a game I recommend for anyone who enjoys open world story-driven games!

  • Platform: Playstation 4, Xbox One, PC
  • Release Date: 26/10/18 (Console), 05/11/19 (PC)
  • Genre: Action, Adventure, Shooter

Posted in Recent Games

Persona 5

Posted on by Hobbit Of Hyrule

I had never actually heard of the Persona series until a friend mentioned it shortly before the game released. After a small amount of digging around on the internet, I quickly decided this would be a game to add to my collection. It was definitely the right choice!

This is certainly one of the most unique, story-driven RPGs I have ever played. The story was simply phenomenal, I could barely put this game down as I was so desperate to see what was going to happen next. It takes a long time to get through, but I feel that there is more than enough variety in the activities and options that are available to you to stop you from losing interest.

The game almost plays like it’s actually a Japanese anime, and this is reinforced by the story cutscenes which actually are in the format of an anime.

I find the battle system very interesting, the standard expectations for a turn-by-turn system are in place, but the Persona system is what I enjoy the most – a feature which could be compared to Pokémon. The main bulk of enemies you fight will be Personas which you can in fact collect. There is a large variety of Personas that are available to the main character, and I particularly enjoyed the mythical theme around each of them – you will spot many legendary creatures, and even Gods. They all have their own strengths and weaknesses for you to discover, so most of them can be useful in some way.

A large part of the game is forming bonds with your teammates and other potential allies, and as your bonds deepen, various benefits will be given to you. This could be some form of service in the world, or it could be a maneuver/tactic in battle. It definitely pays to try to deepen your bonds as much as possible.

The soundtrack to this game is like nothing I have heard before – a unique sound without a doubt! Catchy tunes can be found just about wherever you go, in particular the standard battle music – I have found myself pulling tracks up on YouTube to listen to!

I think the social commentary in play here is particularly interesting, the story tackles an array of issues, mainly regarding “higher up” figures, and really makes you think about people’s perception of others, deep-running corruption, the reaction of the public to the media, and I can’t think of another game that so effectively makes you think about such modern day issues.

There are so many more things I could talk about, but I wouldn’t want to give too much away for anyone who might not have played the game yet! I would definitely give Persona 5 my full recommendation, easily something that you can sink hours and hours into!

  • Platform: Playstation 3, Playstation 4
  • Release Date: 15/09/16 (Japan), 04/04/17 (Worldwide)
  • Genre: Fantasy RPG,