I could see it. As someone who has been a huge fan of FF for decades, Remake felt like a fantastic return to form for the franchise. It not only finally found a way to make action combat that felt true to it’s JRPG roots - it managed to pack so much charm and nostalgia into everything. From the writing to the visual designs and the music and everything else it just all felt so full of heart, and without being afraid to expand upon what the original did. It handles the characters and the setting better than Square has done in any of the expanded media.
My biggest complaint towards Remake is that the pacing felt off - it too often felt like you were stuck on a linear path with minor sections of the original expanded into hours of dungeon crawling to make the game “full”. But the second part was always expected to be a larger more open experience and would likely naturally avoid these issues, so I always figured it could be something really special.
For clarity sake here, I never played the original FF7 on the PS1. So that right there could be why Remake left zero impression on me (i.e. I had zero nostalgia).
For me these titles are just linear action rpg’s with goofy characters, hub areas & lots of side-quests of variable quality. It also has that very Japanese JRPG ‘feel’ & look to it. Some people love that, whereas I’m somewhat ambivalent about these types of games.
None of their exclusives are from their internal studios. Are we saying third party exclusives are better than their PS studios?
Everyone seems to keep assuming that games like Stellar Blade and Rise of the Ronin will be hits but they could equally be another flop just like Foamstars was (is anyone even still talking about it?).
The studio behind Stellar Blade have never released a game before. Team Ninja is a much safer bet, however even then there’s been a few hit and miss (Stranger of Paradise).
I would probably say 2016 for me as I had Uncharted 4, Ratchet 2016, Alienation and Shadow of the Beast but in general, I wouldn’t argue. And thanks!! I’m super hyped for Rebirth, Blade and Helldivers 2!! But one game at a time. lol
While the studios are third party, the games are first party. I don’t know why so many can’t understand this yet will go back to the launch of Xbox One with Ryse, Dead Rising 3, Killer Instinct as well as Titanfall and Forza Horizon 2 in 2024 claiming it was a better first party lineup than what Sony had at their PS4 launch and in 2014 which is true. Xbox One was better for 2013 launch, 2014 and 2015. 2016 was a draw in my opinion. 2017/2018/2019/2020 all belonged to Sony in my opinion.
Anyway, point being is that all those games I mentioned for Xbox One were NOT developed by internally owned studios at the time and only Playground Games became one four years later.
A better question would be - what would YOU rather have? Those first party Xbox One games for 2013/2014 OR nothing? I would like to believe that your answer would be the same as mine which is the fact that I would rather have those games than nothing at all.
Same applies here. Would I rather have Helldivers 2, Ronin and Blade OR nothing? Obviously, im choosing the three games especially since im very interested in all three of them and hyped for two of three (Ronin will be played but im more hyped for the other two games).
The third party exclusives for PlayStation 5 is Foamstars which okay, that seems to be garbage but they have a superb game in a few more days in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. Are you telling me that you wouldn’t play Rebirth if it was on Xbox day one? Come on.
Rise of the Ronin is from Team Ninja and im expecting low to mid 80’s on Open Critic. Team Ninja is great and Ronin will easily tide me over while I wait for Tsushima 2. As for Stellar Blade, im expecting mid 80’s on Open Critic. The fast paced combat of DMC/Bayonetta with the open world RPG elements of Nier Automata. Oh hell yeah!!!
Seriously, Sony’s first four months are stacked with first and third party console exclusives so I don’t understand how anyone who owns a PlayStation 5 wouldn’t be hyped when there’s so many new games to play!!
I mean who cares if it’s a 1st party game from Sony’s internal studios or not? For Sony and for its community it’s still a Sony game. No one should care about the fact that Helldivers 2, Bloodborne, Death Stranding, Ori and the Blind Forest or Age of Empires IV were made by 3rd party studios. They’re 1st party games/IPs. That’s all that matters if you don’t do list wars on certain forums and Twitter.
And 3rd party games like Final Fantasy VII Rebirth? It’s an exclusive game. Your normal customer doesn’t care if it’s a “1st party” or “3rd party” game. All he/she knows is the fact that games like Final Fantasy XVI, Final Fantasy VII Remake or Final Fantasy VII Rebirth are console exclusive PS5 games.
So back to the previous post. Yeah the PS5 has an incredible console-exclusive lineup this year.
The Last of Us 2: Part II Remastered, Granblue Fantasy: Relink, Pacific Drive, Helldivers 2, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Rise of the Ronin, Stellar Blade, CONCORD, Until Dawn Remake, Astro Bot (according to Grubb), Silent Hill 2 Remake, Phantom Blade Zero, etc.
It’s really impressive.
Projections are crashing because the console price is not going down. People are forgetting that in the latter part of the life of the console, you are mainly selling to people younger and/or wth less money to spend. Recall all those cheap ps2.
Stock crashes because profit is very low. There is no money to gain for investors in ps5 business. This is also why MS is changing. Currently it would be much more opportunist to invest in AI or cloud than in gaming for MS. Not saying that they do not gain money here, they do, but if for 1$ invested in gaming, you get 1.5$ here and 2$ in AI endeavors, the investor will ask why you do not favor AI than gaming. Just an example of why stock is not responding to “a fantastic list of exclusives”.
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth isn’t going to shift a needle for the PS5. Its fans & people who’ll buy the game are already gaming on PlayStation. Let’s not act like it’s a genre that’s universally loved. FF is FF, i.e. fans tend to make it appear like it’s way bigger than it actually is. FF 13 & 15 were released on the Xbox & you know what? I barely touched them (I did an hour of 15 on Gamepass before bouncing off).
I think people with list wars & talk of exclusives are missing half the picture, which is namely the fact PlayStation owners buy the console… to play stuff like Fortnite, COD, GTA & Fifa. Hogwarts as well.
The only reason a third party game like this or the other third party titles are getting the attention is because Playstation has made it exclusive and PlayStation’s internal studios (not third party) has built up that reputation.
It’s the big in-house exclusives that I’m interested in. Their lineup being third party exclusives and remasters of games I have already played just seems lackluster to me.
Games like Yakuza, Nioh, NieR and Persona back in 2017 should never have been exclusive in the first place (even if it was Xbox’s fault).
Arbitrarily deciding what “don’t count” is list warring in its own way. What would make that statement not true for Towerborne or something?
I thought Stellar Blade was going to be a 5-8 hour linear small game, but then they did that blowout and showed that it’s pretty expansive and so I was sold on it.
I did not say they do not count. I did say that nobody would care about the first game of this Korean studio if Sony did not push its exclusivity. IMO.
Well yeah, nobody would know it was coming out if they were self publishing it. People care about the game because Sony put eyes on it with state of play marketing.
I never said that Final Fantasy VII Rebirth was going to sell consoles or this or that. All I said was that im hyped for it which I am. BOTH consoles are third party multi-platform platforms.
Exclusives matter. They pull you into the brand, the console, platform and eco-system. You stay for everything else.
Anyway, purchased Helldivers 2 digitally for PlayStation 5 and signed up for a month of PlayStation Plus since it’s required to play the game.
Played 6+ hours and it’s really good. Love the combat and shooting but holy hell, is the game hard playing solo. I thought that maybe I could get to level 2 or 3 (out of the 10 difficulty levels there is) but I can’t get past level 2 which is easy. lol
The insects are a lot easier than the automatons which can slaughter you pretty quickly. It’s definitely very addictive because I didn’t want to stop playing.
I have some minor nitpicks which I have in every game but it’s definitely challenging, intense and a lot of fun to play. Will go back to it once I get through all my other games and should tide me over until I get an actual pure shooter in Division Heartland or perhaps something else.
