Hero-of-Time Posted June 25, 2022 Posted June 25, 2022 1 hour ago, Happenstance said: Anyone ever play the Atelier games? Still looking for a jrpg to buy and it seems like Atelier Ryza could be a good jumping on point but I basically know nothing about that series. I've not but I've heard good things about the recent entries in the series. What about the Ys games? Have you played any of those?
Happenstance Posted June 25, 2022 Posted June 25, 2022 11 minutes ago, Hero-of-Time said: I've not but I've heard good things about the recent entries in the series. What about the Ys games? Have you played any of those? Yeah that's an idea. I've owned the early ones and they never clicked with me but maybe the later ones will. It's the same thing I had with the Legend of Heroes games. I started with the first one but being in the mood for a more modern RPG I never really latched on but also didn't know if I could just skip to a later one.
Happenstance Posted June 25, 2022 Posted June 25, 2022 (edited) Decided to go with Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel. Read up a bit more about it and it looks like while playing the earlier arc will help with the story, it's not a necessity so if I like this then it'll give me a 4 game jrpg series to look forward to. Edited June 25, 2022 by Happenstance
Happenstance Posted June 26, 2022 Posted June 26, 2022 Bought a few more games in the sale, think that's probably me done now 2
Ike Posted June 26, 2022 Posted June 26, 2022 20 hours ago, Happenstance said: Yeah that's an idea. I've owned the early ones and they never clicked with me but maybe the later ones will. It's the same thing I had with the Legend of Heroes games. I started with the first one but being in the mood for a more modern RPG I never really latched on but also didn't know if I could just skip to a later one. Ys IX has a demo so you could try that to see if you like it. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1351630/Ys_IX_Monstrum_Nox/ 1
Happenstance Posted June 26, 2022 Posted June 26, 2022 23 hours ago, Happenstance said: Decided to go with Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel. Read up a bit more about it and it looks like while playing the earlier arc will help with the story, it's not a necessity so if I like this then it'll give me a 4 game jrpg series to look forward to. I'm about 3 hours into Trails of Cold Steel and I'm enjoying it. It doesn't feel like the most unique jrpg out there but it's solid enough and I'm sure it'll pick up. I can see where some of the Persona 4 comparisons come from with spending time with classmates. Only real complaint would be the music. I don't think I ever realised how important music is to me in games like this but this is some of the most generic ass jrpg panpipe music I've ever heard and it's starting to drive me a bit nuts 😆
Emerald Emblem Posted June 27, 2022 Posted June 27, 2022 (edited) On 25/06/2022 at 12:41 PM, Happenstance said: Anyone ever play the Atelier games? Still looking for a jrpg to buy and it seems like Atelier Ryza could be a good jumping on point but I basically know nothing about that series. Seems I'm a bit late at this point. But I would Highly recommend Atelier Ryza, it's going to be one of those games where farming ingredients might be a chore, but then games with alchemy and the like normally are. But I do find the combat some of the best in the series yet. The plot as well is pretty solid. Edited June 27, 2022 by Emerald Emblem 1
Happenstance Posted June 27, 2022 Posted June 27, 2022 4 minutes ago, Emerald Emblem said: Seems I'm a bit late at this point. But I would Highly recommend Atelier Ryza, it's going to be one of those games where farming ingredients might be a chore, but then games with alchemy and the like normally are. But I do find the combat some of the best in the series yet. The plot as well is pretty solid. Not one I'll get straight away now after buying Trails of Cold Steel but it's nice to know it's worth getting thanks. 1
Happenstance Posted July 4, 2022 Posted July 4, 2022 As I'm on a bit of a Star Wars kick I added one more Summer sale game today with Jedi Fallen Order. I have played it elsewhere but never got massively far I to it so I'm hoping playing it on the Deck will help that. I did install KOTOR this weekend as well. Originally I was holding off playing it for the remake but I decided it would be different enough and far enough away that it wouldn't matter. As soon as I started playing and remembered the pc version didn't really have controller support without modding I decided it wasn't worth the hassle. Guess I'll be waiting for the remake after all. 1
Dcubed Posted July 8, 2022 Posted July 8, 2022 So... err... "Q3" went by pretty quickly... I'M HHHHUUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGEEEEE!!!!!!!! But I'm also so smol... I am now the proud owner of a Steam Deck! 3 1
Julius Posted July 8, 2022 Posted July 8, 2022 Ooooo nice get @Dcubed, perfectly timed for the weekend – enjoy! Anything in particular you're looking forward to giving a whirl on it? Hoping this means I get an update on mine soon...
Dcubed Posted July 8, 2022 Posted July 8, 2022 (edited) 14 minutes ago, Julius said: Ooooo nice get @Dcubed, perfectly timed for the weekend – enjoy! Anything in particular you're looking forward to giving a whirl on it? Hoping this means I get an update on mine soon... Well naturally I wanted to put this thing through its paces, so the first game I decided to play on it had to make it sweat with only the most powerful, demanding and extreme gaming experience possible... No, seriously. How is this game not on Switch yet!?!?! I'm looking forward to trying out games that aren't on Switch, like Devil May Cry 4 & 5 (currently downloading), Apeture Desk Job, Soul Calibur 6, Sonic & All Stars Racing Transformed and the like I'm also planning on dual booting this thing with Windows, so I can use it as a handy productivity device too (will particularily be great for video capture/streaming with my Elgato capture card!). But it'll mostly be used to play all those games that I can't play on Switch, the odd Playstation console exclusive (like FF7 Remake, Shenmue 3 and God of War)... and the few ones that have shit ports on the Switch (like Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night). Have ordered a USB Dock that should be arriving tomorrow, so I'll have a nice means of playing PC games on my TV at last too! Edited July 8, 2022 by Dcubed 1 1
martinist Posted July 8, 2022 Posted July 8, 2022 I'm on the cusp of snapping and buying a 3060 ti or a 3070. Might wait a month or so to see if they drop in price a little though.
Eddage Posted July 8, 2022 Posted July 8, 2022 2 hours ago, martinist said: I'm on the cusp of snapping and buying a 3060 ti or a 3070. Might wait a month or so to see if they drop in price a little though. I keep hearing that the 40 series is coming "soon", whatever that means Might be worth waiting for those to release as that would no doubt see the 30 series getting a price reduction. 1
Dcubed Posted July 10, 2022 Posted July 10, 2022 (edited) So I've been using my Steam Deck for a few days now and I wanted to give some initial thoughts... First off, I am enormously impressed with the native Steam OS experience. The UI is very slick, it honest to goodness feels like a console; it's fast, snappy, responsive and feels (mostly) really polished. It's not perfect though, I've had a few issues where sometimes the menu doesn't respond as expected (ignoring button presses, icons not being highlighted), but these are rare and usually fix themselves very quickly with a tap of the touch screen. The biggest issue though is in trying to buy games; I usually buy games on Steam using Paypal, but the Paypal pop-up page flat out does not work... meaning that I've had to buy games on the desktop and then download them onto Steam Deck after. Not ideal. The quick-settings tab is flat out amazing though, it's so dead simple and It Just Works. You can even store hardware performance profiles on a per-game basis! It's incredible! You can set TDP profiles per game and just completely forget about it! Brill! Setting brightness/volume settings works exactly as you'd expect, friends lists & text/voice chat work flawlessly, you could honestly fool me into thinking that this is a console and not a PC. The controls also work really well. I've had zero issues with controls with any of the games I've tested, all the X-input button icons show up as they should. The touchpad is also really nice, with a nice haptic sensor that gives a bit of feedback and with a trackball like feel to it. Games like Peggle play very very well with it! As far as compatibility goes, I've had no issues with stuttering, performance or full screen gameplay with games like Metal Gear Rising: Revengence (which is notorious for not playing nice with certain displays), and the framerate cap options work flawlessly with everything I've thrown at it. While I haven't tried every game I've owned yet (storage is a major issue, more on that later), I've been very impressed with the compatibility. I've only had one single game (Sonic CD) give me any compatibility issues thus far, and when you're playing? You honestly couldn't tell me that the games aren't running on Windows. Obviously, YMMV depending on your library, but thus far? Great stuff! I got my hands on a 3rd party dock yesterday and I've had the chance to try out Steam Deck on my TV as well. I'm very pleasantly surprised at how slick it all feels so far! Now, I know that there have been some teething issues with this, when the Steam Deck first came out there were all sorts of issues with the Docked experience; where a lot of them have now been addressed (such as now being able to force higher resolution settings to be available on external displays). Now, chucking the Steam Deck into a USB dock properly scales the Steam OS UI to the resolution of your display, and you can change the available resolution settings on a per-game basis within the Steam OS UI; so you can render games in 1080p/1440p/4k/whatever. Most importantly however, is the way that Steam OS handles bluetooth controllers. I've only tried out the Xbox One/Series controller so far, but it works nigh on flawlessly! You just turn it on and it automagically works. Best feature of all though? You can change the controller order within the Steam OS UI! This is a huge feature that makes it (almost) painless to swap between the Docked and Handheld experience, and greatly simplifies setting up multiplayer games! Of course, the Steam Deck can't turn off your controller for you when you're done using it, so you still have to turn off the controller itself; but that's a minor issue. Otherwise, the only other issue I have with the Docked experience is that games can't automatically switch resolutions like how Switch does... meaning that you have to set this manually within the game if you don't want to supersample down to 720p in Handheld mode. This is to be expected of course, but it's not a major issue. The games themselves look and run great. Have been able to run Devil May Cry 5 at max settings at 1080p on my TV with no issues so far. Very impressive stuff; but then again, I'm not running (or interested) in games like Cyberpunk that'll give this thing more of a workout. It's been able to run everything that I've thrown at it though with (almost) no issues thus far; and all my games happily run off of the SD card with no issues whatsoever The bigger issues with Steam Deck are those that are more fundamental and ones that you probably already knew going in... Storage. Damned storage. The long and short of it is that PC games are much larger than Switch games go on average. I only have a 256GB SD card in my Steam Deck currently (it's what I had lying around spare), but it really doesn't go very far. You will burn through SD card storage much more quickly than you will with Switch, and since the games are much larger too? Re-downloading games is that much more of a pain. One major issue that I wasn't expecting though is that Steam OS doesn't seem to recognise any USB external storage. The USB-C dock I got has a built-in SD card reader, so I tried that out? No dice. And USB harddrives/flash drives? Nothing. Steam OS just doesn't recognise it at all. This means that (as things stand), your only storage options with the native Steam OS experience is to use SD cards (via the handheld itself) or to upgrade the internal SSD; that's it. Now, I'm sure that external storage would work just fine with the desktop Linux experience? But I am not interested in using that for playing games at all, so that is no good for me (maybe I can use it for cold-storage? Dunno... will have to test that out, could be a better option than redownloading games maybe?). The other major issue lies in the desktop experience... it's Linux. I don't like Linux, have never liked Linux, and I still don't like Linux. Unfortunately, as things stand, there is currently no native support for dual booting Windows; you have to overwrite Steam OS with Windows and only have one OS booting at a time (there is currently a hacky workaround that autoboots into Windows and then gives you an option to boot into Steam OS from there, which is how the current "dual booting" works). Apparantly, Valve are currently working on a true dual-booting solution, but it's not available right now. So far? I'm very impressed with Steam Deck as a game playing device! It's almost like having a Switch PC! But if you're trying to get it to do more than just play Steam games? I think you'll be pretty disappointed. Everything involving the intended Steam OS experience is great so far though Edited July 10, 2022 by Dcubed 2
ArtMediocre Posted July 11, 2022 Posted July 11, 2022 On 7/8/2022 at 8:20 PM, Eddage said: I keep hearing that the 40 series is coming "soon", whatever that means Might be worth waiting for those to release as that would no doubt see the 30 series getting a price reduction. That usually means this fall. But there's also rumors of them postponing the launch because of the terrible 30-series demand, so now might be as good time as any to snag up a good card for a decent price @martinist. I would definitly recommend you go for a 3070 though, to have a card that'll last you a longer while. 1
martinist Posted July 13, 2022 Posted July 13, 2022 On 11/07/2022 at 10:15 AM, ArtMediocre said: That usually means this fall. But there's also rumors of them postponing the launch because of the terrible 30-series demand, so now might be as good time as any to snag up a good card for a decent price @martinist. I would definitly recommend you go for a 3070 though, to have a card that'll last you a longer while. I snapped and bought a 3070. Almost £600, gonna blow out my bank account but i'm replacing a 1060 with it so it's going to be quite an upgrade. 1
ArtMediocre Posted July 13, 2022 Posted July 13, 2022 Congrats! You're going to see quite a big bump in preformance, that's for sure I went from a 1070 to a 3080 my self, and it's such a beast!
martinist Posted July 14, 2022 Posted July 14, 2022 This thing is bigger than I thought it would be. Covers almost the entire length of my case. Also are the Nvidia drivers downloading really slow for anyone else? I'm hovering between 250 and 300kbps. They usually get done in a minute or so. Wierd.
Happenstance Posted July 14, 2022 Posted July 14, 2022 15 minutes ago, martinist said: This thing is bigger than I thought it would be. Covers almost the entire length of my case. Also are the Nvidia drivers downloading really slow for anyone else? I'm hovering between 250 and 300kbps. They usually get done in a minute or so. Wierd. You may have mentioned this before so sorry if you have and I'm just being lazy not looking past the most recent page but what's the spec of the rest of your computer?
martinist Posted July 14, 2022 Posted July 14, 2022 2 minutes ago, Happenstance said: You may have mentioned this before so sorry if you have and I'm just being lazy not looking past the most recent page but what's the spec of the rest of your computer? 1
Happenstance Posted July 14, 2022 Posted July 14, 2022 Ah very similar to mine then, only real difference is I have the 3060ti. 1
Julius Posted July 20, 2022 Posted July 20, 2022 (edited) PC features trailer for Spider-Man Remastered: Looks pretty damn great! Required specs from the PS Blog: Edited July 20, 2022 by Julius 1
Dcubed Posted July 20, 2022 Posted July 20, 2022 A GTX 950 can't even match PS4 settings? This is gonna be one real shitty PC port, isn't it?
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