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I'm happy to see more people chiming in with their thoughts on how much they enjoyed Prey.

 feeder wrote:

Voss wrote:

 feeder wrote:

Voss wrote:

 feeder wrote:
Horizon: Zero Dawn. Best game I have played in a long time.

I honestly don't get this game. It's every open world-collect junk-climb towers game. The story was predictable and cliche (it seemed obvious that the ignorant savages she lived near were addressing her literally during the childhood sequence), and the combat was pretty stilted and same-old-thing for games of that type.

<noncontent>

Great. So... what makes it 'best game you've played in a long time' and not just more of the standard ubisoft formula?

Story, characters, combat, robot dinosaurs..

But two of those were God awful, one felt like Tomb Raider (Reboot) and I'll give you one of them.

As for me? Well I dont want to chose one, and not because there are several that struck me as being great. No I wont chose one because none really stand out to me. However, if I think really hard the games that drew me in most this year would be;

Mass Effect Andromeda, despite all the hate leveled against it and going into it with extremely low expectations, I actually enjoyed the game quite alot, had fun with the single player and the multiplayer and honestly did not mind the Story.

South Park: The Fractured But Whole. It was fun, but to me, not quite as good as the first one.

Nioh also springs to mind, it was fun, drew me in, though I still need to beat it.


Other than that the new games I played this year were either mostly alright with a few flaws, or they were like Horizon: Zero Dawn and I hated every minute of it because of its story and characters. Ok a bit of an exaggeration, because I do like the open world exploration gameplay. I'd just rather play Tomb Raider or Rise of the Tomb Raider .

 VictorVonTzeentch wrote:


Other than that the new games I played this year were either mostly alright with a few flaws, or they were like Horizon: Zero Dawn and I hated every minute of it because of its story and characters. Ok a bit of an exaggeration, because I do like the open world exploration gameplay. I'd just rather play Tomb Raider or Rise of the Tomb Raider .

Why did you continue to play a game where you hated every minute of?

What about Aloy or the story made you hate it?

 feeder wrote:

 VictorVonTzeentch wrote:


Other than that the new games I played this year were either mostly alright with a few flaws, or they were like Horizon: Zero Dawn and I hated every minute of it because of its story and characters. Ok a bit of an exaggeration, because I do like the open world exploration gameplay. I'd just rather play Tomb Raider or Rise of the Tomb Raider .

Why did you continue to play a game where you hated every minute of?

What about Aloy or the story made you hate it?

I didnt continue, I stopped. I didn't like anything about her personality, or the personality of the other characters. For me the way she acted was unlikable. The characters made the story unlikable for me, the dialogue made it unlikable. I tried going back and watching my roommate play and all I did was roll my eyes.

Mind you I also watched my roommate play through The Last of Us and didnt really care for it's story either. So my opinion might just be rubbish.

I had no idea HZD was such a polarizing game. Evryone I know IRL thinks it's fantastic.

I think Aloy is one of the best, most realized characters video games have ever made. Different strokes I guess.

 feeder wrote:
I had no idea HZD was such a polarizing game. Evryone I know IRL thinks it's fantastic.

I think Aloy is one of the best, most realized characters video games have ever made. Different strokes I guess.

Kinda the opposite with my group, where everyone found her instantly unlikable, and the two that have beat it only kept playing because they liked the gameplay.

You've got it spot on though, different strokes.

 VictorVonTzeentch wrote:

Mind you I also watched my roommate play through The Last of Us and didnt really care for it's story either. So my opinion might just be rubbish.

I have significant issues with The Last of Us, though they all revolve around gameplay and have nothing to do with the story.

I think you're the only person I've met who doesn't like Aloy.


But it's Horses for Courses. For example the Zelda series have never interested me at all, and BoTW just seems a bit dull to watch.

I didn't get too many games this year but the one I enjoyed playing the most I think was from the year before.. rise of the tomb raider.

Also played a lot of Elder Scrolls Online when Morrrowind came out, but I wouldn't say that was my favorite. It's more like a time killer when I feel like doing a quest or 2.

 welshhoppo wrote:
I think you're the only person I've met who doesn't like Aloy.


But it's Horses for Courses. For example the Zelda series have never interested me at all, and BoTW just seems a bit dull to watch.

Im right there with you on Zelda games, never interested me, though I differ in that BoTW seemed like it could be fun.

To not just detract, I will add that Ghost Recon ended up being way better than I thought it would be and had a blast playing it with friends. I even finished the main story with out them when they stopped playing for a while.

Same here with Wildlands, it died out because each session sadly turned into a hours long scavenger hunt for medals and weapon parts instead of doing actual missions.

I wound up completing the game solo with the less than stellar AI helping out, but still a great game.

 curran12 wrote:
Easy.

Persona 5 hands down. Not even a contest.

Would you recommend this to someone who knows very little about the series? I've been a bit burned on the last few jrpgs I bought, and this one looks like, oppressively Japanese. Yet I have heard many times that it's good. I'm a little interested, but I'm not sure if you have to have a ton of investment in the story to enjoy it.

I wanted to play horizon dawn but no playstation :/

Had a blast with zelda botw on the switch

and Overwatch was fun for all of the first 3 seasons.

 Kap'n Krump wrote:

 curran12 wrote:
Easy.

Persona 5 hands down. Not even a contest.

Would you recommend this to someone who knows very little about the series? I've been a bit burned on the last few jrpgs I bought, and this one looks like, oppressively Japanese. Yet I have heard many times that it's good. I'm a little interested, but I'm not sure if you have to have a ton of investment in the story to enjoy it.

To be honest, P5 is probably the best installment in the series for a newbie to jump into. Although there's easter eggs from previous games, it has no direct tie-in with other persona games other than the velvet room and the basic format. Story-wise they use a new cast and setting so you don't have to worry too much about having to be caught up with the lore. Game-play wise it's by far the most intuitive and they've refined combat to feel a lot less grindy. The aspect of it being Japanese honestly is just part of the setting and you'll really forget about it once you get caught into the plot, which you pretty much are immediately from the beginning.

 Grimskul wrote:

 Kap'n Krump wrote:

 curran12 wrote:
Easy.

Persona 5 hands down. Not even a contest.

Would you recommend this to someone who knows very little about the series? I've been a bit burned on the last few jrpgs I bought, and this one looks like, oppressively Japanese. Yet I have heard many times that it's good. I'm a little interested, but I'm not sure if you have to have a ton of investment in the story to enjoy it.

To be honest, P5 is probably the best installment in the series for a newbie to jump into. Although there's easter eggs from previous games, it has no direct tie-in with other persona games other than the velvet room and the basic format. Story-wise they use a new cast and setting so you don't have to worry too much about having to be caught up with the lore. Game-play wise it's by far the most intuitive and they've refined combat to feel a lot less grindy. The aspect of it being Japanese honestly is just part of the setting and you'll really forget about it once you get caught into the plot, which you pretty much are immediately from the beginning.

What he said.

With one notable exception, the Persona games have always been completely stand-alone. Persona 2 had some playable characters from the first game show up (at least one of whom was playable in Persona 2), but you didn't miss anything if you didn't play the first game. Persona 4 had a cameo by a non-playable character from Persona 3, but again, it was just something extra tossed in there for the fans. So far as I'm aware, the closest that Persona 5 gets to a cameo is a poster featuring a character from Persona 4 (Rise - she's a singer and part of the party in Persona 4). If you don't know who she is, you won't care. If you do know who she is, and you happen to notice the poster, then you'll smile and nod and then move on. That's it.

(The exception I mentioned above is the unusual case of Persona 2; Persona 2 is actually two games - Innocent Sin, and Eternal Punishment - that cover roughly the same period of time with some of the same characters, but in different time lines. To say more would be to reveal massive spoilers, so I'll just leave it at that.)

There are some spin-off games that include the members of both the P3 and P4 casts (a portable console RPG, two fighting games, and a rhythm game). But they have nothing to do with Persona 5.

 Kap'n Krump wrote:

 curran12 wrote:
Easy.

Persona 5 hands down. Not even a contest.

Would you recommend this to someone who knows very little about the series? I've been a bit burned on the last few jrpgs I bought, and this one looks like, oppressively Japanese. Yet I have heard many times that it's good. I'm a little interested, but I'm not sure if you have to have a ton of investment in the story to enjoy it.

Not to echo the others, but absolutely. As a matter of fact, Persona 5 was my first game played in the series. And funnily enough, I was very much like you in that I was very down on jrpgs, but P5 really kickstarted the genre for me. As far as the "oppressively Japanese", the game is set in a very authentic Japan, authentic as in you can match real photos to locations in the game. But it is not oppressively "anime", if that makes sense. P5's characters are all very well written and relatable (sometimes to a frightening degree), with nothing in the way of the real common tropes and cliches. I think the best way to say it is that there were no characters that I wanted to avoid, which is a big rarity in jrpgs for me.

Persona 5 is on my "I'm poor so I'll pick this up when I have money list."


As I had never really heard of the series until 5 came out. I knew about it, but I didn't really know anything about it.

I've not played much this year. The best game I played was yakuza 0.

Dawn of War 3 was pretty average and destiny 2 just got dull a little too quick. CoD WW 2 was ok, definitely not GOTY quality though.

I think that's it for me on 2017 releases.

Seeing how LiS: Before the Storm will be released later this month, if it is anywhere near as good as the previous chapter that will bump up to being my game of the year.

Evolve is the game of eternity in my heart
I'm not crying I swear