Cloud Monday - Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin - Part 1 - Useful Frequent Auto-Saves

This week's Cloud Monday video is part 1 of playing Square Enix's Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin via the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service to my Japanese launch model PS4.

Even tho this is a somewhat recent release, it has been in development for a long time, probably so long that it originally wasn't set for PS5. So i was wondering how this game's design would work if it was streamed from the cloud to me. For example, would it have a traditional save system like Scarlet Nexus did and thus be a poor choice because of how the save system works or would it have a more "casual" approach letting you save everywhere, like Disgaea D3 did. turns out it's both.

Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin has fixed save points in the environment and this isn't great for a game being streamed via PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service as there's only a 20 second warning before you're kicked off it. However, the game does appear to have an Auto-Save system that is frequently saving in the background. The Auto-Saves appear to be the same as a manual save, but the whole system is shrouded in mystery as we, the player, get no choice as to what save slot is used. both the manual and auto saves just save. Ultimately, the positive is that we will probably loose some progress but in the end not too much.

The quest you have to ask yourself is are you willing to replay bits of Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin again. Even after this first part, i'm not excited to go back because of how clunky the whole thing is. the tutorial is bad, the controls have issues, the story is nonsense so far, and graphically playing it in performance mode makes everything look so soft it might as well be PS3 graphics. 

One interesting issue the game has that is streaming related is that the in-game cutscenes are visually stunning and full of intricate small details that the bandwidth being used to stream this to me from PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service is having a hard time to keep up. A little early on there's a moment when the camera is spinning around the main character in a field of wheat and things stop being highly detailed and crisp and instead go a little blurry. i say in the video it's like the bandwidth needed is just a little short for sequences such as that, whereas for the rest of the game it's fine.

Switch Funday - F-Zero 99 - Frozen Knight League, Classic, And Team Battle Modes

For Switch Funday i'm back with F-Zero 99 as over this Christmas period a new special league is available. Not only that, as i haven't played it in a while i was also keen to check out the recently added classic league.

The tricky thing is that the Frozen Knight League and the Classic Mode are both in rotation so it could be difficult to play both in the same video. thankfully i was lucky and i got to try out both, as well as some Team Battles and F-Zero 99 modes.

The Frozen Knight League seems to be nothing more than an aesthetic change to the circuits with some bonuses for the player after playing a certain number of races. I found the Classic Mode to be more interesting as it reduced the number of players to 20, dropped the spin attacks and skyway, and was presented in a 4:3 aspect ratio. all these made the game feel a little more retro. but it still had the element of racers being removed from the race if they didn't reach a certain position threshold. 

Online Saturday - Pokémon Unite - 7 More Panic Parade Matches

Today's Online Saturday video is on Pokémon Unite. My goal in Panic Parade is to beat it. last video, https://youtu.be/DAtMquAG-vA, i got to the final difficulty level and in this video my aim was for my teams and I to beat it. unfortunately, neither of us were able to get to wave 15 nor finish it. it seemed like wave 13 was the best we could get to. nevertheless, it was a fun time. there's commentary during this videos because i wanted to relax today, so sit back and enjoy the matches.

Mobile Friday - Dynasty Warriors M - Well Designed For Mobile, But 4.5GB Download First!

For Mobile Friday this week is i tried out Dynasty Warriors M on my iPhone 14 Pro. This game from Nexon is also out on Android.

Going in i was a little unsure about this game. it has a small file size, which made me worry there would be an additional download, and there were a lot of things you could buy for it, so i was concerned it would push me towards the shop and/or be full of ads. In the end, it was only the file size i had to worry about as in my time with the game, it never pushed any shop stuff or adverts on to me.

But the additional download at the beginning is a let down in more ways than one. it's not great that a mobile game needs an additional 4.5GB of data. at the very least the game warns you about it and your data limits. it took over 7 minutes to download that data and all i had was the same looping video and music. some other games have longer similar sequences, whilst others use this time to introduce backstory, characters, or even a glossary. it's a wasted opportunity and a waste of my time to sit through it.

That additional install might be the only big complaint i have with the game. there are a couple of small ones like poorly implemented controller support, and on occasion it felt like i had to press things a couple of times before they would register. but on the whole, for a game that recently came out, Dynasty Warriors M felt quite polished. 

Once it became clear what type of game it was, i was eager to see if the game would have framerate issues when there were a large amount of enemies on screen but i never noticed any. the switching between characters also felt very smooth and seamless. i particularly enjoyed the auto battle option. as someone who uses trains and busses to commute, there are times on my journey when i need to put my phone away or use it. so having an auto battle is great.

There are a few little touches like that that make the game feel like it was designed for mobile first. another i liked was how the game tried to tie in it's gacha mechanic into the game's story. it's a bit tenuous, but i appreciated the effort. 

The only confusing thing for me was that we weren't playing as the characters on screen. it took a little while to understand that the story on screen wasn't exactly being represented by the characters we were battling as. to me, it made following the story more difficult than it needed to be. There is a chance that things will be made clear further into the game. but that coupled with the additional download probably means it's not making the top of my game of the year list, but it might've done enough to get on there!

(Version 1.2.3 Played)

Demo Play Thursday - Cherry Tower On PS4

For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the PlayStation 4 version of Cherry Tower. This game, from developers webnetic is already out on PS4 and PS5.

This is not a good demo, i would go so far as to say that in places the demo is broken. this is on top of some questionable level design which is designed for us to loose health or that something isn't working right. the jump seems broken as the first tutorial doesn't work, and the final one doesn't seem to work either. it's one reason i don't like text boxes on screen as i don't know if it's working right or not. games that have a video showing how it should be have better tutorials and whilst that may not work with the game's aims and atheistic, it would be better than the nothing we got.

The demo doesn't say if our save carries over to the main game. i assume that this demo is from the first stage of the game. there's no story and there's no indication whether it was removed from the demo or if there's none in the main game. I was surprised how long and difficult it is. the stage doesn't slowly ramp up in difficulty, it's pretty full on through out. new things are introduced but not explained via a tutorial.

There are a few positives to take away from this demo, perhaps the pixel art used in the level is the main one. But, the negatives outweigh them. the music, the controls, the settings, the tutorial, the story, and the bugs are mostly negative in my opinion and throughout the video i try to talk about them and explain why.

So i came away from this demo not wanting to try the main game. with how broken elements are of this are, i don't know if the main game would have the same ones, or if it's been patched, or even if it's quite different from what i played.

Puzzle & Dragons Tuesday - Nintendo Switch Edition - Christmas Cup 1 Revival - Achievement Run

Welcome to Puzzle & Dragons Tuesday! Sit back and either watch me play through, with no commentary, the cup or leave it running in the background as BGM!

I play and earn all the achievements from The Christmas Cup 1 Revival! (2023/12/18 9:00～2023/12/25 8:59 JST) in Puzzle & Dragons: Nintendo Switch Edition whilst using a GamePad and a docked Nintendo Switch.

This week is the Christmas Cup 1 Revival. i have played this cup before, https://youtu.be/PEehcIe-5jA. I managed to get a few wins in that video before someone tough came in and beat me.

It finally happened, i finally got 5 wins back to back! I have played over 70 of these cups and never managed it before, but today i finally did. but that's because it finally happened, i faced no human players! this is the first time that i never faced someone else. The Ai got a few bonuses here and there, but they were never a match for me this week. so whilst i won and even beat the boss a couple of times, it's a shallow victory because it wasn't against any human players. 

The time has come to start retiring this series!

This week i played against no one!

Cloud Monday - Genji: Days of the Blade - Part 2 - Difficult to Recommend But I’m Glad I Played It

This week's Cloud Monday video is part 2 of playing #GameRepublic's #Genji Days of the Blade, tho i think i got the name wrong a few times in the video. this was a #PS3 launch title when it came out in 2006.

Coming back to this game for part 2 helped to solidify my thoughts that whilst it's great we're able to play a game from the launch of the #PlayStation3, there's not much more here than that. the game isn't designed for being played in the cloud and i would argue that it has some fundamental issues regarding what feels like no checkpointing. it seems that it relies purely on manual saves, which in this game can only be done at specific points.

I didn't notice any issues with the game because of it being streamed to me in the cloud. i might've had some complaints about the graphics, controls, and framerate but that was because of the game and not because of it being streamed to me.

But, ultimately, i didn't have a great time and fell victim to the lack of a checkpoint a couple of times. i was playing on normal and still felt that it was a bit tough. i don't think i will be coming back to the game, but i am glad that i got to play it, as i said in Part 1 i bought Resistance: Fall of Man and F1 at launch, as i hadn't played it before.