Backlog Conquering - Final Fantasy On PSP - Part 1 - Getting To Matoya’s Cave

Welcome to Backlog Conquering. This is a series were i play a game from my backlog that i may or may not have played before. the goal isn't necessarily to finish the game, the goal is to play it. that way, i can have an opinion about it.

The newest game in the Backlog Conquering series is the PlayStation Portable version of Final Fantasy. this is the downloaded version of the game, but it is also available on UMD. I  have played most Final Fantasy games that came out on PlayStation or later but i haven't gone back and played the first 4 games. i have them on PSP so i thought it'd be fun to try out the first Final Fantasy game. this version came out from 2007 and it kept a lot from previous versions. for example, it's mostly built upon the GBA version but updated with the PSOne cinematics, changed to widescreen, and with improved graphics and sounds.

To help with this playthrough i'm proudly using a guide from GameFAQS. here's the link, https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/psp/937909-final-fantasy/faqs/55625. i'm not following it exactly, but it's useful to have. a great example is how the guide told me about going to the shops at the start of the game before i set off on my mission. i might've spoken with people in the town, but going shopping from the start wouldn't have been my first move.

Not too much happens in this part. i show off the XMB first before starting the game. then there's a cinematic that means nothing right now, and then it came to squad building. this i wasn't prepared for, i'm so used to playing a set team i wasn't quite ready to pick my own. so i took a few minutes to think it over and then the game started.

This Part shows the journey from meeting the king, saving the Princess, and journeying to Matoya's Cave.

Stories on Tuesday - Hakuoki: Stories of the Shinsengumi - Part 10 - The Final Part

Part 10 was the final part. because this game takes place during an historical event, the ending was always going to be a little sad. it was just going to be how sad would it end up being. first we had to deal with our Dad and his plans for Edo and with that done we chased after the Shinsengumi, but ultimately we only ended up finding out the end of their story. 

Part 1 - https://youtu.be/H-TuXJyK05Q

Part 2 - https://youtu.be/hQJtjsH3jeo

Part 3 - https://youtu.be/DTXxfdyFOrg

Part 4 - https://youtu.be/Mu7t-UIiecg

Part 5 - https://youtu.be/1olfaNjwmHM

Part 6 - https://youtu.be/h2Ut7OM9bA4

Part 7 - https://youtu.be/hH4X7IveNVE

Part 8 - https://youtu.be/3y6O0LYkyAU

Part 9 - https://youtu.be/qMTqhn8H4qk

Cloud Monday - Sonic Frontiers - Part 2 - It's Fine To Play In The Cloud But ...

This week's Cloud Monday video is part 1 of playing Sonic Frontiers on PS4 via the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service to my Japanese launch model PlayStation 4.

Part 2 was a little rougher than Part 1 in terms of the streaming quality. When we checked the internet speed test at the end of the video it was better than Part 1. It was mostly Stream Tearing, when instead of a video we get grey instead. there were also instances of audio breaking up. it's not something i've noticed too much in past Cloud Monday videos so i'm not too sure if it was a result of the streaming or something the game was doing, like loading for example.

None of these were a big issue when it came to playing the game. with the wide open spaces sparsely populated by enemies, we're not likely to come across something if there's an issue. standing still and waiting for it to pass also won't be an issue as nothing hunts us down unless we get close to them. so the games deficiencies make it suitable for streaming, but it'll be up to you whether or not that's actually a good thing or just making the best of a bad situation.

QTE Gamers official rating is that Sonic Frontiers is FINE to stream from the Cloud but beware that you won't be able to do a manual save for nearly the first hour. the platforming is difficult regardless of the quality of the stream, and i kept stumbling upon springs and such. the lock on camera is rough and often requires manually readjusting. i have other issues with the game, but as it is some of it's negatives can work with being streamed from the cloud whilst others are already bad and would get worse.

Demo Play Thursday - Paw Paw Destiny On Switch

For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the Nintendo Switch version of Paw Paw Destiny, from Daiyu.studio.

The eShop page for this game has some real bonkers looking screenshots that grabbed my attention. but reading about the game from it's page didn't help as it was hard to imagine how the screenshots and the game it says it is match up. so i was really interested in trying out the demo and seeing how it all works.

after trying the demo, i'm none the wiser. it's actually shopping how short the demo is, it seems like we only get to play what i'd call "Chapter 0". we did get a nice character creator where we could make a cat or a dog, but after that it's a bizarre experience. 

It's not a bad experience, weird yes but not necessarily bad. the game puts all the controls on the screen and it's mostly clear what everything does apart from the "-" button which is labelled as "?", when you press it it removes all the controls from the screen. the area we start in also has on screen prompts  to help navigate the area. but on the weird scale, there are ghosts and they chase after us when we're not looking at them.

the final task of the demo, after getting a little bit of story, is to find some people among a crowd. the problem i had with this section was the English used. it mostly made sense, but it had an "uncanny valley" issue. it looked mostly ok, but when i stopped to read it the words that were used didn't feel quite right. with the demo being as short as it is, it's hard to know if this is an issue with the game as a whole or simply how the cat characters talked.

So it boils down to the fact that the demo for Paw Paw Destiny is far to short and it doesn't really show us anything that answers the questions i had about the game. it's a story based game, but we never got to experience much of it. there are horror elements, but all we saw were ghosts. there's a comedy aspect to it, but i never saw it. there are so many elements to the game that i didn't get to see.

I don't think people need to play the demo for Paw Paw Destiny. we're shown too little that it might as well be a waste of our time. especially when we're not told if our save carries over to the main game. the cat/dog editor maybe fun, but it's possible we'll never be able to play as them again. if you're interested in this game, i'd recommend checking out live streams or longer gameplay videos for it.

Backlog Conquering - Eat Them! - From Start To Finish On PS3

I played Eat Them! from December 2022 to January 2023, before i had started the Start to Finish Playlist. i recently found my original video recordings so i decided to stitch together all 4 parts of my Eat Them! playthrough on Backlog Conquering. 

I removed all restarts so it should just show mission completes and making new monsters.

Part 1 - https://youtu.be/yFzk0i8jj1Y

Part 2 - https://youtu.be/naNvLj4k9dQ

Part 3 - https://youtu.be/2OtBPMfJk1c

Part 4 - https://youtu.be/GGClVKXxNZo

Stories on Tuesday - Hakuoki: Stories of the Shinsengumi - Part 9

This part had it all, friends becoming enemies, enemies becoming friends, war, betrayal, death, and it still had a surprise at the end. it was a lot of fun!

Part 1 - https://youtu.be/H-TuXJyK05Q

Part 2 - https://youtu.be/hQJtjsH3jeo

Part 3 - https://youtu.be/DTXxfdyFOrg

Part 4 - https://youtu.be/Mu7t-UIiecg

Part 5 - https://youtu.be/1olfaNjwmHM

Part 6 - https://youtu.be/h2Ut7OM9bA4

Part 7 - https://youtu.be/hH4X7IveNVE

Part 8 - https://youtu.be/3y6O0LYkyAU

Cloud Monday - Sonic Frontiers - Part 1 - Too Long Before Manual Save Unlocked, Empty World a Plus!

This week's Cloud Monday video is part 1 of playing Sonic Frontiers on PS4 via the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service to my Japanese launch model PlayStation 4.

It's nice to bring back Cloud Monday. the main difference with the return is that in Part 2, i'll make my opinion clear and "badge" the game if i recommend playing it via the cloud, if i don't, or "user beware". feel free to check out the rest of the playlist, i think i've made the video titles mostly clear as to what my thoughts were.

For Sonic Frontiers, my main concern was how clear the world would be if Sonic was moving fast. unfortunately, it never really was an issue in this first part of trying out Sonic Frontiers. the open world segments don't really open up enough to go full speed and the more traditional stages i've done so far are short. in terms of gameplay, it's probably a negative but with how empty the open world has been it's actually a good thing for a game being played in the cloud. if the bitrate of the video stream decreases, or the resolution drops, or if there's lag in the controls, having an open world full of enemies would be really tricky. but here i'm not concerned about it.

In this Part, the stream held up well. i noticed no lag in the controls nor did i notice any drops in the video stream. i am concerned with the controls as even with how good things were i was having some issues controlling Sonic. there was a situation where i was trying to make a jump but my character's shadow wasn't below me indicating where i would be landing. there were also a couple of instances where the camera wasn't helping and pointing in the direction i needed to go. i was trying to make some jumps or trying to reach jump pads and i was unable to lock on or work out where to go. if i'm having this much trouble when things are going well, i imagine this would be a big negative playing Sonic Frontiers in worse conditions.

This biggest issue i had was with the game's save system. there is an auto save, but it never seemed as frequent as i would like. there is a manual save system but the game never told me about it and when i found it was seemingly unable to manual save for nearly the whole of this video. with the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming service, there's a 20 second warning before disconnection and after this first part i would not feel good trusting Sonic Frontiers' save system. the game does make it clear when it won't allow manual saves, but that didn't seem to match a lot of my first hour with the game. i couldn't work out why it didn't work.