Cloud Monday - Digimon Survive - Part 2 - Streaming From The Cloud Is A Good Way To Play It

This week's new Cloud Monday video is part 2 of playing the PS4 version of Digimon Survive via the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service to my Japanese launch model PlayStation 4.

In the first Part, https://youtu.be/kjyaV_4XsyY, it was clear how good the game's save system was. it was an Auto save that's pretty clear to see on screen when it's in action, typically before/after a talking set piece, and there's also the manual save option which can save the game at a specific point in a conversation. when we start this Part, we load right in to the middle of the conversation we left the game before.

When there's only a 20 second window to save before being disconnected from the service, being able to save and knowing when the game itself last saved is crucial and Digimon Survive does a great job at it. One of the reasons i feel like it's one of the better games we've played via the Cloud also comes down to the game's art style. none of the Digimon we've encountered so far has fine detail. their art style is simple and relies on expressions. if the game was to suffer from macro blocking, so instead of fine detail we get larger squares of color, there's a higher chance of such squares not getting in the way of the Digimon's design. their character models are large so there's a higher chance of the squares appearing in color anyway. the subtitles on screen are also rather large. if macro blocking were to occur in the subtitle box it would be obvious, but it's unlikely to obscure the whole world due to the size of it so for the most part text should be legible enough. if things did get rough then it's easy enough to pause and maybe even save and wait for this macro blocking to pass.

The visual novel style of gameplay also lends itself to being played from the cloud. this game has a "Backlog" feature, something fairly common amongst visual novels, where you're able to look back at text already spoken. so if there was macro blocking obscuring text you're able to check what it actually said. I think you're also able to check what was set in a cut scene, if you had to end it to save, but i haven't tested that out. 

Digimon Survive isn't a large install, the PSN Store say's it's 6.34GB so for many installing it will be a sensible option. but i do feel that playing it from the cloud is just as good of an experience. there is one added benefit for those who sometimes forget what they've installed on a console and that's whilst the icon will be on the home screen no space is taken up. so if you do forget to uninstall it when it leaves PlayStation Plus, it'll take up no space and you can add the icon into a "To Buy" folder as a Wishlist" of sorts on your console.

Cloud Monday - Digimon Survive - Part 1 - It's Easy To Save And Has Frequent Auto Saves

This week's new Cloud Monday video is part 1 of playing the PS4 version of Digimon Survive via the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service to my Japanese launch model PlayStation 4.

Digimon Survive will be leaving the PlayStation Plus service this month so i wanted to see if playing it from the Cloud would be a good way to play it before it's removed. When it's removed from PlayStation Plus, unless you've bought it, it'll stop working on your PS4 or PS5.

Digimon Survive is a Visual Novel style game that uses that style of game to tell it's story whilst also combining a tactics style fighting mechanic and also have a Mobile Phone explore your location feature. in this hour and a half i played for Part 1, all these different styles work well together and feel cohesive.

How a game saves is important when playing a game from the Cloud. PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service gives users a 20 second warning before disconnecting. it's important to know when the game autosaves and how to do manual saves. in Digimon Survive, the auto save is clearly mentioned on screen and happens before cinematics, where manual saves aren't possible, and after chapters. during typical Visual Novel sections, we're able to pause the game and save manually.

the stream quality was great during Part 1. this helped highlight the graphical style of Digimon Survive which i quite enjoyed. there may not be a lot of small details, but the art style and and use of colors is nice. we saw in the first battle at the start of the game that the Digimon are drawn in a flat 2D style whilst the battle stage is 3D. everything was clear to see and importantly I didn't notice a lag in the controls during menus, story, or battle sections, unlike during the previous game with Cyberpunk 2077.