Demo Play Thursday - Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince on Switch

For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the Nintendo Switch version of Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince. This game, from developers Tose, is set to come out near the end of 2023.

I've never played a game in the Monsters series but i've known about it and seen enough videos to have a general understanding of how it works. I was curious about how much of a DEMO Square Enix was going to release for the game as they have released some big demo's in the past.

This is a great demo. it has an announcement at the very start explaining clearly that there are limits, that not everything will be carried over to the final version of the game but there are things that will be carried over. And yet whilst i played it, i never felt that the restrictions impacted my enjoyment of the demo. i could see some things greyed out, but as it's the start of the game they are things i wasn't really going to interact with anyway.

With these videos, i try to keep them an hour or less and most games in this series have finished before an hour. I didn't finish this demo and i wanted to keep on playing. for me, that's a good sign of a demo in that when it was over i wanted to keep on playing.

Another sign that this is not only a good demo but also mostly likely to be a very accessible game is how good the tutorial is. it came step by step smartly in the story and throughout this video more and more was slowly being revealed at a nice pace that didn't feel overwhelming. the demo came across in such a way that i feel like the game itself will focus more on story telling rather than mechanics and will do so by making the game very approachable. 

The demo did have some technical issues that seemed separate from the issues the #Switch was having in general. there were some slight hitches where the framerate and fluidity of gameplay felt noticeably off for a brief moment. there was also a moment where a monster seemingly spawned half into the environment. But it was also clear the Switch was struggling a little to run this game. the fans in my Switch were noticeably going, the pop-in was too close to the camera and very noticeable, and some of the graphics just looked like they had a low level of detail and in some instances they looked copy and pasted together. But the game isn't out yet so i can't say for sure if those issues will carry over to the retail version of the game. But as a demo, i do recommend it. it's a fantastic demo and a great look at a game.

Cloud Monday - Scarlet Nexus - Part 2 - Still Fun, But More Noticeable Streaming Issues

Today's Cloud Monday is part 2 of playing Scarlet Nexus on a launch model PS4. In part 1, https://youtu.be/z4pOFUlwWsg, streaming it via the PlayStation Plus Premium Cloud Streaming service went really well with only one or two noticeable issues. But in today's video, there were more issues to the point where i got a connection warning. thankfully, it wasn't throughout the video, but as it was more frequent it also was much more noticeable than in part 1.

The game was still fun to play. the combat is fast paced and i didn't notice any lag due to the game being streamed to me. that was true with part 1, so at least the feel of the game holds up across both days. The story is a little slow and the world feels empty, more so in this video. near the end it says i'm free to do what i want. but, as i show in the video, there was nothing i could do. none of the shops are buildings i can go in, it was more like i was at point A and the game wanted me to go to Point B. so, in a way, the game's own story got in the way of gameplay.

Across both parts, a typical thing streaming does is reduce the resolution and i didn't notice it happening. for a 1080p system, the game looks great. but i do worry that if there are streaming issues that the resolution will drop and the game will be greatly affected. the text on screen is small, but for me fine. this and the game's unique art style and way it draws the neon stuff are the most likely to be affected by a resolution drop. We didn't get it, but what we did get in this video was just as bad. there was macro blocking, where squares of color appear instead of fine detail, and even more noticeable were the stream tearing moments as it's just light grey on screen.

I think this is a good game, but i don't think it's a great game to be streamed. i mentioned in the first video how the save system is an auto save and only at specific points. it's a system not suited to a streaming service were you get a 20 second notice of being kicked off. it's unique art style is also susceptible to streaming issues. I have this on disc and if i had to chose between playing the game on disc or streaming it from the PlayStation Plus Premium Cloud Streaming service, i would chose to play it from disc.

Cloud Monday - Scarlet Nexus - Part 1 - Fun Start, But Manual Saves Have Me Concerned

Today's Cloud Monday is part 1 of playing Scarlet Nexus on a launch model PS4 via the PlayStation Plus Premium Cloud Streaming service. It's a game i have on disc and have wanted to play for a while as it's art style and combat mechanics look really cool.

Those two things don't disappoint during this hour. i noticed no lag in the controls, from what i pressed to it happening on screen, so the combat felt fun, fast, and dynamic. it's early on so i'm not too good at it but i 'm curious how it'll change as things unlock and whether or not there are interactions with another character. As for the art style, it's so unique and colorful with bright neon colors and particles that in some respects it was very noticeable when stream tearing happened and grey appeared on screen as it clashed with the game. But it also meant i wasn't able to notice smaller issues like macroblocking. Once or twice there were bigger issues but they only lasted for a second or two and never got in the way.

What was a little concerning for a game being streamed from PlayStation Plus Premium is how the save system works. the game does have an Autosave feature but in this hour i wasn't able to work out how frequently it saves other when entering or leaving an area or after a major battle. But the game, so far, only allows the player to save at very specific places. an example in this video is that it was about 17 minutes between these save points and a lot of story and critical battles took part during that time. I'm concerned as the PlayStation Plus Premium Cloud Streaming service only gives a 20 second countdown before it terminates the connection, whether your ready or not.