Then why the hell nothing isnt showing on brickseek for tales but I go in the store and it scans for $37 on walmart app.

The app just shows you the price on the walmart website now. They killed the price scanning feature in the app to lock it behind walmart+ iirc, though I would never pay for + so I have no idea if it actually works properly there. Maybe someone else does.

But I will put it like this to get the point across: I bought Transformers Battlegrounds (PS4) on clearance today for $8 at my walmart. If I scan the barcode with the app it shows up for $26.00. If you check the price on the walmart website it shows up for $26.00. I paid $8 for it I assure you.

Same concept with Tales, if you go to the walmart website it'll show PS4 and PS5 copies are $37 and some change. If I scan the barcode of my own copy of Tales it shows up for $37. The game is not $37 at my store though, it's normal priced.

I've been pretty obsessed with both Judgment games the past few months myself (hence the avatar change.) I really like true crime stuff irl but most games that actually cover these topics are adventure games. Which is fine, I've said before I am a big fan of like Ace Attorney and anything in that vein, but, I prefer action games in general. So having that story of tracking down a serial killer but in the wrapper of a Yakuza game just hits this perfect combination for me in a way I kinda never thought a game could. I mean I typically try not to play similar types of games back to back but I basically 100%'d Judgment and then went straight into Lost Judgment and did the same there.

Also helps that I think they really perfected their beat 'em up combat here. I thought Yakuza Kiwami 2 (and I assume 6 as it looks the same, I am just not there yet) was a massive step down in terms of gameplay so seeing them go back more in the direction of Kiwami/0 with stances and adding the fun wall jumps and sliding mechanics really grabbed me. And while I know going for higher difficulties isn't for everyone I love how they handled Legend in Judgment, disables auto saving so you have to take the long battles and consecutive fights a lot more seriously.

Lost Judgment on the other hand lol, they added so many new mechanics to the game that it's a complete cakewalk. Like I think it's generally more fun to play because of the new mechanics but I died like twice total, and neither of those were on Legend difficulty lol. But dang I can't lie having a real juggle system in a Yakuza game is super slick and you can get into some really fun combo stuff I never expected out of a game in this series.

How do people have time to play the bad games like Godfall while I can't even make it through my backlog of good games across all systems. Is there some hyperbolic time chamber I don't know about? I don't even care about achievements or trophies...just beating the base campaigns.

Because the game is totally fine, I put about 50 hours into it and enjoyed most of the experience. People have different tastes in things, I could make the same dumb comment about anyone who bought Far Cry 6 or is going to play Halo soon or insert whatever game you want here.

As someone who actually did do everything in Godfall (before the expansion, haven't bought it yet) this is weird. Because yes, the actual story is very boring and it's one of those games where it doesn't feel like the game begins until endgame. But what makes it weird is that it's not like you're not going to be doing the story content. Dreamstones (one of the included endgame activities) is literally just a high/max level version of the story missions, just without the actual story. You play through every single mission but there are modifiers and such to shake up the experience each run, if you've played any loot game ever you know exactly the kind of stuff I am talking about.

So content-wise you appear to be getting the full game with all the levels and bosses and such, you're just not getting all the cutscenes and dialogue.

I don't get it. Usually when a game gets chopped up they give you the boring intro stuff and ask you to pay for the rest, not the complete opposite of that.

Maxing bond skills was a pretty dumb grind. I ended up just farming the Raja Naga side boss on Merciless to get it done.

Also yeah, Zenkichi was actually my favorite part of the game. His persona awakening scene is honestly one of my favorites in the whole series. 

I just realized that the one that I'm calling the fifth boss doing 450 dmg a move is probably the same one you're talking about. So we're actually at the same point.

I don't abuse them, but yes I use them. Being able to carry 3 in a 20-30 round fight is still not exactly enough to abuse.

Eh abuse is the wrong word I guess, but my point was mainly that they basically just let you ignore very large parts of fights and give you so many free actions. It feels kind of cheap honestly, I don't think I like it from a design perspective because it's so easy to make the encounter flow around that in a peaks and valley sort of way. I've yet to have a boss where I actually run out of them since it's not like they magatsuhi every turn obviously.

Also not sure how you've been building your main character but I went full strength with mine which I think helps a lot since you're not worrying about matching elements on boss fights. Not to mention guaranteed critical multi-hits are absolutely disgusting damage.

Funny enough the boss I actually found the hardest was the most recent one I finished which had physical resistance. Made me realize just how much I have been leaning on my main character.

Also, originally came to just post about SMT5.

 

Not a review, per se, but my impressions/minor gripes.

 

After about 25-30 hours on hard, there's some weird difficulty spikes. Especially since it's really easy after said spikes.

 

(Trying to be vague and not too spoilery.)

Have you been abusing dampeners? I am near the end of the third area myself and personally have found the story bosses the easiest part of hard mode. Actually beat the first boss 2 levels lower than him and have been lower or equal to everything else so far.

Despite being a turn based game they sort of gave bosses attack patterns which make them very controllable in my experience. Their magatsuhi actions are completely wasted turns which means you often get 24 actions vs their 1 action (assuming they do not crit on the attack they use before activating magatsuhi.)  I just play extremely defensively during the "normal" parts of the fights and then go all out on the magatsuhi turns.

Something I will say though is I've been 100%ing the compendium as I go which I am sure helps. When I get to a boss, I do a test run to see what they like to do during normal turns and then reset to fix up my team accordingly. It's surprisingly easy to very quickly make a half-decent demon in this game thanks to the essence system.

If it matters to anyone, BB’s offering the Yakuza 7 steelbook as a free bonus with the game.

Also worth pointing out it's the best buy exclusive steelbook and not the Day Ichi edition one lol. Because two different steelbooks for a game is the world we live in apparently.

I thought the demo was fun but it was way too freaking easy. Reading some impressions/reviews it seems like the whole game stays that easy as well. I still want to play it but yeah gonna wait for a pretty big discount.

Not sure how other walmarts are but the ones around here have "value" sections beside the glass cases for games that are $20 and under. Every game they put in those spots were marked down at my store. Not yellow sticker clearance, but the uh rollback sticker I think it is?

Not exactly clearance but figured I'd bring it up since looking at brickseek it seems to be the case for all the stores in my general area. For example Katamari Damacy PS4 was $15 a few days ago and now it's $12.88. FF12 on the Xbox has been $10 for months and is now $7.88 at all the stores around me.

Was at my store this morning and it seems like someone finally gathered up all the stuff brickseek said they had in stock but I couldn't find. Got Balan and a steelbook version of The Show. For once I actually managed to get everything I wanted from one of these mass clearance deals lol.

Oh I also picked up a copy of DMC5 Special Edition (PS5.) I already have it since I am a big DMC fan so it's for trade I guess. Though like I said I have everything from this crop of games so not looking for any of that.

Wait what, Control PS5 is $14? Thats good enough for me. Can anyone confirm if this is everywhere? 

It's been that price at my local store for a few weeks now. That is why I asked about it going even further since I was hoping it had continued to drop.

Anyone know if the PS5 version of Control has also gone down to that price? One of those games that says no results found on brickseek despite the fact I know my local store has a bunch of them on the clearance shelf.

someone a couple weeks ago said it was along with yakuza, genuinely asking here cause my brickseek says none in my area even though i know thats not the case

Yeah, Nier has popped up a few times in this thread over the last few months. Not a troll or anything, it just doesn't seem as widespread a clearance.

And yeah it just doesn't show up on brickseek properly, which makes tracking down a clearance copy annoying.

Took me a second to figure out what SO6 was (Star Ocean 6).  Looking at the trailer, I'd be down to play that.   I love open world exploration.  If it weren't just PS4 & 5 I'd put it on my radar.   For now I'll keep it in mind if/when I venture back onto the PS platforms.

It's on Xbox and Steam as well, though I am assuming you'd be more interested in a Switch port?

I am actually a bit surprised they're not trying to put it on Switch, it's not exactly the best looking game ever or anything. Feels like one they could actually get running on the console if they wanted.

Awesome posts dudes, grabbed a copy of Nioh and Fenyx at my local store. Wanted Balan as well out of curiosity but couldn't find it and didn't want to look around the mess that my store is currently.

Waiting for these clearance titles to drop even further, but at my local Wal-Mart Superstore they were priced at:

PS5  Puyo Puyo Tetris 2  $30.00

This was $17 at my local store when I grabbed it a few weeks ago, so seems like a contender to keep dropping elsewhere.

Wow, I opened a chat with Gamestop CS and explained that my Lost Judgment GameCoin offer hadn't appeared despite picking it up in-store on 9/24, then the rep issued 10k PowerUp points for the trouble. That was shockingly easy and helpful, plus these won't expire as quickly as the GameCoin would have!

Decided to try my luck talking to chat and the guy didn't say anything for like 20 minutes then came back and specifically said that I would have my game coin and 1200 points I did not get very soon. Just checked my account and they gave me 22400 points.

I don't even understand lol, but I will take it.

Anyone here still waiting on the $10 Game Coin for Lost Judgement? I usually never preorder at GS so I don't know the usual turnaround time for it to hit your account. It's been 10 days since I picked it up, so I'm just wondering if I'm screwed...

Haven't seen anyone in the thread mention getting it yet, so I don't think any of us have. Tales of Arise was the first game I've bought that had game coin and it came a week later. Figured this would be the same as well but nothing so far.

Hmm...still no Lost Judgment GameCoin offer on my account. Hopefully it shows up within the next 1-2 days.

Yeah I figured it'd just be like Tales of Arise and it would come in yesterday, but still nothing for me. I actually didn't even get normal pro points from it either.

I didn't care too much for scarlet Nexus. Very much a god eater like. So if you like that series then you may like it.

Scarlet Nexus is nothing like God Eater lol, other than the anime aesthetic anyway. It leans more into the character action side of action games, though very simplified. I see a lot of people compare the gameplay to Nier Automata which I'd agree with in the sense that both of them are very stripped down. But they don't have a lot in common other than that.

But anyway, I finally got around to getting the plat trophy back in August which requires playing through it on both sides. It's a fun action game but the story pacing is its biggest enemy. The way the game flows they throw all the major story cutscenes and character bond episodes at you back to back. It starts to get overbearing, especially later in the game when you have a full party. It creates this experience where you play the game for like an hour and then you spend like an hour watching story cutscenes and bond episodes. That wouldn't be so bad if the writing was better, but it's all pretty run of the mill stuff you've seen in a million JRPGs. Not bad, just bland.

My only advice for anyone that decides to check out the game: if you start it as Kasane and don't really like it, give Yuito a try. One of the main topics I see on the SN reddit and such is people asking why the game is boring and if it gets more fun as you go. And in pretty much every case they were playing as Kasane. After having finally played through the game as both characters, yeah it makes sense. She is not fun at all, had I played through with her first it probably would have soured me on the whole experience. For some reason they designed her to be slower than Yuito and have a bigger focus on AOE attacks. Which is totally intentional according to the devs despite the fact you spend most of the game fighting like 1 or 2 enemies at a time. Like she's just poorly designed on a base level and it confuses the heck out of me.

She is also objectively weaker as well. Late game when you're unlocking the final bond abilities Yuito has one that is extremely powerful that Kasane just doesn't get for whatever reason. Best example of how extreme the difference is: it took me longer to beat the final boss with Kasane on NG+ with her post-game "ultimate" weapon (stats and equipment carries over, enemies do not scale for some reason) than it did with Yuito on NG. It's one of the most unbalanced action games I've played in recent memory.

It should be in your active offers.

Yeah I found it. My mistake was assuming it'd be the first thing on the page since I figured new = top of page. But no, It was at the bottom. My active offer page is just covered in $5 gift card things since I always just use my monthly credit on that stuff.

Tales of Arise game Coin hit. Expires the 30th.

Super noob question but I've never had game coin before, where do I even check on their website to see if I've gotten mine?

It's about the same as the demo for me. My main gripe (and most people's) is the lack of dodge cancel.

 

But I also feel like the xp gain is too low early on. Playing on hard, I hit the first boss at level 9 or so, and that's killing everything I passed. It got better when you reach the demo map.

 

And things don't respawn like on the demo, which I prefer, because I like to clear maps when I explore.

Ah yeah, lack of a dodge cancel doesn't bother me that much to be honest. It's just one of those things I can live without if the designers don't want you to have access to it.

My biggest problem with the demo was they didn't really make the flow of combos clear, leaving out that fact your penetration is nerfed for spamming the same move over and over cleared up a lot of my confusion just with how I should be playing. Also I can't remember if they tell you boost attacks restore AG in the demo but I did not realize that either which just helps with keeping the speed of combat up.