AtheistPreacher

@gtxforza: I guess Sony just doesn't see the relatively small amount of additional sales as worthwhile for the hassle of breaking out the online components into a separate thing?

FWIW I did a bit of Google searching and found this video about Xenoblade Chronicles X, I think that's the one I was remembering. It does seem like it was a very horny game and has the kind of "armor" I was talking about. But it also apparently had various things censored outside of Japan. I guess they assume other countries are more prudish in general?

I was pretty interested in all this, so I decided to see if I could go and find some numbers that would help me understand it better.

Unfortunately sales data per country is just not a thing that's publicly available. The best I could do was locate this list of Steam users by country. Number of users isn't a perfect metric to understand revenue percentages, but it's the best we've got.

I stuck all of this in a spreadsheet and then went about highlighting the PSN countries to separate them out using this list (the same site has a corresponding list of non-PSN countries). Note that the numbers don't fully jive here. This site lists 70 PSN countries and 121 non-PSN countries, for a total of 191 Steam countries overall, whereas the site where I got the user numbers shows 226 countries. And all the articles are saying it was 170 countries in which one can no longer buy Helldivers 2 or Ghost of Tsushima, and yet when I separated out the PSN countries I was left with only 156 non-PSN. I'm too lazy to compare it against the SteamDB change list, but suffice it to say that the data I found isn't all complete.

With that being understood, here's the top-line summary I came up with:

• There are a total of 97.25 million Steam users worldwide.
• 86.39 million users are in the 70 countries with PSN, or 88.8% of all Steam users. The average number of Steam users for PSN countries is 1.23 million.
• 10.85 million users are in the 156 countries without PSN, or 11.2% of all Steam users. The average number of Steam users for non-PSN countries is 70,000.
• This means that, on average, countries with PSN have about 17.5x the number of Steam users as non-PSN countries.
• The country with the most Steam users that does not have PSN (by far) is the Philippines with 2.1 million. Runners-up are Vietnam, Belarus, and Kazakhstan, each with between 550k and 600k Steam users.
• The four countries with the least Steam users that do have PSN are Nicaragua, Malta, Bahrain, and Oman, each with between 20k and 27k Steam users.

So there's the data, imperfect as it may be. Make of it what you will. As I noted at the outset, number of users is hardly a perfect metric for revenue, as I'd expect that on average the PSN countries are wealthier and hence spend more money per user on games, so the 11.2% number is probably still high compared to actual revenue share.

With this being two high-profile releases in quick succession, it certainly does seem to be the future. At least the PSN requirement for Ghosts is only for the online functionality. I haven't played the game myself, so I'm not sure how significant that is, but I've never been much for multiplayers in those types of games.

I guess it makes sense for Sony to try to get more people into their ecosystem. Still, can't say I'm in love with this development, and it especially sucks for people in all those countries that now can't buy this game. As you say, it seems they could still offer the single-player parts to non-PSN countries, yet they're not doing that. One wonders what the rough percentage of prospective sales would be for the delisted countries; maybe it's so small that Sony doesn't see it as worth the hassle.

Welp, I just had my first successful run on Chronos. Felt kinda flukey though, honestly. I got a Daedalus Hammer upgrade early on that shortened my special charge speed by a lot, but I didn't really build around that for most of the run. Then right at the end I ran across a Charon well that offered a couple of temp boons: something like +40% damage to all omega attacks, and +30% damage to all special attacks, for X number of encounters. On the strength of that I was able to just range Chronos down with fast charging omega specials that were hitting for like 900 damage a pop. I just kept my distance and tried to stay safe.

I'll probably do a few more runs for giggles, but I think soon I might stop and give it a little more time to cook, give them time to write the actual endings, etc., not to mention add the remaining surface world areas.

@efesell: TBH the weapon aspects also feel that way. I unlocked them recently and they're less distinct than I want them to be.

@junkerman: It's been a while since I played the first one, but it's pretty much just more Hades IMO.

@shindig: You're not wrong. Also Humble Bundles etc. It ain't all bad.

Yeah, the bow with the aspect of Chiron was pretty hack with the tracking arrows and whatnot. That was easily the weapon I was most successful with. But I think you're right, all of the Hades II weapons seem to have some sort of ranged component, whereas the first game's weapons were more... focused? I don't want to say one-dimensional. But so far it seems harder in this sequel to put together a pure ranged build. It can be done with the right boons, but IMO none of the ranged options seem that strong out of the gate.

Figured I should just start a new thread for this rather than keep posting comments in someone else's blog, since discussion of this game might go on for a while. Feel free to share any thoughts on the game, your progress, etc.

The first night I played for a little over three hours and made a few failed attempts at the second boss. At that point I hadn't really found a weapon or boon combination that I particularly liked.

But tonight I was able to play for an extended period, about twice as long as the night before in total, and I think I've started to settle into a preferred playstyle, at least for now. I unlocked the Moonstone Axe and immediately felt most comfortable with that. I generally preferred the ranged options in the last game, but here they feel kinda weak by comparison--not sure if the dev team is overcorrecting, or if maybe there will still be a ranged option I like when I start unlocking alternative weapon aspects, which I understand are still a thing. Anyway, I dig the Axe's big damage despite it being slow as hell.

One thing that helps is taking a freezing basic attack from Demeter. When I first saw that her effect had changed from a stacking slow effect to a short freeze on a longish cooldown (you freeze for 2 seconds, then can't freeze the same enemy again for 10 seconds), I didn't think it would be as useful, but for the Axe it's perfect: freeze your enemies and then pound them into sand, even if they're armored. Extra great if you get the passive boon that extends the freeze duration. By the time they'd be unfrozen they're usually already dead, so the slow attack speed just doesn't matter as much.

But of course anything that increases the Axe's speed also helps. Hermes can grant boons that just straight up increase attack speed, and the Daedalus Hammer can also help with that, including an upgrade that massively increases charge attack speed for the charged spin2win strategy.

Beyond that, I feel like Hestia's "Hearth Gain" (rapid magick regeneration in trade for -20% max health) is distinctly overtuned and basically top-tier for any build. Sure, -20% max health is not ideal, but with this boon you rarely have to be concerned about your magick meter at all and can just spam omega attacks about as much as you want.

As I started figuring all this out, I began making pretty good progress. I got to where I could beat the second boss consistently, but for my first two attempts in zone 3 I didn't even make it all the way to the boss. Then, funnily, I actually beat the zone 3 boss the first time I faced it... though it was by the skin of my teeth, and I died in literally the first area of zone 4. But on my next and final attempt of the night, I beat the boss of zone 3 a second time, and then made it all the way to the boss of zone 4. I suspect I won't beat that dude for a while yet, he hits like a truck and I really haven't figured out his moveset yet.

Anyway, all in all I'm definitely enjoying myself. There are a few rough edges that need to be addressed; e.g., for some reason your current gold isn't displayed when you're in a shop, which seems pretty dumb (you can see it by checking your boons, but that shouldn't be necessary). And it remains to be seen how I'll ultimately feel about this one in relation to the first game (I suspect I may end up preferring the first one). But there's plenty of time for improvements.