Yes can we have this back? It was one of the main reasons I visited gamespot. I haven't really been here much since the update which took away so many critical features.
You probably don't need this answer anymore, but just in case here's the basic idea.
There are main story missions and then side missions. You can play all the side missions online, but not the main missions (because usually in those you have an NPC who is supposed to be there for story purposes). However, there are way more side missions than main missions so you still have a ton of content to play online. Also, I'm pretty sure all of the monsters you can fight in main missions can also be fought in side missions.
It's online. No monthly fee. Houses pop up on their own, but only in areas you designate. Learning the controls is fast. Learning more indepth management of your city is more complicated, but the learning curve isn't all that steep for the most part. You're bound to make some mistakes in your first city as some mechanics aren't explained all that well, but it doesn't take long to just start up a new one with your improved knowledge. Your first city will still be making you money, just not as efficiently as it could be (unless you REALLY screwed up somehow). Since you can gift resources and money it shouldn't be so bad starting your second city since you can use your first one to help you out.
The gameplay itself is awesome. Everything else surrounding the game is a disaster. There are the issues with losing progress, getting locked out of your city, not being able to access the servers at all, and so on. Then there is the whole intercity relationship within regions. In theory it's a nice idea, but they really botched it. Transactions don't sync up very well and are often buggy. I gifted 300,000 simoleons to one of my other cities. The 300,000 was subtracted from my one city but never was given to the other one. I played for 5 hours after I made the trade and it never arrived so I'm pretty sure it's just gone for good (I logged in and out 3 or 4 times too and also restarted my computer once during that time). Then I encountered a situation where one of my cities was short on power but I was out of space so I made a bunch of extra power in a secondary city so I could buy from it. However, despite the regional screen saying I was buying power from my secondary city, I never actually received any power or paid for it and I kept having power outages in many of my buildings. Clearly none of the power was actually being transferred despite the contract stating it was in place (it said something like "Buying 0kW at 0 simoleans an hour" even though I was clearly short on power and should have been receiving and paying for the excess power from my other city). And finally, there is a the issue of regional perks from other cities not properly unlocking. There are certain buildings you can only make if someone in your region has upgraded the corresponding city hall attachment (Department of Education allows you to build Universities for example). However, half the time the buildings wouldn't get unlocked for my other cities in the region even as long as 4 or 5 hours after they should have been.
So anyway, fun game but everything involving online is broken or buggy and needs to be fixed before I can recommend this game to anyone in good faith.
Actually. I just beat the game and you NEED to play 999. Or at least you really should. It doesn't matter for most of the game (I was ~3/4th through when I commented initially), but in the last one or two hours there are a ton of references to the first game. I guess you still don't need it technically, but you'll be missing a lot. The ending will be much more satisfying if you've played the first game =)
That works, actually the easiest way I found was just moving one of the analog sticks =P Can't believe I didn't figure that out earlier. Anyway, just finished the game... =O amazing. Anyone who didn't play 999 first though should really go back and play it right now. Even if you're halfway through this game. You don't need 999 for most of the game, but you'll be lost at the final reveal (final ending). You'll miss so much without having played 999.
You don't have to play 999 if you don't want to BUT, you really should play it first. Since this series isn't about fancy graphics, 999 ages well so it's still as good a game as it ever was and definitely worth playing. But again, if it's a huge hassle for you to get 999 for some reason, it isn't necessary to understand the story in Virtue's Last Reward.
I guess I should distinguish to avoid confusion. There is 'auto-dim' which causes the screen to darken every minute without pressing any buttons and then there is 'auto mode' which is a mode that makes the text progress automatically without having to press any buttons. When you put the two together... well it's a pain.
So I like playing in auto-mode as it keeps the pacing nice and I'm not tempted to just mash the screen to read the dialogue without the voice-acting (as I was used to from 999 since it was all just reading). However, a lot of these novel sections are quite lengthy, often spanning multiple minutes and the screen auto-dims every minute even when plugged in. Then I have to go to the menu, go back out of the menu, go back into the menu, select auto again, then go back out of the menu. Every minute -_- It's not that bad at first, but after you've done it 60 times in 3 hours it gets tiresome.
Anyone have a work around? Or at least know a way I can go into and out of the menu a few less times? The problem is when you tap the screen to get past auto-dim it automatically cancels the auto mode =/
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