It doesn't make sense to pre-order now, since the game is still over three months away. Prices on Steam will be the same, no matter what (until launch).

People always say not to pre-order, but I think it's fine shortly before release, especially after reviews are out and/or you will play the game anyway. That way you get any potential bonuses or can maybe pre-load the game. Buying on Steam or GOG directly also lets you refund the game, so there is little to no risk.

You mean random encounters? I think the modern games have visible enemies in the world, that you can avoid, although they try to engage you, so that's hard or impossible sometimes.

The one that's coming out in 10 days or something, Resonance, is trying to be a bit more old school, and has random encounters, that you can't see, but the minimap changes color to tell you when you will get attacked. And technically you can cheese that at times, because saving and loading resets that encounter timer.

As for turn-based combat, it depends. The games have slowly changed over time and the latest 3D games (15, 16, 7 Remake trilogy) are just Action RPGs, although sometimes you get options to slow down time when you choose your attack or something. As mentioned, Resonance, trying to be an old school-ish FF game, is just turn-based.

Some newer releases of the old games also add cheats and features to make it "more palatable" for modern audiences. The Pixel Remasters of FF1-6 just let you disable random encounters I think, but you could also just enable auto battle and turbo mode to speed everything up. I think the latest release of the OG FF7 also has this feature, no idea about the others. There are probably just mods that let you do that stuff as well.

Then there are the spin-off games, that I have little to no knowledge about. FF Tactics recently got a new port, and that is a proper turn-based tactics game.

Hasn't this been a thing for a while now? Some Collectors Editions don't include the game, because people that buy them usually want to play immediately, but those boxes might only arrive after launch. People would have to buy the game twice, so this way they can get the normal edition first and then "complete" it with the rest of the Collectors stuff.

I think Blizzard has done some stuff, where you get Battle.net credits, when you activate the Collectors Edition code, on an account that already has the digital game. This is a better system imo, but doesn't make sense for every game. Dunno if this is only for WoW or they still do it though.

You don't get it. It wasn't buggy. Sure, they delayed the game again, but that was totally because of GTA6. Trust

1. World of Warcraft
2. Baldur's Gate 3
3. Nioh 2
4. Doom Eternal
5. Overwatch

Just barely eking out heavy hitters like Marathon, Marvel Tokon or God of War Sons of Sparta I bet.

Same story, different localisation, so minimal differences.

You get modern graphics and QoL changes and stuff.

They stopped releasing heroes in 2020 or something, then did nothing for a few years, but eventually started doing occasional balance patches, and now they're apparently going to release at least two new characters. Servers have been up and running this whole time.

The dude who was on stage during the announcement, Dan Hay, was apparently a producer on all the FarCry games since 3, so that tracks, but as you said, how can they extract a billion dollars from that.

If anyone can deliver those insane profits on a consistent basis, I'm betting on Blizzard currently. Basically all of their major games are live service and print money. That probably still won't fully save them from the next round of Microsoft layoffs, but they might no get hit as hard.

Just some minor notes, Dominion is just the name of the cinematic, the game doesn't have an announced name yet (unless they're calling it just Starcraft, which would be weird).

The Last Titan expansion wasn't revealed for the first time here. I think during the last Blizzcon a few years ago, when the World Soul Saga was announced, they went through the three expansions, their names, some overall themes, so you might find a bit more info in those videos, if you're interested.

For me, the 2030 release date (+eventual delays) lines up with Microsoft's recent push/wish for more games in their big franchises a couple of months ago, so this is probably still in some kind of pre-production.