chirinea (47507) on 1/20/2020 12:42 AM · Permalink · Report

The first game I beat this year was Half-Life. I remember playing only the opening sequence back in the day. The game is cool, but it shows its age. The storytelling is alright, but nothing new nowadays. The gameplay is great in the first levels, but is really bad in the last ones.

I started Shenmue II in the end of last year, but I put it on hold, so I guess I'll get back to it. I'm also looking forward to starting The Witcher 3, which I bought during the Steam winter sale.

vedder (71102) on 1/21/2020 10:25 PM · Permalink · Report

Inside - Finished another great short game. Didn't like the "if you do the wrong thing you instantly die" mechanics much. They weren't fun back then for games like Flashback and Another World, and they still aren't this day. They mostly felt relatively fair though and save points were always just seconds away which made it completely tolerable. The thinking puzzles are nice. Not very difficult, but never frustrating and making you think every now and then. Great audio and visuals (particularly loved all the little animations for the NPCs) and very polished execution. Liked the ending very much as it managed to be very refreshing while reusing earlier content and mechanics.

MediaCult (190) on 1/25/2020 4:06 PM · Permalink · Report

The Elder Scrolls Online: This will never end, but it keeps being good, and I enjoy the community being mainly 30+ (as far as I can tell).

Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology (PSP): Somewhat repetitive bashing, near the end boss at 30+ hours. OK fun.

Patrick Bregger (303228) on 2/1/2020 8:32 PM · edited · Permalink · Report

Dragon Quest XI: I abandoned this one after about eight hours because it is just boring. I love the art and especially the enemies and the combat system is standard OK and the boring overworld and bad dungeons are something I can live with. But the writing does not work at all for me because the dialogue (especially the unvoiced) is completely uninteresting and the silent protagonist does not fit. Normally discovering a new town should be the highlight of playing a JRPG, but here I just sigh. I have to admit that I played it during a nasty cold, but I doubt I would have liked it much better without.

Octopath Traveler: The combat system is very interesting and I like the basic structure: at least in chapter 1 one city and its dungeons takes about 1,5 hours which makes a nice session length. I also enjoyed the random combat because it has been a while and the frequency is very well balanced. Unfortunately it has a very big flaw: the writing sucks, the characters are uninteresting and those special abilities (stealing, interrogate town people, etc.) get old very fast. I am not categorically opposed to playing this further, but at this time it is not what I am searching for.

Tokyo Xanadu ex+: It has a very Cold Steel feel to it. Why? Because it recycles about 80% of its assets and just adds a modern setting and action combat. Even the characters look similar, the protagonist is a barely changed Rean and Towa is even officially in the game. The parts between dungeons are pretty much 1:1 the free days from Cold Steel.

Nevertheless, the game disappointed me. The best part is combat which is fluid, fast and fun. But, I see a pattern in this post, the writing ruins it. The plot and the characters do not work for me. In the Trails games I am interested even in the smallest NPC on the road, here I don't even care about the main characters. In the Crossbell games I enjoyed the tour through the city even after 80 hours, here I got sick of it in chapter 3. In Cold Steel I have a very hard time to choose where to use my precious bonding points, but here I don't care because no one says anything interesting anyway. I decided to stop during chapter 4.

In conclusion, I fear the Trails series ruined JRPGs for me.

vedder (71102) on 2/11/2020 2:36 PM · Permalink · Report

Playing Europa Universalis IV. Convenient to pause at any time using spacebar when you have a baby to keep an eye on.

The Fabulous King (1332) on 2/14/2020 3:38 PM · edited · Permalink · Report

Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth

Holy sh..!! I think this is the best story I've ever encountered in games. Seriously, this is what mature actually looks like.

Daedalic has won a new fan.

Patrick Bregger (303228) on 2/22/2020 10:16 AM · edited · Permalink · Report

Assassin's Creed: Odyssey - it lost me after 10 hours. It is well polished, the environment is great, but I always had the feeling I played it already ten times. It has been two years since Origin, but I am still too full of AC.

Dr. Cares: Pet Rescue 911 - Unfortunately this was the worst time management game from Gamehouse I played so far. The story is not very interesting (it takes it time up to the the second-to last chapter before anything of significance happens), the mini games are obviously designed for mobile and are badly converted to mouse controls and the game is way too easy, even on the highest difficulty level.

Afterwards I remembered I got a free three-month subscription to the Xbox Game Pass (PC), so I decided to try some games out.

Forza Horizon 4 - It looks fantastic and is very fun, but the missing progression is lame. For what reason would I need a thousand different cars when I can use every one in every race anyway? When I play a racing game I'd like to progress from weak cars to sports cars over time and not win a super car on the stupid wheel of fortune after ten minutes.

The Outer Worlds - As you know, I am a huge Obisidian fanboy. But this game is just plain bad. The world is lifeless, the plot is boring, the dialogue is awful, the UI is a trainwreck (they even managed to have worse inventory management than vanilla Skyrim), the loot is uninteresting, there are too many useless consumables, most game systems become useless after the first ten minutes and the weight limit is the icing on the shit cake. Bah, 15 hours of my life wasted.

Ori and the Blind Forest - This is a very good game and one of the very few which manage to have an intro with emotional impact. The graphics and controls work also very well. My points of critic would be that it feels like a linear platformer where some metroidvania elements were tacked on in the end and it became too hard for me. The platforming was OK, but I had a lot of problems with the enemies which take too much hammering on the attack button to die. And I already leveled the standard attack up through the unnecessary RPG system! I managed to clear the forest.

Wolfenstein II - I loved the predecessor but quickly abandoned Old Blood. Wolfenstein II is well made (I love the satisfying stealth takedown!), but somehow this particular gameplay/story mix did only work for me once.

Halo: Reach - I liked the first level because there were some cool fights which managed to create a big battle atmosphere without the usual Call-of-Duty-Respawns. But the second mission lost me completely: the AI follower is stupid, the car controls are awful, the AI drives like drunk when I use the car cannon, I never have enough ammo (this may be just my fault, though) and the level design is boring. After I had to fight two enemies which can kill me with one shot but eat roughly guessed one billion shots, I quit. I have the feeling Halo and I will never become friends.

West of Loathing - I love the humor, but the gameplay is mediocre. The UI is bad (no quest log, bad inventory, etc.) and the locations all have one or two very funny ideas, but in the end you just use an item (or leave it for later because you don't have the item yet) or fight combats which are either too easy (but still too long) or impossible (one-shot kills by the enemy), but nothing in between. I'm on the fence if I should continue or not.

Last, but not least, my favorite in today's list: Celeste - this game is just a design bomb. You only have a few moves, but the level design manages to frequently use those in new and interesting ways. Celeste is not an easy game, but because you can almost instantly repeat the challenge (and the challenges itself are mostly pretty short) it never bugged me. Celeste is not a short game, but it never becomes boring. Personally I thought the main path (if you don't obsess over every strawberry) was easier than Ori. The story is a bit overrated, but it does not interrupt the game too often.

Cavalary (11447) on 2/25/2020 2:55 AM · edited · Permalink · Report

Grabbed Ascension to the Throne when it was free on Indiegala and finished it this evening. Actually last night had a first go, thinking it wouldn't really be the end there and finding that it actually was, as it's a series of 4 chained battles, location changing (no explanation why given in the game itself) after first. Died in the last battle then, and instead of reloading the autosave before it I just reloaded the proper save from before all four today and won. But then wanted to get the best character and army too, so reloaded again, went all around Airath to open chests and use altars, since I had delayed (rewards scale with level, so get any as late as you can), then back to Oganthar and Annaroth to get myself a kickass army, then back there for another run just out of curiosity. Complete joke, this last run, one round to wipe the first two enemy armies, they didn't even get to attack, messed up a bit in 3rd and had to delay a bit to resurrect some units I lost, then killed the boss before it got a move in final battle and then could easily deal with the other units and keep a last one around to resurrect the few I lost, just to have no losses.

There will be a review, and I have a wall of text of notes, so not dumping that here now, will try to write some more clearly... Half of it is about bugs though, and there are quite a few. None game breaking if you're a bit careful (clicking through dialogs quickly can have odd effects for one, stuff that should happen at the end of the dialog may not, and that may break stuff, so if you see stuff being listed on screen, such as rewards, unit changes or what not, wait for the text to go away), but there were plenty of crashes at the start of battles, mainly chained battles and even more so if you level between them, and in one particular case I needed to reload the autosave made before the last battle in a series, kept trying and it kept crashing at the start of it otherwise. Nice that it makes those autosaves before each battle though.

About the game itself, starts hard, have to search for fights you can survive and figure out how, but it gets much easier after a bit, and after you can get a conqueror, who has the scapegoat spell way before you can learn it yourself, things start to be a joke. Only exception are very fast enemies, even more so ranged ones, or the few battles on very small areas, where you can't stay out of range. The AI can be tricked though, and quite easily, as otherwise there would be a few battles that'd be nearly unwinnable (small arenas and very fast toughies, or very fast units with long range in front row), seeing that when the hero dies, it's game over. But yeah, even a single conqueror will turn the tide. Conqueror in top-front slot, any speed ring, armor spell and high spell power on hero = only offensive spellcasters can do any damage anymore. There will be plenty of them later on though, but there are protection spells (albeit for each element, not generic) and ways around. You WILL need to trick the AI on those sometimes though, because if they'll gang up on hero, you're toast. But by the time you'll need to deal with many of them, tricking them will be second nature.

Otherwise, kinda liked how units are individual, not stacks, each has its position and it's a matter of how many can hit enemies in case of melee ones. A problem there is that you can't choose positioning or spread of attacks, at most a single destination or attack hex, other positions or attacks being determined automatically (though you can see how attacks will spread before clicking - not positioning though). And also about this, felt odd that armor applies to total, not to each attack.

Oganthar is quite large and got more attention, Annaroth seems quite rushed, Airath even more so. But feels like you can't really explore, full of invisible walls, no jumping whatsoever and so on. And there seem to be things included for Valkyrie, like rings or one altar you can't use since they're for an archer and you're not (Eneya does get one ring you find in a chest, but that's the only thing). And speaking of things, no shop interface, no way to sell things (bar one armor), and each shop only has one or two things, which you check out in a regular dialog menu, getting a description of the effects.

Still, not bad overall. Shows a lack of resources, but they tried to do something there, and it is quite a power trip once you advance a bit and nearly everything becomes easy. But plenty of battles remain nice enough, and there are plenty of varied units.

Tracy Poff (2095) on 2/25/2020 3:32 AM · Permalink · Report

I finally beat Kirby's Epic Yarn a few days ago (after a few months on this save, and quite some years since I first played it). It's fun, but I've been playing it in co-op and it just doesn't seem very well designed for co-op. There are things like autoscrollers with moving platforms or vertical drops that require both players to be closely synchronized. There's nothing wrong with making players work a little, but the game is easy enough overall that just being in co-op becomes the largest challenge in the game, unless you just want to have one player literally carry the other through levels.

vedder (71102) on 3/28/2020 8:26 PM · Permalink · Report

Was playing and enjoying Jedi: Fallen Order, but I'm playing Half-Life: Alyx as an intermezzo. The benefit of having my work PC at home due to the quarantines is that I have a VR capable PC and both a Rift-S and a Quest.

Jedi: I like it, but I'm not sure it will be remembered a couple years from now. Combat feels a bit unpolished having recently played Spider-Man on the PS4. The metroidvania aspect is nice, but perhaps a bit too much by the book. Could've used a bit more innovation in that area. The whole Star Wars sauce makes up for all of it. Still, so far the game felt very varied and even if it had been generic sci-fi I'm sure I would've enjoyed it. Was also impressed with the interplanetary travel witouth loading screens. Sure Elite II did it, but looking so much better now. My PC does have a rough time keeping up with the framerate though. (Guess I could play it on my work PC instead...)

Alyx: Feels very much like a half-life game. There's a lot to love, there's also quite a bit that feels slightly unpolished. It suffers from all the common VR quirks. Due to having worked in VR game dev for the last couple years I'm quite immune to motion sickness (as long as the framerate is at least 72 fps). Which allows me to play using stick motion. This does give me the impression the game was designed with teleportation in mind. Stuff like jumping and mantling is just awkward. Being VR the game is a lot slower, and by extend much different from earlier games (especially HL1) and this is further emphasized by things like contrived reload mechanics (which is great, don't get me wrong). What it does great is how like in earlier HL games every level feels completely different. From spooky dark areas with barnacles and zombies to shootouts in the street with combine or more puzzle-like environments or just environmental story-telling. This is the kind of game with lots of single player content that VR has been lacking.

Patrick Bregger (303228) on 3/30/2020 6:16 PM · edited · Permalink · Report

Yesterday I finished Yu-No: A girl who chants love at the bound of this world (2019 remake) and I need to talk about it. The prologue is one of the worst pieces of writing I have ever encountered in videogame form, but that's normal. I hated the first seven hours of Steins;Gate, too, before it grew on me. No, I want to start with the middle part which has the biggest reason to continue: I am triggered by flowcharts. And a great flowchart it has. It was very satisfying to visit the different paths and uncover the intriguing and complex mystery. The writing does become a bit better, the translation has many problems (for example a lot of false gender pronouns) and it is much too long, but I liked the story enough to continue.

The game was originally an eroge, but the remake cuts out all sex scenes. However, there is still a lot of talk about sex and naked ladies, just without nipples. Unfortunately, I have to add, because it feels tacked on. The sex scenes were obviously unnecessary - I did not miss them at all - and in fact I wished they cut most of the sex stuff. Then the game would probably be nice 30 hours instead of unbearable 60. I also looked at a longplay of the original and thought the old graphics were much better; the new ones have a very generic anime style.

The game mechanics follow the usual (bad, I need to add) style of Japanese Adventures, just with hot spots except menus. But you still need to exhaust sometimes random hot spots and read the stupid thoughts of a stupid protagonist. There are also too many hot spots in most scenes. However, the worst part is that you need to visit all available areas in order to find the next event trigger. Thankfully the remake adds a help function, but this is nevertheless a bad mechanic.

The Epilogue (Spoiler!)
After the relatively (for a JA) freeform middle parts comes a long (about 10-12 hours) and linear epilogue. And it is bad. Very bad. First there happens absolutely nothing for a few hours and then it concludes with two gigantic infodump scenes (ca. 40 and 20 minutes) which feed the player all the lore and the conclusion of the story. But here the sex becomes the worst: the epilogue is full of useless scenes which are only there so the protagonist can fuck a few more woman. Including his daughter. I repeat, his daughter - without the stepchild excuse of the middle part. Yes, the remake cuts out two sentences which makes it explicit, but come on, were are not stupid - it is still obvious. And this happens a few weeks or a year (the translation can't get its act together on this front) after which wife was brutally murdered by religious fanatics.

In this part the games also opens up too many new themes which it never concludes. I did not care at all about the new characters and all the dramatic stuff in the end did not touch me at all. The only positive thing I can say about the epilogue is that I like the new graphics more than in the original. I think that's because it goes more into a fantasy direction and the old graphics show too many unmotivated naked breasts.

Conclusion
I can't recommend this game to no one. It is historically an important step for the Japanese Adventure/Visual Novel genre, but it did disappoint me too often. I liked the middle part well enough - the flowchart is great and I like parallel world stories - but the epilogue ruined everything for me.

Patrick Bregger (303228) on 6/15/2020 8:57 PM · edited · Permalink · Report

I neglected my Journal duties in the last months (sorry!), so only the quick version:

Desperados: My favorite Commandos variant from back in the day. I only wanted to play a few missions to refresh my memory, but in the end I played half of the game.

Steins;Gate 0: I really liked this VN. In contrast to most others VN, the beginning did not suck! Unfortunately I thought the big twist was too foreseeable.

Indivisible: Not bad, has a unique combat system. Unfortunately I become too old and bad for reaction tests like this.

Battle Chasers: Nightwar: fantastic combat system, but the whole scenario does not interest me at all.

Gears of War: Ultimate Edition: I can't remember the last time I played something so dumb and boring.

Gris: Very enjoyable visuals and sound, gameplay is OK at best.

Murder by Numbers: Very enjoyable puzzle game with a nice story. I had to take a longer break in the middle, but I finished it.

Amber's Airline: High Hopes: OK hidden object game, but one of Gamehouse's lesser. I could not finish it because of savegame loss a few levels before the end.

Ni No Kuni II: I loved the beginning, but it became too grindy and uninteresting after 30 hours. The whole kingdom stuff is neat in concept, but those browser game mechanics sucks.

Lovekami: Divinity Stage: The writing was pretty OK (not many redundancies) for a Japanese visual novel, but the plot is boring and the constant innuendo was not appreciated so shortly after Yu-No. Played about 1,5 hours.

Pac-Man: Championship Edition 2: I loved the predecessor, but this one did not manage to hold my attention.

The Turing Test: The first game of this kind after Portal 2 (OK, maybe except Talos Principle) which made me happy. I liked the conversations and the puzzle mechanic was interesting, not too complicated and well balanced.

11-11: Memories Retold: Good idea, but the execution is very flawed. I stopped playing after the story drifted off and became too esoteric for my taste.

Purrfect Date: The first impression was good, but the whole romantic stuff is not interesting enough and important VN features (auto-play, skip) are missing.

Aviary Attorney (finished): I loved the first three chapters: awesome graphics and good writing. The fourth chapter (respectively the three variants) was a letdown.

Final Fantasy VII (PC) stopped after 15 hours, the story became a bit meh after Midgard and the mini games suck.

That was March to mid-May (except for Yu-No, I ranted about that already), I hope I did not miss anything. Afterwards I decided to start a big project I wanted to do for a long time. More on that in a later post.

The Fabulous King (1332) on 6/20/2020 11:00 AM · Permalink · Report

I'm playing Pillars of Eternity for the first time.

I was happy when Obsidian had the successful Kickstarter, but their games weren't on my radar then. I even played Tyranny before this.

So. At first I was like, yeah this is cute. A loving tribute to Baldur's Gate. Yeah, it's nice.

Now I am like... this game is good, very very good. I did not expect this.

I really dig the heavy theological angle of their worldbuilding. People take their metaphysical ideas seriously in this world. And it's written in a smart way. Like the writer really understand why people are religious. I find the conversations intellectually interesting. Consider me positively surprised.

Also. Endless Paths. I was skeptical. Come on! 15 levels? Really? I am now impressed. This dungeon is a lovingly crafted masterpiece, almost a game on it's own.

vedder (71102) on 6/20/2020 11:21 AM · edited · Permalink · Report

Finished Brothers: A Tale of Two sons. Short and sweet. Controlling two characters was a bit annoying to get used to and you have them stumble around a lot, but luckily this is never punished in any way. There's some very cliché fantasy stuff in the story, but parts are also really good. The visual story telling in the battlefield of giant warriors is one of the most memorable environments I ever encountered in a game!

Now playing Unchartered 4. Figured it was overdue. So far it exceeds my expectations. I expected it to be on par with 2 and 3, but this far exceeds the quality of those games, not just visually, but particularly in story telling and so far the greatest part of the game: driving around to explore the bush of Madagascar.

Edit: just remembered I also tried Symmetry. Another game received for free. Incredibly tedious game, that was quickly uninstalled. Being a fan of similarly themed Frostpunk I expected more from it. Visually nice, but it has nothing else going for it.

Jack Parkin on 6/30/2020 11:49 AM · Permalink · Report

Thanks, I will be sure to try these games.

The Fabulous King (1332) on 7/7/2020 8:45 PM · edited · Permalink · Report

Pillars of Eternity 60 hours later...

So I finished act II, Endless Paths and White March I + plus all the sidequests until now.

Yeah, my feelings are definitely more mixed now.

What I like about PoE is how it has forced me to take stats and combat mechanics seriously. I am actually using enchanting and crafting actively.

In Tyranny I never had to. There you had so many ways to become powerful that you didn't really need to pay attention. But in PoE I do have to. A fight can suddenly become tricky because of a mistake. PoE is definitely much more challenging than I expected. And I like that.

PoE is also lot longer than Tyranny. I think Tyranny was about 25-30 hours. In PoE I still have act III and White March II to do after twice as many hours. PoE is kind of a game I don't really have time to play anymore.

So where do my mixed feelings come from?

Act I was so well done that. The Maerweld scene was Obsidian at it's best. But act II didn't deliver scenes of equal intensity/quality. I think the mystery of the Hollowborn was solved too soon. Also, I thought that you would have more interactions with your companions, but you don't really.

And White March.. I'm not sure what I yet think about it. I enjoyed it yes, but... it does break the flow a bit. And while some moments reflected the larger theme of the game, I wish it would have gone more in-depth into them. Devil of Caroc for example. Her introduction and backstory is some pretty cool storytelling.... and was that it? Killed the guy and that's all?

Cavalary (11447) on 7/14/2020 2:03 AM · Permalink · Report

Finally got around to starting Lionheart in March and finished it yesterday (or 2 days ago, since it's almost 5 AM here now). The timer on the last save, made at the start of the final battle, was 4 d 23:39, so add the duration of the battle and the ending cutscene and I'm thinking I got to a full 120h during the credits. But it seems it does actually count the actual time spent playing, so if you reload it doesn't restart from the time of that save, in which case it's quite possible I got to 120h while playing, since I finished that final battle on the 4th try, after finally figuring out how to keep the Lightning WarGolem alive (er, not destroyed?) too, not wanting to let anyone I had taken with me that far bite it.

Now I have a list of notes that I just checked and has 977 words. Will make for another huge review if I will turn it into one, but depends. Tend to say I'll try to review any game I finish that has less than 3 reviews on here and generally won't bother with those that have more than 3 (unless those that exist are really bad I guess), but this has exactly 3, so... Let's see if I'll get myself to do it.

Very short version, not fond of SPECIAL, and a system requiring you to know exactly what you'll want to do with your character from creation and overspecialize is even trickier, but at least there's no level cap (I finished at 53, just hit 52 with the exp received at the start of the final battle, so got another free level by using Here and Now then, since I hadn't taken my level 50 feat, seeing as at 53 I got another feat). And the real time combat is poorly implemented, not being RTwP and enemies being so fast, and companions are really just tacked on, often more frustrating than anything else. But a pretty nice job with the setting, at least halfway through, and the Montaillou Crypt is a nice, complex dungeon. Plenty of nuisances otherwise though, in every way, and rather took issue with the Inquisition and the Spanish as led by them portrayed as after all the good guys (albeit... overzealous) and the implication of Druids/Pagans as evil (and going on a build maxing Divine Fortitude and Smite would have made Inquisition as the choice of guild for my char too, but no way, Wielders no matter what!). Other than that, yes, it does get tedious after a point, and the desert is just lazy design, and being sandwiched between two dungeons that are so and so, it'd have needed to be refreshing instead... Still, a decent enough game, with a pretty good first part and a second part that's serviceable, if at times overstaying its welcome.

vedder (71102) on 7/16/2020 8:54 PM · Permalink · Report

Playing DiRT Rally. Felt like playing a racing game, and this has been sitting in my backlog for ages, because I don't have a steering wheel. Figured I'd just give it a try with a controller and buy one if it was really gripping me.

I do really like it, but so far racing with the controller was actually OK. Not as immersive of course and I miss some force feedback but it'll suffice for now.

The real question remains on whether it can dethrone Richard Burns Rally as my favourite racing sim game. The verdict is still out, but it's a contender.

vedder (71102) on 9/1/2020 8:06 PM · Permalink · Report

Trying to clear some short games I got for free from various sources (mostly Epic's giveaways):

Overland - It's nice, but after my initial play session I wasn't really enticed to pick it up again. Would rather reinstall any of the last 3 XCOMs.

Frog Fractions - Hadn't actually played it yet. It's unique and fascinating, and a worthwhile experience, but I wouldn't call it fun.

Kamile: The Fall - The only likeable thing here is the Deus Ex inspired music.

Vader Immortal: Episode II and III - The first episode was alright, but this series gets worse with each episode. It's like the budgets kept dropping.

A Short Hike - Didn't expect it, but I liked this a lot! Another great example of how there's absolutely no reason so many games focus on combat if you can have an amazing Zelda-like experience without any combat.

Aer: Memories of Old - A game that's all about exploration should be totally my thing, but pretty much everything in this game annoyed me so I only played for a little while. The controls just feel off, the camera behaves badly, the animations make me cringe. The rest of the art is nice though. The music is OK, but it appears to repeat at the start everytime you transform to your flying form.

The one game I did pay for that I'm playing is Fall Guys. It's not as great as the online hype makes it appear, but it's definitely enjoyable and I'm curious as to what new seasons will bring. It's also a game my wife enjoys so that's a big bonus.

cheberachko viktor on 9/29/2020 1:08 PM · Permalink · Report

I like it how they've invested a bit more in "puzzle solving".

Cavalary (11447) on 10/20/2020 12:34 AM · edited · Permalink · Report

Finished Grim Fandango Remastered Saturday. When I started it, it was meant as another adventure that was a freebie that I hoped to get through relatively quickly and give myself a fighting chance of finishing a couple more games this year... And it took me four months to finish. (Admittedly, started a month before finishing Lionheart, so didn't touch it much during that time.) But at least I managed to avoid having the review get away from me again and kept it to a smaller size :))

vedder (71102) on 11/30/2020 10:09 PM · Permalink · Report

The Witcher 3 - Four years after release I finally found/made the time to spend on this massive game. I'm nearing the end of the main quest now I think (about 70 hours in). I did a fair bit of the side quests but have left the more generic stuff like contracts mostly untouched. I'm a bit conflicted about the game. I'd definitely say it's overrated, but of course if it wasn't very good I wouldn't still be playing it. Aside from too many repetitive quests, overly long dialogues which aren't very interesting and Ciri's voice acting, I think the biggest shortcoming is the leveling system. I keep gaining XP and new ability points, but after the first few there's not really any abilities I want anymore and even if I get more then I need to swap them out for something I do want. It all ends up in the whole leveling thing feeling useless. The world is great to explore though and in general the quests are more interesting than your average open world RPG. I've grown to accept the potion system it uses because at least if felt more rewarding than the leveling system. The more serious setting compared to Elder Scrolls games definitely are a high point. I also really enjoyed the main story thread in the beginning because it was about finding people who were on the run and in trouble and that felt really touching and human. Unfortunately later on it falls into the terrible save-the-world trope for absolutely no good reason whatsoever. It's a shame. All in all it's a great game with some serious shortcomings which can be overlooked by the many high points of the game.

Cavalary (11447) on 12/31/2020 7:51 PM · edited · Permalink · Report

Wow! Didn't think I'd manage this too by the end of the year, but I was close to the end and decided to just rush it. So, with finishing (such as it is, considering how abruptly it ends, without explaining anything or even allowing questlines to complete) Witch's Wake today, I finally finished all of Kingmaker and also, seeing as almost 2 months ago I also finished those additional scenarios first included in Neverwinter Nights: Gold (bar the multiplayer one), I have now finally, finally finished all of Neverwinter Nights: Diamond. First started the original campaign in 2007, finished in 2009 or 2010, SoU I finished rather quickly after that I think, then started HotU, this definitely still at least in 2010, if they weren't all in 2009 somehow, only finished HotU in 2016, started KM right after that, only finished it in January this year, then SG in March, and WW today! Over 13 years, but there you have it. Phew!

I'll be trying to write a review for Kingmaker, with something about each of the three modules included, but not sure when, and not 100% sure if, for that matter.

Right now, just... feeling rather content.