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low rated
UnEpic

Unepic is a castlevania style game with RPG-like elements, namely quests you can do to get items or the like.

One main aspect of Unepic is that you can't just choose a weapon to go with and you're good to go, each monster type has a different weakness, so you'll be switching between your best sword/dagger, and then the mace so you can break open barrels only to switch back again to the other weapon. (Although you COULD hit it with your sword, but doing 10 hits with a dagger vs 1-2 times with a mace, well...)

This I've played twice so far, the first time I remember having a lot more fun than the second time.

Graphics: Pixel art, sorta, more or less. You are a very small character in a screen/room so the exact detail doesn't necessarily require a lot, although traps often are only noted by 1-2 pixels of warnings, and sometimes blood on the walls being a warning. Graphically it works, although there's two art styles, one when you get characters you are talking to (hand drawn) and then the pixel art, both are more or less good.

Music: Sounds a lot like elevator music. It isn't grating, and it's often not in the way. The battle/boss music being the most prominent you'll notice.

Sound/VO: Hmmm maybe I should drop sounds unless there's some that are fairly good or bad... Voice acting is good enough; Although pressing a button to get the full text doesn't work and instead you end up skipping conversation rather than just speeding it up.

Mechanics: There's mario-like gravity and jumping, namely once you start in a direction it's very difficult to change directions, and jumping straight up and changing directions is difficult.

Items you equip (1 weapon, one side/misc (lighter being the first), 8 rings, 1 armor, and 1 pet). Items degrade over time and your pets can die (requiring a 100g resurrection 'spark of life' orb).

Spells: You require components to cast spells, so for fire you have the red element, for cold blue, etc...

Potions: Sometimes you'll come across potions, however you get recipes so once you drink your potions you have empty bottles, mix your own, once you know the recipes and have the ingredients, you need to be at a cauldron.

Death: Depending on the difficulty level you'll be rewound a few seconds, a screen, or maybe not at all (for hard level). Dying means losing gained experience and items, so it's annoying. If you're at risk of dying (poison, burning) you can always use the halo to jump back to the safe spot and save which immediately will also cure and heal you.

Thieves: little thieves will teleport in and pick up any items you leave behind if you are gone long enough. So that's annoying, although you can reclaim this stuff at a later date..

Story/plot: You are playing D&D with your friends, you get up to use the restroom only to find the area is off. Opening your lighter you find you're not even in your friend's house anymore. Now you need to escape, probably by defeating the big bad of the castle. You also get possessed by a ghost and.. well... he talks to you trying to kill you.

There's several easter eggs, not only in conversation where he calls himself 'dark helmet' to seeing 'it's a trap' as well as other characters showing up like Zoidberg.

Final thoughts: Other than having to constantly switch out items and there being hidden rooms/walls that you can't really map (other than leaving notes in the map section) it's a fairly decent game to waste some time on.
low rated
Puddle

Puddle... move a puddle of... water (or some other liquid)... because... yeah....

A 2.5D liquids/physics simulator where you want to move as much of the liquid from A to B.

Graphics: Looks nice, not quite unreal engine nice but good.

Music: Very much square waves and sounds like synth filler music from the 80's (although certainly not the awesomeness of the 80's). Somewhat upbeat but sounds somewhat generic.

Mechanics: Press Left and Right to tilt the screen/affect gravity... If there's other mechanics I quit halfway through the water stages and I don't know.

Story: ???

Thoughts: Game overall is too simple and yet requires a lot of skill to do well. Honestly not enough to keep my attention on it. This feels like it was intended and developed for another device like a tablet where you are turning and twisting it around.
low rated
Advent Rising

This is more or less a less polished 3rd person Halo clone. Driving feels like halo, the space mission and more or less fighting the alien forces is Halo, the two weapons (often dual wielding) is Halo... Corridor shooter and uber linear storyline, no inventory or quests to speak of... It's basically Halo, but a bit less polished.

My first experience with the game on the original Xbox was the game crashed while going through the tutorial mission. The PC experiences aren't too much better.

Graphics: Looks Xbox/PS2, which it was. Not bad, but definitely dated. It has just enough of a style that it doesn't look horrible though.

Sound/Music/VO: Most of the sounds are fine, although the vehicle scene section the motor is WAY TO F*** ING LOUD!.

Music sounds Orchestral epic sounding, although nothing stands out enough as memorable.

Voice acting is passable, like the voice actors were trying but didn't quite fit into their roles.

Mechanics: The keyboard layout is kinda annoying. WASD to move, Q&E to pick up weapons for your left/right hand, as such you use the left/right mouse buttons to fire the left/right weapons. R to Reload, F for Fist punching, C to crouch... And shift to dodge... Shift... such an odd choice I never used it, which is probably a reason I got fed up because I keep dying.

Driving is like Halo, press W/S to go forward/backwards and the vehicle will automatically steer in the direction you are pointing. Right click will brake hard (letting you do a 90° turn?) while the left button will use a Nitro boost, which quickly recharges. You'll have a passenger probably who will do some firing.

Besides picking up ammo you can swap out weapons (Q/E) as well as access some stations with weapons or a med station to heal up.

Story: You are on a mission to talk with the local aliens, the first to be aboard their ship. Alas they bring bad news, within 2 days your species is going to go extinct because they couldn't prevent this other alien species... Then all hell breaks loose.

The game is Uber linear, and checkpoint based so every few minutes you'll see an automatic checkpoint progress.

No idea how it ends, because I got fed up. Maybe I will resume it later.

There's some humor and quips, but most of it seems like inside story type of stuff.

Appreciations: Even while my computer is loaded down with background processes and working, the game is fast, smooth and playable with no issues I saw.

Annoyances: Low resolution options, not seeing many Controller options, and the vehicle engine was way too loud.

Final thoughts: If you can stand to play a Halo Clone, it doesn't appear to be that bad, pick it up on sale, expect a few hours of mindless running around going the only obvious path forward and a few variety of missions that mostly end up going A to B and/or killing everything in your path.
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low rated
SKYRIM (PS3)

This was a game that was given to me as a gift on PC. Naturally my computer couldn't run it at the time, and due to Steam and DRM i didn't play it much. Got annoyed at the whole limitations of packing crap around... Now much later replayed again on another system. Perhaps the most gimped of the systems: The PS3.

Graphics: Pretty good, some of the visual effects are trippy, although beyond that all the models are decent enough, flowers and plants look realistic enough. Characters don't have nearly the uncanny valley that Oblivion did, looking almost doll-like with those eyes. Instead these look respectable. I'm not sure about the graphical design of some of the items (glass and Daedric mostly).

Audio/Voice Acting: Decent enough. Too many of the same guards voices, too many of the same quips. Too few voice actors, sounded like there were a dozen or so for nearly everyone. Beyond that all the sound effects i heard sounded like they fit.

Music: Good, although i hear a lot of throwbacks to Morrowind, which was nice.

Gameplay/Mechanics: The usual two stick movement style. L1 & R1 represent acting out that hand's specific spell/ability/weapon/other. L2 is Dash and R2 is Shout.

After getting a number of skills boosted you'll level up, and get to choose between health, magicka reserve and stamina (which also increases carrying capacity). You also get a perk you can put in, which a number of them are apparently useless (which i couldn't reset, so yay...)

Buying/selling has no bartering, you'll do a fixed price depending on your speech and bartering skills.

Most spells require a charge, so it takes time to cast. Also you can't just use a spell you learned to enchant, you have to break an item to learn the enchantment.

Equipment you have 6 slots. You have Feet, armor/chest, Hands, Helm, Ring and Necklace slots. Curiously you can't put any enchantment on anything, it's divided to try and have only up to 4 slots that can be enchanted at a time, and peerless level enchantments give a 25%, or up to +100% effect (not including up to 100% via perks)

Alchemy is take 2-3 ingredients and if they share an effect you get those effects on potions. Course mixing and matching can show you new effects you weren't aware of, or you can just enter ingredients from your inventory (recipes can be sold with this information, though they are very limited in scope).

Enchanting.... put one effect on an item (or two if you get it high enough). This is a great way to raise the value of items like steel daggers and make lots of money, at least until you max out enchanting...

Blacksmithing, you create base items perfectly regardless of skill level. Improving on the other hand is based on your blacksmithing ability. Although you can triple the effectiveness or higher of your items (and their value), once i had maxed out Blacksmithing i was regularly taking ebony weapons and taking them from their 1k value to 4k, not bad... too bad i had so many i couldn't sell them well enough.

Story: You get caught up and are about to be executed, when lo-behold a dragon comes and causes havoc and you escape. The remainder of the main storyline involves learning 'The Voice' and going to destroy Alduin the world eater.

Annoyances: (Some of these are probably fixed in later versions or can be with mods, but naturally not that one i was using....)

Being on the PS3, once the save gets beyond 10MB you start getting hit with huge frame drops, the game crashing among other things.

Shop keepers have a tiny (pitiful) amount of gold vs the items you get.

Soul Gems, ingredients and crafting materials are pretty annoying to get ahold of in large quantities.

Instant deaths. You'll suddenly get hit by an arrow and just die.. annoying. Or someone will stab you through the chest, or cut your head off or a dragon will bite you and throw you away... yeah.. annoying.

Long loading times... way too long... way too often...

Dead Thralls groan too often, and sometimes have had just fall over dead... quite confusing...

A number of items couldn't be made at the forge (base game specific...)

My followers if you have them pick up items beyond their carrying capacity, a number of items will be marked 'stolen'...

A number of perks are annoying and in the way of the perks you want. (need a mod that re-orders them to something useful).

Only one follower/summon at a time.

No bound dagger (hmmm those would have been nice with 15x damage)

Some skills don't upgrade unless you have a 'valid target', and otherwise raise far too slowly.

Limit to getting trained 5 skill points per level.

The GUI doesn't help you much. (why can't i just dump all my gathered ingredients into this barrel! Square, square, square **repeat 50 more times** ).

No hotkey assignments, instead i traverse through the menu 10x more than i needed to. (Haven't played PC version in a while so not sure if this is different)

Carrying limitations... Uggg...

Final thoughts: Somewhat enjoyable at first, the number of deaths, loading times and crashes have tried my patience. Honestly i'm not willing to keep playing after beating it. Mod support, expansions and more options.

Graphics: 4/5
Audio/Voice Acting: 3/5
Music: 5/5
Gameplay/Mechanics: 3/5
Annoyances: -6 (Wow there's a lot...)
Total: 9/20, 4.5/10, 2.25/5

edit: fixed total
Post edited March 22, 2018 by rtcvb32
Saints Row 3 (PS3)

Needing something long that would keep me occupied i found this in the discount bin (mostly because the PS3/XB360 are being phased out) and gave it a try. Can't say i got a full grasp on it even now after beating it. I alternated between buying up businesses and when i ran out of money doing missions.

All in all it felt like there should have been more.

Graphics: Graphically, really good. While good enough for the majority of the city, there's a few goofy bits, like the dildo bat and Gat suit, and quite a bit more.

Music: A lot of music, something like 10 tracks on several radio stations; Although only when in a car (and you'll be driving a lot...). You'll recognized quite a few older songs, although the rap and R&B and others i didn't like so i ignored them. Actually the sing-along with pierce was perhaps my favorite part of the game.

Sound/VA: Guns sound like guns, etc. The voice acting is good and varied. Though the pimp with the microphone stands out the most.

Gameplay: Missions and side-missions. Cause destruction, cover/defend a driver, ride a client around to get laid, race, insurance fraud, Ginko's super ethical killing gameshow, fetching/saving some hoes, stealing cars, assassinations...

The gunplay is good.
Driving is a little floaty. Everything no matter what it is feels like it has the weight of a large balloon.
At a variety of times you'll be given a choice, 'turn in truck for money, keep truck and get slower permanent income' etc...

You get an hourly income based on businesses you own. Generally you pay 10x what you're income will be, so if you do $1000, you get $100/hr. Businesses you own give you a 10%-15% discount on purchases, which is nice.

You can also call up help and they will arrive (eventually) to help. I rarely found this necessary.

Upgrades: Your purchases in gun stores is where you upgrade your weapons from a shotgun to a 3 barreled shotgun, larger clip sizes and... well you get the idea. You also spend money to upgrade your abilities (limited to your level). So money is pretty important i guess.

Story: It's weird. You start off robbing a bank, get caught by the bank's owners (the Syndicate), you escape and start off with ALL your money and property seized, so you have to retake the entire town one mission/business at a time. There's basically 3 phases of the game. The syndicate, The luchador, and the military.

Annoyances:
Drop 5 feet out of a helicopter to the ground and die... yeah slightly annoying.
Hourly payout has to be done manually in the menu
Endlessly spawning enemies. Simple missions shouldn't be difficult with helicopters chasing and sniping you at the beginning of the game!
Half the time when getting shot i can't tell who is shooting me... so avoiding hurting innocent NPC's is sorta out of the question.

Graphics: 5/5
Music: 4/5
Sound: 4/5
Gameplay: 4/5
Story: 3/5
Annoyances: -1
Total: 19/25, 7.6/10, 3.8/5
Post edited February 28, 2018 by rtcvb32
Saints Row 4 (PS3)

After the heels of finishing SR3, might as well. I'm finding the other two games i got are a bit annoying, even if they are suppose to be good...

Graphics: Good, lot of reused assets, but a lot of new assets too. A definate Matrix, Tron, & They Live vibe in large portions of the game.

Music: Again a variety of music, i just made a mix-tape and chose the best songs i liked, including 'what is love'... The semi-dubstep default background music isn't bad either.

Sound/VA: Same as SR3... Although this game has Keith David... gotta love him :) Though i found i really like the main villian too. Quite a bit of unneccesary cussing.

Gameplay: A lot of carry-over from SR3, except you quickly get super powers (in your simulation at least). So using vehicles isn't what you'll be doing most of the time. In that you because more or less as strong as Neo (minus the whole stopping bullets and dodging bullets thing). In some ways this is a better matrix game than the official ones (barring the plot). Actually in many respects it's a lot like the game Prototype too.

stores/hacking: Before you bought the stores outright. Here you hack them. They won't sell to you until you do. It's a simple pipe-dream game, connecting the start to the finish with what pieces you are given, which goes from easy 4x4 to hard 6x6, and you only get like 30-60 seconds to solve it. Puzzles don't change (from one attempt to the next, only after you solve them), so you can go again after you deal with aliens attacking you.

Powers: Jumping, Running, Blast, Stomp, Telekineses. Combined with an element (fire, explosion, bling, ice, gravity) you can do quite a bit. Although explosion blast seemed the best with normal minions. (there's 8 powers but only 4 are on the Dpad... you'll see why).

side missions: Every side mission will be covered... if you want to do them (about 100 of them). Extra weapons and outfits mostly. A few of them are recycled (mayhem, car jacking), while others specifically needing a power or two (telekineses or jumping) you have platforming, climbing a tower to the top, running through the city at high speed... Like many open world games, a lot of this is just busy work.

controls: There's multiple control schemes depending on if you are on foot, in a power suit, vehicle, or aircraft. One interesting aspect on foot is the Dpad if you double tap directions it changes the element you are using for that power.

sex scenes: These seem just thrown in there, you don't see anything, just a bit of hilarity of the prelude to sex... like Kinsey punching and then jumping on your character. Far as i can tell they have no impact on anything in the game except a bit of humor. Honestly it was more sexually explicit in SR3 with characters walking around naked in some missions (though that DOES happen here to some degree).

Story: So 5 something years after SR3 and saving the world from a nuke attack, you become President of the United States, and before a press conference starts, aliens attack. You lose against the big bad and are shoved into a simulation. While in the simulation you explore glitches, rifts, left behind code giving you powers. Through the story, save more of your crew, get them powers as well, with the ultimate goal of beating Kinyak and shutting the simulation down.

Each simulation is suppose to be their own personal hell. One of them for example is stuck on a plane where her best friend was murdered, along with his body. One who can't ever finish her mission, one who can't save the person he's suppose to in a genesis beat-em-up.

Christmas DLC: yeeaahhh.....

Annoyances: A little hard when murder bots start appearing, but more or less workable.
Platforming is a little annoying, including since super jump it's easy to overjump small things. But since you don't take fall damage this is also workable.

Neutral: It seems more balanced than SR3 but then again you ran run quickly away from a fight, recharge and return so there's that.

Apprecication: Lots of little thrown in touches. 'I love Goliath' referencing gargoyles for Keith David; Propaganda and images that are redone with Zinyak on them. And plenty of game/pop culture thrown throughout, though it doesn't feel out of place, usually quite subtle. And the various other simulations are nods to other games.

Graphics: 5/5
Music: 4/5
Sound: 4/5
Gameplay: 4/5
Story: 3/5
Total: 20/25, 8/10, 4/5
Post edited February 28, 2018 by rtcvb32
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rtcvb32: SKYRIM

[snip]

After getting a number of skills boosted you'll level up, and get to choose between health, magicka reserve and stamina (which also increases carrying capacity). You also get a perk you can put in, which a number of them are apparently useless (which i couldn't reset, so yay...)
From what I have read, as of a certain update, you can get perks back by raising the skill to 100 and then making that skill Legendary; this will reduce the skill to 15 and refund any perks you spent on that skill's perk tree. It will not lower your level, and you can level up further by raising the skill again (and get more stat increases and perks).
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rtcvb32: SKYRIM

[snip]

After getting a number of skills boosted you'll level up, and get to choose between health, magicka reserve and stamina (which also increases carrying capacity). You also get a perk you can put in, which a number of them are apparently useless (which i couldn't reset, so yay...)
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dtgreene: From what I have read, as of a certain update, you can get perks back by raising the skill to 100 and then making that skill Legendary; this will reduce the skill to 15 and refund any perks you spent on that skill's perk tree. It will not lower your level, and you can level up further by raising the skill again (and get more stat increases and perks).
I've seen and heard of that too... but that's not the version i played/own. This is very much the original (not special, legendary, GOTY, collectors, gold/platinum, etc). And updating the PS3 and putting it online, yeah not happening....

I have a bunch of mods downloaded i want to try; Just a matter of getting my gaming rig again and i'll give this a second go.
Shenzhen IO

Take what made TIS-100 with programming, and make it better. That's what this game feels like. Instead of a matrix of chips and communicating between them, you are taking a pre-sized board and putting chips and connections on to do tasks.

Note: I haven't finished the game (yet) which is a bit of a disappointment. But i've played enough to have my impressions

Graphics: Simple and to the point. While not flat colors but also pleasing to the eyes. Nice art for your coworkers.

Music/Sounds: The music has enough complexity and soft enough it's a nice white-noise, easy to ignore. But overall there isn't that much there. It's no soundtrack like Transistor though.

Gameplay: The bulk of the game is you are given tasks via email from your superiors. Not all tasks need to be completed. You are given a PCB board where you place chips, draw connections, and encode assembly language.

Quite a few ideas/features from TIS-100 are carried forward, a buffer for holding information, a ROM, etc.

The assembly language has a unique twist to it, where comparisons you don't use jumps to avoid code, instead you use positive/negative results. So say you are checking the accumulator and if it's over 10 you want to subtract 10 (for overflow), you'd do the test and prefix with a + or - (positive or negative) which acts as an if/then/else statement.

[code]
tgt acc, 10 #Test Greater Than, always executes
+ sub 10 #subtract 10 from acc, but only if tgt is true
[/code]

to do the same thing in say x86, you'd do (and you can see is quite a bit more bulky)
[code]
cmp ax, 10 #compare, set flags
jle skip #if less than or equal, jump to skip label
sub ax, 10 #subtract 10 from ax
skip:
[/code]


For chips there's generally 2 types of pins, you have Xpins which are blocking (they will wait until something can take the information) and it's information ranges from -999 to 999. While normal pins go from 0-100 (and go immediately). These pins aren't interchangeable, extra work might be needed to convert one to the other but can be annoying.

There's some undocumented instructions, some of which are hinted later (like gen).

Like all Zachtronic games, there's multiple ways to solve the puzzles, going for what costs the least (chips/hardware-wise), uses the least energy, or the fewest instructions (some of which can be handled via other chips). (previous games time usually is a target, but not in this case as a tick won't progress unless all the chips have gone to sleep, and there's fixed durations for the entire test runs)

A game of Solitaire::
A Solitaire game (which i've done over 700 hands of). It's sorta like Cell Solitaire where you have temporary slots. Those temporary slots will be taken up by dragons (white, green, red) and if you've played Mahjong you'll see them.

As the game progresses cards will automatically be removed into the appropriate stacks at the top, those that can't safely be removed you might have to remove manually in some cases to solve the hand.

Games/hands can be played in about 2-5 minutes. Once unlocked (very early on) you can play as much and as often as you want.

Story: You've always wanted to work in the tech industry, so you go to China and work for Shenzhen IO, which does a variety of projects, from a fake security camera to a spoiler blocking headphones and sandwich making machines. Lots of little projects that have their own rules, many details which are only found in the manual for reference like the codes for the 'creepy doll scream'.

NOTE: I haven't beaten the game so midway through i can't tell where it goes from this point. But a number of your coworkers who refuse to work on projects (which are military in nature) suggests potentially Orwellian results

Annoyances: Chips are too small and don't hold enough instructions... But that's part of the charm of getting around limitations and being creative. So...

Moving around larger boards is slightly annoying, especially on a laptop.

Appreciations: While managing blueprints/solutions, you have more than 3 slots. You can also clone a solution making it good for keeping the structure while only changing instructions nice and easy.

(may change after i get further in the game, with the addition of the story and other details)
Graphics: 3/5
Music/Sounds: 3/5
Gameplay: 4/5
Total: 10/15, 6.6/10, 3.3/5
Post edited March 03, 2018 by rtcvb32
SKYRIM (PC)

Having gotten myself the hardware for a mid-level gaming PC (you can probably get ultra settings in all games 2014 and earlier at HD, but not good for 4k, thankfully i don't care about 4K) i've restarted my game. However with a few bit differences.

Many of my thoughts on graphics, sound, etc won't change. So this is more re-addressing what did change. To see what i said about the PS3 version, go here (or look back like 5 posts)

Graphics: No real change, though it looks better (obviously).

Audio/Voice Acting: No change.

Music: No change.

Gameplay/Mechanics: By far the largest change, other than framerate (due to save size) and addressing annoyances.

Movement is WASD (naturally), mouse to look around. left/right buttons are opposite, so left button activates right hand. Slightly annoying.

E/Enter is Yes, Tab is No... R is Craft and F is rename (when crafting/enchanting) for... some reason? Wouldn't Q be a better fit for No? Or R rather than having to totally move my hand to say yes when E won't work...

MODS:

Sky-UI: A great mod plugin that actually makes the game playable on PC. This adds a nice menu system, filtering (type in dae, and you'll get ALL daedric items, sort items by value, armor, damage, type, etc). Most importantly (although a little annoying to set up) are the hotkeys for setting up 8 different configurations. This includes everything you want worn, as well as what's equipped in your left/right hand for spells. This way you can have one outfit for black-smithing, one for adventuring, and one for sneaking, etc. (although not enough space for the name in the preview)

Annoyances (Addressed with mods/other): (Some of these are probably fixed in later versions or can be with mods, but naturally not that one i was using....)

Gamesize/speed: Going from one room to another takes 2 seconds, saving is instant (or nearly instant) so that's nice.

Increasing carry limit to unlimited, more items in shops makes the soulgem/ingredient/crafting problem go away.

The most 'instant deaths' i've seen (Playing with Ordinator mod) is mostly from falling. Dying from high damage rather than instant kill. So much better.

SE/Legendary edition removes the major issue for making items at the forge, although more mods with overhauling blacksmithing do that too.

Perks are still iffy. Although playing with an entirely different tree.

Followers are far less important if they don't have to carry your stuff. Though with being able to summon skeletons (i have 6 i can have) they act as a good distraction, plus 3 skevers that spawn at the beginning of combat.

Skills still raise slowly, though some are easier than others.

Training raised to 20 points. Yay... (figured that was high enough).

Doing highly repetitive still is an issue, thankfully AHK to the rescue, removing MOST of that issue. Wish you could say 'make 50 potions' or 'make 50 daggers' or 'smelt 50 gold ingots' when you're obviously grinding for your skills at that moment.

NEW annoyances: Enchanting resets the soul gem, item and enchantments each time, while this was apparent in the PS3 version too it's more annoying this time around in the PC. Makes grinding and raising the value of items early on so you can get more septims annoying.

Some popup menus (when playing 4:3) get cut off making reading perks or selecting options impossible. So have to play in Letterbox mode, or on a widescreen monitor/TV to be practical.

Final thoughts: The PC version is far better than the PS3 version, by far. Wish there was more of a way to do certain things in bulk, but otherwise it's good.

Graphics: 4/5
Audio/Voice Acting: 3/5
Music: 5/5
Gameplay/Mechanics: 4/5 +1
Annoyances: 0 (YAY!)
Total: 16/20, 8/10, 4/5
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rtcvb32: NEW annoyances: Enchanting resets the soul gem, item and enchantments each time, while this was apparent in the PS3 version too it's more annoying this time around in the PC. Makes grinding and raising the value of items early on so you can get more septims annoying.
Reminds me of this issue in Morrowind. The thing is, unlike Oblivion and Skyrim, you can fail to enchant, and it's random (but affected by your skill); when this happens, you have to re-specify the parameters of the enchantment again, which gets annoying. (It's also worth noting that this destroys the soul gem you were trying to use.) (I also note that enchanting isn't a way to make money; instead sell the filled soul gem.)

It's not an issue in Oblivion, because enchanting can't fail, can't be used to make money, and doesn't have an associated skill (so there's no benefit from this other than getting the item, so there's no need for repetitive enchanting). (Of course, Oblivion, like every other Elder Scrolls game, has its issues, but this ain't one of them.)
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dtgreene: (It's also worth noting that this destroys the soul gem you were trying to use.) (I also note that enchanting isn't a way to make money; instead sell the filled soul gem.)
True, especially for Morrowind. However it's the power of the soul not the gem you are interested in. So if you have a lesser soul gem with a lesser soul, and a common soul gem with a lesser soul, it can go up/down as appropriate. I usually also have stacks of gems filled, like 10 or more, so i really don't see why i can't continue using the same stack. I mean for dealing with alchemy that makes sense and once you run out of an ingredient, all ingredients are undone and reset, which is fast and easy to select 2-3 if you wanted.

I do recall this issue in the PS3 version, but when i worked i only had a few enchantments/gems/items on hand so getting an item enchanted took 5 seconds just going through it quickly, while in Sky UI it's more steps even if it's the same result.

Hmmm i really wish enchanting broke gems but recharging wouldn't, then i wouldn't feel as afraid of recharging items. But meh...
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rtcvb32: Hmmm i really wish enchanting broke gems but recharging wouldn't, then i wouldn't feel as afraid of recharging items. But meh...
Try getting Azura's Star (or, since you're playing Skyrim, the Black Star also works); it doesn't break when used. (If you want, you could only use the Star for recharging and use other gems for enchanting; in Oblivion, I find myself doing that at the mid levels where the only way to get Grand souls is to find the gem already filled or use Black Soul Gems.)
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dtgreene: Try getting Azura's Star (or, since you're playing Skyrim, the Black Star also works); it doesn't break when used. (If you want, you could only use the Star for recharging and use other gems for enchanting; in Oblivion, I find myself doing that at the mid levels where the only way to get Grand souls is to find the gem already filled or use Black Soul Gems.)
Oh i HAVE azura's star. And it's the first thing i use when enchanting or the like. (because why not?) (though it's basically a grand soulgem, as i have found monsters i couldn't trap with it)

Curiously the script in Morrowind is broken for azura's star, and only works for azura's star... tried tinkering/duplicating with it and found it wanting. :P
Post edited March 22, 2018 by rtcvb32
Dark Chronicle (Dark Cloud 2, PS2)

Years ago when i first got a PS2 back in 2000, i had only a couple games. Dark Cloud was one of them. It was cute, it was fun... but it was slooooowww.... Dark Cloud 2, i think of as the game remade with better mechanics, experience, better graphics and story, but it's the same basic story.

All Level-5 games are slow and need a lot of grinding. The only way you can really play it sanely is if it's the only game([i]s/[i]) you have, or use cheats to speed up the process. I beat the first Dark Cloud legit but it took like 200 hours, most of that leveling up weapons.

Graphics: 2000ish they were really starting to get into cell shading, and it actually looks good even today. Upping the resolution certainly makes it look cleaner/sharper, although the textures could use a little upgrade. All in all, very nice.

Music/Sound/VO: Music is midi for the most part,and most of the music is forgettable. It's a lot like elevator music, repeated loops. Voice acting is okay. There's better voice acting in a lot of places, and a few of the voices don't match the characters well. But it's serviceable.

Mechanics: If you played the original Dark Cloud, you sorta know what you're getting into... with a few big exceptions. You enter areas, defeat monsters and gather treasure, level your weapons. Certain monsters have 'gate keys' which let you leave the area. Some levels only one person can be in, so it's more hardcore, or other limitations. (although the limitations are far weaker than they were in the original game).

Unlike the original game, here you have 2 weapons: Melee and Ranged. The weapon that defeats the monster gets the XP (although if you switch characters, it's split evenly).

When a weapon levels up you get synth points, meaning how much you can upgrade it. Satisfy criteria and you can raise it to the next level. The type/level of the weapon also specifies the max a particular stat can be. It seems to be 45/70/110/150/250, as a rough estimate. To add to stats you'll get gems, like the lightning stone which you synthesize, then merge. You can synthesize almost anything, including weapons. When you do you only get about 80% of the abilities/stats, so you can upgrade weak weapons to boost a stronger weapon.

Inventing is a little annoying. Take pictures, and if you combine 3 things together (fireplace, flour, bottle of water for example) you'd know how to make an item (bread in this example). Figuring it out or doing them at random can result in inventions, although you'd most likely get 2 good and then it will hint the last one, like B_____. With those you can take the elements and make as many of them as you want (if you have the ingredients).

Land Building: A large portion of the game is also put on restoring Origin points. You need to satisfy criteria like having specific people living in a blue house, or the people will complain if they want something different that you have to satisfy (most of the time it's easy to accommodate). When all the requirements are met you can move to the future 100 years and something will be there. A shop, a restored mystical tree, labs, etc. A certain number of these are required to continue with quest items.

Spheda is a golf game included, where you have to whack a red ball into a blue portal or blue ball into a red portal. If they are the same color, bounce it against a wall to chance colors.

Monster races: As part of the story you can collect badges that let Monica become said monsters, level with them and become stronger. But this is sorta if you feel like it. There's room for 16 badges that i see.

A Third Wheel: You can also have one person tagging along. They don't do anything directly, so they might repair your weapons, increase rate you get materials, make you cheese... etc... The most useful is probably the one who makes you bombs. They also have a limited number of action points, and if they don't have enough points they won't do anything for you. So granny makes you cheese, it costs 24 points to get cheese and her max is 72 points, so 3 cheeses... after that, gotta wait... better to swap to someone else you have with you.

Story: A circus is in town... to find a 'stone' that Max has. Quickly the hint of things going on in the rest of the world moves him to leave town and find out. This adventure goes to multiple locations, restoring towns and areas that were erased, and in the end going to the past by quite a margin to defeat the final boss. Emperor Griffon!

Annoyances: Grinding is SLOOWWWW... after 20 hours i enabled cheats that quickly let me level weapons and not worry about item acquisition or money. This cut probably 150+ hours or more off my game time.

Doing the garden at the end is an annoyance to center just right so everything fits. And only going off pictures...

Final Thoughts: A fun game, but based on the age, it's not something i would suggest getting back into. It was much better playing when it was new. But it still looks and plays well enough. If you're interested in trying it out, give it a try.


Graphics: 4/5
Music/Sound/VO: 3/5
Mechanics: 4/5
Story: 3/5
Total: 14/20, 7/10, 3.5/5
Attachments:
dc2_crest.jpg (172 Kb)
Post edited April 03, 2018 by rtcvb32