I rode a tank; held a general's rank, when the blitzkrieg raged, and the bodies stank.

I played FlatOut 1 a while today - quite enjoing - is F2 even better than that?
Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name, but what's puzzling you is the nature of my game.

Oh, thanks for the recommendation! Wishlisted and awaiting next sale.

I had cleared out my boring PS2 collection yesterday (they were all games that I owned in a previous library) adn while at an independent game retailer found a mint-condition copy of Fighters Megamix for my Sega Saturn library (never played FM in my life, but it is HARD, even when using the 3D Analog Controller). I probably need to order a Virtual Stick.

In between assignments and preparing for my last semester at university, I've been playing (in order of most time to least time invested):

* River City Ransom Underground - Provie is my favorite character and I seem to last the longest using her moveset.

* Hollow Knight - love Metroidvania games and I LOVE the art style, difficulty and implied story. I like it a LOT better than Valdis Story: Abyssal City.

* Strafe - it's a quick game or two when I need a break between homework assignments and projects. I already beat it in the first week of it being available for Mac and unlocked all of the mods, but the randomness provides for some fun.

* Everspace Encounters - again, a quick game or two between assignments. Unlike my time playing Everspace pre-Encounters, I can't seen to make it to the second map. Before Encounters I would usually survive until the fourth.

* Tower 57 - just purchased it. Not the best $10.00 USD that I've ever spent, but the game IS warming up to me. The main reason I'm feeling "meh" about the game in general is that the store page promises controller support but it doesn't work with the Dual Shock 4. Also, too many pauses in the action.

Games NOT on GOG:

* Xonotic 0.8.2 - replaced Red Eclipse and Warsow as my favorite open-source FPS.
* Fighters Megamix (Sega Saturn)
* Sonic Jam (Sega Saturn)
* Guardian Heroes (Sega Saturn)

EDIT: open parentheses corrected.

Started yesterday The Age of Decadence. It's a nice game, just the technical part is a little bit rough around the edges. Began as mercenary because the game suggested that a combat oriented character would be easiest to start with. But, hell, either I'm to dumb or the mainstream RPGs made me a sissy.

Pillars of Eternity. Glorious.

I had problem to survive the demo xD
I own this game and want to play, but to make this a bit easier I've started with Dungeon Rats - just to get to know the AoD mechanics before that challenge.

It's not that hard really. Only thing you need to remember is to specialize. If you want to be a fighter you need to put ALL your points into your fighting skills (one attack skill + one defense skill) etc.
AoD is more about replaying it with different characters ;)

Age of Decadence is really great, but the start can be hard because you're immediately thrown into some difficult fights. Don't get frustrated, it's all doable. Just create a character with stats geared towards combat (so I'd suggest make Charisma your dump stat and lower it to 4, high dexterity and perception - 9 or 10 for dexterity - though 10 may be too much if you want to use heavy armours, 7 or 8 for perception - are most important imo, strength of 7 or 8 is enough, and I've never played with more constitution than 7)and focus on a few skills. Just pick ONE combat skill, and either dodge or block (not both!), and raise that up to about 5 or 6 in the first town. Alchemy and crafting can help a lot.
And don't just rush through the mercenary quests, but do all the sidequests in Teron, you need the experience.
Bad idea! Dungeon rats is much harder than Age of Decadence. I managed to beat it once on the preset difficulty, but that was probably due to some bugs which worked in my favour...got stuck on a 2nd playthrough. Very, very hard game, Age of Decadence is much more forgiving (and has other quest solutions apart from combat).

EDIT: Or if you do start with Dungeon rats, do yourself a favour and pick one of the lower difficulty settings. Trust me, it will still be challenging enough.

You don't need to put ALL points just into combat. My assassin builds mostly had high crafting and lore (up to around the 8-10 range), alchemy, lockpick and sneak at around 4. It's also possible to do a combat build with some speech skills...there are lots of options. But you definitely can't have everything and need to focus on some skills, that's true.

Thanks for the tips. My mercenary had the default stats (Str 8, Dex 8, Con 8, Per 6, Int 6, Cha 4) and I concentrated on the skills axe, block, crafting and alchemy. But I guess trying to be a kind-hearted and honest warrior was not a good idea.
Anyway I restarted as loremaster and it seems easier now, although I still don't feel comfortable with some choices I have to make...

Not so bad, I think. I've managed to finish Dungeon Rats on lowered difficulty level (quickly realized that continuing with the normal one will eventually make me unable to finish the game). And even on Low it was challenging, indeed.

But thanks to that experience now I know better the mechanics and I hope I'd be able to avoid many mistakes - such as investing some points both on Block and Dodge, which is perhaps the best example here.

I supposed that AoD is very unforgiving and I didn't want to invest in skills or parameters, which are useless or incompatible with my game style - because points wasted may lead to dead end, situation when you are just before the end and cannot complete the very last quest. Playing DR should help me a bit to avoid that scenario.

Mea culpa! It's true you can have hybryd builds. But it's much easier to beat the game for first time if you stick with fighting-warriors and talking-merchants, etc.

I wouldn't even call it a hybrid build if you invest in alchemy and/or crafting as a warrior, these skills are very useful for combat after all. I always go to Alchemy 4 for the poison, and crafting at least to level 8 which lets you make blue steel items.
And lore is just essential for all characters and brings many exp rewards.
Hybrids imo are more along the lines of a Praetor who has speech and combat skills, and these are indeed quite difficult to play since it's easy to end up deficient in both areas.
The default stats are all right, though I usually raise Per and Int to 7 because with that you get most of the quest-related benefits (plus the XP bonus for Int) and lower Str and Con to 7. But in a first playthrough you won't see everything anyway.
And yes, it's a quite amoral game in some ways...but you can still be good. Just don't expect to be rewarded for it and to be celebrated as an hero :-)
That can indeed happen, though mostly it's not that bad (the thief questline imo has some egregious examples for this, where at some point you're f***ed if you haven't built up your lockpick to a high level, but apart from that it's mostly fair).
Just focus on some key skills. In my experience sneak isn't really useful above 5 (4 is enough for most checks), and for most characters lockpick of 4 is also sufficient. I never did steal except as a thief. Traps has quite a few interesting checks in the thief questline, but is not that important for other characters. Etiquette isn't very useful, even speech characters shouldn't put points in it unless they have covered other more important skills.