Great expansion to an already great game. Dogtown is beautiful, fun to explore, 2.0 combat and gameplay suit the environment perfectly and the story is gripping all the way through. That said… bit of a sod to get the gog version running on my steam deck, wish there was more Linux support.
Didn’t encounter any performance related issues. A few bugs. Well, a lot of bugs. But most were hilarious visual bugs. Only gameplay one I can remember is occasionally getting stuck in the terrain and a crouching/standing bug when skipping dialogue too fast. Story is topnotch. Some of CD Projekt’s best work. World building is topnotch. Same as above. Night City and it’s lore are fascinating even if the genre doesn’t interest you much like it did me. Characters, including acting and voiceovers are topnotch. Kudos to the writers and directors too. Ai is about on par with Witcher 3’s. NPC’s in the world are just set dressing. They don’t live lives or react when you steal from them. Cars seem a bit... stupid. Like if you’re one foot on the road coming off the sidewalk they’ll occasionally start crashing into things for no reason. Again, mostly hilarious but might be immersion breaking if you’re prone to that sort of thing. Much smaller and shorter game than Witcher. Main quest is about 30 hours. Throw in all the side quests and activities and you’re looking at maybe a 80ish hour game tops? Choices don’t matter much. So replay value is pretty dead too. It was absolutely overhyped. But my god were the 70+ hours I put into the main, side and gig quests (And seeing all the endings) so damn worth it. Just go in with lower expectations and expect a few minor bumps.
I really enjoyed my time with Gothic 1. Particularly in the opening sections. From the music and sound design to the overall feeling of the world. But most of all I love the feeling of character progression this game gives. When you start out, you're nothing but a peasant who can barely hold a sword, hell you struggle to kill a single lizard-chicken thing. But as you level up and grow by increasing your weapon skill, your character will start to hold the sword a little better. Your hits will do more damage, your combos will flow much more elegantly and those lizard chickens? You'll be able to handle them with ease. Then the wolf will be your main adversary until you can increase your power again. It's great and really sells the 'zero to hero' fantasy. Sadly as you dry up the world of quests and finally commit to joining one of the three factions the game will take a turn for the worse, becoming much more linear as you follow the main questline to it's rather lacklustre destination, fighting a boss with the most fitting name of all. I must also note the incredibly outdated control scheme which has you press two buttons at a time to do a single action. You'll get used to it pretty fast, but it's still rather cumbersome. Still, it's a solid game that's well worth playing through and I recommend it to any RPG fan.
Don't play with game with Night of the Raven. At least not the first time around. I was warned about this too, but I didn't listen. "What could be bad about more content, even if it does make the entire game slightly more difficult. Gothic 1 was pretty easy!" I thought. The problem here is 'slightly'. NotR doesn't make the game 'slightly' more difficult. It makes it extremely difficult. To the point where the only viable way to play is to metagame and min/max your character according to guides you find online and even then it doesn't seem to work all that well. Maybe NotR is great for experienced players, but for first timers? Even those coming right off the back of Gothic 1? Don't bother. I had to re-do the first ten hours of the game twice because I made an oopsie that prevented me from gaining health for several of those levels (Don't level up while using a transformation scroll or the health you get from leveling up won't apply). Now I'm on Chapter 2 and I can't beat this pair of Orcs guarding this certain area. I want to re-install the game without NotR, but I don't want to go through those first dozen or so hours from the very start again. The difficulty added by the expansion has ruined what should have been a very enjoyable and fairly balanced experience. There is a good game here, don't get me wrong, but it's not with the expansion.
Dragon Age: Origins is basically much of what you loved about old school RPG's but brought forward into the 'modern' (Well, 2009 modern) world. What to Expect: Tactical (Though some may think it tedious) Combat A rich, story-driven adventure Amazing cast of characters Hoards of lore and ancient items of power to hunt down Humans, Dwarves, Elves, Mages, Warriors, Rogues. You're typical fantasy. A story with a generic premise (Build an Army, Rescue the princess, Slay a dragon) but with the depth of an ocean. I would also like to add that the GOG version supports cloud saves now! Which is something both Steam and Origin have failed to do, which makes this an obvious buy for those who don't want to risk loosing everything when they have computer problems.
