Hack and slash, brother, until it is done.
But a nice little gem in the rough. Char has a problem, and that problem is you. Your life recently took a turn for the worse and well frankly you're being quite a sourpuss about it. Surely a nice little adventure (and archaeological dig) should lighten your spirits and fix that problem. In so doing you end up mixed with the remains of ancient Xanadu, a mythical country from ages past. Dive in dungeons, uncover mysteries, upgrade your stuff, enjoy. I do enjoy the scenario quite a bit. Our character is an established character with a backstory, but he is very much a stranger to these lands, it's not a personal story. Our character's backstory informs us on his outlook in life, what haunts him, what drives him, and why he ends up in the middle of this mess, but the focus is on Xanadu and the Black Bride. Almost like a D&D character. It's not about finding the bandits who burned down your village, it's about who you are when the plot kicks into gear. Gameplay-wise you can see a lot of influence from Ys, and maybe a bit from Vagrant Story, but the gameplay is a lot less complex here. One button to hit when you're close to something you can hit, one to use skills/magic, one for items, and one to open the inventory. No rhythm-based combos, we're keeping it simple. You can have 4 skills in your skill bar, each has its own pool of uses and you can switch them up anytime. So setups with 4 active skills or 1 active and 3 passive skills both make sense. Even quite far into the game, I still got pleasantly surprised by some Guardian abilities or items sold by Agnes. There was a lot of inspiration poured into this game when making it, and it shows. Very little feels phoned in. So yeah, no it's not Vagrant Story, it's probably slightly worse than one of the better Ys games, but it's a simple, nice, effective game with a good story. Heartily recommended.
This game has a steep learning curve, not due to the difficulty or mechanics, but strictly because of the control scheme. I'm 20+ hours in and it still trips me up sometimes. As an example, let's say you start a new game, you choose your difficulty, class, background, and upon reaching the third screen with your stats, you change your mind and want to switch backgrounds. There is no intuitive way to simply go back one screen, instead your option is to restart the process all over again. In your inventory, click once and you select the item, click again and you use it. But the game will keep an item selected, so you click twice to equip an armor, then click on it in your equipped slot to double check its stat, you unequip it. Because even though the game isn't showing the item's stats anymore, it is still "selected" in your equipped slot. Plenty of things like that. Once you're used to that, there are still a couple issues with the systems here and there. The feature to click on green text for an explanation usually works great, with a couple exceptions. For example, using the "defend" action adds your "defending bonus" to your dodge. What's your defending bonus? The bonus added to your dodge when you defend. That's all the explanation you get. Likewise, the magical aptitude stat is hidden away in the spells tab, unlike all your other stats, as the "spells" tab is really a "everything magical tab". But otherwise, for most systems if you played older versions of D&D, your intuition will probably be correct. I don't think the game ever mentions that moving cancels all but one of your attacks, but that's how older D&D editions did it, and that's how Skald works. And the systems are very intuitive. The ambience is top notch, with only a few minor gripes here and there, and all in all the game is extremely enjoyable once you stop fighting the controls. Even with its kinks the game is very much worth it. Sure the story is good, but the gameplay also stands on its own.
Fallout is a question, and the answer is yes! The game does require you to jump through some hoops to play it, and even more to enjoy it. Most hoops come from technical difficulties, the other is moral, should you give effing Bethesda money for Fallout 2? Once you pass those hoops however, you've got one hell of a classic that you can sink hours upon hours into, with freedom you can find nowhere else these days. We are talking of a time before the ridiculous "nobody plays the evil route" statistic. So if you want to be the worst basterd in the entire Wasteland, seduce a young woman, get literally shotgun married by her father, find the slavers and sell your wife, shooting one of those damn pickpocketing kids on your way out, you can. Of course you can decide to be a lot less edgy than this, but it is a depth of choice that exists. The game will let you do things and in many cases will react to those choices. The game is excellent and a classic for a reason, Fallout 1 might be superior but require even more hoops for you to jump through. If you have never played this game, get ready for a rough introduction to the world of retro gaming, but the prize is worth the game.
As long as you can get behind the graphical choices, you'll definitely enjoy yourself playing Return of the Obra Dinn. The game is not as visceral as Papers Please and the gameplay can be marred by some clunkiness, especially with the keyword system, particularly in other languages like French, but the game is otherwise excellent. Great story, excellent atmosphere. It transitions from a more adventure/discovery first half of the game, where you discover what happened to the Obra Dinn, to a more investigative later half as you piece together the more obscured fates of some crew members. The soundtrack is particularly excellent and the game boasts great attention to detail. I finished the game 100% in a bit under 10 hours, but you can definitely put a lot more hours into the game listening to the different kind of clues and relying on different hints, keeping you entertained for more. Since Return of the Obra Dinn is one of those games where most of the time your lack of progress will be your own fault and you can only blame yourself for not getting it, the length of two peoples' playthroughs can vary a lot. The fact that your brain wracking determines your progress "most of the time" and not "all the time" is what holds me back from a 5 star rating, but I can highly recommend this game. Also this stylized 3D feels like an excellent alternative to pixel art indie games, so props for that.
