Started the game. Did the first two story kind of missions, which I assume were part of tutorial. Went great. After that, tried to do regular missions. Took "low risk" pirate hunting missions. Got completely slaughtered. OK, maybe I need to do something different at frist. Took a "low risk" delivery mission. That mission took me to a station surrounded by enemy capital ships, uncounted numbers of fighters, loads of missiles being launched. Best I could do was boost out of there with a huge repair bill. Kept trying. Didn't just give up. Some missions it was downright impossible to escape the overwhemling enemies from the low risk missions. Sorry to all those who figured out the game's secret, but a game this unfriendly to new players is made by ametures or people who simply don't know how to make good games. And I don't want to hear "Oh it's an indie dev crew of 1-3 people" excuse. I've played many indie games with far better game balance than this that were made by 1-3 person(s).
I only played the demo for this game back in the 90s. So, as I play it now I am not looking back at it through the rose tinted glasses of nostalgia. Nor am I going to give it a pass, just because it's Star Wars. When it comes to story and puzzles in FPS games, I am reminded of a John Carmack saying- "It's like the story in a porn movie. It's expected to be there, but it's not as important." Came into this game expecting a pure FPS game. Boy was I wrong. Game has some extremely annoying puzzles that completely block your progress until you finally guess at the right thing to proceed. All the time I am wondering when the action is going to start again. Some of these puzzles are specifically designed to waste a lot of your time while you flail away, wondering when you're going to get to shoot something again. Oh, and you can only save the game between missions. So, there's no saving the game before trying to jump to some distant ledge. Dare to make a human mistake and you will suffer for it. There are times when there are way more enemies than there is ammo. There is no kill count at the end of the mission like in other FPS games, so I guess you're not meant to take out all enemies like in most FPS games. These are just some of the examples of bad game design decisions that went into the game. Of course, this game was made back in 1995 before they knew the internet was going to be as big as it is. Back then, many game devs purposely made games quite cryptic, hoping to sell clue books or hint books for extra cash. To this day, I am thankful the internet put an end to that.
If you've ever wanted a RPG that deals with political power games in an evil nation, in a fantasy world setting, this game is very good for that. There are some things that are not executed well, though. For one, there's this build up about the overlord, Kyros, and what the overlord might know about what's going on during the events of the game. At the end of the game you expect those questions to be answered, but they are not. Now, I think I get what they're doing. Probably leaving it up to your imagination. Or, perhaps that's the excuse. There are some things you don't want to leave to the imagination. Otherwise, you have a game with an anticlimactic ending. That's what we have here. There are inconsistencies. For one, I betrayed a faction a party member belonged to. After a long time of battling that faction alongside this party member, the fellow suddenly has a problem with it. It's because they set his response to happen when you talk to him next and I hadn't talked to him in a while. They should've made it an automatic pop up conversation not too long after the betrayal happened. I encountered things like this numerous times. These are not so much bugs but poor decision making during design. Speaking of factions, the game has way too many of them. It's the same mistake I've seen made in the past with games from other companies. Gaining favor or wrath with some factions is pointless, because it has no real effect on the game. But, you don't know that unless you've played the game before. I spent hours working to gain favor with a faction, only to have it all go in the trash during an unavoidable moment when a NPC from the faction (Gregos) decided he didn't like me. There was nothing I could do about it. Was irritating at first until I discovered any favor with the faction really was meaningless, anyway. So what was the point from the start? If it were possible I'd give the game 3.5 stars. It's more than just 3 stars but quite short of 4 stars.
I like FPS games. I usually like the levels in FPS games to kind of make sense. For example in Duke Nukem 3D you're wandering down a street. Over here is a store and down the street is a bar, etc. In Amid Evil, it's just "levels for the sake of being levels" and there's no other rhyme or reason for it. But, I can deal with it because you're supposed to traveling around in weird outer realms and such. It's not like you're on earth or anything. The big problem I had is the game won't use any custom keybindings I set. The hud increase and decrease are set to - and + respectively. Well, I like to use those keys for something else so I changed them to something else in keybindings. Yet, every time I hit - on the num pad, it still decreased the HUD even though that was bound to a different key. It was like it was hard coded into the game or something. Eventually, I got tired of fighting with this thing and moved on to a different game. Too many games out there nowadsays to waste time on one that won't cooperate with you.
Excellent, but not 100% faithful remake of the original Bard's Tale games with updated graphics. They've done a top-notch job. Skara Brae has never looked so good. Mangar's Eternal Winter spell is obvious as you walk around the ruined city. Combat is fun. I seem to be gaining levels a little faster than in the original game. The 'level grinding' is still there, but they've made it less grindy than the original game. Okay I guess. Once everything is done you'll have all three bard's tale games to take your party of adventurers through, anyway. So what is not 100% faithful? If you recall, in the original Bard's Tale 1 you didn't need a Rogue. If you could spell the name of the trap on the chest correctly then anyone could disarm the trap on the chest. I always had my bard do it. At least that way I could say he was more than just a good singing voice. But here, if you do not have a Rogue and you select the disarm option, the game will tell you that nobody in your party can do it. Also, the original Bard's Tale 1 had six slots for party members. there was a 7th special slot called the S Slot that was reserved for any monsters your magic-users summoned or for any wandering creatures that offered to join your group. "NPC" party members as I will refer to them. In this remake we have all 7 party member slots, like it was in Bard's Tale 2 and 3. However, in BT2 and BT3, any NPC party members were treated just like your own player characters. They could be healed, resurrected if killed, even saved in the adventurer's guild and taken out by a different group of adventurers. In this remake, NPC party members can't be saved in the adventurer's guild. There's an old saying; In for a penny, in for a pound. The guys who made this went in for a penny, but didn't go in for the pound. But, don't get me wrong. The positives far outweigh the negatives. The part about the game not being 100% faithful to the original is supposed to be addressed in the upcoming Legacy Mode.
The first Two Worlds was an underrated game. Two Worlds 2 is an overrated terrible game. For one the controls are way too clunky. I right click to run, 2-4 seconds later my guy starts running. Things like that. Plus, on the easiest difficulty, the groms on the first island will butcher you. Sure the first couple aren't so bad but after that the grims are like 5x harder when your character has barely improved. Bad game design. Now, I've seen it said that if you can just get past level 10 the game events out. Sorry, but I just don't see the point of slogging through 10-15 levels of hell just to get to a part of the game that might be fun. The game developers are just going to have to do a better job than that.
First the bad - Two Worlds 1 has some of the worst voice acting I've ever heard. Many of the graphics aren't that good, either. People and some monsters look like they came from game 10 years before this one. The game world itself (forests, trees, valleys, etc) don't look that bad for a 2007 game. Especially when you stand on a plateau and see towns, huge towers, etc way off in the distance and wonder what's over there. Big open world and exploration is good. Controls are good and combat is fun. Haven't encountered any nasty bugs. I think I've fallen through the ground at least once in every Bethesda game, next to other problems their games have had. Not here. Tired of games with unskippable tutorials? This game barely even has a tutorial. Doesn't need one because it's not hard to figure out. Just need to figure out what you want to do. No classes like warrior, mage, etc. There are just skills. What skills are you going to use? What kind of character is it going to be? Like customizing how your character looks and 'feels' ? My guy is a warrior / necromancer. All black armor with red trim. Great axe called The Cursed Seeker. Rides around on a skeletal war horse. There's such a large variety of armor and weapons that all have different looks to them. This is just how my character wound up as I played the game, due to my own choices as far as what equipment and skills I wanted to use. Tired of overly epic story starts? "The wide-eyed hero runs off to the save the world from the bad, baaaad evil foozie, while gods pee on the world and stars twinkle and blah blah blah.." In this game your sister was kidnapped. Off you go. On with the game. Oh yes, there's a lot more to it than that. But, you are meant to discover it. Explore the land. Talk to the sages you find. Read the wiki if you must. But, it's all there. Yeah voice acting is bad. Yeah graphics look old for a 2007 game. Everything else? Not too shabby, really. Don't skip lockpicking. Let me just say that.
