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TellTale does it again with a compelling, deep, and rich story filled with fascinating multi-dimensional characters in a completely original take on classic fairy tales. The problem is that the game is practically the same as their other TellTale games: oftentimes no meaningful choices, arbitrary quick time events, some glitches and bugs and a dated graphics engine. But for someone like me who oftentimes plays games specifically for the story you will find few better than this. It's unapologetic Noir, a familiarity with the grittier aspects of folklore, and there's so many plot twists that all fit perfectly into line at last. The dialogue crackles along with some amazing actors. Music is down-tempo and retro, perfect for the setting. Even the somewhat shaky graphics engine shines with a moody pallet and the feel of a living comic book...which is ironic because although this is based on the Fables series, TellTale managed to tell a better story and have much more interesting characters than the source material in my opinion. I'll definitely revisit, not for the achievements, but just to try out some other vocal options to hear the performances and hang out with the characters. It's another really not that great game encompassing an emotional and cleverly written story that blows away anything on the big or small screen I think. I do wish TellTale had focused on substance over style, but the style is some of the best and there's real meat to the themes and ideas being played with here.
Honestly the waffling with quick time events, although it did get me to feel engaged, and the choices were interesting and did seem to have some branching paths, this game I didn't love for the gameplay. Your decisions seem pretty trivial and only add up ultimately to collection of statistics at the end of each chapter, although to be fair there seems some memory if you failed to save someone or made a particularly momentous choice. The movement is clunky. Sometimes the graphics have some issues. It's not a perfect game: just erring on the side of mediocre. No, what makes this game five stars to me is that is FINALLY GETS BATMAN. This is the perfect blend of classic superhero and modern-day vigilante: all the best qualities of Adam West's optimism (and unapologetic theatricality), Bob Kane and Bill Finger's Gotham as-another-character idea, Nolan's darkness and grounded realism, the recent TV show's focus on Batman's relationship with the GCPD, Gordon, and government agencies...IT'S ALL HERE. And it's all fresh. Anything could happen. Every character feels true to their origins and legacy but they are not nailed down to previous iterations. The way they handle The Joker is particularly brilliant, and even tragic. I'd watch a full TV series based on this premise and playing this game feels like that, only with more wiggle room to explore. The music, the SUPERB voice acting, the fact that you can finally see a Batman story with the guts to suggest he could make mistakes (even deadly ones) it's all brilliant. You feel like you're hanging out with the cast and they're really the stars of the show. If you want to play a TV show, and an excellent show at that, this is the closest it comes and it is arguably one of the best written and compelling Batman stories of all time. Come for the story, the characters, the twists and turns. The gameplay is just an addition to that quality package.
This game is clearly in the early stages (some mismatched subtitles and barebones menus) but it's already got its heart firmly in the right place. This game has banked hard on how pretty and dynamic the combat is, but the true thing to distinguish this game from others I think is the dedication to ROLE PLAYING. You don't just learn how to hit things, you learn how to read, how to move around, how to adapt spells and abilities to different situations. You can make lore checks to investigate objects to see if your character recognizes them. NPCs will make different remarks if you belong to certain professions or have a background they recognize. You don't just level up and make your spells/weapons more powerful, you learn skills you can use and will recognize if you've played recent D&D rules games! I was incredibly pleased you need to center some spells like Light just like in the pen and paper RPG. It's more fun and satisfying somehow to carrying around an enchanted object than just change the Gamma balance on the screen. It just feels more satisfying as your characters branch into positions in the team, like you're living out a story instead of just trying to min-max a fighting team. Is the story great? No. The voice actors are giving their all in their performances but the game is rather generic in a classic fantasy sense: no real surprises. But with the focus on making the systems feel tight, the graphics immersive, and the characters distinct this is a game I'm going to play a lot of and enjoy as it improves!
Kingmaker I held off on getting for the longest time. I heard reports of bugs, balance problems, and it looked for all the world like a copy of a game like Pillars of Eternity or Baulder's Gate which were fun but severely punishing and could become dull from repetition. I was pleasantly surprised! No bugs I've found. Load times are lengthy but not prohibitive. I don't mind the cheesy voice delivery. It brought me back to the extravagant characters I've played and witnessed played by role-players in real life and I actually got to appreciate how much personality they had compared to a lot of one note fantasy characters. Like Dragon Age I became attached to my team, looked forward to them bickering and talking while camping. The graphics are charming! Chunky, lots of personality, little animations to enhance the immersion. At first I felt a major stumbling block with the combat which devolved like Dragon Age into sending in my team to just whale on enemies until they fell over. But then I found TURN BASED MODE This implementation immediately made this game 100% better in my opinion. Planning movements, coping with enemy maneuvers and abilities, taking calculated risks...it's all great fun. You can move up to a certain amount and then use an ability and it's clear how far you can move and what kind of time frame abilities take to use. Smooth, fun, and it makes the constant combat feel like a chess game you're continually improving at with new skills and stats with each level. I'm not even at the Stag Lord yet and I've already sunk hours into side quests and exploration. If you put in the time to get good gear and fight a handful of trash mobs you should be on an even footing with most enemies you run into, and healing is ridiculously forgiving. You can camp nearly anywhere, don't need items to do it, and apart from random encounters healing is just one amusing conversation away. All told I enjoy this streamlined and full of personality CRPG.
It's an odd niche but it's one I appreciate. Mac is not the greatest gaming system and even Tales of Maj'Eyal will not work properly on my desktop. But Adom works fast, looks great, plays in a window, and has enough depth to keep me interested but is not so punishingly complex I have to keep checking an online database (looking at you, Caves of Qud). It's a nifty, charming little dungeon crawler with a few twists and sometimes that's all I want when I have some time off. There's a load of care and attention paid to enemy roster especially: check out 'memory of enemy' to see a full profile on everything you fight. Only real issue is some niceties are not present here as they might be in other RPGs. I can only really know the value of something based on the amount of sale cost it has (I assume a steel helm is better than a horned helm because it sells for more, not because it actually tells you what it more effective). Also the hunger system is a pain. You won't die of starvation on normal mode but you will go through food fast (especially when you get injured) and it is ridiculously expensive to buy. Still, variety, ease of control, exploration, a sense of advancement...it's all here. A nice light pleasant to look at windowed RPG for those times you just feel like crawling through a few dungeons.
This is all the flexibility and punishing realism of a Piranha Bytes game like Gothic, all the fun micromanagement of an RTS without all the irritating wars of attrition, all the customization and sense of progression of a roleplaying game without annoying RNG turn based combat. This game is NOT for everyone, but crazy people like me who like slow burn ultra-immersion and emergent gameplay are in for a nigh perfect experience. This is the kind of game you start without a goal, much equipment, a super weak character or small band of weaklings, and you need to learn the game as you decide where to go and what to do. Think like a survivor! You need food and water. Do you look for it, or buy it? To buy it you need money. How do you get that? You need something to barter. You figure you should go mine for something to trade...but in the middle of desert while looking around you run into creatures or nomads fighting each other. Then you find scrap or rob a corpse and take it back instead of just some ore to trade. Then you have the money to buy a trained animal or an ally. Then you buy a house. Then you build a research bench and... It's that kind of game, and it's a fine example of one! I didn't have many difficulties when I downplayed some of the graphical effects, especially the view distance. It's got style, it is unspeakably huge and full of content, it is hard as nails. You need time and patience and sometimes a bit of luck, but it's worth.
I like the Fallout series a lot including the recently 3D adaptations, but there's always been a severe lack of color. Elex has the similar fun of scavenging a fallen world and fighting mutants with laser guns and spiked clubs...but in a GORGEOUS world returning to nature with flowers and trees and nighttime bioluminescent plants. Even the enemies are colorful and creative. This is a lot like Gothic, from the fully voiced characters to the system of winning faction approval and the HARD AS NAILS combat. You have stamina now so now spamming for you. It takes getting used to but it's challenging, not unfair, and when you start improving your stats and getting better equipment you will get that same high that only Dark Souls could previously provide of facing down what was impossible and using what you've learned to turn the tide. The missing star is because there's a serious learning curve here. You can see quest markers on a map but more often than not NPCs give you really vague directions you've supposed to follow up on and make deductions with. Nearly everything can kill you if you drop your guard, especially in the beginning, and you will feel underpowered if you're used to power leveling without trainers. Here you want to learn how to lock pick? You need to find someone who knows how, ingratiate yourself to them, then pay them hundreds of resources to learn the darn skill. Anyone who played Risen or Gothic knows this, but Skyrim players will wonder why they can't magically improve their skills when they have the experience. Nope. Takes money and contacts. But the real stumbling block here is NPC dialogue which goes on way too long and repeats basic info, not being clear about whether what you say to someone will make them mad (that was REALLY annoying) and a couple technical hiccups. But otherwise, it's Gothic with a jet pack. Dig in, have patience, enjoy!
I can't tell you how happy this one fact made me. If you can hit an enemy, you will do damage to it. If you have armor you will block at least one attack with that armor. If you attack from behind with an ally flanking the enemy you will get a critical hit. None of this 99% chance to hit 'missed' aggravation! I love the aesthetics and ideas of games like X-Com and Darkest Dungeon (both of which this game heavily draws from in terms of aesthetics and gameplay) but those games infuriate me when it comes down to not so much your tactics or your resource management in a pinch so much as if the dice favor you or the enemy. In Urtuk I always felt if I fouled up in a battle if was MY fault in not paying attention to equipment or placement of my units and not because at the last minute an attack missed for no reason or I got a critical hit at random from an enemy. It just feels more visceral and immediate to have your war band go hammer and tongs with the foe trading blows, accruing status effects, managing stamina to use special abilities rather than dreading to pull the trigger because the RNG forces might look on your with disfavor. Same with leveling up. It is much more rewarding to increase your abilities and raw damage output rather than increasing the invisible indicators of it you can hit something at all or just spend all day wildly swinging at the air instead of the enemy standing in front of you (looking at you Neverwinter Nights). If there is randomization here it's in the loot drops: where it should be! This is not a simple game, but it is much more accommodating than a lot of rouge-likes thankfully. You beat a battle? Everyone is healed up and ready for a new one. You can save at any point or use a single quick save if you feel like being old school. You can break down unwanted equipment into an increased chance to get bonuses from battles to come. It's all tight and definitive and fun. Wish I could rename characters and change their colors though.
I had to stop playing Risen 2 long enough to review it, which is no easy task once it sucks you in! The lost star is for technical difficulties. It crashed on my once (after hours of play) and there's an issue with one quest where you can't sneak inside a barracks without rolling forward and hoping that you get lucky and don't get noticed and there is a substantial difficulty curve...but once all that is out of the way say good bye to your time as it flies by on a piratical adventure! Like the original Risen and Gothic before it this is a hard core 'western' RPG with an emphasis on player decisions, customization, and dynamic combat. The world is mostly open from the word go (after a tutorial session in a fortress) so if you wander into the woods and meet an unbeatable enemy at your level you will get trounced, simple as that. OR you could dodge and wear it down and get tons of Glory (experience) points for your trouble. The way you play the game is basically up to you. Want to charm/intimidate NPCs instead of duel them? There's a stat for that. You can't deal with an enemy or a problem or a route? Chances are incredibly good you weren't listening close enough to a conversation which tells you the weaknesses of a foe, an alternate way to your destination, or a hint to solving the situation. Risen is a curious series. Although I do like both games I prefer the more extensive and refined mechanics of the first Risen game...but Risen 2 has PIRATES which makes it much more interesting that a traditional magical fantasy type genre. You've got voodoo rituals, you carry pistols and shot guns, you deal with rum running and dig for buried treasure, and you can train monkeys: it's a much needed mix up of RPG simply meaning 'Lord of the Rings lite'. Fair warning: this game is ALL bout gold. You buy skills, info, gear and everything with gold so keep your purse weighty. There's always some way to victory, even if it's dangerous: Risen 2 in a nutshell.
This game exists on pure ambition. The combat system is floaty and WAY too slipshod, relying on a mouse-wheel auto-aim that doesn't always work, feeling at worst like a sci-fi version of Drake of the 99 Dragons...BUT it's also flashy and frantic enough to be fun and there's tons of options for weapons even before you get upgradable powers. This game has crashed on me on every pre-rendered cutscene...BUT the auto-saves are plentiful and the levels short enough to avoid this being much of an issue, especially since you can skip every cutscene and even sections of the game with the touch of a button. The graphics are jittery and often a bit stale...BUT are so huge in scope if you see a place you can usually get there and you will fight armies between times, and if you throw a grenade chances are surprisingly good the terrain will get blown to individual pieces. The writing is quite frankly so awkward and cringy it's like watching a terribad SYFY movie, which has it's own charm...BUT the story is intriguing and original and with such high stakes you can't help but get drawn in. The bombastic music says it all: this is a game that shot for the stars and captured a little magic on the way to the ground. Almost nothing they tried worked quite right, but there's just so much raw imagination it's like playing a demo for a game that got canceled for being too ahead of its time. If you can stand a bit of maintenance and jank, you will be in for a completely unique blending of Mass Effect, Max Payne and Jet force Gemini. If ever anything needed to be remade it's this concept and all its potential, but like everything else about it, Advent Rising will probably be the one and the only.