Very few games have affected me as much as this one. By the end I was emotionally involved with both the characters and the story, and the finale is a real kicker. I hope intensely for a sequel in which I can meet the cast again. I agree with some who consider the writing a little clunky. I did, at first. It seemed awkward and somewhat cliched. However, as the story progressed I became increasingly fascinated by the blend of traditional RPG and Sci-Fi elements, and my desire to find out how it would play out became intense. Early on it seems that the story is 'tacked on' and superfluous, but by the end I found it completely engrossing. I would suggest not judging it by the early stages. The game itself is not quite AAA standard, but it works well, crashed only about twice during my playthrough (which may not have been the fault of the game), and is very well thought out and executed. Your party 'crawls' through the mysterious inverted tower in fairly traditional style, seeking to uncover its mysteries and what lies at the bottom. At any time you can exit temporarily to a 'town', where character upgrades are performed, using gold rather than experience points. I played on normal difficulty and never had a shortage of gold - I was able to upgrade all of the characters to very powerful standards. Of the characters you recruit you can take any four into combat, which makes for great variety in battle tactics. The battles themselves I found highly enjoyable, making extensive use of the excellent slow-time system as I am not a fan of frantic clicking. There are many ways to approach combat, and there is always a way to win. Some of the battles are truly epic and I felt a huge sense of achievement winning them. To sum up. It's not perfect (what is?), but the exploration/combat/crafting/enchanting/loot variety are all excellent and combined with an intriguingly original story to create one of the best game experiences I've had. Highly recommended. 'H' key reveals loot!
You can't save. Pointless and shallow.
Thoroughly enjoying these. Work fine on the latest build of Windows 10 (first needs a few tweaks to get it full screen) and are very easy to get into. Nothing too cerebral or tedious, just losts of action, character customisation and a decent story. The party options let you set up combat in numerous ways and are excellent - your characters can be as autonomus as you wish, which I like because excessive clicking and micro-management is something I personally don't enjoy. Just set them up to do what they do best, then dash headlong into a huge swarm of enemies and enjoy the ensuing chaos! Buy all three on sale for fantastic value and hours of action RPG fun.
A lost favorite of mine. Thanks to GOG it works perfectly on W10 and loads more or less instantly, bliss! Graphics are perfectly fine. No tutorial but the game is fairly intuitive and easy to learn. Sound is basic but agequate, music is a matter of taste, I like it. This is a lean but deep and well-realised strategy/tactical combat experience. It's from a time when the single player game was everything, and the computer is capable of providing a decent opponent on higher levels. Read the brief in game encyclopedia to get the info on all the units and structures. For fans of turn-based military strategy games (minus the multiple gigabyes of now compulsory eye-candy) this is 150MB of pure gold. The sequel is just as good.
Despite dire warnings it runs perfectly on my Win10 AMD laptop with Radeon 7600 graphics. Can't say too much about the game yet as I have only played for an hour or so, but if you like the Paradox games of this type you'll be very much at home here.
It's a good game, I have enjoyed all of the 'UFO' series, and this hits the spot. I have the Steam version. However, if you have a machine with Intel graphics be prepared for disappointment, as it probably won't run. This is a known issue. Spent ages trying everything to get it to work on my Intel laptop, no luck, but fortunately my old AMD machine runs it fine, so I use that, just to play it! So if you like the other UFO games, warts and all, and you don't have Intel graphics, this is a no-brainer.
I have not yet written a review for GOG, but this forgotten gem deserves it. I am one of the few people who (I cannot remember exactly how - it may have been second-hand) bought and played this game shortly after it came out, based on nothing other than a low price and the intimation from the box blurb that it looked decent enough. To cut a long story short - it had issues! It felt a bit like an unfinished beta, and it took me a while to get it to run without problems. I assume these things have been addressed in the GOG release (I seem to recall there was an eventual patch that more or less sorted it out). It was also initially quite confusing and not entirely obvious what one was expected to do, or how to do it. But something kept me persevering. I found that the game ran too fast for my liking at its default speed, so a couple of hits of the minus key slows it to a much more leisurely pace and allows you to enjoy the rather beautiful landscape and the activities of your peasants as they go about their daily tasks. It also makes battles less frantic and more tactical, which I prefer. This game immersed me into its world more than almost any other RTS. Once you configure the totally free camera to your liking you will find you have complete and easy freedom to move around the (sometimes enormous) maps - this alone makes this game superior to most RTS-type games, where the view is weirdly restricted to a small area at a particular strange angle! Having experienced the total freedom in Warrior Kings many other RTS games will seem horribly limited, view-wise. The Artos campaign for me was highly enjoyable. Siege weapons are spectacular. The final battle of the single player campaign lives in my memory as one of the greatest experiences I have had in thirty years of PC gaming. WK:Battles was slightly more polished, but the maps seem smaller and the grand scale and atmosphere of the original is lost. Still great, but not quite as magical. Buy them both!
