What's good in S2 in terms of gameplay it inherited from its predecessors, what's bad equally so. The game has pretty nasty issues in regards to giving player feedback, informed choices, and a series of really annoying and almost outdated progress barriers in the form of insta-kill script walls. It is a game rife for modding, balance patches, and content patches. That said it also has an incredibly engaging story if you find it engaging to reflect on the ambiguity of it. It reminds me of Cyberpunk 2077 and Fallout: New Vegas. It's going to be hit or miss and I didn't really care for it until the ending where everything became retroactively far more fascinating, but having finished the game I now am very happy with it. The game also panders hard to nostalgia, which at times can get annoying, but it is always done with subtlety and skill. Perhaps because I am nostalgic for STALKER I am biased, but I never felt like the game was expecting me to clap at a thing I recognised, instead dotting its world and references consistently, and never in a way that would be distracting to someone whose first experience is this game. It is tasteful, and I found it very fun to catch up with the more subtle ones. If this is the last STALKER game then this a worthy send-off for its characters, and I am happy to have seen them like this. But the way this game ends it leaves it plenty open for more STALKER adventures in the future, and this please me. I don't know if this is a great game, but its definitely better than good, and I got a good 150 hours out of it where I was never bored. That said it needs some love in the form of technical patches, and some post-release content would be nice. - Better feedback for when a location is inaccessible - Balance pass on economy on Veteran - Improve mobility options and uncap weight - Scar's VA and mocap actors deserve canned meat - Come to Him - We thank you, oh Monolith, for revealing the cunning plans of your enemies to us. May your light-
The addition of frogs is a pretty good one. They take over a lot of the rainwater roles that foxes used to have (as they have a new gimmick now), and also have affinity for masonry. They benefit from developing your settlement more-so than the other animals, and when I play with them I often find myself micromanaging them more than the others because of it. The new biome, cove, is also excellent. It's shaped like a crescent with water in the centre and because of that you have a greater incentive to build an extra settlement if you're exploring deep, and making sure you have a good central road. It's probably my favourite biome because of it, and it's the only biome that necessitates complex food production as a basic operation, which is fun. Overall a great DLC for a great game, well worth trying out.
When I first heard about a rogue-like city management game I thought that was incredibly silly and I rolled my eyes. Then I got a copy, played it, and I did nothing but play this game every day for a week. It is very, very, good. It also had that wonderful quality where when I wanted a QoL feature, it turned out it was already in the game I just didn't know about it yet. If you like city management games this is a must-try.
This is the best arcade shooter I've ever played. You are missing out if you aren't giving this a shot. Everything from the movement, to the pacing, to the weapons will scream quality at you. I doubt this game will be dethroned in my world any time soon.
With the introduction of 'chilled' and 'superchilled' tanks and the associated animals you get more interplay in the aquarium's layout which is a lot more fun than earlier separation between fresh- and saltwater tanks. In combination all the various tank types you now have (wtih all the DLC) makes for a really vibrant and varied aquarium. Love that. There's also a lot of interesting animals to play around with, the abyssal ones, which while overall less fun to put into an aquarium; there's a lot of them and they have as much interplay as vanilla animals and so it feels like its own thing you can play around with. You also get some more commonly known animals like seals, penguins, various flighted birds, and polar bears; and those are fun to have in their own right. I especially like that birds that fly can be put in enclosures with dangerous animals, as the flight status gives them immunity towards ground- or waterbased predators. These enclosures are a fun ecosystem to manage on their own. There's also breeding attached to these animals, as seen in Freshwater Frenzy; which this time around is a little easier to manage (read; prevent) than with the freshwater fish. As such I appreciate as an option rather than a damned inevitaiblity. The only downright negative thing I have to say about this DLC is that the abyssal tanks have an effect of "leaking" science, like bubbles. And I am so conditioned to respond to red popups in this game that I get noticeably stressed looking at these tanks. You can disable all (but not just the abyssal tank's!) popups to get around this. But I am of the opinion that if the biggest thing you have an issue with is a nitpick; then you're having a good time. Fun DLC, if you like Megaquarium it's a fun addition, and I would recommend this to anyone who hasn't played Megaquarium yet.
The expansion pack has a bunch of new gigs that all have a little more substance to them than even better gigs in the basegame, and are very fun to play. Most (all?) of them have multiple outcomes so there's replayability and personal expression in them as well. The new guns range from 'okay' to 'very fun' to use and if you like iconics then there's several new ones to play with. The added cars also give a good selection of choices if you like to shoot vehicle mounted weapons at people. As for the story the actors do well, the storybeats are presented compentently and are engaging, and the setpieces you engage with are varied and fun - though a few of them, notably one where you cover another character with a sniper, suffer from the age-old problem of looking through a scope for 20 minutes isn't fun. There's also pretty obvious seams where scripted segments such as dialogue or NPCs walking between locations, which makes some of the more complex story elements; very clunky. There's at times a delay between dialogue is stated by a character, and until the trigger for V to respond becomes available. V will often also be required to stand in one extremely specific spot to be allowed to respond or interact with items, which may be a bug because it affects non-PL content as well. Overall it's a really solid expansion pack, well worth its price if you like the basegame, and if it is the last content that CP2077 gets it's a good sendoff - but not perfect. My personal pet peeve is that there still isn't an iconic MG in the game. There is also an argument that playing the 1.6 patch is preferable to playing the 2.0 patch and as such you'd be gated off from playing PL if so. There is one big issue with this content that can not be discussed without severely spoiling the story, so instead I'll just say that if you require the technology in a setting to make sense, be explained, and not be magic; you will find Phantom Liberty intensely frustrating compared to the base game.
After almost 2 hours of endless NPC jibbering about the nonsensical plot are you let loose, and when this happens you are given over to fairly standard and uninteresting looter-shooting. You can rub up on enemies without them seeing you and anyone who does will instantly shoot at you because in the world of Metro everyone is so fed up of all the talking that they will shoot you on sight to avoid any dialogue happening, presumably. Maybe I was just having a bad day but between all of the above, quick time events, and "hold to pick up" I was just having an attrociously bad time and stopped playing. Janky animations, bad voice acting, and uninspired gameplay. Not worth sitting through what must, judging by the first 2 hours, be 80% unskippable cutscenes.
This is a game that warrants a multiple page essay to review it, but the long and short is that an RPG lives and dies on how interesting its world is, and BG3 doesn't really take itself seriously enough to create a consistent world with politics and ideoligies, nor does it interweave its characters in such a way that their motivations become drivers for the plot or the interactions. So you're really left with a game that's a vessel for giving you dnd 5e combat and it's kinda buggy but mostly works, so it's "fine". Whether you like this game can be determined largely on whether you think that shenanigans you can cause in combat, and the weird creatures you'll meet; will carry your engagement through 80 hours of game. I played with 2 other players and we all agreed that it lacked narrative substance, though were at times impressed with what was on display in terms of mechanical depth. With a lot of very good RPGs behind me, this one did not live up to the comparison. Though I am sure it is a defining game for many younger players, and rightfully so. But to me this is just Divinity Original Sin 2: 2.
