Much like Piranha Bytes' others games such as Gothic, the controls are unsurprisingly clunky in this one. If you can tolerate the basic combat, there is an incredibly lore to be found in this game. Lots of quests, multiple playthrough opportunities with different factions, and a cool blend of medieval/sci-fi/mad max. I couldn't push myself to get through it, tired of the combat and the grind. If you can tolerate it, you'll love the game for all it has to offer.
I haven't had a feeling about an A-RPG like this in a long time, and boy have I tried. At first there was Diablo, then Diablo 2 (OMG!) then Diablo 3 (hey... who watered down my game?) then there was Titan's Quest (ehh clunky), Torchlight 1 + 2 (perfection! but I kind of want more gritty less cartoony) so then I get Van Helsing 1 + 2 (Oh wow, just as gritty as I needed, but why is it so freaking unbalanced difficulty wise?)... Now, I pick up Grim Dawn. Good god! What a great game. It's got the grittiness I wanted from Diablo days, the RPG elements I missed, and all the smoothness and features of modern A-RPG's like item enhancement, etc. You will seriously not regret this game, it's just downright fun and all in all a great purchase. What are you waiting for? Get it for yourself with it's Ashes expansion, and get yourself some clicky-clicky and bring back that nostalgic Diablo gameplay you enjoyed as a youth!
I wouldn't call the game flawless but it delivers battletech back to us after many many years of silence. The combat is well designed and has a good feeling to it. While it can feel a little slow as far as turn based goes, it isn't nearly as painful as Tides of Numenera; The combat mechanics are well thought out and easy to learn, and the missions themselves begin easy and progressively get more difficult without any speed bumps. As a result, it's fun enough to play even though it's predominantly mech combat - but hey that's what we wanted right? HBS has done their typical writing, which I like considering they're a small outfit. The interface is similar to the one we've seen in their Shadowrun series. While I consider the interface amateurish, it does have all the bells and whistles to customize your mechs and character effectively and isn't totally ugly. Story is alright, I wouldn't say it's amazingly original but it does fit the BattleTech universe and includes several lore additions to make the game in-depth enough for any lore snob. Between combat, you remain on your ship. This allows you to travel between missions, rebuild and refit your mechs, sell items, recruit pilots, handle finances, and level up your pilots. The mechanic isn't fun but fits perfectly. It is important to note that the clock/money is against you; You have to pay upkeep costs and creditor dues all while waiting for travel times and mech repairs before you can even think about starting a new mission to make cash and cover your bills. While I just started into the game, I'm struggling with this mechanic, I haven't gone bankrupt, but it's basically like driving a crap box car to work and having to pay some large unexpected bills for repairs on it because you can't afford a new one. All in all as a fan of HBS I do like the game, but perhaps I'm a bit biased. Either way, nobody is going to make BattleTech and this is good enough for me.
I wouldn't call the game flawless but it delivers battletech back to us after many many years of silence. The combat is well designed and has a good feeling to it. While it can feel a little slow as far as turn based goes, it isn't nearly as painful as Tides of Numenera; The combat mechanics are well thought out and easy to learn, and the missions themselves begin easy and progressively get more difficult without any speed bumps. As a result, it's fun enough to play even though it's predominantly mech combat - but hey that's what we wanted right? HBS has done their typical writing, which I like considering they're a small outfit. The interface is similar to the one we've seen in their Shadowrun series. While I consider the interface amateurish, it does have all the bells and whistles to customize your mechs and character effectively and isn't totally ugly. Story is alright, I wouldn't say it's amazingly original but it does fit the BattleTech universe and includes several lore additions to make the game in-depth enough for any lore snob. Between combat, you remain on your ship. This allows you to travel between missions, rebuild and refit your mechs, sell items, recruit pilots, handle finances, and level up your pilots. The mechanic isn't fun but fits perfectly. It is important to note that the clock/money is against you; You have to pay upkeep costs and creditor dues all while waiting for travel times and mech repairs before you can even think about starting a new mission to make cash and cover your bills. While I just started into the game, I'm struggling with this mechanic, I haven't gone bankrupt, but it's basically like driving a crap box car to work and having to pay some large unexpected bills for repairs on it because you can't afford a new one. All in all as a fan of HBS I do like the game, but perhaps I'm a bit biased. Either way, nobody is going to make BattleTech and this is good enough for me.
Fun premise but the controls are awful. I paid $2 for it, not complaining, just think you need some kinda VR gloves or something to really do this right.
I wouldn't say I loved it, I backed the game. The turn based combat is painful, slow, feels clunky. It's a roll your eyes moment when the combat starts and there's more than like 5 enemies. The story was pretty well done, and I have to give them credit as far as writing goes and the level of depth of the ninth world (and previous worlds.) It had a lot of awesome concepts and nothing seemed bland. The music was really lousy, just flat honesty here. The combat music was dull, I complained during the beta that it should be improved and they kept the original score. Not saying my opinion is right, but if you hear it you'll be disappointed if you've ever played the original PS:T. Of course, Bioware's baldur's gate engine games all had an orchestral style phenominal "turn up the speakers and get it in your feels" score. The characters were neat, I can't complain too much about them. I'm not a fan about the 4 party max system (kind of like Tyranny by Obsidian), while it does offer multiple playthroughs to experience the characters, it can really make combat a nightmare depending on whom you chose. The character-to-character interaction is there, they each have a decently developped background as well. I've played through it a few times, it offers decent replay value, though the difficulty tends to be a bit unbalanced. Also with the turn based system, screwing up combat is painful because it's like 20 minutes of your life you just wasted. Would I recommend it? Not really, unless you're a huge fan of heavy reading and depth in a game and not so much production value, it's not worth it. If you can snag it for $20, go for it, but otherwise don't pay more. I backed $160 and received about a $40 value of game, they really s**t the bed on this one. Even delaying it one year it still turned out somewhat of a turd. Personally, I won't back InXile ever again, they screwed up Wasteland 2, and now they screwed up Torment. Not that I don't admire their work, just for 4 million or whatever we raised, they could've done much more. My advice? Get PS:T Enhanced by Beamdog, while it's nothing new, it's beautifully done and unlike the original PST with widescreen mods isn't likely to crash. Rumor has it beamdog is going to try their hand at a sequel, while most reviews will tell you they make poor content, I do have more faith in them than InXile. Plus they acquired an original developer of PS:T so it should be *decent*. "What can change the nature of a fan?" "This game."
An excellent modern revamp on the classic Baldur's Gate. I very much like the tweaks that Beamdog has added, it makes the game much more streamlined than the classic version. If you haven't played the game, it has a relatively steep learning curve, but it's not impossible. The game play itself is easy but unless your'e familiar with AD&D rules 2.0 it will take a bit of manual reading to get an idea of how the stats, attack rolls, and armor class factors in. Otherwise the game plays quite easily from the start as far as controls, but the game play itself can prove quite challenging at low levels. Once you level up to level 3-4 it begins to become a lot more manageable as your party members can become more robust and really carry their weight. It's a true classic, and beamdog did a good job of getting it streamlined. They added some new characters which I was apprehensive at first about, but later found to be decently executed and worthwhile.
While a lot of these reviews are negative, I can say that I genuinely enjoyed this game. The story wasn't incredibly epic, but I did enjoy the setting of Hong Kong. While not as mission-heavy as Dragonfall, I found it a good length, and the missions were fun and not frustrating. The characters were quite fun too. They were unique and had some good designs, and are quite powerful in their respective roles. This is good because it makes combat easier, but can also remove a bit of the challenge aspect. Either way it made for a fun combat experience that I enjoyed. It's the last of the HBS shadowrun games and it definitely shows it's refinement, while providing a lot of 'more of the same' shadowrun game play you may have come to enjoy from the previous titles.
Reminiscent of Fallout 1 + 2's style of writing throughout, "Fallout NV" is a series masterpiece. While it lacks the polish of Fallout 4, or the strong RPG elements of the original fallout games, it makes for an excellent improvement on Bethesda's Fallout 3 released a few years before. Written by a team of the original fallout developers, New Vegas has you getting deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole with their unique and skillful writing, environments, and character designs. Come explore the wasteland as it was originally intended! This game is definitely not on rails! You'll find yourself ignoring the main story quest, and going off on small adventures with the various side-quests. Obsidian placed a lot of emphasis on the need for open-world exploration, and taking a cue from fans, really went out there to ensure a fair amount of content. I've played 300 hours of this game and I doubt I've actually explored the entire mojave desert. The time to buy this game has never been better: The ultimate edition comes with all 4 expansion packs. The expansions for this game were all great and enjoyable, providing unique looking new areas to fight and explore your way through. Take a step back on the technological chart and explore "Honest Hearts", bringing you into the middle of a tribal warfare in Utah. Then take a leap forward into the future of tomorrow - today! Thanks to the sci-fi machinations of the Big MT research labs in "Old World Blues." Chase after a fellow courier with a real vendetta and a lot of power at his fingertips by playing "Lonesome Road". Last but not least, play a mutated "Danny Oceans" and execute a casino heist in the do-or-die "Dead Money." I enjoyed every one of them. If you're looking for *more* from this classic: there are literally hundreds of addons available online offering new content, new party members, better graphics, new animations, and almost anything else you might desire.
Reminiscent of Fallout 1 + 2's style of writing throughout, "Fallout NV" is a series masterpiece. While it lacks the polish of Fallout 4, or the strong RPG elements of the original fallout games, it makes for an excellent improvement on Bethesda's Fallout 3 released a few years before. Written by a team of the original fallout developers, New Vegas has you getting deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole with their unique and skillful writing, environments, and character designs. Come explore the wasteland as it was originally intended! This game is definitely not on rails! You'll find yourself ignoring the main story quest, and going off on small adventures with the various side-quests. Obsidian placed a lot of emphasis on the need for open-world exploration, and taking a cue from fans, really went out there to ensure a fair amount of content. I've played 300 hours of this game and I doubt I've actually explored the entire mojave desert. The time to buy this game has never been better: The ultimate edition comes with all 4 expansion packs. The expansions for this game were all great and enjoyable, providing unique looking new areas to fight and explore your way through. Take a step back on the technological chart and explore "Honest Hearts", bringing you into the middle of a tribal warfare in Utah. Then take a leap forward into the future of tomorrow - today! Thanks to the sci-fi machinations of the Big MT research labs in "Old World Blues." Chase after a fellow courier with a real vendetta and a lot of power at his fingertips by playing "Lonesome Road". Last but not least, play a mutated "Danny Oceans" and execute a casino heist in the do-or-die "Dead Money." I enjoyed every one of them. If you're looking for *more* from this classic: there are literally hundreds of addons available online offering new content, new party members, better graphics, new animations, and almost anything else you might desire.
