A Plague Tale Innocence is an unbelievably engaging story about a supernatural twist of the Black Death plague that swept across Europe during the 14th century. The game gives its own fictional take on how the bubonic plague devastated France. I won't spoil anything, so I'll just say some very creative and interesting liberties are taken by the developers in order to deliver a very original story about a little boy and his older sister. The visuals are nothing short of breathtaking. These graphics have aged very well and will put modern hardware to work. The developers, however, are based in France. As such, voice-over animations are synced to the French language (i think) and may be only mildly jarring to players listening to English voices like me. The quality of those English voice-overs, however, are incredible. I'm glad they got good voice talent to record this story in English! Now while the gameplay mostly consists of easy puzzles and acceptable stealth gameplay, A Plague Tale Innocence certainly doesn't excel in this department. It definitely won't bore you to tears, but sneaking by and distracting enemies isn't fast paced and super imaginative with magic like in a Dishonored game. Nor will you use a bunch of different contraptions to sneak by enemies like in Alien Isolation. However, if anything, the stealth and puzzles in Plague Tale serve as fun distractions between cutscenes and amazing snippets of its story. All in all, A Plague Tale Innocence is an easy recommendation for anybody looking for an incredible story and amazing graphics. And if anything, Innocence is still a fun stepping-stone towards playing its sequel, Requiem (which is a damn masterpiece in my opinion).
Side Note: the launcher this game comes with doesn't require you to actually sign in, create an account, or authenticate the game in any way. GoG's version of DOS 2 is still DRM free for me at least. Divinity Original Sin 2 is a perfect sequel and will remain as once of the best modern RPGs for a good while. It improves upon the first game in every regard. The story is much more engaging and we get tons of entertaining NPCs with huge backstories. The romance features are fleshed out very well. Conversations between the main character and your party members are fun distractions from the main story. In particular, romanced NPCs evolve quite a bit and display a lot of fun character development I think you'll enjoy a lot. The combat, spells and abilities, and skills come across as very polished. Each skill have meaningful purposes in the game and give us an incredible variety to combat. Experimenting with builds and the numerous status effects gives tons of flavor to an already addicting gameplay loop. While the visuals are very impressive, I'm particularly happy with how well this sequel performs and how stable the game engine is. I crashed once or twice in the 150+ hours I spent on my heavily modded playthough. Additionally, framerates are always consistently high. I think Larian Studios already have a really good track record of developing well optimized games, but I'm very happy they're still maintaining this reputation. If you're itching for an RPG that checks all the boxes and does everything right, Divinity Original Sin 2 has you covered.
If the second game never came out, this would be 5 stars in my arbitrary scoring system. And even though you can totally skip this game and play Divinity Original Sin 2 right away, I wouldn't recommend doing that at all. This first game delivers an incredible RPG experience with some of the best turn-based combat you'll come across. There's tons of different spells, abilities and skills/builds to choose from. The story's a lot of fun and NPCs are very entertaining. Plus literally all dialogue is fully voiced. The crafting system is a bit of a mess and isn't an important feature, but I think it was intended to be a fun side activity to indulge in while you equip your characters and plan out their builds. The companions/recruitable NPCs are sort of unremarkable and lacking a grand story, but serve well enough as interesting'ish party members to have during your adventure. Divinity Original Sin 1 is a fantastic RPG that performs great, won't crash at all, and will get you hooked on its addicting combat.
Grimrock 2 is a sequel with improvements across the board. Instead of one giant dungeon, players get to explore a variety of gorgeous landscapes and mini-zones. There's more bosses and all of 'em are fun and challenging. Puzzles are still everywhere, but their solutions are (mostly) easier to solve. The story is pretty light and there are no cutscenes, but i personally believe this fits the game better and keeps the focus on the puzzles and combat. Magic, alchemy and the rest of the in-depth gameplay mechanics are handled better and easier to navigate. It's honestly a bummer there aren't too many dungeon crawlers like these, because Grimrock 2 was fleshed out extremely well, performs great with no crashes or stutters, and has a steady difficulty curve. Legend of Grimrock 2 delivers a great oldschool RPG experience and is an easy recommendation.
Legend of Grimrock 1 is great for fans of oldschool dungeon crawler RPGs. Character creation is fun with lots of races and classes to choose from. The game itself is a massive dungeon with very little story, which is a positive or a negative depending on your preferences. It's also has plenty of puzzles, some of them have pretty obscure solutions and honestly might frustrate impatient players who stink at puzzles (like me). So Grimrock 1 will work your brain quite a bit too. This game aged pretty well too, performs well and didn't crash once. If you're itching for a fun RPG, Legend of Grimrock 1 is definitely a title you shouldn't brush aside.
Please Be Happy is a fantastic visual novel about Miho, a fox lady wandering the world searching for the person that saved her life, but ultimately seeks happiness and works towards a meaningful life with newfound friends. While primarily a slice of life/adventure visual novel, romance plays a prominent role in Please Be Happy too. This is a "Yuri"/Girls Love visual novel, meaning the romance taking place is between a couple of pretty lady characters. The story can branch off in different directions depending on choices and decisions from the player. However, there are no "Dead End"/depressing routes that lead to bad endings. The writing is top-notch, the voice acting is super high quality, the GUI is clean and well designed, the characters are all interesting, the music's pretty good too... I really don't have anything bad to say about this visual novel. Studio Élan is responsible for some of my favorite romance visual novels. They released Highway Blossoms and its fun DLC "Next Exit", Heart of the Woods and now Please Be Happy (among some other games I haven't tried yet). This is a super easy recommendation for anybody itching to read a fun romance story!
Reviewing Day 1 Version of Game FYI: Works on Windows 7 64-bit OS Trepang2 is a sensational FPS experience. I only purchased this game for its combat, and I was pleasantly surprised in every single aspect of this game. Let me tell you why FPS fans NEED to buy this game. + Adrenaline Fueled Intense Gunfights: the combat of this game is its greatest selling point. It's challenging with tons of different difficulty settings. It has an amazing gore-dismemberment system. Reducing an enemy to piles of viscera from a slow-mo shotgun blast is probably one of the most satisfying experiences offered by a video game. Enemies are smart and will flank you and constantly keep you running and sliding around the battlefield. + Heavy, Headbanging Soundtrack: Trepang2 has one of my favorite video game soundtracks of all time. Intense gunfights become all the more chaotic with all its super heavy tracks. I rarely suggest buying a game's soundtrack, but Trepang2's OST alone is definitely worth shelling out some extra money. + Well Optimized And Great Visuals: Trepang2's graphics are nothing extraordinary, but you won't need expensive hardware to max out this game's visuals. I'd imagine playing this at max settings will look amazing, BUT you don't need a super powerful PC to run Trepang2 at 1080p and 60FPS. Game runs great on my old computer and only crashed once in 2 full playthroughs. + Great weapon variety: Pistols remain viable guns throughout the entire campaign and some of the heavier weapons will absolutely melt enemies. Weapons animations and sound effects are some of the best I've ever seen and heard. Weapons in this game also have crazy "oomph"/feedback, really giving the player some of the most satisfying dopamine rushes upon obliterating enemies. I really can't say enough good things about this game. It was an absolute blast from start to finish and I'll probably find myself replaying Trepang2 numerous times and revisiting it often. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
*reviewing version 1.1.17082 of game* The System Shock 1 Remake is almost perfect as far as remakes go. It captures everything we loved about the original game and added some tweaks and improvements. I recommend it for fans of the original or any sci-fi FPS fans that enjoyed games like Alien Isolation or Prey (2017). Here are my praises and nitpicks: + fantastic audio quality: the voice acting (some people didn't like it, but i did!), weapon sfx and ambient tracks are top-notch and really well done! + Fancy Retro Visuals: The visual fidelity is great despite it emulating the aesthetic of a super old game. There's a couple spots where the game stuttered and dropped to ~45-50 FPS (executive level and grove mini levels). Otherwise this is a well optimized game with numerous graphics settings to ensure it will look incredible on new machines and run just fine on old setups. + Tons of fun weapons!: I tried 75% of the weapons and they all had great animations with fantastic sound quality. The remake kept all the weapons (i think?) with the various ammo types and I really appreciate having such a wide variety of guns to choose from. + Cyberspace/Cybercombat isn't perfect, but a billion times better than the original: The original game had some gameplay mechanics that aged horribly. In my opinion, the Cyberspace combat was one of them. The remake's Cyberspace was much much better, but nothing to go nuts over. - Lame Boring Final Boss: I won't spoil anything, but basically, you can't die and the mechanics in defeating the final boss aren't obvious. I personally hated the original game's final boss, so this wasn't anything to complain too much over. - Enemies only react a little to being hit: No obvious stagger or pain state. Kinda annoying, but nothing game-breaking. Keep in mind this replicates the old game pretty well, so the levels are still quite a maze to navigate through (a FUN maze, however!). All in all, a fun remake and easy recommendation!
Dread Templar is a really really fun retro FPS game that feels inspired by games like Blood, Heretic and maybe even a little from Project Warlock and Doom Eternal. Here's what I really liked about Dread Templar: + Lots of levels, all really well designed: There's 5 episodes, each with around 5 levels that took me 10-30+ minutes to complete (so around 2 or 3 hours to finish an episode). Secrets are well hidden, enemies are varied with different tactics in attacking the player. + Challenging fights with fun character progression: you collect runes that upgrade the player and weapons, making you feel more powerful as you progress through the game. This does deviates from games like Amid Evil, Dusk, Ion Fury and HROT. But the upgrades are fun to play with and gives Dread Templar a more "modern shooter" feel. Since I found the default/normal difficulty a tad challenging, I'd imagine the higher difficulties will be pretty punishing. + GREAT SOUNDTRACK: Every 2 levels share the same music. Can't really blame the developer as a new track for each level seems really expensive and time-consuming for the composer. But the music is really heavy and induces plenty of head-banging. This adds to the chaotic intensity during each level. I have no complaints about Dread Templar's Music. Here's a few minor nitpicks/complaints I have that, in my opinion, could have done without. - Fixed Save Stations: you can't spam quicksave or manual saves. There are many save points scattered throughout every level. This isn't how i personally enjoy playing shooters. However, the save stations were numerous enough that it didn't bother me too much. - Instant Death Upon Fatal Falls: The only reason falling to your death bothers me in this game is because I can't quicksave before a platforming section. Not a big deal though. - Mediocre Story: Wasn't interested in the story. But it's a shooter, so who cares, right? Overall, Dread Templar is a great FPS! Highly Recommend!
HROT checks all the boxes that make a great old-school FPS game. - great weapon variety. nothing out of the ordinary like Blood's napalm launcher or Ion Fury's bowling bomb, but HROT's weapon lineup are all useful and fun guns to shoot. - Very interesting setting. I don't know much about Czechoslovakian history, but it's set in a very charming socialist, pre-Velvet Revolution world. It was really fascinating place to design this game in. - fast paced gameplay with a tiny bit of spooky segments. HROT gives a lot of DUSK and Quake vibes, delivering really chaotic gunfights against a diverse bestiary of enemies. - Fantastic Level Design!!!! You're hunting for secrets and keys while navigating expertly designed levels. Each level is unique and cleverly mapped out. This never leaves the player lost, confused or stuck backtracking. - Very well optimized. HROT runs super smooth on practically any computer system. I only make a universal statement like that because it ran very well on my ancient 8 year old laptop. I had a tiny stuttering issue, but i mostly fixed it by setting the priority of HROT.exe to "high" via Windows Task Manager & closing my internet browser. This is an incredibly easy recommendation for any fans of retro shooters. It's a great value game at its undiscounted asking price of $20 USD!
