I hate city management games. To me, they never felt particularly rewarding, contained a lot of mechanics that I considered somewhat unnecessary and got rather dull very fast. I did get into mood for a management game the other day and SimCity 3000 came out on GOG with quite pretty graphics, so I thought "What the hell, might as well give it a shot." 4 hours and 3 unsuccessful cities later I felt somewhat hooked. After 6 hours with a successful one I felt addicted. SimCity 3000 contains an extremely robust system of advisors to ease you into the game and answer early game questions, easy to navigate system of petitions to see requests of your cities occupants and the game itself provides very tactile feedback to see if you're doing well or not (providing services and increasing quality of land immediately results into visually more impressive structures, constructing more robust means of transportation clears up roads etc.) The game also provides you with a lot of customization options, allowing you to construct cities just like you want them. Additionally, there's nothing I'd flatout miss in the game as far as ease of use goes - forming terrain is simplistic yet powerful, you can get graphs and graphical representation of important factors like crime values, power/water coverage etc. Interface is nice and easy to navigate. All in all, I'm enjoying my time with SimCity 3000 tremendously and it's become my favorite city builder I have ever played. Highly recommended.
Gameplay-wise, Undertale is mostly a mishmash between jrpg and bullet hell, except for the bits which aren't. Storyline is about a little kid who got lost in a land of monsters, except for when it isn't and then it's not really. Above all, Undertale is a game entirely focused on doing the opposite of what you expect it to do, and when you shift your expectations in order to accommodate for this, it then does the opposite of the opposite you expected. It's a game with a neat ending which then continues when you relaunch it. It's a game with fantastic writing, amazing music and some of the most amazing characters I've ever seen in videogames. It's... Unique, weird and confusing. It's also not a great game, but it's so bizarre that at this point, I don't even care. If you consider videogames an experience and want to focus on story - this one is a must as I can guarantee you've never experienced anything like it. If you play videogames primarily for gameplay... Perhaps skip this one. Oh, and I mean it - after you finish, launch the game again, otherwise you'll miss like half the experience.
Let me start off by saying that this expansion won't change your mind on Pillars of Eternity. It fixes some problems, like adding more interesting loot into the game, but that's about it. When it comes to storytelling, quests and exploration, it's just about the same thing, on the same level of quality. So if you loved Pillars of Eternity like I did, you will love this expansion Side quests are all good save for bounty missions, in the fine tradition set by the original game starting off with a fantasy trope and then finding some sort of twist on it. Main storyline doesn't hold a candle to the main storyline of the main game - but it's very good nonetheless, and in spite of the name, it's actually finished at the end, with a strong hint on future events. The biggest mechanical change are scripted interactions, which give you a good deal more options this time around. Finishing the White March area itself will take you about 13 hours while doing all the side stuff + the expansion also adds a new high level area to Dyrwood, about 2 hours long. You may enter White March area with either a group of about level 7, or lvl12 and the expansion will ask you whether you'd like to scale the content to high level. While it is preferrable to go trough with a low level group, you will only miss very little when you don't. The only major mechanic added by the game are soulbound weapons - pieces of equipment that you can bind to certain classes, and those weapons will then give you tasks you need to fulfill to level them up and give the bound characters relevant new abilities with a little tidbit of story related to the weapon. The tasks can be a quest or just minor things like "Deal 500 shock damage". After finishing the expansion contet, I got all my characters to max level, and all the new talents they unlocked on lvl 13 were actually very nice - like the ability to summon two clones of himself for monk. Per rest magic users also get lvl3 spells per encounter.
Witcher 3 is one of the most disappointing games I have played in a long time, while at the same time being one of the best ones. There are many reasons for me coming to that conclusion, mainly weird open world design, the game pretty much ignoring all my previous choices in the game and CD Project turning away from what they turned out to do so well in Witcher 1 and 2 and jumping on the open world bandwagon for some reason. If you're interested in me somewhat expanding on these thoughts, feel free to look at my full feelz on GOG discussion boards - http://www.gog.com/forum/the_witcher_3_wild_hunt/witcher_3_my_favourite_disappointment
I'm going to keep this review simple, because there's very little to review - it's Command and Conquer: Generals with some mechanics expanded upon, with very Tom Clancy-esque storyline. A must play for Command and Conquer fans, something to take notice of for all other RTS fans, too conservative and traditional for anyone not liking the genre.
TL;DR version is: Oldschool RPG in the truest sense of the word: Unforgiving, hard, but rewarding and fun, with it's share of issues. I've actually had a pleasure of playing the Czech version of this game, so I can go ahead and give you heads-up. The wall of text follows. I think Inquisitor's gameplay can be best compared to that of Divine Divinity - Diabloish combat with fairly open world, where you're controlling one character and can get AI followers. The biggest difference would be that dialogue and decision making plays a very important role as well, you're actually investigating and uncovering what led to series of mysterious events, so expect to be talking a lot, asking a lot of questions, and collecting evidence. I have a love-hate relationsip with this one, you can ask everyone about pretty much everything and they'll only ever have so little to say. It really makes sense - you're there to collect information, and that's just a necessary part of it. Just do expect to proofread a lot of not so interesting text in the process. Thank god it's fairly well-written, at least - well, the Czech version was. Still, there's asking questions, and asking questions. Have you ever wanted to torture someone until he spits out everything he knows? You actually can in Inquisitor. And what if you catch some ill-doers that require punishment? Yes, there's a lot of burning at stake going on as well. A bit sadistic, maybe, but it goes well with the overall dark tone of the game. All this would be for nothing if story was crap: Which it isn't. It's actually very decent - not the best thing you've ever seen in a game, but it does get it's job done and it's really engaging. Anyway, dark tone it has. The game takes place in 'our' medieval-esque world, with the only difference of monsters and magic being present. This actually leads to something I really DO like - Cinemax tried to be as authentic as possible. Armours and weapons actually have historic descriptions, and you won't see a sword shaped like a bloody rollercoaster. Basically, if you like world of The Witcher, you'll probably find world of Inquisitor appealing as well, Cinemax has really nailed the contemporary atmosphere. There, we've got gameplay and game's world covered, let's get to RPG mechanics: The system itself is fairly standard, you get XP which give you level-ups, and those give you skill and attribute points to distribute. You can choose between three classes: A Paladin, Priest and a Rogue. I really like that the world actually reacts to your choice, and some bits of the game change according to it as well - for instance, as a paladin, you get access to their buildings scattered around the world, as a rogue you actually play a role of noble, so you get your own village eventually, and priest is an actual inquisitor, which comes with greater privileges. Other than that, they're just your standard warrior-mage-thief bunch, nothing that surprising there. All in all, apart from actual in-game differentiation, RPG mechanics are pretty standard and generic. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, I just wish they were much, much more balanced. And that's probably the bit where this game suffers the most, unless Cinemax has made some serious changes to game system in the meantime (which I truly doubt.) Balancing. Have I mentioned it's old-school? Yes, yes it is. In all it's aspects. It's really hard, it's really unforgiving, it's also very frustrating at points and more than once have I got stuck in place, not really knowing what to do next. Protip: Get the school of magic with levitation with it. It HELPS TREMENDOUSLY and can be picked by any class. Aaaand I think that just about covers it. My personal rating would be around 70%. If you like oldschool RPGs with all their flaws, add 20%. If you can't stand being frustrated, and think that these old mechanics were only used because devs didn't know better, substract 20%. All in all, Inquisitor is a very good game, with good story, fairly pretty graphics (and bad animations,) and it's really fun to play. Personally, I think that for a price of 15 bucks, it's money well spent - I have paid roughly 35 bucks for it and I don't regret that in the slightest.
Nexus: The Jupiter Incident is ... Well I won't just repeat what other reviews said, it's quite simply an excellent piece. It's got it all: tactical gameplay where you won't get far without planning ahead and actually thinking troughout battles (no choice really since you only get a limited number of ships that you can equip however you want troughout the missions,) great graphics that really nail the feeling of space combat, huge explosions, ships going pew pew everywhere, battle damage actually showing up on hull until only a lifeless, drifting hulk remains. Really, it's brilliant. But that is not all there is to it. The game also has a really engaging story, with some solid writing and voice acting, that can get you completely immersed in the world. You get everything: Captain logs, ship-to ship barter, your crew regulary informs you of new developments or just talk to each other, it quite simply has a lot of personality. The only sad thing is that this gem has been so overlooked. I really hope that this gog release remedies this at least a bit - it's just too good of a game to miss.
