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.
...Not quite so. Even thou this game WAS developed as a spirtual succerssor to UFO games, it has ended up as a very different game. World was attacked by aliens (again!?), and the whole humanity was annihilated by spores. Now, aliens are taking the planet over, with their own agenda, which is, of course, unknown to us. But let's split this thing up a bit, shall we? First of all, I'll talk a bit about gameplay, after all that IS the most important thing about a game, isn't it? Well... I'd say 'medicore' at best. The game, as well as X-Coms, is divided into two parts - world map and tactical missions. Since there's almost no base management, except possibility to change what said base does (research, military, ingeneering or ... Well, I'd be spoiling the story if I said the last thing :D ). No, you don't build buildings, however you DO research and manufacture stuff - how fast you do so is dependant on how many bases of said type you have. Oh, and what do military bases do? Their purpose is to station interceptor jets and a helicopter with your team, so it basically gives you a military coverage over the map. And, of course the last thing - your team! I'll say more about these guys in the next paragraph. It's same ol' otherwise - you shoot down alien ships, you search wreckages, you research dead or living alien beings and their equipement and if alien ship manages to land, you're infiltrating alien base. Fun, eh? Well, not so much. 'Tactical' gameplay of this game consists of running with a bunch of soldiers around the map, shooting whatever moves until objectives are complete. Yes, sometimes you get into challenging situations, mostly in shot-down alien ships, which WILL force you to plan ahead and think about what are you doing a bit, but mostly ... you'll just run around and click. More interesting part of this is that you CAN capture live aliens, or just bring bodies back home. Objectives of missions ARE diverse enough to keep you entertained. And your soldiers level-up and you can upgrade their statistics - that adds a bit to 'fun' value as well. But, overall, in-mission gameplay is pretty monotoneus and you'll get into memorable situation just on a few occassions. Now let's look at the obvious. Graphics. Yes, as far as I know they were outdated even when the game was released, but they fit the whole thing perfectly and I really like their diversity - based on a place of planet on which mission is taking place, design of cities/villages/plains changes and... Well, it's actually pretty atmospheric that way. But that's the only good thing I can say about them, really. They're nothing memorable, nothing unique, aliens may sometimes be gross (especially after you find out something about them), but that's about it. Doesn't look like a game that would deserve 70%, does it? It'll get better from now on, I promise. That's because I'm about to talk about story and atmosphere. Both are simply... Fantastic. Story is well-written post-apocalyptic scenario about people who are trying to survive and eventually counter alien attack. How comes survivors of human race can kick assess of hi-tech alien force? Don't worry, it doesn't go unexplained. Game goes really deep as far as it's own lore goes, with everything alien explained by the believable sci-fi blabbering and you WILL be craving for more. Actually, I think story is good enough to keep anyone who likes alien invasions, post-apo or sci-fi in general going, and eventually force them to finish the damn game. There you have it. Game itself is average and I'd give it 50%. But very good story, setting and atmosphere won't let me give it less than 70%. Yes, it's not exactly objective, game may deserve just 60%, but fact is: I've finished it 2 times and it keeps luring me back. There has to be reason for that, right? So, if you like things that are good about this game, you'll like it and it WILL be your money's worth. If you are looking for tactical gameplay... You'll be better off waiting for second and third part of the series, which are focused on it.
Yep. I could write a long article about how great this game is. I COULD write a lot of stuff about addictive gameplay, about nice game mechanics. I'd be able to tell a truckload of great stories from this game concerning great use of terraforming and what happened to all those silly combinations I've managed to create in in-game unit creator. As well as I could go on and on about added awesomeness by the included map editor. I'd probably fill a whole page of text by praising lenghty and great research tree this game has, providing diverse tactics and gameplay. And I'd add a little note about great lightening effects and very satisfying superweapons. Yep. I sure could do all that. But even without most of these features this game would be worth 6$, since even medicore new RTS games are way more expensive. However, all those features are there. And it DOES cost 6$. ... ... Why the hell are you still reading?
You are sitting in a cockpit of your tiny ship, flyin around huge cruiser with your wing of fighters prepared to fulfill any of your orders, even at the cost of their own lives. It was supposed to be peaceful mission: Just to escort some transport ships from point A to point B. But something went horribly wrong. A bunch of fihters just jumped out of nowhere, followed by some kind of capital ship. You need to keep your head clear and stay focused: Of course, you were trained for this! At instant, you target bombers and divert all power to the engines. You are enclosing, as fast as you can, burning your afterburners to their limits... And than it happened. Bright ligt blinded you, as huge beams of energy discharged from huge cannons of enemy capital ship, ripping appart hull of one transport. No training could prepare you for this... You see bodies of refugees, flying from wrecked ship. That's what war is like... We'll show our enemies it's not fun for them, either! You fire several rockets at one of the bombarders. First one is repelled by shields, but second flew right trough that bastard. You leave him in explosions and intercept another. His shields shine like a strange baloon, when suddenly, enemy fighters somehow got to your tail! You are trying to outmaneuver them, but your fighter is no match for them. Two explosions appear behind you. Two enemies were blown to pieces. And your squadmate is screaming "You owe me for this!" Well, yes, something along those lines. I know I can't write, but something which looks so real cannot be just described. Freespace 2 offers fantastic atmosphere and fantastic gameplay in one package - as well as fantastic visuals with the right MODs, great music, sound and, best of all, story so great, that half of hollywood production can kneel before it and beg for some inspiration. Freespace 1 brought us interesting experience, with big battles and nice storyline. Freespace 2 surpass it in every single aspect: It's twice as big, twice as interesting, and much more absorbing! Do you like sci-fi? You just -need- to play this. I really don't see any real disadvantage in this game, maybe with exception of ending. Story is non-linear, well written. Battles are just huge, you are just a small squad in the fight of titans. Controls: Intuitive. AI: very good. Experience: Great. Buy this game... If you are fan of sci-fi, you won't regret it. Ever.
