This game is really 2 games in one. There is the game before the heist mission & the game after the heist mission. When you start the game & play it you are given great NPCs with interesting narrative way to add tutorials. You do your lifepath intro & meet Jackie get an 80's montage and meet your edgerunner team of Yourself, Jackie and T-bug do a mission together then the game starts. Dexter Deshawn is a magnificent way to introduce fixer to the player as they progress through the game. You meet him & he shows you that sometimes to complete a fixer mission you'll need to maybe meet the client, and maybe run a prep mission. Then you meet to plan the mission run down the deets & learn what you need to do to have a preem mission. After the mission you meet with your fixer to close out the mission. So what happens after this awesome introduction? A fixer mission will NEVER EVER require you to meet the fixer. A fixer mission will NEVER EVER require you to meet the client. A fixer mission will NEVER EVER require you to plan a mission. A fixer mission will NEVER EVER require you to return to a fixer after a mission even when you have a physical object to return. What the FUCK was the point of Dexter Deshawn when not a single part of his mission structure is ever repeated. Why make the whole fixer experience great with Deshawn & a fucking utterly boring phone call after? Most fixer missions is a one off. Regina wants cyberpsychos alive for study but in the mission occupational hazard you save a client from a psycho but here motivation suddenly disappears. No NPCs have any real character development. The romance characters are a 3 to 4 mission affairs that all end with a one night stand then all character interaction ends after one conversation. You can't sleep at their pads even though the ask you to live with them. The romance is save the day panties drop then they go dark. The game before the heist is great & as the heist mission goes to shit, the game goes to shit.
In a word no. It doesn't take much effort to see the there are two camps that are disappointed in BG 3. There are those that want BG 3 to be the game they remembered from 20 years ago and those that want BG 3 to be an exact unaltered representation of 5e rules. What both camps want is unreasonable. Here is why. First off this game was NEVER going to be similar mechanically to BG 1&2, as most of the principle parties don't exist anymore. The IP owner has changed twice in the last 20 years. Black Isle & Bioware both either don't exist at all or in Bioware's case no one who worked on BG works there anymore ( At least in higher positions). The publisher doesn't exist & the rules upon which the games made have gone through multiple iterations. TSR was always struggling financially so they didn't care what developers did with the IP so long as they got a cheque. WotC has never struggled, so they never "needed" to sell the IP & in fact refuse to sell the IP to either Brian Fargo, a former Interplay developer & founder of inXile Entertainment, as well as Feargus Urquhart of Obsidian Entertainment, who were seeking the IP rights for at least a decade. Hasbro has no desire to have a RTwP, they want a turn based system, because turn base is closer to 5e. D&D purists are never going to get what they want because 5e allows reactions/interrupts to the flow of combat between rolling a die and resolving a die roll. Where the player could interrupt at any point. You want play a cRPG where you stop the flow of combat to ask the player, hey do you accept this roll or do you want to use your limited use class ability now? No okay how about now? It would make combat flow terribly. This is possible in a table top setting because combat there takes much longer and there are natural pauses as a DM grab dice declares what is happening. Computers move much faster and near instantly resolve rolls. If you are a purist stay away, you wont enjoy it. That said I really enjoy BG3 cuz it is BG
There are two version of Stellaris 2.0+ the current game and 1.9 and bellow. The game launched as many Paradox title launch a complete but shallow game with a lower than start AAA price point but with a frequent DLC releases that can take the game into the hundreds of dollars in overall cost. With each DLC adding more and more meat to the game. The game released with warp drives, hyperlane drives and wormhole drives all with their own strengths and weaknesses but as of 2.0 they removed 2 of the three drive types. It was a HUGE disappointment to many players because that 3 drive system required different strategies to counter each type. It was fun encountering a wormhole drive aggressor state and watching them jump over your defences forcing you to scramble to counter their attacks. This made the game really enjoyable for me, with the asymmetric setup resulti9ng in many great games. Today I see stellaris as a game that broke the 4x mode to a game that withered and died on the vine to be just a mediocre 4x game. If I recall this happen because the lead designer for the game changed and IMHO the new chap just didn't have the vision or imagination to run as lead for stellaris so he dumbed it down. The game has divided the fan base on those that love 2.0+ and those that love 1.9 or earlier. There is no right or wrong it subjective choice but it has made it so I just don't play stellaris much anymore. As I so miss playing with and against multiple drive types. It changed the game so much to remove them. The also made the game more grindy requiring you to build a station in each system as jumping systems doesn't save you resources as it cost twice as much to claim a system two systems away than it does one system away. Which is another change which makes the game a grind compared to 1.9-. Just not a fan of 2.0+
At first I had issue with some aspect of the game with regards to encounters felt level designed which I don't mind in a shooter but can't stand in an RPG. Then I had issues with the over the top super scrubs. I am all for difficult encounters but WTF was with the super kobolds & mites? These are suppose to be the weakest monsters in the game and I was seeing them with god stats. I ran into a level 5 Bandit wizard/sorcerer with over 50 hit points that means this wizard rolled perfect 6s for all his hit dice AND had a con of at least 20. To top it off I got through the tough levels made it the kingdom stage and right off the bat I get a screw you even that caused my kingdom to implode every day. Which would have been fine but this fired when I picked some choice in kingdom screen that caused my kingdom to fast forward in time. Bad event fires but instead of letting me pause the fast forwarding and go deal with the problem and then resume when finished it, forced me to continue all the while each day I lost kingdom stats which killed my kingdom. Thing is not all choices on the kingdom screen causes you to fast forward in time and it isn't like there was an alert or anything I started it and poof the days just rolled by. other time I start something and nothing happens I can leave the kingdom screen do stuff and come back and see the result. Too many aspects of this game felt like a "Frak you" from the developers. I didn't get the feeling I was being taken on a journey of discovery with the devs, I felt more like I was in conflict with them and they were trying to piss me off. The game just isn't fun and it isn't difficulty I love BG which was notoriously hard but they did it in a way that didn't feel like it was the player vs them, and if you can into weak monsters they were weak not magically god like. I wouldn't recommend this as it was simply frustrating and UNFUN to play which is the worse thing for a game to be.
NWN2 is like three separate games in one. That range from one of the best RPG stories to just plain bad. NWN2 standard campaign was okay, it wasn't bad but it wasn't great, it was a buggy mess and yet there was quality and decent production values. The climax was a bit of a surprise but felt fitting. The sequel expansion Mask of the betrayer is one of the best RPG stories i have ever played. The storytelling here is masterful the voice acting wonderful. Too bad it was resulted in a dramatic about face by obsidian. The second expansion Storm of Zehir was a huge step back. They had abandoned the cinematic camera angles during dialogues, removed voice acting and abandoned the story arc of the core game and first expansion. The story of Zehir was boring as hell. The exploration encounter system was broken and tedious. It felt like this was the moment obsidian went from a AAA game developer to a minor development studio. I can't stress enough just how incredible the mask of the betrayer is, that expansion is worth the purchase price of the game, alone. I can't help to wonder what the reception of NWN2 would have been had MOTB had been the main campaign story. If you like Bioware storytelling ala Kotor to dragonage to Mass effect then you will see that in MotB.
I played Pillars of Eternity and I couldn't finish it, the opening paragraph of voice acting forced me to listen to voice acting only to have to read it again right away to get the full dialogue of the encounter. It was jarring (for me) and constantly took me out of the game. DOS II is fully voiced acted with an enjoyable story and the mechanics makes POE looks decades old. The co-op is fantastic in the game, one player and NPC in our co-op game was willing to let an innocent elf languish in a cage starving to death. i said no way and killed the NPC my companion was colluding with. My mate might have been the one initiating the conversation but i left the conversation and attacked. This is great competitive co-op. What other game do you know where a player not initiating a conversation can make story altering opposed choices? Steal from a merchant they will run around looking for their item asking to look in your bag. In a co-op game it is possible to have 1 player talk to a merchant a 2nd steal the item and a third accept a hand off of the item and run off with it avoiding detection. The interaction of elements in the game makes so much sense. What would you do if you where on fire beside a pool? You'd jump in the water. Do that in so many cRPG and nothing happens. DOS II understands and has mechanics so you can use water spells or barrels to put out fires which creates steam that blocks line of sight. An oil/grease spell slows people down but can be put on fire. Poison will contaminate a pool of blood or water. Suddenly there is a whole new tactical paradigm when elements interact and become part of the terrain. Combat is multilayered that the group can use to form a great combinations of spells/abilities that a more powerful than the sum of their parts. In my opinion this is new gold standard of isometic cRPGs. The 2- 4 co-op mode is incredible, in my 3 player co-op I am amazed how much freedom each player has.
This game suffers from Rose coloured nostalgia glasses from most reviewers. When people tell you it is the "most this" or the "best that," you know they couldn't be objective if their life depended on it. This game has a lot to offer but it isn't like god desented from the heavens and annointed this game the best that ever was or ever will be. One thing that the nostalga hype machine seems to forget is that when morrowind was released a significant number of "fanbois" HATED it. yes the darling of the Bethesda ball was hated by "hardcore" bethesda fans and "true" lovers of the series. Why because at the time Morrowwind was released we saw the great gameplay vs graphics debate in pc gaming. As if you couldn't have both good graphics and good game play. The haters felt that bethesda sold out to the "graphics crowd" and it hurt game development because the "dungeons" in morrowind were tiny compared to the HUGE ones seen in daggerfell. This was cited as proof graphics were ruining gameplay. Also at the time morrowind was hated for its combat and character generation because they changed things from what made the series great in the first two games. I'm not saying this is a bad game but be wary of the retro hype. It has major flaws, it is starting to show it's age and it isn't whole magnatuides better in the story elements. i know multiple people who have played the last three in the series that don't think it is the best story. It is harder to fine people who have played all 5/6 games. I can't judge because i still haven't finished skyrim's main questline, and that isn't because I quit, i just get side tracked all the time. Of the first 4 games' main quest, I like oblivion best. If you like the series then you will most likely enjoy this game but be aware that it is buggy, suffers from being old technology, it looks its age and has clunky rpg mechanics that have since been refined. Also watch out for how people taks these cons and try to say they are features.
I you are looking for an RPG then move along this isn't the game you are looking for. This isn't by any stretch of the imagination an RPG. It is a console action genre game with progression the king you see in FPS today so progression does not an RPG make, there is a branching path but again you see this in some modern non rpgs games. I find this game hugely unsatisfactory as a PC gamer. It was the first game I (note I said I as in myself) every played a game with quick time events. I was like WTF this is considered "fun." I know that many pc gamers that cut their teeth with console gaming find them just another mechanic and no big deal. And if they are no big deal to you then give this review another star as doesn't matter what I think about QTEs it only matters what you think. I just hated that boss fights were religated to press X when you see the X appear on teh screen. It totally takes me out of the game. I found the story to be meh at best and at worse just face palm worthy. The game looked great and still does, I wasn't a big fan of the holocron hunt in each level it broke up the game and just was too clunky a mechanic. The game as I recall did a good job at force powers. You feel like a jedi when fighting mooks but boss fights you feel like a QTE button masher and the fact that part of the battle will be normal engine driven mechanics then have it suddenly turn into a QTE was VERY jarring for me. There where terrible scenes in the game too the star destroyer take for bloody ever to complete and you are not at all thinking this is tough but what a sense of accomplishment when completed. It is tedious and boring and frustrating in just how long it takes doing the same fraking thing over and over. I give it two stars because it isn't the worst game out there, it isn't even the worse star wars game but it isn't worth the buy as far as I am concern. If none of the cons I mentioned are cons to you give it a go, if in doubt stay away.
This game is a POS in terms of the port I am not talking about bad UI or controls when I say bad port but refering to the almost zero optimization of the game so that it can not run on a pc at all like it should. You can find numerous examples on youtube of just how BAD the game runs. The Know on youutube streamed with a i76700@4ghz with a GTX 1070 video card and it STILL couldn't show anything but a jerky mess. The game is in a DO NOT BUY state and will be for I can assume a while. Yes it is the bad on the optimization for PC. This is a shame as it is perhaps the best indie survival game on the market IF and this is a real big IF you enjoy the rewards of just surviving and the thrill of exploration. If these things don't appeal then the game isn't for you in terms of game play if you DO enjoy these things then I am sure you would enjoy the game on the PS4. The lore which is gathered from monoliths is quite compelling to me but this is gets ruined when you jerk around and stutter because of poor frame rates and I am talking about frame rates hitting well below 30 fps. No exaggeration here this is not some PC master race BS where if it drops below 60fps that is 'unplayable,' no this is dropping and staying for extended periods of time below the 30 fps mark on decent video cards mine is a AMD r9 290 and frankly that is WELL above the min requirements and the game can't handle medium settings on an i7 machine with 12 gigs of ram. I was looking forward to the game i was not disappointed with the content of the game just the POS port. This game COULD and I say COULD because hello games is a small studio so maybe they just can't handle making the game for two platforms, be ready to buy next year but I would wait at least a year for it to mature on the technical side plus they are adding new content so you'll get the game likely at a lower price point it will likely but no guarantees be playable on PC by then and you will get more content.
