And by that i mean if you are brave enough to criticize this game in any way, hordes of massive casuals will tear you apart. There are two major camps surrounding this game as of now: those who blindly praise it because they think this is what an rpg should be and those who believed the chants, tried it and found it not the best game ever they were promised. I can see why one would hold tes3 in their heart, but lets be honest: it's a dated, badly designed game with countless stupid decisions. It clearly has a defined ways to play, it clearly has good and bad builds, it is linear. I had the most fun with mw when i was stuck in the countryside with no internet and only morrowind as any 'entertainment'. Even then i spent more time tinkering with construction set than playing the game. So, typical bethesda rpg. Morrowinds undeniable pros are atmosphere, music, somewhat charming visuals and history of the wold. Cons are everything else. Quests are mostly fetches, combat has nothing to do with your own player skill, running around and casting magic is punishing, the map is empty and boring, your journal is a crime against humanity, addons were clearly not intended to be used with lvl1 character (hello assassins), you are expected to abuse at least some systems of the game (alchemy for example), persuasion makes no sense, for all its richness the world is not alive, it's a moon sugar fever someone had in their bathroom. If your expectations are low and you just like the idea of walking around between cities, interacting with npcs and raise your stats and you are not into decent mechanics, good dialogues or world at least somehow reacting to your decisions then morrowind will be a blast. You can steal, kill, pursue carreer in guilds, explore caves and ruins. You can make spells and potions that break the game. Visit various places. If this is enough for you, try it, but don't expect it to be the best game ever.
What a horrible way to make a sequel. For all its limitations and roughness, elex 1 offered a weird but somewhat believable world and characters. This game: 1) Sets up a canon ending for elex 1. You were a good hearted outlaw? Maybe you spent more time with Nasty? What if you took hybrids place? F**k you. 2) Every. single. npc. is a massive asshole. They are ALL unlikeable. And they are made this war just for the sake of being assholes. There's no other justification for it. Each and every guard will bully you into doing chores for them before you are allowed to enter a city, then a district, then a specific building. It gets annoying REALLY fast. Especially since game straight up ignores any of your accomplishments from the first game. 3) PB games were never the pinnacle of polishing, but this is new low. Game looks worse than the first entry, it runs really bad and it's just ugly. Technically its an improvement, more faces, more polygons, more animations. But quantity obviously was preferred over quality. Elex 1 did more with less. Elex 2 looks like a game made in unity from free assets. 7 days to die looked like that 10 years ago. 4) Logic suffers. I wont even start on "morkons" just because their name alone is something sounds like a 4 decades long outdated joke nobody found fun even back then. Every motivation ,every plot point is messed up. Every faction acts against their own core beliefs and character. For example, Nasty, a self made against all odds warrior and genius tactician and a freedom loving outlaw joined religious fanatics with strict organization and code of laws because she did not want to start from scratch again once forced out of the Fort. What the f**k? 5) The usual rpg "system" is still there and it's getting really frustrating to deal with. Combat is not fun, leveling up is not fun. It feels like a job. Just don't. I'm not sure what happened, but just pretend it doesnt exist. Giving it a 1 star would be dishonest, the game is playable still
I heard that this game lacks good combat but is okay otherwise, sadly, it was the complete opposite for me. While combat itself was neat, i had no motivation to endure it at all. You play as a half-elite half-shunned mutant that can control electricity and work as special forces for the "evil government" that opresses poor innocent "rebels". Or not. Who cares? You run around mostly dead corridor maps and hub areas, talk to weirdly animated npcs and keep smashing things for xp and loot. It seems the actual goal of the game is to become 'cool'. Find coolest gear, slap coolest mods on it and deplete red enemy hp bar faster. Game tries to look 'cool' very hard. Animations, cutscene cameras, combat moves, various equipment you can wear, words characters say, it's all so serious and 'cool' it becomes boring and annoying very quickly. Why open door when you can poweslide it with two hands? Why show two characters talking while moving down the hallway when you can smash shaky camera in their faces? Why give military personnel protective uniforms when they can wear hobo gear from scraps? Maybe im too spoiled by other games, maybe this one wasnt for me.
Above line is a bit misleading as P:T is a good game, but it's a very well crafted story first and foremost. What is there to say about this game that hasn't been said already? Not much. Combat is annoying, there is a lot of backtracking, last few hours of it is just combat, game is poorly balanced and if you want to just grind levels and deal bigger damage numbers it will be a major disappointment. But if you want a great story about an immortal man who wakes up with no memories of his past in a crazy city full of portals and original characters, this is the game. Music is incredible, art is exceptional, plot keeps you interested, dialogues branch depending on your actions and stats. If only the last parts of it were not so combat focused, even then you have options. Get it, play through it. Overcome sadness after completing the journey only to find out there's nothing quite like it. Replay every couple of years to relive the experience. --- Current EE build for linux wont run until you manually place libssl 1.0.0 libraries in /game/lib/ folder. Probably a leftover from steam port, sadly this isnt fixed still.
So this game now installs paradox launcher for some reason. For this reason i will never play this game again and will never recommend it to anyone. Find a way to get a version without this disgusting practice or just play something else.
After playing abit too much adventure games you start to expect warious "combine dog with a coffee pot" puzzles and plots existing just to make some reason for you to move between the screens. Not in this one. The story is a dark, sci-fi nightmare for pretty much everyone in it. Mad supercomputer made to wage war against humanity, the machine is trapped in it's original purpose. Unable to break free from it's own curse, it constructs personal hell for five last humans on Earth. In order to beat this mad god, you have to face your fears and show it, that unlike a machine, you can overcome and atone the evils in your past. Or not. What makes this game special is an interesting form of non-linearity. It's short, but gives you just enough variation to keep you interested if you decide to replay it and try something new. For a 1995 game the controls are fine and most of the bugs i've seen were with the animations, but no game breaking ones. Puzzles are mostly logical and theres a pretty helpful tool available for all characters to guide them with riddles. The atmosphere, visuals and dialogues bring a truly unique experience.
As many others pointed out, core elemenths of a solid tactics game are there, but nothing ties them together. Game with so many possible actions on a mission feels limited and repeating, pacing is not very well thought out, tedious base segments and unnecessary hard action sections. Visuals would be forgettable if not for constant rain, night and idiotic post effects. Strongest points of the game seem to be the story and the clue minigame, where you have to navigate through documents and photos and tie the edidence together via strings. Sadly, eveything else is not as near as interesting. Reminds me of alpha protocol, but in defense of this game i can say that at least this one is playable and deserves a try on big discount.
Describing Disco Elysium as a regular rpg doesn't feel right. It's a chracter story, a visual novel of some sorts. You don't play it like you play pillars of eternity, for example. You read, you listen, you observe, you talk a lot, you walk a lot. You will be talking to yourself a lot, arguing with various aspects of your being. Now thats an unsual take. Your inner voices take a big part in almost every dialogue, influencing it and opening new lines, leading to breakthroughs. You have some freedom in choosing your approach and actions, which in turn decides how others will react to you and how the story goes. Feels like a mix between planescape and pathologic, and what a mix it is. Characters are very well done. The main duo and their differences is a stream of endless entertainment. Everything is full of style and obviously artists did their absolute best to bring unique visuals into the game. Picture is accompanied by strong voice acting. Music is outstanding, it sets the game just right from beginning to very end. Some tracks are guaranteed to be stuck in your head after playing it. This game is a like a colorful yet bleak cop story book, but with drugs, amnesia and a bit of dementia in an insane alternative reality. At the core it's a point and click adenture in a form of classic party isometric rpg, but without combat. Everything is decided by skillchecks, even combat is something initiated from dialogue in a very few places. It's perfect for those who seeks unique experiences in their games and likes well written stories. Sadly, there are a few bugs still even in the 'final cut'. World map breaks itself and becomes unusable at the end, there are problems with pacing and you can end up having a boring in-game day walking around doing nothig till evening for the story to progress. Some animations break, some quests don't have desired options, backtracking is annoying, some actions are stupid (hanging coat). Still, deserves to be in a collection.
This game is outright awesome. The steampunk cold apocalypse shown just right, visuals, sound and music in this game is the main selling point. This is true art right there. Gameplay is solid as well, its a very time limited city builder with strong emphasis in resourse management and foreplanning. It offers original map of the city where it is necessary to build around core Generator. Keep your citizens fed, healthy, warm and calm. Hope and discontent add a good headache to captain you play as on top of everything else. The minmal goal is to survive for 50 days, by any means. Sounds exciting and it really is! But this is clearly a spiritual successor to "This war of mine", another game from the same developer and sadly, it has the same problems. First is replayability, game offers several scenarios with various goals and starting conditions. You can even play in the greenery of the Last Autumn. But after first playtrhough you dont really have to play it again to see something new. Most likely you'll visit all the map markers, build most useful buildings and upgrades, try everything except for one of two mutually exclusive path of restoring hope which you pick every run. Second is keeping your citizens calm. This war of mine had very big issues with mental health of your characters. Same happens here, poor captain tries his best to keep everyone ALIVE yet these morons nag and cry about horrible living conditions. In 'A new home' scenario there are even Londoneers who want to go back to dead city they barely escaped from! WHY?! I understand game design decision behind this player task, but it's really stupid. Or my expectations from people in such dire situation are way overstated. So you quickly find out the most effective ways of running the city and abusing several exploits in the game and thats it. Still, compared to 'war' and on its own, this game is worth taking a look and several hours of your time. If not for gameplay but for style alone. Very well done 11bit
Clear Sky was an obvious cashgrab ever since it was announced, it has a few redeeming qualities like being sold in two ways: as an addon requiring original game (lower price) or as a standalone game (higher price) or scary red forest and more personal story tha SoCs. But it fails everywhere else because it tries its hardest not to be like first game. Its more of a on rails shooter. Yeah, imagine that. Game breaks apart everywhere: Stability issues been fixed to some extent, game is at least playable from start to finish, but dx 10\10.1 render is bugged and it really gets to you after hours of play. Faction wars feature that was a selling point of this game is utterly useless because of infinitely spawning enemies and dumb AI. There is no point in capturing any maps because it will be inevitable taken from you unless you intervene all the time. Plus lorewise its a useless thing as well. Where once was freedom and sandbox elements are now hard scripted sequences, its especially bad with invulnerable until decloak bloodsuckers, unkillable enemies in limansk, limansk in general and last hour of the game is the worst you could do in stalker. Even radar meatgrinder felt better than this. Its just bad, its boring and game even throws at you a boss helicopter with hp bar. Yeah. Facepalm indeed. Modding-repair system is fine but its still tied to backtracking around maps looking for upgrade data and you kinda just want to not waste time on that. Artifact hunting is much better with detectors now, but again, artifacts are few and you get better ones as rewards for quests so no point in anomaly diving. It still has its moments, quite a lot actually, but that ending straight up destroys any good impressions. Ultimately CS doesnt offer anything substantionally different than SoC and at the same time stalkers core idea is strong and the game deserves to be played at least once. If you can handle all the frustrations.
