Started playing a bit over two days ago. How to put this... It's the sims of medieval city building: I did not see the 17h or so hours I put into it go. RIP my sleep schedule. There's a learning curve but it's not discouragingly punishing. It's pretty intuitive (had to check a couple of things online, roof building takes some getting used to, in my humblre opinion) but once you're off, you're off. Playing on normal : it's just challenging enough to spice up my gameplay at certain moments, while still allowing me to chill. Music is great. Animations are great. Graphics are great AND they work on my aging, can-barely-compete-with-a-toaster laptop. Having a blast. I often reach a moment of tedium in similar simulators (banished, forest village, dawn of man and the like), that feel of "my settlement is self sufficient I guess so why should I go on", and I have to say the RPG elements implementation is a great way to delay that moment. Very rewarding. AND it's still in dev?! It can only get better from here on?! dreamy!
I had given Kingmaker a try when it came out, dropped it after 2h30. Craving a good CRPG experience now, I tried again. Fifteen hours later, I uninstalled. I don't mind reading, I don't mind text, I don't mind lore. For an alternate example, I adored Tyranny's worldbuilding. In Kingmaker, though, the writing is uninspired and heavy-handed. The VA is on par with it; I've been told it becomes sparser after a while, but I wouldn't know, as I muted the voices entirely. This game is not new-user friendly if you're unfamiliar with this universe. The essence of the pathfinder DnD experience and universe has not been distilled. It's just wall of text after wall of (mediocre) text. NPCs keep giving expository information that doesn't feel earned (you don't know me!). In terms of combat gameplay and difficulty, the same applies. It's a complex system in the vein of traditional CRPG, but the difficulty isn't scaled to a new player. Where I somehow had great fun and delight understanding the intricacies of Neverwinter Nights or D:OS over time, here it just feels gratuitously punishing from the start. No fun is being had, just reload reload reload and hope the dice roll your way this time. It's opaque. (I'm not name-dropping games for the sake of it; I'm trying to give references and things to compare it to, since a game review is by essence subjective) In short: I'm afraid I really cannot recommend it.
Honestly, this game is a joy. Does it have faults? Hella. I don't care. It's the sort of game that has such soul that it outshines anything else. It's fun. It's pleasant. It doesn't waste my time. It amuses me, too, with a dry and not so dry humour that doesn't feel like immature shock-value and often brings a bark of laughter out of me. The fighting ? love it, extremely entertaining, both as a human and as a flying lizard. The dragon flying controls are a bit clunky at times, I won't lie, but it really doesn't hinder much. Not worse than Skyrim, truthfully. Also, you can read minds. Sometimes it doesn't bring anything more than a spark of that humour previusly mentioned - sometimes it gives relevant information. Both are worth the xp cost of mindreading, and if not you can read and reload anyway for the best of both worlds. Honestly? I cannot recommend this game enough if you like ARPG.
Rome is a good-adjacent game, of the sort that fills the time but leaves few memories. And boy does it fill the time: clunky mecanics that take over the story aspects for half the game in dreaded, repetitive conquest maps. If you're here for CRPG content and storylines and narratives, you'll be as frustrated as I was slogging through these parts trying to reach the next story content. It picks up (kind of) in the third part of the game, which introduces a dose of tongue-in-cheek humorous references that at least brighten the repetitive mecanics. It also helps that by then you should have hoarded enough RSS not to need to micromanage your armies. You can just steamroll the enemies and rush it. Ironically, where the game shines is the last part. Where things finally feel urgent and dense and like the stakes do matter, as do your choices. If you have time to spare and the money, try it, I guess. But I can't say it scratched any itch I had. If anything, it sent me back to the previous franchise iteration which I then played twice, in a row, so there's that.
I've enjoyed this game immensely ! The lore and worldbuilding are fascinating, and I've taken much pleasure in discovering more of it. It had been quite some time since I last played a game in which I genuinely wanted to know how the story would unfold. The story and setting are quite original, and are actually a great opportunity for those who want to roleplay something other than a good character without feeling like the game is punishing them at every turn for being morally ambiguous. It's been a great roleplaying experience. I also really enjoy the visual choices. I humbly disagree with criticism about the game's alleged too short length : with the extensions my run tallied about 47 hours of play which I believe is a perfectly respectable time. Indeed I'd rather play a short(ish) well-paced captivating game than a Dragon-Age-Inquisition-Go-Fetch-My-Yack type which could have taken at least 2/3 of its current gameplay time to tell the exact same story in an even better way. As for the abrupt story ending, i'm torn. While I'm curious as to where further confrontation could have taken us, I also feel that in order to be satisfyingly resolved it'd have probably needed a whole new game. The real downside, to me, was the fighting gameplay. Tedious at first, one that I had to micromanage, until finally my characters started to snowball and I could speed them up and let them solve everything themselves, only intervening so my main character would cast some spells to level up the related skills. While I really recommend buying both Tales from the Tiers and Bastard's Wound from the start (they made the world feel more complete), I do feel it comes out quite expensive. Thus I'd recommend getting the game during a sale (which will probably still amount to around 40 euros since BW's sales haven't been greater than 10% so far) Thus ends my review that maybe at least someone lost in the last reviews pages will stumble upon and read
I'm a story and character driven gamer. Were I made to chose, I'd rather a game's narrative was about the characters and how they feel about the world rather than how they're gonna save it and acquire the necessary power and wield said power oooooh. Sadly, the later is a good summary of DOS2. Many things gave me flashbacks to Neverwinter Nights 2 (Mask of the betrayer included) and some Dragon Age : Origins, but in a way that made DOS2 feel lacking in comparison. It's very much on the beaten path. You are a sourcerer, someone who has Special Powers - because of which you are Oppressed. You Will Rise To The Occasion And Thrive Through Adversity. You (or one of your pals) Are A Chosen One. It's a good game. Though missing Divinity : Ego Draconis' quirky humor (last Larian game I played), it's entertaining, and it's been sucking way too many hours of my time. The fights are a bit too challenging at first but once you get the hang of them they become FUN. The graphics are pretty and collorful, the special effects are cool. I just sure wish the plot had been held to similar standards.
I was looking for a game to distract me from the emptiness left after the Dragon Ages, amongst other virtual worlds and, much to my surprise - bias is a terrible thing - this small dev game actually FILLED that emptiness. I am now a shadow of myself after finishing it, because what am I to do without it ?! I cannot speak about its replayability since I'm a one path kind of gamer, but even without that I counted 50 hours of fun and enjoyed every single minute of it. It is incredibly well-written - and by that I mean that I took great pleasure in reading the text itself, the dialogues, the descriptions. I'd sometimes pause to marvel at how delightful it is to read a game with such quality of wording. Never long-winded, always on point, I'd say that the saddest part is not having even more character-specific events to discover. And speaking of characters ! What great companions to undertake this adventure with. The cultural aspects are incredibly convincing and absolutely fascinating. I don't think I'd had such a moment of wonder at the depiction of social and political conflicts since Morrowind's many houses/political parties and natives. I'm not a historian so I can't speak for accuracy but Vikings feels researched; it feels credible, and that's what matters. Finally, as someone used to real time game fighting, I've alway been unsettled by turn-based combat. Yet E:V was both flexible and challenging enough for even a terrible turn-based gamer like myself to have fun. Tl;dr : GREAT RPG, HELP I'M IN LOVE
