I was looking for a worthy game from or related to DnD theme. If youve played games like EverQuest, did some table top DnD, played Baldurs Gate, Icewind Dale, Diablo series (?) (ok maybe not as related), PIllars of Eternity, etc (i think you catch my drift), this was relevant. Unlike the others though, this one I almost rage quit. As with most games you run along and do your thing you think youre supposed to. In my case, I did not weigh the consequences of doing this or that quest (both major quests), resulting in a failure of keeping a companion. That was ~100hrs into the game mark. Now, I also played the game doing no research. Playing casually when there is spare time as the weeks pass (I dont remember everything, no notetaking, and the games journaling system, it has room for improvement. But coming from games that provided little if no clues on what to do next, this was nothing new. So what was I to do with my companion I would lose (you have at least a handful of "companions", that is, group members in your adventures and kingdom). A quick searching pointed me to.. mods. Boy, what had I been missing. Camera mods (rotate/zoom), its not cheating... amongst other mods, I dove into changing character portraits (your chatbots can help, not that there arent numerous portraits on mod sites, and you can make your own). To get to my point, I found a mod that would allow me to modify my current/completed quests, and did them in the "proper" order (one that didnt result in losing a companion). Now, I couldve have went back ~10hrs (real life hours) to get back to that time/save where I would "do this right", but no, that mod was a few clicks. Was it cheating, Id ask myself. I spent 100+hrs playing without mods in the game, and I was about to uninstall, but the mod saved that experience. So I kinda justified continuing with that in mind. Looking forward to playing the next Pathfinder iteration, Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. If i can add anything else, the game is not about uber loot, epic weapons/armor, its about quests, adventuring, and once you thought you got immersed into the game, kingdom management (which i heard, but have not tried, can be set to automatic). Game is not for the faint of heart. You will learn to save often if you dont already. There are consequences to decisions so try to pay attention at those scenarios. Yes, you can turn off turn based fighting (no mods). Game has some dark areas (i mean caves), so have some light on you (magic or physical items). Quality game I thought, though I have not completed. Good enough to have bought its sequel when it was on sale last week. Im on older NVIDIA RTX 3080 GPU (bought at Covid prices !!!), 1 TB NVME OS disk , 8 TB storage disk, 32GB RAM, older i9-11900k, all sitting inside a Thermaltake 900 (just basic AIO water cooling going on, CPU only). So, i dont know or have not experienced lagginess at 4k 60hz.
Do you care for RTS games? Want to just relax and do some city/resource/trading management with some farming, and maybe fight some pirates if you want to? Game also has a storyline, but if you dont want to touch that, theres a feature for that. Don't care for online games? This games got your name on it then. I had not even Campaigns and Scenarios yet and was already hours in. This was a classic, and as you've probably already read, the "gold standard" of the Anno series.
