I had to boot Windows because the Linux port isn't available DRM-free, wtf? GoG, please do something about it, the Linux port of Larry Reloaded is still missing after years too. This and a few minor bugs aside, it's a very good and unique game. It is a genre-mix of "turn based strategy" and "interactive book" with a bit of micro-management. The visual and audio design is stunning. The characters are drawn and the landscapes are pixel art in very high definition. Along the way you constantly have to make hard decisions, often all of them leading to undesirable results or leaving a bad taste. Times are hard, there will be losses and you can't save everyone, be prepared. My ending was really sad. The fighting system has one big problem/deviation, your and the enemy units as a whole get one turn each but each character still has a turn order. This leads to the problem that if you go the sensical way to kill off the small enemies fast in order to be able to focus on the big ones, the big ones get more turns - making it even harder. So you need to get the enemy units to 1HP (which also makes their attacks weak and useless though) and kill them off when all are weakened. I didn't get this until right before the end. Since your decisions lead to slightly different stories, the replay value is quite high and I will definitely play it again. Unfortunately the devs have announced, that they are not planning to release episode 2 and 3 DRM free since they are convinced, the DRM free release of the first one has led to lost sales (which is bollocks imho, but there you go). Hopefully they'll rethink their decision and I hope that the Linux port of the first episode won't stay Steam exclusive like many others.
Although there is a native Linux port, it is still not available here on GoG for some reason, just like many other existing Linux ports of games sold here. It's a good remake and very faithful to the original. I'd have changed the control system but they kept the old one. The graphics are good, for some reason they changed some of the girls significantly though. Eve isn't a black beauty anymore but rather a mix. The diseased hooker isn't black anymore either and instead of the unattractive old one, she is now Russian and really horribly disgusting. They added a swimmer, took away the christian cross around Faith's neck, added some small bits of content and made some minor changes in the puzzles. The major improvement is that you don't have to replay from your last save (which was sometimes already doomed) but get set back in time to the last moment before the point of no return. Technically, it's flawed, because like many others, the native mode doesn't have any FPS limiter and lets your GPU run on max, creating as many frames as possible and heating it up extremely. I had to fix the shortcut to force openGL so that this doesn't happen, it still needed too way much performance for such a simple game though. It obviously wasn't optimized very well, at least the Windows port. Another bad thing about it is the repeated mentioning of the Kickstarter. It would have sufficed to mention this in the credits, but they go on and on about it. Kickstarter backers are written on a wall, some monologues of the narrator are about it suddenly in game and Al Lowe himself mentions it again right after beating the game and before showing the backers in the credits. This game isn't about immersion at all anyway, but they have taken this too far. I'd recommend it to fans of the old adventures of the 80s that are happy to get rid of some of the major flaws of this time. Wait until GoG has all ports though or buy it somewhere where you get the Linux port with it.
Oh dear.... easily one of the worst games I've played. I love the first game of the series, like the second ond and only endured this bs to be able to play part four and five without having to skip something in the series. I sometimes Where should I start? The writing is terrible, the characters get more unsympathetic all the time, the controls are clearly made for gamepads (another one that fell prey to "consolidation" ;) and it's unstable which makes you play some scenes again if it crashes. The really mean points: The camera for some reason has fixed positions (it's all 3D anyway, why did they have to do that?!) that constantly screw up your orientation and controls, which is especcially bad when you have to run away in order to not be killed or when you simply can't see an area where you have to put a box in one of the many box pushing puzzles. You can't skip any dialogue EVER and they'll repeat a lot. There are a lot of crappy quick-time events and if you die in such a sequence, you sometimes have to endure a lot of "cinematic" before over and over again without being able to skip it. At one point you have to watch an endless sequence again for the next try at the very short quick time event. The cinematics seem to be locked at a low framerate, I can't explain otherwise why the movements looks so laggy in those while the rest of the game runs fluid. And the ending, oh no, please no.... why?! All the (out of place) references to the first game in addition to the ending give the impression that they really wanted to crap upon the series. I really hope, that 4 and 5 are not nearly as bad.
I started playing this game quite a while ago, moved it to Linux later and after not wanting to play it for a long time and then having some savestates corrupted making me to play the ugly "asylum" level again, I finally quit. It's a game in the tradition of Quake and probably exactly what many people are looking for that love old school fps, but it somehow didn't really impress me. The soundtrack is nice, the graphics ok, level design is good although the hidden stuff is way too well hidden for me to find anything, the weapons are crude which was cool in Quake 3 but I'm missing something here to be honest. It just looks dead in an uncool way. It isn't a bad game and it's even running perfectly via PlayOnLinux, but it's extremely unsatisfying, boring and doesn't give me any joy. It's really just running around and shooting hordes of boring enemies without the humour or colourful design of Serious Sam.
It was fun at first but the completely unfair and random deaths setting back a big chunk of your progress quickly put me off. For some reason the roofs of the huts you have to blow up constantly crashed on top of my soldiers and killed them all instantly, running away after throwing the grenade reduced it only a bit. It was over the moment there are snipers with bazookas everywhere. Even if you know the map, position of all the soldiers, huts and ammo-packages and try to hit the bazookas with your own missiles after collecting them, they till have a larger range of vision than you and the fact, that you can't control the camera directly juts makes it worse. Even after managing the first two phases against all odds, there's always another one that is even worse and you can only save every fourth level or so. After having ragequitted multiple times, I decided, that frustration is no fun and deleted it. How did this become a classic?! I'll try the second game soon but am prepared for the worst.
Based on the Linux port: My first thought was "Looks, feels and controls like a PS2 game" and guess what: It is a PS2 game indeed that was ported to all kinds of platforms by now. I've finished it in about 14,5 hours with all three endings although had to spend more time due to unacceptable bugs (see further below). It's meant as a satire to all RPGs and falls flat in most regards. Although some short passages are funny, it's too much impersonating what it's trying to mock in a quite repetitive way and is trying too hard to be funny in a mostly sarcastical and cynical way. It would need a bit deeper characters and more kinds of humour to work. Questing is linear, grinding is not too bad although there often isn't much else besides grinding. Gamepad support is there (not only XBox), but there is no button mapping and the Y- and X-axis of the right stick was mixed up on my pad. The save system relies on checkpoints which was a particularly bad idea as seen below. The Linux port has [b]massive technical problems[/b]. 1. The old games simply won't start at all. If you choose them from the menu, you only get the "help" tab. You have to hack in the password protected and disguised archives in the games folder containing the games and then run them in an emulator if you want to play them. 2. There are a few bugs in the game where a script doesn't work and you have to try over and over again in order to be able to make the story go on. 3. There's a really mean lighting bug causing to randomly spread one color over a whole area, slowing down the game to about 0,5 - 2 frames per second and forcing you to reload from the last checkpoint. I had to do this over and over again in order to finish this game. After all those years of updates, I expected it to be at least free of the worst bugs... I'll never touch this game again and wouldn't recommend it to most people, if you're in the mood for cheap satire and a hardcore fan of Brian Fargo, you could try it though.
Now you won't see something like this in my list too often, that's for sure. I wanted to know what the controvercy is all about and if it's justified. Even without all the controvercy, it's actually a good game. I may have to add, that I absolutely HATE dating stuff and normally wouldn't touch such a game. I love puzzle games though and wanted to see if the connection actually works. Starting the game in fullscreen mode doesn't work properly in the Linux port, you have to either play int windowed or changed to fullscreen ingame. Another problem if you are one of the perfectionists that want to have 100% everywhere is, that in order to unlock all the outfits, you seem to have to date every girl at every location and one of those is rarely available. I guess, the reason why most of the girls have such big cup sizes is part of the humour. I prefer smaller cups myself, but whatever. ;) The uncensoring file works without any problem and is actually a pretty effective solution to get the censor happy crowd and the officials out of your way while still not having to remove content. The connection between the puzzle and dating part is very clever and refreshingly metaphorical for such a game including a quiz element in the dating made sense too. It certainly can't be easy for such a "player" to remember so many facts about so many girls. xD The "over the top" stuff was hilarious. I actually laughed a lot, especcially about Audrey and Kyu. I'd actually recomment it to people who like puzzle and quiz games with a RL related humour, as long as they are not afraid of the massive amount of nudity. Compared to all the extremely violent stuff around it's actually not really controversial if you're not very prudent. In general I had the feeling, that a lot of thought has been put into the game and I was genuinely surprised, that it seems to be much more professional than what I've seen from the real Japanese games which this one is mocking.
