Firstly, please note that although I enjoy a point 'n click adventure game every now and then, this is not my genre of choice, hence my standards may be different then yours. The game has a great "cyberpunk postapocalypse meets sweedish crime story" premise. I loved it out of the gates and the game - much like a swedish whodunnit - manages to keep things contained and intimate. The graphincs are fun and while they sometimes are a bit illegible, they serve their purpose and are entertaining. All interactions are voiced which is awesome. I liked, that your character has several skills and that different choices lead to different skills that will yield different outcomes. It souns better on paper than in practice, but it's still a cool feature. The puzzles, although not extremely original, are entertaining and most of the time strike a good balance between cerebrally stimulating and convoluted. There's not that many of them though. The story itself is interesting, albeit not groundbreaking. There is very little to it's "detective" aspect, as you progress through the story on a linear path without really having many suspects. The game resolves itself without your detective skills, so if you're looking for a detective adventure game, this isn't it. It's more of a "figure out the puzzle to progress the story" type of thing. My problem with the game was that it's rather short and underwhelming. You get this set of cool skills, the premise of a good detective story, those fun detective mechanics, but it doesn't seem to manage to spread it's wings. Some of the characters and threads don't really go anywhere and the potentially great mechanics are surprisingly unexploited. I had a feeling that there is just so much more that could have been done with this game. Still, the end product is fine and I hope it's creators will explore their own game to greater lenghts to give us a better developed product.
In it's time, Diablo was groundbreaking. It MADE the genre. Obviously, as a pioneer, it has it's failings. Later games were smoother, better designed, more polished. But Diablo was there first, and just for that - it deserves a bit of your time. If not for the still enjoyable (though - by today standards - EXTREMELY clunky) gameplay, then for the huge chunk of gaming history that this game is. The game's lore - while not very original - is still entertaining and well delivered. Just a small tip: if you don't care for lore or various events, but want to just focus on the gameplay, you might want to play multiplayer (even if alone). Single player has random quests, more lore and has some special items you might find, but - unlike multi - you can get through everything only once (i.e. after you cleared a location, it stays clear forever). Multi is nearly lore-free, you get the same quests always (Butcher, Skeleton King, Lazarus, Diablo), but you can replay levels all you want and grind (and go into higher difficulties).
Everything about this game is set to discourage you from playing. The terrible controls. The extremely annoying combat. The bugs. The sub-par graphics and animations. The abysmal voice acting (and the voice-over addons coming with the DLC which stand out like a sore thumb). And yet... there is just something about this game, that you let it all slide and once you look past it's many, many flaws, you can't help it but fall in love. The game is extremely rich with content and its world just feels so alive. This game surpasses even such story-rich powerhouses like The Witcher III in terms of making all of the inhabitants of the world have a life and some agency - and the game is a rushed product from a small studio from 2005! There is just so much to uncover here. Every named character in this game (and there are hundrets of them) has something to do, a quest, a story (there are literally thousands of those quests, and all have some background, some plot, none of that "exclamation mark - the rats became such pests in my basement. Bring me 10 rat tails for reward" shit. And the hiddent content! Like when you decide to say: screw you game, i will not do your quests to get into the first city. I will do my own thing, jump down a cliff to get past some overpowered monsters and find a ledge missplaced by the devs that lets me climb up a wall along the coast that has a small spot to jump down safely into the water so that i can actually swim to the city from the harbor part and break the initial quests, and... and then one of the characters in the game congratulates you on doing all that and you get an XP reward! This is just incredible. Love it, for all it's flaws, for all it's shortcomings, this game is just part of gaming history. For it's current price, you just can't not have it.
First thing you need to know: this has nothing to do with The Thing by John Carpenter. This is not a bad thing in itself, but the devs seem to go out of their way to market the game as inspided by the movie, which can leave you feeling cheated. In reality, the inspiration drawn is purely superficial. It's a isometric view survival game with some horror motives, set in an arctic base. You control a group of survivors, who search the base for answers and means to survive the harsh enviroment (and alien menace). ::: The game is about progressing through the base while keeping your characters alive - you need to keep them fed, warm and rested. However, food is scarce, heat needs refueling and sleeping can attract hostlie aliens. You need to act decisively and quick or die of hunger/cold, go mad or get eaten by googahs. ::: What sounds amazing in practice falls flat on the execution. I'm not 100% sold on the idea of controlling multiple characters at the same tame, it makes the game unfocused (and they share inventories, which is immersion-breaking). The base is randomly generated, which benefits multiple playthroughs at the cost of level design (bad trade-off imho). You need to search every nook and cranny of the base for supplies, which can be tedious. There is not much going on story-wise and you won't loose any sleep over the plot. The mechanics are simplistic (resource management + find a thing to click on a thing to proceed to the next thing), which - along with the procedural generation and basic story - gives the game a "mobile" feel. The resource management part of the game feels tacked on (warmth I get, but food and sleep is a bit out of place here). It does pick up pace a lot when aliens appear, which is when the game is at it's best. ::: All in all, it's a mediocre game designed just well enough not to pass as a marketing hoax trying to pull in fans of The Thing. Grab on discount if you like survival / rougelike games or find the theme appealing.
Oohh... edgy. Ok, so i nicked the title from hbomberguy (of youtube fame) video about fallout 3 being garbage. Sorry for that. I do agree with pretty much everything he said about the game and more, so check it out. It's only 1 and a half hour long rant ;) In any case, why do i hate the game so much? Glad you asked. See, I was there when Fallout 1 and 2 premiered and i loved the hell out of both of these games, so when F3 came out I remember how enthusiastic i was towards it. However, when I finally got to play this glorified Oblivion post-apocalypse mod i was devastated, it was such a massive letdown. The game disregarded so much of what made Fallout 1 and 2 great (the themes, the lore, the dialogues, the story) and gave us in return another one of Bethesda's hallmark (at least by today standards, it wasn't like that when Morrowind came out) "explore everything, enjoy nothing" cardboard cuttouts, low on dialogue, themes and lore, but high on copy-paste locations with a chest at the end and maybe a recording of someone doing something uninteresting in the past. The interactions with NPCs were minimal, the quests were... kinda weird (i mean, i don't want to say generic, even though a lot of them were, but they had a tonal problem. Lilke, they had only two modes: "cooky" and "grim", and i was quickly tired of the "cooky" mode, but then again - humour is subjective, so take that opinion for wha it is), the enviroment was inconsistent and bland, and a lot of things just didn't make sense (plot- or themewise). And i'm not even going to rant about the hideous graphics and animations, bugs, performance issues, cluncky controls and very subpar fps gameplay (since Fallout: New Vegas had the same engine and was absurdly superior in spite of having a lot of flaws of Fallout 3). There is fun to be had here, sure, Bethesda is great at making exploration sandboxes, but by all the gods of Discworld, play Fallout: New Vegas instead! Forget F3 ever existed. And F4. And F76.
2017 had a lot going for it: System Shock 3: Prey, Nier: Tomatoes, Nier: Irish Samurai, Racist Teacups, Jungian Psychology 101 part 5, Horizon: Zero Dark Thirty and some stuff by Nintendo about a dude not called Zelda - and yet, neither of those got me coming back the same way Hollow Knight did and neither was as enjoyable for me (ok, except for Zelda: Breth of the Wild, because i don't own the Nintendo switchy-swatchy thing. There. My integrity is ruined). Simply put: the game is amazing. It does everything it sets out to do and it does it in style. If you are a fan of metroidvania/dark souls/hack&slash games, it's a must. It's hard, but rewarding. It's design and sound are amazing, it's very atmospheric and can be cute and scary at the same time. It has simple yet surprisingly sophisticated combat. The backstory is intriguing and told by the world itself. Buy it now! To answer some complaints: 1) combat is siple, but is anything but simplistic. The depth is in the execution, not in preparation. There's still a lot of variety (10+ permanent skills to find + upgrades to all + 40 switchable upgrades), though little in terms of different playstyles. 2) The game is hard, but not unforgiving. You need to catch your stride. It's not a question of "git gud", but rather hitting the right tone. Don't rush into things. Blindly mashing attack will get you killed quick. Be respectful, patient and cautious. Prioritize not getting hit over hitting. EVERY enemy has an opening, find it. 3) The save and fast-travel spots are spread out thin (think Dark Souls). Dev's choice. I wasn't bothered, some people are. There's a late game teleport spell to help out. Also: game saves on quit. You don't lose your progress, just start from your last save location. 4) Same with map - dev's choice. I liked that actually but it can get overwhelming early to mid-game. 5) It can be hardware heavy on low-end computers. Mid >>should<< be fine. 6) Get a controller. Keyboard + mouse can be frustrating.
I have played Witcher 1 right about when it came out - for all it's flaws, i enjoyed it a lot. After a while, i switched to consoles - i didn't own a gaming PC and since Witcher 2 never came out on PS3/4, i missed out on it. Then Witcher 3 came out and i fell in love, basically doing a 100% completion in one sitting. Even if some things in Witcher 3 could be better, I find Witcher 3 the game of the decade. So why am i writing about W3 in a W2 review? Because this review is focused on how it feels to sit down to W2 having played W3 (and W1) first. :::::: Here is the main issue: W3 was an upgrade on absolutely everything. Every. Single. Thing. When i started out with it, it was my understanding that while it was obviously an inferior game in a technical sense (graphics, mechanics, gui etc.), it stood it's ground with the story, the immersion and lore. It doesnt, not by a long shot. I was actually surprised on how poorly delivered parts of the story were. The story itself is good/great, but for me the deliverance took away a lot from the enjoyment. The scenes start/end abruptly, the characters act unnaturally, there are a lot of tiny cliches, basically while the overarching storyline is great, the bits connecting it are mediocre. Also, although the main characters are beautifully fleshed out, they contrast strongly with everyone else being very one dimentional. Additionally, I was spoiled by the abundance of fleshed out side-content in W3 - W2 is mainly focused on the main story (though it's not necessarily a flaw i guess). The combat is poor and the gui is very unintuitive. The graphics are still beautiful and the animations are what you'd expect for the time. ::::::: Don't get me wrong, the game is still great and - by all means - play it! As a point of referrence: it's better than every entry in the Dragon Age series. Just don't be disappointed by how far from W3 it is. And - if you have the chance - play W2 before W3.
I used to play it a lot back in the day. It's a challenging and fun game - however, you need to spend some time on it to appreciate it. The game is pretty hard regardless of whether you use keyboard moves or mouse. The mouse is way more fun, but also waaaaay harder to master and may feel too tedious to use, even if you got arround using it - most of the time, especially against the more difficult enemies, you need to execute your attacks perfectly, otherwise you'll just frustrate yourself. Problem is - with the keybord you know exactly what will happen, while the mouse can and often will surprise you with movement, that you didn't plan for. I reccomend learning the keybord first and playing arround with it and only then switching to the mouse. Otherwise, you might find the game too clunky and discouraging.
I installed this game on three seperate somewhat modern computers (one was actually 10 years old, which is still 10 years younger than the game itself ;) the two others were a laptop that i use for work (lower/mid range) and a gaming laptop (high end). I managed to make it work smoothly on all three, so with a little bit of googling and some 15-20 minutes of work, you should be able to make it work correctly, with no framerate drops. It was easy for me - and i'm no computer expert - so it shouldn't be hard for you, unless you're really unlucky. :::::::::::::::::::::::: and booooy, is it worth it! The game still has it! It's amazing, how you sit down to some of the old wonderfull titles with your nostalgia goggles and they pop right of your face when you see how the game doesn't stand up to today standards at all - but not JA2. The story is fun and interesting, nicely balancing it's serious and quirky tones (something that Sri-Tech were always very skilled at), the strategy is still on a decent level (especially on the higher difficulties - but be warned, they can be killer!) and it manages to be enjoyable throughout. It might get a bit tedious at times though, so be warned - don't put your Napoleon hat to all of the battles, because some of them can be easily rushed with a big and strong enough crew (and then healed quickly at Cambria). What this game does best though, are those little touches, that turn a good TBS into a magical experience. A surprise interaction between characters here, a fun NPC there, some hidden mechanics that you may not even notice the frist time you play through, maybe a completely reduntant (yet hillarious) in-game website that you can unlock via links... there's seemingly an unending supply of small yet interesting additional content, that didn't need to be in the game, but is there nonetheless. And it all makes the game impossible not to love.
I had fond memories of Knights and Merchants. I had it when it premiered and spent countless hours mastering it, although I remember barely beating half of the game. I remembered how demanding yet satisfying it was back then. So I decided to give it a shot. And the backfire hurt. The game is difficut, this didn't change, but the satisfaction did. You see, a big part of this game difficulty is how unforgiving it is. You often can't just reload the last battle you lost, you need to go way back, to remodel your whole strategy. Now, that itself is not a great sin, some might say it's a virtue, but the problem is that the game is also terribly time consuming and not really dynamic. It takes a grinding forever to set up your base the way you think you need to, only to find out that you are dramatically underprepared for the opponent's assault. The thing is, gaming has changed and I changed with it. Back in the day, this grind-punishment cycle was just part of the experience. You took on a hellish game like this, spent countless hours on it, tinkering with your strategy, tweaking it this way and that, untill you got something working and you moved on to the next mission. Back then it just felt like a challenge. Today, gaming is way easier and dynamic, which makes Knight and Merchants feel like a chore by comparison. And I don't want that in a game today. I have enough chores in my life, thank you very much. That is not to say that the game is bad. It's not. If you like strategy, if you like a challenge, have a lot of time on your hands and you don't mind the slow progress, you might want to give it a shot. Beware however, if you don't know what old games were like, you might be surprised how modern gaming has spoiled you and made it impossible for you to appreciate this game the way it deserves.
