TL;DR; If you're in a mood for a very long RPG, with rich combat, engaging story and fleshed out companions, you can certainly do a lot worse than D:OS2. Pretty much everything was improved here from the D:OS: - Builds are even more diverse and the game lets you rebuild them almost completely. - Optimizing gear load-out and hunting for that last missing piece is time consuming, but complements base stats and abilities very, very well. - Side characters are much better: more fleshed out, memorable and with meaningful companion stories, strongly tied to the main plot. - The plot won't show you anything new, if you're a long-time fantasy enjoyer, but it is engaging and takes you on the great ride through the world. - And this time around your choices matter much, much more than in D:OS. There are flaws, of course - The main flaw of this game is subjective: if you have the infamous FOMO (fear of missing out) experience in RPGs, this will give you the mother of all FOMOs. At times I felt paralyzed mainly because I wanted my run to be "perfect" and so I spent way, way to much time in online guides. I still had a ton of fun, but the game wore me down at times and I had to make some breaks. - The way initiative works in this game is one change from the OS that I don't like: you cannot make all of your party to go first regardless of their initiative stats. The game always puts characters from opposing sides into an alternating order. You can only start the fight if you have the fastest character in the fight. All in all, this is a great game. Long (very long), rich, re-playable and fun. And even if you played BG3, you'll probably still have a ton of fun here.
TL;DR: If you're considering this game, stop right now, buy and play it. You will thank yourself later for making a great choice. I saw a presentation of this game a few years ago on an Xbox showcase and I waited impatiently for launch. To say that I had high expectations is an understatement. Suffice it to say, this is very risky approach to anything, and especially a new game, from a new and unproven studio. I can happily say that all my expectations were met and then some. Most games are either very artistic but don't play all that great, or are fun to play but you would not necessarily compare them to works of Da Vinci or Chopin. This game is both a great game and a true work of art. Everything about this title is inspired. The music alone is fantastic. When combined with art style, story, world and creature design, acting, and tough but fun gameplay, it puts most other games to shame. To think that something like this came out of a new, small development studio (with a lot of help from contracted artists of course) is almost unbelievable. If you haven't already, look up some documents about how this game came together. This story is in itself a great entertainment (I recommend Skill Up's video). I played it on Game Pass when it launched and loved it there. I though of buying on Steam but I try to avoid that, if possible and much prefer GOG. When I saw it today on the home page, I just had to have it. Now I'm thinking if I should maybe put another 100h in...
TL;DR; if you like survivor horrors, you will like this one too. If you don't like survivor horrors, mod the game for "easy mode" and try it for the story and setting: it's worth it :). I'll start by stating: I don't like survivor horror games. The usual gameplay assumptions in this genre are, subjectively, not fun. So why I bought this title, you may ask? I really liked the setting and story vibes presented in trailers. Was it worth it? Yes, with a caveat that I'll explain later. Why should you play this game then? If you are a survivor horror player, this should feel like home to you: - I'm no expert obviously, but to me this game played in many ways like Dead Space Remake (for better or worse). It was tough but fair. Shooting felt very satisfying. And there were moments of genuine anxiety created not by simple jump scares, but by your expectations about what may happen in a moment. - Upgrades felt a bit lacking at the beginning but with time you'll notice how much they matter. - Enemy variety is a bit lacking and not all bosses are memorable, but for the most parts they are fine. - Developers really nailed resource drops, if you take the time to explore. Don't get me wrong: in a traditional survivor horror fashion, you will be counting every bullet and every scrap you'll find. But the game drops just enough of everything for you to be able to progress, if you're smart about your inventory content and how you approach combat. - Oh, and the inventory itself will be your worst enemy because it's so small. One big caveat here: there is no difficulty setting. I played Dead Space on easy (and I'm not ashamed of it!). I played it like that because of slow movement and no dodge. Combat frustrated me because of that and I have no patience for this kind of gameplay. If the combat is in real time, I prefer a more action-oriented style, that's why I don't like the genre. Here I had the same experience. I managed to get to about 2/3 of the story, but I just couldn't force myself to repeat a fight with one particularly annoying boss. The only reason I managed to finish this game is because I found a "story mode" mod, that made changes to inventory, game economics and resource drops. The combat was still hard and annoying, but at least now I had the depth of stuff to kill the boss before it killed me because of a small misstep. Purists will no doubt be disgust with what I did, but I really wanted to finish the story and that was the only way I could :). And on that note: the story and setting - the real reason you should play this title: - I'm from Kraków, where the game is set, so I can recognize a lot of details about the environment. There were quite a few artistic liberties taken, of course, but a lot feels genuine (those old trams!). - I'm not old enough to remember communist Poland directly, but I recognized a lot from stories and old movies. Developers made a great effort to recreate 1980s Poland in details, small and big, and in my opinion they succeeded. Underneath all that post apocalyptic rot you can really see a lot of from that place and time. - The story didn't start very strong for me, but 2 - 3 hours in it suddenly hooked me. I wanted to know what has happen, to the world and to characters from the past. The game drip-feeds the story at first, but with time you will find enough clues to start working on theories. The ending can be predicted, but for me it happened very near the end. And even after the credits, there are still questions to be answered. Not a sequel bate, but definitely a sequel possibility. - Voice acting, while not a lot of it, is good. One missed opportunity is the lack of Polish. It would really nail the vibe from the time and place. - And to cap it off: the music makes a great work. You won't hear it all the time. But when it starts, it amplifies everything. Tracks were chosen masterfully. On a technical note I didn't have many issues. I remember one crash near the end (acceptable enough in 20 or so hours I played). There were some minor stutters but only after loading a save or reaching a new location. Otherwise the game run ok without RT (around 80 fps in 4k on a 4080S, highest preset, and DLSS of course). And with frame generation you can even play with RT on, but I preferred to turn it off.
Story, visuals and music are as good as in the base game but those puzzles... I think devs wanted to make a more challenging playthrough, but they did it in a wrong way. Puzzles use the same mechanics as the base game, but are very convoluted and often frustrating to complete. They take much, much more time to do, even if you figure out the solution. And I think some of them expect you to have specific "optional" updates, or at least I don't know how I would have solved them without some optional skills. I was very close to giving up. The story is ok, but if I knew about those puzzles before, I would have check it out on youtube.
After a rather not good Trine 3 the team decided to go back to the roots of the series. That turned out to be a great decision. Trine 4 brings back what was great about 1 & 2: fun, often challenging puzzles solved with most (all?) of the familiar mechanics. All this in a much better looking visuals yet in the same charming, fairy tale like setting. Sound design is great as usual and the cast made the story come to life once more. The game does not add that much new to the series, but if you liked 1 & 2, you should enjoy this part as well.
The idea of adding a 3rd dimention was good in theory, but the team didn't manage to do it in a satisfying way. At best the platforming and puzzles are playable, at worst they're so, so annoying. Too bad, because everything else is as good as in previous two games. We have a great voice acting, charming world desing and music, and traditionally fun, fairy tale of a story. Unfortunatelly that story ends on a clifhanger and it doesn't appear we will ever get a proper closure.
Sure, the graphics is dated. Sure, the story can be cheesy. And sure, the gameplay is mechanically simple. But all this doesn't matter much, because this is still a fun game. If you haven't tried it yet and are looking for something from those "good old days", try it. It's not a masterpiece, a must play or anything like that. But coming with right expectations, I think it will safisfy those who would like to go back in time a little bit.
The setting is very uncommon, both the historical era as well as geographically. And developers did a very good job recreating the vibe of the time and place (at least that's what it looks like to a laymen eye). This alone should interest some players as there are not that many games set in similar environment. On top of that backdrop there is a similarly fresh-feeling fantasy world. Both take center stage in the plot of the game. The setting is populated with many great characters, on both on "the good" and "the bad" side. And it's very unclear at times which side is which, great stuff. Also the protagonist can be very different based on how we want to play and which choices we make. The story has several endings, some distinguished in only details but others being completely different. There is a great replay value here, and even if played once, the game will still take a good amount of time. Music and sound design is very fitting, if not especially memorable. I have some small complaint to the Polish dubbing: at times it sounds too clean, as if the proper context was lost on performers. It's fine most of the time though. Graphically the game is nice, but it's not a looker in compared to other new titles. And here we start getting into some (small!) annoyances. I think the optimization could be better: even on a strong PC there are small stutters here and there. It's not a big problem in a title like this, and locking the frame rate made it less visible. Slightly bigger issue is the combat: while fun all the way to the end in my opinion, if you do most of the side quests you can end up quite overpowered and the combat can become repetitive (though I still had a good time and never shied away from it). But then, depending on your choices, you can end up in a boss battle so much more difficult that after several attempts I caved and lowered the difficulty. All in all this is a very good game, easy to recommend to any RPG player.
The sentence "they don't make them like they used to" is very fitting here. This game is pure, no-nonsense fun. You're dropped in the middle of an alien invasion, pick up a bunch of heavy weapons and mow down everything that opposes you. There is not much to look for on maps (or rather elongated arenas), other than ammo and weapon change/upgrade points. Hidden audio logs are completely optional. The story is simple but competent. I'm not familiar with Warhammer 40k lore, but I know someone who is and he told me this is it, this is the game to start with, if you want to dive into that franchise. But it does not matter that much because the most important part is the gameplay and that is still great, even after over a decade. So why such a low score? Two reasons. The first one is that the game is too short, I wanted more. You can replay it again on a higher difficulty. But there were moments, where I struggled on normal, I do not want to challenge myself that much. Because there are no story choices and gameplay variety isn't great, I feel it would get stale quickly. I picked this up because I want to play that new sequel and that is what I'm going to do next. Too bad SM2 is not available on GOG. The second, much bigger problem: game crashes often on modern machines. Internet says it's because modern CPUs have too many cores. A solution that worked for me: assign a few cores (I went with 4) to the game process in Windows Task Manager. This should have been patched in.
The story mode is very short, but it works as a folloup to the original Alan Wake. It expands a little on the world and some character's fate after the fist game. Main "story vehicle" may feel a little overplayed now, but I think it works very well in here. Oh, and it's definitely worth looking for all the pages and to watch all TVs. The gameplay is a little simplistic and easier than in the first game, at least on normal, but I played for the story so I didn't mind. The game should be darker. As it is now, if feels too bright in compare to first Alan Wake so you don't have the same "dread" when in fights compared to the first Alan Wake.
