Firewatch is not meant to be played, but experienced, which isn't necessarily a bad thing if it wasn't for the extreme limited nature of the scope of the game. You hike through an oversaturated, very fake looking scenery, while listening to well acted conversations, which is the driving force of the game - the interactions and deepening relationship between you and your boss on the other end of the line. It's all well written and the story is very good at setting up mysteries, but quickly starts falling apart once you realise the extreme limitations that the game is capable of and that the story is not going to reach great heights because of it. Firewatch is very short and because your choices don't carry weight or have an influence on the story other than some minuscule details, there's very little reason, if any, to ever replay this experience, which for a full price, is a very expensive experience, indeed. This is not a choose your own adventure. It's also a little buggy, which was surprising considering how very simple the game is. Personally, I think this could be a stand out among mobile games, something you get for your iPad to kill a few hours, but despite not being strictly bad in any sense, there are just far, far better adventure games out there, especially for the PC.
This game is clearly a labour of love. It oozes atmosphere, everything is brimming with detail and you will come to appreciate the well structured writing and characters, despite that some of the prose can be somehow a pain to read. Where the game completely falls on its face is the difficulty - it's all over the place! Some will argue to just get good (as in learn to break the game), but for most others, the game has a tendency to devolve into a completely unnecessary re-load fest, especially on your first play-through. The game can be very rewarding, but even with all of the difficulty sliders set to normal, Kingmaker requires a much higher player effort than your typical Baldur's Gate 1&2, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights.
Mac users beware, I'm sure the game itself is alright, however, it crashes on launch when running the game on a silicon Mac. Just letting folks know.
There's a lot to love about Kingmaker as it oozes with great story, fun characters and huge amount of little details. It's more than obvious that Owlcat really poured their heart and soul into every quest as well as great many locations - truly one of the most impressive roleplaying games out there. Where I think the game missed the mark though is the difficulty curve, especially when you're playing the game for the first time and aren't yet aware of the many death traps, be it wildly unbalanced encounters or otherwise. This is especially true at the beginning of the game, when your party is still just a bunch of weaklings, prone to failing skill checks, stat draining or dying to an unfortunate critical hit. Unless you're willing to play on a difficulty with nerfed enemies and keep adjusting it based on your power level, the gameplay sadly tends to degenerate into save-scumming galore.
Nearly everything about this game is top notch. Deep rpg mechanics, great turn-based combat, well written story and characters - all these things are absolutely awesome and there's a lot to love about the game. Where this game fails miserably, potentionally ruining the experience, is in the implementation of the ruleset, as there are very many instances of hitting the wall. On core difficulty, you can have your progress stalled almost completely, just because there's no way around the mechanics, unlike in the tabletop version where the DM can make it work. To give an idea from beginning of the game, some of the first enemies you meet are spiders that do permanent damage to stats. After "one" regular battle and some bad rolls, you can have your strength halved. Well, some of that can be healed by resting, but tough luck, the story says you have to have a nightmare episode again, which means no restoration and because you got no sleep, your stats are now drained further. Rest again? Well, shoot, you're ambushed by more spiders and now you're encoumbered even by the mail shirt you wear. You also need supplies to rest and the main quest is on timer, so you better stop wasting another half a day and your precious resources just so you don't have to run around naked and defenseless... For veterans of the game, aware of what danger awaits where, stuff like this is no issue whatsoever, but for a first time player, even when you're well versed in the Pathfinder system, the difficulty curve of the game is unfortunately a jagged nightmare with many pitfalls - game that's highly encouraging save-scumming, unfortunately.
Every part of Dead Space is an experience you want to partake in. Games get rarely this good.
I recently got the game based on a glowing recommendation by my favourite reviewer, praising the level design, Half-Life levels of innovation - boy, was I disappointed. Story: It's basically a B movie premise being served by blatant exposition. Notes, recordings, even videos are literally everywhere - on roofs, in ventilation, under kid's beds. The way these interrupt the gameplay can be very frustrating and after a while, you'll just start skipping these altogether. Not great in a game that takes its own story very seriously. Level design: You know how in good games you get an idea which areas are exploration and which lead to the next level? Forget it here. You go on searching a room and suddenly a door closes behind you and you're left lamenting all the uncollected loot you just unknowingly left behind. This makes you constantly evaluate, which paths "look like" they lead to the next level. Scripted sequences: Everywhere. Even combat seems scripted. For example, during one of the first firefights with enemy soldiers, unaware, I left the game on and when I got back after about five minutes, I was standing in the middle of a firefight with everybody missing me, enemies running around, changing covers. This was on the hardest difficulty. Only after you kill about ten enemies, you are suddenly no longer invincible, but your buddy needed to say his lines... Gameplay in a nutshell: At the beginning, you team up with a buddy who is all tactical, changing covers, saying stuff like "scan that exit" or "clear left", while you're running around like an idiot, jumping on crates, searching dumpsters, reading notes, turning on recordings, watching movies, picking up in game currency that you have, at this point, no idea what it's for and when your buddy stacks at a door and dramatically shouts at you to kick the door in - that's the last thing you want to do. If you like it, awesome, but buyers beware!
