Legacy sequels are doomed to fail either commercially or critically or both when published by a AAA studio like EA and Paradox. There are but few exceptions that managed to make it a success, but even those took years and years, maybe even with a few years of players testing the game, to make it a full fledged experience. This is just an unrealistic standard no one can strive for in the videogames industry. It takes resources, patience, respect to the source material and enough interest from fans able to back the entire project. A great example of such a success story is Baldur's Gate III, and it's a miracle they were still giving many updates after the game released. And here we are with Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines. Many people were looking forward to it, it came out almost literal decades after the first Bloodlines came to PC, Paradox Interactive Published the game and predictably, people tend to be disappointed and infuriated. I'm glad people see this game for what it is but also disappointed this many copies were already sold in the GOG store alone. At best we'll never see another entry again or someone with true passion and a solid vision would make a spin-off part 1.5. At worst they'll milk it for what it's worth. Unfortunately, the damage has already been done with the number 2, but that's how the market works nowadays. People see 2/Remake (looking at you, Final Fantasy) and interest within the game already skyrockets.
No wonder I'm stuck. It's all about the grind but right here it's to the point artificial game time is added. Such a shame since it could be a game with no-go zones until a level or 2 in another dungeon or zone and leveling was way faster.
So first off, yes it's DRM free. But the performance on modern hardware is not all that great. And it's not updated for those at the time of playing. I went through several hoops just to get it to minimal crashes. Technical things aside, Dragon Age: Origins were very disappointing for me. The origin stories had great potential in the start of the game. But eventually it all comes down to the same conclusion based on your choices in the main game. What I mean by that is that the origin stories only matter in the context of how other characters look at you. Otherwise you can progress the story like normal. The graphics and gameplay didn't age very well compared to games that came after this one. Or even before this game. Movement felt slow and they went a little overboard with micromanagement of your pary members in my opinion. It just takes the flow out of the gameplay. The gameplay loop revolves around having muliple rooms with enemies, with slow combat, quest progression etc. The graphics part is a matter of taste and it just weren't to my liking. One more thing to note is that it's possible to softlock your character at a certain point. Look at Games like Mass Effect, Diablo 1&2, Fallout NV etc. Here's why I think they are superior experiences. Mass Effect aged gracefully, although I did play the Legendary Edition. The Gameplay is phenominal, and the RPG Mechanics actually mean something. Diablo might be difficult to get into nowadays, but the pixel art, sound design and theme of the games are top tier. Fallout New Vegas might need anti crash and preferred shader fixes. Luckily the engine were built for that and many of New Vegas' issues are ironed out nowadays. It truly is one of the best RPG experiences ever. Now for the positives: The storyline and character development are sublime despite being semi linear in progression. The DLC were fun to play. It ended in a satisfying way. In conclusion, it's not overrated, just expected more out of this game.
If you feel like you're tricked by the 4.4 stars. Don't worry, you're not alone. This is the least configurable PC game I have played in my entire life. And that's saying somthing. No dedicated "block trigger 1" or "skill trigger 1" botton" for KB/M, little controller support on bluetooth even (in my case) with DS4Windows and the first boss feeling like practically cheating because of it make for an unpleasant first half hour - an hour. Don't make the same mistake I did and skip this one by any means necessary. I'm sick of the kind of practices where you have to figure "modern PC port" "X console port" yourself.
I think this is a decent entry in the Ys series. But I have a few complaints about this one. First, the positives: +Satisfying combat. +Fun story. +Voice acting, abeit up to you whether you like it or not. +Some of the bosses. So here are the negatives: -Some platforms near invisible until leap of faith (with the sort of swirling ability). This makes the "AHA!" moments a little less satisfying for me -The dark rooms of the Quarry have nearly no checkpoints. With many enemies and some annoying platforming sections. This makes for some unfair difficulty. Might be not being well equipped on my part. This made me give up on the game. Depending on the person, either the positives outweigh the negatives. Or the other way around. For me, it's a 4 star game, despite giving up on it and the negative aspects for me.
Fun game, but having to wait at LEAST 10 seconds (with cutscenes) before trying a segment again is a pain in the ass. That could've been totally avoided by making death animation shorter and having an actual save/checkpoint at the bossfight itself.
After some years of getting many classic games to work (including some Steam games) I'm tired of companies not patching a game to work flawlessly on modern systems. I refuse to fix this myself as there are ways to get it for free. If it were free I would have been more than willing to patch this game myself. From what I've seen it's a good game, I just want to be able to consistently enjoy it. Buy at your own risk.
I'm getting tired of big companies releasing broken ports of games. It's not GOG's fault, it's Ubisofts and their lack of proper play testing. While I think the game is fun so far, it suffers from random crashes and a 2GB memory limit error. For a CD based game not running on Windows 11 and/or 10 this would have been totally fine. Since there usually are fixes for those. For anyone interested, here's a fix I found for the 2GB memory issue: https://www.moddb.com/downloads/large-address-aware1 For the random crashing issue I read something about setting the game to DirectX 9. Don't take my word for it though In summary: Buy it at your own risk, and know it could be a hassle to get it to work.
