great classics - relatively lightweight by modern standards dont be afraid of ancient graphics, you'll stop noticing those pixels pretty quickly being immersed into steampunk world
One of the best RPG in history. I don't like the setting (pseudo-medieval, church, opressed elves, zombi apocalypse etc), but game so good, that I loved it nevertheless and re-play it once in 3-4 years at average.
I am great fan of original games and avoided SoD because of bad reviews, but finally I decided to try it, mostly for extra bard artifacts to us them in BG2. Game surprised me, both in good and bad ways. Good sides: game is not boring. Really, I spent this 20 hours totally engaged in story and gameplay. NPCs - both new and old are great, Beamdog managed to get same voice actors, and good old NPCs match what you'll expect from them - this alone makes SoD worth playing for a fan. Also I didn't encountered any bugs (in 2020 though) Contradictory side: story. Story is pretty good throughout the game and I enjoyed it.. but in the end Beamdog was itchy for a story twist and that twist breaks that seamless connection of BG1-SoD-BG2. Bad side: combat. Combat is weakest part of the game. It is simply not AD&D2, it is combat of consumables. Amount of consumables used by enemies, and amount of enemies simply makes it very tedious to fight in styles similar to BG1/BG2. In the same time combat is not hard (on core difficulty), just use your wands and acid arrows and summons... so in attempt to make game more difficult, Beamdog make it too tedious for "non-consumable" walkthrough (you'll be forced to rest too often), but didn't fixed overpowered wands/potions from BG1. At some point I simply stopped using class spells at all and was just bombarding everything with fire wands while spawning monsters to avoid being hit at all. Corwin in the same time has 100 damage per round output with acid arrows and any "boss" without invisibility just dies immediately. Game is stupidly easy if you play with consumables and barely playable without them.
First of all this is Paradox game, if you are not used to it's engine and AI logic, you won't get all flavor until you explore all it's facets. Second, gameplay-wise Stellaris is your typical, but perfectly-made 4X with Civ5-like progression/economics and diplomacy/AI mechanics from CrusaderKings (light version). Latter means that all those small things you don't understand, they matter a lot, and if you'll understand them you may make AI dance for you. I like small stories of Stellaris, graphics, music combat it is all very smooth and balanced, but AI and it's behaviour is a real gem here. Not perfect gem, but still times better then in other 4X games, where AI runs as a script and after script end will never try to come back and just sits braindead in the corner. Here it will come back, and it will fight other AIs for you too (without your participation in war). Just set it on the right track. You may meet small random non-scripted AI who sits on one planet and not finished, because he is very polite. Gift him a sector and you'll see how he'll bloom and make a comeback. To put it plainly, in comparison to Endless Space 2, this game rocks from gameplay side. I'll say it's like civ5 but 4x. If you like civ5 go Stellaris, if you like civ6 where game entertains you, but AI is dead, go -> ES2. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed ES2 greatly. But after you heard all stories there is nothing to do there. Here... in Stellaris you may play for centuries same run even after all unique researches are done, just keep AI dancing and fighting. Yes, you need to make wars, even if you are "good guy", like me. There are "liberation wars" for that. And if you don't like to war, you may get into federation and other AIs will win game for you, though game will be much shorter and shallow that way.
Actually, for 90% of content it's 5 stars. For other 10% it's very specific game, which gives you very bad feeling like you are cheated or backstabbed, both for story and for combat. Here we have very deep and interesting, but in the same time strange combat system, with unlimited possibilities to cheese. To fight with this cheese, devs made majority of main story encounters to be ambushes with unpredictable flow of combat. If you play on sufficient difficulty, this ambushes are mostly wipes when half of the group is dead before your turn comes. Of course, you reload, adjust your positioning and skills setup and here we go, it's easy-peasy finished in 1-3 turns. If you enjoy save-load-cheese "tactics" that's game for you. If you are used to something more classical (BG, PoE), I'll advice to pass this game.
If you don't have super large monitor and are planning to play on notebook with standard 17'', don't buy it, font in the game is simply barely readable in this case and all interface is extremely small and you can't adjust it. (even if you select lower resolution, all interface became even smaller). My eyesight certainly cost more than this "game". Wasted 8$ and 2 hours of life.
