I played the Remaster of this game for about twenty hours before giving up and coming back here to the true Oblivion. Is there a janky leveling system? Yes. Does the level scaling break in obscene ways if you're not careful? Sure does. But there is an artistry and a consistency to everything in this original game that the Remaster just does not come close to. Certain balance changes there wildly changed how the overall experience works, and some of the visual and content changes are distracting and I just could not look past it. #NotMyRanaline. Do yourself a favor and play this game if you can handle old graphics, especially if you don't mind slotting in a mod or two to smooth over the odd edges that might grate you specifically. With luck, you'll find a fun, charming, memorable adventure waiting for you, even if some of the stars of that adventure look a little funny.
Like it's fine. If you don't play a lot of games like this, def give it a try for a fun, shorter experience that'll feel unique and exciting for you. If that's you, give it a shot and enjoy. But if you play a lot of choice-based games, including Black Tabby's other game, Scarlet Hollow, your mileage may vary. Very much sink or swim based on how much you are emotionally open to what's going on, and unfortunately I wasn't. It felt like all of the things the story was trying to say were self-evident and not particularly compelling, which ultimately made the whole game feel less like an amazing emotional adventure like so many people say, and more like a casual trip to the zoo. Like I wasn't gripped by anything after the first little foray into the game, more just going through the motions to see what else there was because ultimately the structure of the game doesn't really have any true "build up" to anything unique to the player's own interaction with the game. Which is strange because the game makes a big deal about what YOU chose to do at the end. That felt entirely pointless to me because, just as an example, half of the things on the list of "things I did" at the end were things I only did because the game forced me to keep playing it long after I had seen the things I was personally interested in. The game branches plenty but because of that none of the branches really felt like they had the time to explore what was interesting about them before it was on to the next. Very hard to describe the feeling without spoiling anything lol, but point is your choices do branch what you see plenty, but it feels like none of it really matters or reflects the intention behind why you might have made those choices. You're literally just checklisting. In a narrative RPG. Which is... kind of a feat, honestly. I wish I liked it more than I do, but it really is just a hollow experience. Ironically, Scarlet Hollow doesn't have these problems, so I'll just play that. :)
Liked the game when it launched, even if the consesus was decidedly against it. Now with all the updates and the DLC, I feel vindicated that people are finally able to see the game I saw back then. Beat it about four different times, and yeah, there's not a ton of actual branching or consequence to your choices (though the choices that ARE there are often excellent), but the writing that is there and the story it is trying to tell are very worth experiencing, and the city setting itself is the only video game city I've ever actually believed. It reminds me the most of Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, which itself didn't have a ton of branching until the finale, much the same as 2077, but the quality of the dialogue and the atmosphere and exploration of the world really brought things to life. There's no equivalent to a Malkavian or Nosferatu run in 2077, unfortunately, but even without that, I think that's the closest equivalent game I can offer. Similarly shit launches, too. The major difference is that VTMB was just there to have a good time, while 2077 actually seems to have something important to say. And speaking to that, I have "beat" the game about four times, but I just can't actually finish it because of the story context for the ending. It's a Cyberpunk game, and as such there is no perfect solution to anything, and I appreciate that in a game's narrative, even if it hurts me lmfao. The themes on offer are not exactly unique but the way the story approaches them, combined with how the world draws you in, have left me gutted every single time I go through the game. Take that for what you will. It's no revolution in player reactivity or gameplay innovation, and there are things that didn't go as far as they could have, but as a world to live in for a hundred hours, and a story being told, I think 2077 is absolutely worth the money and the time. If those are things you care about, you really can't go wrong here.
I'm sure Larian will patch the game up and make it worth a damn in a year or two, but they should have done that before launching the game in the first place. As it stands, the game is bugged beyond belief and extremely unpolished. The first act is well done, as that was what was in Early Access, and the second act is also pretty badass with a few caveats (especially for Evil player characters, but I'll get to that), but act 3 is a hard wall. It's just bad, I don't really know how else to say it. Flow is interrupted entirely, many quests callback to things that didn't happen or happened different, entire major quests are broken to the point of being unfinishable. These are required MAIN quests. It's embarrassing to release in this state and even knowing Larian has a good reputation for fixing things I can't really forgive that. It is my understanding that they polished the mainline "good guy" route the most, knowing that most players choose those options, and it really shows. I have done as much as I can across several playthroughs, and discussed with friends, and evil just gets shafted. You lose out on tons of companions, entire areas become optional, major story beats make no sense or are hamfisted, it's just a joke. This compounds with numerous bugs that only strike for evil protagonists, it's just annoying and insulting in a game that claims to be about choice. The ONE single character you get for going evil (who you can get as a neutral character as well) was bugged on release to the point where nearly all of her post-recruitment content was just non-existent. That feels like something REALLY OBVIOUS that QA should have caught. But Larian decided to outsource QA to Early Access players, I guess. Once they fix everything I am sure this game will be pretty good but I just don't know how I'm supposed to feel about a company that releases something like this and expects money up front before they fix it. My mistake for buying in early, so I guess I won't again.
I'm a fan typically of the genre, loving games like Pillars of Eternity and the like for their rich stories and the interactivity and RP value. This game has several fun and variable choices and the alignment system is done better than most games, so that's a plus. So why two stars? Literally everything else. To start, the game is buggy, runs poorly even on my high end computer, and the myriad other issues i'm sure people have mention have plagued me as well. Long load times, poor optimization, glitches and bugs and crashes, oh my! All of this could be forgiven on its own as patches are forthcoming but. They are not alone. The balance in this game, as many have said, is awful? It feels like if you play the wrong sort of character from the start you're out of luck. Don't have trickery on your main character and make one wrong choice? Good luck dealing with traps for a significant chunk of the first leg of quests. Not looted/bought enough bombs, which the game never told you you needed? Sorry! It's really just annoying. In PoE and Divinity I always felt that I could puzzle my way out of a situation with whatever party I had and this is just not the case in this game. And the move speed! Ouch. Finally, the story is just not..... worth it. At all. The characters are one-note, boring, and honestly feel like someone written in the early 2000s. Which is likely a holdover from the pnp campaign this is based on, but really, the writers couldn't have done a little bit to update them to modern standards? I thought we left these things behind. And no pure gay characters too! Retro! My final thought is that this game reminds me of Wasteland 2. That game was rough around the edges, really hard to get into without a lot of pre-game research, and was puuuunishingly difficult at the beginning. But that game had good writing and a reason to push on, which Kingmaker just doesn't. I'm sure someone will love it, but not me. Save your money, buy a game that's not stuck in the past.
