Graphically and Environmentally this is a great game for just the relaxing environments and the feel that you are out at location fishing. However, there is very little fish simulation. I have played several locations and all the fish fight exactly the same. Rainbow trout and largemouth bass don't jump, Brown trout and small mouth bass don't tail slap or surface run, and carp don't break into a run as you bring them up into the shallows. I don't know what fishing the developers have actually ever done but none of the fish I have caught so far act like they do when you actually catch them. I find it a very relaxing and well designed game for the environments but completely lacking in the simulation of the fish themselves. I have given it 4 stars because the environments have been designed so well and some fish are correctly simulated because they fight very close to the single behavior that the game simulates.
The two stars given here is a reflection on the terrible control system and complete lack of a manual or tutorial. The need for the manual and/or tutorial is due to the obtuse controls. When you try to surface you must push either F, space, or some other key until something happens. Early in the game you get a scanner which indicates things that need to be removed from the environment by highlighting them in red. Good luck figuring out how to remove them. F the action key doesn't do it. Shooting them with the echo gun doesn't do it. Is the frustration with not knowing how anything is accomplished until you stumble across it a "feature" of the game? Eventually, a simple description of how the control system works will come out on the internet. Don't buy this game until that happens.
This is a great open world game. One of the best of the elder scrolls series. I have it on disk and have played it through more than once. However, the disk version rarely crashes (once or twice playing it all the way through). Working in Windows 10 my download from Gog crashes about every 10 to 15 minutes. It restarts much more quickly than the disk version. I have started removing the add ons through the data selection in the launcher to try to determine if one of the add ons is causing the constant crashing. Have had no luck so far. It is a really good game but thought that a warning for anyone having Windows 10 was required.
Brought this game because I thought that it was like the original outpost game where you selected a planet and then the resources to take with you and launched for the planet. This game was turn based resource based game. This game is named Outpost 2 so I expected it to be similar. This is nothing like it. I am just adding this post so no one makes the same mistake that I did. This is a shallow science and warfare game with none of the polish or background of the original outpost. Paid $5 and wouldn't download it for free. Loved the original outpost game. Don't know how it got a 4.6 rating. I have rated a lot of Gog games and have been happy with almost all my choices. This is definitely an exception to the excellent games I have purchased here in the past and much of it may be due to the expectation that it would be related to the original outpost.
The art is good but crowded. Your character only fights in three contrived areas at the start of the game. After that, all battles are performed by troops which you have purchased. Control is kind of clunky as your troops will battle by themselves (probably to the death) without your control. It may be a good "tactical" game among troops BUT it is not an RPG by any stretch of the imagination. My rating reflects my disappointment in my expectations. The game is simple and includes a good deal of "stuff" and you may like building up an Army and going through a story where you are little involved. Elemental is a much better game but not near as pretty. However, it is an actual RPG games. You control the King who can fight in every battle should you so choice and can purchase spells, armor, weapons for him and NPCs.
Dragon Dogma is along the lines of Witcher 3. In some ways it is better. Witcher three has a much larger diversity of how you can make yourself stronger and more able to combat stronger foes. Dogma lets you develop a large set of skills and also provides upgrades to more capable classes of fighters, bowman, and mages. However, in many cases this means storing your current armor and buying all new armor. I found the gameplay to be good and after 50 hours of playing (it doesn't keep track) you can probably finish the main plot of the game. There are many side quests and I played many of them with no issues at all. You also get to create a partner called a pawn with capabilities different from your own and early on get a low level mage to assist you (if you are a fighter, dont know what you get if you choose something else). If you like Witcher 3 than I am very sure you will like Dragon's Dogma. I played the game on Windows 10 but have 12 Gigs of memory and a separate 2 gig ATI game card. So I get no delays at all when playing the game. The game only uses 1 of my four CPUs, this makes me believe that memory and the game card is more important than the type of processor. I really like the Witcher and Skyrim series and believe that Dragons Dogma is just as good but not as large or story driven. My recommendation, buy it from GOG whenever it becomes lower than $25.
This is an RPG in the same sense that Nantucket is an RPG. Except, unlike Nantucket, you are not a character in the game. A Shame you couldn't pick a character and that persons death ends the game. In this game, all the characters must live of the game stops. However, you can play it so that you can recover with a game save of play where the game must be started over if a character dies. The game is simple but rich. You survive by collecting other people that you find on the island your are stranded on and building structures that allow you to cook, grow food, hunt, fish, etc. There is no diversity in the fish or meat, there is no fishing in this game except for the catching of X number of fish to make meals. I liked Nantucket and like this game too. It has enough tasks, buildings, etc. to keep you interested BUT the focus is on how long you survive. The games on GOG are getting fairly expensive and this one is only $20. I would place it as a turn based survival game. I have not had a crash 21 days into the game which is a considerable number of hours in and a sure sign of what a time waster it can be. I rate it as 4 stars out of 5.
I have two of these games on disk. This one and Barbarossa to Berlin. Units are squads, individual tanks, and guns. You can play a single battle or a complete operation (3-5 related battles). For each battle or operation you are assigned a specific group of units. During a deployment phase before the battle you can put you units anywhere in a specific zone on the game map. Once they are deployed, you provide commands to each unit for the next minute of battle. Once you hit start, that minute of battle will play out. Tanks, guns, and squads will hide, fire, move and fire, or just move depending on the commands you provided. After 1 minute, the battle will temporarily stop and then another minute of commands will need to be given. Battles stop and either once side is eliminated, runs off the map, morale decays to the point it surrenders, or time runs out (basically representing both sides running out of ammunition). Through that minute you are watching you bazooka or panzercreck men and hoping they knock out tanks or pillboxes, watching or machine gunners stopping the enemy from overrunning a position, or watching artillery wiping out an advance or falling harmlessly in a field. I prefer Barbarossa to Berlin over Beyond Overlord because you get a better feel for how the weapons evolved and how important elimination of obsolete systems is. But they are both excellent tactical WWII games. If you do not have the time to put in to each Combat Mission game, you might try Close Combat which is simpler to play and each battle takes less time to play. However, this is the more realistic because it represents the actual battles rather than a stripped down version.
I prefer Close Combat 2 to Close Combat 3 due to the strategic element of a single operation with multiple battles. Close Combat 2 represents inter-related battles from operation Market Garden during World War II. Fighting is real time with individual squads/guns/armored vehicles. Success or failure of each battle affects all other battles afterwards. A battle may occur later, earlier, or not at all. Fighting is real time with a few squads and single gun or vehicle units. This game is much simpler than the Combat Mission series and can be played in much less time. Most battles take about an hour or two where Combat Mission battles can take several hours and a single operation may take days. I would expect most people to prefer the Close Combat games because of the amount of time most people have on a day to day basis. The Combat Mission games are, however, turn based and you can save the game after every turn. In Close Combat, you must complete the battle to save. I like both games with each having pros and cons. Combat Mission allows you to put in the next minutes moves and firing solutions and then start the games which plays out the minute. Close Combat executes in real time with specific commands being given during gameplay. They both have a good number of units which can be played. In Close Combat you have more capability to determine which units will be in each battle and there is a campaign mode where you keep the same small number of units until they are destroyed or replaced. Combat Mission only lets you keep and reinforce units for a single operation.
This is for people who have not played the game before. The game consists of moving, firing, and setting up ambushes with small squad sized units and individual armored tanks, AT Guns, etc. You must command your squads in real time but the speed can be adjusted for how fast your computer executes. In campaign play, you purchase what commands you want to use in the next battle in addition to some basic troops. You can buy mortars, field guns, AT guns, Flame thrower armor and troops, Tanks, Tank destroyers, etc. Once you choose something, it stays with you throughout the campaign until it is destroyed, damaged, or you decide to replace it because it has lost two many men, is too damaged, or you decide you just need something else. It is a good game for someone who does not want to spend a lot of time on each battle. Most battles last around an hour. It is a good game with a reasonable amount of depth in each battle. It is much simpler and less time consuming than the Combat Mission games (in which you have a lot more squad/guns/vehicles and put commands in for each minute of battle). I prefer the Combat Mission games but they require too much time to play. The Close Combat 2 Game is similar but reflects a single airborne operation in WWII where every battle has specific consequences to all battles afterwards. It is an excellent small unit tactic game where the purchasing of additional units allows for some strategics decision making.
