I've got TR1-Underworld collection from a store around the time of Underworld premiere for half of this remaster The good stuff: + it exists + Antarctica is great + they've "updated" TR1 engine to the one from TR2, so the lag input is gone The bad stuff - The lighting is just plain terrible; when nearly 30 yo games have better lighting, you know you've messed up - Remember how dark TR3 on PS1 was? Now all three are even darker The ugly stuff * They brag about adding GOLDs, as if this was some sort of achievement and other collections didn't came with it * The AI-enhanced FMVs are... let's just say they could leave them be if they weren't planning to remake them from the scratch. All in all: very mixed bag Also: you need Win 10 to run 28 yo game thanks to the stellar programming using a kernel redundancy to launch the game (but not used for anything inside of it). Spaghetti-coded remaster at the pricetag of a fresh premiere. Yummy! t. TR fan since the first one came out
Let's get one thing straight right off the bat: it's no Darklands, even if it desperately wants to be its successor and clearly took inspiration from it. The game severely lacks polish, even for an indie title, and any real depth to its gameplay. Which is frustrating, because there is an enormous potential wasted on a pretty shallow gameplay and the possibility to, well, have Darklands 2. Instead, it's Darklands 2: Electric Boogaloo.
Roadwarden was a pleasant surprise: a text-based RPG/CYOA mix that knew exactly what it is doing with its presentation and content. Windy Meadow is trying to cash-in on whatever small fandom Roadwarden has developed, but delivers just a banal and shallow VN. While Roadwarden artstyle was minimalistic, WM feels simplistic for turn. While Roadwarden was densely written, WM has just incredibly corny dialogues non-stop about teenage angst. The setting goes trough the standard "explaining too much of everything to ruin the mystery that made it interesting". And worst of all, it's simply boring. After certain point you just don't care anymore and skip dialogues to see the conclusion, while majority of dialog options have zero impact on things. Disappointing
Imagine if only GOG was selling Pharaoh bundled with Cleopatra at a bargain price for a decade, while adjusting them to easily run on modern hardware... Oh, right, you don't have to imagine anything and you can just get that (if you still somehow didn't) for quarter the pricetag. Why playing inferior, overpriced remake, when the superior original is widely accessible on any possible PC you can have, and sold by the exact same venue? The new version adds nothing worth your money and doesn't even work as a nostalgia bait. This game is the equivalent of carting wood into a forest. Just nope.
Played the Steam version It's barely a game. It's not even a proper visual novel, for your choices barely matter at all. What it is is someones unpublished dark, low fantasy novel - and a poorly-written one - disguised as a video game. Don't be fooled. There is less than 10 hours of gameplay and absolutely ZERO replay value. The only reason I'm giving two stars is because this game is because it perfectly encapsulates everything wrong with having a terrible GM in your tabletop RPG session, along with being probably the best case study of what happens when every single character in the game is hostile toward you: eventually you don't give a damn. It's six bucks and it's still not worth the pricetag. Don't bother.
It's a really, really weird game. Not in the concept itself, that's pretty straightforward, but the mechanical side of it. When it started out, it was a very primitive inn management game, itself riding a wave of similar games from few years ago. But the more the development goes, the more it starts to morph into a crafting-heavy clone of Stardew Valley. Including the "upgrades" (it is still in pixel art) of graphics and character models. For an inn management game, it's incredibly chaotic and disjoined. For SV rip-off, it has no characters or interesting things to do. It's fun to play and pretty engaging in a single shot, but I feel the devs themselves no longer even know what game they are making. Oh, and community for it is almost completely dead for past year, which is never a good sign for a game that started with pretty active playerbase and community.
Then buy this pack. It's not GOG's fault, it's Paradox going full-on greed. EU3 without at least HTTT expansion is unplayable (your mileage on DW might vary, but HTTT is a must-have). But don't worry, for HTTT is sold in separate package! At twice the pricetag of the baseline game! Over a decade after release! I literally bought this cheaper in physical copy on premiere than it is priced today. And that even after including inflation. Screw you, Paradox.
I don't believe my own eyes - not only this game got a modern re-release, but it even comes with multi-language translation. One of the funniest P&C games I ever played. It's doing to the medieval fantasy what Monkey Island series was doing to pirate genre. And unlike Monkey Island it doesn't come with puzzles that are language-specific.
