I think I should qualify this opinion on the fact thqat this is my first jrpg ever. The humor in the game is very funny but dad-jokey. If you like terrible puns, bad word-play then its GREAT, if you dont fund puns and intentionally bad jokes funny then this probably isnt for you. Mechanics i suppose is my problem, the combat for the game to me feels very boring and once you get the feel for HOW to play it 's hard to lose, I am also not wild about inconsistent skills and no specific stats for many of the skills. The way the combat rotations work i found dull. To be fair, i did some googling and found that this is very common for jrpg's, so this is just not the best choiuce for me. The game has made me laugh several times, and it is a goofy light hearted story which is family friendly, and the overall writing is great. It is rock solid and plays smoothely and is overall very easy to control. I just finished "Bel" and I will complete the game as I am curious as to see the ending of everything. Definitely worth playing, and I imagine if you have kids it could be a real hit there too. Personally likely my last jrpg, but overall a good experience and one I recommend.
I bought this game years ago on Steam, have a ton of hours in it. On the surface it is a HL2 engine cyberpunk game, but sooooo much more. To really do the description justice, I feel you need someone far smarter than myself, with a much larger vocabulary Aside from a great bio-mod system, the hacking sub game is great, if you like a zone you can get randomly generated missions outside of the story stuff for as long as you want. But the plot, which is kinda a mind bender is what makes it so great. This is as much psychological thriller as it is anything else. The game is one big mobius loop, and you need iirc 4 play through's to find the REAL ending. But you get a crapton of weird plot stuff designed to make you question your own role. You have a meeting, then later someone claims you were arguing with yourself in an empty office, a friend telling you some very odd allegories (there are a few of them in the game) and it is obvious there is more going on here than is obvious, then he dies, gets killed and EATEN in front of you. But he is alive in the next mission, standing outside while aircraft are strafing and he is untouched and saying "Bet you're surprised to see me". The blind woman who gives you some almost biblical style parables, with interesting ties to you, the mentor, and Riminah. Or the fact that everytime you die, or reload your game you start out in this weird nightmare dreamscape again, which has a lot more to it than face value. I love this game, introduced friends to it who have played it obsessively as well. It is NOT perfect, it is HL2 so 90% of the time the AI is great, then it goes utterly braindead at random. Also game was not originally in English, so some translations are reeeeeally weird\awkward. Also the game encourages wandering, but has checkpoints, so if you dont wander in the right direction you can go for hours with no save, and if you have to leave, your game progress may be lost. Main reason I haven't played it more.
I played the heck out of this in the 90s when it was new and cool. To me it felt like Bethesda said "I enjoyed Ultima Underworld, let's take a stab at in in TES world". I didnt finish it, I kept finding bugs like disappearing items or monsters who had specific keys getting stuck inside the map where I couldnt loot them (found from some web searches tryiing to find why im stuck). Im not the best pathfinder granted I was one of the few who wasnt overwhelmed by Daggerfall maps that were the size of Morrowind and all it's xpacs put together, and could use the map. Jumping is a bit odd, but once you get the feel for it, it is not bad. The combo of rightclick and drag to swing plus freelook was really odd and awkward. It felt like playing Die by the Sword, in fiurst person, with Daggerfalls weapon controls, I can only imagine how it looked form the outside. The no regen complaints are not completely accurate, you could get skills for that during character building, and that just means you need to find the occasional dark corner to hide in while things regen. I also found spells to be resisted most of the time, and when they werent seem to do miniscule damage, and a sword was a better way to go, which is opposite of some others here, not sure if it is a play style difference or character design. The conversations with some of the monsters were hilarious "You want keeeeys? Keeeeeys out? Key down in dark smelly place down by my tail, want to look, see?" Overall it is an interesting story that I really enjoyed, it is a buggy mess at times though. The dialogue is HILARIOUS...like Spiders flirting with you, or NO! Shrenell is a FEEEmale, do I look like a FEEEmale to you? It is an intensnse adventure that doesn't take itself too seriously. I still think this game is the PERFECT candidate for making a BIG mod in Skyrim to add in the Battlespire as a training mission, a historical mission from centuries past as a requirement for a high rank in College of Winterhold.
BUY THIS TODAY! I started out with Line Wars or WC1 forever ago, and in the 90's a friend introduced me to X Wing. great game. My biggest complaint about X Wing was aside from the A Wing I really didn't like the fighters. The game was well done but lacked, imo, the polish and finish AND FEEL of Wing Commander. Then a year later, maybe 2 I played Tie Fighter at a friends house. Controls are smoother as butter, the ships feel and move like you think they should, you get to see Grand Admiral Thrawn (Vice Admiral then), and Vader. Much more depth to the missions than X Wing, I loved the Secret Order of the Emperor where you can become The Emperors Hand, and all that is mainly due to you being VERY ambitious, showing initiative, some options are handed to you, others come from inspecting EVERY ship or container in a single mission. Test drive 3 different fighters (test piloting). Tie Advanced is a very nimble fighter, the Tie Defender, WOW, that was the WC4 Dragon, in X Wing Alliance you could use it in multi, and the midgrade pilots loved its hitting power but complained it was a HUGE target and kept getting FF'd in multi, well, same happens here to a degree, but that ship is really as good as you are, you are whats holding it back, and the Assault Missile boat, this tank hit the mark the Crossbow from WC2 Secret Missions1 missed, a fast cap ship killer, not much of a dog fighter, but ordinance payload FOR DAYS. The music pulled you in, granted the quality wasn't the best, neither were the graphics, but it pulled you into the game, like you were in a movie... modern games, with a few exceptions, it takes an Oculous Rift to get THAT tied into a game. Never made the game feel like you were the bad guy playing the evil campaign (like Dungeon Keeper) but it was more, you are military and dealing with a rebellion, that is causing the territory more harm than good. Very good story telling, excellent controls, and the AV just pulled you in. BUY THIS TODAY!
I am a LONG TIME FPS guy, doing heavy LAN since DOOM, and ROTT. That being said I played Quake 2 for years, same with Quake 3, I have gone through the entire Unreal Series. Now every goes on about how fast 2K4 is, I frankly don't see it. Maybe because I only every played UT99 with turbo mode on (I think it was a glitch, ti started at like 35% or 45% when I installed) but I always played it that way. 2K3 was fun, liked some changes, disliked others, LOVED Bombing Run. When 2K4 came out, some of the changes were beyond bleh to me. I would have given it a one as I simply didnt enjoy it. But to be fair 2 right off as the game delivered on the graphics promises and was SOLID AS A ROCK. But coming from UT99 with turbo mode, and alot of time the speed relic (disabled relics after a while as I hought they game some an unfair advantage... liek me, got boring after a while) but after that, it felt liek i was in all that space marine armor and running in mud. Slow friggin motion. I also hated that they removed headshots from minigun and also I think, could be wrong on this part, the assault rifle as there was no pistol anymore. After a while I was really solid at minigun headshots, I did it often enough that it was NOT an accident. Also, once you had any armor, any bullet weapon was an annoyance and little else. Flak still rocked, but my minigun :( Now, the mod tool, OMG!!!!! The mod tool, I made a nice fast forward twitchy jerky version of the game again and LOVED it. Still loathe onslaught, and that will NEVER change. Never liked vehicles, FPS's are a bunch of gropo's, leave it at that. The modding tool breathed alot of life back into the game, and that I THOROUGHLY enjoyed. I cannot give it any higher, as my ratings are as follows: Enjoyment out of the box 1/5 Game is rock solid, but did not help the fact that I thought it stunk, is another star because I NEVER had the slightest error EVER, so 2 stars, and the modding tool was EPIC, 3 stars. Actually, modded alone I would give 4 stars, however I cant give over 3/5 to anything that I need a mod tool to run well. Im not a opinionated @$$ who says you suck if you like it. However, I had little to no enjoyment out of it until modded. If you enjoy it, then by all means buy it an enjoy it. To me, the game was bleh. If my buddy who loved modding this game was interested in playing again, I might grab it for our heavily modded version, otherwise, not for me.
I got this because of some friends wanting to group in it. NP, I got the game. It had the fun factor down. What it didnt have was challenge. I ran the Vampire, it was like I took a chainsaw to a knife fight. I bulldozed through the game with such an incredible level of ease, I think I stopped adding skill points for challenge. By the time I beat the final boss in Nightmare, or whatever the second level was called. (I accidently borked the main quest in the original. I killed one of the world dragons from chapter 4 in chapter 2 and the questline BROKE, it was the one in the volcanic area). So I restarted in Nightmare. I still wasnt adding in points, I got the the final boss and my game kept glitching. In frustration I called my buddy who asked me to get it and sent him my save game, he beat it and sent it back. I think I had like 40 points to distribute for the main big-bad and hardly got hit. I used like 4 HP pots. My friends who played it were of the same mind, fun but too easy. Now, there were alot of details that I so thoroughly enjoyed. Read the headstone in the graveyards. "Last thing he said was, Gee I wonder if Dragons are tickelish". Or the was a huge mound "Unmarked mass grave. Rumored to be the beta characters" next one over was a defiled grave, that stone read "Developer who killed the Beta Characters". The original was kinda buggy, but the expansion was a disaster of bugs. I gave up not overly far into the expansion due to all the quests crapping out on me. Like one early on, I had to go into some cave deal, I walk in, instead of zoning in, I am ported back about 10 feet, after i tried again, the world stopped interacting. I was told it was a normal bug. I have heard that it got alot better with time, but in spite of it being generally fun, and having alot of amusing features, the combo of oddball bugs and being painfully easy lead me away form it.
Getting past the point that I did not enjoy the game. I tried, several times, I understood it, I had no problem with the spreadsheet like number crunching, it wasnt that complicated, just wasn't the best layed out. If all the sliders and resourcing etc was too complicated, stay away from Gal Civ2. Anyway, aside from a halfbaked attempt to be a continuance of the original (story wise). If you read all the backstory prior to launch this was WAY in the future from MOO2 and had already had a Dark Ages in Space, for lack of a better description. But aside from the fact that they are both space Strategy games and a few of the names remained, this is not MOO. MOO2: fine tune and control EVERYTHING. MOO3 tune little, control less MOO2: Build what you want, when you want (provided tech is there) MOO3: It tried to automate everythign for you, and did it in unimpressive fashion MOO2: Outfit and organize you fleet how you see fit. MOO3: NOT ANYMORE! If you want a fleet of between X-Y ships it requires, 3 pint defense, 2 carriers, 5 Dreadnaughts, 4 destroyers, 7 Token Ring ships. Basically 2/3 were there to be bullet sponges MOO2: Planet admin guys offered static buffs and debuffs, perhaps some interesting other perks. MOO3: Admins took over, and argued and generally fought against me. (perhaps more real to the politics side of it, but thats NOT what I played a game like this for). MOO2: All forms of weapons were very viable. MOO3: Build lots of missiles for combat ships. You Win, easy as that. MOO2: Everyone is on the council, period. MOO3: At least at release time, you had to chose it as a customization option, or pick one of the canned "upper" for lack of a better term races. MOO3: Graphics were a selling point. MOO2: Was good enough you didn't care what the graphics were like. Basically so many things that defined the type of game MOO1 (played a little) and MOO2 (played crap loads) the games they were was gone for MOO3. They wanted to design a new game, thats fine, have at it. But don't call it a sequal to a classic just to ride on its coat tails to game sales. It may be fine for its type of game, but I don't dig that type of game. Its like getting a Sex Pistols CD, opening it, seeing Sex Pistols on the CD itself, and putting it in and hearing Greenday. THAT'S NOT WHAT I PAYED FOR! Basically, they took advantage of a name, at the fans expense.
I did all the old FPS's, Doom, Heretic, Hexen, Duke, Shadow Warrior, Original Dark Forces.... the list goes on and on. This was always a classic. It had that right balance ofgood action and laughing my @$$ off. I remember what got me through it was a gamer friend of mine said the game is more joke than anything else, its not meant to be beaten. I said whaaa? He said yeah, no ones beating it on "They Call me the Cleaner" difficulty. So I proved him wrong :D The game is nuts, Democratic Bonus, Republican bonus, Ludicrus Gibs.... when you died, spinning around your corpse saying "You Suuuuuuuck" or the + and - key to scale the game incase your comp didnt have enough horsepower, and if you scaled it down too much it said "Buy a 486". Or the infamous "This level causes an error" To me, its not about cool features or the best graphics. I play Daggerfall over most other RPG's STILL. This just had the speed, pacing, absurd weps like Firewall, Firebomb,Drunk Missile etc, and a boat load of humor. As some have said, not for everyone, because it is over the top and campy. But sometimesover the top and campy is what makes it fun. That why I love Bruce Campbell "Splat stick" movies :)
