This is one of the best RPGs I've played in recent years. Having not really enjoyed Mars Warlogs or Technomancer, I was about ready to dismiss Spiders, but GreedFall changed my mind. The main reasons to play GreedFall are clearly the story and the world building. If you're looking for a lootbased game, this isn't it. If you're looking for the next Dark Souls, that will challenge you immensely, this also isn't it. That's not to say combat is terrible, in fact, I quite enjoyed it but, to me, it's not the main selling point of the game. If you enjoyed Gothic 1 and 2 way back in the day, this is probably your game. The writing is great, the world is interesting and believable and none of the quests felt like busywork. All of the companions are well fleshed out and likeable (that might be subjective). The choices you make are meaningful and callbacks to things you did are frequent. There are a few twists that I did not immediately see coming, which seems rare these days. I cannot say enough good things about the world building. Especially after how lifeless and bland The Outer Worlds felt to me, GreedFall's Teer Fradee and it's factions were a welcome change of pace. Even within these factions, not everyone is marching in lockstep and sometimes you might find yourself agreeing more with the natives and sometimes it might be one of the other factions. A few words on "bugs" and "jankiness". Personally I feel people overemphasise that, for whatever reason. The game hasn't crashed on me once in nearly 50 hours and the worst bug I've seen in game was an NPC getting stuck for a few seconds before moving on. That's definitely no worse than any other RPG I've played and it didn't take away from the experience for me. The game also ran smoothly for me, but again, your mileage may vary.
If you enjoyed PoE1, you might enjoy PoE2, but even then you should be prepared for a drop in quality as far as the writing is concerned. Graphically, the game is beautiful, just like PoE1 was. The music is still atmospheric and fitting. The voice acting is done by high profile names you might be familiar with. For the most part, that is a good thing but it can be a little jarring once you start noticing how many people have multiple roles. The open world aspect of the game is fun. Driving your little ship and uncovering the map is the strongest aspect of the game and you can feel that most of the development effort went into that. Levelling up your heroes has been improved as we've finally discovered that skill trees are a thing. Unfortunately, that is pretty much it for positives and the skill tree I just mentioned is something you are only allowed to look at during level ups. In regular play, all your stats are vomitted on a single page you are free to spend half an hour scrolling up and down. The interface is a hot mess in places. Ship combat is an insult to pirates everywhere. For some reason, this is a text based affair, along the lines of the chose your own adventure segments. While those are okay, this does not work *at all* for naval combat. All you do is shoot, hold (for an aim bonus) and jive (turn your ship by 180° to use the other cannons), rinse and repeat until one ship sinks. The main story is laughably bad, runs for about 4 hours and leaves you thinking "This really did not need my involvment". In cRPGs I often cannot decide which people to bring because they are all interesting. Here: Which of these people, I feel unprecedented amounts of apathy for, should I bring? Companion quests are a similar deal. Remember that time you and Edèr went on an epic quest to learn nothing about his brother? Get ready for more sidequests petering out unsatisfyingly. Chose from one of four factions that are all pretty much equally grey. How exciting.
There's a lot to like about Battletech. Building up your mercenary company, upgrading your ship, salvaging new Mechs, the list goes on. The campaign is fantastic and any expansion that might be released is an instant buy for me. Both the story and the actual missions were great. It's been a very long time since I've played a strategy game with a campaign I was this invested in. Some of the missions came down to the wire and from watching streams, I know I'm not the only one that happened to. Fiddling with your mechs is fun, too, if you're into that sort of thing. If you don't like trying to find the best loadout for your giant robot, this might not be the game for you. Depending on how you play, you'll get anywhere between 40 and 80+ hours out of a run, well worth the price of admission, if you ask me. Now, the game does have some flaws, but considering everything it gets right and how few games of this genre exist, I am more than willing to forgive them. For one, there's performance. No two ways about it, performance isn't great. Mostly, this concerns load time between missions, but it's still annoying. Then, there's some balance issues. Mechs, weapons and skills are not as diverse as they could be. Some are objectively better than others, which is a bit unfortunate. In contrast to previous Mechwarrior and Mech Commander games, there's even less reasons to bring light mechs and some of the simplifications make certain weapons largely obsolete. Those are minor nitpicks, in the grand scheme of things, though. Still, the game has me making meaningful decisions all the time which is more than can be said of most current games. Do I want more money or a bigger cut of the salvage? Do I want to try and take this enemy mech out leaving it mostly intact so I can salvage it or does it need to die right here, right now and who cares how much it explodes? Do I eject this pilot who's almost dead or does she have to stay and fight? Long story short, I recommend this game.
There's a lot to like about Battletech. Building up your mercenary company, upgrading your ship, salvaging new Mechs, the list goes on. The campaign is fantastic and any expansion that might be released is an instant buy for me. Both the story and the actual missions were great. It's been a very long time since I've played a strategy game with a campaign I was this invested in. Some of the missions came down to the wire and from watching streams, I know I'm not the only one that happened to. Fiddling with your mechs is fun, too, if you're into that sort of thing. If you don't like trying to find the best loadout for your giant robot, this might not be the game for you. Depending on how you play, you'll get anywhere between 40 and 80+ hours out of a run, well worth the price of admission, if you ask me. Now, the game does have some flaws, but considering everything it gets right and how few games of this genre exist, I am more than willing to forgive them. For one, there's performance. No two ways about it, performance isn't great. Mostly, this concerns load time between missions, but it's still annoying. Then, there's some balance issues. Mechs, weapons and skills are not as diverse as they could be. Some are objectively better than others, which is a bit unfortunate. In contrast to previous Mechwarrior and Mech Commander games, there's even less reasons to bring light mechs and some of the simplifications make certain weapons largely obsolete. Those are minor nitpicks, in the grand scheme of things, though. Still, the game has me making meaningful decisions all the time which is more than can be said of most current games. Do I want more money or a bigger cut of the salvage? Do I want to try and take this enemy mech out leaving it mostly intact so I can salvage it or does it need to die right here, right now and who cares how much it explodes? Do I eject this pilot who's almost dead or does she have to stay and fight? Long story short, I recommend this game.
