Hellblade : Senua's Sacrifice is an essential modern gaming experience, though, there are a few things you need to know before starting. 1. This is a game where immersion means everything. The audio quality is second to none, but headphones are a must, and to better appreciate the experience, you'd rather be ready to dive a few hours into it rather than play for 30 minutes and stop. 2. It takes a bit of time to get used to the game, who slowly introduces you to its mechanics. The start could even feel boring as you're not yet fully immersed into its world, and the early puzzle mechanics are dull. Don't give up, it's getting much better quickly. 3. This is not a game about fighting, and even though sword fights are part of the journeys, they are not the destination. 4. The game is short, can be finished in about 6 to 15 hours depending of how fast you solve the puzzles, and how much you rush the experience. I wouldn't advise you to rush it though. Once you have understood those few rules, immersing yourself into the world of Sennua is one of the most pleasing experience one can have. The sound stage is outstanding, there are smart idea everywhere, and those voices in your heard make a great job at both tricking and helping you. The UI is minimal, nonexistant even, and everything is delivered to you through sound and environment clues. That is superb. Even though not its main selling point, the fighting bit in Hellblade is pleasing, with a few great moment, though it does fighting more than one opponent not the greatest part of its package. The graphism as well as the art direction are superb, and you'd be hard pressed believing they achieved that with only a small team. In conclusion, I believe this game needs to be in any serious gamer's library. It's a 10 hours experience, with limited replayability, but will provide great moments of gaming. On top of that, this is on GoG, DRM Free. What are you waiting for ? buy it !
DOS2 deserves a spot in the top 5 cRPG ever made, and simply put, it's most likely my favourite cRPG ever. When I'm old and on my dying bed, I have no doubts that DOS2 will stand there alongside Planescape Torment, Fallout 2, and Baldur's Gate 2, and likely above them all. I even bought it twice, the early access on Steam, and the full release on GoG. This was cheap, and it gave me more content that I could ever dream of for those 30£ I spent. More than 300 hours so far, and counting. I could tell you all of those great things that make DOS2 stands out against the competition, but I'd resume it from the 3 following points : - Outstanding companions : I cannot recall in any party based RPG before that I had such a struggle to pick 3 out of 5 companions. It was heart breaking every single time. They are all very different and you want them around all the time. - Second to none no-class system : DOS2 gives you the feeling you have class when you build your character, before you understand there is no class. Most skills are useful in many fashion so you are fully free to build your character as you want, and you could play 10 times and never do the same. - Awesome tactical combat : DOS2 is easy to understand, hard to master, and there is so many more in those fights than in its brethrens. DOS2 doesn't bombard you of a million stats, everything is nearly binary, yet you'll find yourself so much better as you learn it. It is not to say that DOS2 is perfect. There are some choices which will divide, but thanks to its great mod support, any of the annoyances I once could have had with the games have been alleviated. I'll list a few : - Extreme gear scaling : gear is obsolete every level. Very annoying, somewhat fixed by mods. - Overleveling content is easy : All challenges disappear when you overlevel its content ; fixed by mods - Limited Crafting : fixed by mods - Limited visual customisation : fixed by mods If you like RPG, you MUST have that game, no questions asked
Divinity Original Sin Enhanced Edition is a cRPG masterpiece, it's the game every Baldur's Gate and D&D Fan has dreamed of. To be fair, I already thought so about the Classic Edition, but for some reasons, I gave up on the original one. Too Long To Read, so I skipped most of the dialogs. There was this "comic" bit which kinda put me off, and well, despite me having a blast, I guessed my attention went to other games, and I never came back. That is, till Divinity Original Sin 2 was announced, obviously. As I try to always play a prequel before attacking a sequel (even if, in this specific case, there were no story incentive to do so). I thus dived into DOS EE. And what a good idea that was. There is something organic with this game. The sheer amount of things you can, the sheer amount of possibility and freedom this game provides are astonishing. It plays and acts with objects like no other cRPG ever had, and the elements (that is water, fire, air and earth) quickly become the main actors of the game, making your life either miserable or fantastic, depending on which side of the elements you stand. The turn by turn combat system is extremely deep, challenging even as its standard level, and never stops to entertain. Compared to another masterpiece such as Pillars of Eternity, who often throws boring trash at you in between meaningful encounters, DOS manages to throw meaningful encounters constantly. There is never any repetition, each encounter feels new and challenging. The story is now completely voiced, and this add a lot to the game. I've played my shared of old school RPG with a mountain of text to read, but after playing games such as Mass Effect(s), Dragon Age(s) or The Witcher(s), fully texted games gets annoying. Hence, the fact it's been fully voiced really adds on top of all the other quality. The story makes a good job, if not exceptional, at puting the combat system into action. And let's repeat it, it's very fun to fight in DOS, and you'll do that most of the time anyway.
I bought Seven The Days Long Gone partly for many reasons, but clearly, a few things made me buy it at launch. I have hundreds of games in my collection and I hate to say it, but it's extremely rare I get any games at launch. So why this one ? 1. Indy : I love indy developers, I think they stand out. 2. GoG : It's on GoG, so it's already awesome. No DRM bullshit, the dev has trust in his game and don't need 25 layers of DRM protection to sell the game. 3. The game looks and feels awesome, and to be fair, we never have enough RPGs. 4. Obviously, I read about it, so I didn't buy it only for 1,2 and 3. Now, well, I always have my worries when I launch a new game, especially and Indie game. Gaming on an Ultra Wide Monitor, you never really know if your shiny monitor is going to be supported, and who can blame developers not supporting less than 1% of their playerbase ? Well, not them, Ultra Wide is supported straight out of the box, and on top of that, you truly have PC options. Resolution Scaling ? You name it you have it. Arbitratry locked framerate ? (so, I can lock it to 99 FPS, just below the Vsync limit of my GSync monitor), you have it. This looks gorgeous, performs gorgeously too. In other terms, it's a genuine and true PC experience. It plays and feel fantastic, keep it guys, I'm definitely keeping an eye on this development team from now on !
