SKALD is a very fun game that can get a bit repetitive, and suffers with its rushed finale. Combat is not the games strong point, as most fights you'll find yourself using the same combo pretty much every time. Enemies don't seem to have any real strategy to them other than hit them as much as possible in each round. If you're downed in the fight, don't worry you'll pop right back up after with no health and "wounds" which are instantly removed from a rest with food (which you will have endless amounts of by mid to late game). As to the characters and story, they are not given a very long time for development. The overall story of a distant threat gradually getting closer to destroy humanity is extremely rushed at the end with a quick explanation of some other massive entity being able to stop it, albeit with a sacrifice (which is part of an infinite time loop... or something like that). It is a very fun game though, and the story will keep you moving forward, but the developer would have been better off expanding more on some of the characters and building up to the ending instead of the abrupt way it ended.
Tried a few different Wings and the game is pretty much the same every time. Dialogue options don't really change things that much, and the story was unclear. Tons of abilities for guns and melee moves, but they all do similar things... the game is based on HP and fatigue. You can lay a guy out doing fatigue burning moves or take way longer trying to kill them. I was playing on tactics mode (hardest difficulty) and this heavily armored robot/stone crab with tons of HP walked repeatedly into an electric anomaly killing itself while I watched. Honestly, I keep getting very bored playing it because the system is "fake deep," with a superficial crafting system and giant inventory of useless junk. The story also drops off hard after the first big mission. Just feels like a big waste of time really.
This game is a mess of cool armor (which actually shows on your character), interesting story, atrocious combat, a TERRIBLE 6th and final chapter, and glitchy quests. I had a few ongoing quests and the promise for some cool knight related mission in the 6th chapter which all got ignored because I tried to cure the wizard. If you want to play chapter 6 to its fullest, do not heal the wizard until you've done EVERYTHING. Seriously, it feels so rushed at the end for such a slow burn, interesting story. The end guy of the game unceremoniously just activates and removes all of your companions. Being a warrior, I had to rush up and auto attack him and hope his spell casting was in my favour (took about 10 tries, and on the 10th he fell in a couple of seconds). Then the game is over. Very disappointing. That being said, I had a ton of fun with the first few chapters, but be warned it degrades sharply. Also be warned you'll be doing an ice level that is perfectly manageable while the next fire level is nearly impossible without using the broken scout mechanic of casting shadow (on Wyatt or the elf) and having them inch across the screen to kill fire elementals with 1 shot. I had an issue with one quest, where the commander in South Gate wouldn't give me his report so I was unable to finish that one. Besides that, some quests are awkward running back and forth for 20 minutes only to have 1 line of dialogue to progress it. If you can get past irritating things like this, it is a very fun game as long as your willing to buy into it and overlook its (MAJOR) flaws.
Stasis: Bone Totem is a very good point and click adventure game. Excellent voice acting, believable characters and great atmosphere. However, I felt it was lacking in the final chapters. Everything felt crammed in and rushed, and there were so many new story elements introduced it was kind of overwhelming. On top of this, the final cinematic is very short, and if you wait until after the credits, a highly unlikely thing happens (obviously for the bleeding heart gamer) that as the Numen would say, has a "0% probability of actually happening." All I'll say is bottom of the ocean, deep inside a submarine, under a collapsed cave network. Far fetched for sure. The overall experience of the game though is so good I would still recommend it to any fan of their previous games, or adventure game/horror fans in general. I wasn't a big fan of the green description circles everywhere (the writing was like someone used a thesaurus for every descriptive word), but I don't know how they could have done it better since the game was quite dark and hard to see a lot of the artistic detail. Despite my issues with the game though, it is very well done and I hope they make something else and continue to improve on their storytelling and gameplay.
The only complaint I have about this game is that some of the trash battles took way too long. Besides that, I very much enjoyed the character creation options and development, the story was interesting and a nice conclusion to the series if you have played 6 and 7 already. If you haven't played 6 or 7, you can still enjoy this game, but some characters/races/alliances/factions/lore, etc, may be confusing, but I can definitely assure you it is not necessary in understanding or enjoying the game. At first I was skeptical about the futuristic meets fantasy type setting, but it is well done and the characters are quite unique and memorable. If you do decide to commit to playing this game, know it will probably absorb a few months of your time. Definitely recommended!
Wizardry 6 was a blast, I ended up playing through it twice. Wizardry 7 Gold does not work properly, and seems inferior to me, so make sure you play the DOS version instead. I found Wizardry 7 to be a little too vague and open ended in comparison to 6, so I eventually burned out to finishing it. It does have much better graphics and different environments, but there was something about 6 I found more entertaining. The sound effects/music in both games is repetitive and I ended up muting it entirely in Wizardry 7 (this also seemed to speed up the fights when it didn't have to play the "FIGHT STARTING" music). That being said, you just don't really find games anymore that blend so many different aspects of folklore, culture, mythology, etc., into one game. At one moment you're fighting giant creeper vines, in the next skeleton warriors, a dinosaur, and even ninja/samurais. The story keeps you interested enough to push on in 6, but a lot of times in 7 I kept wondering what was going on, who is this race of alien/people and why do they hate each other. Some of the puzzles are very cryptic and I wonder what the expectation was in figuring them out back in the pre-internet days. You see more of this in 7 rather than 6, which is pretty straightforward. On the whole, if you're the type not to get turned away by older graphics, they are both very fun games that should keep you occupied for a long time. I didn't even mention character creation and the class system which in themselves was very fun to learn and enjoyable to play. Definitely worth your time.
There will be SPOILERS. So I just finished The Excavation of Hob's Barrow, and I will say the atmosphere, the music, the art and the main character were all great. The setting was excellent, and the other characters were also very well done. The plot leaves much to be desired though, as the game relies heavily on building suspense and dread. It is quite obvious to the player that something is very wrong here, and the main character being the "atheist with no fears of hogwash stories" seems to ignore every warning. Near the end of the game, I was a little upset that even though the "promise" was clearly a lie, there was no alternative option, just keep leading Thomasina to her doom. That being said, the story is a mash-up of The Wicker Man and Dagon, with the small town that has its old. hidden religion to some evil, old god (Abraxus Rex... not Rawhead Rex) that the rich Lord Panswyck (basically Christopher Lee) charmingly references as "HIM," but Thomasina never questions what the return of "HIM" could mean. They would worship and sacrifice to the old god for bountiful harvests and riches. Thomasina's father is basically Van Helsing, or the guys from Supernatural, as he bound the evil god with his own blood, which seems to have put him in a 25 year coma. She becomes a barrow digger just like dad, because that was the lie he wanted her to believe. So a new character, Leprechaun, I mean, the Hobgoblin Saxnot (seems like he was a good goblin?) Comes to Thomasina in her dreams and says if you break the seal I will heal your father. She does. Its the old god. He was using the goblin as a proxy and vaporizes him. He then possesses her and makes her kill her father with the very first urn he ever gave her. She ends up in an insane asylum Lovecraft style mad at her mother for keeping her fathers demon hunting a secret. I wasn't a fan of how the end railroaded you into an obvious poor choice and bad ending, but I do recommend the game.
Puzzle Agent has a cool art style, great voice acting, and an interesting story mixed with humour. Some of the puzzles are basic while others are pretty difficult (although I felt it was the lack of clarity in explaining them that was the biggest obstacle). A very fun game worth your time.
Like the title says, I had a few quest breaking bugs, and the game isn't very clear on how the faction quests will sometimes lead to failing other quests. For example, I had the Rebellion and the Forge make a truce and was doing quests for both of them, when all of a sudden after defending the rebels I spoke to their leader and the Forge lost 70 reputation and became hostile towards me (I reloaded and didn't speak to the rebel leader). There is a large area out on the fringe of the map, which I cleared due to having quite a few quests tied to it. Soon after the Forge says they heard rumours of that place, and I had to go back there as if I had never seen it before in order to progress the quest. Finally, after I cleared out the last battle, the quest description says take the Staff out to the first area then come back. I go out and the game ends with Mask as the new Rulers. Choices seemed to make little sense I and believe the implementation of quest overlap was ambitious but they left too many loose ends (lack of testing). The other big "oopsies" they left in the game was what looks like line of code in multiple areas instead of descriptions. I had a bow that every time I landed a hit some code line would come up like "descriptor;\damage enhancement" (or something like that), and a spider camp had no description, just some "random;\encounter;;spid." You get the idea. They're asking $17 for this. I suggest you buy it for under $10. Its not terrible, but it is very rough and feels unfinished in my opinion.
So the game looks great for its age, and does a pretty good job of emulating the Lovecraft slow burn, building of dread style, it falls short with the lack of direction though. The game starts with your friend, Edgar, running to your house and giving you a mysterious hand held pyramid. He warns you to not give it to anyone, not even himself if he asks again. No sooner than you close the door, there is another knock with a doctor concerned about Edgar and asks you to check up and see if he is okay (I guess they just missed each other outside). Judging by the name of the game, I figured the story would be focused on the Necronomicon, when it is actually based on The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (which also has a pretty good movie called The Resurrected, if anyone is interested, free to view on a certain archive site). Back to the game though, I played about 3/4 of it until I caved and looked at a walkthrough. I still have no idea how anyone would figure out the laboratory area on their own (I figured out how to turn on the lights, that's it). I don't expect handholding, but there is a room full of 1000 vases (with ashes of dead people) and you need to know that you are looking for one with E.L. (the guy from the old letters) written on it so you can commune with his spirit for some exposition (no idea how you're supposed to guess this). Same with a map you have to mark spots on with items from your inventory (no hinting toward this at all). On top of that, once you complete the map puzzle, your two buddies don't even acknowledge anything and you leave unceremoniously for the finale. So overall, it has great atmosphere, but it feels like the developers either cut scenes or ran out of finances to weave a tighter plot that gives you the most basic of guidance on what needs to be done next. You basically just roam around sometimes clicking everything until the story progresses. The setting looks great though so if you're patient, it will still be enjoyable.
