Fallout London, like all the great total conversion mods that came before it, is a very mixed bag. It blows anything Bethesda ever made out of the water in terms of writing, storytelling and dialogue, but in many other aspects it feels like a downgrade. The story is amazing, the quests and factions are all well done, the dialogue and dialogue system is very New Vegas-esque, with plenty of skill checks and roleplaying opportunities. It really is better than any Bethesda Fallout in that regard. However, like many of the great total conversion mods that came before it, London falls behind in one key aspect that Bethesda is still king at: world design. Londons world design is dull and uninspired. There is very little in the way of environmental storytelling, random events and quests to stumble upon. It's also very big and empty, with points of interest spread so far apart with very little in them. The details and references to real life London are spot on, but obviously if you don't live in London all that will fly over your head. The game is still very unstable, with random unavoidable crashes, long load times and bugs being present, and updates that do arrive come very very slowly. Lots of key features are still bugged with no fix in sight. Compared to the generally stable state of other big conversions like Enderal, it's a big dissappointment Additionally, the attitude of some of the FOLON devs towards Bethesda really sours my opinion of the whole thing. Lots of needless antagonism and entitlement. Overall, London is still worth playing as it's completely free and loaded with content, but be sure to manage your expectations. At the end of the day it's still a mod made by amateur volunteers, and it's very good as that. But it still falls short of many of the mainline Fallout games.
You've probably heard about the localization by now. Fans discovered that the localization was done by a company that practices DEI (similar to Sweet Baby Inc). Personally, I don't care about "woke" dialogue, but in this case the practices of the localizers have completely changed parts of the script to the point where it is almost completely different compared to the original Japanese script. It's disrespectful. The terrible dub doesn't help matters either. There's a part where they literally question the gender identity of a boss they just defeated. Want to take a guess if that was part of the original script? Beyond that, the bigger issues are the sheer amount of bugs the game launched with. The biggest being the encounter rate bug. The encounter rate is tied to your MONITORS REFRESH RATE, so if you're on a standard 144hz monitor or higher like most PC gamers, you will get almost no random encounters. There is a bug preventing recruitment of a certain character which can lock you out of the true ending. There are many more, but these are just the standouts. There are over 200 more bugs on the discord servers bug tracker. There is so much this game does right and it really does feel like a true successor to Suikoden, but it was NOT ready to launch in this state. The fact that the encounter rate bug has been known since the backer beta and hasn't been fixed is just insane. PC users shouldn't be forced to hard cap their monitors refresh rate just to get the game to work right. What was the point of the backer beta if they just weren't going to fix all the issues that were discovered with it? I'd still likely recommend this even with the terrible localization, but the game just isn't ready to play right now. Too many bugs, some of them potentially game breaking, and no ETA on when the most severe of these bugs are supposed to be fixed.
A flawed series, but one worth playing Telltales Walking Dead (Season 1) is one of the most legendary games of all time. It was probably the best reviewed game of 2012. Top tier voice acting, writing and story, presentation that was groundbreaking and unique for it's time, and an episodic release structure that thankfully didn't catch on for any other studios, with Seasons 2 and 4 being just as good (Season 3 isn't great). Unfortunately, these games are essentially just glorified VNs, where you're essentially just watching things play out and the choices you get mean almost nothing aside from a select few. Nothing you do will affect the course of the story, or change the outcomes for most of the characters you meet. Everything will happen the same way, every time, regardless of your choices. That said, it doesn't really matter. Like a good VN, the lack of choice or interaction doesn't really matter when you're too busy being enthralled by the story. And while Season 3 is definitely lacking, Telltales Walking Dead as a whole has some of the best stories and characters in video game history. Worth playing at least once. Just know what you're getting into.
NWN2 is a weird game. It's pretty much identical to NWN1, aside from better graphics and better gameplay systems. However, it never really caught on as much as NWN1 did. There aren't as many modules that were made for it, and nowhere near as many PWs. Eventually it was abandoned, and because the game never got an "Enhanced Edition" upgrade like NWN1 did, it's incredibly buggy in it's current state. However, if you can get it on sale, then it's worth playing for a nice little gem known as "Mask of the Betrayer". It's an expansion of NWN2's base campaign, and it's without a doubt the best official module in the entire NWN series, and arguably one of Obsidian's best works. It's brutally difficult, borderline unfair, and riddled with bugs caused by NWN2's ancient engine, but at it's core is an incredible story and an amazing adventure. Aside from MotB, there isn't really much here. There are a few decent user made modules, but at the end of the day you'll get more mileage out of buying NWN1 instead.
Chained Echoes is the first game in a long time to really surprise me. Made by one person, Chained Echoes is a love letter to the JRPG genre, specifically the SNES era. It takes all the tropes, story beats and gameplay that we know and love, but cuts out all the fat that makes the genre unappealing to some. If I had to describe it, it's essentially a mix of Chrono Trigger, Suikoden 2, Xenogears and FF6 but with it's own unique aspects to keep things fresh. Pros: -Fantastic pacing. The story never got boring, and there was little to no filler. Things just kept going and never stopped until the game was over. -Good crafting system and character building. -Amazing QoL. Health + Mana restores after every fight, guaranteed escapes, many difficulty options, waymarks for most quests + a quest log. -Good story and lore, with potential for a sequel. -Unique combat system that makes you be careful about the skills you use, and when you use them. -Fair bit of side content and post game content Cons: -Mech Battles. The mech system in this game is boring, and you're constantly forced to fight bosses with them. The standard combat system is great but the mechs are dull and weak with little customization. -Poor english translation. I don't know if it was machine translated but the english dialogue really isn't great and does bring down the story a bit. -Weird balancing. The standard enemies in the game are tougher than the bosses, and the bosses are really easy. -The ending. The rest of the story was fine but the ending is genuinely horrendous. It's poorly set up, makes no logical sense and it left a really bad taste in my mouth by the time the credits were finished. Overall, Chained Echoes is a game worth playing if you love the JRPG genre. While it has it's flaws (if the ending was better I might have given it 5 stars), it's still well worth the price. Main story + most of the side quests took me ~ 27 hours.
Skyrim is the most successful single player RPG of all time. You've played it, I've played it, everybody has played it. Everyone already knows it's a good game so reviews are useless. Having it on GOG is nice, since now every singleplayer TES game is available DRM free. If you haven't played this in a while, or you're one of the few that's just never given it a try, then go read up on a mod guide and have full tinkering with the game for hours and hours. Or, install a premade wabbajack modpack. While vanilla Skyrim might have it's issues, a fully modded Skyrim game is an unmatched experience that very few RPGs can even hope to compete with.
Ghostrunner is a fun little action game centered around one big mechanics: one hit kills. You will die in one hit, but so will all the enemies. You're constantly outnumbered, but you have so many tools at your disposal that the enemies will be kind of outmatched if you're playing right. The game itself says it best. It's tough, but fair. It plays a lot like a fast paced, melee version of Superhot. However there is one big issue. Boss fights. There are 4 total (this isn't a long game) and every single one of them is terrible. Not only does it completely break up the lightning fast pacing of the game, but as you can imagine it's not fun fighting something with a health bar when you die in one hit. The boss fights completely go against the whole point of the game, and not only that, none of them are fun to fight.
Despite all the hype from youtubers/social media, the game still isn't that great. It's so much better than it was at launch but still, all they really did was turn a 2/10 game into a 5/10 game. For the good: The game gets updates frequently, there is a fairly large mod scene, and if you can get past the ugly soulless world and dull planet generation, there is a fair bit of content to keep you busy. You can probably spend a long time with base building alone. As a whole the game now resembles what was advertised back in the day. For the bad: the graphics are still ugly, there are so many bugs, the gameplay loop is a boring grind and worst of all: the planet and creature generation is still just as awful as it was at launch. Once you've landed on a handful of planets, you've basically seen everything the game has to offer. The entire gimmick of this game is the procedural generated worlds but they never let the system go wild. I've seen more landscape variety in Minecraft of all things. As a side point, I think it's really funny how people are praising Hello Games for this "redemption story". People seem to forget that the reason NMS flopped in the first place was because Sean Murray lied to everyone's faces for MONTHS, and then vanished when people realized. Yeah it's nice he eventually gave us the game he falsely advertised, but we shouldn't be letting him off the hook and treating him like a saint for being a serial liar who eventually delivered on his lies. You want a real gaming redemption story? Look up the history of Final Fantasy XIV. Unlike NMS, that's a game that really did end up becoming a masterpiece in the end
Fantastic game but massively overrated. This game has a very dedicated community fueled purely by nostalgia, and they'll have you going in believing that Morrowind is the best TES game and one of the best RPGs ever made....and it really isn't. The community also seems to have some kind of inferiority complex considering every positive review just HAS to bring up Oblivion and Skyrim as if they've got a point to prove, even though if a game really is the best you shouldn't have to compare it to anything. As for the game itself... The gameplay is a weird and janky. It's CRPG style dice roll combat, but you have free movement and it's in a first person perspective so it feels off. There's also no animations for enemies blocking or dodging attacks, so if an attack misses it just goes right through. Quest design, dungeon design and world design are horrendous compared to later titles. Dungeons especially as they are generally only a single room connected to a single hallway. Most of the quests are either a boring fetch quest or a boring escort quest. The game also really hasn't aged well graphics wise, even with mods like OpenMW. However, there is a lot of good: The setting is one of the most unique in gaming history. The story is fantastic and the lore is some of the most interesting to ever exist in an RPG. The gameplay systems, while janky and odd, allow for a lot of customization and crazy things. You've probably seen videos of people jumping from one end of the map to the other. Or one shotting god-like characters such as Vivec. In conclusion, if you've never played this before just go in knowing what to expect. Don't expecting the best game ever made, because this is not it. Don't go in expecting the amazing quests of Oblivion or the top tier world design of Skyrim. This game is almost 20 years old and it really shows. Install OpenMW, read up on how the combat systems work, and then go in expecting a dated, but still solid CRPG experience
The Outer Worlds feels like Obsidian tried their hand at making a Bethesda-style RPG, while completely forgetting what makes Bethesda games so enduring, so it just ends up feeling mediocre and soulless. The game's story, sidequests, characters and themes can all be boiled down to "CORPORATION BAD", and that's it. There's no depth, no nuance, no shades of grey. The game is written like a cartoon where a band of witty, quirky heroes take on a big bad evil corporation. Compare it to something like New Vegas where the question of which faction is best for the wasteland is a massive, diverse issue with no clear answer. Makes you wonder what happened to Obsidians writing department On top of that, the world feels dead. There's nothing to see, nothing to discover. The maps are small, and the game itself is over in only about 15-20 hours despite having an asking price of 60 dollars.
