- The Gameplay is quite solid and most of the puzzles are interesting, although there are some situations where you can feel lost, especially in the first parts of the game. The game uses Ideas as combinable inventory items which is cool but takes some getting used to. - The Presentation is great. The game has its own unique style and delivers a great atmophere, especially through its soundtrack, but also due to its environbment design. - The Story is its biggest strengh. Using twists, turns and revalations it makes for a great mystery with a genuine dark feel to it.
Gord does have some great Lore and an overall captivating atmosphere. That and the promis of a gameplay mix between strategy, survival and roleplaywas the reason I bought it. Sadly the gameplay combination does not work at all. The Elements do not work together and the only thing they have incommon is that they quickly become tidoius to manage. While all you villagers have destict personality traits these do barely matter. There are Irems, but their benefit is not worth the hassle of tranfering them to the people that would benefit from them. The Sanity System only leads to everyone taking rests once in a while slowing down the gameplay. Your ressource gatherers wander of into the wild so you constantly have to monitor them. Most buildings feel almost entirely useless as they only allow your villagers to gain certain professions with which they can also alread start. The placement of Pallisades for your gord and outposts ist frustatingly resticted. The map is cluttered and confusing... Although I liked the atmosphere and lore there was no part of gamplay that worked well for me. So, sadly, I cannot recommend it.
While technically sound and with some interesting ideas Gamedec failed to excite me for its plot and mechanics. I didnt feel like a detective solving mysteries, but like someone bumbeling through a world by simply doing things because they are possible. The progression and roleplay dont work very well to evoke a sense of meaning and agency either and it doesnt help that the games setting leans heavily into the simulated nature of the ingam-games removing the plot even further from the player. However, in some moments the game pulls clever twists on you and does make good use of the simulated worlds and their interaction with the ingame real world. Finally, since this is so often mentioned, I dont think that Gamedec is all to similar to Disco Elysium. While the two games have much in common, you should not expect a similar experience.
The Council blew me away as the creators managed to excell at some very difficult things. First of all the Plot is captivating. All of the characters are interesting personalities with their own secrets which you can discover and use against them, if you so choose. The web of shifting alliances, betrails and secret goals always keeps you on your toes. The game also trusts you to make decisions which are not explicitly staed. Often you are not bluntly told that the information you found is relevant, rather there are dialogue options you can choose which get rekontextualised by the information you discovered. This makes it all the more rewarding when you figure out how to handle a konversation/konfrontation, because you did indeed figure it out on your own. Tension without combat can sometimes be hard to pull of, but in the Council does a brilliant job in this department two. There are all kinds of tense konversations where you can try to hold back crucial information or pretend to know whats going on when you really dont and much more. The variity of nonviolent konflikt in this game is amazing. There are also quite a lot of puzzels in the council and they all fit the theme and hit the sweetspot of beeing difficult, but not frustratingly so. Also some of the puzzels can be solved in a wrong way and you walk away from it thinking you had it only to later find out that you got it wrong. The skillsystem is also very well designed and also acts as an aid when you are lost as you can get hints and information by using your abilities. It is also cleverly interwoven with the characters as they respond differently to different approches. I would absolutly recommend the Council to everyone who contemplates playing it. It is executed to near perfection.
While at first beeing put off by a needlessly confusing interface and a lot of (open world typical) junk ites you don't care about I have grown to love this game for the relations it lets you build with its charakters, the attention to detail and its overall feel and presentation. All aktivities like driving, shooting and hacking are fun to do (with the sole exception of crafting) and the variity in possible playsyles allows you to very freely pick what you like the most. While all of this works great the actual treat ist the narrative and especially the character relationships. You can grow from disliking a character to begrudgingly respecting them to befriending them and it all feels organic. Especially if Narrative and roleplay is impoortant to you, but really even if not, I can wholeheartedly recommend Cyberpunk 2077! Pro: + Presentation + Characters + World + Stories + Attention to Detail Con: - Messy Interface - A lot of Trash Items Technical state: Playing on a midrange gaming PC I had no issues
As much as I like the core game, this DLC is basically that, two elaborate fetch quests. Yes, they do have some good idears and the excution is not bad, but in the end I was disappointed by what this DLC had to offer. Even more so as the qestline has an rather arbitrary fell to it.
Kingdom Come Deliverance delivers a highly emersive role play experience. Its strenghts are the intricate story, the belevable world and the freedom to approach (almost) every challange in many different ways. It also does some things very different: The focus is on actually playing a role so although your are the hero of your own story you cannot escape your place in the world entirely as some things are, and remain, out of your control. The many activities and gameplay mechanics are mostly realized in game. For example, alchemy actually requires you to prepare ingredients and brew them together which makes these processes seem so much more real than in other games. I do recommend this game wholeheartedly! PS: For any fans of the old gothic games. Writing this I just realized much of what was done well back there was done well in Kingdom come. Just saying ;-)
The combat system, character skill development and dialog system all work and are enjoyable. If your looking for a good past time this is a good game for you. But if you want to get absorbed into the world and story of this game you will be disappointed. While the world is rich with lore and could be a great setting for an unforgettable story, that is not what you will find here. The game does not give you crucial pieces of information while at the same time asking you to make decisions which would require said information. To make it even worse the characters you make these decisions for actually know the things you haven't been told. This results in an odd detachment from the protagonists and many moments of „oh now you tell me...!?“ or „I guess I have known this all along then?“. Also the motivations and goals of the characters are often unclear leaving you with no other choice than adopting a „I go there because the game says so“-attitude. Some key parts of the story do not make any sense, even in retrospective and with additional knowledge of the world. To top it off the writing can be pretty bad sometimes and very often fails to deliver a atmosphere matching the events of the game. Gameplaywise many mechanics seem pointless e.g. the path you take on the overworld map which is utterly without consequence and the resource management seems arbitrary and unimportant. I could go on and on about things like this, so why three stars then? Well, looking back, I had a fun with that game and in the end that is what games are about. Just do not expect too much from this one. PS: Almost everything that is good in Ash of Gods was copied from the banner saga and is far better executed there. If you have not played the banner saga I would strongly recommend you to get the banner saga instead of Ash of Gods.
Senuas Sacrifice is perhaps the best, but certainly the most courageos game of 2017. It does hardly follow any game conventions and cannot be ascibed to a genre. Calling it a Roleplaygame is probably the closest you can get, although it comes without any of the features you would expect from such a game: no character customasation, no inventory, no leveling, no interface, no perks or stats,.. What it has is a role for you to play and its not an easy one. It is a carfully crafted, sometimes beatyful but mostly terrifying journey into the mind of a pictish woman suffering from psychosis. The game explores this theme with its sounddesign, mechanics, graphics and narrative. Everything in this game supports the portrait of Senua and the developers have come up with some truely inovative ways to use the medium of games not only to present Senuas story to the player but to make the player experiance what Senua is going through. Because it does this very well it might be too desturbing for some people. Gameplaywise the main features are environmental puzzles and action based fights but they are really not at the heart of the game. I can wholeheartedly advice everyone who is interested in this game to by it. But dont by it for its gameplay features, by it for the experiance it offers.
In a nutshell: If you like a good story and a rich world then this is for you. Gameplaywise there is a brutally difficult turn based combat, witch has the potential to be very frustrating and very satisfying. If you are not into that kind of thing you can avoid it completly. Though I would highly recommend to at least give it a try. The second and more important part of the gamplay is an extensive textadventure and dialog system. You will read a lot in this game and everything is so well written that you won't even notice. The Heart of the Game however is not its gameplay mechanics, it's the world and the story. Those two things blend into each other in the age of decadence as the world evolves in ways that cannot be foreseen by the player who will have to find his own way to deal with the callenges presented to him. The Amount of freedom you have in your choices is huge. I more than once found myself staring at the screen wondering if the game really just allow me to do this. However you always have to get along with the consequences of your actions. So if you mess up you might get thrown out of your guild or even executed for treason. The whole world is as unvorgiving as the games combat system. Age of Decadence has probably the richest and most dense world I have ever experienced in a game. It really gets you immersed and even for players who don't usually do this its well worth to play a second time to see just how different things might have gone. If you did read untill here Age of decadence probably is for you. Have fun playing!
