A big thank you to the team at Relic. I've been playing this game off and on for 20 years and seeing it given an update like this is awesome. You preserved what makes the game feel authentic to the original while addressing some of the biggest issues I had with it like pathfinding and units getting stuck on uneven terrain. After seeing another classic remaster I won't name try to overhaul the visuals and end up completely losing the charm of the original, I'm glad to see you limited yourself to updating the textures and lighting engine to make it look like someone might remember the original looking, rather than a whole new design. That plus to UI and menu updates make everything look a lot cleaner, but still the same classic game. You threaded the needle, awesome job! That being said, any chance we might see some additional DLC? Maybe another campaign with Tyranids? There's plenty of room on the main menu below Soulstorm. Age of Empires did it for their fans, just saying...
Gave this a shot when it first came out and it was so broken I got a refund. Tried it again when I heard about the Uprising DLC and it's a lot better this time around. Don't let the Dark Fate timeline put you off from giving it a try. The game's story and graphics really nailed the setting and I haven't gotten any "modern audience" vibes from what I've played so far. If you like real time tactical games with a persistent company management element between missions this game is pretty awesome.
Stalker 2 is an RPG without experience points, like an open world System Shock that punishes you for refusing to think and rewards you for figuring out what you are doing wrong. The way you level up is by learning. You start off collecting anything you can sell, but you don't have much inventory and can't run far while loaded down. Then you find a few artifacts and realize they are more valuable, plus they respawn after emissions, so you stop looting guns and start hunting for artifacts. Suddenly inventory isn't a problem anymore. Eventually you figure out that artifacts don't spawn until you are 100m away so you start farming for good ones, balancing weak rad protection with weak endurance buffs to keep the artifacts from cooking you, and by the middle of the game you've found armor that shields you from artifacts, so you stack 3 thunderberries, a weird water, and a liquid rock for max endurance, max weight, and max rad protection. But that's just one build. You want to respec for combat you need to swap your gear. Rifles for people, shotguns for monsters. Hypercube and Compass for bleeding and physical resistance. It's not perfect. A-Life isn't working and the spawns are annoying, especially when you just cleared an area and they pop in out of the ether. Even more so when a failed spawn puts their broken guns in your equipment slot and you pull out your fully loaded saiga to find out its been swapped for an empty cracker with a bloodsucker breathing down your neck. It's a poor first impression, but patches have been dropping like crazy though, so hopefully they get it all sorted. The story is serviceable. I'm not familiar with the previous games so I might not pick up on everything, but it was interesting enough it kept me going and didn't make me feel lost about what was going on. To be honest, these days it's just refreshing that it isn't woketrash. The gameplay is spot on though, so as a package it is definitely worth the price of admission, warts and all.
These days it seems like most games take up around 50-100 gigs of space on your ssd, but this one is less than a 4 gig download, 8 gigs installed. Hard to believe such a dense game could be so small. Reminds me of the good old days when game designers new how to work magic with code to make games run efficiently on resource strapped computers. It's like a different mindset that bleeds into the gameplay itself, tasking you with writing down codes you'll need to reference later. This game doesn't treat you like a toddler. It was a bit of an aquired taste that took some getting used to, but once I got used to the inventory and scrap system it really shined. I don't typically like dungeon crawlers or games where the only npcs you interact with are enemies, but this game really made it work. Enemy variety is good. Weapon variety is good. Nothing feels useless or unwarranted. It like an RPG from a time before RPG's treated experience points and minor stat increases as mandatory. It's just a really tight game. And that's coming from someone who never played the original, so no nostalgia bias here. Also, no strategy guide necessary, but you might want to look up where the 2 inventory expansions are so you don't jettison them out into space by accident. Also, comparing this game to the other remakes that have come out lately and completely blown it like dead space or warcraft 3, it's clear Nightdive Studios wanted to get it right and they really did. They didn't add any modern day-isms, new features that broke old mechanics, cut any corners, or make promises they had no intention of delivering on. They just made a perfect remaster to an excellent game.
Just saw that it got updated so I redownloaded this after a long time and tried The Old Realms from moddb. Great game, incredible mod. The instructions on steam workshop and the comments on moddb will tell you how to get it going if you have the patience and half an hour. If you haven't tried it yet, the base game is good. My only gripe was having to hunt for companions and only getting ones with gimped stats you can't improve. I also didn't like the hoops you have to jump through, waging war on your own people, just to get a city you can manage properly. But if you are looking for a reason to hop back in and have any interest in Warhammer Fantasy, give TOR a try.
Save often and use separate saves. Not for crashes but because the UI is unforgiving. You are not allowed to cancel actions so you are stuck with any misclicks or mismeasurements until the action is complete for you to undo for a partial refund or just accept and move on. Speaking of that, you have to build either 3, 6 or 8 districts at a time depending on whether you are expanding, building, or opening up tiles. If you didn't count the right number of tiles you can't undo it without save scumming. This wouldn't be so bad if you could see ahead of what you are building, but you just have to guess how many irregularly shaped tiles are ahead of you. The graphics are gorgeous even when you turn them down to medium which I decided to do with my rtx2060 to make the framerate buttery smooth. High played fine, but it was just a little laggy and that accentuated the sluggishness of the controls. The color scheme makes it feel like the game was made just for me with the white, black, orange, and teal palette. The sounds is excellent, but it's a little difficult to know when you need to take certain actions because the crunch you heard in the first game whenever a new law or technology was complete is gone. This may be a design decision because it no longer feels like you need to stack those things back to back like before since a new law or tech doesn't just benefit you in a vacuum. You often have to repeal an old law to enact a new one or tear down an old building to install a new one. It makes progression feel a lot less linear than the original. That being said, it's an excellent game. It feels like a natural evolution of the Frostpunk series. You no longer see the individuals you are affecting with your actions, but you have to respond to and navigate the larger groups in society, like switching from local county politics to the national stage. It's a similar kind of game that doesn't make the first one obsolete, how long has it been since a sequel like that came out?
Fighting games aren't the main thing I play these days, but I grew up playing Street Fighter and most of my favorite characters from SF2 are here. The controls are a little different than I remember, but the special moves are mostly the same and I got right back into it pretty quick. I can't speak to the balance since I'm not an expert and only play single player, but it's pretty clear some characters are better than others. Luckily, all the ones I like seem to be somewhere in the middle and despite a few cheap shots or a hit not connecting like I think it should sometimes, the gameplay is still tight enough to enjoy it. I really like the Street Fighter sprites that were updated for this game. They are basically all of the characters that I felt were missing from Street Fighter 3 back in the day. While they aren't quite as detailed as SF3, they are way better than anything that came before and with a much better art direction than the Alpha series. I wish they could have added more Samurai Showdown or Darkstalkers characters though. Seeing them with this level of quality and art direction in 2D would have been awesome. The soundtrack/announcer/effects are way better than SF3. I never liked the pop music and loud silly announcers from the more recent Capcom fighters. While this game might have a few lighthearted tracks or characters, the overall tone takes itself more seriously which is what I tend to go for. But having said that, it's not quite as good as something like KoF XIII that’ll get stuck in your head long after playing it. All in all I'd say if you are like me and regret not picking this up back when it came out at the tail end of the original xbox's life cycle, give it a try. It’s a solid enough fighter to scratch that 2D fighting itch and the nostalgia of seeing some of my favorite characters in the updated 2D art style makes this my new favorite fighting game.
The version I bought and played awhile back was 4 out of 5 stars. This "Complete" version that replaced it when I tried to get back into it is 0 out of 5 stars since I can't get it to run anymore.
Japanese Original: Thank you for creating one last great adventure, Yoshitaka Murayama, rest in peace. Thank you as well for bringing this to PC so that even more people can enjoy the spiritual successor to my favorite JRPG series of all time. Wonderful art style, classic story, nostalgic gameplay. English Translation: Pretend this is a successor to the Suikoden series, what do you get out of it? Ermagerd, Yoshitaka Murayama lolz ded. Oh what, you expected a genuine compliment here? One good hooray after accomplishing something unprecedented? Have a snide remark instead farthead! Genuine storiez are for chudz, sarcasm is all the rage these dayz. LoOk At Me, I'm ThE LoCaLiZeR NoW! Keep yo words outta my zone. Honestly, this is a good game. Will I look back 20 years from now and remember Nowa and Seign as fondly as I do Victor and Flick? Probably not, but the story as I'm playing through it now is a lot less genuine and heartfelt than the one I've seen translated from the original japanese, so once the mods come out that allow you to experience the game as Rabbit and Bear studios intended maybe I'll feel differently. Even in spite of all the modern dayisms that were peppered thoughout, I would still recommend this game over most other games that've come out in the past year.
