Most skills are useless. Ranged combat is absolutely useless. Melee fighters are cool at the very beginning, when escaping from the goblin's prison, and weak everywhere else. First battle with demon as a melee still haunts me in nightmares. Magic is overpowered to such degree it becomes laughable. The fireball spell destroys almost any danger in one cast in the first half of the game. Life drain kills everyone else. There are some more combat spells, but why bother with them if you have these two? Puzzles are... well... Most puzzles are "go to the room, pull a lever. Now go to the room at another side of the level and pull the lever there. Maybe a door will open somewhere in the level. If not, try to pull some more levers. Or search for a small key on the floor". The crypt level is one of the worst examples of game design ever. It's absolutely safe, if you play as a mage, but you have to scan the entire level for levers and keys, find 6 small stones on different floors and solve a really weird puzzle at the end where you must put these stones on pedestals. Skipped even 1 stone? Go back, start the crypt from the very beginning, search this freaking stone". Some people call Arx Fatalis an "immersive sim", but it's an illusion. It looks immersive during first 1-2 hours, but after this time it transforms into a very linear RPG.
I kinda love and hate this game at the same time. What I love: 1. Music. It's absolutely amazing. I think there's no RPG with better soundtrack. Music in Divine Divinity is on the same level with Chrono Trigger 2. Game world. It's logical and looks alive. There's a poor quarter, and it feels like it's really poor. There's a big town, and it looks like a real medieval town. There are many caves and dungeons with interesting stuff inside. What I hate: 1. Combat. Divine Divinity clearly takes inspiration from Diablo 2, and that's a horrible idea. You need no tactics when playing as a warrior - you just exchange strikes with enemies and drink-drink-drink HP potions. You need no tactics when playing as a mage - just press the right mouse button and drink-drink-drink MP potions. You need no tactics when playing as a thief - just shot everyone with your bow or crossbow (yes, playing as an archer is a way easier than any other class). 2. Quests. Yes, quests feel promising at first (thanks to an amazing game world), but at the end they can be subdivided into 2 categories: the ones where you just need to fetch something, or the ones where you have to slain a ton of enemies. It becomes absolutely awful in the sewers of Verdistis, where you have to slain hundreds of lizards and assassins. How did they get there? Such a crowd of people require tons of food - how are they surviving here? It feels like the creators wanted to make a normal RPG, but their publisher said: "Quick, we have to make this game similar to Diablo 2! Multiply the number of enemies by 100!" For me it absolutely breaks the immersion. So... it's a nice game with some serious game-design flaws.
System Shock 2 starts amazingly. 5/5 for the first 15% of the game (before the player enters Hydroponics Deck). 2/5 after that. Issues: 1. Enemies respawn. It wouldn't be such an issue if not the next problem: 2. Backtracking in the worst possible way. "Go collect 5 keys hidden somewhere in this deck, insect. By the way, the deck is huge and full of boring corridors and similarly-looking rooms, pathetic human. Got the keys? Great, go back to the previous deck and find the specific place where you can use them, you, scum. Oh, and by the way, all the enemies have respawned, so you must kill them again, dirty meatbag". Do you think it becomes better later in the game? No, because the next issue is... 4. The same boring gameplay loop from the beginning to the end. "Find 5 pieces of code, kill 3 assassins, destroy all the eggs..." It becomes especially awful by the end, when you visit another place. 3. RPG elements. Half of your skills are useless. Repair? Not needed. Modify? Almost useless. Research? Either useless or absolutely necessary, if you want to obtain the strongest melee weapon in the game. I think if you need to raise the skill to use it only one time in the entire game, that's an example of a bad game design. Heavy weapon? Only useful for the grenade launcher. Exotic weapon? Only useful for one weapon. And some other skills are absolutely critical - Hack, for example. 4. PSI. Exactly the same reason as with the RPG elements. A ton of PSI powers (something like 50), but how many useful ones? 5 or something. That would be good if the game was easy, but it's hard, so you can't even use the powers for your own fun, or you'll find yourself in the nearest Quantum Bio-Reconstruction Chamber really soon. The UI for switching the powers is horrible - it's difficult to choose the right one during battle. But the first part, when the game is scary and mysterious, is really cool. Especially the cargo bays - exploding robots still come to me in my nightmares.
