a bit inept in places (death by falling when out of bounds, poor signposting at times) but otherwise a solid early aughts shooter. The emphasis on old school arenas combined with modern quality of life additions and the swordplay manages to make it stand out as an affordable classic
Attempting to get through the first mission. Keep getting killed by snipers. This isn't really a question of difficulty. The scope wobbles around to the point where its impossible to hit things unless you're crouching, if you're crouching you usually can't see the snipers. It doesn't matter if you're crouching, the snipers will kill you anyway. If you want to load the game will ask you if you want to abandon the current game even if you're dead. All the menu sound effects are bullets and explosions. The premise is nice but the end result is bad,
I'll be direct. While the writing is good, the set pieces fun, and the overall quality high, Tim Shaefer has, yet again, padded out the end with unfair level design and tepid platforming. What starts as an enthralling and interesting narrative is weighed down by an anemic amount of content and the strange preoccupation double fine has with drawing out the lifespan of this series by making the final level needlessly and unfairly difficult. Buy on sale.
why are you selling me a map on an online strategy guide website
bluntly speaking TNC is written like a movie, not a game. It tries to humanize its protagonist as a person with deep trauma while forgetting that his primary narrative purpose is killing nazis. The game opens with a long cutscene about his traumatic childhood and then, at the outset debuffs his health to try and force you to use stealth. the stealth gameplay is miserable, there will be lengthy and reasonably decent stealth segments ended with seige runs that start you off without any armor causing long, frustrating bouts of flailing as you try and figure out how to survive the latest action set piece. this game placed its mechanics secondary to its story and forgot that it came from a genre about blowing up mad scientist laboratories and killing nazis. As onboard as I am with black panther hackers helping me destroy nazi facilities I cannot say this is a good game. buy it on sale or not at all. the gun play is better than new order but its undermined by the fact that most of the game takes place with your health locked below 50 with armor pickups being scarce and the stealth gameplay being unforgiving and often impossible.
while the game starts out strong the ending is a misable mess designed entirely to deprive your character of all agency and sequel baits. Very unsatisfying. Would be one start but beautiful presentation deserves some leeway. Otherwise not worth the asking price even on sale.
TL;DR: This game is a faithful recreation of the Pathfinder TTRPG. This is an incredibly poor decision if you want to make an enjoyable CRPG. Bluntly speaking the pathfinder rule system is bad. It is a circuitous mess of trap decisions wherein one wrong decision in your build can lead to a nonfunctional character that is fated for death and irrelevance in your party make up. Kingmaker, in its bizarre set of priorities maintains authenticity to Paizo's ivory tower design decisions to the point that all of Pathfinder's awful flaws are maintained in pristine clarity in this game for anyone to look upon. This could perhaps be overlooked if you don't mind wasting hours creating poorly optimized characters but other atavisms of the tabletop ruleset are maintained like the 'swarm' mechanic. This is a mechanic wherein the player is menaced by a swarm of monsters that can only be taken out by splash damage...or a torch. I hope you enjoy killing swarms of rats or spiders with a torch because its the only option martial classes can reliably depend on. The game also pretenses to having a stash system, but places a weight limit on your stash forcing you to manage your inventory lest you become overloaded. Oh, and we must, of course, consider the fact that the Kingmaker Module for Pathfinder that this game is based on is known to be lethal and poorly balanced often forcing DMs who wish to run it to rebalance the whole module themselves. This game has the makings of an excellent CRPG. It is hindered both by the design team's apparent incompetence, and the fact that they have chosen to build their game on sandy ground. This game is bad, and the people who made it should feel bad for wasting the time and money of a fanbase on trying to deliver a bad simulation of a tabletop experience instead of a good computer game.
