I love this game. It is one of the best, if not THE best. I've played it to death a few years back. Today, January 2, 2019 I felt like playing it again. NO dice. Checked GOG downloads. Saw that an Update was available. Uninstalled. Re-downloaded, reinstalled the 'updated' version. STILL DOES NOT WORK: Horrible shimmering in all menus and all things, like in-game email, mouse trails are forever superimposed on the screen. Unusable, unplayable. Checked all GOG troubleshooting tips. None of them work or even apply to my system. Buy at your own risk. My only hope for replaying this game and having fun is my old laptop which has been sitting on a shelf for some time. But I doubt it. I have been stupid: I have been installing Windows updates on it (though I don't really use the laptop). THERE IS A VERY GOOD CHANCE that the problem is NOT so much with the game, but with what Windows Update fukcs up. Too bad GOG is NOT up to speed. Regardless of whose fault this is, as of right now the game DOES NOT WORK.
Rosy glasses though? No I am not wearing any. I am a VERI-fucking-FIED owner of some 260 "good old games" here. Some are GOOD. Am I playing any? Not really. Hoping to play? Hoping to recapture the good old days one day when I don't have to slave what remains of my life away for rent and useless shit? YA!!! You BETCHA! Wishful thinking that. I'd played King's Bounty games first. Loved them. Then, I thought, hey, all that HOMM awesomeness bypassed me somehow when I was some 30 years younger, so let me try it... So I've tried it. IT SUCKS The tooted music? Try Baldur's Gate soundtrack (better yet King's Bounty soundtrack) and stick that HOMM soundtrack CD up your know what. How's the GAME though? Here's how: Choose the "kindly" brother's story. Get quest to pacify all nearby tribes. Get 3 Boar and 9 Halfligns for the army. Get killed. Reload. Go looking for gems and gold, dig through the ground. Do that for a dozen turns. Get a lot of gold, treasure and shit. Drink from a fountain. Get blessing. Kiss a Statue get luck. Pick a fight. Die. Reload. Go back to Castle. Yay! Can hire 8 more Halflings. Repeat above (except no more luck from kissing Statue) and no effect from the fountain. Try ANY battle again. Die. Nothing more to loot, dig or kiss or suck or drink on the map. Back to Castle. Turn, Turn, Turn. Hire 8 more Halflings. Try again. Die. Say: FUcK!!! $hitt!! Try to Turn-Turn again, no more Halflings to hire. An ENEMY ARMY emerges. It kills EVERYTHING that had KILLED YOUR army without breaking a sweat... Spit at your screen. Uninstall.
They say: "Fool me once - shame on you, fool me twice - shame on me". In the case of Spellforce 2 it is exactly right. Once, long enough ago, I played the original Spellforce. It was fun for a while, but I never finished the game. It was too long, too tedious and, ultimately, it was boring. Spellforce 2 Anniversary Edition is another such game. It brings nothing new to the original game. Nothing new that I can see anyway (except for better looks and wide-screen support); -- Voice acting is still *abysmal* (and it IS a problem because there is A LOT OF IT and it completely kills whatever mood, atmosphere or immersion that such a game could potentially have). -- A game like this MUST have Turn-Based combat because the AI has suffers from NO delays but you do: Imagine 20 enemy units mixed up with your units and you need to 'focus-fire' the most dangerous enemies (such as mages before they nuke your army), but the only feasible way to do it is to TAB through ALL enemies until you find the one you need to kill FAST, and by the time you find that enemy it is often too late; -- Camera is INSANELY annoying: It is always reset to inconvenient isometric view after EACH NPC dialogue (and there are a lot of those dialogues) and you must always fiddle with it to get it back to the usable state; -- There are NO shortcuts to speak of and you must ALWAYS perform half a dozen clicks on the interface to execute simple actions, and with many units under your controls and many enemies it becomes... hmmm... I don't even know what to call what it becomes; -- There are NO controls settings except ONE (the Camera control key) and you CANNOT set it to something convenient. The only options are middle mouse button and Insert key. Guess what? The middle mouse button setting does not work, and while you control movement with WSAD every time you want to fix camera you have to hit Insert on the other end of your keyboard. There's more to say, but friggin' GOG does not like detailed reviews...
... this game desperately needs an update to be playable on modern machines/screens. It could (and I am sure it WOULD) become one of the best-selling RPGs of all time. However, as of right now ... I feel like I need to dig out my 20-year old PC from the bottom of my basement and visit a hundred garage sales to find a 20-year old 14-inch CRT monitor: This game is unplayable on any modern screen (well, it may be playable on a 70-inch monitor or something like that). But not on most standard monitors in use today. Everything is SO INCREDIBLY SMALL, no, strike that... TINY... on my 25-inch monitor with 1920x1200 native resolution that I can't see a damn thing. Try the game's native resolution, and everything looks like carp to the point that I don't want to even think about putting any more time in the game. And NO, I am not an idiot who likes games for flash and flare (i.e. graphics). See my 5-Star review of 25-year old X-COM: UFO Defense right here on GOG. I don't mind pixel-art or old-fashion visuals. But while I can play UFO Defense in a 1024x768 window with serviceable visuals (as in I can SEE $hit) I have found no way to play Geneforge in any manner where I can see said $hit.
I never finished the game. Very soon I became disappointed and frustrated with it. And even then, when it was supposed to be top of the line ... it was ugly. It is still ugly (even more so in the world of modern graphics). It is still frustrating too. I suppose for the sale price you could give it a shot, why not try it for the price of two cups of dish-wash American "coffee"? But be warned, it will be time and money (however little) wasted. Just my two cents.
I really don't know how to review this game. Perhaps, everything good the fans say about it is true. I just never got a chance to confirm it or contradict it. I have played with various resolution options on my 25-inch screen, but everything (except for tanks) looks so incredibly tiny, especially infantry units, AND unit movement is so incredibly SLOW that playing this game feels to me like searching for a needle in a haystack while watching grass grow. I would rate it zero stars, but I just can't ignore all the positive (and in-depth) reviews. Perhaps, one day, when I play this on a 50-inch screen I will get to appreciate the game. As of right now, I feel they would do better by simply creating icons such as a square for an infantry unit, diamond for a tank unit, etc. (instead of animated actual unit models which you can't see anyway). So far I have played only through the tutorials, and (in addition to the above complaints) the tutorial text is so tiny that I literally have to put my face into the monitor (to the point that I feel the heat emanating from the screen) just to be able to read the text, and when I do that I physically feel my eyeballs being burnt by the screen's radiation.
Before buying this bundle -- WH40K:SR+the two DLCs, I read everything I could and watched Let's Play of the first few missions on YouTube. I was excited in spite of obvious problems with the game's design: - I did see that the tile overlays (colored tiles that show movement paths, danger zones, cover etc.) were confusing to the point that when the overlays are displayed you can't see the units (both enemy and your own); - I did see that the units were colored in such a way that it is very hard to see them against the terrain, trees and buildings (both enemy and your own); - I did see that the color palette was something like 50 shades of gray and grayish-blueish and grayish-greenish, making everything blend into everything else; - I did see that there was no "Undo" in case you miss-click (and miss-click you will because unit selection is kind of clumsy - clicking on a unit does not select it, until you right-click to deselect the previously selected unit); - I did see that there is no narrative of any kind about the campaign; - I did see that there are no cinematics or cut-scenes of any kind (except the intro movie); Yes, I saw it all and yet I bought the game. I suppose it is because SplatterCat's commentary in those Let's Play videos was cool and distracting, so these obvious problems did not look like a huge deal... But they *ARE*. I regret having spent 30 bucks on it. 10 bucks for the whole package might be a fair deal, not 30. Finally, I accidentally discovered a "tactic" which kind of shows just how dumb the AI is. It so happened, that half my units were stuck behind debris and rough terrain and out of battle, my commander was in cover but alone on the opposite side of the map. Units in the center were on Overwatch. The ENTIRE orc force ran toward my commander and tried to kill him for 3 turns (he is hard to kill and can heal) while my center-field Overwatch units just decimated all of them... I "won" this 9-turn mission in 3 turns...
I own the original BGII discs, and I own the GOG Complete version. Currently installed is the Complete version which I modded with the best mods out there. The install is 5.11 Gigabyte. It works flawlessly, there's no missing content (though at my high monitor resolution - at which I am playing the game - the dialogue text is a bit hard to read). The developer of this Enhanced edition may have fixed (most of) the bugs? But if you already own ANY original copy of the game (be it the original disc version or GOG complete), do NOT buy this. Just mod the version you already own. It will take a couple of hours but it will definitely work (unlike this Enhanced edition) and you will have saved a few bucks to spend on another game you don't yet own. One way or another, no developer or any product manufacturer should release broken, unfinished products... which is exactly what this developer did and at the time of release they charged a premium price. Such developers deserve no support from the gamers' community, and I don't care if this version of BG is currently on sale... and nor should you.
Firstly, side-scrollers and platformers are not my kind of game. Secondly, initially I found the game frustrating. I installed/uninstalled it twice! But something about it made me reinstall it again and I decided to tough it out. Now I can't find proper words to express just how glad I am that I gave Dex a chance. This game is not without flaws, but the flaws are relatively minor (character limit permitting, I will address the flaws at the end). So, let me highlight several of things that made me go "WOW!" 1. All characters are unique and awesome and fully voiced 2. Voice acting is superb 3. All quests are unique, nothing generic, and most quests have several solutions and outcomes, not to mention that most quests have more than one unexpected twists 4. It is possible to miss or fail to complete quests, depending on your actions 5. Puzzle difficulty is just right = nothing too primitive, nothing nonsensical, nothing overcomplicated 6. Skills and cyber augmentations are perfect for cyberpunk 7. Dex rewards exploration with many "Easter eggs" to be hunted 8. There are many different ways to play Dex - Combat, Stealth, Lethal, Non-lethal, etc. and when you find schematics for certain suits 9. Investigative work is rewarding 10. Writing is top notch (in spite of a few typos here and there) but most of it is voiced over anyway, so you don't care But there are a few flaws as well 1. I don't understand why you can't *toggle* equip/holster the gun, why you must press and hold a key to have the gun equipped instead (which is mighty inconvenient) 2. Melee/unarmed attacks are infinitely more effective than ANY gun (except for the laser gun which seems to have limited utility, especially if you play Stealth 3. Melee combat can be frustrating because of slightly clunky animations which make special attacks hard to time 4. Hacking is cool, but can be annoying because you are often overwhelmed with no way out Overall? Great game and has replay value.
Honestly, The Book of Unwritten Tales series disappointed me (including this title). Short with some puzzles that defy common sense (read "need to google for solutions") with the story and animations on par with B-rated cartoons... There is really nothing of note I can say about this title. I played it a few years ago and when I saw it on sale today I did not even realize I already own in.. that's just about how memorable it is.
