Don't worry about graphics. Get the patches and read their Readmes: Combo_Patch.zip and UFO_Defense_geotickfix_v2.zip (optional, I am not using them) but XcomExtender_05_05_2010.zip is a MUST. It allows you to set window size and to modify a variety of game parameters which are explained in detail in the Readme. This significantly improves game-play and addresses a couple of bugs which exist in the original release. There are no hi-rez patches. The best visual mode to play UFO DEFENSE (at least on my 25-inch monitor) is the windowed mode at 1024x768, but it works very nicely. When the game was released 20 years ago I skipped it somehow (stupid me). The first time I played it was only 3-4 years ago and I was sad when I got the credits screen - I just wanted it to go on forever: The depth of X-COM: UFO DEFENSE is still unrivaled even today. There are NO squad-based tactical games that come even close to it (maybe with the exception of Xenonauts, but because of all the bugs, terrible line of sight problems, cookie-cutter environments and the high price tag, I'd say - forget Xenonauts until the devs fix this mess and GOG drops the price by 80 %). Another one to avoid is X-COM 2 - read negative reviews on Steam, for example, to learn why. In short - it is all flash and no substance; it is unbalanced and tactically primitive compared to X-COM: UD. X-COM: UD takes time to learn. HOW TO: use the interface, train soldiers, develop, manage and defend bases, transfer soldiers/material between bases, manage base personnel and research, aircraft production and stores/inventory, use robots, move in 3-dimensional space, breech walls, use time-delayed explosives, flares (for night ops) and smoke grenades and guided munitions, equip soldiers and transfer items (such as ammunition) between them during battles, capture aliens and so on. In this game you can do everything you might realistically want to do. Google the manual and watch some game-play tutorials on YouTube.
Now, the game looks cool (environments), music is passable too... Good unless you are okay with your character and his/her team running like they have several baseball-sized balls lodged between their legs which hamper their movement, while at the same time they (characters) are desperately looking for a place to take a HUGE, life-changing $hit. But, I could overlook ugly character models if the game were not as BROKEN as it IS. These are not technical bugs that I am referring to. This is RETARDED crap that is happening even on the first mission. Examples: 1. I roll a human Samurai. Team goes in to crack a vault. As Samurai I have no decking (hacking ability). So, Monica (team leader) takes the job (she's a hacker). Before that she (inevitably) appoints me as team lead. Her brain gets fried while she is plugged in and we have to fight our way out. Team easily kills everything and then a BIG ORC (security chief) with a minigun shows up. At first I am fearful, but then I see that he just runs around and does NOTHING. He never fires a shot. I actually spent a turn without moving to see if he would do anything. He did nothing. And my mission was to escape. 2. As I moved the team to escape, a guard ran in the hallway. I kept a summoned spirit there just in case and set my main char on overwatch as I moved the others to the exit. For reasons unknown, my main shot OUR summoned spirit next turn. The spirit shoots BACK... 3. So I restarted the game and this time I rolled a DECKER (hacker) thinking I could take Monica's place and save her somehow. (I had a feeling Monica's death was scripted and unavoidable, but as role-player I hoped..) I CAN live with scripted events... 4. But this time the BIG ORC was NOT just running stupid. He was shooting... and he was joined by a dozen guards. At first my team fought, but after shooting at the ORC at POINT-BLANK range missed three TURNS in a row, we escaped and no once chased us and I uninstalled the game. Happy hunting.
Adventure / point-and-click story-driven games should not have Quick Time Events, especially on PC. I can understand console fighting or swordplay games using QTE in the form of combo moves which result in a huge variety of different attacks, blocks, counterattacks, etc.. But there is no excuse for QTE in a story-driven adventure game for PC. So be warned. This title is a QTE galore. To me any game that relies almost entirely on QTE is a zero-star game. This is a horrible mechanic which should be banned. If you are in this for the story, just watch a playthrough on YouTube and save yourself the QTE headache, heartache and frustration.
One could rate this title as 10 stars or zero stars. It depends on whether you can stomach the gameplay mechanics. This is NOT a game. It is an Incredible, beautiful, story-driven interactive movie with lovable and memorable characters, great graphics, art and music, but it is seriously damaged by two horrible gameplay mechanics (and, seriously, the designer who decided to use these mechanics should be forever banned from designing video games) There are only TWO gameplay mechanics - Quick Time Events and Dialogue system: 1. Quick Time Events - QTE You must mash keys to struggle, move, climb, dodge, shoot and so forth (similar to Tomb Raider 2013). If your button or key mashing skills are not up to the challenge you will die a lot and have to restart from last save until you manage to get through the QTE sequence. This breaks immersion and otherwise smooth game flow. But worse still is the Dialogue system 2. Dialogue system Your answer choices are displayed while someone is talking and you are given only 4 seconds to pick one of the answer choices. It would not be so bad, but you HAVE TO READ the answer choices while your counterpart is talking, moving and otherwise acting in the game world. As the result you miss half of what is being said and done while reading your answer choices and deciding which one to pick... Oh, and did I mention that you have about 4 seconds to read the choices and decide on one? Watch how this works on YouTube (link below) before you decide if you are okay with the above gameplay mechanics https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6Ndv3gj6Hc&list=PLTcoRMwrX2DjC0Zne-PWX7TudAppQaHV_ ...
Question: Do you, as a gamer, want to feel dumb? If so, by all means, get this game and play it. Space Rangers HD is a complex game with everything an RPG-Sci-fi-Old-School-Text-based-quest player could ever want.. so it looks on the surface, but in reality it is a horrible mess of cow pies. No GOG room for fine details, so here's how it goes (I am a Merchant Ranger and my reputation with EVERY faction is 'Excellent': - My Leadership is low, I am not trying to recruit any wingmen. Another ranger says he loves me and wants to be my wingman. I accept. Next turn (for NO reason) he says he is disappointed and wants to put me out of my misery. He does not leave me. He attacks; - I am on my way on a delivery mission... ANOTHER ranger (and my scanner labels him as Bandit) demands that I pay 2000 credits or else. I say I don't have that much money. He attacks - (see above) . There are military patrols in the area. I hail them and ask for help. They say they see no justification for attacking a ranger (AS IF I AM NOT A RANGER BEING ATTACKED BY ANOTHER RANGER TURNED BANDIT). He is attacking me. I fight back. The military vessels gang up on me. - as Merchant, I have 'Excellent' reputation with ALL factions (including pirates). I deliver a stasis pod to a planet (turns out later it was a pirate planet) on behalf of the government of a major faction. OK, I've been used. I can see that… but what happens next makes not sense at all: - everyone is happy. As a gesture of good will the pirates return some lost equipment. Once I deliver it, the whole sector with whom I have Excellent reputation gangs up on me… but I avoid and evade. Deliver the goods and grab some diplomatic documents to deliver back to the pirates… -- Once I make it to the pirate sector, those pirates who were in love with me a few turns ago are now attacking me... No room on GOG reviews to tell you everything, but I hope I've saved you some time and cash.
. . . go on YouTube and look up a series entitled Let's Play: Sword of the Stars - it is for the Complete Collection too. A video in this case is worth a thousand words. Watch episodes 1 and 2 and then an advanced episode or two - when many systems are already colonized. If you do as I suggest, you will find that: - The 3-dimentional galaxy map, where you spend 90% of your time doing your turns, is a convoluted mess of giant text labels, excessively wide travel routes and tiny planets where it is very hard to orient yourself, especially when a dozen travel routes by several civilizations are highlighted - Each race has only 3 classes of ships: destroyer, cruiser, dreadnought, and ALL ships for a given race look identical regardless of configuration except for their size, e.g. cruisers are identical to destroyers, only 3 times bigger - Real-time space battles are painfully slow as your ships take forever and a half to do what you tell them to, and you must wonder if your orders matter . . . and half the time it looks like they don't - Auto-resolve battles is broken - you can lose your huge fleet without even scratching the enemy or you can destroy the entire enemy fleet without losing any ships - The Tech tree is great: technologies are meaningful and the tree is dynamic - it changes from game to game, BUT it is not quite usable because it is a race to bigger ships and guns, and you are unlikely to research 90% of the techs, such as Translate X language. As the result Diplomacy does not exist. It consists of telling your allies to defend or attack something - There are no planetary invasions - No amount of planetary defenses will stop the enemy from destroying your planet - Colony management is nearly non-existent This game has many good ideas which are poorly implemented. Low price does not make a good game. The problem here is not paying for it. It is wasting time to learn the hard way what I described above. Save time and money. YouTube it.
I played Armored Princess first, then I played The Dark Side... Loved them both, especially the Dark Side. Then I made a mistake of buying The Legend. To begin with, this is the first game in the series and it is inferior in every way imaginable to both of the sequels, especially compared to the Dark Side which has TONS more of everything in terms of content, features, units, quests, items and so on. So, if you played either Armored Princess or the Dark Side, you should skip The Legend. But The Legend's inferiority to the sequels is the least of its problems. The REAL problem is that The Legend still has many bugs - many small ones, but also a couple of HUGE ones: - Some quests are bugged and cannot be completed (at level 14 I already encountered two such quests); - Some NPCs which clearly should be interactive are not interactive; - And then there is the Ice Spirit Lina bug. You rely on your spirits in The Legend as you would rely on your pet dragon in Armored Princess or on Blackie in the Dark Side to prevail in combat, but one of the four of your spirits (Lina) cannot be activated. I uninstalled/reinstalled the game, followed other suggestions I found on the forums where users discuss this exact problem - nothing works for me: When I get to the energy source to recharge Lina, I can click on it, but nothing happens and her dialogue options do not change to where she agrees "to serve" me. Bottom line, even if you never played any of the King's Bounty games, just skip The Legend. It is still half-broken, will never be fixed and it is a waste of time (as you will need at least 150, maybe 200 hours to finish it). Get Armored Princess or Dark Side or both. Oh, and finally The Legend is very unbalanced in terms of the enemies you encounter - a good number of quests you get at level 3 cannot be completed until level 14+ and STILL you will lose 90% of your army while fighting quest enemies. Very disappointed.
Though SS2 enjoys a unanimous 5-star rating, I just had to say it: Regardless of genre, this game is in my top three list of the best games of all time, equally good to Falcon 3.0 Gold and Baldur's Gate (entire saga). Overall quality of SS2 is absolutely unmatched by any similar game (the original and prophetic Deus Ex one sort of comes close, but not quite). I will not reiterate all the praise that others have already given this fantastic (in every sense) game. I just had to add my 5-star rating and comment here. NOTE: If you are skeptical about dated graphics, don't be. Just get and play this game. You will forget about the graphics 30 minutes after you start playing. Personally, I've played and completed it half a dozen times over the years and it only gets better as you explore new classes and skills (not that there are a humongous number of them, but still there's a good variety to keep things fresh for over a decade). Get this game. I rarely insist on recommending a game. I do here. Get it and discover a benchmark... WARNING: You may begin to hate despise most modern games after you play and complete SS2.
I've owned and played close to 1000 PC games since 1990 but I have not spent nearly as much time on any of them as I did on Falcon 3.0 Gold (I would estimate that over some 5-6 years I played Falcon 3.0 gold for a total of 4000 hours at least). As a matter if fact, it so inspired me (and several of my virtual squadron buddies) that we went to flying schools and pursued private pilot's licenses. Two of us ended up purchasing real single-engine airplanes and some went to Air Combat USA numerous times. If this does not tell you how awesome this thing is, I don't know what will. A few things to keep in mind: 1. You DO need a true HOTAS system such as F-16 FLCS+TQS+RCS or equivalent such as HOTAS Cougar+TQS+some third party rudder system or HOTAS Warthog+TQS+rudders. This will set you back between 400 and 600 US dollars. You may consider a cheaper Saitek or CH Products HOTAS system + rudders but they will still cost you around $300-350. Otherwise you simply should not even consider getting these sims. 2. Even with Falcon 3, the manual is around 300 pages. There is a STEEP learning curve. Falcon 4 manual is even larger and the curve is WAY-WAY-WAY steeper. For example, just starting the F-16 takes about 20 minutes in real time (if you follow realistic procedures and pre-flight checks) 3. You do need to watch this tutorial to learn how to install the latest update for Falcon 4 and how to prep and start the F-16 -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uU3pmXvnc0k If the above does not scare you, GRAB THIS THING IMMEDIATELY and thank me later.
… you could not rate it highly unless you were high, drunk, delusional or all of the above and here's why: Art, voice acting, music, setting, stability are all good. However, - There are no animations of any kind – you are dealing with voiced-over static 2-D paper dolls. - Dialogue options are limited but there are a lot of things you must memorize because the "girls" constantly quiz you and it gets annoying. The dialogue options are recycled and repeated often. ALL dialogue options are the SAME for all girls. - "Dating" means solving the "match some gems" puzzle. 98% of playtime you do exactly that and your "date" will fail if you forgot what color gems she likes or hates. - Puzzles start easy, but difficulty grows exponentially because the score you are required to attain is bumped from the initial 100 to over 600 after just a few successes solving previous puzzles while you are still limited to your original 20 moves (the game offers some help items to overcome this, but they don't really help). - While talking to the girls you must feed them non-stop. One phrase = minus 2 hunger bars. Three phrases and she will no longer talk to you unless you feed her… - In spite of the above complaints, the game can be enjoyable for a very short while… UNTIL you end up in your bedroom with a girl. That's when you go WTF (??!!) … because your reward is… TO SOLVE THE SAME PUZZLE with old constraints removed and NEW ones introduced. Now you must score 500 to have her climax, but it is impossible because the score meter is reset before you match the next set of gems. You may accidentally trigger some crazy combo and get to the 500 score, but you just cannot do it intelligently or on purpose. Even if you are a shaolin click-master you still cannot do it because the game does not begin to register your next input until the animation of the previous one has finished. Sorry, no room here to give more details.
