Forged Alliance is the greatest RTS of all time. It has and never will be surpassed. The co-opting of the genre by real time tactics ensures this. Starcraft killed the RTS genre.
The character limit is way too low for my review, it can be read at the following link. https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/ys-series.95745/page-37#post-6545522
The story and characters are good but CDPR can't make tolerable gameplay to save their lives. This would have been much better if it was a visual novel. As a game, not so much.
The story and characters are good but CDPR can't make tolerable gameplay to save their lives. This would have been much better if it was a visual novel. As a game, not so much.
It did what is nearly impossible these days; managed to be a spiritual successor that was actually as good or better than the games that came before it.
LoX was an exemplary RPG, combining a nice JRPG style turn based combat with a blob style overworld exploration. It was well rounded with great depth in gameplay development, dungeons, exploration, and puzzles in addition to being delightfully old school with the type of challenge that doesn't hold your hand and give you a participation award like so many of the people here would have wished for. There is legitimate criticism in that the final 3rd/4th of the game started getting very grindy to deal with the arms race of monster strength. Eagerly looking forward to Lords of Xulima 2.
Video games are only video games if they have gameplay. This is an irrefutable truth that creates the foundation of what distinguishes video games as their own unique medium separate from film and literature. Disco Elysium is an electronic choose-your-own-adventure book, heavily drawn from the like of Steve Jackson's books and visual novels. This is another fruit of the casual virus that co-opted this entertainment medium aggressively in the past 20 years, who are the type of people that believe "games are art", and who have perpetuated the falsehood of "RPGs have always been about story and dialogue, and have always had bad/no combat". However, while Disco Elysium is obviously not an RPG, to even pose the question of it being one in the first place, it would have to be a video game. Before you say "you're wrong, it has a heavily scripted combat encounter that plays off of the same skills that are used for dialogue in the rest of the game!", the joke of "gameplay" that is implemented in this shamble is glorified to the extent that you must also then consider the complexity of navigating a Blu-Ray play menu gameplay. Suffer not the Disco Elysium proponent, for he is a wolf in sheep's clothing, he is a Trojan horse at your gates. His insidious nature is to rewrite history and redefine what a video game and RPG is, a card taken from the playbook of Karl Marx. Behold his true intentions when he proclaims "Disco Elysium is finally a game to experience story unencumbered by gameplay". This is not a video game, this is an outreach project for GOG's website to host other content besides video games. To video games and actual RPGs, this is an immense decline that contributes to the death of good video games. The end goal of casuals - the like of whom glorify this book - has always been the absolute dissolution of gameplay from video games, to make them become movies and books. By supporting this facade and others like it, every day we stray further from God's light.
