Gemini Rue was the first Wadjet Eye published game I bought and finished, and it started my decade long love for the publisher. Here are some of my favorite features. As a point-&-click adventure, you get logical puzzles and captivating story progression that are motivated by sensible hints picked up naturally while you play. Even when I used a guide a few times, it was always "Ok. That makes sense." Never "What the hell?" The level of interactivity with the game world feels just right, neither too restrictive nor bloated. As an indie game, it's the perfect length: enough to flesh out the story but not so long that it drags. The developer commentaries provides some great insight from the game creator on the creative process of making games. It feels innovative, both in its plot and in its cover-based shooting combat. As a Wadjet Eye game, it has the same feel that I find appealing in the others games they publish. Although the presentation feels retro, it's also fully voice with detailed and stylized character portraits. The story has just the right amount of quirky strangeness rooted in relatable human feelings. The game always feels like an adventure or a journey with obstacles to overcome, never a collection of puzzles strung together by a mandatory plot. If you like Wadjet Eye kind of games, you will like Gemini Rue. If you are interested in what I described above, this game is a must-try.
DAO has been reviewed and reviewed again to the Deep Roads and back. I'd like to add a couple of great things that I don't hear about often. One is how flexible, feature-rich and self-contained the DAO is as a game package. It is very mod-friendly. I personally used the Morrigan Restoration, several adult mods, a mabari slot mod, and a fix that restored Sigrun's personal question in Awakening. The game takes automatic screenshots with captions for many achievements and major plot points. If you want more, take your own. You can easily rename and move around the screenshots in Windows while writing your own captions in the game's screenshot viewer. It's a robust system to chronicle your journey through this massive game. There are in-game achievements. Helpful in-game achievements. You can do all of this independent of GOG Galaxy or Steam. It's perfect for the spirit of game ownership. The other great thing is how well DAO embodies the old Bioware spirit of writing your own adventure. Just as one example. You don't have to recruit most companions, including fan favorites like Leliana, and you can drive away or kill off every companion. Your own character can die as part of a legitimate game ending (not a game over/bad end). At the same time, even minor characters can become a lasting part of your journey. I developed a lovely relationship with Queen Anora without marrying her. The writing is so good at being ambiguous and flexible that you can easily imagine various outcomes that the game doesn't spell out explicitly yet hint at strongly enough that you can believe it. This art of writing for the sake of player choice seems to be a lost art these days, even to Bioware itself . There are shortcomings too, of course. The game mechanics cover a bit of everything from crafting to spell combination but don't do any of it exceptionally. The inventory is rudimentary. Just to name a couple. Nevertheless, this is one of the best games for GOG.
I bought this game shortly after it came out on GOG because it was I think the highest rated AO game on Steam at the time and a top seller. I played a few minutes in the beginning and wasn't impressed. I thought it was going to be a shallow college f**kfest. So I put it off. I missed out. To be sure, there is a lot of sex. And a big part is frat life, though having never joined one, I don't know how accurate it is. However, it is not shallow. Here are some positive highlights: 1. A great male friend to the MC, the kind I wish I have more in real life. He gives some sage advice on life. You have a lot of fun, whacky adventures together. 2. Some genuinely interesting personal relationships. I see a lot of exotic characters in adult games, but interesting relationships are rarer. 3. A lot of humor, and most of it not slapstick. 4. Some of the best female models I've seen in a Ren'Py VN. Rarely cartoony. And the skin textures and body shapes in sex scenes really add to the realism. 5. Great music. 6. Despite not knowing if it's accurate, a sample of college frat life that most people don't have, that after playing, made me feel maybe I missed out, despite the hazing. 7. Some minigames that I actually found intellectually challenging and in different ways, but never annoying. 8. Some of the most balanced discussions on political correctness I have ever seen in a game, even AAA GOTY games. My only major complaint is that the DIK system begins to feel arbitrarily restrictive starting in Chapter 3, and going to 4. You could potentially miss out on a major plot line by making seemingly innocuous decisions. I would have, had I decided to smoke a joint. And you could miss out on a lot of the sex scenes. Ok, my other major complaint is the MC's internal struggle in Chapter 4 felt out-of-the-blue. Having experienced what he did, I kept asking, "What's [my] problem?" It resolves ok at the end, but I had to endure it for a while. I can't wait to play Season 2.
To the point: 1. The swordplay is great with several skills that make the sword useful in different situations, including at range, but the gunplay is more situational, almost puzzle-like in their applications. 2. Multiple skills give Lo Wang more control over the battle, like CC and healing (the healing skill is especially good at keeping LW in prolonged fights), but skills are activated by double tapping the direction keys then pressing alternate fire. In a hectic firefight with guns upgraded with alternate fire, misfires are common. 3. The environment, especially the outdoor ones, can be gorgeous and even majestic, but there is very limited environmental story telling. 4. The story of the Ancients, told through stylish hand-drawn cutscenes, is surprisingly emotional and very Asian, but that story has very little to do with Lo Wang's rampage through the game. 5. The voice acting, especially Hoji's, and the music fit the setting well, but the dialogue/writing feels cringy, even more than the old Lo Wang, whose lecherous old man archetype is a long-running inside joke in Japanese culture. 6. There are in-game achievements with several that motivate the player to practice game mechanics, but some are only grindy with no apparent purpose to those achievement "points." Having played through Shadow Warrior Redux including both expansions, I found SW to sit at a unique place between old school shooters and tactical shooters. SW 2013 carries on this tradition admirably. The Ki skills let me safely draw out multi-wave fights even in relatively confined spaces. The different weapons and environmental designs almost always let me fight tactically even when all hell broke loose. The last mob fight of the game was especially rewarding, albeit tiring. If you are not used to this middle ground, however, you may find the pacing of the game off. To me, this game is an excellent reboot/prequel to Shadow Warrior Classic, but it could use some more work.
You play as the American Marine, Sam, looking for a way home in the city of Vladivostok. The story never strays far from that theme and never gets more exciting than that. On the other hand, the gameplay is superb. If you want more of Metro Exodus' mix of shooting and steath, this is probably better than any comparable sized part of the main game. There is a lot of varied action. Mixed in there are also a couple of first-person in-engine cutscenes, including a fantastic one of Sam in CQB with several mercenaries. And the in-game city actually looks like the real city. I almost give this five stars. Two things hold it back. One: boring boss fights with the same boss, not once, not twice, but three times. Two: Sam feels too much like an outsider. I couldn't find any emotional truth when playing the DLC. Coming from the main game where despite being a peaceful person, I meticulously killed every last cannibal I could get my hands on for hurting Anna, the lack of emotional investment was disconcerting. I just couldn't care if Sam got home or not.
And I am not talking about you already know how the story ends by playing through the main game. The story of this DLC falls into all too familiar tropes of greed and deception and fear in a society running out of time. Because the DLC is so story driven, being predictable hurts it more. Given how cheap the entire Metro franchise is on sale, though, I don't see why you wouldn't get this DLC if you like Metro. Even if predictable, it still fleshes out some background of a key location in the game. Not the most interesting location, but what are you gonna do, right? For most of the DLC, you fight exclusively with a flamethrower. It's neither especially fun nor dreary. It's functional.
I was tempted to give The Void 3 stars even though it's a 5 star for me personally. However, this game has some of the best nude women I have seen in a game, adult-only or not. I couldn't bring myself to give less than 4 stars to the Nameless Sister, and Ire, and Echo, and Yani, and... you get the picture. Though there is no sex, not even implied sex, the Sisters are incredibly sensual. They kept me going. And the voice acting. Damn. Marry me, Nameless Sister! If we put the sex appeal to the side though, the Brothers actually shine through even more. (This next bit could spoil a major plot point of KOTOR II. So if you haven't played The Sith Lords, be warned.) Some of them are chumps, but some are very well designed both visually and thematically. A few have incredible juxtaposition of appearance and personality. I have not felt quite so moved by a mentor figure like the Patriarch in a video game since everyone's favorite mentor in KOTOR II, and the Patriarch gets a lot less screen time and is a lot more disturbing to look at. And every serious gamer should hear and think about the main lesson from the game. You can't miss it. A disembodied college professor voice beats you over the head with it repeatedly near end game. If you are in a bottleneck in real life, this game is for you. Here is a little help from me. The game plays like a rudimentary farming simulator. You collect color, store it on the right, process it in your body, store the product on the left, then use it to plant more color and do other things. Whatever you may want to do with color--pump the Sisters full of it or beat the Brothers to death with it--the farming cycle must always be your top priority. Having enough storage, having enough color to plant, having enough color for buffs, organizing your gardens both in time and space, sustainability, pest-control... make sure you are on top of them. It gets boring after a while. Oh, and don't draw the Donor Glyph like OC. Draw it like cursive L.
The highlights of the game for me are the two perky breasts that belong to an actual woman, a pretty one at that, and the comically exaggerated FMV. It also doesn't hurt that the game is pretty forgiving with its puzzles. For example, you don't have to use items on a specific place on the screen. If an item in your inventory can be used anywhere on the screen, your character will automatically use it correctly as soon as you tell him to use the item. Otherwise, this game feels like a wasted opportunity. If I got to see more of Noctropolis, if there were some hardcore sex scenes with the Succubus, if there were some SAW-like horror scenes with the Butcher, if Top Hat just got more screentime and Greenthumb just did something, anything, this would have been a much better game. Alas, a risque video game from the 90s is pretty tame by today's standards. If this weren't FMV, I'd probably give it a lower rating than many free games on itch.io. Why 4 stars then? I applaud Night Dive Studios for bringing this game to the modern era. Although the game has aged about as well as beef jerky, the setting, some characters, and the wacky superhero theme hold a lot of promise in my mind. Perhaps someday there will be a better version of this game by today's standards.
After 800 hours (some of it was my leaving the game on while I went to do laundry and thinking about it), I have completed one playthrough to true ending on modified Challenging difficulty. Even expert CRPG players have spent hundreds of hours on the game. There are plenty of insights online, so I will try to share less common feedback. The things I liked the most: 1. There is enough information in the tool tips, in the combat log, in the character screen to help you master the Pathfinder 1e mechanics as they are adopted in the game. Figuring out how to overcome a challenging enemy with fair application of established mechanics is very rewarding. I got this rush regularly all the way to the end. 2. You can auto level any character you want, including your own, up to max level. Owlcat's default companion builds are perfectly viable on Challenging difficulty until the end. 3. Even after 800 hours, the ending was very satisfying. Everything resolved in a way that gave me closure. And there was enough ambiguity to let me fantasize my hero became a king with a harem of lovely, unique, and mostly good lovers for many years. Here is my only serious complaint: The game is too long. Not that I got tired of it, though I came close a couple of times. A RNG-heavy, PnP based RPG with multiple endings on multiple story threads just isn't suitable for a video game. A group of friends could spend months or even years playing one Pathfinder or DnD campaign. They are not in a rush to move on to the next game. I played Kingmaker on my own, with two other solid CPRG just from Owlcat always on the back of my mind. I will likely do another playthrough for some achievements, but boy do I wish I can move on to WotR or Rogue Trader. A tip: At least get the DLC with the tiefling sisters. Kaessi is a very helpful companion.
