* utterly boring start with a hilariously incompetent dragon "protector" * very interesting followers with much more drama in the first few hours than they've had in the entire Kingmaker game * still a buggy mess ("Doesn't wear armor" after every other rest, text bubbles missing in "cutscenes" leading to minutes of painful waiting) * extremely unbalanced, no matter what difficulty you take, half the fights feel like a joke, and the other half like banging your head against a wall * occasionally awfully long "cutscenes" ending with a fight, forcing you to watch the unvoiced text bubbles for hours if you have to reload a few times Overall an experience just like Kingmaker. They've learned a bit from it, but not as much as you would have hoped. A diamond in the rough. It will take a lot of patches and a lot of mods, but then it will become a gem like Kingmaker.
Larian has finally hired someone who can sculpt faces that don't look like poop, yay! The dice-rolling is fun, the story picks up at a decent pace after the boring mindflayer start, however ... ... the combat is the worst I've seen since Torment - Tides of Numenera. ITS SOOOOO BOOOOORING TO FIGHT! Action points in DOS2 were already boring, but this 1-attack-per-turn is even worse! I don't know what the Larian devs were smoking when they came up with this, but I deeply hope they'll fix it before the full release. I literally dread going into battle because of this tedious mechanic.
Two years after release the game still has game-breaking bugs that end your campaign. I like the concept, but the end result is a disaster.
* world graphics are nice, character models are a disaster * story is okay, but very predictable * inventory and character management are still a mess * having to create 2 player characters is still dumb (but at least its not 4) * very few NPC followers * balancing is totally random, expect A LOT of trial-and-error * EXTREME loading times for tiny maps Overall Wasteland 3 feels like the Director's Cut of Wasteland 2, a console port of a PC game. You can feel the love the developers have for their game, but you are also constantly reminded that they have no idea how to make a good game out of their vision. Asking 70 bucks for this is a joke. Get it on sale, then its okay.
BattleTech isn't a total disaster, but its a completly forgetable chapter of a once epic series of games. It feels like the developers had a lot of great ideas, but were limited by a tiny budget, so a lot of features had to be truncated or cut entirely. A shame, because it looked good to begin with. To name a few things: * it didn't crash even once for me * unlikeable/unrelateable characters you are supposed to care about (Mastiff, your crew, literally everyone except maybe the two Lady leaders are replaceable cardboard figures) * pointless character creation (you end up with the same answers and events anyway) * your character has no voice, not even in battle, a computer speaks for you * mediocre graphics * mediocre sounds * boring and bulky user interface * very partial voiceover (MechCommander 2 was 100% voiced in 2001, it just seems silly) * boring campaign with a story that has been told a hundred times * arbitrary sandbox mercenary "work" that only serves to stretch the game * arbitrary space travel that only serves to stretch the game * annoying XCOM 2 flashbacks with the pointless pauses during combat * boring Mechs (pre-Clan era, SLDF mechs are the exception, you mostly run around with Mediums/Heavies that all play the same) * pathetic difficulty, just focus fire and keep moving to auto-win * pointless character development, only Evasion and Focus Fire are important
I will never understand the haters of this excellent remake. I also bought both IWD1+2 when they came out. First in german, than a few years later as english DVDs, then at GoG again when they came on sale and I still bought the EE all over again. And you know what? They've done everything right! 1) The small tweaks go over extremly well, like 80 arrows per quiver slot. 2) The engine works flawlessly and the little UI enhancements alone were worth the money to me. 3) The EE is easy to mod. Most Gibberling's & Co mods work, but you need far less of them. This goes especially towards the NPC MOD. I can't play Icewind Dale without it, so I waited until it worked, then bought the EE. To sum it up, Beamdog delivered a pure Icewind Dale experience in a very polished package.
GOG really dropped the ball on this one. Unable to start, unable to play, virus warnings, exceptions. Windows 7 x64 I bought like 10 games from you guys so far, but this will be my last until you fix it.
