(Beside the Town Movie bug, everything works flawless with the GoG version on my system. I own a physical copy so i know what a pain it is to get it to run on a modern machine. Thanks GoG for making it possible. The Town Movie files can be fixed easily, just take a look into the forum) Technical stuff aside, this is a great dungeon crawler in the style of Wizardry and Might&Magic. It has a great race/class variaty, a simple but effective skill system and turn-based combat (optionally real-time). The Dungeon design is also very atmospheric and well constructed. There are some nice puzzles too. The overworld is bit more boring but the exploration is still fun. The graphics are dated and the interface is clunky, but other than that its a great game for what it wants to be. If you like party based dungeon crawler in the style of Wizardry and Might&Magic you certainly will enjoy this one. A 5 star experience for me.
Judging by the reviews and the metacritic score i was sceptical. But i love spaceships so i gave it a try. And it turns out, this game is really good. The interesting part is how different genres and elements were mixed together to a tasty blend. The story is charming, the art style and the overall tone is very light hearted and cheerful. The crew management aspect is deeper than it seems at the first look and caring for your crew becomes enjoyable tougher as they increase in levels. Also the game make you really care for your crew and i started to fly with a not so effective team because i liked them much and didn't want to replace any of them. The trading part is great. The economic system is easy to understand but you will have to do some work before you get the best profits. Smuggling can be very exciting. Customizing your space ship is one of the best parts, i spent much time looking at my rooms and try to find a better and effective build for my smuggler ship. How you outfit your ship alters your game experience completely. The combat may be the weakest part of the game but its quite tactical and can get challenging. Unfortunately its very slow and some times tedious. Overall if you are a fan of space sims, FTL, Firefly and trading, you aren't turned away by a slow combat system and some longer waiting times during flights(also the loading times can be a bit long), you should try this game. At the time of this review the game is patched up and is much more stable and playable than it was at the release. Time to do some smuggling...
The Gold Box games were legends and really content rich at the time of the release. They inspired and spawned many CRPG after that and who knows if we ever got Baldurs Gate without these games. But time wasn't gentle to the Gold Box games. There are some feature that remain nice even today, but mostly they are not so enjoyable anymore. On the plus side is: great pixel art graphics, good D&D atmosphere, nice storylines, tactical and challenging round based combat, quit long with many places from the Forgotten Realms to explore. On the dark side of the game are: extremly clunky controls(first one was released 1988), story is mainly in the manual because of memory restrictions back in the time and copy protection, difficulty is very imbalanced and can be very unforgiving and the 2nd edition ruleset of the D&D rules is ab bit unflexible. The Gold Box games still have their charm and can be interesting to play if you love D&D, the Forgotten Realms and good old dungeon crawling especielly if you can oversee the abysmal controls of the games. But if you are no special D&D fan and never played this games, they are much better classic rpg's on gog for you.
Transistor is one of the best titles i played in the last 2 years. The game has a wonderful interesting world, a really likeable main character, a complex story and a really good and innovative fighting system. The music is part of the game and the atmosphere is great. This would be a 5 star without a problem but unfortunatly it is much too short. I finished the game the first time after 5 hours and i played slow. You can play a "new game +" to unlock all abilities and descriptions, the enemies get tougher too with each playthrough but still it is a very short game. If you like a good artistic art style, a nice story and chalenging combat, this game is for you.
Darkstone took the Diablo formula(escpecially from the first part) and refined it to something really beautiful. They added some personal flavour to it and created in my opinion one of the best ARPG's even for today standards. If you can look past the dated early 3d graphics(still they have an special charme for me) you get a great game. The possibility to control two characters at once add a new depth to the gameplay and allows more different skill build combinations. But you can still use just one character if you want. Skill system is simple but addicting enough. Every class has a set of skills her or she can learn. Every class can learn every spell in the game provided the magic attribute of the character is high enough. Also the equipment is not class locked, it depends just on your stats. The dungeons are very diverse and so are the enemies. It is structured into junks of 4 dungeons each and a quite small overworld. So the szences and atmosphere changes a lot. The music and sound effects are great and add to the atmosphere. There is even a quest editor for this(not common back in the days). So if you like ARPG's just a little bit, there is no reason to pass on this gem.