This is one of the best roleplaying games I've played. It is simple, compared to modern offerings, in terms of graphics, but in terms of character customisation, it gives modern games a real run for their money.
As a fan of fallout 1&2, I was looking forward to playing this. Sadly, it appears to have been programmed by idiots. I use a 5 K monitor, and not only can I not see the full title screm. but I can't even click on the "options" option, to try and get a better resolution. When I tried to start a new game, it did absolutely nothing and I had to exit the game using task manager. A compete waste of time, that I am happy to tell everyone to just stay the F&(K away from.
One of the very best games ever made. Perfect, in so many ways. Unfortunately, this game is not fit for play on modern monitors, especially widescreen. I had hoped that GOG would come up with a fix for these DOS conversions, but unfortunately, this seems to not be the case. RIP Fallout 2.
I always find it interesting to follow how may people have completed varous achievements. As things stand, only 13% of people have completed this game on any level (I'm assuming that doesn't include the expansions). In other words, if you buy this game, your chances of actually completing it are poor to say the least. I have been playing this style of game since the original Baldur's Gate, but there is something missing from this. Everything seems to be there, but the formula just isn't right. Maybe it spent too long in the oven? Maybe I did? The game didn't do anything to grab me and draw me in. Maybe I'm just feeling jaded, but over the last two years, I've attempted to get back into the story on muliple occassions and each time, I've played for 5-10 minutes and quit. On the surface, everything seems to be there. Interesting character design. Potentially interesting stories and NPCs. Even a sequel. But I keep wondering, "where is the magic"? And then I look at the number of people who've completed the game and the answer seems to be: "Elsewhere..."
So, after three years, I finally decided to buy this "game" and am incredibly dissappointed. What a waste of money. Firstly, there is no way to remap the keys, so I am forced to use WASD to move, but as a touch typer, I've been using ESDF since key mapping first became a thing back in the late 1980s. Also, while there is a screen that appears to be for this pupose, it is completely blank, so I can't even figure what keys are for what purpose in the standard mapping system. Secondly, I got dumped on a planet that killed me due to radiation poisoning in less than five minutes, with no chance of any other outcome. WTF kind of trash is this? I had enough time to fix my scanner and then I was dead. There is no obvious tutorial and nothing to help new players figure out what they are supposed to be doing. Finally, there appears to be no way to change my ingame name, because the game automatically defaults to my GOG account name of "Wraithcat". Nor do I appear to be able to set my character's gender, or any other of my characters traits. I'm sure if I were able to play the game for more than five minutes without dying, I'd have quite a few more complaints, but after three years No Man's Sky is still FUBAR. If I bought this game on Steam, I'd be going for an immediate refund, but am not sure of how to do so with GOG.
In no way, shape, or form is this game to be considered an RPG. It has precisely zero RPG elements and the story is one of you being railroaded through a series of different maps. Claiming that it is an RPG, rather than a squad level simulator demonstrates considerable dishonesty on the part of the developers. There doesn't appear to be a manual for this game and so I am still at a loss for how many of the skills actually play out. What, for example is the advantage of a knight going two handed vs horse mounted? Also, I had to watch a third party you-tube video in order to learn how to run the Mystic character, because it turns out that he can't move and that his initial attack requires that he be standing right next to an enemy. So until he levels up the skill, he needs to be on the front line with the melee fighters and you need to organise the fight so that the enemy comes to him. Folks, this is why we have manuals! There is also very little information on the internet as to how to build characters, or what skills mean in practice, so you are largely left on your own to figure out how the game works. The game is also incredibly buggy and on average, I've experienced a crash every 3-4 hours of game play. LoE itself quickly turns into a boring grind fest. Earned XP is pitiful and force you to spend hours wandering around the map, waiting for weaker enemies to re-spawn in order to level up your army to the point where you can even begin to consider doing the actual mission quests. Add to this the fact that you can't carry over your army from one scenario to the next and you end up having to grind every map, to build your forces anew. I don't consider grinding to be a form of gameplay. Grinding is what developers get you to do because they lack the inspiration and wit to come up with a meaningful game design and suitable quests to take you through the whole game. The squad level combat is good, but not enough to salvage the game from lazy developers.
I don't know why people are rating this "game" as good. It is clunky, badly implemented and without any meaningful help from the manual at all. I wasted a whole day trying to figure it out and found it a frustrating experience that had me wanting to throw the damn thing against the wall. Character creation is a tedious process that is painful to endure. It is like the programmers wanted to design the most annoying way of doing things ever. Each character requires a specific set of statistics and if you don't happen to roll those you are wasting your time. Not only this, but you are required to allocate each number as it is rolled, which means that you have no flexibility and you are forced to gamble on your allocation, knowing that a better roll might just be around the corner. After you have generated stats, you are required to allocate skills, but even this isn't guaranteed, which meant that my mage ended up wasting five of his ten skill picks simply because the dice rolls to get the skills didn't come through. Scratch one mage. The manual is absolutely useless. Spells are mostly given stupid names that give you no idea of what they actually do and there is no attempt anywhere to try and explain it. Seriously, WTF does "Necropathia Putrid Head" even mean, let alone do? I gave up on the game after getting into my first dungeon trying to figure out what spell I needed to cast in order to be able to see. Whatever it is called, it isn't "Light". There are a heap of spells in the game, but why waste investing in them if you can't tell what they actually do? You'll like this game if you are the sort of person who enjoys banging their head against a brick wall, or if you like figuring out games without any meaningful input. But If you just want to have fun I'd suggest that you find some other game.
