Not a lot of lessons learned from the first game. PoE 2 falls into the same trap of that the game doesn't really have a hook and well, it's kinda boring Combat is still way too micro heavy and you'll be pausing constantly For what it's worth, multiclassing does make things more interesting build wise
A solid improvement over the first title, but more of the same good old MM style blobber. Spend less than 5 minutes to make your party and hit the road, adventure awaits. Dungeon quality is a lot better than the first game
The game's presentation is nice but it really falls flat in combat. Combat is run by the "overdrive bar", where you try to stay in the green and avoid getting "overheated". Unfortunately this ends up eliminating a lot of fight strategy as you just pick the skills that will always leave you in the green as the combat impacts of the bar outweigh everything else you might do. Combat also feels very RNG dependent. You might have a fight where the enemy opens up with multiple AOE attacks and wipes your party, or they might just spend 4 turns inflicting status effects on you while you clean the floor with them. This also goes for impacting the overdrive bar, as the amount of change from your skills changes turn to turn. The upgrade and loot system is anemic as well. Most will be +1 attack or +10 health. Overall very meh, if you're looking for a greatest hits of jrpgs, you probably just want to replay CT/FFVI
Fairly standard tactics game that's held down by some bad dev choices and terrible optimization. The game, even now years after release runs terribly with long load times and noticeable lag on the tactical maps. The overall "strategic" level is missing and you can pick up random merc contracts between story missions. The issue with these is that there's only so many mission types and within a few hours you'll have seen all of them. The other issue is that tactical battles tend to play out the same way, due to deviations from the TT version and no tonnage limits you're heavily incentivized to field a lance of the heaviest mechs you can find as fast as you can find them. On average you'll be fighting 4-10 enemy mechs plus their supporting vehicles/turrets, which gets old very quickly. Mech customization is nice It's okay, I'd get it on a steep sale.
Wow, never figured graviteam would wander over to gog, hopefully Mius Front follows Anyways, Tank Warfare is a realistic war sim based in N. Africa during '43. The game operates on you setting up your forces correctly and giving out broad orders to take objectives. This game punishes micromanagement pretty harshly with you losing "command points"(resource that lets you give orders) and units gradually becoming confused as more and more orders flood in. The game takes place on an operation level map and depending on the map you're playing with platoons up through battalions. When your forces meet the enemy you engage in tactical level battles. I will say the game's UI can be a steep initial hurdle, but once you get over it, you'll love how simple and easy it is to give complex orders. For those of you interested, I would highly recommend watching TheWarSimmer's youtube videos on Graviteam Mius Front as for all practical purposes, under the hood this game is the same as that.
A very solid wargame, plays very similarly to Close Combat, but at a higher level, you're commanding more troops and formations. While there isn't much to speak up campaign wise aside from some prebuilt missions, the game lets you choose a small area of a larger map(central germany and southern finland) to fight over, then you set your point limit and build your force. Several WP and NATO nations to choose from with their own arsenals ranging from the 60s to the 80s. As far as gameplay goes, you're not giving individual commands out, but more giving general commands to platoon level formations(advance here, advance to contact there, etc), so there's not necessarily a ton of micromanagement to deal with The UI is pretty amazing, pretty much all your commands can be given in a single click(similar to graviteam's interface) All in all, if you're looking for some real time cold war tactics, this is it
After a long wait, CP2077 is finally here. Overall it's a pretty fun game, I haven't run into any bugs and the game runs great at max settings, but I have a fairly beefy rig. Gameplay is fun, but does tend to have the curse of "+5%" damage equipment. Shooting in game is better than I thought it would be. Various styles of play have consequences and heavily leaning into one style, hacker for instance, can easily lock you out of becoming a master of all. Writing is CDPR standard, pretty good. Quests generally have multiple approaches based on your background and skills Night City itself is incredibly immersive and nails the genre on the head
The theme and designs are pretty spot on, but combat is fairly lackluster with a general theme of one melee guy, one shooty guy, and one debuffer for your team Enemy set up is basically the same throughout the game so far which is a real bummer, you'll see all the enemies the game has to offer fairly early on. The true crime of the game is only have 3 team slots(4 with an upgrade) and 3 classes, which quickly runs dry on entertainment and what you can do tactically in fights. From a strategic sense it's pretty easy to end up in a death loop even on easier difficulties, but you'll usually catch on pretty early if that's gonna happen Game probably needs another run through to get polished up, along with better enemy roster, larger away teams, and a better use of enemies to make interesting fights
The game has an interesting premise, a killer soundtrack, and a neat combat system where you time your attacks to try and set up combos and disrupt the enemies. That said, they don't execute this well at all, the game never throws a situation at you where you have to use this system to its full effect, and then the game throws a lot of trash encounters at you. That combined with incredibly weak dungeon design really undermines the game. Appearance wise it's pretty obvious that this is a vita port, it's not bad on the eyes, but it's not good on the eyes either This is very much a function of whether you can suffer through the gameplay to enjoy the pretty gud story.
If you've played any of the older Might and Magic games, this is certainly a throw back to 3 through 5 Assemble your party of 7 heroes and head out to hunt down the missing crown. The real meat of the game is exploring the world and uncovering clues and dungeons to delve through. Combat is fairly quick and very forgiving outside of a few specific encounters with dragons and some high level enemies you can encounter early on. Dungeon design isn't the greatest, but it's function and serves its purpose Overall the game can be beaten in about 10 or so hours, but you can extend that by exploring every nook and cranny along with hunting for hermits who can give your party some free stat boosts
