After waiting for more than 20 years, we are finally graced with JA3. The game does live up to its name and provides good tactical combat, varied locations and quests and avoids any politically correct bullshit. Unfortunately, the dumbing down of some mechanics, as well as some unexplainable decisions prevent it from reaching true greatness like its predecessor. Pros: - Good tactical combat. The environments are varied and most of the maps have good use of verticality. - Diverse (in a non-PC meaning) and well acted roster of mercenaries, with many banters and interjections. - Good quests, writing and plenty of choices and consequences (especially for not a full-fledged RPG). - Mercs receive skills when leveling up. - Plenty of guns and armor - Contains well executed satire of our culture. Cons: - Some dumbing down of the combat mechanics: weightless and shared ammo, incorrect weapon calibers and behavior (dragunov being fully automatic and shooting 7.62*39 ammo). - Removal of the stamina bar. Now you can just charge the enemy, get hit multiple times, and still have the maximum amount of action points. - No standard UI for vendors. In order to buy or sell something, you need to interact with special objects (boxes or crates) located near the vendor. - Uneven difficulty throughout the game. The game starts moderately challenging, then as you grow stronger, the game becomes easier. Then somewhere mid-game, something happens, which skyrockets the difficulty, and then the difficulty slowly decreases till the end of the game. - Perhaps the most annoying and ridiculous decision in this game: Bust fire damage is nerfed. If a weapon inflicts 12 damage with a single shot, it will inflict only 6 in a burst. Or even less in full auto. Why?? Who thought of this decision? All in all, JA3 is a solid game, head and shoulders above the entries in the franchise, released this century. Some ridiculous decisions, as listed above, hold it back from receiving the full 5 stars.
This is poor man's BG clone for better and for worse. Black geyser is a rather linear RPG with real time with pause combat (RTwP), where you explore hub-based locations on an overlword map. The story throws you into the politics between 2 cities, which will use you as an errand boy to solve their issues. Not to mention that as usual, there is an "ancient evil" looming in the background. The pros: - Scratches that Baldur's Gate itch. This is the closest game to BG since BG2. - Large enough map without being too big. - Dialogue is well written, and is concise and to the point (the complete opposite of PoE...) - In some cases, the sarcastic dialogue options are hilarious - The game features a new ruleset (i.e, not D&D) The cons: - An unoriginal story. - Mostly Linear quests (Kill someone / bring something). But some quests are decent (murder investigation...) - RTwP combat is very hectic and it's hard to understand what's going on (but that can be said for all RTwP games) - The game is very easy - The ending is rather tedious and has a sharp increase in difficulty (but luckily, difficulty can be adjusted on the fly) - The game mechanics are not well documented To summarize, if you are a BG fan, I recommend this game as nothing came closer to the original BG experience in the last 20 years (not even BG3). If not, skip it.
