I feel like somewhere a cabal of RPG developers got together and someone said, "First and third-person RPGs are awesome! People feel so immersed in the character they can almost forget it's a game. So, what can we do to interrupt that experience?" The answer. Cut scenes and taking choices away from the player. Many recent RPGs do it, some are worse than KCD, but KCD is pretty bad. You want to pick some herbs? Cut scene. Want to talk to someone? Cut scene. I'm a few hours in and I think my gameplay so far has been more cutscene than actual play time. Add to that the forced choices and scenarios. I just passed a part where you're exploring a village and get jumped by bandits. I got blitzed and killed, but I felt it was unfair, so I reloaded. Blitzed and killed. I ran my ass off and got away on the third try! Got to the city gates. Oh... even though the gate is open, I can't walk through. Invisible wall. FML, I guess I have no choice but to get killed, well I'm going to take as many of the bastards as I can with me. Run and hide, ambush the weakest one without a weapon. I hit him literally a hundred times and he would not die. Something about the encounter bugged the entire game, so I couldn't die either I just dropped to 1hp. So now I guess I have to re-load again and just fall on my sword like a good little boy because that's what the game forces me to do. "Open World" "Non-linear" my ass. Also the combat system is pretty frustrating. I guess it might get better as I level up. A lot of players are saying that, so here's hoping. TLDR, if you want to spend $30 to pull your hair out, go to a barber. It costs the same but it's less painful.
Seriously, ID software figured this out 20 years ago. I don't care how little or underfunded your company is, this is not complicated! PC Gamers, by and large have keys they're accustomed to using. WASD is a TERRIBLE keyboard layout leftover from two player games on Apple IIs. ALL KEYS SHOULD BE REBINDABLE! Not only is it impossible in game to bind the keys I want, there doesn't even seem to be a reasonable workaround like a .ini file I can edit. There's a big thread on Steam from 2018 where they tried to figure this out, contacted the publisher, still they haven't fixed it? Just shows a lazy developer and I'm sure the port will aggravate me in other ways. I hate being irritated by a game before I can even started playing in this way.
One of the first missions I got a hint of how buggy this POS is when I rescued some merchants and the quest markers kept popping up in the same place, telling me to rescue the merchants, however it turned out it was just in the quest log and map it was bugged, the game let me progress. A few missions later, I'm supposed to repair some tools. Go to workbench, there's the option, press the key it gives me as an option, and... I'm in the regular crafting manu. Try again, and again. Read online bug reports, try those fixes, nada. Ultimately it comes down to re-loading the game prior to the bug. I'll give you three guesses whether that worked, (spoiler alert! It did not!) So... that was a main quest. Which means no more progress for me. Yay, I just wasted money on this crap. Aside from that the gameplay is an annoyingly bad console port. Every time you open a door or climb a ledge it's a quick cut scene. I'm playing a rogue type and wanted to sneak up on some opponents once, but NOPE! Cut scene, after my careful approach, I just walk straight up and say HI! "Please attack me now!" Combat is just button mashing and the game has items like "Sniper RIfle" for you to buy, but you can't use it. In fact apparently there's only two characters who CAN use it. If I could get over all that, I'd still not be happy with the game. The character you play is a total douche bag, the mission I got stuck on he's tasked with getting slaves back to work, and there's no kind and gentle option, it's either bluster and threats or just kill some so the rest learn a lesson. There's no "role play" in that, It's just a choice between douche and murderous douche, Voice acting is god awful. It sounds like the programmers did most of it themselves. Script is painfully bad. The dialogue is excessively long and unnatural. One mission I was rescuing a woman, who kept shouting, "Officer, I think we're in danger!" repeatedly as I was literally fighting some guys who were trying to kill her.
1) OMG, I just finished the game (I enjoyed it for a bit, then hate-played it to try to get to the end as fast as possible). The Epic Final Boss Fight is basically a cut scene. if you don't press the right button the instant it flashes on the screen, you die. 2) Enemy levelling. I hate it. Why bother to allow me to upgrade my own skills if a bog-standard zombie keeps pace with my abilities? It's so stupid and takes any sense of achievement out of the game. 3) Yay, they give you a really cool grappling hook that's lots of fun! I can be Spider Man, cool! Oh, because myexcept when they decide I'm "tired" so I have to climb a 20 story building parkour-style instead? 4) Twice they remove all your gear and you have to manually put everything back in your inventory afterwards. 5) The plot stinks. Your bosses, "Hey you know that drug you and everyone else in the Zone needs to survive?" Me, "Umm, yeah, I just found the last crate." Bosses, "Yeah, burn that shit." Me, "Yeah, sure, that sounds like a great idea, and I totally believe you're the good guys in all this." I mean WTF, seriously? It's an "RPG" but you NEVER get any choice in your actions. 5b) The main antagonist, "Oh, we've captured him. Make him fight some weak zombies." I do and manage to get a weapon in the process. TMA, "Oh, well put some slightly stronger zombies in there now." Kill them and get a better weapon. TMA, "Hmm, let's try... more zombies!" Kill them too. TMA, "I'm totally evil and I decided the best way to be evil is to give you a first aid kit so you can heal up and escape now!" Me. "Wut?" He drops the kit, I escape killing a bunch of his men. Later: TMA's trap closes on me, "Now I have you, instead of killing you, I will make you fight..." Me, "Zombies?" TMA, "That wasn't what I was going to say." Me, "Yeah, but it's zombies, isn't it." TMA deflates, "Yeah, more zombies." (this repeats about five times, he could straight-up kill you, but leaves it to the zombies (or sometimes his minions).
I'm not a huge fan of platformers, but Limbo's focus on puzzle solving rather than perfect timing plus the excellent atmosphere made this a fun little game. Be warned though, it took me only about 4 hours to play through the whole game. I'd say it's worth the money on sale, otherwise it's too short with too little replay value to recommend.
Coming from many FPS and TPS shooter/RPGs, I thought I knew what to expect. The reviews are great, looks a bit like Oblivion, or other earlier Bethesda games, so that's what I expected. Opened the game and tried to map my controls. Can't use spacebar in my standard control config... okay, I'll map it to a different key. Hmm, can't map mouse buttons? That sucks. Okay, I'll give it a try. Cinematics are soooooo long and boring, really sucky animation too. Like cringe worthy bad. Grass slicing straight through the cart as it goes along. Okay, I've played games with bad cinematics before. Still willing to give it a try. Skip cinematics, first battle, finally! Okay, it says opponents in red. Got it. Go next to a red circle. Umm how do I attack? Click madly for a few minutes on every key combo I can find while my comrades finish the battle for me. Well... maybe it's somebody's idea of fun, watching other people fight while you flail around madly. I thought this was the tutorial? It didn't tell me anything useful except I was moving my mouse too fast? I don't get how that's relevant, especially since changing the speed didn't seem to do anything. On top of all that the story is so thick with Fantasy tropes it doesn't even feel like an original game, more like a mod a bunch of 13 year olds made for Skyrim (with worse graphics and awful controls). Can't believe I spent money on this. How this has such a high rating is beyond me.
