Trudograd certainly makes a number of quality of life changes over the first game. First of all, the perk system is more dynamic, and doesn't increase the cost of everything with each skill you get, but higher perks are at higher tiers that cost more points respectively. I personally like the first game's locales better, but this game just has a bit more polish and more QOL stuff, also it has a card minigame, Bombagun, AKA Russian Triple Triad. If you liked the first game, you'll like this too. You can even carry over your save from the final area of the first game and carry over your levels, stats, and perk points.
Are you a fan of both Fallout/Wasteland, and/or STALKER, turnbased CRPGS and/or post apocalyptic games in general? Then this is the game for you! Combat wise, it's not too different from Fallout, although you can't directly control party members, but in this you can issue vague orders to them, like be defensive, aggressive, avoid enemies, when to heal, focus on a target, etc (holding left click on them while in combat) The companion AI is dumber than dogs*** most of the time, your dudes will die more often than you do in a lot of cases, even if you give them the appropriate tactical advice. Speaking of dogs***, I can not count the number of times I had to quickload from the dog companion dying, because apparently everyone in the wasteland *really* hates dogs. Speaking of quickloads, in the famous words of Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw, "Bind quicksave and quickload to the left and right mouse buttons". This game is kind of hard. Certainly harder than Fallout 1/2 or Wasteland 2/3. You will be quicksaving and quickloading. A lot. Even on normal. The small blessing is that you can quicksave in combat, and them RNGs will reroll, thankfully. There isn't a ton of companions... there are only 6, I ended up getting 3. I *would* have gotten a 4th, and had a full party, but of course the dude was locked behind a Personality (6) stat check. One of the companions are obscure to hire, and ends all other quests if you hire them, and the last one won't fight in battle, just a pack mule. So, better get that personality stat up to snuff if you want a full party. Unlike Wasteland 2, this game is actually fairly optimized, and doesn't run like dogs***. If you prefer a squad/turn based PA CRPG where you can fully control your party members, than I recommend Wasteland 2/3 or Fallout Tactics over this. If you don't mind not being able to control your companions directly, then still give this a shot, it's good when it's not being slightly unforgiving somewhat poorly balanced nonsense.
As in, you're a cop, instead of (usually) a criminal. The combat is about 75% kung fu melee, and 25% gun shooty bang bang. It's an open world game set in Hong Kong where you beat the snot out of bad guys while undercover. Fun fact: This was supposed to be a True Crime game at one point. You drink from vending machines to get a temporary powerup. It's like if drinking from the vending machines in Shenmue 1 and 2 actually did something, instead of just looking cool. Have some dragon PUNCH!.... Soda.... Energy drink, whatever. The gunplay is a bit more visceral than it is in say, older GTA games. A bit more deadly, enemies die fast, you die kind of fast, stay behind cover, and you'll be goodo. You even get some bullet time when vaulting and such. Good thing they didn't put an underscore in the title, it might have sucked then.
From my Steam review. I'd give it 3/5, but it's more like 3.8/5. Definitely the worst Thief game thus far, although it's not outright bad, it's just disappointing and shallow compared to previous games. In short: + Combat is simple and ditches the sword that Garrett shouldn't be carrying around in the first place, because it's cumbersome, and he's a Thief. + New Swoop ability to quickly & silently move between shadows + Upgradeable equipment + Decent lockpick system + The asylum level + Visuals are good minus some muddy textures / Most focus upgrades are nearly useless, there's only about 2 worth getting / Guards will sometimes spin in place at the speed of light, which is really funny, so not exactly a negative for me / Third person Prince of Persia style parkour system that's used like a grand total of 6 times in the entire game, which seems like kind of a waste to even implement. - Contextual BS that will end up annoying you (PEAK) - Levels ain't exactly big, open, and sprawling - Confusing to navigate hub world, map doesn't list proper entrances/exits clearly - Slow to open window transitions that won't tell you if it's a level load or not - Picking up loot and opening drawers is slow - Can't mount on any ledge and rope arrows have very specific points where they work, although climbing is faster. - Game runs a bit like bricks, specifically in some of the hub areas, although it never crashed for me. - Sound system is a bit f***ed - Why do I have to hold a button for 5 seconds to knock out a stunned enemy in combat, I guess it's to punish the player for alerting guards? - Points of no return that don't tell you they're points of no return. - Garrett isn't voiced by Stephen Russell, it's like Resident Evil not using Court for Claire, or MGS not using Hayter for Snake all of a sudden, why. If you want something that's closer to an actual Thief 4, try The Dark mod, it's free and really good. Dishonored is also a game with Thief elements, it's fantastic.
Did you know the original Fallout was inspired by Wasteland 1? Anyway, Wasteland 2 is a pretty good turn based post apocalyptic RPG. Create a party, take along some unique characters, and blast the wasteland clean. The main thing that sucks about this game, is it's engine/optimization. Unity isn't a bad engine by default, but it's not particularly great either. Just wish they optimized their game better, it kind of runs like dogshit, even on minimum settings.... at least on my old PC, which ran better looking and more demanding games far smoother. My first (or was it second) playthrough was with 2 custom characters, Kiryu and Majima from Yakuza (specifically their Yakuza 0 selves), complete with custom character portraits. Kiryu specialized in hand to hand, obviously, and Majima specialized in blunt weapons. They were unsurprisingly, very overpowered. Have you ever seen a Japanese man punch a giant assault robot to death? Me neither, until now. It was GLORIOUS. Also, this game gave me a new character creation tradition for these types of games. W2 has some default characters you can choose from the character creator, one is a punk Medic lady that uses heavy weapons, and first aid named Stitch, the other is a handy Sniper Mechanic Lockpicker named Slick, he kind of reminds me of Jock from Deus Ex. I also made Stitch and Slick in Wasteland 3. If you like games like Fallout 1 and 2, etc, get this, you won't regret it.
It's a dumbed down, even more linear version of the preceding game. No grenades, no giving commands to crewmembers, can't swap/manage weapons of crewmembers, knockdown/revival system is gone. Most weapons are hilariously inaccurate, as usual. At least the death/checkpoint system is relatively snappy, and a bit stylistic. And shaky camera is enabled by default, TURN ON STEADY CAM IN CONTROLS (that's a weird place to hide that type of option). I know it's part of the game's aesthetic, but it's stupid regardless. I made the mistake of turning it off the last literal 5 minutes of the game. Also, cartoonishly abrupt ending, even worse than the first. It has it's good moments, but not a ton of them. Wish the first game had additional polish. Even without more polish, it's still a bit better than the second game. Still don't know why they got IO to make 2 big dumb third person action shooters. That's not really their forte. They excel at third/first person stealth games, AKA Hitman.
Certainly not terrible, but generally not great either. The schut is aight, although weapons tend to fire a lot more crooked than you expect, even with very controlled bursts, and crouching... Partners can be idiotic at times. Has a few somewhat terrible stealth sections, mainly the jungle one. I hear the sequel is better. Very. Abrupt. Endings. Game is most likely better in co-op. Kane's daughter looks like they laser scanned a microwaved ham. She was born 40. Ra ra ra ra ra. Ra ra ra ra ra.
UnderRail is a post apocalyptic turn based RPG, similar to Fallout. However, just about the entire game takes place in an underground Metro, like... well, the Metro games. You can go with various types of shooty bang bang, PSI powers, or be unga bunga melee man. You can also specialize in traps, stealth, lockpicking, cleaning your neighbors toilet for the low low price of $4.99. The usual RPG skill affairs. This game is generally great, but it's kind of nonsensical and DIFFICULT at times, mainly towards the end of the game... especially the final area. Oh god. The final area. Nightmares for days. I still haven't beaten the game to this day. The point of no return final area consists of this ABSOLUTELY GIGANTIC, NON-LINEAR, AND WINDING series of open areas and tunnels and interiors and such. That also has respawning enemies. You have to go on a gigantic key item fetch quest to open this f*** all massive nuke proof door to get to the final boss. If you're even remotely allergic to high difficulty, START THIS GAME ON EASY. Don't worry, it's still plenty challenging on easy. If you're still having trouble, you can always do a New Game+ by starting a NG, then importing your old character. There is a level limit, though, so be careful. Pick your character build carefully. I hear the DLC / Expansion apparently fixes some stuff in the main game, dunno if that's true or not, guess I'll find out when I return to this game in 2033.
Played this game a bunch when I was a child, could never beat it. Found this many years later on GoG after a vague memory of it farted out of my brain. I still can't beat it. I like the weird car and character designs. They're pretty weird. It's a cool racing game... once you figure out the controls and probably apply 10 billion patches. Also the game takes place in the year 2020. Lol.
Now would you kindly finish up Starfield and get Elder Scrolls VI out of pre-pre-pre-pre-pre production. And it wouldn't kill you to also include Oldrim + Expansions with this for various reasons. Vanilla Skyrim could fit on a digital cracker and could run on freaking 32 bit Windows XP. This cannot. In fact, this ALMOST fits on a BD-R, but is just a few hundred MB too big (happens every time, and it pisses me off when stuff just barely can't fit on there) Actual review: Skyrim simultaneously dumbs down stuff from previous titles in the series, but at the same time makes stuff more complex in certain areas. You can dual wield magic/weapons in this, in previous games you could not. You finally have a sprint ability, but speed is fixed (speed stat tossed), and you can't jump while sprinting, meh. Less individual armor options. They yanked out the basic stat system, but at the same time gave each skill loads of perks, but at the same time getting rid of several skills/conjoining them with others, including HAND TO HAND AND TURNING IT INTO A JOKE (Heavy Armor gauntlet punch perk aside) Gameplay wise, unarmed combat handles like GARBAGE. You just punch with your right hand over and over again, it's like an afterthought or something. They should get the people who worked on Cyberpunk 2077/Zeno Clash first person HTH combat, it's actually decent in those games. The rest of the combat handles fine, and finally you can shield/bash to finally say f*** you to any block happy enemies, instead of the ol' resorting to blasting them with magic every time they block. Other than that, it's Skyrim. You quest, you collect alchemy ingredients for hours in the wilds, mash them in a mortar and pestle, find the alchemy exploit, become the Nerevarine Ash Yam Alchemy/Smithing God with really OPly broken gear, you explode peoples heads with your voice and don't afraid of anything, then you send a giant flying into the sky with your 900 damage alchemy exploit improved iron dagger.
