I loved playing this on the PS3. More so than Darksiders 1. I thought it would be great to be able to play this again and a remastered version at that. Unfortunately, remastering it for PC apparently also means introducing various bugs and getting a second class version of the game, at least on GOG. There are weird lighting glitches all over the place. Bounce light is there in one camera angle and disappears with just the slightest turn of the camera. It's very reproducible, so I'm not sure how it was missed. There is also some pretty bad shadow striping throughout the environments. Poor frame rates and stuttering that doesn't go away despite adjusting all the settings. Poor controller support means an Xbox 360/One controller has to be plugged in before the game is started and if you want to play the game on a Steamlink, a controller is out of the question entirely. There is also no support for a PS4 controller period. To top it all off, we don't get achievements for the game on GOG which I did not realize when I bought this game and would not have bought it had I noticed. Nice, higher resolution textures though.
Definitely a game worth picking up if you like Baldur's Gate, Torment, Icewind Dale, Pillars of Eternity, etc. However, I started to suspect this after POE2 and Pathfinder just confirmed it for me. I really just don't like Realtime with Pause gameplay. I tolerated with those games, but I usually just end up spamming my way through the combat however I can. It's just not that enjoyable to me. Fallout 1/2, Arcanum, Divinity Original Sin 2, XCom, etc are far more enjoyable for me. So, for me, this game just didn't hit the mark. That said, I really like everything else about the game. The characters seemed interesting. The camping system was great. The game itself was pretty. I enjoyed the world map. The story worked for me. That combat just drags it down for me. I don't know how much more of this game will get updated, but it would be cool to see a turn based mode get added like POE2. Don't let my dislike for RtwP disuade you from playing this though. Its a real gem!
I really enjoyed the visual style of this game. It really went a long way to making this a scary game. I think it was the audio that really sells it though. That ambient audio just fills you with a sense of never ending dread. No idea what was going on with the story as it was just really weird, which I think adds to the horror even more. However, I really hate crafting. I hate crafting in every game I have ever played and I think it really drags this game down. I must have missed that crafting was a part of this game in the game's description (that or I assumed it wouldn't be very prominent). I wish I could fully enjoy this game. Maybe if there was a no-crafting mode. I don't want to knock my score down too far, though, because it does so much right. Check the game out if you enjoy horror and crafting. Unfortunately, it wasn't for me.
The game looked nice enough. I was enjoying the music as soon as the game started as well. The intro mission demonstrated some nice gameplay mechanics even. But I was instantly turned off by the game's brand of humor. It just isn't for me. Singing about killing demons and fart jokes? No thanks.
I've gotta stop buying games because of their artstyle. This game looks so gorgeous, I just had to play it. I quickly realized I should have just skipped through a few Let's Play videos to see all the prettiness. The gameplay in this is just bad. I should have known better given that so many oldschool platformers were bad, even when they were originally released. Its kind of why the video game market crashed back before Nintendo came around (though even they couldn't stop the flood of bad games being made at the time). I was trying to overlook the gameplay, instead focusing on how beautiful all the hand drawn artwork was. The characters you encounter are fantastic and they are great reimaginings of their original retro counterparts. The developers have made it super easy to compare the characters with their originals (as well as everything else in the game). With just a press of a button, you can switch between the original look of the game and back (and boy was it ugly back then). Alas, good looks can't overcome the terrible platforming found here, as much as I wish it could. I really am conflicted about this review, but I have to remember that gameplay comes first as it is a game. Maybe the developers will make a sequel that overhauls the gameplay while keeping this amazing new artstyle.
Skimming through some of the reviews here, it seems that people have different complaints than I do. I didn't get very far in the game. I can't speak to the length of the game, the challenge, or whatever else. I don't like the game because of the kind of character you play. I know, I read the synopsis. It's made pretty clear you are playing as an evil character (or perhaps the lesser of evils). I thought I'd be okay with that and it might be interesting. It wasn't for me though. I should have known ahead of time, given that I never play evil characters in any game that gives you the choice. But I like having that choice. This mostly takes that choice away. I did enjoy the way you create your backstory in the beginning though. One other thing I didn't really like was the art style. It just fealt very flat, and I don't mean in the 2d vs 3d sense. It was missing something, perhaps a bit more flair.
I really enjoyed this and in a lot of ways, more so than the first game. Just to get it out of the way, my biggest gripe is still that it's realtime with pause instead of turnbased. So, I really loved seeing the characters returning for this game. Eder is especially better than ever! The new characters are also excellent additions, though I do miss some of the characters that didn't return. The various stories are all well told and interesting, with the main plot tieing up far more consisely than the first and better all around. I just wish the game had a more focused way of distributing them. Once you get to Neketaka, you spend a really long time there before being sent back out of the city. Or maybe thats just how I play these types of games. I try to get as much done in a single location before moving on and there is just so much to do inside Neketaka before you can move on. I also didn't like the ship to ship combat. After a few ship battles, I just ended up resorting to storming the opponents ship every time. I really enjoyed the new setting as well. It took me a while to get the hang of who was who as far as factions are concerned, but eventually, i picked it up. Really gotta make some tough choices in this game, which I also liked. I think overall I enjoyed this one more than the first. Hopefully the few bugs that are in the game get ironed out before then next DLC, which I will definitely pick up.
Played through this the first time on PS3. I remember it being hard enough that I had to restart a few times. And I was okay with that. Playing through it again on pc and I really don't remember it being so random. Maybe I was more tolerant of it back then, but now, I find it incredibly irritating. Enough to make me stop playing it. It doesn't help that the controls are kind of wonky on PC and the graphics aren't much to look at. Clearly, it was designed for consoles. I also don't like that I'm forced to wait for all the actions to play out. As in, I'd like to tell a unit to move and not have to wait for that to happen before I can switch to another unit. The game is just kind of clunky. If XCOM 2 comes to GOG, I'll pick that up. I'm sure it'll be better.
I suggest reading more on the game before it's purchased. At a glance, it appears to be a tactics styled game. Something along the lines of a simpler XCOM or Final Fantasy Tactics. This very much isn't that. This is much closer to a puzzle game. One in which the primary path to progression is player death. I've never understood the appeal of this sort of gameplay mechanic. It just feels tedious to me and a cheap and easy way to extend the length of a game. It's simple pixel art style is pleasant to look at and well done, but gets old very quickly given the frequency in which the player will see the same thing over and over again. The music is nice as well, but suffers from the same issue.
I had hoped this was going to be a good game, but it really fell short in the end. Combat never quite clicked with me. It felt very random and always seemed as though I were missing something crucial about it. It never felt as though there was much variety to the combat either. Graphically, the game felt rather bland. The camera work was more distracting than anything else. It was never responsive and intimate enough to make it capture anything interesting going on. A few of the story oriented characters were kind of interesting, but the lack of voice work and emoting in dialogue scenes really hampered everything that was going on. At no point do I end up getting attached to any of my mechwarriors so their loss is rather meaningless. Mechwarrior stats didn't really feel like they did much of anything so it was hard to get excited about their progression. Many of the ship upgrades did a poor job of explaining their purpose and end up feeling like an artificial roadblock to further progression. After about 14 hours of playtime, I think thats enough to have a decent feel for the rest of the it. Overall, it's simply a lackluster game.
