I enjoyed the story, and for someone who was not familiar with Der Swarze Auge Universe, the setting was surprisingly interesting. To spoil the story a little bit, you basically get framed for something you didn't do, bust out of the prison thanks to a certain dwarf, to then go on a journey to seek the answers to your conundrum. The companions have presence and the voice acting was absolutely superb. I do however feel that the game loses some of its steam after you deal with the "Alchemist" - story perspective. In terms of the system, it is a turned based game with a steep learning curve that at times felt complicated, and at others not as intuitive as it should have been. I did however power through it to the point where I managed to grasp it, and even started to appreciate some of the decisions it gave me. Forget going into this blind however, open up an online guide for the sake of your sanity. Also, forget thinking that if you roll Wizard you're gonna end up becoming a God of the battlefiend. You're a buff and utility character in this game. However, there's potential to make your Wizard into a hybrid that also uses archery, or even does some melee. The class balance is also all over the place with a lot of abilities being poorly implemented from TTRPG, and thus certain options become less good compared to others. For instance, I wanted to play a Rapier character with a back-up sword to deal with certain enemies that are immune to piercing damage (undead), I found out that this was strictly inferior to 2h Hammerblow approach, which does 3 times as much damage for less effort. While the game is interesting with some challenging fights in the beginning, once you unlock more abilities and spells (like hammerblow and haste), the game really degenerates and becomes too easy. The final battles do not offer the same kind of challenge the early ones did. The narrative ending was a bit of a letdown as well, like they run out of resources and had to cut it short.
Adds Tiefling Race, Kineticist class, and 1/2 companions in a rather unique situation. The race is powerful, enough to give you pause between standard Human/Aasimar conundrum, mostly due to Motherless subrace of Tiefling, which gets a free bite that helps with Bite/Trip stacking. Kineticist as a class is absolutely broken, to the point where a lot of encounters become super-easy due to their cheese. I personally avoid playing the class and pretend it does not exist for the sake of my own "artificial and fair difficulty", but hey, maybe you like that kind of thing! The companions are...well, barebones I suppose. You do notice that it's a DLC: they do not have party-camp banter, their quests are somewhat boring and their presence is non-existent outside of intro and 3 hastily made zones for the DLC's sake. Yes, they do comment on some main quests from time to time, but that's about it. From gameplay perspective they're probably the strongest companions you can have in this game, assuming you know how to use and abuse the Kineticist classes, if you don't, they're kinda meh. You can also romance them I suppose (both even), if you're into that kind of thing, I usually however do not care much about those in games, thus it had very little appeal to me. Honestly, safe to skip unless you're into romance and munchkism, or buy on sale I suppose. (I've tried to do my research online regarding the banter, and some sources say that they do indeed have banter, but when I tried to spam rest to see if they had, I never saw anything.)
I did not play the standalone, as it does not appeal to someone like me. Fortunately the main game gets a smaller version of the dungeon (including its big bad), which is the one I review here. The story is simple and straight forward, almost like an after-thought, but passable - I enjoyed it for what it had to offer. It's not very involved however, and is mostly told by the items you come across in the dungeon - left behind by those who came before you and ended up succumbing to the ancient evil sleeping in it. If you're not the kind of guy who reads the description found on items you find, then you won't really notice a story at all. Maybe that's okay. Some folks just want to have more heads to bash, and this dungeon offers that. The dungeon consists of 16 floors, split into 4 parts that are gated behind chapters. In chapter 2 you can only do up to, and including, 4th floor. After that you have to wait till next chapter etc. Once floors are cleared you will face the final boss. The encounters themselves are a mixed bag; some are empty filler in typical owlcat fashion, others are interesting. Nothing difficult if you know your way around the pathfinder system - stack buffs on top of buffs and everything will die. At times can be frustrating, and there's a bit of a learning curve. The items sold by the npc's as well as the ones you find in the game expand your choices a little bit. The dungeon loot is okay, but nothing to write home about outside of final boss. If you're more into story, this is a safe skip, as there is no dialogue or banter regarding the dungeon. It also lacks character compared to things like Durlag's tower, as it's just repeat of same rooms that are then slightly rearranged. If you don't like main game, but like the system you can play standalone and you'll get your money's worth there I suppose. I completed this once, and never really bothered on subsequent runs, that's how forgettable it is.
Showcases the story from Baron Varn's perspective - the guy who won his noble title at the same time as you. The story is decent, I won't spoil it, but I found the clash of realpolitik cynicism vs idealism refreshing. Cephal was a breath of fresh air and it's a shame that he did not survive in main game. My only issue is that you don't get to learn how Vordekai managed to overrun the barony, as Main game's big bad highjacked the story in the final dungeon. In terms of actual gameplay, this is where it all drags it down for me. The encounters are way overtuned. The first main battle in this game is against a band of Goblins who have an alchemist in their ranks. His bombs one shot most of your party except for your tank, who ends up dying in 2 hits. It's managable once you figure out that you need to buff, resistence and all that, but it's still too strong for a first encounter. The "boss" of goblin-zone is a joke compared to his minion, which thematically is very lame. You will notice that this continues on, as on the next map, you will face creatures that are sometimes twice your level, who sometimes can get lucky crits and 1shot your tank! As if that isn't enough, General, Varn and Cephal can't die or it's game over, and a lot of creatures in this game are capable of 1shotting them. It actually got so bad that I decided to give Varn a crossbow and let him sit in the back to prevent reloading. Fortunately there's no time limit, so what I ended up doing is using all my buffs on each difficult fight and then spam rest to get a new one. It gets better once you level up to 7-8, but 5-6 is an absolute slog. The frustrating low point is that you end up losing both Varn and Cephal, and thus only have 4 companions to clear out the final dungeon. Have someone else to cover for trickery and lore skills, otherwise you'll miss some loot/xp. The items that carry over to main game do not justify the effort. With more development and vision could have been 5/5. Too bad.
The story follows a young nobleman/woman thrown into the machiavellian world of intrigue. If I had to pick a theme, it would be an exploration of honor vs realpolitik, of morality vs realism. Are you willing embrace political - and wordly for that matter - cynisism, or will you live according your values? Each choice carries a consequence, and the author of the story tries to explore it in a manner that I found refreshing - it lacks the biases and hamfisted strawmen of today's arbiters of discourse have gotten all too comfortable with. The gameplay is unique and different. It's squadbased, but with a distinct lack of freedom of movement: You're free to move your units in several ways, but once they're engaged in close combat they must hold their ground until they defeat enemy unit or die in the process. As your units level up they will acquire more abilities, mirroring real life experience (experienced soldier is worth several soldiers without experience), this opens up a more tactical debth - you will notice that as they level they get ability to disengage, hold the line, wait for enemy to approach them etc. The units are separated into 3 categories, with some in-betweens of course: - Frontline - Ranged - Utility Each of those units can be upgraded into 2-4 different upgradable units. Some units are clearly better but others, like the nobleman, but he levels up slower and requires 10 times the amount of gold you would spend on a cheaper unit. On that note, gear costs gold, and it's not always endless, so you can't just spam 10 knights and win, because then cheaper units with better gear will destroy them. Some units if built and equipped properly can hold their own vs fully equipped knights, but you gotta know what you are doing. Final score? 5 Stars due to uniqueness of gameplay and narrative, challenging battles and surprising depth. If you're not a lowest common denominator "Nugamer", this game is well worth your time.
I like to think of this game as 2 in 1. First half is set in Dark Ages, where I personally believe World of Darkness setting is at its most interesting, and the second half is set in contemporary late 90s which is also interesting but nowhere near as cool as vampires in plate armor. You start off this game as a human who then gets embraced after showing he's worth - which is destroying a Tzimisce vanguard consisting of tons of szlachta and a single young Tzimisce Vampire infesting a silver mine. Some may think that it's not "lore friendly", but we have to keep in mind that humans like Christof who dedicated their entire lives to combat, are on top of tht boosted by "faith" and have access to armor + holy water are more than a match against young inexperienced vampires. Sure if this was an experienced vamp Christof would get his ass handed to him, but lorewise it's a warsetting between Ventrue/Tremere alliance and Tzimisce, which means that both sides are gonna be embracing footsoldiers like crazy and they aren't exactly toptier combatants when they're this young - so it makes sense (sorta). Gameplay is archaic, but enjoyable. I grew up with mid to late 90s and early 2000s games so I felt at home. It's point and click mostly. The difficulty comes from managing party, its builds and its abilities/blood, which was sort of interesting. A wrong build will suck, while a correct one will make game stupidly easy. I played lorewise, so I maxed potence/celerity and physical stats and ignored everything else and Cristoff was destroying everything solo - especially after he got the magical 2h bloodstealing sword. You get access to many companions who will join and leave you through game, which I found to be a breath of fresh air. Situations and self-interests often clash which is why it makes no sense that companions should stick with you throughout entire games - it's a shame that industry moved away from this (though I understand why they did). Dungeons can drag on tho
Frustrating, ambitions, hardcore and.....a waste of your time unfortunately. I wanted to like this game, and hell, I really did enjoy what it offered in terms of party-management and challenging fights, but it's been seriously kept down by the rest of the tedium. Lets start with my first and foremost issue with this game: Loading time. At first it doesn't seem like a big deal, but then later down the line you will notice that at certain points of this game you will spend more time on loading screans than on playing this game. Moving world map, and your party got tired? Welp time to waste time, and I know that you can skip the dialogue, but even if you do that, that still eats your time. Got a quest in your capital? Good luck, leaving throne room to go into mainhub city grants you the longest loading time in the game - at later acts I spent 30-60sec per loading screan... Like come on Owlcat, I just want to play the game, not stare at those damn loading screams over and over. Related to the first issue, and more of an infamous one at this point because everyone else have written the same: Kingdom management sucks. It really does. Not only is a waste of your time, but it's also tedious as hell. Granted you do have an option of skipping it altogether, when I did that, I missed some important story-related tidbits so keep that in mind. If you wish to see the story, you kinda have to play this bullshit game. And not to say that I do not enjoy these kinds of games, in fact I actually do - but only when it's done well. And the issue here is that kingdom management is an unfinished mess that loses it's appeal rather quickly. Other issues include: Horrible companion writing - save for a few decent ones like Jubi and Nok-Nok, issues with balance (game is hard early, then gets super easy later), poor itemisation (want to play with javelins? Tough luck almost none in this game), some companions are forced upon you (I want freedom in that regard). I did like the books tho.
I'm not a shill or a blind supporter who's going to defend this trainwreck, but with that said I do think that Beamdog could have been saved from this fiasco had they adopted a different storyline. Forget Baldurs Gate, and forget it's established characters and stories; focus 100% on being a nameless adventurer who got captured by a powerful Drow sorcerer who has taken you into the Underdark where you - after defeating him, try to escape as a powerful Drow house in tandem with other dangerous Underdark elements are trying to hunt you down. There. Interesting story, decent premise and it doesn't ruin any of the established lore and on top of that even gives potential for Beamdog to hide it's obvious bad writing. I mean lets face it, whoever wrote BG1 and BG2 was a Shakespeare in comparison to Beamdogs toddler "I'm gonna make it so AWSUM" Michael Bay reject who drank a bit too much of the dominant coolaid narrative of that timeline. TL:DR: Black Pits should have been a longer storyline about nameless adventurers escaping underdark. This would have "saved" the company, but they were too arrogant. But then again, had they actually done SoD well we would have had BG3 delivered by Beamdog so I'm grateful that it did not happen anyway. I'll take Divinity Original "Baldurs Gate" 3 any time of the day over anything Beamdog can come up with. As for the game itself, there's not much to say beyond what others have already pointed out. It's alright in some places where there's very little story like Temple of Cyric which was a highlight for me, but the rest is so bad that you kinda can't go over the lowest rating. Bad story in your face preachy dialogue, little potential for roleplay, reused assets from Icewind Dale including it's final boss, linear gameplay that offers little freedom and overpowered items that are in many cases even better than some BG2 items.
Wasn't a huge fan when it came out, but it has since grown on me enough to subplant HoMM2 from it's 2nd place into 3rd. So now it's HoMM3>HoMM5>HoMM2>The rest. So to those who are familiar with HoMM 1-3 universe, this isn't it, like 4th, they decided to scrap everything and begin anew, although in this case there's no cool lore explanation like we had in 4, so you just have to roll with it. The Lore byitself is less of a mess than originals, but also more cliche. The only bad thing was that it lacked those elaborate novels written in the game - I rather enjoyed them which was a bit of a bummer. Anyway, so gameplay is changed in the regard to speed, because now speed isn't the only thing that decides who goes first because they have also introduced "Initiative". I'm not a huge fan to this day, but it does add an element of complexity that 3rd lacked - but overall it doesn't matter enough since fast units have usually good initiative - with notable exceptions. The AI is retarded and on top of that takes forever with its turns, on top of that you can't "alt-tab" because the game freezes til you come back allowing you witness those extra seconds tick by as the meter fills up. This is a huge issue for me on custom maps, but in campaigh its tolerable since a lot of it is scripted to a point where it seems smart. Campaign by itself is a bit of a hit or miss in terms of story/lore, but it does offer some interesting challenges down the line. Playing this on max difficulty heroic has been a trial which I enjoyed. Hero & Hero skillwheel; so yeah first and foremost you can now attack units with hero. I think it's a bad change personally but yeah, it does grow on you. Skillwheel is more balanced than HoMM3 and 4, and there are more useful abilities. There are also ultimately abilities you can acquire once you unlock specific skills, but I usually skip them since most of them are not worth it - with notable exceptions. Theres a mod that fixes most of the issues btw.
You start off as a heir to a fallen Jarl who left to you a mess of a Jarldom that does not have much of a future. Stuck picking up your father's pieces you're beset by conflicts and problems from your nearest neighbours, who view you as an easy picking in terms of expansion so it falls to you to strengthen your lands. As you progress into story it becomes obvious that things in good old Denmark are pretty much set in stone, and you have no hope at carving out your piece without first sailing towards the greener pastures - namely England. TL:DR: Basic barebones story. So what's new? Character customization: standard stuff, a bit old and barebones for a 2017 game but it's indie. Doesn't really matter what features you pick as you will not get to see the face of your character after the creation screen. The only choices that matter are gender, colors and size (thin, average, bulky). Tedium and feature bloat (crafting/party management/task management): I'm of the opinion that they took it too far this time around. Yes Conquistador was barebones as it gets, but that wasn't bad because more doesn't always equal to better, and frankly if I have scroll 5-7 pages of different abilities to spend my points on you have done gone overboard - on top of that most abilities are useless. Real actual RPG settlements with walking and talking sprites and auto-travel via map: Actual upgrade from the first one since world exploration and travel were its weakest parts. Felt really immersive - great job! Followers with better stories and personalities: though they're all cliche and barebones and nothing to write home about. Outside of that it's the same old, subpar class balance - actually worse this time around, and meh AI, but their credit it actually seemed smarter! Obviously you'll still stomp it once you learn the combat intricasies, but it won't rollover in same fashion as Conquistador did once you learned how to properly use the units strengths and weaknesses.
