GOG Patron
Near-Mage is about as beautiful and silly as it could be. The hand drawn backgrounds are fantastic, some of the characters and various creatures look great, while some are just plain silly. And that's OK. In terms of gameplay, in the traditional adventure game sense it is a bit bare bones, as the puzzles aren't what you would call difficult, but they give you something that most adventure games don't, and that is multiple ways of solving them. Like, imagine if the duck puzzle in The Longest Journey gave you the option to not do something insane to solve it. Well, Near-Mage does the opposite, a lot of puzzles have multiple ways of being solved, some choices have consequences, some have provide moral dilemas, and others you just do because the game lets you and you want to see just how far you can go before someone tells you "STOP BLOWING PEOPLE UP". This isn't a violent game, but I've racked up a higher bodycount already than in most other adventure games, including Monkey Island 3 (Guybrush totally murdered that guy at the top of the cliff). Maybe the only thing that comes close is Space Quest, but that's only because Roger himself had so many creative ways to get himselved clobbered. Here, it's the other way arround. Illy can be a menace to society if you play the game right... or wrong. It's fun, it looks nice, the voices are good, the music is fine, the story is OK, it's got a few rough edges, but for something made by 3 people it is a blast.
I used to have the demo version of this, limited to 100 turns, I played it for years. Eventually I managed to find the full game. I also played that for years. It still amazes me how much you can do with some BMP and TXT files. Were it to have a bit better UI, which fits with larger screens, it would still be my go to 4X space game today. I do, however, have issues with the AI basically constantly trying to find reasons to go to war with you. Especially when the Drushoka and Eee (mortal enemies in the lore) ally themselves against you.
I've made it a point to recently go through some of the games that have been constantly declared the worst in history, and Daikatana was among the first. I've found a lot of things that made me see why it would be called that. The extremely annoying first levels. The suicidal AI companions that you can't even leave alone without them finding a way to get themselves murdered. Some weapons that are rather counterproductive. Physics that tend to favor people who manage to somehow never make contact with the floor, actually succeed in getting myself killed by trying to get unstuck out of secret passage. And yet, there are these moments, like when you're alone, with a bunch of disks, ricocheting them off the walls to clear a room of enemies that's just amazingly fun. Though sadly, such moments are broken up by larger portions of babysitting Superfly and what's her face. Oh, but make no mistake, it's a lot better as a game than a lot of the FPS games in recent years. The fact that a flawed game like Daikatana makes the Medal of Honor reboot (the one that got a sequel, which I'm told is even worse) look even worse, is baffling. Give it a go.
Although they've been around for quite some time, I've only managed to play all of the Blackwell games last year, back to back, in two days while on vacation. They are fantastic. Far from perfect, but still fantastic. The main issue I have with the games is that most of the puzzles tend to be overly simplistic, or so old that I can just auto-pilot trough them. Stuff like the penny-screwdriver or the newspaper under the door to get the key. There's also the need to sometimes combine clues, so the character can reach conclusions I already did, in order to progress, which could get annoying if you forget to do it. But that's besides the point. The main focus of the game is it's story, and especially it's characters. The dynamic between Rosangela Blackwell, a journalist that recently discovered she is a medium and can see spirits, and Joey Malone, a man who's been dead since the 30's, is just amazing. They really come of as believable characters, and seeing their interaction over the course of 3 games, and then seeing Joey and Rosa's aunt in Blackwell Unbound, as they help lost spirits find peace and move on, is the reason I keep wanting to play these games. They have more to them than just the characters. The story is well done, having elements that are somewhat based in reality from a subtle to a very direct way. The graphics, though they could have been better in Deception when it comes to the characters, are great. And the music is just amazing. I'm not sure if it's included in the pack on GOG, but look for Epileptic Fish in SoundCloud. If you haven't played these games yet, and you're a fan of adventures, or just stories with good characters, I encourage you to give them a try. Also check out the two cartoons with Rosa an Joey that are on the web, they're short, but very funny. Hopefully the fifth game will come along soon, because I really want to know what happens next.
This was actually one of the first Might and Magic games I've played. I know, it's sad, but at that time, the older titles weren't anywhere to be seen where I lived. I liked the concept, especially how the classes evolved and how unique they were, but I never managed to finish it because of several game braking bugs. Quests wouldn't finish, sequences would become stuck, and all sorts of stuff that made me throw the game out the window. Still, if those ever got fixed, the end game wouldn't be horrible, but it would be nowhere near the older titles. For me, World of Xeen is still the best one, and compared to that one, Writ of Fate sort of bites.
After finishing Broken Sword 4, it left me with a strange sensation. On one hand, I liked the puzzles and the control a lot more. Moving away from the mobile phone-esque block puzzles that BS3 had was really appreciated, but for me the game sort of dropped the ball on the story. It tried it's best to be like the first Broken Sword, it had the meeting between two strangers in unusual circumstances, it had the manuscript that needed to be deciphered, it had the fake villain, but it lacked the charm that the first one had. Well, it lacked Nico for most of it, so that may have been it. There was also a very big lack of Paris, and a proper ending for that matter. Much like the third game, Broken Sword 4 had it's ups and downs. Hopefully, if they ever make another game, and if it's not a 2D hand drawn adventure, it will have the gameplay of BS4, but a story more in the lines of BS3.