This is a good game. But... This is NOT a game suitable for grown-ups. It's also NOT suitable for kids. For those in between? Yeah. Highly recommended. If you have a job, a wife, kids... The mechanics of this game seem to be deliberately designed to piss you off and waste your time. If you are still living an adolescent lifestyle, I cannot recommend this game highly enough. The setting is immersive, the story is captivating (if a bit cliched), and the characters are imbued with... well... character. There's lots of blood, and even some b**bs. You will spend hours on end immersed in this experience. If, however, you are living life as an actual adult, you should probably give this game a pass. The combat system is innovative and original, but it's also clunky and hard as hell to get the hang of. Even if you nerf it with mods, you are going to have to grind like hell to "get gud," as the kids say. The kids DO still say that, right? In any event... Expect to spend 10-15 hours just practicing the combat system before you can really fight even basic enemies. This is fine for the kiddies. But if you only have an hour or two a night to play you're looking at a 1-2 week grind just to learn how to swing a sword and shoot a bow without a reticle. This game is also inconsistent with an adult lifestyle in that you cannot save manually without a save item, the fairly scarce and expensive "savior schnapps." If the baby starts to cry, your boss calls you into the office, or the wife decides she "just wants to talk" in the middle of your game you may have to deal with kissing your progress for the evening goodbye. At best you'll have to throw away a pretty sizable pile of your hard-earned silver coins. For the "Get Gud" teenyboppers this is probably the best RPG out there. For those of us with real jobs, mortgages and kids? Not so much.
Not a bad game. Kinda buggy, from time to time, but still... overall... a worthwhile piece of game design history. Buy it... On sale. The early parts of the game are a blast. The environment is grim and lonely. The FPS and survival horror is a hard mix to pull off, and this game manages to do a decent job of it. The world is fairly open allowing you to set your own goals and goals and achieve them. The story is convoluted and only vaguely described, but that's fine because... like I said, the world is open enough to set your own goals. The downside is that the story is not engaging. By the time I reached the center of the zone, I had no desire to continue playing. I had a ton of money and equipment. It seemed like the best move at this point would be to shoot my way out of the zone and find a nice Ukrainian girl to settle down with. Still... I trusted the designers and moved into the center of the zone. Mistake. The endgame is... bad. After tens of hours playing in an open world, the final stage becomes increasingly linear. At one point I flashed on Super Mario levels where the key to success has nothing to do with skill but is, instead, about memorizing the level. The game becomes a spamfest on the quicksave. As a young man, I took a certain pride in grinding through the last two levels. Now? As a veteran gamer from the days of Pac Man? It's just aggravating. And once you do hump your way to the finale, the game thanks you by stripping you completely of all the agency you have spent the last 10-20 hours engaging. You spend 20 hours to make a wish, and when you get to the end the game makes the wish for you. This game was an ambitious grand experiment that only partially succeeded. If you are a student of gaming history, give it a play. Just don't expect too much from it.
Part of my problem with this game is that I started it with unreasonably high expectations. If you like action RPGs you will love this game. The combat system is rich and visually stunning. As an RPG? Meh. It's not a bad game, it's just not a particularly good one. The dialogs are linear, with player agency boiled down to being able to agree or disagree. The plot is written by game designers, not actual writers, and it shows. The cutscenes are beautiful, but oddly empty. My biggest complaint is with the pawn system. While their two dimensionality is cleverly explained away by the world-builders, it is obvious that the real function of the pawn system is to give the game a party dynamic without having to do the hard work of actually creating interesting, dynamic, meaningful NPCs to act as companions. This is a perfectly adequate action game, but it's a pretty weak RPG.
There are a lot of misleading reviews here, so I want to throw in my 2 cents. NWN is the best CRPG ever made for multiplayer coop play. That hasn't changed. Has Beamdog cheese-bagged consumers by locking the diamond edition? Yes. But that doesn't change the quality of the game. Has Beamdog enhanced the game? No. Not really, but that doesn't change the quality of the game either. Is NWN still worth $20? That's a pretty subjective question, but I paid it (back before I had money to spend on this kind of thing). While there are plenty of valid reasons to criticize Beamdog, they can be credited with keeping this game alive. They haven't contributed much to "enhancing" the game, and they certainly could have. The original campaign has ALWAYS needed a prelude chapter... But , no. It's the same game. Same outdated graphics. Same boring, cliched, voice sets. What Beamdog HAS done is fixed broken game functions, and they continue to support the game. As far as I'm concerned that's a service to cRPG fans everywhere. Neverwinter nights was, and is likely to remain for the foreseeable future, the best online co-op RPG experience in gaming. The included module construction toolset and DM client puts this system in a league of it's own. It is fully backwards compatible with old fan content and mods, and while the game itself is, as mentioned, basically unchanged they have added some minor, but useful, functionality to the toolset. I have been a DM since 1980 and I just bought copies of this game for my entire gaming group as a fathers day treat for myself. I am looking forward to DMing a custom module for them, probably more than they are looking forward to playing it. They would, I am quite certain, prefer to continue our normal 5th Edition Fantasy Grounds campaign. That will change after session 1. It ALWAYS does. Buy this game. If it's not worth $20 to you wait for a sale and pay $5, but BUY IT.
Great game. The artwork is absolutely beautiful. The AI is excellent. Battles unfold quickly and realistically. Control over your regiments is EXTREMELY limited. The AI is pretty good about switching from line to column formation for long marches, but you cannot switch from line to skirmish or double line. The game ignores regimental commanders and troop quality doesn't seem to be an issue. Routed units recover far too quickly. A replay function would be nice. The battle is broken into "episodes." Personally I would prefer a single large board battle. Overall this is one of the best Civil War battlefield sims I have ever played. It's not Sid Meier's Antietam... but it's close, and it's MUCH sexier.
Let's start with a warning: This game is SHORT. Don't expect more than a few hours of gametime, and it's NOT replayable. Consider that when looking at the price point. Now that's out of the way... Watching video games lurch their way off the kid's shelf and into the realm of literature is very exciting, and this was a passing fair shot at that target which fell sadly short of it's mark. Kids will call this a walking simulator and wave their little fists with cries of, "It's not a game!" It is a game, of course, if you look at the strict definition of the word, but in all fairness "walking simulator" is a pretty accurate description. It's a linear story with an inevitable end. It's a frightening story to be sure, but still just a story. The only ageny the player has in this game is how well he understands what's happening, and this is where the game falls terribly short of it's mark. It could have been more. Most games shooting for this target can't be any more than "walking simulators." We just don't have the programming language to describe non-player characters as actual people, and until we do the idea of "games as literature" in a truly interactive sense is simply not possible. This game could have done more. It was a personal journey, but even the most personal journeys are not travelled without making choices. This game could have been great. The end could have been truly devastating if player choice had a hand in it. Instead it comes off as predictable and a little bit hackneyed. The devs settled for making a game that was just "okay," and that's actually infuriatingly sad.
I bought this game after seeing several YouTubers claim that it had been extensively patched and no longer suffered from poor optimization. Not true, from where I sit. After a couple hours of tweaking I managed to get the start screen to pop up... with no start menu. Uninstalled and all files deleted. I can't speak to the quality of the game, because the game wouldn't start, but the code is still garbage.
Personally I'm REALLY enjoying this game. Full disclosure: I am a huge BSG fan and that may color my opinion, but I am also VERY critical of strategy games and this one has managed to capture my attention. I did not expect much from this title, but I have been pleasantly surprised. The game is VERY thoughtful. If you're not prepared to seriously consider every move you won't fare well. Battles are short and furious in real time, but can take an hour or more to actually play out. Encounters are NOT balanced to your fleet strength. There WILL be times when your fleet has no recourse but to run, especially early on when your fleets are small and under-powered. For a little extra difficulty I like to play with persistent damage turned on, forcing me to repair my fleets each turn. I have very few criticisms of the game. The unit types are limited. Upgrades don't change strategy much. The replay mode is pretty, but the cool BSG style movies it shows you don't offer any review value. They should offer a map mode version of the replays so you can actually review your battle tactics after-action. The strategic board is small. All of these shortfalls are completely forgivable, though. A solid 4. Must play for BSG fans, and a must-at-least-see for turn based space sim fans. If this game supported modding it would be a perfect five.
