I liked Dragonfall, but I couldn't play the last mission due to a game-breaking bug. I vowed never to play another Shadowrun game, but here I am anyway, playing Hong Kong. So I create a decker that also has drone control. I get to the Lotus Den, and can't open the door because I don't have a deck. This seems like a bug because you can create a decker with guns and get a gun and a deck. Why would you not get a drone and a deck if you put points in those two things? Reminds me so much of Shadowrun Dragonfall where I couldn't play the last mission because of a bug. I start over and create a decker with guns instead, and get a deck. I really wanted drones, but I guess I can't have that and a deck to start with for some idiotic reason. Whatever. Then I get to the second fight and realize I can only turn drones off with the decking skill. Turning them against the enemies requires drone control. This was a huge part of why I wanted to play a decker. Uninstall. 0/5. I'll never play another Shadowrun game as long as I live. I'm only giving it 1 star because I can't give it 0 stars.
This is an old game, but I'm just now playing it so my rating is based on my experience as of 11/15/2021. So no nostalgia. The concept of the game is pretty fun. You create a "hero" with skills and attributes, recruit a "warband," then complete various quests and missions. Your hero and warband level up as you play. First I did the tutorial. Right off the bat, the fighting controls strange and clunky, and they never grew on me. My first character was a polearm fighter, and that style felt really clunky and disadvantaged. Sword and shield was better, but I still wouldn't call it "good." Ranged felt equally bad. Next, I did character creation. First I selected a background. Hunter, Warrior, Noble, etc. I had no idea what any of this stuff means without consulting a wiki, so I picked some choices that sounded warrior-like. Next are skills & attributes. There are tool tips that explain what these mean, but I had no idea which things I should focus on first. So again, I picked some things that sounded warrior-like. The town system has kind of a "Darklands" style menu system, AND a first person view, which is nice. I wish more games had a menu system to navigate instead of endless running. Overland travel was absurdly slow until I did a web search and found how to speed it up. The quests seem to be buggy. On one character, the bandit hideout did not spawn. On another, the sea raider landing did not spawn. On another, I cleared out the sea raider hideout, but it wouldn't let me cash in the quest. Despite having a PC that far exceeds the hardware recommendations, the was choppy in places. I don't have that problem with other games. I see what they were going for, and yes it's old, but I did not enjoy it.
I've completed other Wadjet Eye games like Primordia, Technobabylon, and Shardlight. My eyesight isn't the best, so where I usually go sideways with their games is not seeing some barely visible thing I have to click on. There are a few in Gemini Rue that had me cussing. #1. Calling the pilot. You can kind of puzzle out what you are supposed to say to him through trial and error, but I missed the one dialog option that triggers his information. As a result I ran around for hours trying to figure out what I missed. #2. The guards outside room 2a. There is this little smudge on the wall that's supposed to be a hole that you can put your foot in and boost yourself up to disable the electricity on a whole floor with your LOCKPICKS. Aside from that sounding incredibly hazardous, I walked up and down that hall a dozen times, then back all over the map trying to find out how to get past the guards. It's not obvious at all because it's hidden by the blurry graphics. What a waste of time. Also, why would I assume that 2 of the guards would run off if I turned out the lights? If anything, I would expect they would look down the hall then shoot me. This was a dumb puzzle solution, and an even worse pixel hunt. I really think Wadjet Eye does a great job with their games, but I absolutely hate "puzzle garbage" like this. There is no reason in any even semi-modern game for pixel hunting. Ruined an otherwise enjoyable gaming session for me. It's a decent story, so I might watch a "Let's Play" of the rest of it, but I'm not going to finish it.
Disclaimer: I played this game for the first time in 2019. I beat the game on "core rules" in 2019, and have played it off and on since, trying to beat it on harder difficulties. Graphics: B. Even for an older game, I don't mind the graphics in Baldur's Gate. It is easy to tell what objects are meant to represent, and considerable effort was obviously put into backgrounds. Of course more modern games have better graphics, but these get the job done. Combat mechanics: A. I feel that from a game mechanics perspective, Baldur's Gate accomplished what it set out to do. Combat is surprisingly flexible and manageable for a party-based RPG. Character creation: D. While I like the wide range of races, classes, skills, and attributes, this concept of clicking "reroll stats" can turn into a major time waster. "Well why shouldn't I just sit here and click re-roll untill I get nearly perfect stats?" Indeed. That is the logical thing to do, the problem is that doing so is tedious and completely unnecessary. I would have greatly preferred a "pool of numbers" to allocate rather than rolling dice. This is a legitimate way of creating characters in the tabletop version of D&D, and it removes this feeling of being "cheated by chance." My advice is to not spend too much time on character creation if you just want to experience the game for the first time. Expect to die semi-frequently no matter what you choose. Story: C. The main story is decent, but there are a lot of dumb side quests. Music, sound effects, voice acting, and cut scenes: C. While not terrible, the same short music clips loop throughout the game. My advice is to simply turn off all sound and listen to music you actually enjoy in the background. All of the dialog shows in text, so you aren't missing anything. Replayability: D. I didn't find any difficulty level above "core rules" even remotely enjoyable. Overall: Recommended for a single playthrough on "core rules."
Disclaimer: November 2020 was my first time playing Riven. This review is based on my 2020 gameplay experience. Graphics: C. Visually, Riven is quite an accomplishment for an older game, but only barely serviceable by 2020 standards. Animations like the revolving room and tram cars were excruciatingly long and repetitive. FMV cutscenes are grainy. Mechanics: C. The control scheme is decent once you get used to it, but some things are hard to click on. Puzzles: C. Some of them were fun, but I'm a little salty over running around for 2 hours looking for wood for the wood chipper, only to find out this wasn't a part of a puzzle. The game clearly shows you how to make books in the revolving room, including an image of the wood chipper, and the game is about magic books. Then to show me an area where trees are being cut down, directly followed by an area that can only be a paper mill, complete with a functional wood chipper. Yes, the book making process is part of the lore, but if it's not part of a puzzle, make it non-interactive so people don't waste time with it. The puzzles are hard enough as it is. Story, lore, and acting: A. I quite enjoyed the rescue mission and all the background lore for the setting. Acting for FMV cutscenes was surprisingly good. Overall: C. I do not recommend Riven to people who have not already played it. I can understand the nostalgia, but unless someone has an exceptionally high tolerance for puzzler tedium and old games, Riven might be a disappointment.
Disclaimer: This review is based on my experience playing the game in 20202, and is not weighted for nostalgia. This is another old game I bought when it was originally released, but never finished for one reason or another. Fast forward to 2020, and I discovered for reasons unknown to me, Ultima 7 is in my GoG library. The game really looked terrible on my 4k 55" monitor, so I installed Exult, which allowed me to sharpen up the graphics, and provide improved audio. After tweaking Exult, the game looks and sounds surprisingly well. The game immediately starts out with a fun murder mystery that quickly pulled me in. I was enjoying questioning the townsfolk of Trinsic, searching locations of interest, piecing the puzzle together. Eventually The Avatar determined he needed to travel to Britain to question to people of interest. "You just missed them, the went to Minoc!" Then to Vesper, Paws, Moonglow, Jhelom, back to Britain.. Clearly the game was more enamored with the concept of "you just missed them!" than I was. Yes, we can move The Avatar pixel around the map. Fascinating. When can we advance the story? I probably would have continued playing if there had been a major plot development after quickly catching up to the persons of interest. Along our many pointless travels, each and every animal the party encountered became hostile and attacked. Aside from this being a complete misunderstanding of animal behavior, it's tedious, unnecessary, and time consuming. I think I would have been much more inclined to slog through the "traditional RPG" elements of this game as a teenager back in the early 90's. Not so much in 2020.
This is a classic game, and anyone interested in fantasy RPG's should give it a try, especially if you have a BG EE character to transfer over. For a game it's age, it does many things well. Combat, NPC's, quests, the overall story, all very enjoyable if you can adapt to it's 90's way of doing things. So I guess these would all be "PROS". As for "CONS", my biggest two complaints are the pathing (how the caracters decide how to walk from point A to piont B) in areas with lots of narrow passages. At times it is just totally broken. If you have a narrow corridor, and instruct the party to move somewhere, some of the characters in the back will be blocked, and choose a different path. This path might be walking through an unexplored room full of monsters, causing you to reload the game, they might also choose a blocked path, and just stop. This is definitely due to the age of the game, but it's still annoying as hell, and I wish they would have done something about it in the "Enhanced Edition". My second complaint is the way in which quests are given to you, especially in Athkatla. At times it feels like the entire town has a quest for you, and you can't walk 5 feet before another NPC runs up to you with a quest. You have to look at your journal carefully too, because in addition to barraging you with quests all at once, some of the NPC's will leave your party if you don't do their quest soon enough. Even worse, if you REALLY want that NPC in your party, and don't have a save far enough back, you just have to finish the game without them or start over. I don't see this as "role playing", I mean if an NPC has just "had enough" and insists on doing their quest NOW, they would tell you BEFORE it's impossible to placate them. Just, out of the blue, if you've messed around too much, an NPC can just leave the party never to be seen again. These are some unfortunate design decisions I wish would have been fixed, but it's still 100% worth playing and fun.
