While I hoped for a game that takes the formula of Civilization to new horizons, the game as a whole feels oddly unpolished and lacking production value. Apart from that it seems strangely inconsequential. I expand my cities, irrigate land, build mines and temples, but nothing really comes from it. It just meanders along without giving me any real incentive to play on. At some point I just put it aside and never really touched it again. I have zero incentive to start a new playthrough past the tutorial scenario. Perhaps I have outgrown this type of game, I loved playing 4x games since the first Civ.
Starting the game without using Galaxy via the NWN2.exe results in the Multiplayer functionality "not being available." How this is in compliance with the NO DRM policy GOG advertises, is beyond me. If this isn't adressed via a patch in the upcoming week, I am going to file my first ever refund on GOG.
The most recent entry into the series after Coteries and Shadows beats its two predecessors in almost every department. The graphics have taken a step up by adding small animated effects to the protagonists. The text font has good clarity and the text itself is structured by boxes signaling its speaker. The story puts you into the middle of the action, wasting little time to make you aware that it is down to a prevail or perish journey. Under the threat of meeting final death, Kali, a vampire of Clan Ravnos, teams up with a reluctant Caitiff to find her missing creator who has fallen on the bad side of pretty much every faction in the vampiric society. With only a couple of days at your hand, the game structures its narrative by counting down the remaining days until New Years Eve, thus giving you a constant feeling of impending doom. This more streamlined approach in story telling easily absorbs the player, tempting to try and finish it in one go. The musical score is the only downgrade in comparison to Shadows, focusing more on an ambient soundscape than actual melodies. For fans of Vampires: The Masquerade, Reckoning is a worthwhile addition to the Library, not the least for introducing the protagonist as the lesser popularized member of clan Ravnos. Witty, snarky and still young enough to retain a tongue-in cheek attitude, Kali is the perfect player vehicle to jump into the unforgiving world of Darkness even for new players. Due to the limited playtime it is highly preferable to grab it at a discount, unless you really are starved for Masquerade content. The game can be enjoyed without experiencing the previous entries in the series, although their stories add a little background to the antangonists and the world building.
I rarely ever enjoy playing puzzle games, especiall if they have a somewhat mazelike aspect to them. But Carrion really makes me want to move through the caverns, connecting me emotionally to my creature via cleverly placed flashback scenes. The way the creature moves and interacts with the game world is very fluid and organic, making it a joy to navigate the tunnels and overcome the various obstacles. The difficulty mainly lies in finding the right solution to an environmental puzzle, rather than battling enemies. Carrion is perfect for people who have a knack for science fiction / horror settings and want to enjoy the atmosphere of a creatures desperately trying to escape the confines of its prison.
If you are even only remotely interested in RPGs, you will enjoy Baldur's Gate 3. The quality and size of the world is epic, the caracters are superbly written and the story keeps you hooked and wanting for more. This is one of the few games I'd even accept a price tag beyond 60€, because you can literally feel the love and labor poured into this game at every turn you take. --- Baldurs Gate 3 is basically the pinnacle, the evolutionary peak of the classic computer Role Playing Game since the late 1980s. To go beyond the narrative choice and gameplay freedom BG3 offers, we don't need an evolution, but a revolution in Computer based RPG.
It's Jagged Alliance 2 with modern graphics. They basically stuck to the tried and tested formula, without making wild decisions. Combat feels great, animations are buttery smooth. Will write more once i got more time on the clock, but after fighting through the the first four sectors i am pretty sure i will have a blast with liberating the rest of Grand Chien. So to all JA2 fans: Yes, this time it's the real deal.
It's hard to understand, but this game is less engaging than the 90s versions of Mechwarrior 2. This iterationof the games didn't evolve the games in any way. The only difference is the starmap which allows the player to move around and choose engangements. Unfortunately these engagements are extremely repitive. While it is funto develop your lance in the first few hours of the game, it quickly devolves into an endless series of copy&paste engagements, which basically force you to fight through x waves of enemies. The better your mechs are, the more waves you will face. That's it. The few story misssions scattered in between don't really change the pace, they are too few and lack any sophisicated mission design. The story is told in text boxes, with only a few spoken intermissions. The devs didn't even bother to create cut scences of any kind. It's just not worth the time to play through it in order to get some mediocre ending scence. TL:DR: This game is actually a step down from MW 3 and MW4, especially in terms of story and immersion. It's an eventually boring grind, with a cluttered, uninteresting story. It lacks atmosphere, an engaging story, immersion and ceativity. And worst of all: A lot of game improving mods are broken now, because of the latest update. Mechwarrior deserves better than this lackluster game.
I really can't recommend this game. The user interface (UI) is ugly, unintuitive and due to the small fonts a sore to the eye (on a 32" screen, mind you). Apart from the loading screens, the art style of this game hails back to Victoria I standards, meaning small icons without much information value. While the world map is at least scrolling quite smoothly, there is nothing really going on at it, so that they could as well have used bitmap graphics instead of a 3D engine. The music is dull, not dynamic and actually rather something you want to turn off after the third loop. The gameplay mainly consists of waiting: Go to the projects tab, click one of the policies and wait until it is implemented. Forein policy consists of clicking a country on the world map and then selecting a few interactions, which will play out as another status bar. There are very little provinces, even for the major countries. Which is probably for the better, as there is nothing useful implemented there. World events unfold in a single line of a newsticker on top of the screen, which you'll get tired of reading through quite quickly, if you actually even notice it. Occasionally an event window pops up, forcing you to make a decision which doesn't really feel making an impact at all. And that's the bottom line of it: The player is watching, but never really has the feeling there is something like cause and effects. You could as well just watch a round of Progress Quest and at least wouldn't have to bother with the bad UI. If you are searching for an easily accessible, fun and quick to master world strategy game, this is not it.
