What game are you wasting time on?

[Sunri]

I haven't played a game in months. Is there something wrong with me?

Yes but it has nothing to do with games.

 

[samuraigaiden]

do you not mind the older graphics and does it not bother you?

I like how these games look actually.

 

[octavius]

Personally I prefer the more primitive but sharper graphics of older CRPGs than the more blurred and "smudgy" graphics of later games like Dark Sun and Master of Magic.

 

[Daemongar]

Personally I prefer the more primitive but sharper graphics of older CRPGs than the more blurred and "smudgy" graphics of later games like Dark Sun and Master of Magic.

I kind of get a kick out of playing games like Lands of Lore 2 and such and using every trick, tool, and modification to sharpen the graphics. I go a little nuts with Dosbox settings, but to me its a game within a game to fart around with the old settings. Not a graphics whore, but just like seeing the old originals in a different way.

 

[Abu Antar]

I'm almost done with the Realms of Arkania Trilogy. I have probably the home stretch of the third game left to beat, including a few side quests.

My next PC games that I plan to play are the Krondor games. The trilogy is installed and ready to go.

 

[Ivan]

me every fucking time I reach the end game boss of Nex Machina. anyone here actually gotten past this bitch?

 

[newtmonkey]

I'm playing Ultima 3.

Still early in the game. I only have one mark, but I've figured out where the shrines are. I'm using a very conservative Thief, Fighter, Cleric and Wizard party.

Anyway, playing Ultima 2 and 3 back to back should be a semester at every one of those game development schools they have nowadays. It's fascinating to observe how Ultima 3 corrects some of Ultima 2's mistakes. Everybody talks about the fact U3 has a proper party and combat system. To me, the biggest game changer in Ultima 3 is being able to sell your loot.

Both U2 and U3 are insane money grinds. But in U2 you can't sell anything. Changing this alone would have vastly improved that game.

I played through U3 (PC) for the first time pretty recently and had a blast. I agree with everything you said. It's still very enjoyable, but compared with U2 it is an incomparable masterpiece.

I played through with almost the same party (Paladin instead of Fighter). I found the thief to be a life-safer when exploring the dungeons.
The game seems like a huge money grind at first, since money is the only resource that really matters as EVERYTHING costs money. However, you will eventually reach a point where you start getting a ton of gold exploring the dungeons. It all works out in the end, without any real need to grind imo.

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

I'm playing fallout 4 and for the first time I'm not playing an iron sights rifleman or a sneaky melee guy.

I started with 10 luck and 9 cha, 3 per, 3 agi, 1 str, 1 end, 1 int. Playing as a crit pistol build. Deliverer does very good for building my crit bar up, then Old Faithful pretty much OHKOs everything with a crit.

Its pretty silly. I'm playing on very hard, as I don't really enjoy the survival mode fast travel restriction. Plays very differently from an iron sights rifleman, can't snipe from long range, but in close I can just kill everything in vats. The constant crits are ridiculous, and I have all the other luck perks like mysterious stranger, ricochet, four leaf clover, etc, so every other shot some random thing is proc'ing.

Having 10 cha right from the beginning (with clothes) was fun too. You can talk anyone into anything. Robbing the two guys trying to hold up the store at the beginning, then making them leave was pretty funny.

The hard cap for price discounts is unfortunate. There's no point to stacking CHA or other price discounts past a certain point, and I blew way past that point. Not that it matters much but I wanted to see the numbers change.

Not having gun nut made loot collecting and buying more interesting, as I was always on the lookout for better mods to strip off other guns to put on mine. Honestly it didn't make all that much difference to my power level.

So if you've never tried such a build I'd recommend it, it's a big change of pace from other character archetypes. The low per and agi make you have to get in close. I just didn't do any iron sights shooting, so if I couldn't hit in vats then I couldn't hit, makes the weapons feel a bit different. I learned the mods that improve hip shooting also lower AP cost, I never tried those mods before (snub barrel, small mags, no scopes).

I'm also trying to find a use case for splitter barrels on plasma guns, but they add so little damage and hurt accuracy and range so much... they just feel poorly balanced.

 

[No Great Name]

You are right because many things I prefer because of my active imagination. I use to DM in AD&D and that is pure imagination and yes books are honestly always better and that is irrefutable for us readers

So I need to apply myself when its an older PC game, I tried Elder Scrolls 2 Daggerfall about 9 months ago and its a massive, huge game and I used a good Mod yet I stopped playing after 6 hours because of the graphics.....or maybe I told myself that because I had ELEX on Steam and I think I was not focused on what Daggerfall offers

So maybe obvious question, if I do start an older game how do I ensure I am using my imagination because I think I have a block as the oldest game I played is Ultima 8 and that was fine but I want to be able to play and enjoy the older games?

I'm unable to answer that to be honest. I don't think about it at all since it comes naturally to me, but if I had to try to put it into words, I interpret images via what they represent rather than how they actually look. I'm not sure if that makes any sense to other people.

Jarring audio takes me out of the game unlike bad graphics. I'm playing through the original Baldur's Gate right now and I've kicked out party members due to how much their audio lines annoy me since they are repeated every single time they are clicked on.

 

[Ivan]

Roundup

Unsighted

Spoiler

Unsighted is a phenomenal game that echoes 2D Zelda and Metroid design. There's a generous playspace that spans 3 elevations and you're tasked to net 5 macguffins before you can enter the endgame. Right off the bat, I loved the game's difficulty. The weakest, smallest foes you start against do more than just 1 HP worth of damage, meaning you normally can't play sloppily, especially in the early game when you're pretty weak. Also, there's a time-limit mechanic whereby both you, but more importantly, NPCs will eventually die if you don't offer them a unique item found in the overworld. Some NPCs hoard unique items/weapons that only become accessible if you turn in 3 of these items to them. Thankfully the game makes it clear what kind of item each of these NPCs holds, so you don't waste that precious resource. I noticed that the time mechanic made me focus on acquiring on the macguffins and not dawdle about. I never felt like it hindered my curiosity to explore, but the reality did set in that I would start seeing notifications that NPC X died because I didn't extend his time. It's this other metagame whereby you can choose whose lives to prioritize. There's also another not-so-secret method of extending your own time that ties into the fate of other NPCs that is unlocked but I shan't spoil.

Another special element of the game is the utility of your items. Much in the tradition of Zelda, you acquire new tools and weapons that grant you new verbs to use in exploration. A gun can be used to shoot down foes, or activate switches. A shoryuken may be just another projectile, but you soon learn that it can also catch fire and burn objects that are only immune to fire. The game has several of these wonderful surprises that trigger your memory into recalling playspaces you couldn't navigate before. Soon you'll learn new ways of traversing large surfaces of water, or large gaps with no floor to secure your footing. Utterly fantastic job in this department.

The combat is also excellent. As mentioned, the game's enemies hit pretty hard, so you'd do well to learn their movement and listen/understand their tells. Your dodging/attacks are governed by a stamnina meter, so mind you don't deplete it lest you can't block. Time a block right and you can leave enemies staggered and suceptible for a critical attack. Some enemies require multiple consecutive parries to enter a stagger state. Thankfully, the boss fights not only make use of this system, but many encourage the use of the items you find in their respective areas.

TLDR: This is definitely going on my favorite metroidvanias list. The game nails exploration, item acquisition that deepens your means of engaging with the playspace, and satisfying combat thanks largely to enemies who are NOT pushovers. On top of this, there's the interesting time mechanic that encourages you to think about the NPCs and who you're going to prioritize to take care of.

-things I didn't mention: unique soundtrack that sounds like electro-jazz, very enjoyable. The pretty expansive arsenal, though truth be told I was happy with the default loadout. the art is easy to read and nicely detailed. the game has a smart map system that gives you sufficient hints as to where to go or where a necessary dungeon key may be.

minor complaints:
(1) when selecting weapons, I wish reaching the bottom item on the list would send you back to the top if you hit down one more time

(2) I appreciate the chip system, but there's part of me that wishes for some sort of drawback to installing more and more of them. I understand there's the cost of the bolts, which you're encouraged to save for items/time, but I wonder if there was a cut feature, or if something was considered to help balance the system

-there may be too many support systems that balance the difficulty too much in your favor. perhaps this is why I never felt the need/desire to experiment with the other weapons. part of me wishes there were enemies that required specific tools/weapons to make vulnerable.

Final thoughts:
the finale uses the trope of bringing 4 of its bosses back but sics 2 of them at you at once, that said, there's still a proper final standoff against a unique foe that had a sturdy life bar and a solid moveset that keeps you on your toes. Its generous healthpool may force you to change your tactics, as your healing resource is determined by how often you hit your enemies. I also enjoyed the epilogue that shows what each NPC is up to at the end of the game. I liked the detail of the game showing the expanded graveyard, encouraging me to give the campaign another go and try to save everyone to see it alters the epilogue.

F.E.A.R. w/MMod

Spoiler

Probably my third playthrough, but it's been a good while. The game definitely shines brightest during the combat encounters, particularly in the more closed in arenas vs in outdoor settings. The expansions suffer in this regard, both of which present you with some really wide open spaces that don't make good use of the awesome effects from the firefights. I rolled my eyes whenever I saw new parking garage, or a new sewer, or a metro. That said, the base campaign and Extraction Point do a good job of presenting you with fun, cramped levels where the AI shines. I love how lethal the gunplay is, must be why the game allows you to have up to 10 medkits. Being able to charge at your enemies knowing you have the bullet-time superpower in your pocket at all times is super fun, if OP. But that's the beauty of it. Thankfully the game does a good job of throwing enemies at different ranges at you, such that the enemies further away can flank or lob grenades at you. Their VO and aggression is on point.

Not sure if I just never noticed before, but a lot of the guns sound pretty weak. I was hoping the MMod would buff them up significantly, like with what I found in Half Life 2's MMod, but most notably it adds new effects. Also, it makes FEAR feel like playing with Fallout's Bloody Mess perk, often rifle bullets will gib enemies (youre milage may vary if you enjoy it, I found it to be overkill, no pun intended).

strengths
-a lot of nice audio touches: stepping in blood pools has a nice sticky effect, I loved that there's normally a lot of silence in the game, such that you can hear bullet casings bounce off the floor, the enemy VO is outstanding and pretty much classic at this point, wish they didn't add the new one in Purseus Mandate
-enemies hardly remain static, always moving, throwing nades, vaulting over things, laying cover down
-I liked that the game didn't auto reload your guns when switching to others, really disliked this in Half Life 2 MMod

weakness
-quiet/horror times are dull, made worse by the pretty slow movement speed. in fact, it was these moments, plus the wide open arenas that exacerbated the slow movement speed
-this playthrough left me feeling a little less impressed with the gameplay loop, as I often felt like the bullet-time was too available. I would have preferred a system whereby you refill it by some other means so that you can't spam it for every encounter, or any time you find yourself in a bind. I wonder if the devs experimented with such a mechanic

Extraction Point
Starts off strong with a lot of tight arenas that make the combat sing. I loved the addition of the laser rifle, it has a unique feel and sound that complements the arsenal just fine. Not a fan of the larger environments presented in the metro levels.

Perseus Mandate

Very few surprises and overstays its welcome. Some neat things: some new instances of Alma utterly destroying enemies is awesome, the frights not so much. I hate fighting the pultegeists b/c it doesn't make the excellent gunplay shine. The stationary poltegeists that grab your uncles are also a joke. They added a new humanoid nightcrawler enemy that is extra spongey, and almost required you to use slow-mo to even hit it since it moves very quickly. The campaign is marred by open environments that aren't conducive to the explosive firefights found in the main campaign, or the extra bonus modes that round out this expansion pass. It has its moments, I especially like the new heavy mech it introduces. Sound design for the guns, and the new mercs is pretty weak, I found myself ditching the new rifle for the old favorites.

Pony Island
A neat little subversive game with some excellent puzzles. The simple platforming game is a front for its meta story, but the real highlight for me was the logic puzzles that are hidden deeper in the game. The whole thing is very brief, reminding me of Portal, perhaps 2 or 3 hours. Very much recommend for the strong puzzles. There's a completionist rabbit hole you can dig into if you like the pixel hunting/puzzlry, but I was satisfied with the base experience.

Portal
Replay. Great minimalist title. I was surprised by how easy the onboarding is. It takes the kid gloves off a bit when you make your escape. I really dug the urban exploration this bit provides. This was also the first time I played the Still Alive expansion that was only released for Xbox. Much more challenging puzzles in this one, though no new sound unfortunately.

Subnautica 2 shelved
What I enjoyed from the first is present here, the progression and free-form exploration. What I felt far sooner in this entry was the slog of the progression, feeling the weight of time spent crossing back and forth, back and forth, struggling to navigate the geometry to find objective targets. It felt like the map was less intuitive to navigate, such that the elements that I dislike were felt too keenly too soon. A shame since I like many elements of this series, I just wish the world map were smaller, more deliberate.


Half-Life 2 w/MMod + HL Update

Spoiler

Replayed Half Life 2 and its episodes after a significant amount of time. I used the MMod and the HL Update to spice things up. These work together nicely in buffing the combat experience. The guns have been re-worked with new sounds and feedback. I also love the animations HL Update adds for when you're weapon is fully reloaded. It was nice to use this feature during the game's cutscenes where you may not have much to do, especially if it's not your first time. I was always a big fan of the hard hitting weapons from HL2, the magnum and shotty in particular. I spent most of my playtime with the shotty in this playthrough b/c it was just so much fun to use thanks to the mods. I think it must have buffed the enemy aggression as well b/c I saw them use grenades, grenade launchers, and the plasma rifle's alt fire much more often. I loved that I was consistently pressured to push the pace, or scramble for new cover. Overhauled gunplay aside, the adventure itself definitely lived up to my memory. The voiceacting, the facial animations, it all still works tremendously well in selling its characters. I loved the urban exploration bits, and fatigued on the vehicle sections. There were 2 difficulty spikes that were made more strenuous thanks to the mod: the Nova Prospekt wave defense, and the Shield Generator standoff. The former was still enjoyable, as the game gives you 3 turrets to defend yourself with. The sound was incredible, what with so many enemies coming at you. The second encounter was not as enjoyable b/c your mates die off quickly and the game seems to send an endless wave of enemies at you. I don't know how I got through it, but I just shot the energy ball and somehow made it out of there.

The episodic content was also great to revisit. I loved the low-level gameplay of E1 where you largely have to support Alyx to take out enemies in the darkness. Then there are some awesome combat encounters in the hospital leading up to the finale. Also, I felt that the Episodes did a much better job of metering your ammo. I often felt like I could use whichever toy I wanted in the base campaign, and that the episodes leasurely give you ammo for specific tools.

In sum, I had a wonderful time revisiting HL2 and would recommend anyone to try it with MMod + HL Update (hands). It definitely spiced up the combat and made the human enemies more aggressive.

A great adventure with a notable increase of quiet traversal moments. I'd say the weakest part of the game is the vehicles as there aren't as many interesting gameplay mechanics intertwined with them, at least not until E2. MMod is a great reasont to replay the game, as it drastically improves the feel of the gunplay. I also played with the new Hands mod which adds a lot of nifty idle reload animations to the game. Zeroing in on low points of the campaign, I'd single out the Antlions traversal level as pretty boring since it slows the pace of the game dramatically. I also found the Combine soldiers to be extra spongey, not sure if that had to do with MMod or playing on Hard. The hardest part of the game remained the same, the Nova Prospket last stand. I died so many times, but the gunplay was so fun I didn't cave in to lowering the difficulty. I hunked in a corner with the turrets and somehow squeezed my way through to a win.

Sunset Overdrive shelved
It has a charisma and charm built into the characters and world that reminds me a lot of Bully. Relatable characterization, with a fantastic/over-the-top scenario.

Shelved: obnoxious characters and writing. it has a low down feel which I quite liked, reminding me of Bully, but everything is so "cool" that it burned me out. Also, the gameplay loop itself was pretty shallow. I didn't find the combat engaging, as it's mostly about whittling down mobs. Also, it's another open world with checklists.

Rage 2 shelved
Having played the Just Cause series and Mad Max, the game loop will be familiar. You have a large playspace with objectives peppered throughout. Knock off enough objectives for 3 NPCs and you unlock the endgame. The strongest element of the game is the combat: the guns feel great and the game offers you abilities that make getting into the fray fun. The problem is that the traversal, the driving, and navigating through the terrain is awful. Drifting doesn't feel right, crashing against rocks/boulders kills your momentum and occurs far too often. Linearity would have served this much better. Writing is definitive "wacky wild wasteland" and I stopped caring pretty quickly.


ReCore

As a big fan of the Prime trilogy, it sucks that ReCore makes such critical mistakes that hinder the player experience. ReCore is a AA adventure platformer with tacked on crafting/upgrading and pretty shitty combat. You only have 1 weapon in the game, you get different colored ammo to better deal with color coded enemies. No new weapons, no new finishers, from start to end it's the same pew-pew. The biggest sin the game commits is that it limits the amount of verbs you can have on your person when exploring the world. There are 5 verbs that any one puzzle may require, meaning that if the two you've chosen doesn't accomodate, you're effectively locked out and have to backtrack, re-set your loadout, then come back. Fuck this shit. The strongest point of the game is the movement mechanics. You can double jump and can dash thanks to thruster boots. The endgame embraces this shit and you start seeing end-game style Mario platforming gauntlets. I quickly grew bored of the combat and zipped through to the end, where the more devious platforming sections are. In the end, a disappointing and puzzling game that gets a few things right but drops the ball so fucking hard in others.

Black Mesa

Spoiler

A damn fine remake of HL1 with a wonderful re-imagining of Zen. I played the mod years ago, so I knew what quality of polish to expect going into this. The animations are top notch and I feel like there's much more VO to flesh out the NPCs. I do take issue with the action tracks that play, finding them often cheesy and overblown. I did however enjoy the moody ambient tracks that punctuate certain moments. Gunplay: I found the grunts to be aggressive, and was happy to see them use grenades pretty liberally, which often kept me moving. I don't like the slight delay in-between switching weapons that prevents you from firing. Now on to the new stuff: Zen is wonderful. It's better than I had imagined. This is a full re-imagining of it. It reminds me of a Metroid Prime. It's a beautiful area with a wonderful soundscape. There's a greater emphasis on environmental exploration/puzzle solving that reminds me of the first half of the game (my preferred half).

Zen is generously expanded, I was surprised just how good a chunk of content it comprises. As previously mentioned, it starts off strong with a great slice of exploration and puzzle solving. Further along the way you experience chase sequences, platforming, and some combat gauntlets. These are my least favorite since resource management isn't as important since the game offers you environmental props that offer ammo for your energy weapons. At least these sections make good use of the jump pack, still I found the endgame encounters to be on the easy side with too many healing pools around. The final encounter was a little surprise, it ditches the teleportation/floating aspects in favor of a wide moveset. It actually kinda felt like a nu-Doom boss fight. Different, but not bad. I was still hoping they'd retain the jump pads. In the end, Zen is definitely the highlight of this project. A wonderful re-imagining and expansion upon the original.

 

[TemplarGR]

I'm playing fallout 4 and for the first time I'm not playing an iron sights rifleman or a sneaky melee guy.

Pistol guy is really fun actually in FO4.

 

[deuxhero]

Mega Man ZX (via Legacy Collection, with undub mod).
The game is charming and the core play is fun, but the details are really, really rough. The map is horrifically bad (find a fan made one and only use the in-game one to learn what area you're in), and the boss ranking system (which ranks you on how few times you hit a boss's weakpoint, with the best rank requiring 0) is just tedium, especially when the bosses are super imbalanced and there's no save before bosses unless you're rematching them. In general, there's far too few save points for a Metroidvania, and many arbitrarily don't allow warping with no rhyme or reason (the save point that's clearly marked in the hub does not allow teleportation, so instead you have to regularly go to the one on the far left of the hub and go through a long area with no real enemies yet some obstacles that slow you down). Extra live pickups are basically non-existant, which makes it worse.

Contrary to what you'd expect, the Legacy Collection actually does include meaningful additions beyond just emulator box. The big one is an option for "Mastered" audio to free it from the audio being compressed to fit the DS. Likewise, all animated cutscenes and still images are also far higher quality as a result of taking from the master files. Mechanically there's two optional changes. Casual Scenario is basicly just some changes to the existing Easy mode with the same drawbacks (can't unlock some secret stuff, big mark on save file), but more important is the Save Assist feature. Save Assist addresses the lack of checkpoints and lives a bit too much by adding checkpoints in every room, before most instant death sources in the game, and effectively giving you unlimited lives. Still, it beats the hell out of the alternative and doesn't mark your save (can be disabled at any time) so use it.

Sadly there's a few glaring omissions in the collection that otherwise adds some needed fixes. First of all is the lack of a native undub option for the ZX games, despite the before mentioned flaws, forcing you to use a mod that translates the Japanese versions of the games (JP, NA and a few various PAL versions are all included in the collection and essentially all installed at once seperately). Despite remapable controls, you're locked to bottom button for confirm, which is really weird when the original versions of the game all used the right button like something with sane design. Also they expect you to pay over 80 dollars (double the game's price) to have the OSTs from the six games in the collection, even though they're all playable/convertable from the game files with any decent (free) audio software (FooBar2000 with VGStream component).

I'm nearing the end of ZX, will start ZXA when I'm done.

 

[BruceVC]

You are right because many things I prefer because of my active imagination. I use to DM in AD&D and that is pure imagination and yes books are honestly always better and that is irrefutable for us readers

So I need to apply myself when its an older PC game, I tried Elder Scrolls 2 Daggerfall about 9 months ago and its a massive, huge game and I used a good Mod yet I stopped playing after 6 hours because of the graphics.....or maybe I told myself that because I had ELEX on Steam and I think I was not focused on what Daggerfall offers

So maybe obvious question, if I do start an older game how do I ensure I am using my imagination because I think I have a block as the oldest game I played is Ultima 8 and that was fine but I want to be able to play and enjoy the older games?

I'm unable to answer that to be honest. I don't think about it at all since it comes naturally to me, but if I had to try to put it into words, I interpret images via what they represent rather than how they actually look. I'm not sure if that makes any sense to other people.

Jarring audio takes me out of the game unlike bad graphics. I'm playing through the original Baldur's Gate right now and I've kicked out party members due to how much their audio lines annoy me since they are repeated every single time they are clicked on.

Thanks for the feedback because your response is what I would have expected when I asked " how do I use my imagination to understand the older game experience " because as I mentioned I am going through this right now and I am chatting in PM to another member about all the older RPG, like Wizardry, and Gold Box AD&D which adds another level of discussion

Because your point is 100 % correct about how qualified neuroscientists and phycologists would describe how our brains utilize a cognitive function like " imagination " but they would use big words and these real neuro-scientific terms to describe what we use our imagination for and that can be overly complicated when we talking about old games and how we enjoy them

And your response is what most people will describe imagination as "its hard to describe because its an automatic thought process that you dont consciously control " ...in other words are you a qualified neuroscientist ?? :D

And in closing I know the big words reason, because of social and some work related reasons , for how our brains use our imagination when basically anyone plays an older RPG and its not just a switch that you can " turn on " but I wish it was because for me personally I am trying to create a way to play all these older games and enjoy them like you guys can.

But I havent found out how yet but I have only started trying to really understand it since I became recently active on Codex about 6 weeks ago. So its early days and I have had some interesting chats already from Codex members and its worthwhile

And in closing your mention of audio is another real and proven way to allow our brains to respond to stimulus and automatic cognitive function but the common thread in all old RPG would be visual so that is the path I am pursing

 

[octavius]

Jarring audio takes me out of the game unlike bad graphics. I'm playing through the original Baldur's Gate right now and I've kicked out party members due to how much their audio lines annoy me since they are repeated every single time they are clicked on.

If only there was an option to change this behaviour...

 

[Wunderbar]

Finished Pathfinder Kingmaker.

Went in with lowered expectations after hearing all the criticism towards encounters / timed quests / kingdom management / imbalanced difficulty / endgame locations and so on. Even though I found most of the criticism to be fair, I still ended up liking the game a lot. Was playing on Challenging, my staple party consisted of me (fighter/vivisectionist with a composite longbow), Ekundayo (regular ranged damage-dealer), Valerie (tank with dazzling display), Octavia (weapon focus: ray, disintegrate), Tristian (regular healer) and Jewbelost (regular bomb thrower). Occasionally swapped Jewbelost for quest-specific characters when needed.

Kingdom management

Spoiler

I agree with the other players saying that it's a very flawed mechanic that wastes your time and may even potentially ruin your playthrough, but in the end I didn't mind it all that much and actually liked some of its parts. I thought it was great how instead of doing the usual RPG power fantasy, Kingmaker burdens you with a bunch of responsibilities and stresses you out. I also enjoyed the small CYOA segments you get after reaching certain kingdom stat thresholds, especially the fact that they aren't just small thematic random events, but are parts of small stories (like how levelling Espionage tells you about the unrest in Galt and Gralton, levelling Culture is basically a questline about staging an Opera, etc). If I were to be tasked with re-designing Kingdom management, I'd:

- axe the constant loading screens by replacing a town square/ throne room/ tavern with just a 2D splash screen (like in Sid Meier's Pirates or Mount&Blade);
- cut the city building sim, or at least significantly streamline it. I don't need to see a 3D plane of my towns and villages and manually place buildings into slots for meager +1 bonuses, a simple 2D picture like in HOMM3 would be more than enough;
- add the ability to modify the world map by building bridges, paving roads, restoring mines and other "resource nods". Just fixing the slow travelling speed would make kingdom management feel much more useful;
- expand the audiences/CYOA segments, maybe even axe recurring kingdom problems and repurpose them as throne room events. Obviously this would create a ton of work for writers and make the system very susceptible to metagaming, but at least it'd be fun;
- axe a bunch of "kingdom numbers go up!" and replace them with passive bonuses/debuffs. Like, if your high priest failed at handling a task, then you're gonna get -1 to all willpower throws for a week, if your magister succeeded, then you're getting a +1 to all spells DC, etc;
- didn't like artisan mechanic. All they did was showering me with randomized equipment, and this barrage of useless and expensive loot completely wrecked the game economy. There are already collectible components scattered around the world (scraps of leather, fragments of skymetal, etc), a simplistic crafting system (akin to Baldur's Gate 2) would be a better solution. Hire an artisan, gather enough components through exploration and secret hunting, give components to your artisan, make a choice of what to craft according to your needs, ?????, profit.

Quest timer

Spoiler

Kingmaker's quest timer was another divisive gameplay element. Honestly, I quite liked timers in Kingmaker. During the first main quest the game clearly tells you "there are timers in this game, so don't slack off!", but then in subsequent quests the timers become ambiguous, and since you never know if the quest is timed or not, you try to solve problems as soon as possible. After starting the Troll trouble chapter I thought "ah, there's no timer in the quest journal, that means I can do whatever I want" - NOPE, the mage Bartholomew I was asked to visit just fucking died, and I lost a potential kingdom advisor. It was refreshing to have an RPG with a real passage of time, where the world moves on and doesn't wait for you to finish picking flowers and saving kittens that stuck on a tree. And the timers aren't even that harsh, the game still gave me a plenty of time to deal with the main problem, explore optional locations, and level my kingdom. The only time the real passage of time had bothered me was during Varnhold's Vanishing and Twice-born Warlord chapters: because ***spoilers*** your main healer runs away right at the Varnhold's bossfight, the game doesn't give you a downtime and immediately throws you into the next chapter so you could find and recruit your healer again. Which means you are railroaded into three long-ass main quests in a row, and can't really explore the world.

Combat

Spoiler

Combat was another stressful thing in this game. I don't hate RTwP, but i'm not a fan of it either, and I can't imagine how ball-bustingly frustrating this game was at a launch, when only RTwP mode was available. In RTwP, every fight that isn't a simple trash encounter turns into an uncontrollable clusterfuck. Hell, the 5-foot step, an immensely useful ability, is only doable in TB mode, which means your casters and archers were at a significant disadvantage since they couldn't have stepped outside of melee enemy's range to cast a spell or drink a potion. Eventually the combat stops being uncontrollable, but it happens for mostly a wrong reason - your party becomes too powerful and can just roflstomp through encounters on autopilot. I guess the devs were aware of such problem, but unfortunately instead of reworking late-game encounters, they just artifically inflated enemies' stats and turned combat into a slog.

The encounters overall were all over the place, and the game greatly suffered from low enemy variety. There's actually a lot of different types of enemies, the problem is that a lot of them are concentrated in their respective chapters. I.e. the first chapter is about taking down a bandit leader, so most of the encounters are about fighting same stupid bandits, chapters 2 is about fending off a troll threat so 80% of the encounters are trolls, third chapter is all about owlbears and manticores, etc etc. I don't know if the original Paizo's AP suffered from the same problem, but even if it did Owlcat should've addressed that.

Levelling

Spoiler

I enjoyed the process of levelling and becoming stronger, but didn't really like the actual levelling system (though I'm not sure if I should blame the game, the Pathfinder ruleset, or DnD 3.5 in general). It's just bloated with stuff that's only useful in niche situations, only useful when you make a strictly specialized build, not useful at all, or stuff that's very OP but is hidden behind some weird requirements. It somewhat worsened by a suboptimal feat list where you need to go through hell and high water just to understand what acts as a prerequisite for what, and why is this important feat is buried in "non-recommended" category. Why is focusing on ray-type spells is hidden inside "weapon focus" feat? Usually I don't like skilltrees, but Kingmaker could've definitely used one, just for the visual clarity.

I also didn't bother multiclassing my party members, because multiclassing never made sense to me as a concept. If you want to give players more freedom so they could build any character they want, you may as well just redesign the system to be entirely classless.

Resting

Spoiler

Don't @ at me, I liked the fatigue and resting mechanics. In the early game the tediousness of resting was compensated by the novelty of assigning companions to do different tasks according to their skillset (I don't know any other RPG with resting as an elaborate mechanic... maybe Stygian?), in the mid game it was compensated by the party banter (really good idea on dev's part by the way), and in the late game I've built enough teleportation circles to just easily jump around the kingdom and thus avoiding fatigue. Other than the world map, I barely rested - limited camping supplies and timed quests made me play until I have zero spell charges or reached the end of a dungeon. The game overall has problems of being direspectful towards player's time, but I don't think resting mechanic affected it all that much.

Companions

Spoiler

I saw a lot of criticism towards Kingmaker's companions, like how they are SJWs, written in an annoying leftist way, etc etc. I couldn't disagree more. Yeah they're all quirktards, but the setting of the game is a lawless land that naturally attracts all sorts of misfits who think they can start their life anew. Yeah their writing is subversive, but then again - usually there's a double subversion, and the strong and independent barbarian wymyn ends up being a coward and a fraud, the strong and independent shieldmaiden is actually a vain bimbo who goes mad after men stop simping for her, nihilistic edgelord dwarven priest realizes his wrongness and stops being nihilistic, etc. You're bothered by weirdo bisexual cuck couple Octavia and Regongar? But they were sold into a life of slavery and abuse when the were kids, of course they grew up with some mental health problems. All of their questlines tie neatly into the main theme of being a good king and properly leading your underlings, all of them have nice character arches (and none of the usual pedestrian shit like biowarian "every sidequest is about solving daddy issues"). The only thing I didn't like about companions is that their stats aren't all that optimized (except for Ekundayo and Nok Nok, those guys are machines).

Story

Spoiler

The story is, surprisingly enough, was my favorite part. At first Kingmaker feels like some lighthearted adventurous TV-series in the vein of Xena and Hercules, with a background overarching plot and a bunch of disjointed monster-of-the-week episodes. However, during the grand finale the game ties everything in a very neat fashion - all of the companions quests, side quests, random events, background politics, monsters of the week, even little mini-quests from your artisans. Very impressive. Was it Avellone's influence? He served as a narrative consultant after all, and he already did projects where he tried to tie every element under an overarching theme (like in New Vegas DLCs for example). I was a bit disappointed with the War of the river kings (all this build-up, only for Irovetti to fall after four short missions?), but story-wise that was the only low point. I also gotta give devs a credit for solid worldbuilding - Golarion may feel kitchen-sinky, but it feels that way in an endearing, fun and pulp-writing sort of way. Obsidian tried the same with with Pillars but did a way worse job of making players feel invested into the setting.

tl;dr
early game (Staglord, Trolls) - - decent low-level adventuring in the vein of BG1. It suffers from the usual low-level problems such as player not having much in terms of tools/weapons/spells, and constantly missing due to lack of attack modifiers, but that's to be expected;
midgame (Blooming, Vordakai, Armag) - - peak Kingmaker, just one excellent adventure after another. Plus you're character is levelling in the most satisfying level bracket (lv 7-15) - not too low, but not too high;
endgame (Pitax, HATEOT, The Cursed King) - - starts with a disappointing Pitax chapter, continues into a very tedious and unfun final dungeon, but ends quite strongly;
DLCs - megadungeon has some nice encounters that aren't limited by the current chapter's theme, Varnhold's Lot is basically the closest you can get to emulating BG1, and The Wildcards cuties are worth it for the Deadly earth alone.

overall (and half). It's a game of high highs and very low lows. A combatfag RPG with a meh combat but a surprisingly decent story. A BG + TOEE + Fallout hybrid in its best moments, and Dragon Age 2 in its worsts.

 

[Kabas]

Enderal: Forgotten Stories - an overhaul mod for skyrim that can be considered a stand-alone game.
I like the way enderal world is designed better compared to skyrim. You're constantly being rewarded for exploring and snooping around with some nifty handplaced loot. Music is nice.

Unfortunately, i can't stand vanilla skyrim gameplay anymore even with the changed leveling system. The plot didn't manage to grab me so far, granted i am at very beginning of it.
I quickly realised that i don't like my chosen character build, decided to restart. Ended up losing all my motivation to continue after going throught the beginning parts again.

 

[Abu Antar]

Betrayal at Krondor. Let us not travel straight to Krondor. The plot will have assassins on my way there. Instead, let us move north, and take a longer route. *defeats enemies that leave a note about sending assassins north, to the longer route, because they expect to avoid the shorter route*

 

[Darth Roxor]

Betrayal at Krondor. Let us not travel straight to Krondor. The plot will have assassins on my way there. Instead, let us move north, and take a longer route. *defeats enemies that leave a note about sending assassins north, to the longer route, because they expect to avoid the shorter route*

Spoiler

which is actually 36d chess fake news that is meant to direct you back south where all the high-tier assassins are posted, including the leader

 

[Abu Antar]

Betrayal at Krondor. Let us not travel straight to Krondor. The plot will have assassins on my way there. Instead, let us move north, and take a longer route. *defeats enemies that leave a note about sending assassins north, to the longer route, because they expect to avoid the shorter route*

Spoiler

which is actually 36d chess fake news that is meant to direct you back south where all the high-tier assassins are posted, including the leader

Interesting. I've already killed a tonne of assassins, I won't go back south now! Too much to explore. I'm already loaded on cash, and have leveled up several abilities and stats. I love the failed haggling and barding messages you get in this one.

 

[mkultra]

Bought a lot of new games for my PS5.. Demons Souls, Death Stranding DC, Ghost of Tsushima DC, Ride 4, the two Spiderman games + something else i've forgotten.. played all for around 1-3h.. They're decent, some even really good. Now totally back in Rimworld on PC, which i've already played for 1000h..rolling my eyes a bit @myself.

 

[Caim]

Betrayal at Krondor. Let us not travel straight to Krondor. The plot will have assassins on my way there. Instead, let us move north, and take a longer route. *defeats enemies that leave a note about sending assassins north, to the longer route, because they expect to avoid the shorter route*

I remember reading the novelization of Betrayal at Kronor, and one part that will stick out to me forever is when the protagonists accept a side quest to fight a monster in a mine and ignore the quest for the rest of the book. It was surreal.

 

[Jvegi]

Being a DIK. Porn game. Having a blast (not literally, pills make me unable to). It's one of those rare vn in which you actually stop and read sometimes because you want to. Amazing. And the music is way better than the competition.

 

[jackofshadows]

It's one of those rare vn in which you actually stop and read sometimes because you want to.

Author does have a good sense of humor - that's for sure but sometimes he goes for his pretentios shit like in the very beginning about family and that's just ugh. As for the music - it's also very shitty at the starting episodes but then becomes somewhat better as his game was getting hit status and therefore a copious amounts of $$ means expensive licensed tracks. Soon there's a new update by the way.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

overall (and half)

 

[Starwars]

Played Unforgiving, an indie horror game from a few years ago. Made by a Swedish studio and the game itself draws heavily upon Swedish folklore.

Actually played it when it was released and I liked it, but I think I actually liked it more now. Felt like it went pretty unnoticed, maybe just drowned in the ocean of shitty indie horrors. It's not perfect, and it's not the scariest game I've ever played but it's good, and I love the atmosphere. They did very well in conveying the folklore-ish feel to the game.