Siege of Avalon - really wanted to like this one, as it's clearly a labor of love, but the combat absolutely ruins it. The scenario is rather original, you start in a castle under siege and you get to walk around the place talking to people, asking their opinions on the siege and getting quests. NPC interaction is good, with lots of dialogue, which is competently written. The pre-rendered scenarios are nice too look at, the UI is fantastic and you get to play around with many varied layers of clothing. If you like dress-up RPGs, this one's for you. I'd say overall the game has a particular charm to it. But then, there's the combat, which appropriately for the time tries to mimic Diablo. It turns out more like a schizo RTS where you desperately try to click on your enemies, which conveniently jump around all the time, only to misclick and move in their direction instead, while also trying to kite them because they can kill you in two hits. I've found the Scout/Archer class nearly unplayable. Like Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance (which it somewhat reminded me of), you're better off playing as a mage, although that involves waiting around for your spells to recharge. Not my kind of thing.
Shadowrun: Dragonfall - Decided to try this one, as I found some consensus regarding it being the best of the nu-Shadowrun titles. My early experience with Shadowrun was with the SNES game, which was very stylish, even if the gameplay was a bit shallow. Dragonfall is also strong on style and overall I'd say the presentation, including character portraits and music, is top-notch. There's a good variety of character development choices. In my case, I picked a SMG-toting decker. Even though SMG is considered rather lackluster, it complemented my teammates' skills quite nicely, as I could use it to flush enemies out of cover, right into the sights of the heavy hitters. By late-game I became quite a heavy hitter myself, what with all the cyberware I was carrying. So no complaints, there. Combat is generally good if you're into turn-based tactical, but there's a big issue with cover mechanics and visibility. You can only check cover efficiency from four main directions, even though enemies are rarely lined up so neatly, leading to many situations where you're not certain if you're being covered or not. Hiding in one of the hidden tiles (i.e. behind a wall) can make it even more mysterious. A bit short of tactical, turn-based bliss. The missions are moderately challenging (I played on Hard) and fast-paced, which I liked. I felt a bit of a difficulty spike in the middle, but that was because the early missions didn't condition me to use all the tools at my disposal. By the late-game I had so many options, the game felt kind of easy again.
A note about the writing, which some people praise to high heaven. It's generally competent, but sometimes the writers got too high on their own supply. It's not a text adventure, I don't need a graphic description of how someone's forehead furrows or how sweat trickles from their face. I found the effect quite comical in the beginning. There was also quite a lot of non-sensical political "commentary" on relevant subjects like racism and how Christofascist fathers brutalize their daughters. I found it funny, since despite their amalgamation to blacks, Orcs and Trolls do *in fact* have a racial limitation to intelligence. What is the game trying to tell us? Anyway, I'm not a leftist, so I can take the good with the bad.
Not sure if I should try Shadowrun Returns or Hong Kong, if Dragonfall is the best the series has to offer. I'll probably wait a bit.
