I only played the two “new” ones. They were both good, fairly interesting, but not amazing. It’s hard to say, but it just felt like something was missing from them. Maybe it was a lack of things to do between missions beyond finding my way into a few random apartments for no real reason?
It’s worth noting that I’m generally not into stealth games, I get impatient and just want blood, or think I can sprint past a few guards without being seen. (I think I fucked up in the police station in HR, and the entire interior of the building was just corpses)
Out of the two human revolution was a bit better but there wasn’t much between them.
I did like the aesthetics and general mood of the games though, and cyberware will always be cool.
I still would have played the next one if it hadn’t been cancelled sadly.
I would suggest against GMDX for a first time playthrough, it changes A LOT. From the aesthetics, to the gameplay, to the sounds, the mood, the feel of the game, and the viable approaches in each level, there’s so much that’s changed it just isn’t the same game anymore.
You’re much better off with the Vanilla Fixer tool, Transcended, or Zero Rando (I’m the dev). You could also use Revision and toggle every setting to vanilla, but make sure you also disable the HDTP models, and disable Shifter and Biomod too, and definitely set the maps to vanilla.
It’s been a while since I’ve watched these, his video on the original is spot on, but I really dislike his takes on Human Revolution, felt like he was mostly nitpicking for the sake of nitpicking, especially the story bits.
Coincidentally I just started playing Earthbound (Maternalbound Redux ROM hack) this month. I’m just past the monkey cave. It’s charming, simple, fun. It’s great for my dad brain as right now I’m doing a lot of parenting and my brain isn’t able to handle something more complex.
I have Earthbound on my new Retro DMG but haven’t played it yet. Thanks for referencing the ROM hack, I’ll play that one instead as it seems like a vanilla + experience
I only played the original. I didn’t really like it at first, thinking that the augmentation and mod stuff was needlessly complicated for this kind of game. Also the graphics weren’t all that great in comparison to other games using the same engine. There were a lot of attention to details in comparison to other games so I gave it a chance. The turning point came after completing the first part of the story and getting hooked. The story really carried the game and touches on some interesting topics.
A game with a similar feel would be Omikron: The Nomad Soul. It was released the year before Deus Ex, has worse controls and graphics, but the story and setting is somewhat similar.
I just replayed the entire series over the last couple of months. The first one is the highlight of the series and laid the groundwork not only for the sequels, but pretty much founded the genre of immersive sims all by itself. This type of game is the rare lightning in a bottle that many have failed to capture since and it really hasn’t aged much since it came out over 20 years ago. Sure, the voice lines are cheesy, the AI is outdated and there are some pretty wacky characters in this otherwise serious game, but it all fits together extremely well and has a certain charm to it.
I don’t think there are any “bad” Deus Ex games, but the sequel Invisible War is definitely the weakest installment. It leans too much into the whole B-Movie theme and, with the exception of the last chapter, suffers from lackluster writing and forgettable characters. The gameplay itself is still fun but overall severely limited due to the hardware constraints of the Original Xbox.
Human Revolution did well to separate itself from the first title while staying true to the core gameplay and I do love the aesthetics that they went for. The story is very solid and I’d say there are more ways to approach a mission than the first game had. Adam Jensen is also a well-written character and a worthy replacement for JC Denton. The only thing I didn’t really like was the new melee system.
Finally, Mankind Divided turned out to be the most “Deus Ex” we’ve gotten since the first game came out. It’s a brilliant game through and through and I can’t really think of even minor criticism. It’s basically what the first game was, just all grown up. Even the DLCs are among the best missions in the whole series.
It’s so sad to see the great path this series was on before it was ultimately cancelled again. I felt like they had finally perfected the formula. And now we’re most likely stuck with the open ending of Mankind Divided for the foreseeable future.
Top-tier writeup. The original will always hold a special place in my heart but Mankind Divided was an excellent modern interpretation of similar systems of gameplay.
The weird thing about Stardew Valley is I cannot understand why I don’t like it. I’ve tried to like it. I’ve poured many hours into games in the same genre, but I haven’t even managed to get 2 hours into Stardew Valley and I do not understand why. I can’t point at anything in particular that doesn’t work for me, and it’s exactly the kind of game I love to play, so I’m honestly perplexed as to why I don’t like it.
The first time I tried my time at Portia, I found building stuff took forever. I was trying to build a bridge(iirc?) And I felt like it was just going to be a lot of waiting. Was I playing it wrong?
The first time I played My Time at Portia, I had the same issue, and it felt like it took ages and ages to do the bridge. It was much easier on subsequent playthroughs. Basically what I did was build about 6 furnaces to get the crafting going early on, and always had at least 2 of each subsequent crafting station (more as space and resources allowed, although there were a few that just one was sufficient for. Making sure you get a crafting commission every day really helps as well, because that’s your main source of income, which makes it easier to afford more land, inventory upgrades, etc. Fishing is also ridiculously lucrative once you get good at it.
What my Portia daily routine normally looks like is something like this:
Wake up, check mail (if any).
Grab resources that have crafted overnight (if any).
Go to town hall and pick a commission, looking for something that I have most or all of the materials to craft. The plan is to get it made and delivered that day if possible, so if there’s a choice of something that doesn’t pay well but can be done immediately or something that pays better but will take 2-3 days to make happen, I pick the low paying one.
Check map to see if any locals have quests that day. If they do, go and get the quests.
Go home and craft the commission item, plus any items required by other quests picked up that day. If any crafting stations have finished production, set them going again.
Deliver crafted item to recipient(s).
Gather resources for the rest of the day. I usually pick one activity and stick to it, say mining, fishing, hunting (the sound of dying colourful llamas makes me sad, but I want their pelts), etc.
Check crafting stations when stamina has run out. Set more crafting going if needed.
Go to bed.
The other thing is that the big “main” quests for building those major projects aren’t necessarily meant to be done quickly, as they’re the bigger story events that gate your progress through the game. Once I stopped trying to get them done as quickly as possible, and let myself get sidetracked on other stuff, I enjoyed the game a lot more. I spent quite a lot of time just spending whole days on, say, just mining, or harvesting wood, or fishing, while ignoring the bridge entirely. (I actually think I spent about two weeks fishing once. I got really, really into it. It then took me another week to sell them all.) By the time I thought “oh yeah, I should do that bridge thing”, I had more than enough of all the resources needed, and then it felt really quick to do. I ignored quite a lot of main quests for a really long time, including one that narratively I should have done much quicker. Let’s just say that
spoilerPortia went without clean drinking water for so long that everybody should have died
Speaking purely from my own experience, the mistake I made with My Time at Portia the first time I played it was I was too focused on being goal-oriented by following the main quest. But the game’s not really about that. I had a much better time when I slowed down, focused less on the main quest, and more on crafting stuff for the locals (so many stone stools) and selling them preposterous amounts of fish.
Sorry for the late reply! This is an incredibly extensive list, thank you so much! I’ll have to give the game another go at some point here. It seems super charming, so maybe if I go into it with this added knowledge, I’ll be able to get my bearings. Have you tried the new game that just released a while back? I think it was called my time at Sandrock?
When did you last play? I literally just played the game and sometimes just didn’t place some services- I think a good tip rn is just advance from a small city quickly, as later in the game it’s broken and gives you unlimited money as your people somehow make insane amounts of money. But in the early game advancing is your friend to gain cash from the advancements
That’s what I meant with at the beginning. As soon as I started making more profit than losses, it became very easy, which also made it kind of boring.
What I don’t like is that you need to finish the day for it to save
Also the wording about what happens to crops at the end of season should change
But otherwise, it’s something to do, but it is getting a bit click and pointy really. I wish you should pair up with characters more and walk around with then
I love this game (500 hours played), but I have to bring up a point of criticism…
One aspect which has not aged well IMHO is the “kindness coin” mechanic: The exchange of goods for the NPCs’ friendship and/or affection. You give the NPCs stuff, then you give them more stuff, then some more on top, then you get a cut scene and then you get back to giving them stuff until you trigger the next one.
Yes, the requests on the blackboard and the occasional personal quest mix up things a little bit, but overall the mechanic remains the same and for me over the years this has cheapened the interaction with the NPCs for me somewhat: They are mostly transactional and predictable to the point where you can calculate their outcome.
You have to give character A so-and-so many objects X to romance them. It takes so-and-so many days to do that.
Sure, the “kindness coins” mechanic was industry standard at the time, but I wish there were more variety in regards to the interactions with the NPCs, because they are amazingly written and I wish there was more to do with them besides giving them stuff over and over again.
I’m sure he’ll probably use a different mechanic for Haunted Chocolatier, probably too late to change it for Stardew Vallery, given it’s age and the existing complexity of the game.
The most famous one ATM is probably “Baldur’s Gate 3” which offers a wide variety of mechanics and stats to measure if an NPC member of the player’s party is romantically interested in the player character. Two examples given in the talk I linked are the VNs “Monster Prom” or “First Bite”.
Yes and no. Like in Stardew Valley, technically you can romance every NPC in your party, but in practice you have to meet certain criteria to do so and those differ from character to character. Of course, it is possible to “game” that system.
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