Thats what Im doing. I heard the game patch was basically going to make it a whole new experience, and Im only 1hr in, so Im just going to start over after it drops on the 21st.
I feel like there’s two parts. On the one hand, Larian’s engine is fantastic and allows really creative and diverse approaches to their puzzles. There’s a number of fights that feel more like puzzles than fights, because they’re nearly impossible if you just go in spells blazing, but not nearly as threatening with a little preparation. They’ve honed that engine through DOS & DOS2, so it’s much more mature than you’d get if this were a pure derivative of BG1/2. The first time I lit Shadowheart up with Spirit Guardians and dashed her around a battlefield reaping the canon fodder…I actually giggled with glee.
Then there’s the storytelling. My journal is filling up with quests & side quests, but I don’t think any of them have been the “Kill 5 orcs,” “gather 10 blood moss,” or “deliver this McGuffin” variety. The NPCs you meet tend to reappear later and react differently depending on how their previous quest ended. I suppose, technically, that’s similar to going back to the same quest-giver, rising in their ‘ranks’ toward some prize, but it doesn’t feel the same. The NPCs, even the side-quest NPCs, feel like they’re woven into the overall narrative and it makes for a much more immersive experience.
I can’t imagine how much writing, animation, and voice acting had to be done to accommodate all the choices I won’t make. Even just the times some NPC voices my gender.
I agree about the quests feeling fairly good, but my hod is the jour Al itself atrocious. No way to remove/hide quests from the map. Many quests sort of remain in this “not done” quest state because completing it will have undesirable outcomes and it feels weird that I have to keep it there still
I agree, and the fact the NPCs have conversations and stories that play around you which are not automatically turning into quests for you to do (sometimes even chiding you for eavesdropping) makes the world feel much more alive and less player-centric.
Zero-K. It’s a competitive online RTS loosely based on the classic Total Annihilation (which led to Planetary Annihilation and Supreme Commander). Some of its features are a bit overcomplicated, but it does an amazing job innovating within the RTS genre.
It’s fast, aggressive, and fun. You spam units, claim territory (in the form of metal-extractors and energy-grid that upgrades their output, and building defenses to protect that) and raid and assault your opponents.
It abandons the hoary old concept of factions, instead giving you your choice of starting factories… and as the game progresses, you can expand into other factories to access the synergy of units. So you start a battle with a narrow slice of the unit-pie, but ultimately can access the whole inventory in a single match. There is no “teching” really, besides constructing resource-buildings, which keeps the focus on resources, construction, and combat.
It has a full single-player campaign that introduces the game’s complexity bit-by-bit… but the campaign does have some difficulty spikes, particularly since the units do get rebalanced once in a while and so an old mission will become suddenly easier or harder as the developers patch the game.
The game has a Lua-based GUI plug-in architecture if you like WoW-style UI mods as well.
Yeah, I’m still going to play the remake when it comes out even if it’s the exact same game, cause having and HD and wide screen version I can play on the go would be fantastic. but also just playing in bed would be a lot more comfortable than sitting at a desk to play
I’ve just finished Ghost trick this week (I can recommend it if you are hesitant). 😎
Right now I’m few hours into Sea of stars, beautiful looking game, reminds me to golden sun a lot, hope it continues at this level.
When I get a break my partner steals the Switch and plays Shotgun king… I think he got very addicted to that one, if there would be a mobile phone version I’d definitely buy it for him 😄
Shotgun king has a “throne mode” where you need to pass 12 levels on a row to get some sort of ending. But to be honest it does not have a lot of story, so you can count it as endless run as well. It’s more the way of playing, where each level you pass you get to choose two random modifiers (good and bad) for the following level.
You also get additional weapons and modifiers each time you get to the ending and we haven’t yet seen all, so it has reply value and maybe an extra ending 🤷♀️
About halfway through Blue Reflection: Second Light
The story is fine, but I’m unsure about the battle system. At first I loved it, but building up a combo in every fight makes random encounters kind of a drag. I wouldn’t mind this as I could just avoid them - however, you need to farm drops quite a lot for the crafting system.
I did not. Back when Second Light released I’ve seen people praise the game for how much of an improvement it was. I planned on playing the first one anyway, but I could not find a physical copy.
Still playing Pikmin 4, I think I might be close to finishing. It’s been fun, but I’m starting to feel a bit bored after almost 30 hours…
After yesterday’s Direct I got Horizon Chase 2 which I was expecting on the Switch. It’s a bit buggy (nothing major, just small things here and there), and the frame rate drops in some stages, but it’s still quite fun and the music is amazing. Barry Leitch never disappoints 🙌
I think I’m at the last site of the main campaign. I’ve been playing pretty relaxed and getting 100% in each site. HowLongToBeat says it takes 38½ hours for “Completionists”, so I’m guessing that’ll be how long it takes me at least. But I’m in no rush 😅
Horizon Chase 2 is pretty fun, it’s arcade racing, so pretty accessible for people who don’t play realistic racing games like me (the only other racing game I play is Mario Kart!).
I also played some Smash Ultimate during the weekend and I’m seriously considering getting Nintendo Online again to play online (and also for F-Zero 99…).
Hands down the best. I even have a full rack mounted server setup with Sonarr and Radarr that’s full of content, but Stremio is so friggin easy. Especially useful for the stuff you will only ever watch once.
bin.pol.social
Aktywne