I wondered why I had heard no fanfare or announcements (not even the Steam banner changing, its still Shmup sale up there) but on checking the page this seems to be the Overwatch school of sequel? Just update a current game and put a 2 on it?
Well. On one hand, doesn’t seem like it needed fixing (Its not my type of game but its popular enough, certainly more than most other Valve ventures) but also geez. At least artificially pretend its big news.
Not gonna lie, this was exactly the first thing I looked up, though I changed my mind in posting because it seemed to be a bad faith article in general. But yes, if you’re going to have a person stand by their professionalism and experience, especially when making such harsh criticism over a highly rated game while demanding more media literacy, I think have someone that actual has relevant professional experience would make it far less eye-rolling to read.
For a game that’s a full comedy romp, West of Loathing consistently ruined me with laughter. The spittoon descriptions are probably the most derangedly funny writing ever put into the world. I’ve got to remember to play the sequel one of these days. Its also extremely mechanically satisfying, with several enticing roleplaying moments (as well as the occasional dramatic or scary moment that hits just as well as the comedy)
For a game that’s not explicitly only comedy but still hits strong marks, Yakuza 0 is a full meal. While most Yak games are fairly wacky when it comes to sidequesting (1 being perphaps the single exception, as the beginning of the series was quite dry), 0 feels like the one where they really hit their stride. There’s so many flat out ridiculous moments (you’ve most likely seen the chicken, and that’s just one of many) that you even forget this is also a heavily dramatic story and a full blown action beat’em up.
Its very rare that I actually finish a game that’s just plain miserable but I got a nomination since it was also (thankfully) short: Photographs
Photographs is an indie puzzle/narrative game, where you solve dilemmas through a different set of mechanics in 5 different narratives. So far so good, that’s somewhat interesting. It falls apart completely, however, on the absurdity of its attempts to be tragic. Every story in Photographs has to be a tragedy - which in itself is already a negative point. You start each of these vignettes already expecting how it’ll all go wrong, which by the third or fourth time is already stale. You’re just waiting for what will be the inevitable Bad Thing™ that will randomly happen to these people.
But its biggest failure is that those tragedies just don’t hit. I’ll spoil some of those so be wary if you’re still interested in that. In one of those, a swimmer is caught in a doping scandal, which ends with her being scorned, kicked out of the competition scene, and homeless. In another, a newspaper editor decides to only publish bad and infuriating news to get more readers, and ends up being bombed by one of his former employers, after publishing a paper that says people deserved to get fired. The quickness in which things go south and the intensity is absurd, to the point of almost being comical. Worse of all, it also fails in one critical point (one which even big names fall for) which is not building up its characters. You rarely get an idea of who you’re dealing with before tragedy occurs. You’ll often only have a general understanding - old man lonely, athelete stressed, editor scared of bankruptcy - before the inevitable happens, and by that point you’re on the rollercoaster watching a castle fall down, but it was more like a makeshift, straw castle that you never really cared about.
And at the end, you get one final “tragedy” where you as the player will decide one of these stories to rewind and have a chance at a happy ending. Its a distressing attempt at emotional manipulation where the multiple characters will beg you for their lives and futures, but once again…you have no investment in any of these. They’re all 1 dimensional cardboard cuts, all struck by baffling circumstances. You might as well pick at random - for my part I did the one story that angered me the least, the lonely alchemist - but at the end its just one more alternate future for empty characters.
Its by far one of the games I’ve hated playing the most, and a massive stepdown from a developer that made some kickass mobile games before (You Must Build A Boat is still a must have)
Now I kinda want to make a thread for highly rated AAA games that disappointed you…
She is not big on turn based and definitely isn’t getting through a long game with extended turn based battles. Persona was an exception because you could use elements to hurry most battles the fuck up xd
In that case not only will I counter recommend the Trails series, but also reverse my Yakuza 7 recommendation to Yakuza 0 instead. Its gameplay is based on the root of the series of being a brawler with levelling up, and its chronologically the first game of the series (As well as technically the first game in release order, since the remakes of 1 and 2 directly reference it) and often called one of the best ones of the saga. Its also terribly cheap in pretty much any platform you want to play it.
Tokyo Xanadu and Trails of Cold Steel both follow a Persona-ish way of being RPGs mixed with socializing with party members and their community. I particularly find their social aspects stronger than Persona because they’re tied to the main story, meaning characters will often having interactions that are based on main events and not completely divorced from their plot/character developments, as well as having a more colorful cast of side characters.
Cold Steel is a fairly long series though - By itself its 4 games long, but its also part of a much larger universe and has some crossovers with other Trails games. I played the first 2, which are a somewhat self-contained story, without much issue but AFAIK they get denser from there on.
Xanadu is a more action-y game, in the vein of Ys, if you’ve played those, instead of being turn-based.
The Yakuza series also has some very strong characterization and side activities involving multiple characters, as well as a multitude of minigames. Like A Dragon (or Yakuza 7) is a soft reboot with a new main cast and also follows a more traditional turn-based RPG mechanic, highly recommended.
Warframe explains very little of its systems, and what it explains is generally poorly done. Upgrading and optimizing your abilities, acquiring proper mods and frames, how the levelling system actually works, generally anything that isn’t “shoot at enemy until it dies” needs to be taught by another player or read upon.
While everyone has been talking about Baldur’s Gate 3, I decided to cave in and started a replay of Divinity: Original Sin 2. Well, yea, I got a ten years old PC and a Ps4!
Still, what an excellent game. The easy mode goes well since the battlefields are chaotic, there’s not a single combat that I go through that doesn’t involve 1)Setting everything on fire 2)Shocking a large portion of the characters 3)Poisoning a large portion of the characters 4)Mixing all that because elemental interaction exists (Poison + Fire makes NECROFIRE which is a harsh and often deadly punishment)
But the questing and adventuring still stands out well. This is a game that has a somewhat large map, but unlike most open world fillers its a dense map. Every corner has a named NPC with a little trouble to solve, and there’s no “random cave with nameless mobs” to venture into; Every single place you can go has a little lore, a little story, something important that makes the world feel alive.
Its no surprise Larian has been taking the world by storm lately, and I’m glad this has aged so well so folks can try an original setting whenever the BG3 hype cools down.