I played Plague Tale 2 this summer. It’s a wonderful game and very much worth experiencing, but it would crash every time I opened the skill tree and the crafting tree. I tried contacting the devs about it, offered every info I had (system info, steps to replicate the bug, things I already tried to solve the issue, etc).
At first, customer support gave some generic advice (check files, uninstall/reinstall, update drivers, etc). Then they directed me to the Discord server of Focus Entertainment. Like, what? Why the heck is everything a Discord server nowadays? Why do I need to join a Discord server to get customer support?
But anyway, I did. They told me that, in the Discord server, I’d be able to talk to some developers. Instead, there were only a bunch of people from the marketing team, and they didn’t even bother with answering me. When I tried contacting customer support again, they didn’t reply to my email.
I’m 100% positive that I was not the only one who had found said bug, because I found a bunch of people on Reddit and Steam discussions reporting the same problem. As far as I know, it still hasn’t been patched.
So, not only do you have to deal with dozens of people before you’re actually able to reach the department that can actually deal with your problem. Sometimes, you are not able to reach the department at all. But hey, you can chat with someone from the marketing team on Discord! (If they actually bother with answering you at all, that is)
Just finished Sea of Stars. I never 180’d from a game so much.
I started it a week and a half ago, and I was in love with the game. The story was cliché, sure, but everything else was perfect, and the characters were kind of cute.
But the third act feels too rushed and the ending… Oh boy, the ending. It just doesn’t feel like an ending at all. I was extremely disappointed with it, and too many setpieces just led to nowhere.
And the true ending was even worse, in that it not only has very arbitrary requirements to unlock (including finding all 60+ collectibles scattered across the map in random locations), but ruins one of the best and arguably the most emotional moments of the game as well.
spoilerI despise time travel. Always. It just doesn’t work, unless you put a lot of thought into it, and the Sea of Stars developers clearly didn’t even try.
I enjoyed DS3 for what it was. The lore went surprisingly deep and the story was fun, although the love triangle was too distracting and the co-op partner was pretty much absent from the story if you weren’t playing with another player.
It was yet another game that tried to stray from its roots to chase the CoD golden goose. That generation was full of them (I remember being extremely disappointed by Resident Evil 6 and Ace Combat Assault Horizon). Dead Space 3 was, IMO, the game that managed to strike some semblance of balance between its two souls, at least compared to all those other COD copycats. Of course, that doesn’t mean that it was a great game, or even a good game, but I appreciated it for what it was.
At first I thought he was the comic relief guy, and I’d spend the following 20-40 hours listening to cringe-inducing Marvel-like humor. Instead they crafted a character that was funny but never over-the-top, and actually proved useful a few times (especially on a chapter that I won’t discuss because I’m not sure how spoilers work on Lemmy and its various applications yet).
I have not finished the game yet, and although the story is a bit cliché, it also has a few good moments, and I’m loving the cast so far.
Story is a bit too cliché at the moment, but graphics, soundtrack, gameplay and exploration are top notch. It really captures the feeling of being a kid, coming back home from school and playing those old school JRPG, but the QoL features make it much more enjoyable, and it doesn’t waste your time like those games.
I’m really satisfied for now. I also like the cast, it’s a nice change of pace from the edgy/moody characters that lots of JRPG seem to have. Sitting down at the firepit and listening to the two protagonists joking and having fun among themselves really makes me like them.
My only gripe is the story. As I said, it’s a bit too much on the “generic” side. Like, it’s not bad, I’m having fun, but it feels like, you know, been there, done that. Hopefully it gets better later on.
I finished Spiritfarer, and I gotta say, I was underwhelmed. The game told me I was the new Charon and promised me an emotional experience of helping spirits come to terms with whatever was holding them back before disappearing forever.
What actually happened, is that I found myself in the company of very demanding (and, often enough, even quite rude) spirits who never actually bothered with interacting with me on anything more than a very superficial level, mostly just to ask for arbitrary and very specific things. “Stella, I want Fried Chicken” (which requires ingredients that you can only craft hours later). “Stella, I want expensive furniture for my house”. “Stella, go buy a rose bouquet and expensive-looking jewelry for my wife”.
There were too few interactions with them to form meaningful connections, and by the time they were gone, I felt like I didn’t really know most of them. They never interact with one another, either, and they are completely dependent on you to do even the most basic of things. One of them wanted to throw a party, and wanted me to ask other spirits what they wanted to eat, as if he couldn’t do it himself. One was gifting me food every day, and at the same time was asking me to feed him. By the time they were gone, I was relieved that they weren’t there anymore to bother me with their silly requests.
The first few spirits are probably the best (Deer, Frog, Porcupine), but most of the later ones are not as well written. Bull is just “generic cartoonish mob guy”, Parrot is “dnd guy”. Falcon wanted to build a museum and… That was it, that was his entire personality. I don’t even know what the deal was with Dog, she just acted like a self-righteous and abusive teacher for a while, and then asked me to set sails to the place where souls go. They don’t show any personality beyond their distinctive trait, feeling one dimensional, boring and, ultimately, fake. The fact that huge swathes of backstory for all spirits are hidden away in the artbook doesn’t really help.
And despite you trying to help, none of them really comes to terms with what was holding them back. Most just… Give up and accept to disappear. Which kind of makes sense, considering the actual story of the game (which you can piece together as you play), but it is underwhelming and the exact opposite of what I was promised when I first booted it up, and kind of a bleak statement by the developers.
And that’s the story. The gameplay is just a repetitive grindfest that stretches on twice as long as it should. At first it looks like a cozy, relaxing experience, but soon enough you find yourself working around the clock to grow crops, melt ore, feed herds, check on the spirits daily to give them food and keep them happy, and the situation grows worse and worse as the ship gets bigger, more tasks are added on top of the previous ones, and more spirits join you on your travels. It gets overwhelming.
I’m kind of used to devs releasing apologies for their games after a bad release and the following review bombing. It’s almost guaranteed to happen for any modern AAA game, it’s the sorry state of the industry. But now, we’ve reached a point where devs apologize for their games before they’re even released. This shit is hilarious.
What’s next? “We’re going to release a game four years from now. You should temper your expectations, it’s probably going to suck.”
I mean, kudos to them for warning the potential customers, instead of lying to them or luring them in with nice trailers and trying to silence journalists by prohibiting them from showing game footage (I think I remember someone doing that…). Although I’m not sure how I should thank them. Should I buy the game because they were honest? Or should I not buy it, because, well, they were honest? I’m confused.
A few years back, dusting off the GameStop bargain bin with old gen games, I found a sealed copy of Zone of the Enders and a used copy of Metal Gear Rising.
I had never heard of the first, and I was only mildly aware of the second one (it was before people started memeing it into mainstream status).