Of course, I had to run it back in Baldur’s Gate 3, Honor Mode, after I failed right before the finish line. This time I went four Fighters, two melee, two ranged. My run ended in Act 2, not because of my party comp, but I let Isobel die in Last Light Inn. I forgot to block a door and the enemy crit three or four attacks on her. I did survive the fight with all the zombies afterward, got into another fight and ended it there. I’ll do another run like this, but probably after Patch 8, when Fighter gets a proper ranged sub-class. No idea, what my next run will be, but it will have to wait a bit.
Then, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth finally released on PC. I’ve been looking forward to this, and just recently re-played the first part. I’m at the beginning of Chapter 4 and it’s good. The big zones are kinda meh, pretty empty, and I don’t think the devs ever used a Chocobo to run around. Unless you only follow the roads, there are small ledges everywhere, and your Chocobo either slows down or stops completely, which is a pain. I still have fun, although the constant short breaks are kinda annoying. Like in the first game, you need to wait for certain animations to finish, before you can go into the menu, or when you completed a “World Intel” objective there’s a 10-second jingle and animation you have to wait for. Often you also get a call from a dude, who tells you he’s found another one, and you just have to stand there and listen. Like I said, I still have a good time, so it’s not a big deal.
Reviewers don’t get these games and then play them in complete isolation. They are in contact with the devs or publisher and might get told which problems are fixed at launch or something.
You kinda have to believe what you’re told, and maybe adjust your score accordingly. Maybe if one dev burns you again and again, you might discard whatever they tell you, but I don’t know who could fit the bill.
This is much older than 2023. I remember Fallout 4, the console version was apparently almost unplayable at launch, so Giant Bomb actually lowered the score, compared to the PC version. And even that example isn’t when this started.
Similarly, what if the reviewers don’t get a specific version, that runs like shit? Like what happened with Cyberpunk, where nobody was able to play the XBONE or PS4 versions.
The thing is, as always, a review is subjective. If the game has problems, but the reviewer can look past them or doesn’t care, why should they change the score.
Someone mentioned it already, but review copies might also run outdated code, and reviewers are in contact with the publisher or devs, and they might say some problem is fixed on release. If the reviewer believes them, it probably won’t affect the score.
I played an unhealthy amount of Baldur’s Gate 3 and finished my run. Sadly, Ansur, the last boss before I went onto the finale, ended the Honor Mode part. I’m a bit salty about it, since it wasn’t the boss being too hard or something, but mainly bugs, that did me in.
My first try I got him to half HP, then the game just didn’t want to use any actions anymore. I couldn’t even save and quit, but had to go through Task Manager to kill it. Next try I get him to like 80hp, fresh turn with all of my characters, but the game just crashes. Third time, he’s at 80 or so again, but because of terrible animations I didn’t see that he was supposed to be flying in the air, charging his giga attack. Because of some debuff, he was just writhing on the floor, so I just couldn’t really tell. I had a dozen Globe of Invulnerability scrolls, so I could have survived easily.
Anyway, I’ll do another run next month, after Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and maybe the new Diablo 4 season, but dunno about that last one.
We pass the ps5 controller so we each get an npc during combat and do splitscreen for the world.
Is local coop different from online coop? I’m playing through the game with a friend right now, and we both have our own small party, and control two characters in a fight. Or maybe I just misunderstood what you meant.
I dropped Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire for the time being. It’s good, but I just don’t feel it right now. The ship travel does suck though.
Then more coop Baldur’s Gate 3. We are now in Act 3, about to go into the city.
BG3 is part of the reason I stopped playing Pillars 2, since I got a lot more into it than I thought. That’s why I started another solo run, trying to make it through Honor Mode. So far, I died twice in Act 1. First time was the three Intellect Devourers shortly after the tutorial. Second time was to the Gnolls that siege the two dudes in a cave. That one, I could have survived, but did some dumb misplays and paid the price. The current run is going pretty good, although I had some really close moments. The Spectator fight almost took out my party, same with the Robots in the Underdark Tower. If I die again, I’ll probably change to a custom difficulty, where I can save, just to learn the game and fights more, before I try again. I severely overestimated my game knowledge.
I also beat Windblown a few more times, and moved up to the final difficulty, but barely did any attempts since then.
Square was really scraping the barrel for this one. “Good graphics, that you can change!”
Changing how many NPCs could be nice, and I’m probably gonna need DLSS for upscaling. AMD and Intel users might have to wait for a mod, since there was no mention of FSR or XeSS.
They’ve already said it’s all because of DLSS 4. The 5070 needs the new 4x FG to match the 4090, although I don’t know if the 4090 has the “old” 2x FG enabled, probably not.
On the site with the performance graphs, Farcry and Plague Tale should be more representative, if you want to ignore FG. That’s still only two games, with first-party benchmarks, so wait for third-party anyway.