To me, it fell into the same trap basically every cRPG falls into; late game combat is a chore. Once the number of enemies and skills you have to juggle gets high enough, you can’t realistically use real-time on the harder fights, but you can run into so many enemies that turn-based takes forever.
I don’t even really mean that as a criticism of Larian, since nobody else ever managed to fix that issue either. It’s a big reason why the genre died off for so long.
I mean, Larian isn’t even a AAA studio. They’re still technically an independent studio, though with the success and polish of Divinity I think most would have considered them AA even before BG:3. Also you’d need a lot of evidence to convince me that any cRPG isn’t a product of antiquated design, there’s a reason the genre completely died off. From my experience playing it, even Larian couldn’t figure out how to make combat with 20+ enemies feel fun, a problem nearly every cRPG has had for years.
No, not even remotely. The biggest game of the year was an antiquated cRPG, followed by a bunch of sequels and remakes. The industry as a whole has been rocked with scandal after scandal, with the most recent being the large, widespread Christmas layoffs. Innovative gameplay is now something that completely eludes AAA studios, who only seem to know how to regurgitate trends popularized by better games.
2023 was another shite year for gaming, and rewarding it with brain-dead articles like this is why 2024 probably won’t be any better.
I mean, Call of Duty: Another One is one of the best selling games of the year, despite even casuals lambasting it online. I think devs want to feel like they’re making something people want to play though, rather than feeling like they’re shovelling out garbage for the hogs.
Definitely should give it another try if you still have it. The writing and creativity of the quests is still top tier, but now the combat is incredibly fun. You probably can use that controller, Steam is pretty good about third party controllers these days, but I wouldn’t know much. It’ll definitely play well on a controller though, though you might want to grab the keyboard if you’re going to do any advanced inventory fiddlin.
Best: System Shock: turns out the 90s darling gal can still run with the best of them in 2023 thanks to Nightdive’s excellent remake. Citadel Station was a real blast to explore. It almost made me disappointed to see how little gaming has advanced since that time, I’d have expected to view the remake as a relic of a simpler time. Instead I played something way more fun than the typical hand-holdy shooters of today.
Cyberpunk 2077: Update 2.0 made this a real videogame. I absolutely hated playing Cyberpunk 2077 when it released, so much that I refunded it. The combat felt awful and floaty, the RPG systems felt stupid and poorly thought out, and don’t even get me started on the bugs. 2.0 is the reason to buy the game again, and with modding support already available I have a feeling this game is going to grow the kinda legs of Witcher 3 and Skyrim. CD-Projekt Red managed a real miracle. Oh, and the DLC is pretty rad too.
Warframe: There’s been a lotta new content added to Warframe this year, and it’s all been pretty good! I was a little worried about the game considering the change in leadership, but Rebecca Ford knows what the players want and seems really skilled at walking the fine line that makes a grind enjoyable. If you’ve never played, and have always wanted to play a mass murderer in space with magic powers, I’d recommend hopping in.
Worst:
Elden Ring: Miyazaki please where is the DLC. It’s been two years, I just want to play through a new poison swamp.
I mean, the only thing that’s really needed is the standard access to the creation kit. After that, I think modders can polish it up to competency, although flying to planets might be outside the abilities of the engine. I think anyone still hoping Starfield is going to be a good space game need to stop dreaming and go back to Elite/No Mans Sky/Waiting for Star Citizen, but there were some really elaborate mods for New Vegas and Skyrim back in the day. Maybe someone dedicated and talented enough could even fix that.
From the article, it indicates you’ll just need to have bought something since 2017 to avoid this wave. I can’t imagine someone has been playing exclusively free since WoD while buying the expansions, but it sounds like just paying for the next xpac with money will be enough.
I guess gold farming bots were too self-sustaining? Blizzard really wanted to make sure they were getting their pound of flesh out of the exchange?
I just can’t imagine this mattering in any other instance. It’s not like you were realistically farming the gold with the free trial, this is a weird change solely to prevent theoretical abuse.
Feels like a big kick in the nards considering they just released a new video series from Yahtzee like two weeks ago, and Frost recently began the video series Stuff of Legends. I’m willing to bet this was a major shock.
The disinformation doesn’t really matter. The fandom wiki’s naturally become incorrect over time, since they’re typically no longer maintained after a community switches, so vandalizing it after the fact won’t really change anything. For Path of Exile, it took the developers linking to the new wiki, and about two years of the community sending new players to the correct wiki, before it even started to show up in searches. Even then, I believe the fandom wiki still shows up first if you look at some of the very old entries.
I get all my news from Lyle Rath on Pregame Discharge. He’s told me it’s the only videogame show, so I’m surprised to hear about all these other shows.