Last game you finished, tell us about it

[BoboTheMighty]

Dmc: Definitive Edition on Pc. I've never played any other, actually, but you can jump right in, as this is a prequel of sorts. So yes, reboot, but I think they changed a few things. Crazy writing is still there of course.
Scenes, where you have a lumbering, oversized monstrocity the size of a mountain yelling: Fuck you, Dante!
Dante: Fuck you!
Demon:No, fuck you!
And so on...you can see where this conversation is going.

 

[Carnifex]

I put almost 80 hours into Knights of the Republic Two over the last month, playing first as a good guy, then as a true wanker. The latter was far more suited to me! After playing it through on either side, I'd say it was a true rpg, with real and considerable choices and consequences. I really had a blast with it, and I'm not even a huge Star Wars fan.

This morning I fired up Grandia Two for about four hours, having a blast so far. Never played it before and several friends gave it raving reviews,

 

[GothicGothicness]

I put almost 80 hours into Knights of the Republic Two over the last month, playing first as a good guy, then as a true wanker. The latter was far more suited to me! After playing it through on either side, I'd say it was a true rpg, with real and considerable choices and consequences. I really had a blast with it, and I'm not even a huge Star Wars fan.

This morning I fired up Grandia Two for about four hours, having a blast so far. Never played it before and several friends gave it raving reviews,

Are you playing the HD version of Grandia two? any screenshots? I played the original on PC back in 2002, great game!

 

[Carnifex]

I'm playing whatever release of Grandia Two that hit steam maybe a month or so ago. I grabbed it while it was on sale, noticed that it had a few patches and then jumped right in after finishing with the Star Wars game. I think it is the HD version but not 100% sure, the only real complaint I'd have so far is that the camera seems to be very close to the ground for me. I much prefer a first person perspective and I can deal when a game is otherwise, but I really like to be able to pan out when I feel like it.

 

[Zloth]

I'm pretty certain that's the HD version.

I just finished Shadowrun: Dragonfall (Director's Cut) - great stuff! The story was very well done. The atmosphere (fantasy cyberpunk!) is excellent. The music is good though, as usual, I wish there was more of it. Turn based combat is excellent. The economy actually works. And you can even save your game whenever you want including in combat.

About my only problem with the game (aside from some trouble picking a character early on that ended up just being my fault for not trusting the developers enough) was that my character was always the point man. Everyone follows my character outside of combat so I'm always the one standing dead center in the doorway when it opens. Considering that I was playing a dwarven mage, that really the best place to be! Still, I got through it on Hard difficulty without too much trouble.

Healing was sure interesting. Instead of just giving you X health points back, it simply heals the most recent wound. Get hit for 30 damage and it heals 30 points. Get hit for 30 damage then slapped for 2 damage, it heals 2 damage. It's a bit strange but it made for more interesting tactics. It also meant that health would slowly wear down over the course of a mission.

The in-game decisions are meaningful, too. You get several throughout the game and you'll have some really big ones as the game starts drawing to a close.

 

[wolfing]

Just finished Might & Magic Heroes 6. Well, I actually finished it a couple of weeks ago but immediately started playing the expansion 'Shade of Darkness', which I just finished.
What can I say, I loved the game, my favorite after HoMM3. Technical problems aside (i.e. black screen), I liked everything about it. The stories were good, the gameplay was fine, the AI was smart enough, abilities and heroes were fairly well balanced. Last battle I fought today, I honestly didn't think I could beat and almost did a quick reload to try again (for the 3rd time), but decided to keep going… and I won! Literally one attack before the enemy healed itself 20,000 hit points

Note: If you are planning to play it, don't play it campaign after campaign. All the campaigns are more or less parallel so it's better (story-wise) to do the maps in the following order:
- Prologue 1
- Prologue 2
- Stronghold 1
- Sanctuary 1
- Haven 1
- Inferno 1
- Necropolis 1
- Stronghold 2
- Sanctuary 2
- Haven 2
- Necropolis 2
- Sanctuary 3
- Stronghold 3
- Inferno 2
- Necropolis 3
- Inferno 3
- Sanctuary 4
- Stronghold 4
- Haven 3
- Necropolis 4
- Haven 4
- Inferno 4
- Epilogues

 

[Arhu]

Note: If you are planning to play it, don't play it campaign after campaign. All the campaigns are more or less parallel so it's better (story-wise) to do the maps in the following order: (..)

Thanks and noted. I'm always a sucker for suggested reading/playing/watching order for media.

 

[sakichop]

Got my platinum for bloodborne last night. Good game in the same formula as the souls games.

I would say I enjoyed it more than DS2 but less thanDS1. I was disappointed that they seemed to resort to cheap tactics to artificially inflate the difficulty. Things like enemies hitting through solid objects, lock on disengaging by itself even if you stay close to enemies, sometimes you'd need to be looking right at an enemy to lock on other times not so I died quite a few times because I thought I'd lock on but didn't, having your character get stuck on virtually everything and then cluttering up most areas and allowing many bosses a one hit death attack.

The one hit attack is especially prevalent in the defiled chalice dungeon because you only get half health. I was actually getting one hit by normal mobs in the dungeon. Which is a required dungeon if you want to get the platinum trophy.

Coop and pvp were lackluster. I was never able to hook up with anyone in coop but to be honest I only tried twice but my bell wasn't heard. I was invaded only 4 times in the game. Won 1, lost 1 and in the other 2 the people left before I could kill them.

My biggest complaint would be the lack of encumbrance. It makes a big difference in DS and was sorely missed.

Obviously I enjoyed the game as I stuck around long enough to platinum it. If I had never played a souls game I would probably be raving about it but I have played the souls game and bloodborne is just falling short in almost every category.

I would still recommend it to anyone who likes souls games.

 

[wolfing]

Just finished Shadowrun: Hong Kong. Enjoyed it, though I liked the 2nd one better. But what can I say, I kickstartered Shadowrun Returns… With the first game I would have been totally satisfied with my investment. Then, with the second game for free it made it a great return for the money. Now with this it makes it 3 full games for the price of one, at release! Not only that, I think they're making a mini-expansion for this one free for 'kickstarterers'. Best use for my money ever!

As for the game itself. I liked the story. Didn't like the characters as much as I liked the ones in Dragonfall. Also, totally hated the changes to the Matrix, like, I dreaded having to go there. First, I suck at stealth. Also, the 'Simon' minigame was tiresome. I liked the original incarnation, not sure why decided that adding real-time gameplay to a turn-based game would be a good thing.

But anyway, it was enjoyable. 7/10.

 

[Moriendor]

Yay! I dunnit.

After 2663 kills, 2266 conversations and 84:26 hours I have finally managed to finish the main campaign of Dragon Age Origins plus all of the DLC that integrated with the main game as I played the Ultimate Edition.
I played on normal difficulty (had to switch to easy once for one particular fight in the Deep Roads) which provided a decent challenge in the tougher fights without any need for excessive micromanaging.

I was surprised by the rather sudden ending so I had some unfinished business in my quest log that I could not get back to due to the way the ending is set up. It was a hmm… ~90% completionist run though.
My main was an elf mage (finished at level 22) and my default party was Alistair, Leliana + Wynne.

I actually played through all of the origin stories back when the game came out, abandoned it, started another attempt in 2012, abandoned it, and this time finally did it.

In hindsight I'm not even sure what kept me from finishing the game earlier… maybe the extremely generic premise of a demon invasion by the even more extremely generic sounding "darkspawn" horde?

I guess I had the advantage this time that I barely played any games this summer so it was easier to simply forget about the generic stuff and instead focus on the smaller picture, take the game step by step, enjoy the progression and the gameplay and to just do it.

It definitely started to drag a little towards the end, also because there was barely any new stuff to be found anymore. It seems I got most of the best-in-slot equipment from the DLCs rather early on so there was barely any loot/equipment progression in the last half of the game or so. I finished with over 250 gold in the bank because there wasn't really anything sensible to spend it on.

On a whole I really enjoyed the game though. The character progression in terms of attributes, spells and skills was motivating. The combat was (mostly) fun as it required crowd control, prioritizing targets etc., and in some fights you really had to use pretty much ALL of your entire arsenal.

The story, or the sub-plots rather, ended up being rather decent in spite of the lame, generic premise. They could have done a better job with the choices & consequences. It was hard to tell the impact sometimes when you actually had a real choice and the one rather important choice (involving Alistair/Anora/Loghain) was executed very poorly because the dialog options were kind of weird and unclear and led to totally unexpected results (I believe I reloaded three times and then looked up a guide).

At the end it still all felt like a nice classic epic RPG with a grand finale.
Now I'm looking forward to playing the expansion and the standalone DLC.
I actually started The Witch Hunt right away as it was on the top of the 'Other Campaigns' menu from the main menu but I luckily had a hunch to google for "Dragon Age Origins DLC order" since I was curious if there was a "best order" and there sure enough is if -like me- you want to keep playing with your beloved main campaign character.
So instead of The Witch Hunt I will now be playing the Awakening expansion first, then Golems of Amgarrak and The Witch Hunt last as that seems to be the only order you can import your character from one DLC to the next.
And then after that comes the totally standalone Leliana's Song and Darkspawn Chronicles.

 

[JDR13]

Finished Dead Effect.

Dead Effect is a low-budget sci-fi horror shooter. Think Dead Space but in first-person and not nearly as good. *Edit* Doom 3 would be a better comparison.

The story is pretty cliché. You awake from cryo-sleep to find the ship you're on has been overrun by the mutated remnants of the former crew. (Sound familiar?) You find logs left behind by other crewmembers that slowly reveal a conspiracy, and go from level to level blasting undead and mutants. It's a fairly short game, and the plot is nothing to write home about.

I wasn't expecting much, and it didn't take much investment on my part to finish it. I'd probably rate it somewhere around a 6/10, and I wouldn't recommend it unless you're just really craving something with a sci-fi horror theme and have nothing better to play.

 

[Deleted member 18181]

Shadow of Mordor

Combat was nice and fun, pretty much like in the batman arkham games, the areas were nicely done with a good and little dark atmosphere; not much else on the positive side, even if you are free to go anywhere, it gets boring really fast even with the side stuff to do. The story is absolute garbage, from 20 story missions , maybe one quarter is actually related to the story.

Dont get it how this game won so many awards

 

[joxer]

MGS5.
I'm among 0.2% of people who got it on 100%, and probably the only one who did it without cheats and MMO garbage.

I have to research a few things more about it to be sure, but the game will get a nice and shiny thumb down on steam minireviews from me. Plenty of reasons, being pisspoor port when it comes to UI is just one.
Otherwise, compared to usual console garbage that gets ported on PC, it's 8/10 material. Buy on some upcoming sale.

 

[basharran]

I finished The Witcher 3, that was a nice ride. Goodbye Gerald and friends

 

[DArtagnan]

SOMA

Wonderful atmosphere and intriguing storyline. Strong production values for such a small team, with amazing sound. Gameplay was pretty barebones - and the "evade-the-monster" sequences didn't really aid the experience as much as hinder it. I could come up with many ways to improve the game - but I'm still very impressed by it, and it definitely has one of the richest environments I've seen in a game. Probably the most convincing underwater setting too, and it's great to finally have a game go really deep into the abyss.

It reminds me of a better version of Alien Isolation, if less scary and less technically accomplished. But, unlike AI, it doesn't outstay its welcome and it has a story that actually pays off.

It's not really a horror game - so much as a game drenched in bleak and disturbing material.

Just about the perfect length at around 8-10 hours.

This is a game I won't soon forget.

8/10

 

[crpgnut]

Madman - Finished the game a few minutes ago. I think I was level 11 or 12 and played a ranger. I also played a druid to level 9 or so just to see if it made any difference; it doesn't.

This game is very much in the mold of Geneforge, or Eschalon or even the old Excelsior. It can be played in about 30 hours as I played through it almost twice in 52 hours and a lot of that was backtracking. As far as difficulty, if you take ranged weapons and critical hits, you can finish around level 7. Any lower and you won't have enough skill points to spread around to the other skills.

Lot of fun, though the negatives would be that it is very barebones compared to games made today. There are only 3 little villages and probably less than 50 NPCs in the whole game. Still, lots of dungeons and it's fun getting rich enough to buy anything you want and still have gobs left over.

This is NOT a challenging game. This is for people who like to explore and clear the fog of war. Combat is never difficult if you choose ranged. If someone wanted to make it hard, go unarmed or melee and choose daggers.

 

[KaosWarMonk]

Divinity 2: Dragon Knight Saga. Played the first part about 18 months ago and Flames of Vengeance over the last couple of weeks.

Very enjoyable action (light) rpg that doesn't try to be constantly grim. Takes a while, looks good, plays very smoothly with little to no bugs for me. Has a pretty good story with lots of characters and many interesting idea's and things going on - I liked this part particularly, other worlds, recurring characters, your own tower, mind reading, dragon form, lots of puzzles etc etc. Quests are many and varied from gruesome to amusing. And has I think one of my all time my favourite voice acted NPCs, the necromancer Jonelath, his dialogue is great, an epic psychopath, reminded me of Emperor Palpatine.

Random loot drops can be a bit perplexing with the myriad bonuses on items but there's many sets of stuff to treasure hunt. Dungeons, whilst looking great, are a little simple. Being an action rpg fight animations are a little anime but not too over the top.

I got to lvl 45 by the time I finished. The final boss fight was pretty epic and took many attempts. Probably because I selected the option that let me fight both bad guys at the same time which made it pretty tough.

Recommended if you're after an action rpg.


-kaos

 

[lackblogger]

Grand Ages Rome (Gold Edition with expansion but playing the Original Campaigns only + Freebuild)

Half and half here folks.

A really addictive game which offers more content than you actually need, but is actually horribly lacking in variety and depth. It's like that moment somewhere in adolescence when your brain starts to lose it's ability to create imaginary worlds and your Lego building and toy soldiers suddenly just become a Lego building and toy soldiers instead of CGI movies in your head. The game feeds your natural impulse to enjoy both these elements and you dig into it like a child reborn, but no matter how much you play, you just can't really love it, because it's content is just too much of a wooden shell.

It's a traditional Roman city Building Game with the added extra of small micro-Total War-style battles and scenarios to play out. The game is separated into over 40 independent missions, but you carry your character (ruler) into each successive mission with accumulated level-up points and bonuses. The missions will be either pure-builder missions, pure battle missions, or, most commonly, a light mix of the two.

The missions branch, like RPG quests, where performing one mission will block out all missions on an opposing branch of missions, so you'll likely do about 75% of the missions per-run. Also like an RPG you get to choose a Ruler (family) each with different traits and bonuses at the start, and the Ruler has a level-up tree with three branches, totaling 48 level-up bonuses over all three branches, but a level cap of just 25, leaving you with only a 50% completion per-run.

There's also a freebuild option where you can just build a city without the pressure of time or war and you can perform this with any character at any point of their leveling process, to which it's difficult to know which is more fun, doing it with a new Ruler with no bonuses or doing it over-powered with tons of sweet bonuses.

Sitting around leisurely building a Roman city is fun, like playing Lego is fun. Having the satisfaction and fun of completing missions and leveling-up is fun, like it is in any game that can hold your attention. But there's a huge void in this game, and it's this void which likely got the game pretty average to low scores from the critics on release, even though the game continues to have a popular user score.

A vast majority of the buildings are useless or impractical, a vast majority of the level-up bonuses are over powered, the battles all require very similar tactics, the variety of aesthetics is small and extremely limited, military units level-up to easily, the range-of-effect of a vast majority of the buildings is way out of whack, leading one to conclude that the game had about as much group testing as New Coke.

You can build a huge and impressive Theatre or Colosseum and you can fit, like, two houses next to it before it's effects become redundant. The Colosseum doesn't even have a global effect, it effects a small circle around it, totally bizzare. The global build is the Circus Maximus, but that's so big you can't even see either end of it when you try and place it, even at max zoom (bar 'from space' view, which you can't build with anyway). Seriously, a tactical build game where you can't even see where your building is being placed!

You can build both a Philosopher's Academy and a Library, both of which require quite late-on techs from a civilisation-like tech tree, which is hugely ironic, because they are both very slow to build and only provide you with more research points. It's going to be that once-in-a-blue-moon game where these buildings are actually built before you've completed the entire tech tree 10 minutes ago.

Just to be annoying the game offers you unavoidable earthquakes every 15 minutes. Mostly they don't do anything, but once in five times they destroy your biggest and best building. That's all they do. Just irritate you mildly for the sake of irritating you mildly. Like destroying your Circus Maximus 1 minute after spending 5 minutes building it. Hmm, well, er, thanks for that.

The build requirements are also quite staid and repetitive with only 8 buildings that generate food, 5 that generate Religion and 7 that generate entertainment. Now when I tell you that 2 buildings in that lot are represented twice, in that they provide both food and entertainments… well… why build anything other than those two as your central buildings? Basically you end-up with all your micro-settlements consisting of the exact same basic set-up, with just small varieties here and there which you only implement because you're determined to add variety, not because they make rational game-sense.

Then you get a Ruler level-up bonus which allows you to plant just one tree next to a house and it provides the house with 20% Religious satisfaction and 40% Entertainment satisfaction. So the two buildings mentioned above + a tree and you've virtually 'job done' about 20 houses satisfaction levels.

You get the idea.

But it's curiously great fun. And thoroughly addictive. I wouldn't recommend it in the slightest. But if you do decide to get into it, it'll probably be a lot of fun for a good many hours!

 

[JDR13]

SOMA

A very interesting game. It was developed by Frictional Games, the makers of the Penumbra series and Amnesia: The Dark Descent. It's a significant improvement over those games imo.

It's hard to describe the plot without being spoilerish in some way, so I'll just say that it's quite unique. The game takes place in a series of underwater stations deep in the Atlantic Ocean, and the general setting is something of a post-apocalyptic scenario.

There are a lot of aspects throughout SOMA that reminded me of other games at times. If I had to guess, I'd say the devs were influenced in one way or another by System Shock, Bioshock, F.E.A.R., Dead Space, and Fallout. I'm sure those aren't the only games, but they're the ones that came to mind while I was playing it.

While Frictional Games is still labeled as an Indie developer, SOMA has all the polish of a AAA title. The visuals are slick, and the ambient sound effects are as good as anything I've heard in the survival-horror genre.

If the game has a weakness as far as production values are concerned, it's the voice acting. I disliked it in general, and the VO of the two main characters were bad enough to break the immersion for me at times.

Story-wise, the game is really good, but I have to stop short of calling it great for a couple of reasons. The first is the complete lack of C&C. There are several points in the game where you get to make choices that would appear to be meaningful. Thing is… they're not. Nothing you do impacts the outcome in any way, and I found that pretty disappointing when it was all said and done.

The other thing that bothered me was that several interesting plot points were never fully explained, and you're simply left wondering about the how and the why.

It's definitely worth playing if you're a fan of the genre, and especially if you're a fan of their previous titles. I doubt I'll ever replay it due to the linearity of the story and the game in general, but it was a fun ride.

7.5/10

 

[DArtagnan]

Agree with most of that, except I don't think the VO is bad. I found it quite good, though the dialogue was implausible at times given the circumstances. As in, the writing didn't support the extreme situation the protagonist found himself in, at least not to my satisfaction.

Surprised you didn't mention the creatures, though.

You liked that implementation of hide-and-seek?