RPGWatch - Game of the Year Awards 2014

Kordanor · January 5, 2015

Yeah, same for me. It's a good game, but the enthusiasm I had in the very beginning dwindled quite a bit when I had to experience the story and ended up grinding (which while it is optional quite often, I kinda felt pushed to it). It also isn't helpful that the difficulty curve is sinking instead of rising. While the beginning is hardest, the second half of the game is much too easy.

vanedor · January 5, 2015

I might be the only person to think this but I feel Divinity Original Sin is overrated. It's not a bad game, but its combat system while amazing at first, get old and redundant quickly. Fire on poison, rain on fire, etc. You don't need to get very far in the game that any fighter using only melee weapons get almost useless because he cannot reach the enemies without crossing three magic walls of some sort. I've got tired of it and stopped playing the game before the end, in the "witch" world. I didn't think the story or the dialogues were good enough to keep me hooked.

My N1 game is Wasteland 2. Good old combat system. Great texts and dialogues. Great use of the different skills. They avoided the typical mistake that plagues so many Rpg : There is no or very little "filler" battle. You don't fight endless waves of nameless creatures. I haven't had that much fun playing a cRpg since BG2!

Kordanor · January 5, 2015

Well, you are not alone. I felt as well that Divinity: OS is overrated. Nevertheless it's a good game.

But putting the WL2 combat, which has absolutely no diversity at all and a very clear path for 99% of all battles, before Divinity:OS is a little absurd. In addition WL2 also had filler battles. Starting with basically ALL random encounters in the first zone.
The rest of the battles were as much "filler battles" as the ones from divinity were. There were only a hand full where you needed to adjust your tactics a bit and which actually were challenging.

But as I mentioned before. I voted for both of these games nevertheless.

vanedor · January 5, 2015

Kordanor said:
Starting with basically ALL random encounters in the first zone.
The rest of the battles were as much "filler battles" as the ones from divinity were.

*shrug*

In Wasteland 2, all the random encounters can be easily avoided and occupy just a small space in the game , while most of my time playing playing Divinity was spent fighting filler battles. As for all the battles playing the same in W2, I'm not sure what you mean. Depending of your enemy weapons, style of fighting, and the geography of the site, they can be quite different.

Kordanor · January 5, 2015

Depends on "how" you play as there is pretty much one optimal way.
Take 10 AP on everyone.
Equip snipers and Assault rifles for most of the time. You can shot twice with most of them.

Position your group. Start the fight. Shoot everyone. Next.
This works with the majority of all battles on elitist jerk.

Once you reach 140% aim with snipers and you get the snipers which use 7AP, you always use Headshot
The same goes with burst for Automatic rifles which happens earlier.

Of course you could make your life hard by going full melee or something like that.

joxer · January 5, 2015

In Wasteland 2 feel free to skip *all* random encounters.
The "hair" trader is funny, nuns that transport slaves too, then a group around a barbecue… But my outdooorsman was very high all the time I skipped usual encounters and it had no impact on my game. You do get some XP for skipping encounters, but what's more important is you save the ammo!

I suggest accepting only unique encounters and skipping the generic mobs.
For those who adore grinding, you, of course, should not enter any fixed location but just roam the wasteland and picking on these encounters, when you get bored uninstall the game as outside of wasteland mobs don't respawn endlessly.

This is why Wasteland 2 is so much better than Dragon Age 3. Both grindlovers and grindhaters can enjoy it. DA3 is aimed to be played only by grindlovers.

Kordanor · January 5, 2015

Especially the encounters in the first area give you a huge boost as they give tons of XP and die in an instant.

Ammo is only an issue in the very first part in the game. Once you reach the trader in the nomad camp who sells ammo extremely cheap it's not a factor anymore.

vanedor · January 5, 2015

Indeed, I guess it depends on how you play. Personally, I use a pretty balanced group with smg, shotgun, pistols, laser, rifles, heavy weapons and believe me, each battle is very different from the last one.

Kordanor · January 5, 2015

Which difficulty did you play on? And what did you do against explosives? And what was the hardest or most tactical combat you encountered?

vanedor · January 5, 2015

By the way, I think "Serpent in the Staglands" is missing from the options for next year games. It was supposed to be released in december but so far, it's been only the beta version.

vanedor · January 5, 2015

I rush them with SMG's/Hand to hand or I kill them from afar, it depends of the situation. I play on the normal difficulty setting…. But I've not completed the game yet so I guess my opinion might change later in the game.

Couchpotato · January 5, 2015

vanedor said:
By the way, I think "Serpent in the Staglands" is missing from the options for next year games. It was supposed to be released in december but so far, it's been only the beta version.

Check the forum thread as our database does not use 2015 as a general release date. I also don't have the time to change dates of over 100 hundred games manually.

Link- http://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=27045

We also have an option called other were you enter the game you want to pick.

xenocide · January 6, 2015

Best of 2014:

1. Lords of Xulima
2. Might & Magic X
3. Divinity OS

Wasteland 2 was really close as well, in fact for me all four were so close that I would be ok with them in any order of 1-4. I am a big Gothic and Risen fan so I kind of assume that Risen 3 would be in my top three had I played it yet.

2015:

1. Age of Decadence
2. Pillars of Eternity
3. Witcher 3

Unfortunately Underrail slipped my mind at the time or I would have written it into my top 3.

I know that kickstarters seem to be down right now but it has given me my game of the year 2 years in a row now (Expeditions Conquistador last year) and a lot of other really good games as well.

Maylander · January 6, 2015

vanedor said:
I might be the only person to think this but I feel Divinity Original Sin is overrated. It's not a bad game, but its combat system while amazing at first, get old and redundant quickly. Fire on poison, rain on fire, etc. You don't need to get very far in the game that any fighter using only melee weapons get almost useless because he cannot reach the enemies without crossing three magic walls of some sort. I've got tired of it and stopped playing the game before the end, in the "witch" world. I didn't think the story or the dialogues were good enough to keep me hooked.

My N1 game is Wasteland 2. Good old combat system. Great texts and dialogues. Great use of the different skills. They avoided the typical mistake that plagues so many Rpg : There is no or very little "filler" battle. You don't fight endless waves of nameless creatures. I haven't had that much fun playing a cRpg since BG2!

I think they're both a bit overrated. Good games, but nothing ground breaking.

joxer · January 6, 2015

And I can't disagree more.
Sure, if you'll concentrate only on combat, they're so much behind consoley action no_need_to_think_just_press_random_buttons games genre and enjoy spectacular explosions, nearreality graphics and impossible to do in RL acrobatics.

But hell, these are RPGs. Since when RPGs are supposed to be blindlyclick2win?
Compared to other RPG mediocrity on the market, both D:OS and WL2 have ~~groundbreaking~~ spectacular inventory systems. If something is overrated in these games, inventories definetly aren't.

RampantCoyote · January 6, 2015

Corwin said:
Yes, I believe Jay is hopeful of FK 2 being ready for 2015; it certainly got my 'write in' vote. However, I also didn't see Grimoire on the list!!

Oh, snap. I just got lumped in with Grimoire on the vaporware list.

ChaosTheory · January 6, 2015

This "grindlover" just finished Dragon Age: Inquisition after 160hrs. Really enjoyed the game. After about 150hrs, the same variations on the same quests in each zone did start to get old, but I never thought about walking away like I did with D:OS (came back and finished) or WL2 (did not come back). I guess my idea of "grind" is different than others… Every game has it to a certain extent, I just found DAI's to be bearable because I knew it was a very small part of an otherwise impressive experience.

The sad thing is we'll never see a game this big from EA/BioWare again. Clearly they were building an MMO here early on, but realized it just wasn't big/good enough compared to other offerings. It would have failed miserably. Instead we got an immense single player game that turned out to be loads of fun, despite some of the residual MMO systems that really are lacking.

Deleted member 18181 · January 6, 2015

wasteland 2 followed closely by lords of xulima, in 3rd spot not really a definitive one, maybe dark souls 2 or m&m X or dragon age

Letdown of the year was divinity..

As for 2015 obviously the 2 big iso pillars and torment 2 and probably witcher; and lets hope something new from piranha bytes though slim chances

Archangel · January 7, 2015

joxer said:
In Wasteland 2 feel free to skip *all* random encounters.
The "hair" trader is funny, nuns that transport slaves too, then a group around a barbecue… But my outdooorsman was very high all the time I skipped usual encounters and it had no impact on my game. You do get some XP for skipping encounters, but what's more important is you save the ammo!

I suggest accepting only unique encounters and skipping the generic mobs.
For those who adore grinding, you, of course, should not enter any fixed location but just roam the wasteland and picking on these encounters, when you get bored uninstall the game as outside of wasteland mobs don't respawn endlessly.

This is why Wasteland 2 is so much better than Dragon Age 3. Both grindlovers and grindhaters can enjoy it. DA3 is aimed to be played only by grindlovers.

Actually if you wanted earlier into higher level zones and can kill the random encounter you can get higher tier weapons and profit

So it is not all useless to do them.

ChaosTheory · January 7, 2015

Archangel said:
I guess you need to be special kind of crazy to play that turd for 160 h. Probably same kind of crazy that play Skyrim for 300h and be proud of it (or Oblivion).

I think these people have what I call a "counter lady"* brain. The kind of people that for 8 hours per day do same boring, mechanical job that I would kill myself after 1 week if I need to do it.

*because in my country women do this job 90% of the time.

Nice. Keepin' it classy with posters like this, RPG Watch.

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