Last game you finished, tell us about it

I finished Heroes of Monkey Tavern this morning, I usually don't play on weekends but had a couple of free hours and thought I'd clear another floor. Little did I know then that this was the final floor, a fun and decent game that ended just a bit too early for me. I really enjoyed it though, but the shortness of the game would cost it a few points. Truly, I could have easily done with another ten to twenty floors, the eight that you get is just too brief.

There are some memorable fights, the one with the minotaur and the dragon thingie at the end come to mind. Plenty of loot and secrets to find, some floors though are almost entirely empty of combat, which I found a bit odd. For the price, you'll get a few hours of entertainment, and I'm hoping at some point that maybe there will be an expansion or some other extra content or maybe a sequel.

Not sure what I will fire up next, I'm feeling like a replay of the Trails in the Sky games might be due soonish. I replayed the first one a couple of months ago, so perhaps the second and third are due for a revisit.

you said:

Banner Saga 3:

I finished Banner Saga 3. It is much like the previous 2; story heavy with choices to be made. Many of the choices have consequences - some obvious some not so obvious. The game mechanics are pretty much the same as the previous 2 so if you did not like those you will not like this one. I did not replay 1 and 2 so some of the finer details of the story were forgotten (I'll probably replay all three in a couple of months).

I encountered no major known bugs (obviously there could be some bugs related to how choices were made that I missed); but there are some folks who are having technical issues.
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I was unhappy with my ending but no spoilers here. All in all if you like a story heavy game (much as 1 and 2) then this will not disappoint but if you were looking for major changes in game or combat mechanics - don't look here.

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Finished it last night. It was shorter than I thought it would be. I finished it in 12 hours. I think it was very good however and I enjoyed it thoroughly. Again, it was an improvement on the first one and second with more combat options and less having to worry about food.

I really liked the story myself and I thought the ending was quite good. It can never be perfect but it was good enough for me.

The surge a very decent scify demon souls clone. If you are into the genre then it is even much better than the mediocre reviews out there. It follows the format perfectly, is hard enough and addicting, although the atmosphere is slightly lighter (less/no scary moments). I'm glad I finished it as it was demanding too much of my time lately, but that shows how addicting it can be.

Dragon age Inquisition is on my list for a while now, but the grinding aspect and time sink is a huge turn off. Is it enjoyable to play and only do the main quests (and not miss too much of the actually good side quests)? Or maybe I'll start with DA2 first, or the banner saga 1. Although the latter I played for the first hour or so but did not found my bearings yet.

ilm said:

Dragon age Inquisition is on my list for a while now, but the grinding aspect and time sink is a huge turn off. Is it enjoyable to play and only do the main quests (and not miss too much of the actually good side quests)? Or maybe I'll start with DA2 first, or the banner saga 1. Although the latter I played for the first hour or so but did not found my bearings yet.

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DAI is only a grind if you decide to do everything, I never 100% the game personally. First time through, I basically only did the zones that you have to open for the main quests and get the companions (+ the Fallow Mire, but it's very small compared to the rest).

The companions and main quests are the best part of the game. The good side quests are usually the zone story questlines which start the first time you enter that zone and have a chit-chat with scout Harding. The game also have a few "side dungeons" tied to no external quest that are worth seeing/doing (Château D'Onterre in Emerald Grave, Lost Temple of Dirthamen that requires finding runes in Exalted Plains and The Still Ruins in the Western approach). Exalted Plain has some nice side quests from an Elven clan too from what I remember (not part of the zone story). I can't talk about the DLCs, Hissing Waste or Emprise du Lion (I still haven't played those). Note that you can still play the game after you finished the main quest.

Also, you might want to set a world state via Dragonkeep (will spoil the DAO and DA2 plots to you)

Great thanks, I was afraid some good quests won't be triggered automatically when only doing the main campaign. I think I will give it a shot as there are few high production value RPGs out there. In fact I will even start with DA2 (I played DAO a long time ago). I browsed the DLCs for it on origin. Glad I did as I saw there is a HD texture pack which improved things a lot. Are there any other recommendations on mods? Apparantly there is a community HD pack too, although it also changes the actually appearance of objects:
https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonage2/mods/3981

As an aside, DA2 does not support a xbox controller but the steam controller is just awesome. Downloaded a template and now it plays like the xbox version of DA2. The steam controller even has a gyro (always forget about that), and it is configured to control the mouse. Works very good, buttery smooth with no hiccups at all.

Finished Titanfall 2. It was okay, nothing spectacular and I would not recommend it to the watch crowd. I did play it as the campaign was supposed to be very good, but you can clearly still see it is a multiplayer first affair. The premise, scify military, is still very interesting though (without the mechs, hate them). I would not mind something of a RPG in a starship troopers kind of setting. Related, but not really the same: freespace 2 was awesome in that respect.

I only play DA2 with the official HD pack and sometimes the chargen revamp mod.

I only play DA2 in nightmares.

One day I must taste the evil that is DA2...

DA:2 wasn't that bad; for me the biggest issue is that the maps were tiny and reused which made that aspect of the game boring. The rest of it was ok i guess; though people complained because it didn't keep the da party perspective (top down or wahtever it is that folks expected).
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DA:I was fun I think. The companion stories and related quests were fairly decent. The areas were expansive to fun to explore. Some of the quests were repetitious but those were optional. I think it was under-rated and da was over-rated.
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Mind you these days I think there are better games but whatever.

Sill people, need I remind you all that there is only one Dragon Age game? Consider this your public service announcement!

Da1: 9/10
da2: 7/10
da3: 5/10

Carnifex said:

Sill people, need I remind you all that there is only one Dragon Age game? Consider this your public service announcement!

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Bah I enjoyed playing all three of them even Dragon Age 2.

I'll rank them as the following:

1. Dragon Age Origins
2. Dragon Age: Inquisition
3. Dragon Age 2

DA2 is enjoyable for what it is (more personal stories, well written and varied companions, interesting setting and atmosphere, and solid combat) - I spent about 50 hours on my first play through.

Thrasher said:

One day I must taste the evil that is DA2…

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After all the negative comments here I almost changed my plans, but I think I'm still going to try it. The taste can't be that bad can it. I will play only for the story.

DA2 is not that bad - but it's very inferior to DA:O - and quite inferior to DA:I.

For me, the worst part would be the parachuting enemies. That was close to unforgivably stupid - but the rest of the game is ok-ish, if you forget what it's supposed to be.

I would probably rank it around 6/10 - which isn't bad at all, as I'm relatively harsh.

DA:O - 6/10
DA2 - 3/10
DA:I - 4/10

Ironically, I finished DA2 but couldn't bring myself to finish DA:I

purpleblob said:

Ironically, I finished DA2 but couldn't bring myself to finish DA:I

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That's not surprising as DA2 is a much shorter game.

I haven't played much of DA:I, but if it's anywhere near as bloated as ME:A, there's probably a whole lot of people who didn't see it to the end.

ilm said:

After all the negative comments here I almost changed my plans, but I think I'm still going to try it. The taste can't be that bad can it. I will play only for the story.

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Most people who are super negative on DA2 just wanted more Warden, mute protagonist and pseudo-turn based combat and got super pissed the game wasn't that. If that isn't your expectations, you reaction will probably be different.

DA2 has some parts of it that shows it was made in just 18 months though and the engine was getting long on the tooth back when it released (it's the same one as DAO, Jade Empire, KoTOR and NWN). The tone can be very campy as well despite the game stories being on the depressive side. Also, the good quests are the main quests, companion quests and secondary quests (that's how they are labelled in the quest log), the rest can be ignored and only main quests are mandatory to advance through the acts.

azarhal said:

Most people who are super negative on DA2 just wanted more Warden, mute protagonist and pseudo-turn based combat and got super pissed the game wasn't that. If that isn't your expectations, you reaction will probably be different.

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Yeah, I'm sure the drastic change in art direction, the bland, repetitive level design, and the super repetitive combat didn't have anything to do with it.

JDR13 said:

That's not surprising as DA2 is a much shorter game.

I haven't played much of DA:I, but if it's anywhere near as bloated as ME:A, there's probably a whole lot of people who didn't see it to the end.

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I did finish DA2 and gave up on DAI after about 80 hours.

I think DAI can be great game on par with DAO if they remove all the crap padding. Its really shame that they went over board with the size of the world and then adding in crap it fill it up to make it feel like the world is full of stuff. I must have spent lot of hours in the first couple of zones closing all the rifts, exploring camps, star gazing, side quest and all the others stuff they added, I was bored out of my head when I had to do all these in the 5 or 6 remaining zones too! Its the same pattern and once you discover this pattern, the immersion factor breaks down.

Part of the problem is also me in that I have completionist tendency and did not know when to stop playing the "filler/padding" stuff and other part is, its not obvious which is "filler/padding". So one can easily get burnt out.

I wish some one will make mod to DAI which will remove the filler crap.