Geneforge Saga on Steam - Is it worth it?

I like Skyrim… noobies word.

I'm about 2/3 of the way through Geneforge 1. It's very nice so far, with an interesting story and good old-school Baldur's Gate style gameplay, the main difference being that your "party" consists of creatures that you create via spellcasting. (At least if you play as a shaper. I haven't tried the other two classes yet.)

Even on the normal difficulty setting, this game is pretty unforgiving and it's not uncommon to inadvertently march into a combat situation and find yourself dead before either you or your creatures get a single turn to attack. Also, there are 77 regions in the game, some much harder than others, and there's often no way to know ahead of time which ones will be tough. E.g. the region just north of the first town is practically impossible if you are at a low level. Some of the regions, such as Shaper Crypt, are brutal even at a high level. Save your game often.

$10 for all five Geneforges on Steam is one of the better gaming deals I've ever had. (Although today's GOG sale is amazing as well!) Even the normal price of $20 is extremely reasonable.

That's what I love about the Spiderweb games, they actually present a challenge. These wimpy so called "action rpg's" could take some lessons from Spiderweb. Several lessons, in fact! I envy you getting to play them for the first time, enjoy them all -)). And oh yeah, that steam deal was quite the steal.



-Carn

Its a ridiculous value on Steam. I payed $75 for the CD just a few months back. Having finished 4 and the 1 I have to say 4 is a very polished game with a great story line. I went with a Champion and it was pretty challenging. Highly recommended!

It was a smart move for Spiderweb to put this saga on Steam. For me, it went from "I'd like to try that some day" to "for that price, I'll buy it NOW." And now that I have experienced the quality of their games firsthand, I'd have no problem paying $15-20 apiece for their other titles. Of course, if they show up cheap on Steam as well, I won't complain.

Forgot to mention in my earlier post that I've encountered essentially no bugs. There was one situation where one of my creatures got stuck behind something and I couldn't move him and I couldn't leave the region because my creatures weren't all with me. Took about 2 seconds to realize that all I needed to do was destroy the guy that was stuck.

I also like that the tough combat forces you to experiment with all the spells and items you're carrying to see what can help. Those shield spores really come in handy to give the creatures a bit more staying power. Also, for a few tough battles I decided to destroy my creatures and rebuild them with lower intelligence (so I couldn't control them manually) but more endurance and strength. Sometimes that's just enough to do the trick. Other times it's disastrous as one of them runs at the enemies and the other 4, 5, or 6 stand around doing nothing.

Also found that simply building an army of battle alphas, while effective against many enemies, is sometimes completely ineffective, like when battling the stronger turrets. Gotta use ranged creatures such as vlishes in such cases. I like that the game forces you to try different tactics like this, rather than allowing you to cruise through the game with the same army and weapons/spells against every enemy. (Like, say, Diablo allows you to do.)

[Some G1 spoilers below!]



Finished G1 over the weekend, pretty satisfying ending overall. I chose to destroy the Geneforge instead of using it.

That last screen (Guarded Docks) was pretty tough! I was having a miserable time trying to kill the various augmented guards. I had got myself into a situation wherein as soon as I entered the area, the guards sounded an alarm and came running at me, so there was no possibility of sneaking around.

I think this happened because I killed some of them and then left the region in order to heal and recreate my creatures. And I saved the game, so I was stuck in this situation unless I wanted to backtrack quite far to my previous savegame.

I was beginning to think I was never going to make it through as they would kill my creatures and me before I could kill even one of them. But then I discovered that if I used my batons to set off both the brown and green mines just as the worst of the guards came running across them, I could take off a huge amount of their health, making them relatively easy to finish off. I wish I had thought of that tactic much earlier in the game!

I cleared out everything except Shaper Crypt and the Power Core. I did the "big secret" after reading about it in a walkthrough. No way would I have discovered that on my own, not nearly enough patience for running around touching stones to work out the pattern. And I died pretty quickly every time I tried entering the temple without touching the stones first. It certainly wouldn't have been a show-stopper if I hadn't read the secret, but I figured since I was unlikely to do another playthrough any time soon, might as well find out what it was.

There are some creatures I never got around to trying, but I expect they'll be available in the later games as well. Once I finally found a "create drayk" canister (a good 3/4 of the way through the game), my army consisted of 4 of those guys and nothing else. Good enough to get through the game. Prior to that, I had been using half battle alphas and half beefed-up vlishes. Also quite a satisfactory combination.

Taking a break from the Geneforge series now to play Fallout 1 for the first time.

Nice work. I suggest you leap to GF4 if you plan on continuing. I played GF4 then GF1, but GF2 wore me out and felt like a rehash of GF1. GF4 is unique and has a great story line. I've heard mixed opinions about GF3, most leaning toward negative.
Great series overall!