Last game you finished, tell us about it

Guess I forgot to mention, recently finished with Mafia series, I and II, that is. Great world design, ambiance, detail… easily on same level as CDPR and Rockstar.
What stands out are main characters( great modelling) , dialogue, performances…even in first game, as old as it is, the game does phenomenal job of capturing your attention with every scene…those "whoa!" moments when it's like you're inside a movie, well directed one.
Only Naughty Dog does this as well( though with them it's like one of those disgustingly inoffensive sunday everyone-get-together movies that force you to pull up your schlong in front of everyone in protest of all the sappy drama that's going on in front of you)
Anyway, the story: classic, young man, unfortunate circumstances pulled into life of crime, working your way up through the family: recognition, respect, wealth, until it takes a downhill later on.
Gameplay is pretty basic overall, straightforward pop-a-mole, with good driving mechanics.
One thing they also did extremely well is crime system, fines, speeding tickets, chases, and so on…probably the best in an open world title to date, without none of that spawning police on top of you.
Feels like this was wasted in gameplay though, was a lot of fun when those non scripted AI events kick in, in side missions.

So you carraced with formula. And loved it.
Good for you.

Originally Posted by joxer

I'm speechless…

A great RPG with great graphics in great 3D sitting right in front of me… and I use it to play cards?? Not happening! Well, not much anyway…

P.S. And why couldn't I import the cards I got in Witcher 1??

I finished Avernum: Escape from the Pit. It was my first experience of a Spiderweb game, and I really enjoyed it. Everything was set up to reward exploration, from magic spells that could only be found in dungeons to the vast number of quests. I clocked in at just under 60 hrs when I beat the third and final Great Quest and called it a day and I didn't find everything by a long shot (judging by the steam medals and my empty spell slots ). Definitely recommended.

…and now finished Avernum II: Crystal Souls. I was a bit apprehensive going straight into it off the back of the first one, but I had a great time with it. Very similar to the first one, but with a few more spells and creature types (some of which, like the Doom Guard, were entertainingly annoying! ). I enjoyed seeing how the game world had changed in the decades since my last party explored around, and whilst it is completely stand alone there were some fun call-backs to the first one. Exploration was brilliant and the writing is good - I particularly like the way that the Great Quests develop fairly organically through rumours and references throughout the game, which means the quests feel epic when they finally arrive. The turn based combat was good and the Great Quests were challenging. Overall, great games - hopefully Spiderweb are working on updating the third one as well!

Medieval 2 Total War. It's a bit old, but it was very fun playing it.

Nice ones, Pongo!

That's quite the spidery marathon there Pongo, excellent stuff! I really enjoyed the story and pacing in Crystal Souls. Quite a long game too. Much like yourself, I look forward to the Avernum 3 remake - then I can safely go 4-6 without having to wait any longer.

My last completed game was my second time through Dark Souls III in co-op format with a trusty friend. We've done all three games over the years and it was good to finally reach Lord of Cinder and beat it for our two characters. I do want to write a more in depth response to the game at some point to give it its due merit and to interact more with other players here on the 'Watch.
Unfortunately, it just didn't inspire me to write anything like the first two did - perhaps my saturation point was reached with that game-play formula.

Nice one, Pessi! Co-op format, eh? It wouldn't happen to have local co-op on the same screen, would it?

It would be interesting to hear your thoughts on DS III Pessimeister! Like you, I enjoyed it, but not as much as I expected. It felt like they had corrected some of the stuff that was wrong with the second one (eg health decreasing on death) but not brought anything particularly new to the table and some of it wasn't quite as good (eg the central hub in DS feels much more natural than the one in DSIII that forces you to teleport). Maybe a different setting might have helped. Anyway I enjoyed it well enough, but it didn't blow me away in the way the first one did

Originally Posted by Pessimeister
perhaps my saturation point was reached with that game-play formula.

That was one of my suspected reasons for not enjoying DS3, however I'd replayed DS2 shortly afterwards and it was still as fun as ever, so I' ve settled on DS3 being rather derivative, safe, uninspired game, with badly thought out combat and balance to boot, as the main culprits, as far as I'm concerned. And now it also has a subpar DLC which is FromSoftware's first when it comes to Souls series.
Wouldn't say it's a bad game per se, the overall mix just felt like a cold effort to me, like
a group of old pros phoning it in, whereas DS2 felt more in the vein of bunch of apprentices eager to prove themselves, resulting in a much warmer creation, or something .
Hopefully they'll at least manage to end on a high note with the last DLC.

Originally Posted by Pongo
It felt like they had corrected some of the stuff that was wrong with the second one (eg health decreasing on death)

There's health decrease in DS3 as well though (you loose roughly 25% HP after death).
Personally I've found DS2's solution a great compromise between too punishing Demon's Souls' and too lenient DS1's. DS3's ember solution is ok too I guess, just not particularly interesting imo, ergo not really what I'd call an improvement.

Ahhh yeah the ember, you're right. I played DSIII in non-ember form most of the time so I just wrote off that 25% health.

Shadows of Adam, a kickstarter project that gave birth to a game that most resembles an early final fantasy game or phantasy star, at least in my opinion. It was short, took me maybe eighteen hours to complete it, but it was nonstop fun all the way. This one will go down as one of my most enjoyable games that was delivered via Kickstarter, and if these folks ever ever do a similar game in the future, I will be there with wallet in hand.

So I finally, FINALLY finished the main campaign of Pillars of Eternity, taking about 180 hours or so (Many restarts, playing through both expansions ,etc etc.) Great game overall, especially the expansions, but the last third of so of the main campaign was really subpar, IMO. The whole Twin Elms and final areas were really shallow and weak.

That said, if Obs expands upon with it did in the expansions in Pillars II, then I'm confident it will be an excellent game.

Just finished Tales of Berseria (played on PS4 but available on PC as well). The story and game in general is SO much better than the much more hyped and higher Metacritic rated Final Fantasy XV. Basically you're a demon who stops at nothing seeking revenge. Awesome and fully developed cast of characters. Good and expansive voice acting (like 10 movies worth of voice I think).

No random encounters, you can save anywhere, enemies only respawn after you leave the 'region' (region is a group of areas) and you can either dodge them if you don't want to fight them, or drink a cheap holy potion and they'll ignore you. Also no grinding needed (I hate grinding with a passion).

The combat system for someone who doesn't like button smashers like me works well, basically instead of having to memorize that square square circle is a high kick and left trigger triangle circle is a heal, you get to customize the buttons for whatever you want on the fly. In my case, since in each area you would find 3-4 different types of enemies, I just set a chain of attacks appropriate for each type on each button, so, say, I find zombies that are weak to fire, I set 4 attacks on 'circle' for powers that are good vs. undead and/or fire based. Problem solved.

Took me 102 hours to finish, doing the main quest and all side quests, with some time spent on mini-games. Loved it!

Originally Posted by wolfing
No random encounters, you can save anywhere, enemies only respawn after you leave the 'region' (region is a group of areas) and you can either dodge them if you don't want to fight them, or drink a cheap holy potion and they'll ignore you.

Say what?!

Lemme shech what Steam users say about K+M. That smells like an instabuy.
But when will I find enough time to play it…

That Tales of Berseria sounds like something that could be right up my alley. Time to read up some more about it.

That does sound awesome - too bad it isn't on PS Vita as well … would have bought today!

Just 'finished' Risen 3. I put finished in quotes because I got a game breaking bug that wouldn't let me continue, and since I wasn't caring much for the game, I just uninstalled it (after about 30 hours gameplay).
I found it very similar to Risen 2… bunch of islands, you navigate from one to the other and do a bunch of quests. It became ridiculously easy after I learned crystal magic. Like, boringly easy. The only challenge I encountered was the ship boss fights (sea serpents, etc), and that's where the game-breaking bug happened. After the toughest battle I fought (3rd sea serpent), after like 6 attempts I finally beat it, and then… my character alone in a cloud and nothing anywhere. Checked the forums, many people said they had the same issue, dev said it was a hardware problem … pffft! Someone said I could skip the animation after winning the battle and maaaybe it'd work… nope.

Not recommended.

Originally Posted by wolfing
Just 'finished' Risen 3. I put finished in quotes because I got a game breaking bug that wouldn't let me continue, and since I wasn't caring much for the game, I just uninstalled it (after about 30 hours gameplay).
I found it very similar to Risen 2… bunch of islands, you navigate from one to the other and do a bunch of quests. It became ridiculously easy after I learned crystal magic. Like, boringly easy. The only challenge I encountered was the ship boss fights (sea serpents, etc), and that's where the game-breaking bug happened. After the toughest battle I fought (3rd sea serpent), after like 6 attempts I finally beat it, and then… my character alone in a cloud and nothing anywhere. Checked the forums, many people said they had the same issue, dev said it was a hardware problem … pffft! Someone said I could skip the animation after winning the battle and maaaybe it'd work… nope.

Not recommended.

You're not missing out on much. The whole series really ended on a whimper…lackluster ending, like the devs wanted to be simply done with it ( or were really on a tight schedule).