Last game you finished, tell us about it

Originally Posted by txa1265
Finished The Outer Worlds on Nintendo Switch this weekend. This was my second run-through, and I actually took my time and really completed everything I could, taking about 60 hours. . . . .

Overall I would not recommend buying a Switch just to play The Outer Worlds (never been big into that ‘system seller’ concept anyway), nor would I recommend buying the Switch version if you have a PC that will play it reasonably well. BUT, if you already have a Switch but don’t have a PC or console that will play it … it is actually OK on Switch.

Thanks for this. I was a big Gameboy fan back in the day but the gaming experience (graphics, lag, etc) just simply didn't make up for the portability. Looks like they are getting close though. What if Gothic 1 was available on Gameboy when Gothic came out? Outer Worlds on switch is fantastic.

I just finished Conglomerate 451, the procedural Science Fiction/Cyberpunk Crawler.
And boy…it has been a while since I have experienced such an underwehelming ending.
I was already in the process of doing my review and I consider redoing something now, as it was such a horrible experience. Basically the full game has a play time of about 40 hours or so, 75 Weeks or "missions". These missions are super generic and if you seen the first couple, you have seen all, and then you just repeat. At about half of the missions and 20 hours or so, you will have everything finished, and there is no further progress. You will still need to do
20 more hours and the rest of the missions and then… (Spoiler)

After 118 hours completed (100%) Death Stranding.

TBH I didn't expect much but wanted to see Decima capabilities on PC.
I mean… Apart from surreal and creepy trailer all I heard about the game was that it's walking/postman simulator.

It takes a genius to make a game full of fedex quests fun. And it's exactly what this game is. Fun fetch quests. Sounds impossible? Well, try it.
K+M support? Amazingly good, in fact aiming feels like mouse was in mind.
Can the game be played in 1st person? Yes! In fact you'll want to play it that way in some parts.
The story? Masterpiece.
The mood? Dark, creepy, yet somehow sexy. No atmospheroimmerse rubbish to use as description.
Characters (actors)? Absolutely fantastic.
Music? 100% compatible with the setting.
Frames/stutters? The game plays smoothly and never dipped under 60FPS on my rig (4670K, 1070).
Hair? They dropped the ball on this, but at least it's not horrible like in Ubisoft games.
Any more cons? Yea… There are a few irritating things that taint the experience (pokemon collection for example).

A musthave and mustplay on PC, flawed masterpiece: 9/10

Pathfinder freaking Kingmaker. Took me almost two years to finish it. When it was first released I couldn't stand the bugs, multiple hot-fixes, and the damn long load times.

Fortunately the game was fixed and with the DLC it's a very enjoyably RPG that can at times get very frustrating. Mainly due to time and Kingdom management.

I replayed three different characters and each had a different story and experience based on alignment, and game choices. Oh boy does your alignment and choices matter.

This is the first game I played where some your choices really matter and affect the game. Combat was hit or miss though because of the games rule-set. I'm not kidding.

I highly recommend you play as a fighter based build as spells take anywhere from 1-5 seconds. Meanwhile your fighters have killed or nearly killed the enemy already.

Now having said that I'm playing version 2.08, and haven't tried the beta TB patch yet. It might very well be the preferred way to play the spell-casters. That's all for now.

Edit: Score 9/10 a must play game for RPG enthusiasts.

Terminator: Resistance

A very average shooter with some RPG elements. I can't really recommend it unless you're a huge fan of the franchise.

I just finished the Jedi Fallen Order, I am quite disappointed with the ending. The overall game is just so so.

Originally Posted by Couchpotato
Pathfinder freaking Kingmaker. Took me almost two years to finish it. When it was first released I couldn't stand the bugs, multiple hot-fixes, and the damn long load load times.

Fortunately the game was fixed and with the DLC it's a very enjoyably RPG that can at times get very frustrating. Mainly due to time and Kingdom management.

I replayed three different characters and each had a different story and experience based on alignment, and game choices. Oh boy does your alignment and choices matter.

This is the first game I played where some your choices really matter and affect the game. Combat was hit or miss though because of the games rule-set. I'm not kidding.

I highly recommend you play as a fighter based build as spells take anywhere from 1-5 seconds. Meanwhile your fighters have killed or nearly killed the enemy already.

Now having said that I'm playing version 2.08, and haven't tried the beta TB patch yet. It might very well be the preferred way to play the spell-casters. That's all for now.

Edit: Score 9/10 a must play game for RPG enthusiasts.

Glad to hear you enjoyed it. I finished Kingmaker with pure arcane caster (empyreal sorceress) and didn't have any issues in RTwP

The Banner Saga 3 (2018)

Was very similar to my experience with Eschalon Book 3, in that it felt more like a quick DLC to the previous games than a game in and of itself. But then the Banner Saga 1-3 are kind of one game by themselves anyway, depending on how you look at it, whereas Eschalon games start you afresh with each new game, stats-wise.

After 13 hours it was all over and I got my one-of-many endings. The ending was both satisfying and awkward in equal measure with a good sense of closure but at the same time not really tying up many loose ends.

I had one bug which is apparently quite common, where loading screens don't ever load, but it only happened once and a ctrl alt del and then a reboot of the game cured it. I was also disappointed that the game didn't import my character's chosen skill-sets when I imported my save, meaning I had to play the game with my least favoured skill-sets and there was hideous amounts of duplication of skill-sets across many heroes.

The combat isn't as interesting this time as heroes will regularly fall in combat even with full armour, making the pretence of tactical combat even more tenuous. But it was, again, perfectly satisfying in the general sense.

There was lots of Choice and Consequence for those that like that kind of thing, but for a single play-through it's difficult to say what was good or bad about any of it. I guess that at 13 hours the game is enabling people to replay for the many divergent story avenues, but I'm not that kind of player.

They still didn't remove the timer from Survival Mode for part 3's SM, and you can only get this as paid DLC this time, so I didn't buy that after already being thoroughly put-off such a system by Banner Saga 2's timed SM, so can't comment on that. I also didn't buy the Eternal Arena DLC, so have no idea if that's good stuff or not.

On its own, I'd rate the game 7/10 but as the final chapter of BS 1-3 and imagining the whole series as one game, it does nothing to alter my general rating for the series as being a very recommendable 8/10 series.

Originally Posted by Couchpotato
I highly recommend you play as a fighter based build as spells take anywhere from 1-5 seconds. Meanwhile your fighters have killed or nearly killed the enemy already.

That highly depends on the actual build and enemy. Often casters kill the enemy before melee fighters are even able to reach them.
Try Octavia with maximized, empowered Hellfire Ray with sneak attack or various "save or die" spells. Also AoE spells against lower level enemies.
But yeah, fighters are strong and fun as well.

Expeditions: Vikings

Finishing the game took 55 hours spread across multiple years (the only games I ever finished in one go were the Witcher series games). I really enjoyed the game due to its setting and lack of high-fantasy for a change. There was still magic in the world but this magic reflected the characters believes rather than the typical fantasy-magic. In situations where "magic" was used, it was possible to find out the truth given a high enough perception score. The story was good enough for this type of game. Even though I play RPGs mostly for the stories, somehow the story did not matter too much due to the setting.

The battles were fun at the beginning but once you figure out that it really is about placing your shield wall correctly, having archers dealing damage and someone to heal the wall, the challenge dropped quite dramatically. Anyways, I did not ever get bored of the fights.

Downsides were the "modernization" of the setting. The characters were talking to each other like modern people with some weird Viking twist. No political incorrectness/wickedness involved (murdering is still politically accepted). Skill checks were annoyingly only going for the main character even though in many cases someone else in the party could have done the check with a better skill level. Travelling and looting areas got boring over time. Generally the game lacked variety characteristic for great fantasy RPGs.

Recommended for turn-based fans who want to learn something about fictional history. Probably not true history but makes you think in any case. Expeditions: Vikings seems like an underrated game.

8/10

Originally Posted by largh
Expeditions: Vikings
8/10

Thanks - I've been meaning to play this since @purpleblob did a review a few years back. It looks good. You've reminded me I need to check it out. I've just been watching the Vikings TV show, it's definitely an interesting setting for an RPG.

Yep, not a bad game. However…Expeditions Conquistador is better in pretty much every aspect.

Originally Posted by Kordanor
Yep, not a bad game. However…Expeditions Conquistador is better in pretty much every aspect.

I haven't played either, but I thought Conquistador looked a bit clunkier. Is that not the case?

Originally Posted by Pongo
I haven't played either, but I thought Conquistador looked a bit clunkier. Is that not the case?

I wouldn't say so. Vikings added complexity where no complexity was needed, like with the looting and equipment. Also the balancing was much better in Conquistador (comparing both release states).
Vikings also had some quests which had quite a dissatisfying ending if I remember correctly. Quests were more sparse in Conquistador but worked well.

It's like Vikings acts like it had lots of complexity, while it really didn't (but back then that was also part of the broken balancing which made some stuff obsolete).
Expeditions Conquistador looks simple in comparison, but upon playing shows, that it has some more complexity under the hood than was initially apparent. Though it's not getting super complex either.

Hmm - ok thanks Kordanor, maybe I should start with Conquistador then (particularly since I already own it - I backed it on Kickstarter years ago but never got round to it!).

Originally Posted by Pongo
I haven't played either, but I thought Conquistador looked a bit clunkier. Is that not the case?

That's a loaded question but I prefer Vikings over Conquistador.

No big reason why just the graphics and game-play was better.

Two videos for reference.



I hope the next game which they haven't shared much info about is more like Vikings.

Guess I'll just have to play both of them to find out

Played Samurai Jack: Battle through Time for 4-5h but I think I'm done with it. While the world and characters are great, it got really grindy and repetitive with the combat system.

It's 90% endless battles, and very little story and narrative. They built a weak narrative explanation as to why they need to string you along random worlds/locations, and you're basically going from battle arena to battle arena. With very little in terms of exploration and puzzles.

So it really got tiring to fight all the time. And while the fighting system is not bad, I'm just not in the mood. I was hoping for an expansion to the story from the tv series. But it's very little of that.

And I was ready to put up with that, just to get a taste of the world and characters but it seems they either spent very little adjusting difficulty, or I'm seriously underleveled or something. But I just got tired of needing to respawn constantly after having retried a boss battle for the n-th time.

It's 6.5/10 for me, I think. Too bad.

After many years, I tapped into the bog of eternal backlog and finished Mega Man Zero 4 this weekend.

This ends the Mega Man Zero series with a pretty final (and almost bittersweet) ending. Getting there though, the Zero series started out as one of the hardest games ever (especially if you're masochistic enough to go for S rank) and ended on a whimper; Zero 4 is almost comically easy in comparison to earlier and later Mega Man titles. Stage design is by and large very basic and simple. The exception was a fraggin' timed maze that posed the only significant challenge of the game. A crafting minigame was added in (poorly), but all in all it's not a very satisfying ending to the series. It's sequel (featuring a new character in the MM mythology) is somewhat better, though the Metroid-style open world is more annoying than endearing.

I finally finished PoE1 + The White March DLCs.

After the DLCs I went back and killed the Big Bad in Caed Nua for the first time, and did that high level optional section with the sorcerer under siege.

My sad old eyes found it a bit hard to pick out what was happening in combat when things got really busy, but other than that, thoroughly enjoyed it. I liked the plot and the lore. I liked the little text sections for some of the challenges. I liked the systems and levelable items, though there was probably a bit of a loot overload.

I recently bought PoE2, and will probably start that soon.