Last game you finished, tell us about it

JDR13 said:

Yep, there are also a few really good mods that enhance it further. Doom 3 has aged very well imo and is still a blast to play. I enjoyed it more than the new Doom tbh.

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Enjoyed it more than the new Doom? Really? You're really the first I hear saying that.

For me Doom 3 was ok, but completely lost what made the originals unique. I absolutely loved the reboot. Maybe even more than the originals. The music alone was absolutely fenomenal. I've got the soundtrack constantly running in my music playlist. Mick Gordon is a god.

And I'm really hyped for Eternal. That's why I hope to finally finish the reboot before November.

danutz_plusplus said:

Enjoyed it more than the new Doom? Really? You're really the first I hear saying that.

For me Doom 3 was ok, but completely lost what made the originals unique. I absolutely loved the reboot. Maybe even more than the originals. The music alone was absolutely fenomenal. I've got the soundtrack constantly running in my music playlist. Mick Gordon is a god.

And I'm really hyped for Eternal. That's why I hope to finally finish the reboot before November.

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I've seen a lot of people express disappoint with the new Doom. Personally, I liked it, but it didn't blow me away like the originals did.

I don't like how most of the enemies teleport in in waves as you explore the level. To me, that gives it more of an arena-shooter feel as opposed to the older games where you cleared them out as you explored the levels. The older games had teleporting monsters too of course but not nearly to the same degree.

I'm not entirely sure what to think of Doom Eternal yet. I was originally hyped thinking it was going to be more like the older titles again, but the more recent gameplay videos have me a little skeptical.

JDR13 said:

I've seen a lot of people express disappoint with the new Doom. Personally, I liked it, but it didn't blow me away like the originals did.

I don't like how most of the enemies teleport in in waves as you explore the level. To me, that gives it more of an arena-shooter feel as opposed to the older games where you cleared them out as you explored the levels. The older games had teleporting monsters too of course but not nearly to the same degree.

I'm not entirely sure what to think of Doom Eternal yet. I was originally hyped thinking it was going to be more like the older titles again, but the more recent gameplay videos have me a little skeptical.

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I agree with all of that. I also didn't like the teleporting enemies and preferred the hand placed feel in Doom 1 and 2. I still had a blast with DOOM 2016 and thought it was a good game, but I'm hoping they put some of that stuff right. I haven't been keeping up with Eternal so no idea what it's looking like though or what they're focussing on. I'll go in with an open mind and hopefully enjoy it whatever.

How do you guys find Master Levels of Doom and Final Doom? Played about 3 levels of Master Levels, and found it ok, but I think I've just overdosed on Doom and wanted to move on, and maybe leave those for later.

I never played much of those despite being a huge fan of Doom 1 & 2. To me, it seemed like they were made for people who didn't get enough of the originals and just wanted more of the exact same. No new monsters, weapons, etc, made it seem pointless to me.

Now that I think about it, I think Final Doom was basically just a collection of user-made levels.

I don't think I ever played Master Levels. I did play Final Doom many years ago but I found it too difficult to be enjoyable and the lack of new monsters and weapons etc didn't inspire me to press on and try harder. Someone (possibly my brother...) later told me that I should have stuck with it because it has some really well designed levels, but I've never gotten round to trying again.

Damn, I just installed Brutal Doom, and suddenly have an urge to replay them. It's really fast paced

"Just" played through all parts of the Risen series (i.e., in the last weeks). In case of 1 and 2 those were replays.

Entertaining stuff, but it really shows how much trouble they have with balancing. And melee seemed to draw the short stick in part 2 and 3. Especially in part 3. Unless you count melee magic.

(Oh, and the only decent sidekick is Jaffar. )

Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire

I initially started the game with RTwP mode but found the combat too messy so restarted it with TB mode. Steam shows 58 hours of game play which includes ~8 hours of the first play through with RTwP. Overall, I found it "ok" but not fun enough for a replay.

The character building is decent with the choices to multiclass + subclass, not just for your main character but also the companions as well (e.g. depending on your choice, Eder can be multiclass as Fighter/Rogue or just a pure fighter or rogue). I really liked the fact that there are a good variety of companions (with their own story and quests) and sidekicks (no story or quests) available to try out different class builds in one playthrough.

Unfortunately, I didn't find the combat very engaging nor challenging. Most of the battles play out almost the exact same way since your spells, abilities and health resets after the battle - you can just blast enemies with your best spells and abilities all the time without having to worry about the next encounter which really removed the strategic nature of the combat. I only came across a couple of challenging encounters throughout the whole game and most of the time it was due to the fact enemies were much higher level than my party (indicated by the red triple skulls).

While I could keep a better track of the combat in TB mode, it also dragged out the combat heaps, especially for the ship encounters where they basically outnumber your crew most of the time. In the early games, there are many ship that will pursue you, which really ruined the exploration for me with so many boring combats - yes, I tried both ship to ship battle and just getting on board the other ship, and both were equally tedious. Another issue I had with TB combat is terrible pathfinding - characters often either push others out of their path or get stuck and waste all of their movement points…. I found this really ridiculous.

Obsidian put a lot of effort in building the world and lore - while I appreciated some aspects, some I simply disliked a lot. For example, I loved the contrast of the poor vs. the rich area in Neketaka - the gloomy atmosphere of The Gullet made me want to escape the place as soon as possible, while I stood still for a while in Serpent's Crown, enjoying the calming sensation of the surroundings, listening to the flow of waterfall and chirping of the birds. On the other hand, I hated the language Obsidian developed for Deadfire, with the NPCs and companions constantly spouting something that sounds ridiculous like "ac".

The main plot is extremely short, and you spend most of the game trying to form a strong relationship with various factions in Deadfire. If you like dealing with political affairs, you may find the game very interesting - I really hate politics and didn't really get attached to any of the factions which reduced the fun factor significantly. It was quite disheartening to learn that my choices caused so much chaos and destruction to Deadfire even though I didn't really feel much attachment to any of the people I've met.

I encountered a few technical issues like stuttering and rather long loading time but nothing serious.

Final score: 6.5/10

purpleblob said:

The main plot is extremely short, and you spend most of the game trying to form a strong relationship with various factions in Deadfire. If you like dealing with political affairs, you may find the game very interesting - I really hate politics and didn't really get attached to any of the factions which reduced the fun factor significantly. It was quite disheartening to learn that my choices caused so much chaos and destruction to Deadfire even though I didn't really feel much attachment to any of the people I've met.

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This has been my main worry with Obsidian's recent games as I also don't really care for games making me care about factions. I bought Tyranny a while back because apparently it's quite short and could give me a flavour of what their newer games are like. I've so far played about 6 hours, two of which were the computer left on while I fell asleep. And the problem I'm having is I just don't care about the factions.

I've been playing it for four hours and only had one brief combat area. Which is fine, some games can take a while to get going, but after this four hours, the next area is yet another screen where you just visit a faction leader's camp, and all the myriad of useless and not useless NPCs that entails. So my next two hours looks to be a borefest as well.

And even then, some games can make this interesting, but I'm stuck in don't care mode and I have no idea if I can pinpoint why, though I make guesses. I think my best guess is that the game doesn't feel like an adventure by being so rigid in it's faction plot-line. I like RPGs where the story is much more about the mystery of strange goings on that the player gradually unravels, to which most NPCs and story characters ask for your help and things like factions are not directly tied to the main plot beyond visitation stepping stones and maybe an optional quest.

With Tyranny they tell you everything about your environment as an introduction, they tell you all about the factions at the same time, they tell you what you're going to be doing and that everything you do will relate to these factions. So actually playing the game feels like just going through the motions rather than discovering a whole new world step by step. Each decision you make has been de-personalised and is now dominated by your concern for your faction ratings. And even then the end result of a ratings influenced situation can turn out a result you didn't want because, really, one has no way to mind-read what the dev's imagine is how each faction wants you to act.

I've no doubt there's some interesting and/or exciting content in the game somewhere, but getting to it is such a slog of predictable and forced-dilemma non-game that I've found myself unable to load it up even when I'm dead bored. It's not just the faction system I don't think, it's a combination of lots and lots of things, from combat to itemisation, UI to, as you say with Pillars, uncomfortable language and a whole raft of things that just makes me think that the main problem with Obsidian games is that they simply don't get the concept of adventuring and, in fact, don't even like adventuring. They seem to like people and philosophy more than challenge and mystery.

But they present their people and philosophy in a quagmire of intricate systems akin to reading a new car manual, or, worse, a spaceship's manual. And there's nothing wrong with system complexity, it just seems really time consuming and over-elaborate for game where the only real impetus is speaking to people and conceptualising different philosophies. Even for a D&D adventure game their systems are over-convoluted, let alone a game where they don't even prioritise either combat or mystery. A sort of Life Is Strange but with four heavy manuals and Europa Universalis' UI. Utterly bizarre IMO.

Even when they did Neverwinter Nights 2, they tried their best to shoehorn in as much of this kind of stuff as they could, making you choose between factions to progress the story, making you care (and failing) about your reputation with regards companion factions, culminating in the end-battle being just a little faction war, and so on and so on, but at least that game had some remnants of the idea of an adventuring party. I guess that was the element that at least kept you going until the end, at least with Pillars there's some sense of adventuring, even though it's clouded behind all of Obsidian's tiresome over-intellectualism/pretension.

lackblogger said:

It's not just the faction system I don't think, it's a combination of lots and lots of things, from combat to itemisation, UI to, as you say with Pillars, uncomfortable language and a whole raft of things that just makes me think that the main problem with Obsidian games is that they simply don't get the concept of adventuring and, in fact, don't even like adventuring. They seem to like people and philosophy more than challenge and mystery.

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This, I totally agree.

lackblogger said:

This has been my main worry with Obsidian's recent games as I also don't really care for games making me care about factions. I bought Tyranny a while back because apparently it's quite short and could give me a flavour of what their newer games are like. I've so far played about 6 hours, two of which were the computer left on while I fell asleep. And the problem I'm having is I just don't care about the factions.

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EXACTLY

I think they got it perfect with Fallout Vegas. But I think no one gets it as far as factions. Both Elex and Fallout 4 fell apart for me once I had to do some faction time. And I have hundreds of hours in both games.

I don't know. Maybe I'm just tired of lame narratives and have more fun making my own stories in a well constructed world. Of which both Elex and F.4 both excelled in.

I finished Bayonetta 2 on Nintendo Switch. I finished the story and I'm not really attached with its premise. I'll be spending more time coming up with a better combo and win platinum trophies.

The Banner Saga 2

I really enjoyed the first game in this series so I was always going to play the second one and I have to say, I wasn't disappointed. Just over 18 hours played according to Steam and that's the second entry in my favourite Viking themed game series completed.

Much to my delight, this is a cRPG which allows you to import your previous game and all its decisions and then proceeds with the story as if it were a single game merely split into parts.

Nothing has changed system-wise from the first game, the game simply expands its bestiary, character classes and then expands the character level limit from level 5 to level 10. Its great entertainment learning how to use all the new classes and skills associated with them while at the same time keeping all the same characters that worked so well for me in the first game. The only downside in this department is the fact that levels 9 and 10 seem pointless as this is the point at which all the base stats are maxed out, leaving you 4 stat points to distribute amongst really boring minor % modifiers of no great significance, except maybe Critical Strike percentage, and then once you've put points in these areas you then find loads of items which offer you these percentages anyway. It's not unusual to find a level 10 item which offers you +3 to all of the % modifiers, completely negating the need for any levels beyond level 8. And yet level 9 and 10 cost an exorbitant amount of XP, which is really annoying.

The combat is still it's very own brand of extremely satisfying isometric turn-based and I found all of the battles gave me lots to think about even on normal difficulty, with quite a few reloaded fights throughout. The only annoyance here being that a few of the reloads came from unexpected events occurring during the fight, though I would not call them waves pre-se, just examples of the new characters and their classes and a couple of more irritating gotcha-like events.

The story managed to continue being interesting while evolving into something grander as it progressed but does end on a cliff-hanger to part three, which might be somewhat annoying as I can't say I've ever heard anything good about part 3 and I'm not sure I'll ever try it before a huge sale. I'm not a slave to story in cRPGs though, so I'm not bothered if the end of this story marks the end of the tale. The voice acting and occasional cut-scene are all very well done IMO.

So a hearty recommendation from me as a game which has the golden combination of both interesting and engaging story and interesting and engaging combat. Although I've completed it I'm not even done with it as there's another good 18 hours left to play running through the story with an alternate protagonist and then another 18 running through all the bonus-game survival mode and all of its achievement goals.

A good solid 8/10 cRPG series up to this point, really glad I found this series.

I quite enjoyed the first two Banner Saga offerings, but have yet to buy or play the third one. I had a friend that thought the final game was rather light and over too fast, and hearing negative thoughts on it certainly hasn't made me whip out my wallet any quicker. I know I'll get it at some point though, simply to complete the series.

Never got into the Banner Saga 1. I tried it at at time I was really ready for some turn based combat, but I lasted only a couple of battles in before giving up. I guess I'm also just bad at it.

Moonlighter. A typical rogue-lite dungeon romper. Nothing wrong with it, it just seems one in a dozen these days. There is a minor novelty that you have to sell your loot in the shop afterwards, but that wears off by the time you get to the 3rd dungeon (out of 5).

It gets up to 84 on metacritic, but only 74 for the pc version (I guess pc players have higher standards). For me it is worth a maximum of 70.

I was also expecting something else completely when going in based on some quick screenshots I saw: a normal top-down rpg where you go different places and a good storyline. Given that I would only give it a 50 expressing my disappointment

I've been playing a plus game of Final Fantasy Four the past few weeks, and yesterday I parked it. I was trying to farm a red tail to get an upgraded weapon, but after over six hours spread over three days and not getting one, I just went to the finish and ended it. It's still a great game, one I highly recommend if you enjoy the genre, but just avoid the farming shenanigans. I don't know exactly what the odds are of getting those tails, but in the process I stole three crystal rings and received over twenty wyvern lances, and by all accounts those items are fairly rare as well.

Next up for me will be Final Fantasy Four: After Years, a game that I've never played. I'll likely start playing either later today or tomorrow.

I've now completed the Survival Mode for Banner Saga 2, which consists of 40 staged combats in a row with a pause after each individual combat to level up, assign loot and optionally hire more party spare characters if any of your team died, or just because you want to add variety options.

I didn't hire anyone extra and I completed this trial with just 6 reloads on normal difficulty. One of the rewards for winning a combat is also allowing you one extra reload, to which the most amount of reloads you're allowed is 12, though many of those have to be earned. Some combats also offer you an extra wave of enemies if you're feeling really confident for extra XP, and I did all of these until combat number 25 when I started to decline the offer.

I have to say, I really enjoyed having this feature as after playing the first game in the series I found myself wanting more of the combat even after I had exhausted to story in multiple playthroughs and to be able to just load up a few fights is very satisfying and satiates the urge for more without having to start a new game.

Like most things in life, there's one aspect of it that really deflated my enthusiasm though and almost killed it for me: It's all timed.

Yup, you only have 60 seconds to arrange your troops before battle. And then you only have, like, 20 seconds to perform each character's turn once you've pressed the "ready" button. And so most of my reloads came from time related panic and the inability to read enemy skills nor assess enemy movement/turns without losing my turn, and, often, just thinking about my own character's available choices that I do know quite well would take more than the time allowed.

It's like walking into a Chess club and finding out that the only version of chess they play is 20 seconds per move chess, but here you also have about 80 different pieces to know about and every piece has three or four different attacking options before you even consider whether or where to move them first.

And there's no option to turn the timed element off. Utterly bizzare and not at all coherent to the cerebral nature of the combat of this series. It's almost a hair-pullingly dumb design choice IMO. It completely ruins the whole concept of just sitting down to relax with a bit of Banner Saga combat, instead you're more agitated than in any given action game.

Oh well.

AC origins DLCs: The hidden ones and the Pharaoh one. In one word, meh. After finishing the base game I was still excited about the world and wanted to stay a bit longer but the DLCs kind of ruined it. It is more of the same, kill or fetch an item in the same cookie-cutter fortress or cave. I knew that upfront but still. It sucked away the last joy I had of the setting.

The plus: I did enjoy some moments like the various afterlife settings
The negative: the bullet sponges of bosses. Terrible, just terrible. I lowered difficulty from hard to easy for the bosses as otherwise it would have took me too long.

I don't think I will be playing Odyssey. No matter how much it improved. Regardless, AC origins is still a significant step up from the previous AC games.

Btw: there is a gameplay video of AC Atlantis. It includes dialogue options!!


https://youtu.be/tVj_d4JH4uA

ilm said:

I don't think I will be playing Odyssey.

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I really hope you change your mind.