Last game you finished, tell us about it

largh said:

Baldur's gate 3 early access

I haven't enjoyed an RPG this much since Pathfinder: Kingmaker and would like to convey that this will become an excellent RPG. Those who are not going to try the EA: stay strong - there are plenty of bugs and poorly working elements in the game at the moment. You're doing right by not spoiling the enjoyment

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Thanks for this - I am definitely in the ‘not playing the EA’, and staying away from review/previews as well. Looking forward to getting it eventually when it becomes a ‘real game’ ...

Banner Saga trilogy

Great music and sound overall, the environment ones are awesome. Story is good, there are tons of chars, a little difficult at first to remember so many. Good writing as well, the events are pretty interesting. Sadly the combat mechanics are garbage which makes fights boring and annoying, and in part 3 you are extremely OP with the right skills.

ps no spoiler about the ending but it was dissapointing, just 2 pics and fuck off, had to google what the fuck it meant
ps2 play all games in a row since first 2 end in cliffhangers

porcozaur said:

Banner Saga trilogy

Great music and sound overall, the environment ones are awesome. Story is good, there are tons of chars, a little difficult at first to remember so many. Good writing as well, the events are pretty interesting. Sadly the combat mechanics are garbage which makes fights boring and annoying, and in part 3 you are extremely OP with the right skills.

ps no spoiler about the ending but it was dissapointing, just 2 pics and fuck off, had to google what the fuck it meant
ps2 play all games in a row since first 2 end in cliffhangers

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I actually really found the ending satisfying to me.

I also found the fights quite good. Just the first iteration had too many repetitive fights and not enough skills.

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A semi-trolling post, because why not.
The last game I finished is Bloodstone: an Epic Dwarven Tale by Mindcraft (1993)

Ok, let's cut to the chase: I start to dislike modern AAA games - because I've seen too much, I play too much, it's my freakin' profession, and most importantly: I love games.

Modern AAA games are like your average bloated, full-fat, jewelry-covered pimp: they have da money, they ain't no have no g*ddam taste, and sure as hell they don't like you.

Enter Bloodstone, a real RPG underdog from a real underdog game series (Magic Candle) developed by a real underdog company (Mindcraft).
Some of you may be familiar with Magic Candle -- a great game, but a tad tedious. Bloodstone is the same as MC3, but much less tedious. In a nutshell, it is a top-down turn-based RPG, Ultima6-style, with some "realistic" elements, not unlike to some German-style RPGs (Gothic, Drakensang, etc). While you save the world (again), you must learn languages, learn spells, work for money, gather info and generally try to survive. Fortunately, your party of six dwarfs (yup, no romancing non-binary halflings trappedin in elven bodies acting like orcs here!) can be split up, and you must manage their everyday living in the huge gameworld. Danger is in every corner, but fortunately, the excellent battle system more than makes up for it. This is no mere hack and slash, each battle may be your last if not careful. Add an interesting skill-based character development system and some tough choices in the story (leading to some tough game breaking bugs, heh-heh), so your agency is clear and present.
Oh, by the way, the graphics is very hit and miss and the music is totally forgettable, but you can buff your party by eating magic mushrooms, so I guess it's OK then.

Wonderful stuff.

What can I say? Am really miss the old days when a couple of passionate geeks in smelly sweaters could create wonders with imagination and neolithic computer technology.

I loved the first two Banner Saga games, and really intend to play the third one at some point.

porcozaur said:

Wasteland 3

One of the best games from 2020; just like the 2nd, many choices and consequences and some memorable moments, like the Aspen mission which was absolutely fantastic, felt trully rewarded at the end. OST awesome as well.

The big problems are on the technical side, loading times are a pain in the ass, overall the game doesnt look that good except the vehicle exploration part. Plus the interface is clunky as fuck, managing the squad becomes really annoying really fast. Also had a big bug towards the end which made it impossible to get one ending.

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It's on my Steam wishlist. I enjoyed Wasteland 2. I've heard somewhere that they improved the loading time quite a bit, recently.

I tend to play a lot of games you can't actually finish : Mount & Blade, Dominion... I think the very last game I finished is Star Control Origins. The Campaign is fairly short. Good old space exploration with a simple action gameplay.

Couchpotato said:

Just finished GreedFall it was a solid RPG that was a huge letdown towards the end of the game. Have to give them credit for an original setting, and good companions.

Still It suffers from the usual Spiders method of constant back tracking to the point it gets annoying. I'm not kidding half the game is going back to old areas multiple times.

I'd give it a 7/10 as most will enjoy it even with the negatives.

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I bought this one I think late last year. Discovered here on the Watch. Bailed out probably 40% in. I would probably rank a little lower. Pretty cool story, setting, companions. I found the gameplay however to be quite boring.

Shadow of the tomb raider: Loved it. I can live with the linear story and progression, but I expect more non-linearity in the problem solving part. At least give me a real sense of exploration in tombs where I actually have to map rooms and backtrack a bit.

Alan Wake: I liked this more than expected. The graphics look quite nice. The combat is original and fun, though it could use some refinement and more enemy variety. This last part made me google if there is an Alan wake 2, and apparently it might be as an expansion of Control (I see it is more a rumor than fact):
https://www.tweaktown.com/news/67537/alan-wake-coming-back-new-control-expansion/index.html

Outer Wilds - kb/m

Great little game with a neat concept. Didn't have any expectations going in other than some decent thumbs up and comments like "its a fun little game". Was not disappointed.

Took me 22 hours according to Steam but some of that was when I minimized and forgot to go back to it for a few hours. Its an exploration and puzzle game so I didn't look up any guides.... except once... theres a spot you have to go and the clue is vague. Even if you get the clue and get to the right spot, theres a mechanic that rips you right out of the spot unless you time it just right. Eventually looked it up just to make sure the clue was even right.

Also accidentally ripped the space time continuum by destroying a black hole before I created it... Ends the game with credits (but thankfully lets you load).

I went and got dangerous and played through Darkwing Duck for the NES. I've tried to get through this quite a few times through the ages, but never got much into the second round of levels. It's a late NES title, and a Capcom platformer during the era in which they had mastered the genre. It's more than solid, with tight controls and good graphics and sound for the system coupled with with decent level design. It's a little on the easier side for most of the Capcom platformers; nothing on the par of Mega Man 3 here. It's also a little short; levels are shorter than a standard Mega Man level, and there's only 7 (versus 10-16 for the Mega Man titles).

I finished NieR: Automata a few days ago. The first playthrough, that is. It was a strange experience.

First of all, the game does a terrible job explaining its mechanics and systems to you. For example, you keep finding items that look like crafting materials, but you have no idea what to do with them. It doesn't really matter, though, since you can finish the game without doing any crafting or any side quests at all.

The map is also terrible. And you need to enter the menu to open it (unless I have missed something here as well).

As far as the story is concerned, I didn't understand a whole lot of it. Most of the time, my motivation to do the main quest wasn't very clear to me.

I do know that you should play the game multiple times in order to fully appreciate it. The developer states it in a message at the end of the game. This can be an interesting approach, but in my opinion, the first playthrough should still feel like a proper game, which for me, it didn't.

I had been looking forward to playing the game for several years, actually, and was pretty disappointed. I'm planning to watch the other playthroughts as a letsplay, though — maybe even the first one just to see what I have missed or didn't understand.

Did anyone else have similar feelings after completing the first playthrough?

big drunk satanic massacre - pretty enjoyable, quite short too but longer and it would had become boring

I finished Victor Vran (2015) recently, in co-op mode.

Tonally, it's similar to the Van Helsing CRPG - vampire hunter, gothic trappings, steampunk content. Similar dark, sardonic humour as well.
Enemies are vampires and other undead, but also elemental (called "essences") and demonic types. Also, giant spiders. You gotta have giant spiders.
Like VH, there are some cool steampunk weapons to go along with the usual swords and whatnot. I especially liked the lightning guns.
The game has some humorous items to be found. One of the better uniques is a chicken gun - a grenade lobber that shoots out three exploding chickens at a time. Cluck cluck BANG. Feathers everywhere.

It's relatively short. It took us about 20 hours to finish, and we made certain we did every side-dungeon and found almost every secret. You're meant to re-do the dungeons fulfilling different challenges (you can even accept penalties), but we didn't find there was much replay value there.

There are a couple of things that differentiate it from other action-RPGs:
1) Jumping
You can leap around like a frog, over obstacles, or back in forth between walls until you get high enough to reach a certain ledge or ever a certain wall. This adds an interesting verticality to some of the maps. Some of the secrets relied on using jumping to reach secret areas. It also allows combat to be even more "actiony" than this type of game usually gets.

2) You are what you wear
Character development is pretty shallow. There are no character attributes, and no character skill trees. It's entirely based around what weapons, demonic powers (up to two at a time), and "cards" you equip. As you get to higher levels, you can equip more points worth of cards, the rarest ones of which are additionally blessed with an advantageous side effect. The plus side is that you can totally re-jig your character whenever you want; the obvious downside is that it's missing an extra layer or two of complexity in character building, and less of that feeling of build satisfaction as a result.

Overall, it's a fun game, but not one I'm likely to return to. I'd give it three and a half Shagadelics out of five.

Most memorable moment:
My co-op partner and I found that we has been carrying around a piece of Pumpkin Pie in our inventories for a while. We both ate it and ended up getting transported to a Halloween-themed level where we had the most challenging encounters of the game, culminating in fighting a giant pumpkin headed boss.

Just finished Wasteland 2.
Mixed feelings about this one. Lacked a certain level of polish.
Liked the combat, but a lot of the story decisions were total bollocks.
Example: forcing a certain character to become an enemy in the final fight. It just so happened that it was the character I invested the most time in training as a medic/surgeon. After many attempts at the final fight without surgeon skills, I gave up.

I guess Wasteland 3 can wait.

Shagnak, did you play the director's version of Wasteland Two? I find it to be a much smoother game than the first released version. Although if some of your dislike for the game was the actual plot/writing, I guess the version may not matter at all.

Shagnak said:

Just finished Wasteland 2.
Mixed feelings about this one. Lacked a certain level of polish.
Liked the combat, but a lot of the story decisions were total bollocks.
Example: forcing a certain character to become an enemy in the final fight. It just so happened that it was the character I invested the most time in training as a medic/surgeon. After many attempts at the final fight without surgeon skills, I gave up.

I guess Wasteland 3 can wait.

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I never finished wasteland 2 so maybe not the best indication but I found wasteland 3 to be a vastly improved version compared to 2.

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Carnifex said:

Shagnak, did you play the director's version of Wasteland Two? I find it to be a much smoother game than the first released version. Although if some of your dislike for the game was the actual plot/writing, I guess the version may not matter at all.

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Yep, it was the Director's Cut.

Pladio said:

I never finished wasteland 2 so maybe not the best indication but I found wasteland 3 to be a vastly improved version compared to 2

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That's good to know! Cheers

Timelie

Finished this indie puzzle game. Very similar to FAR: Lone Sails and other similar games. But it has a fantastic time manipulation mechanic that's at the basis of all puzzles. A real head-scratcher sometimes. I loved it. Highly recommended. Also has 30 or so extra levels offered as free DLC. Took me around 6-8 hours.

It's also 40% off on both Steam and GOG. Get it. Worth it.

Just finished a replay of Call of Duty 2 which I enjoyed quite a bit. I had been itching for a WWII setting, and it was better than I remembered.

Now I'm looking for something short to play before Cyberpunk 2070 is released.