Last game you finished, tell us about it

I didn't replay any more after I finished, the ending I got was fine for me. I quite honestly didn't mind the lantern part at all, nor the other reality you often had to dip into and out of. I also wasn't a fan of the house at edge of time, yet didn't find it nearly as annoying as I did part of the Varnhold saga.

I got through Pillars of Dust far quicker than I thought I would, maybe a total of twelve hours of play-time. I didn't realize until the second time I loaded the game that I'd played another by the same team, about three years ago, entitled Shadows of Adam, which I really liked.

Pillars is very different from Shadows, in that you're only playing two people max at any one time. You can hire others if you don't care for the character that joins you along the way, yet I stuck with both of them as they fit my play-style well, so I've no idea how comparable the hirelings are. The story is good and kept me wondering most of the game as to what was really going on. Combat is almost optional at many points, saved for the named, which you do need to beat to progress. If these folks at Something Classic put out any further games, I'll likely give them a go.

Elex again...

I just finished another playthrough of Elex, which I started because some discussions about Elex in this forum a few days ago reminded me, how great it is.

And again I loved it! The exploration, the progression, the story….

I like some of the more hidden side quests most, like joining the "claws", Arva and her beast, the true story behind the god of the clerics, or finding the "beans". There are a few interesting quests and locations you will never see, if you only follow the quests you get in the big cities…

Like Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines, this is a game I love more and more every time I play it…

I feel an urge to restart these games every time somebody talks about them…

Yup, often that's how the fancy strikes me as well. I'm not even thinking about a certain game, yet I'll read something online (usually here!) that causes me to recall just how much fun so-and-so was, and before ya know it, I'm loading it back up!

bkrueger said:

I just finished another playthrough of Elex, which I started because some discussions about Elex in this forum a few days ago reminded me, how great it is.

And again I loved it! The exploration, the progression, the story…

I like some of the more hidden side quests most, like joining the "claws", Arva and her beast, the true story behind the god of the clerics, or finding the "beans". There are a few interesting quests and locations you will never see, if you only follow the quests you get in the big cities…

Like Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines, this is a game I love more and more every time I play it…

I feel an urge to restart these games every time somebody talks about them…

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That's your 4th run, right? That's some serious fortitude. I can't replay games like that regardless of how much I enjoyed them. I might replay certain games once every 3-4 years, but that's about it.

Also, how did you get through it so fast? Did you just rush through the main quest?

JDR13 said:

That's your 4th run, right? That's some serious fortitude. I can't replay games like that regardless of how much I enjoyed them. I might replay certain games once every 3-4 years, but that's about it.

Also, how did you get through it so fast? Did you just rush through the main quest?

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There are a few games, which I have surely played more than five times, like VTMB, M&M VI or Spellforce (the latter surely more than ten times).

I Started this play through about the 22nd of May (there was a thread in the Elex subforum around this time), so there were two weekends and two holidays in there.

The in game time in my last save game shows about 70 Hours. So no, I didn't rush through the main quest.

I have to admit however that I may not have visited every area/building yet, so maybe I go on and play a little longer (didn't find all fotos and map pieces yet, which are small easter egg sidequests in themselves).

I love that you can play on after finishing the main quest…

What I like also, if a little bit childish:

bkrueger said:

What I like also, if a little bit childish:

Spoiler: Animals...

The perk which prevents weak animals from attacking you scales with your level. And I like it, when you can pass night stalkers without them attacking you. If I remember correctly you can even reach a level, where trolls don't attack you, but that is not the case on my curent level. Maybe I level up a little bit to try this out. I have a child-like fun, when night stalkers or chimera support me in my fight against some Albs or bandits…

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Interesting.. I didn't know that skill scaled. It doesn't mention that in the description, but PB didn't do a very good job with the skill descriptions, at least in the English version.

JDR13 said:

Interesting.. I didn't know that skill scaled. It doesn't mention that in the description, but PB didn't do a very good job with the skill descriptions, at least in the English version.

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I also learned it only by experience. In cases like this I like that it isn't described more precisely. (You can find a necklace giving you that skill, so you don't need to spend a point in this as long as you are not sure if it is useful.) However, I chose it regardless for roleplaying reasons, since I wanted to play a nature-affine guy. i also like picking herbs and flowers

Edit: What I don't like in Elex is that you can't see values of resistencies and armor. You have to try out, whether they are high enough for certain tasks (annoying for poisoned or radioactive areas). That is too much secretiveness even for my taste.

bkrueger said:

Edit: What I don't like in Elex is that you can't see values of resistencies and armor. You have to try out, whether they are high enough for certain tasks (annoying for poisoned or radioactive areas). That is too much secretiveness even for my taste.

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I thought I remembered resistances being shown. Is it just on certain things? For example, isn't there a mask that gives you +25 vs poison and radioactive? I remember using that in combination with chems when I wanted to explore those areas.

JDR13 said:

I thought I remembered resistances being shown. Is it just on certain things? For example, isn't there a mask that gives you +25 vs poison and radioactive? I remember using that in combination with chems when I wanted to explore those areas.

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Yes, the resistance value of items is shown. But the resistance value of your avatar is not shown. So if you have skill points in a resistance, use a "stim" to increase your resistance and also equip items, you do not know, to which value these add up. So you don't know, what overall resistance you have as a result. (You don't even know, if everything adds up or if some of these different means are redundant, so using two of them at the same time may not even help.)
Edit: And there are areas, where even maxing your skill, using all available equipment and a stim doesn't make you immune enough to go there for more than a few seconds. What I didn't try, was to additionally eat an anti-radioctive (or anti-poison) soup, since I assume that they don't add up with stims. But I don't really know.)
If somebody made a mod to show such values this would be a reason for me to try that…

Nancy Drew: Treasure in the Royal Tower (2001) was the 4th game in the ND Adventure Game series and, controversially, I didn't really like it much.

I say controversially because I watched a vid recently which ranked all of the ND games according to 100 of the youtuber's fans (the 'tuber specialising in ND vids) and this game came out as one of the top 10 (out of 33) and is seemingly widely loved.

The main issue I had with it was a case of personal taste. The characters were good, the puzzles were enjoyable, it was just that it had a maze-theme and very awkward pacing issues IMO.

It's heavily reliant on triggers, probably more so than any other ND game I've played, and you can find yourself retracing and backtracking and sleeping a whole lot just to get the next trigger to move the game along.

I might have left the game with a slightly more positive tone, only slightly mind you, had I not been stumped at literally the last step of the game. I couldn't trigger the doodad to open in order to give me the final item I needed to finish the final puzzle, which I had completed albeit without the final item.

As it was, I spent about 2 to 3 hours retracing my steps looking for the final trigger. Getting very dizzy from all the camera turning involved in a maze scenario. I eventually looked at a walkthrough, the first time in the game, and saw that there were lots and lots of issues regarding triggering the final item, it seemed to have been an extremely common situation.

And I can say I never would have found the final trigger, even in days of searching as I had simply missed something that was easily missed earlier in the game and would never have thought to go back to 'that place' and 'do that'.

I also guessed whodunnit extremely early, which is very unusual for me, so I wasn't really excited as each new route to a trigger felt very "well duh". I was also disappointed it wasn't actually in a royal tower, but in a regular mansion that had just had a tower from a royal tower transferred and built into it. Was expecting something more interesting, like a crown jewel robbery case or something, you know.

6/10

Ah well, that's me done for this season's batch of ND games, one cracker and one decidedly below average. IMO, of course. only another dozen or two to go!

Kingdom come deliverance is the best Open-World First-person RPG ever created.

Much above Gothic, Skyrim, Morrowind or Fallout. The world never feels cheesy. Combat is gripping and feels right. The story is strong and moving. NPCs have a life and do things I have never seen NPCs doing in any other game. Even hunting hares or deers is fun and challenging. The game let you make stupid decisions if you want to. Going against a well-trained and equipped mercenary when you are just a boy barely out of his parent home is certainly not a good idea.

The game is not for everyone. You won't find Dragons or magic (except some potion effects…). The scale is small (it's basically a province of the Czech republic / Moravia. 1km in game = 1km irl ) and you won't save the world or even the kingdom. It still has a few bugs. It got some of Gothic's unforgiveness. But if you are up for the challenge, the game is so worth it.

Vanedor, I've had Kingdom Come Deliverance waiting the back-wings for quite some time now, I'll have to make an effort to get playing it. I understand it might not be for all, yet I think it might be something I'll enjoy, based on many comments I've read here. I'm glad you had a great time with it!

Carnifex said:

Vanedor, I've had Kingdom Come Deliverance waiting the back-wings for quite some time now, I'll have to make an effort to get playing it. I understand it might not be for all, yet I think it might be something I'll enjoy, based on many comments I've read here. I'm glad you had a great time with it!

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You won't regret it.

Actually, I'm pretty surprised about how I hear little about this game and I think it deserves much more.

vanedor said:

You won't regret it.

Actually, I'm pretty surprised about how I hear little about this game and I think it deserves much more.

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I followed the game back then, of course as usual I had missed the Kickstarter. All the RPG and combat elements seemed great, as you described, and I almost bought it a while after its release but there were many negative reviews due to bugs and performance issues so I never did.

There are some recent videos of game footage with ray tracing that are impressive.

Redglyph said:

There are some recent videos of game footage with ray tracing that are impressive.

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When did they add ray tracing to Kingdom Come? Or is that something they're working on now?

I can't even imagine the system requirements with RT activated. The game is already brutal on high settings without it.

JDR13 said:

When did they add ray tracing to Kingdom Come? Or is that something they're working on now?

I can't even imagine the system requirements with RT activated. The game is already brutal on high settings without it.

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From what I read, that's something that was enabled in the beta version of the game but they decided to remove it from the released version to increase performance... No idea why they didn't just keep it as an option. Would love to try it with my RTX3060.

Anyhow, as is, the game is already truly beautiful.

JDR13 said:

When did they add ray tracing to Kingdom Come? Or is that something they're working on now?

I can't even imagine the system requirements with RT activated. The game is already brutal on high settings without it.

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The video I saw is linked below, there are others on the same channel. When I saw "BETA with RTX 3090 RAYTRACING in 2021" it looked like a recent update in progress, then when I searched I found the same info as @vanedor;. So it's not being worked on anymore unfortunately.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxSf2NfkUzk

A shame they couldn't optimize the game better. I see it's using the CryEngine.

Redglyph said:

The video I saw is linked below, there are others on the same channel. When I saw "BETA with RTX 3090 RAYTRACING in 2021" it looked like a recent update in progress, then when I searched I found the same info as @vanedor;. So it's not being worked on anymore unfortunately.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxSf2NfkUzk

A shame they couldn't optimize the game better. I see it's using the CryEngine.

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Thanks. Yes, that does look pretty sweet.

I can see why the devs dropped it though. Even on a RTX 3090, there's a considerable amount of hitching there. Maybe they'll go back and implement it someday when systems are ready for it.

Redglyph said:

The video I saw is linked below, there are others on the same channel. When I saw "BETA with RTX 3090 RAYTRACING in 2021" it looked like a recent update in progress, then when I searched I found the same info as @vanedor. So it's not being worked on anymore unfortunately.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxSf2NfkUzk

A shame they couldn't optimize the game better. I see it's using the CryEngine.

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I'm glad they didn't add Ray tracing as the game still has texture loading problems unless you have a high end graphic card and a fast SD. Game still has bugs as well.

I enjoy playing the game but wish they used something other then CryEngine.