Last game you finished, tell us about it

After many years and many restarts, I finally finished Arcanum.

I finished as a level 40 Human technologist with maxed persuasion and firearms skills, and I completed nearly every sidequest in the game. There's almost too much content imo, but most of it is quality. I found myself getting burned-out several times, and I kept putting it on hold to play other games, but I can finally say I've finished all of Troika's games.

Originally Posted by JDR13
After many years and many restarts, I finally finished Arcanum.

I finished as a level 40 Human technologist with maxed persuasion and firearms skills, and I completed nearly every sidequest in the game. There's almost too much content imo, but most of it is quality. I found myself getting burned-out several times, and I kept putting it on hold to play other games, but I can finally say I've finished all of Troika's games.

I wonder how many hours it took for you to finish the game. I burned out after some 2/3 of the game, because it was too much, too long and mostly i got tired of that melancholic violin music. I tried it once again, but that music…

JDR man, what took you so long.
Ah yeah. Doom.

Originally Posted by Zogar Sag
I wonder how many hours it took for you to finish the game. I burned out after some 2/3 of the game, because it was too much, too long and mostly i got tired of that melancholic violin music. I tried it once again, but that music…

I'm sure I spent well over 100 hours, but I don't know the exact time because I played the GOG version rather than Steam.

I think the soundtrack is superb. The music is much too loud by default though, so I set the slider to about 20% while keeping sound FX at 100. At that level, the music is still there but not so overpowering.

But yeah.. the game is massive, and it was a completionist run. If I ever replay it, it'll be as a magic-user, and I'll probably skip a few of the sidequests.

Originally Posted by joxer
JDR man, what took you so long.
Ah yeah. Doom.

Heh the new Doom is one of the games I played while taking breaks from Arcanum. I never finished it though due to my save getting corrupted.

Originally Posted by JDR13
never finished it though due to my save getting corrupted.

Maybe they patched it. Remind me, who's the publisher, please.

Done with Venetica. Overall charming action adventure rpg…closer to mix between Fable and Gothic.
Wouldn't say it particularly shines in any area, but overall comes as decent package and changes scenery and quests often enough to not overstay it's welcome.
Liked main character the most, love the snarky attitude. Overall nice surprise.

Also close to done with Syndicate ( 2012), unless I go blind from the damn bloom. Very cliche cyberpunk storyline, standard FPS, but my god, do the gun sounds feel good here, really the only thing outstanding about the game.

I have venetica - maybe i should play it - i started the intro and it was ok - but then got distracted.

Have to say something about finished ME4, have to write as short as possible, have to be fast because Maylander is preparing a review…
If it matters, the game says I "solved" 99% of stuff (100% is not possible due to a few broken quests). Origin achievements got more than a half (again at least one is broken, quite a few are grindbased).

superb:
- combat
- crafting possibilities
- ending made easier or harder depending on your choices through the game
- e-mails protagonist receives, sidestories on terminals and logs
- visuals of galaxy and explorable areas
- not possible to fastrun the game in one afternoon (normal dif.)
- sound effects
- references to original trilogy (button pushing on Kadara, Cerberus in a few side missions, Liara's audio logs, etc)

thumb up:
- hidden stuff and puzzles (although easy, and I'm not talking about 20 sudoku)
- space pr0n exploration although rewards should have been better
- flirting
- Apex HQ works on emulators
- The Art Of ME:A does not disappoint
- was afraid jack of all trades system will stink, but no you can't be Skyrim master of everything

stuff improved compared to ME2, ME3 and DA3:
- no cutout story/setting critical content sold as DLC
- DLC (deluxe version) relevant only to MMO audience
- MMO rewards symbolic in campaign and don't guarantee the best outcome
- Mako returned and thank god no N4S carracing idiocy
- no reason to spam sonar constantly
- no instarespawning bears
- no Bioware Points scam!

not bad, but should have been much better:
- inconsistent writing, not as bad as generally suggested though, it's "good, bad and ugly"
- tons of quests and sidequests, not all are a quality over quantity though
- cryo pods system has level cap and some of pods' bonus are crappy
- sidekicks are hardly memorable
- sidekicks banter tainted with breaks on trashmob respawns or Sam's POI-s alert
- too many unfixed annoyances that proper QA would notice (example: tendency of corrupt autosaves)

thumb down:
- facial animations, while there is a logical reason, EA should have funded it with more $
- loadscreens, loadscreens everywhere instead of fasttravel between roamable planets:
----- Kadara loadscreens at big doors, inability to freeroam without landing on it's port
----- just like Kadara, Nexus port area used as a loadscreen to other Nexus areas
- unskippable cutscenes
- no F5 on PC, saving anywhere outside of combat disabled in main story missions
- grinding is toned down, but it still exists
- longterm romances again feel pathetic ("friends with benefits" option is okay)
- sidekicks AI in general, sometimes "frozen" hostiles/friendlies AI
- disproportional (mutated?) human bodies
- music, what music, where is music spectacle?
- default film grain on and subtitles off, no option to disable motion blur, console command needed to make a screenshot

unforgivable catastrophes:
- mining minerals with Mako
- roguelike randomly generated task objectives
- UI (weaponswitching circle stinks, menus are a mess, 3D map rotation not possible, etc)
- hair!


I said that once I started playing this game I just couldn't stop.
8/10

I just finished XCOM 2 for the 2nd time, this time I was using some mods (first batch of Long War mods as well as another QoL mods; the first time I finished it I was playing vanilla only).

Now I am ready for a third playthru Maybe I'll use "A Better Advent 2" along "Shadow Ops LW", who knows…

I don't feel like I'm prepared to face Long War 2 yet

Final Fantasy eight……don't play it. Seriously. If you played any of the prior seven, I'd suggest just avoiding this one. You'll thank me!

Too late, Carnifex
I actually finished it years ago. The PC CD-ROM version with 5 disks, IIRC. I don't own them anymore.

Yeah, FF8 is a shitty grindfest. I didn't like it when I played it 15+ years ago, and I have to think it probably seems much worse by today's standards.

One of the worst games in the series imo. I'm surprised you forced yourself to finish it.

I always finish. If I pay more than a cent for a game, I'll go the distance. My mouth will flap though if it was a great or not so great experience, though. Out of the nine final fantasy games I've played since Christmas, this will be the only one I'd never replay. Now I'm kinda scared to download number ten……

Originally Posted by Carnifex
Now I'm kinda scared to download number ten……

You should be. That one sucks too, imo.

Out of all the FF titles to be released after FF7, the only one I like is FF12. (I haven't played FF XV yet)

Don't trust JDR. FF10 is good. Could have been much better, but is still good.
Hint: if possible, use japanese VO.

Amusing. I think the last in game sound I heard was in '98 while doing beta for Everquest one =p. Ooops wrong, pretty sure I did have audio on for that vampire game. Any game that has Lacuna Coil on the audio gets a /high five from this rocker.

Originally Posted by Carnifex
I always finish. If I pay more than a cent for a game, I'll go the distance. My mouth will flap though if it was a great or not so great experience, though. Out of the nine final fantasy games I've played since Christmas, this will be the only one I'd never replay. Now I'm kinda scared to download number ten……

10 is fine, actually my favorite FF of them all (though I've only played all since 6). In my order of preference it'd be something like…

10, 7/9, 6, 12, 13, 8, 15

With the border of 'liked it/didn't like it' right around 12.

I thought seven and nine were quite good, if you rank ten even higher than those I'll have to check it out!!

Just finished Atelier Firis. The Atelier series is one of my favorite RPG series (if not *the* favorite), I've played them all starting from hmm… Mana Khemia? maybe earlier. At least 10 games. I can say that Firis is my least favorite game of the series, by far.

Core gameplay is similar to all the previous ones. Basically you're a newbie alchemist and need to gather materials and craft items with alchemy, while combat is party and turn based. So far so good. One main difference from this game to the previous ones is that now travelling is done open world, where it used to be almost instant travel to different locations.

My problems with Sophie are numerous. I played it in my PS4, so here they are:
- First part of the game involves you having 1 year to travel to the capital and pass the alchemy test. My problem with this is that you have no idea how long it takes, you have a map where you can see several steps to get there. Should you stay and explore? should you craft a lot? Should you explore the whole map or run towards the capital? I didn't know any of this, so I basically erred towards caution and ignored a bunch of areas, got to the capital with like 80 days to go.
- After you pass the test, your only goal is to decide what to do with your life, with the hint of 'Do things and meet people'… So basically, it's now visit every place, talk to everybody, do all their side-quests, I personally don't like 'open world' games, I like having clear goals, so this killed the game for me.
- I mentioned travelling now is open world. Well, this means that having to go from one place to another means lots of useless travelling. in each map you can find landmarks and camps where you can insta-travel to from inside the map, so basically it was enter map, insta travel to closest landmark to exit, run towards exit, repeat all steps until you reach your destination.
- The above wouldn't be much of a problem if game didn't involve going back and forth to all over the world map. Eventually you get a means to insta-travel the map, but this comes far near the end of the game.
- In all previous Atelier games, companions were integral to the game. Here it's basically you and your sister, the rest of the companions are actually optional and other than a couple of side quests for each, totally forgettable.
- Firis is the only game in the series where I experienced bugs. It crashed several times, making me lose a total of about two hours of gameplay.

It's sad for me because basically the previous game in the series (Atelier Sophie) was my favorite of them all, and to go from most favorite to least favorite in one step sucks. Sophie for me was a 10/10, this one is more like a 4/10 (with all the other games in the series around 7-9).

Originally Posted by wolfing
Just finished Atelier Firis. The Atelier series is one of my favorite RPG series (if not *the* favorite), I've played them all starting from hmm… Mana Khemia? maybe earlier. At least 10 games. I can say that Firis is my least favorite game of the series, by far.

Core gameplay is similar to all the previous ones. Basically you're a newbie alchemist and need to gather materials and craft items with alchemy, while combat is party and turn based. So far so good. One main difference from this game to the previous ones is that now travelling is done open world, where it used to be almost instant travel to different locations.

My problems with Sophie are numerous. I played it in my PS4, so here they are:
- First part of the game involves you having 1 year to travel to the capital and pass the alchemy test. My problem with this is that you have no idea how long it takes, you have a map where you can see several steps to get there. Should you stay and explore? should you craft a lot? Should you explore the whole map or run towards the capital? I didn't know any of this, so I basically erred towards caution and ignored a bunch of areas, got to the capital with like 80 days to go.
- After you pass the test, your only goal is to decide what to do with your life, with the hint of 'Do things and meet people'… So basically, it's now visit every place, talk to everybody, do all their side-quests, I personally don't like 'open world' games, I like having clear goals, so this killed the game for me.
- I mentioned travelling now is open world. Well, this means that having to go from one place to another means lots of useless travelling. in each map you can find landmarks and camps where you can insta-travel to from inside the map, so basically it was enter map, insta travel to closest landmark to exit, run towards exit, repeat all steps until you reach your destination.
- The above wouldn't be much of a problem if game didn't involve going back and forth to all over the world map. Eventually you get a means to insta-travel the map, but this comes far near the end of the game.
- In all previous Atelier games, companions were integral to the game. Here it's basically you and your sister, the rest of the companions are actually optional and other than a couple of side quests for each, totally forgettable.
- Firis is the only game in the series where I experienced bugs. It crashed several times, making me lose a total of about two hours of gameplay.

It's sad for me because basically the previous game in the series (Atelier Sophie) was my favorite of them all, and to go from most favorite to least favorite in one step sucks. Sophie for me was a 10/10, this one is more like a 4/10 (with all the other games in the series around 7-9).

What an interesting looking game
Never heard of this series.

I may have a look at some point