Last Game You Played and What You Would Rate It Out of 10

[PACOX]

Sins of a Solar Empire 2 6.5/10 - Above Average [My ratings are 1 being unplayable shovelware and 10 being the best game that has ever been made. 5 is an average game]

Three points deducted for the price and DLC price. $50 for a game that feels like it could use a little more time in Early Access to work out some application crashing issues. And another 45$ for DLC that adds things that should exist with the main game. Main example is the "Times of War" DLC which adds the game's Campaign. That is a bit strange to me.

DLCs include:

'Paths to Power' Scenario Pack: Custom scenarios with unique starting and victory conditions.

'Reinforcements' Ship Pack: New forces join the fray as each race gains two new units to field.

'Times of War' Campaign Expansion: A full single-player story driven campaign that relates the tragic story of the TEC, Vasari and Advent.

'Harbinger' Expansion: Discover and play as the mysterious fourth faction!


Outside of those complaints. The game is a ton of fun to play. It plays like a 4x Lite / RTS. Think Stellaris meets Age of Empires. If you like cool space ships, large research trees, and epic space battles, then this is the game for you!


This reviewer gives it an 8/10. So a good watch to hear good things about the game.

I'm thinking of reinstalling Stellaris/catching up its DLCs or getting this. Which do you prefer?

[Kathandira]

I'm thinking of reinstalling Stellaris/catching up its DLCs or getting this. Which do you prefer?

I think you'd have to ask yourself how deep you want the management of you empire to be. Stellaris has way more depth in that regard. While Sins of a Solar Empire leans on fleet combat more than empire management.

[Grinning Serpent]

Elden Ring - 4/10

I ended up pouring my thoughts into the Steam review I wrote, so I'll just copy it here.

Great exploration, but the worst gameplay design of any of the Souls games.

I know this won't really affect anyone's decision, the game having been out for so long now, but I just can't recommend ER. It has too many growing pains, too many questionable decisions, too many examples of what to me are From Software refusing to accept there are issues with their core game design.

I'd go so far as to say most bosses in Elden Ring are simply not fun. I think that there's a very good reason they introduced the player summons and they are present in every fog gate boss fight - because the bosses are more "cheaty" than they have ever been in a Fromsoft game. Flailing combos with precise tracking, variable combos with (as far as I could tell) no startup frames or tells that indicate the combo will be continuing, grab attacks that still don't have animations that match their actual hitboxes, and so on.

Yeah, I've seen the videos of people killing these bosses without dodging, parrying, or blocking on NG+7 as SL1, but these people also probably have dozens of hours on each of these bosses to perform such feats. I didn't pick up Elden Ring for it to become a college course I can't put on my resume - I picked it up to be able to play it as a fun game where I go around and explore and kill bosses and monsters when I come across them. And unless you are using a very narrow and precise set of builds, which necessarily means tons of spoilers, you... can't actually do that. Like for me, I played the same "first playthrough" build I have played in every souls game - heavy armor, big shield, big weapon. Block and swing, occasionally trade hits, patiently observe attack patterns and then take them down slow and steady.

But that isn't an option in Elden Ring, not for "I want to fight bosses and monsters when I see them." Blocking requires an enormous investment in Elden Ring - which is good! Blocking was often overpowered in previous games, particularly Dark Souls 1. I need the STR to equip the shields, I need the END for the stamina and weight capacity to carry the shields, I need to find and use souls and stones to upgrade the shields to keep their stamina costs in check. And then I need to actually identify which attacks I can and can't block or should and shouldn't block. A new guard counter mechanic adds a bit more to it with timing my return strikes, but this runs into the issue I mentioned above with variable combos with no tells or startup frames (and at my level and amount of exploration, at any rate, I could never poise through the attack I was about to eat.)

Meanwhile, if I had pursued a lightly equipped (whether or not it's using a light weapon) build focusing on fastrolling, I merely have to identify timings for when to roll. I don't need to invest more into END than I need to fuel my attacks, since rolling is very cheap, and I only need to worry about my weapon's stat requirements rather than also having to consider a shield (which also means I don't have too many concerns about weight capacity.) The points I had to allocate to END can instead go into more HP, more damage, or picking up some INT or FTH to add some spells to my toolkit. It is pretty obviously and transparently the "best" way to play... but it's not the way I wanted to. It's not the way I ever felt like I was forced to, in the other games.

I had an utter blast exploring Limgrave with most of the spoilers I've seen long since having been forgotten. I had fun seeing a lot of places for the first time. But at some point, around the time I was working my way through Liurnia and and Caelid, I just realized that eventually the exploration is going to lead to a boss, and I just... really don't enjoy bosses in this game. And that's really a first for me, in Fromsoft games. I have my favorites, everyone does, but I've never before had such an overwhelmingly negative opinion of boss design and gameplay before.

I don't think there's a way for Fromsoft to get out of this without completely redesigning their basic gameplay systems. We saw that they can produce something tight, responsive, and perfectly balanced with Sekiro. They clearly have the talent. But I think that they've been trying to have their Dark Souls with their Bloodborne going back to DS3 and that's poisoned the well in design terms. Souls was never supposed to be BB, and BB was explicitly designed to not be more Souls. So the BB influences (like cheap, powerful dodge rolls and evasion) just need to be discarded. The three primary means of addressing damage (blocking, dodging, and parrying) should all require investment and focus, none of them should be free. Blocking and parrying are nerfed and, to me, fairly well balanced in Elden Ring (aside from blocking being too "grind more levels" dependent, which could be addressed) but dodging did not receive similar changes or nerfs and so is very clearly "the" way to play while learning to git gud.

But I didn't think that was what I was signing up for.

Suffice to say, I had a fantastic time exploring Limgrave and just like... wandering around in general. But the more I played, the more it was clear that my preferred way to play was not suitable for babby's first Elden Ring playthrough, and that meant bosses were becoming more and more tiresome rather than enjoyable... and all roads lead to boss fights. I might have quit even before clearing through Stormveil if I hadn't admitted I would rather just kill the bosses and move on to see more cool stuff and started summoning the jellyfish to help.

Elden Ring is not a good open world game, because it has too many things holding it back that are due to it needing to be a Souls game - but it's also not a good Souls game, on the other side of that coin.

Needing to find specific enhancement stones (instead of just needing an increasingly large pile of a few different grades) meant that I would find new weapons and... just toss them into the box, because I couldn't upgrade them enough to make them usable. I explored, found a cool thing! And then couldn't use it. Why does it need to be this way? Because it's how Souls is? But Souls wasn't an open world game before where I could go (mostly) wherever I wanted at any time. Like I actually explored a ton of Caelid (fighting or running like a coward from things depending on how scary they were) very early on and ended up getting a lot of stones that I couldn't even use. What's the point of exploring off the beaten path if the game's mechanics say no?

Finding crafting books was cool. You can make so many cool consumable items! But you're still limited to the same "tab through your toolbelt one item at a time and only in one direction" design from the previous games. They added a pouch, but you're already guaranteed to be using at least one of those slots for Torrent's whistle and in my case also my most common summon (the jellyfish), the lantern, and the physick flask. Plus, it's a two-button combination press and I found that those were pretty unresponsive. Maybe it's just my fingers being dumb but it sure felt like the game (not the controller - it's a pretty new 8bitdo and they don't make bad controllers) wasn't reading inputs like I was trying to send. Tabbing through my item belt means I have to take my thumb off the left stick, which means I cannot for example avoid a boss that's throwing a tantrum while trying to swap between healing items, pull out a consumable of some sort to get some chip damage in while they're too dangerous to melee, etc. This has always been a problem, but it's worse in ER because you have so many more items and they clearly expect you to be using them.

Let's go back to the combination press problems, briefly. Because the A button now needs to be an exclusive jump button, Y has to pull double duty as your button that switches handedness, so you now have to press Y+R1 to two-hand your weapon for example. And remember that needs to be Y+R1, not R1+Y! But Y is also your general interaction button, so hopefully it doesn't get confused when there's a flower at your feet while you're desperately trying to get your shield back out. A lot of very stupid deaths to the game not reading inputs well and making an attack instead of switching handedness - but maybe that was user error? I'm pretty sure I was pushing the buttons in the right order at least some of the time. I also noticed it felt like you couldn't switch as freely as in previous games, but maybe that's a design choice to make switching handedness more of a conscious decision instead of something you can do while evading.

I don't know. I really wanted to love Elden Ring but it feels like Fromsoftware has past the point where they need to admit the "half Bloodborne half Dark Souls" design is a poisoned well. I think it's pretty telling that Nightreign is apparently doing away with a lot of user customization and builds (sounds like you'll pick archetypes with mostly static stats rather than a traditional "build how you like" souls experience), and while I don't think it will be particularly good (it's coming out way too soon on the heels of Erdtree DLC for me to think it'll have had enough time to cook) I am interested to see what lessons learned Fromsoft will be applying to the Elden Ring formula.

[Floofi]

Hyperbolica [3.5/10]

I'm really sad about this one, as it seemed like such a cool concept for a game; the world is constructed using hyperbolic space rather than the usual Euclidean space.

However, there just really isn't a game here, it's just a glorified tech demo. I beat the game in 88 minutes, and I was going slowly as I was trying to find more gameplay than there what was offered. The basic premise is to collect the 5 doohickeys needed to complete the game by solving a "puzzle" in each of the 5 corresponding worlds. "Puzzles" is in quotes since most of them can hardly be considered a puzzle; here are the 5 in order that I completed them:

1. Do a timed speed delivery challenge in a hyperbolic cafe. Takes about 2 minutes to complete
2. Shoot 10 targets in a world with spherical geometry (the puzzle is solved after the first target, takes another 3 minutes to complete the rest)
3. Diffuse a "Cold War" situation between the Cereal First and Milk First sides; AKA, walk back and forth and talk between two NPCs 5ish times (7 minutes to find the correct NPCs to talk to, 45 seconds to complete the rest of the "challenge")
4. Complete a maze in hyperbolic space (best puzzle)
5. Find and talk to the art exhibit curator (do a 10 second, 4 jump platforming challenge)

Then get told that the 5 doohickeys are pointless, then fight a final boss by leading it's projectiles back to hit itself.

And that's it. If I was to replay the game, I could probably beat the entire thing in 7 minutes.

I would only recommend the game if you are 1) really interested in the concept, 2) buy it on a steep discount, and 3) play it in VR for the extra novelty. Otherwise, just watch the DevLogs about the game and it's development instead; they're more entertaining than actually playing it.

[Jastall]

Elden Ring - 4/10

I ended up pouring my thoughts into the Steam review I wrote, so I'll just copy it here.



Suffice to say, I had a fantastic time exploring Limgrave and just like... wandering around in general. But the more I played, the more it was clear that my preferred way to play was not suitable for babby's first Elden Ring playthrough, and that meant bosses were becoming more and more tiresome rather than enjoyable... and all roads lead to boss fights. I might have quit even before clearing through Stormveil if I hadn't admitted I would rather just kill the bosses and move on to see more cool stuff and started summoning the jellyfish to help.

Elden Ring is not a good open world game, because it has too many things holding it back that are due to it needing to be a Souls game - but it's also not a good Souls game, on the other side of that coin.

Needing to find specific enhancement stones (instead of just needing an increasingly large pile of a few different grades) meant that I would find new weapons and... just toss them into the box, because I couldn't upgrade them enough to make them usable. I explored, found a cool thing! And then couldn't use it. Why does it need to be this way? Because it's how Souls is? But Souls wasn't an open world game before where I could go (mostly) wherever I wanted at any time. Like I actually explored a ton of Caelid (fighting or running like a coward from things depending on how scary they were) very early on and ended up getting a lot of stones that I couldn't even use. What's the point of exploring off the beaten path if the game's mechanics say no?

Finding crafting books was cool. You can make so many cool consumable items! But you're still limited to the same "tab through your toolbelt one item at a time and only in one direction" design from the previous games. They added a pouch, but you're already guaranteed to be using at least one of those slots for Torrent's whistle and in my case also my most common summon (the jellyfish), the lantern, and the physick flask. Plus, it's a two-button combination press and I found that those were pretty unresponsive. Maybe it's just my fingers being dumb but it sure felt like the game (not the controller - it's a pretty new 8bitdo and they don't make bad controllers) wasn't reading inputs like I was trying to send. Tabbing through my item belt means I have to take my thumb off the left stick, which means I cannot for example avoid a boss that's throwing a tantrum while trying to swap between healing items, pull out a consumable of some sort to get some chip damage in while they're too dangerous to melee, etc. This has always been a problem, but it's worse in ER because you have so many more items and they clearly expect you to be using them.

Let's go back to the combination press problems, briefly. Because the A button now needs to be an exclusive jump button, Y has to pull double duty as your button that switches handedness, so you now have to press Y+R1 to two-hand your weapon for example. And remember that needs to be Y+R1, not R1+Y! But Y is also your general interaction button, so hopefully it doesn't get confused when there's a flower at your feet while you're desperately trying to get your shield back out. A lot of very stupid deaths to the game not reading inputs well and making an attack instead of switching handedness - but maybe that was user error? I'm pretty sure I was pushing the buttons in the right order at least some of the time. I also noticed it felt like you couldn't switch as freely as in previous games, but maybe that's a design choice to make switching handedness more of a conscious decision instead of something you can do while evading.

I don't know. I really wanted to love Elden Ring but it feels like Fromsoftware has past the point where they need to admit the "half Bloodborne half Dark Souls" design is a poisoned well. I think it's pretty telling that Nightreign is apparently doing away with a lot of user customization and builds (sounds like you'll pick archetypes with mostly static stats rather than a traditional "build how you like" souls experience), and while I don't think it will be particularly good (it's coming out way too soon on the heels of Erdtree DLC for me to think it'll have had enough time to cook) I am interested to see what lessons learned Fromsoft will be applying to the Elden Ring formula.

While I wouldn't agree with your score, I do agree with most of your criticisms. Once the pleasure of exploration and discovery is gone, I just can't find myself the will to suffer through the clunky gameplay and annoying bosses. The best part of Elden Ring are the legacy dungeons, you know, the places that play like Dark Souls levels in the first place. The open world is cool and the lack of hand-holding direction quite refreshing, but most destinations are pretty disappointing once you get past the first two zones. Oh hey, another cave/catacomb/gaol/castle/other I've already seen with enemies I've already killed and a boss I've also already killed, but this time with extra moves or random mobs in the arena to make it a chore to kill, and 90% of the time my reward is an item I won't use. There are enough unique locales to make the player push through, but I still think the game would have been much better with a smaller world that heavily cuts down on the repetition.

I also think core gameplay needs a revision. Using items and aiming/cycling through spells shouldn't be this incredibly clunky. I know in ye olden times of Dark Souls I it was made deliberate, but so were the enemies back then. Now that every boss and half their minions jump around like monkeys on crack and the game is approaching spectacle fighter-levels of speed the clunkyness feels a lot more like a relic than a proper design decision.

Boss design is the other big, big pet peeve. There are fun bosses in there- Godfrey, Rykard, Radahn, Morgott, for example. But for every one of them there's an annoying or plain awful one like Godskin Duo, Malenia, pre-Torrent Elden Beast, Fallingstar Beasts, and that's before going into the endless repeats of some of them like Ulcerated Spirits which are some of the most miserable experiences I've had in a FromSoft game by a mile. Looking at what the DLC had in store helped me in my decision not purchase it as well.

It's still quite the good game, but I definitely hold it below DS1, DS3 and especially Sekiro. Can't speak for Bloodborne as this one ain't on PC.



Now as for me, Warhammer 40K Rogue Trader - 7.5/10

It's an Owlcat game alright, which means you know what you get; a gargantuan RPG with several novel's worth of text in the first twenty hours, which are basically the prologue. I haven't finished it yet actually, but I'm far enough in to give my thoughts I think

When it's good, it's really good. The roleplay options are delightful and while the combat relies a bit too much on buffstacking and having masses of trash enemies pad the turn lengths, it's satisfying to pull off victories against bosses and the like. In terms of tone and atmosphere it nails 40K in a way Space Marine 2 doesn't, in that the universe is a bleak place filled with uncaring nobles, zealous assholes, insane heretics, devious xenos, regressive dogma and more misery than you can shake a chainsword at. But it doesn't get mired in the grimdark, rather it's used as the canvas to tell your own story. You can be the Good Guy here, it's just not an easy path to being a shining paragon of moral rectitude whose every action is vindicated by the needs of the plot, like in many RPGs. You gotta work for it, and work against the deeply ingrained dogma of the Imperium to do it. I personally went 90% Dogmatic because it's a lot of fun to roleplay as that, but there's still room there to be something more than the Emperor's best and most genocidal boy-scout.

The Heretic path is the one I'm not convinced by at all, having tested it a bit. You can easily get away with shit that would get pretty much anyone in the Imperium executed on the spot, and no, being a Rogue Trader shouldn't protect you from some people as the story itself makes clear. Maybe at some point I'll get deeper into it but man, it's a close to 100 hour game, I won't replay this anytime soon.

My biggest criticism is the padding. There are too many huge combat encounters full of enemies that don't do anything but die when you look at them funny. There are too many sidequests that aren't really interesting. The overworld/colony/ship gameplay is singularly uninteresting overall, especially during Chapter 2 which in particular suffers from a lack of direction. I would have done with all that being scrapped and just have space combat and colony management be resolved by dialog/important decisions. I know that one player's padding is another's fun fleshing out of the universe but the game would have been better had it been more focused. Then again I thought the same of the kingdom and crusade managements in the Pathfinder games so obviously the devs aren't interested in cutting that down.

Still, it's quite the fun, if demanding dive in the 40K verse, and quite likely the first Owlcat game I'll actually finish.

[Popastique]

Pathfinder: Kingmaker - 7/10



This game has been on my radar for a while, so I decided to give it a go (previously played Divinity: Original Sin 2 and enjoyed it big time).

The story, companion quests, and the whole narrative have been pretty great. As well as the combat system (I chose the turn-based version). The ability to combine 2+ classes and their abilities/passives into a single character adds a ton of variety, so that was pretty impressive.

However, I found myself displeased with some of the mechanics present in the game.

- Rest: At first glance it is a good thing; it adds a roleplaying element and downtime between battles/traveling via the world map. Listening to your party's banter and all that jazz. However, it soon becomes pretty obnoxious as you have to rest every 20-25 sec when you travel via the world map or suffer the debuffs. The same applies to resting after 1 or 2 battles every goddamn time.

- Spell CD: When you use some crazy high-tier spells that turn the tide of the battle and have to rest before using them again, that's fine. Completely understandable. However, when you just start the game and are using some pretty basic ones, which do not do a ton of damage and have the same daily limit, it makes no sense if you ask me.

- Kingdom Management: The whole system feels nice at first, and you get to enjoy something different when you are not exploring the world map. But it all breaks down when you get to the last few acts and there are no more points of interest to explore on the world map, so you sit there and click the skip day button waiting for the main story to progress.

Fortunately the mod Bag of Tricks fixed those problems for me.

Apart from the things above, Act 7 is also pretty bad if you ask me. House at the Edge of Time and its confusing lamp-mist gimmick combined with high AC enemies that love CC way too much, mandragora swarms that are super annoying, and pesky ghosts that take ages to kill. And it would have been tolerable if not for the fact that the game decided to kill 2 of my characters right off the bat for story/plot reasons, so I had to use the spare ones whom I didn't level up and haven't used for the majority of the game except for their companion quests.

Will try W40K Rogue Trader next.

[Kumorii]

Indiana Jones and the great circle - 6/10

Very good Indiana Jones feeling, but the rest leaves much to be desired. After you've done the first area and it's sure quest you've done them all basically. Each area just repeats the same 4-5 side quests. Only variety is in the mysteries.

Main story is at least interesting enough.
Combat is very surface level and books aren't clear on how you perform certain moves.
Lucky hat makes combat very easy. After aggroing a base enemies paths tends to break. So they just stand still in awkward positions.

I recommend it for the Indians Jones aspect of it.
I won't of what you look for is gameplay.

[Grinning Serpent]

While I wouldn't agree with your score, I do agree with most of your criticisms.

Well, I do rate on a 1-10 scale instead of the 6-10 scale that most people seem to prefer using. To me. 4-6 is average, not "bad." Given all the issues I have with the gameplay, but the fun I had exploring (at least for a while), I think a 4-5 is a pretty fair rating. Maybe a little higher? I do think I might punish it unfairly because I feel like ER is *really close* to doing things right, but doesn't quite stick the landing. FWIW I did give it one last try after a couple days off. I did kill that asshole Bell Bearing Hunter that gave me so much frustration after another dozen attempts (and it reinforces my belief that grab attacks should not exist in Souls games if Fromsoft has so much trouble making the animations match the hitboxes), but the magic was gone. I even paid $5 to that one website that hosts those super useful maps (I used their maps for Octopath Traveler for example) to unlock the ability to make my own filters and have unlimited tracking but after about 20 minutes of running around Liurnia I just... I realized I was bored. There were definitely some bosses I wanted to get to and fight (like the ones you mentioned) but I just didn't feel like going to all the effort.

I might give ER a shot in the future if I can find a co-op buddy to use the mod with, but for now I'm putting it on the shelf. I did start up an SL1 DS2 run since I never did finish the onebro experience in that game, but I imagine it'll be chipping at it here and there when I need a break from WoW or whatever.

Now as for me, Warhammer 40K Rogue Trader - 7.5/10

It's an Owlcat game alright, which means you know what you get; a gargantuan RPG with several novel's worth of text in the first twenty hours, which are basically the prologue. I haven't finished it yet actually, but I'm far enough in to give my thoughts I think

Been eyeing this one for a while. $25 is a pretty compelling price on sale, and I always wanted to play Dark Heresy or Rogue Trader. Sounds like it'll be worth picking up! I think I'll like it more than Kingmaker (which I put down after a couple dozen hours) because I won't be constantly comparing it to the experience of actually playing the system in tabletop. Kingmaker ultimately drove me away because it's very much rigid with RAW whereas on tabletop we often dismiss things like "you need to actually dismiss spells/field effects don't immediately vanish after the bad men are gone." Maybe there's mods for that though.

[Jastall]

Well, I do rate on a 1-10 scale instead of the 6-10 scale that most people seem to prefer using. To me. 4-6 is average, not "bad." Given all the issues I have with the gameplay, but the fun I had exploring (at least for a while), I think a 4-5 is a pretty fair rating. Maybe a little higher? I do think I might punish it unfairly because I feel like ER is *really close* to doing things right, but doesn't quite stick the landing. FWIW I did give it one last try after a couple days off. I did kill that asshole Bell Bearing Hunter that gave me so much frustration after another dozen attempts (and it reinforces my belief that grab attacks should not exist in Souls games if Fromsoft has so much trouble making the animations match the hitboxes), but the magic was gone. I even paid $5 to that one website that hosts those super useful maps (I used their maps for Octopath Traveler for example) to unlock the ability to make my own filters and have unlimited tracking but after about 20 minutes of running around Liurnia I just... I realized I was bored. There were definitely some bosses I wanted to get to and fight (like the ones you mentioned) but I just didn't feel like going to all the effort.

I might give ER a shot in the future if I can find a co-op buddy to use the mod with, but for now I'm putting it on the shelf. I did start up an SL1 DS2 run since I never did finish the onebro experience in that game, but I imagine it'll be chipping at it here and there when I need a break from WoW or whatever.




Been eyeing this one for a while. $25 is a pretty compelling price on sale, and I always wanted to play Dark Heresy or Rogue Trader. Sounds like it'll be worth picking up! I think I'll like it more than Kingmaker (which I put down after a couple dozen hours) because I won't be constantly comparing it to the experience of actually playing the system in tabletop. Kingmaker ultimately drove me away because it's very much rigid with RAW whereas on tabletop we often dismiss things like "you need to actually dismiss spells/field effects don't immediately vanish after the bad men are gone." Maybe there's mods for that though.

I do think the game is well worth a first playthrough. There's enough good stuff in there to warrant it, especially if you can get a steady co-op buddy to do it with. But a second playthrough and more would really require me to love the combat far more than I do. Yeah the game has tons of build diversity but that doesn't help when half the bosses are incredibly annoying to actually fight and the balance is completely out of whack so some builds breeze through the vast majority of fights and others require a PHd in the game to make work, and that's just not of interest to me.


I can't speak as to how Rogue Trader adheres to the tabletop game itself, but it definitely has fewer annoyances than the Pathfinder games, and the ruleset and leveling up feels far more straightforward. Once you've chosen your Archetype most decisions feel natural enough for most characters, whereas in Pathfinder (especially WOTR) the game throws such a kitchen sink of options at you haphazardly that it made my poor head spin. Plus the actual combat wasn't very fun once you got to stronger enemies who stacked so many buffs on themselves the only way to beat them was to do the same so you had even a chance of actually hitting them. Rogue Trader is far easier to break admittedly, one character in particular has an NPC only class that is very easy to min-max and deals frankly stupid amounts of damage. But hey, it cuts on the padding so at some point I'm all for it.

[Frostfred]

-snip-

The CC of the satyrs is a gaze attack. It can be negated by a talent (iirc it was blind fighting), or anything else making you immune to such attacks, which makes most fights in the act a breeze. Though the game is terrible at conveying such details, I only found out by luck - having a level up with a char just after a few fights against those satyrs, not knowing what else to take, and realizing that this char didn't get CCd anymore along with another one who already had it.


OT: Empire - Total War 7/10
Quite a solid Total War game imo. Similar to other TW games I played, I enjoyed the building / turn based aspect of it. However, the controls and responsiveness in the RTS part feel really clunky. Luckily, there's an auto-battle feature for that.

[tehealadin]

Trails in the Sky FC - 8.5/10

Decided to finally play the earlier Trails games. Loved it. While I prefer the gameplay refinements of later entries, it still plays well, I enjoyed the story, better paced than CS1. Had me leaping straight into SC. This is quickly becoming my favourite JRPG franchise.

[Malkiah]

soul reaver 1 remaster: 9.5/10 for nostalgia and original concept, 8/10 for the era.
the graphical changes are fine considering how pixelated the original PS1 game looks but like a lot of these remasters the new art assets don't often feel like they match the original artistic vision, and/or change enough details that for us nostalgiabait gamers it's distracting and annoying.

a simple but effective revenge story, with game play and implementation of the late 90s - but, i'd argue that in its brute force simplicity there is elegance.
the controls are surprisingly tight for a game that came out in 1999, and the combat is used sparingly enough that its clunkiness could almost be mistaken for intentional if you squint - though quite honestly, i felt like it handled at least as well as any fromsoft game. in fact, with the pixelation and shitty combat and high gothic drama you could almost mistake this for some corner of elden ring.

definitely feels the weight of massive cut content in its final act, but nearly 1/3rd of the entire game was cut to meet deadlines so it's not shocking.

soul reaver 2: 6/10 for nostalgia, 4/10 for being kind of a stinker quite honestly
while playing through i realized just how much of defiance i had smooshed into SR2 in my memory, as SR2 itself quite surprised me at being so short and basically only having 3 locations and having very little happen.
all the chunky charm is gone from the first one, and they were clearly trying to make a slicker and more combat-centric PS2 game and just didn't have the chops in their combat development team.
the great parts are still great (ie, the voice acting and the high drama) but seeing what's actually in the game vs. what i project into the story having been a huge LoK nerd for 25 years, there's not very much steak to the sizzle here.

[Daedius]

Alan Wake 2 -- 9/10

100%'d, enjoyed it thoroughly.

Was caught off guard with "We Sing" chapter. Was pretty well done... lol

Just love the world the game's set in with the Federal Bureau of Control. Very similar to SCP stuff which I enjoy;

[En Sabah Nur]

RUN: The World In-Between - 8/10. It was exactly what I wanted it to be.



Grabbed this while its on sale. Its basically a cross between Super Meat Boy and Celeste, imo. With tight controls to match. I've only completed the normal run so far (in about 3 hours, easily done faster than that, though), but the story is fairly minimal. It just lets you get on with playing the game. Each single run is procedurally-generated, but you get used to the different building blocks it uses. It becomes a matter of executing your moves properly/getting the timings down. If nothing else, it only cost 2 bucks, and it scratched an itch I had lol And it has some really solid music.

Also great for people that just want to add achievements to their account, I guess. I've played a total of about 4 hours and already have 34/57 without even trying for anything specific.

[Zuben]

Dragon Age: Inquisition - 8/10

Finally managed to finish it. Going through the game followed the same pattern as it always is with me in these long-ass games: First month I play it religiously, searching every nook and cranny, ingesting all the cutscenes and character interactions, but by the time I'm nearing the final parts of the game I drift away. This time it took two months before I picked the game back up again and finished the last few story missions and the DLCs.

But it was worth it. I absolutely loved the experience, the characters, the setting. Where DA2 was wonderfully focused in a narrow setting and the largely pre-established character of Hawke and his/her family, Inquisition spans the entirety of southern Thedas (or rather, a bunch of select regions in Orlais and Ferelden) and stakes are once again about saving the world. Your character also has more background options like in DA:O, but this time they also come off like a real person, speaking their lines and everything. This is vital to me, I can't enjoy a mute character in games like this. That's a big part of why DA:O is my least favorite DA out of the three I've played — the "Hero of Ferelden" never felt like a character in the way Hawke and the Inquisitor do.

Anyway, bulletpoints! What I liked:

• How the Inquisitor both feels like an actual character in the setting, yet is still completely mine. I never engage in photo mode in games, because why would I take pictures of a game I'm playing? This is why. I wanted to archive many pictures of my Inquisitor, so I could look at them in the future and remember the good times.
• The companion roster was great. Vivienne and Cole were the only ones I didn't really care about, Sera required a bit of time for me to warm up to her, and Varric didn't quite reach the highs of his DA2 self. Otherwise I loved interacting with everyone, advisors included. My main crew consisted of Blackwall, Sera and Dorian, but I would occasionally switch them with Cassandra, Varric and Solas respectively, especially when I suspected their presence was essential for a story mission*. Bull was great as a character, but I never felt like using him as my tank.
  *I failed to foresee how essential Solas would be for the Adamant mission and went with Dorian there as well.
• The game is 10 years old and cross-gen with PS3 to boot, but the graphics and aesthetics look pretty good regardless, impressive even when coming directly from DA2, which looked like horse's ass even back when it released.
• Gameplay works right into my tastes. I like action RPGs, where you control a single character. Adventuring as Geralt or Dovahkiin etc, I much prefer that over controlling an entire group of people. Where Inquisition saddled me with companions, I could leave them to fend for themselves thanks to the Tactics feature. The tactical mode, where I could select them and pick a spot for them to scurry to is enough micromanaging for me. For leveling them up, I just used recommendations from a website like I always do for any talent tree in any game. Only with my Inquisitor I picked the skills myself, looking at what would support my preferred gameplay.
• Story moments, character interactions etc. are all high quality and well-written. This is the content I played this game for. Romance was pretty good too, and while I was set to finish with Sera, I dabbled with Cullen and Josephine as well (before reloading the save). There was also a cute scene with Cassandra where she awkwardly addresses my Inquisitor's advances and how she's not into it.
• Trespasser was a fine way to end the game. Playing Inquisition in the year of 2024 meant I was aware of Solas' secret, but I think that only enhanced the experience. And Trespasser was the cherry on top.

What I didn't like:

• The most famous complaint of Inquisition is how much the Hinterlands suck. The truth? That area doesn't particularly suck, but is an example of how many of the areas in the game suck. Exalted Plains, Emerald Graves, Emprise du Lion etc. They are all places where production values are lowered in favor of Ubibloaty busywork and environmental storytelling. I didn't really care for any of it, it's all extra, just devoid of cutscenes and the like. Val Royeaux sucked too. Calling it a far cry from Witcher 3's Novigrad or Beauclair is giving it too much credit.
• Companions are great in cutscenes, but kind of... sterile out in the world. When I had Varric with me in DA2, his banter was always spot on and it felt like I was hanging out with my crew. Yet in Inquisition it's like they lack impact. Varric's banter was lukewarm and in general it felt like his body was there but not the charismatic personality. I intended to have him in my party 100% of the time, but switched him for Sera (the love interest) because it bothered me how he felt like a different person compared to DA2.
• There's loot-bloat. I mean, yeah, duh, it's an RPG. But still. Eff that shit.
• I wanted my Inquisitor to look more feminine, but there wasn't really a long-hair option (the above-shoulders polka was the best I could have), then the wardrobe options in Skyhold (and Winter Palace) were quite masculine too. At least some medium armor options looked good on her.
• Main story was fine, but kind of silly in parts and lacked oomph in others. For example, the Red Templars felt like a Saturday morning cartoon villain faction with their absurd red crystal aesthetic. Corypheus himself felt more menacing in DA2's DLC than in Inquisition. His threat was also diminished by the fact the Inquisition could afford to dick around in Skyhold, as the many lovely cutscenes there showed.
• Hawke features in the game, but for whatever reason they're locked into the serious personality option instead of the sarcastic I went with in DA2. Because of that I had no problem choosing him to stay behind in the Fade instead of Loghain. #notmyhawke

All in all, Inquisition does many things well, yet is also noticeably flawed. DA2 was better in some aspects, so I struggle to say which one is my favorite Dragon Age. In the end, I would probably give it to Inquisition, because I felt such a strong ownership of the Inquisitor I created.

I started Inquisition before Veilguard was out, so I was looking forward to the continuation of the story. Now that I've heard the game sucks, and more importantly seen some atrocious cutscenes myself, I probably won't bother. I might if Sony includes it in the PS+ Essential monthlies, but otherwise no.

Big choices I made:

Spoiler: 

• Sided with the mages.
• Chose Loghain over Hawke.
• Supported Celene and brought up her old boo to rule by her side.
• Had Morrigan drink from the well.
• Softened Leliana as the Divine.
• Married Sera.
• Disbanded the Inquisition. I struggled with this one. It felt kind of okay to pledge the organization to the Divine, especially since she was softened Leliana, but in the end I liked how it was independent. Chantry-adjacent, but its own entity. So now my Inquisitor is that on a smaller scale.

[Gaidax]

Path of Exile 2 - 7.5/10

Yes yes, get them pitchforks out.

It is a great game overall and once it will be out of early access it will be easy 8.5/10+, but at the moment there are a few major gripes I have with it:

• Initial first run of current Act 1, 2 and 3 are a bit too hard, while subsequent re-run on higher difficulty is too easy.
• Some of the maps in Act 2 and 3 are simply way too frikkin' huge and daunting.
• Challenge modes (ultimatum and such) are RNG AF, you can either breeze or get fudged by random affixes. Specifically, the one with Honor mechanic, which is just a pain in the ass and IMO should have that mechanic nuked or hugely reworked.
• Endgame is currently somewhat lacking in variety.

Now, the game looks great, they finally started to pay more attention to narrative quality and of course the variety of build options is amazing (although somewhat limited by the above).

I say, give it another year in the oven if you want a complete polished experience. But then for 30 bucks entry fee, might as well try it out now - first 40 hours will be mostly great, the chorebore begins after that and can just stash the game then.

[Frostfred]

Assetto Corsa - 8/10

Probably the racing game that goes most in the sim direction compared to the others I played, which were a bit more arcade-y. I'm really digging it so far. Driving physics are good, for the most part, and the variety of tracks and cars is awesome. I rarely play on a controller, so my accuracy isn't as good and I'm fairly slow in general, but it feels good trying to push times and see improvements when learning a track/car. It also has lots of tools for that, e.g. real-time comparison with your best lap in that session, which helps optimize every single part of the track. And it seems there's a really active modding community out there, pushing it even further (though I didn't get into that). Just for that, it may be a 9/10 or even higher.

However, there are 2 downsides.

First is the AI. It's bad. Not in the sense of slow, but bad in the sense of weirdly inconsistent. An example: The AI seems to be somehow adjusted to how the results are at the end of the first round, at least in career mode. That means, if you manage to overpass all cars in the first round, you won't have an issue winning even on highest difficulties. If you don't, the AI can be fairly fast and almost unbeatable for a new player, even at the lowest difficulty settings. Sometimes it just seems to randomly adjust in the middle of the race, and the lap times of AI players are about 5-10 s slower. I still didn't understand the system, but it doesn't feel good, it's inconsistent, and all over the place. And while we're at it: career mode is not really good, but I won't hold it against the game, as it doesn't seem to be the focus at all. Still, if that's something you look out for in a racing game, you're better off elsewhere.

The second is more a pet peeve, as I like collecting achievements, and the game is just a nightmare for that. There are more than 700 in the game, mostly tied to events (certain car and track, then e.g. get a certain lap time). In the past, they seemed to have been fairly well-balanced for more casual play, some harder, some easier. Still would take hundreds of hours to get them all due to the sheer amount and different tracks and cars to learn. Imo that would have been fun due to the great tools available, variety, and driving physics.
But then, they patched and changed the required times to be a better fit for enthusiasts. Nowadays, some events/times are super difficult. Even the people writing the guides come up with stuff like (quote) "The trick with this event is using higher amounts of SC compared to normal with an oversteery setup, so you can turn in nicely while SC holds you up slighlty." SC is stability control in the driving assist options. I.e. the achievement requires optimization on the level of adjusting driving assists in the options and adjust both your driving style and car setting accordingly, even for people with several hundred hours in AC and several thousand hours in racing games, in general. That just feels over the top.

[Nihilist74]

EA Sports PGA Tour PC 9/10

This game seems like a great golf game. Its a lot like the 2007 era Tiger Woods golf games. What made me really happy about it is that it gives you the choice between 3 click swing and analog stick swings. I bought it this morning and played a round. It was fun like the old tiger woods golf games and hot shots golf on the PlayStation. It just had better graphics. I am not into golf much but I think it is fun to play on the pc.

[Relapses]

Silent Hill 2 Remake - 8.5/10

Solid remake of the original. It hits all of the right notes and even improves on some of the more murky, less obvious aspects of the OG's story. I know that can be read as both a blessing and a curse but I generally enjoyed the changes they made. They extended the game's run time by a solid 10 hours but I'm fine with that. The music, mostly carried over from the original, is great. (New pieces being developed by the OG composer is a great touch.)The addition of verticality to some of the sequences only improves the unsettling nature of the unreality. The only parts I didn't enjoy were the extended prison sequence which felt largely pointless and many of the bosses felt a bit too claustrophobic for my tastes. Oh, and those spider mannequins can fuck off the tallest mount on earth. I hope the guy who designed those wakes up every morning and steps on a Lego for the rest of his life. The graphic fidelity is amazing, though I can't say I was a huge fan of most of the game developing into "walking in between mostly same-looking apartment rooms." Regardless, thematically it's excellent and I think it sticks the landing even better than the OG did.

All in all, it's definitely a great addition to the Silent Hill franchise and I'm excited to see whatever Bloober Team takes on next. They clearly cared a lot about this game and I think they've effectively made a name for themselves with this property. It's the kind of labor of love that's rare to see in today's highly commodified video game development landscape.

[Attackrabbit]

Assetto Corsa - 8/10

First is the AI. It's bad. Not in the sense of slow, but bad in the sense of weirdly inconsistent. An example: The AI seems to be somehow adjusted to how the results are at the end of the first round, at least in career mode. That means, if you manage to overpass all cars in the first round, you won't have an issue winning even on highest difficulties. If you don't, the AI can be fairly fast and almost unbeatable for a new player, even at the lowest difficulty settings. Sometimes it just seems to randomly adjust in the middle of the race, and the lap times of AI players are about 5-10 s slower. I still didn't understand the system, but it doesn't feel good, it's inconsistent, and all over the place. And while we're at it: career mode is not really good, but I won't hold it against the game, as it doesn't seem to be the focus at all. Still, if that's something you look out for in a racing game, you're better off elsewhere.

If you're not using it I'd suggest a look into Content Manager for AC, give you a bit more fine control over ai difficulty and other difficulty options as well as a drag n drop system for installing mods