Last game you finished, tell us about it

Just finished playing Solasta. My experience was pretty much exactly as I expected from reading comments / reviews here on the Watch. Really great PC implementation of combat encounters using the D&D ruleset. Many fun and well designed turn based encounters. Story and voice acting good enough. I was intrigued by one clever idea they had for character customization. Basically you choose backgrounds / traits - so each character has 2 or 3 tags - and those drive what your characters say and do in game in the cut scenes and banter before and after combat. It's not choices / consequences, it's just a fun way they add background-based flavor to each character's in-game dialog. Definitely adds something to the experience you don't get from other tactical-combat oriented games. Overall this game left me wishing a larger budget studio could take this up, with the full D&D license, and just more time and money to flesh everything out. Not a game I would recommend putting up towards the top of your queue. But one to keep an eye on to see if maybe a community takes off around their dungeon maker tool.
 
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Last night I finished Troubleshooter: Abandoned Children. This game started off really well, I felt fully engaged from the first conflict, and eagerly jumped into upcoming battles hoping to get to explore new areas or maybe add to my stable of characters. The save system though leaves something to be desired, and the way maps actually function....well, it might work for some yet often felt convoluted and simply too busy for me at times. I also think the master system could use some work, at best it's overly cumbersome, and at worse I think many folks might simply ignore it.

I like the overall concept a lot, that you run your own organization in conjunction with the local authorities! There are other businesses that you interact with at time, and when your base evolves you get even more of this. Relationships become important, and the game has some choice and consequence decisions to be made along the way. I'm not sure if this is a game I'll ever find myself replaying, yet the first trek through was enjoyable for the most part.
 
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Yesterday I completed Another Star, which is a delightful rpg-maker type game. It's a few years older, yet for that age has a lot of value within. The combat can be rather jarring at times, you'll be going along fine and then run into something that can clean your clock in a hurry. Once you manage to balance physical attacks with what magic you have, it's not too difficult. The story is solid and the game has a built in note journal to keep you up to date on what you should be trying to advance. It was a fun game and one I'm sure to revisit sometime in the future.
 
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I finished Darksiders 3, very easy game, really liked the combat with the dodge mechanics but sadly that what really makes you invincible. I think i died 15-20 times in total and mostly because of the sometimes weird angles in platforming lol, not because of the combat. The world design was pretty cool, though much smaller and way more liniar than the 2nd game, and with alot of verticality. All in all entertaining but an easy game even on the harder tiers, slowmo during dodge and some weapon enhancements make you godlike.
 
I liked the first Darksiders, and I even managed to finish it. I also loved Darksiders 2, but it was so large that I lost steam towards the end. But I liked Death more than War. And I remember the game also openened up a lot more. I never got to play part 3, since it's also from a new studio (formed from the ashes of the old studio?). I also didn't really find anything too compeling about the new main character, Fury. But maybe one day I'll get to it.

Too bad the original studio was disbanded, from what I remember, and the creator of the IP left to form another smaller studio.
 
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Finished XCOM 2. It's a great game overall, and I wish I had played it sooner. My only complaint is how uneven the difficulty is. It's frustrating at times and too easy at others. The last 20% of the game is definitely too easy except for the final battle.

I think I liked it a little more than XCOM EU, but it's been so long since I played EU I'd have to replay it to know for sure. I haven't played either game with the expansions yet so there's that.
 
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metro exodus enhanced edition

Overall very enjoyable and entertaining but some elements if you put them aside are shameful. Feels very clunky and consolish, jumping over/on something only works sometimes that reminds you of the ps3/xbox era, also the shooting is very unsatisfying. Romance is a big part of the plot and its so dissapointing, not even a kiss in the whole game. But the most dumb ass decision from the devs is the voiceless artyom; most of the interactive scenes were very nicely done with a warming touch that made you feel for the chars, and you just sat there muted...that took half of the immersion and atmosphere.

Now for the graphics part on the EE, in open above ground spaces day time looks normal nothing impressive; but the scenes underground or during the night, look absolutely mouth watering lol, the lighning and all its effects are just hands down. Sadly dlss is a complete blurry mess in this game, played with it off and just set shading rate to around 2.0.
 
Disco Elysium
Finished now, it is close to a masterpiece and definitely set some bars for the future, probably many games will get some inspiration from it.
ps one of the best moments in it
 
I finished BG2 yesterday. It was a great experience. A lot easier than when I was younger and I could cheese a lot if I wanted to. Didn't most of the time, though.

Now on to Throne of Bhaal!
 
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Disco Elysium
Finished now, it is close to a masterpiece and definitely set some bars for the future, probably many games will get some inspiration from it.
ps one of the best moments in it
I found the storytelling amazing, but the gameplay mechanics mediocre. I'm considering playing it again to try a completely different approach and see how much it changes the story.
 
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@Lolozaur; , nice review & I've also read your post in the gRPG forum.

Without generating too much of a debate, to what extent are you saying it's a masterpiece, in terms of which aspect, the game or the words, if you know what I mean. To what extent is it a wonderful game and to what extent is it a wonderful visual novel.

Are you, as a player, continually active and focussed on gameplay or does the game mostly just knock it out the park when you're statically engrossed in narrative options?
 
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For me the only thing masterful about Disco Elysium is the amount of options available and how they can be resolved in different ways.

For example, missing a check can sometimes result in more interesting outcomes than succeeding. But they all result in different things.

Overall it is a Choose Your Own story kind of game with walking around a little world and some interactivity.
 
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73 hours, 3561 total kills, 1399 stealth kills, 2912 headshot kills, 158 machete kills, 472 kills by amigos… those are my stats after finally finishing the story (including all side missions but one) of Far Cry 6.

I ended up liking this "Far Cry goes Cuba" game quite a lot after getting used to the changes from Far Cry5 and New Dawn. It is actually not all that different and many things have only changed superficially. A good example to illustrate the level of change is the name of one companion, or "amigo" rather, as they are called in FC6. The doggie companion that was named "Boomer" in FC5 is now called "Boom Boom" in FC6.


Far Cry 6 is a typical UbiSoft open world game. It reminded me a lot of Ghost Recon Wildlands which also features a Hispanic setting and a very diverse world (Bolivia) with different climate zones.
There are main missions, side missions with and without a story, activity missions like races, enemy checkpoints (very small "bases") and large enemy bases that can be taken over, there are treasure hunts and many, many collectibles including special treasure hunts (criptograma chests) that require finding two keys by exploring the surroundings. Finally, there are also some (lame) mini-games like dominoes and cockfighting.

I originally started the game with a male Dani, only played half an hour or so, waited for patches and then I restarted with a female Dani because playing a female guerrilla seemed like a nice diversion from 95% of other games with male protagonists. It ended up being a good choice as I liked the acting and the voice actress with the cute accent ("fockin' Castillo").

The missions were mostly fun with the typical quirky Far Cry humor. Some missions were a little (very) over the top, but if you have 56 operations total, then not every single one can be great obviously.
The story had a great ending and in between I was surprised how much freedom FC6 offered for a game of this type.

I don't want to spoil anything but there is a real asshole character in the game, and when you finally get to him, you are discouraged from killing him. The mission objective states to leave him alive, but I was so pissed off at the guy that after the cutscene ended, I shot him in the face anyway, he went down, cried in agony and I put a second bullet in his head after watching him suffer for a while.
The mission did NOT fail or abort! Wow. And the companions even commented on me killing him later in camp. It makes me wonder if leaving him alive actually makes a difference. Will have to Google that some time…
The game also has a secret premature ending that is quite funny when it happens.

I thought that the equipment/loot system was a little weird but you can mix and match pieces to fit your play style quite well so it was OK.
The game was pretty easy on the normal difficulty. There no longer is a hard difficulty. Just easy and normal. There was one mission/operation I had to return to later after leveling up some more but everything else was mostly a cakewalk.

Things I liked a lot: The world, the exploration, clearing the map by conquering the world for Libertad bit by bit, the flying, the wingsuit & parachute (airdropping onto a mission never got old), the story and most characters, my trusty black ghost panther amigo Oluso, the hunting and fishing, the great graphics and the Rambo themed mission they added as a free DLC :) .

Things I did not like: The bugs and crashes. I haven't had a game crash as frequently as FC6 in a long time. It got better after title update 4 (which had many crash fixes according to its patch notes) but it still happened sometimes. It was totally random but a common pattern was: If the game did not crash within the first hour then I could play for five/six hours straight without a single crash but once it started crashing then it would crash repeatedly about every hour or so and only a reboot got rid of the crashing. Regarding the cause, my guess is bad memory allocation or caching (the game does its little shader caching routine every startup and a longer one every time you update drivers).
There was also a good number of annoying glitches like when you got stuck on terrain or when the AI went bonkers… the game could use another polishing pass to make it more enjoyable.
Another real annoyance is how the amigos sometimes stick to your feet and block doors or even prevent you from quickly dodging an incoming attack etc. … sheesh.

I finished most of the map but there are a few loose ends I want to tie up, especially the remaining two or three Ubi core challenges to grab the XP for UbiSoft points (you can buy 20% discounts with 100 Ubi points in their store).
On a whole FC6 was a lot of fun and I would put it on the same level as FC5 and New Dawn, both of which I liked a lot. At first I was sure FC6 would rank below those games but now I'd call it a tie, give or take.
 
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[/B]I ended up liking this "Far Cry goes Cuba" game quite a lot after getting used to the changes from Far Cry5 and New Dawn. It is actually not all that different and many things have only changed superficially. A good example to illustrate the level of change is the name of one companion, or "amigo" rather, as they are called in FC6. The doggie companion that was named "Boomer" in FC5 is now called "Boom Boom" in FC6.

Just tell me Hurk is in it.
 
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Oct 21, 2006
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Last evening I finished Divided Reigns, and what a splendid game it was! I think it took me over a month to do everything, and even with that time spent I may have missed a dungeon or two. The story was engaging, the characters interesting and diverse, and the combat mechanics solid and enjoyable, with varying degrees of difficulty. If you enjoy rpg-maker type games, I would highly recommend this one, even at full price you'll get pure value!
 
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Well, finally finished my playthrough of the Witcher 3 (including DLC), about 2 years after I started. According to GOG Galaxy it took me about 347h, but I tend to leave the game open and running while I am doing other things sometimes, so take that with a grain of salt.

What can I say, it's a great game, but it is held short from perfection through the lack of meaningful exploration and the shoddy loot. The world is absolutely gorgeous though, and feels alive, and the quests are fun and interesting. And the DLC, well, they're worthy of the name "expansion". The amount of side quests in Blood and Wine was quite staggering, it took me quite some time to complete all of those.

I am left with a bit of a double feeling now. On one hand I am glad I can move to something else (I'll probably start KC: D now), but on the other hand I've been playing this game for so long now that I feel like I'll miss Geralt - that melancholic feeling you get when you finish a particularly good book series, like saying goodbye to a good, old friend…
 
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Oct 18, 2006
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Completed Expeditions: Rome last night on Insane (Crassus) difficulty. The last save had me around 141 hours though I assume some of that must have been me leaving the game sit while I took breaks. But I did have to redo some fights and it is definitely a pretty big game.

It is great game and I do recommend. They combined aspects I enjoyed from both of the previous expeditions game, but the combat mechanics & character building are quite different. Combat is a nice change from the heavily RNG reliant turn-based combat of D&D, XCom etc. (RNG still comes into play with critical hits, damage and status effect resistance, certain special attacks and abilities, but the outcome of a particular attack is more predictable overall). On the downside, the weapon & armor crafting is more random than I would have liked. You can modify weapons a bit but the base damage of weapons & armor class vary somewhat as well as the bonuses and special attacks associated with a weapon, which makes it tempting to reload until you get something good.

Gameplay is primarily focused on turn-based tactical combat though there are some sidequests, optional romance, and interesting narrative choices to make. Apparently there's also quite a few different endings. I'm tempted to reload a save where I returned to Rome and get another ending. But I'm planning on replaying the game once the DLC is released. Also looking forward to the revamped legion battles which was the weak point of the game (on the positive side they do not take long to resolve).
 
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AC Odyssey done. 200 hours, 100% cheevos, all content. Considering I did everything, including the recent Korfu dlc, I'm surprised it didn't take me longer. As I said in my "currently playing" post, Odyssey<Origins in many ways.
2 game-play things in particular: tombs in Origins were much more interesting with various puzzle elements, and climbing. Climbing is a fundamental part of AC and in Origins I had to feel around for cracks and ledges, scouting for a route, planning swings and jumps to my destination. None of that in Odyssey - you are Spider-man!
A note on the Korfu dlc. In the promo for it they said it was for Kassandra only - not true, I played with Alexios just fine. Don't know if the Valhalla side is Kassandra only, but that is a different game.
 
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