Last game you finished, tell us about it

I completed Expeditions: Rome on normal difficulty (with permanent death for companions), I'm at about 140 hours of play too, and the in-game time shown for one saved game near the end is about 100 hours so the rest is demo / reloads / tests of different outcomes and so on.

It's a very good game, and I agree with what @daveyd; said above.

The fights take a good part of the time because they are turn-based. They are not very hard on normal if you take advantage of the terrain layout. I felt a little "hollow time" in the middle of the first act when the side quests dried out and there was only more sector conquests to do. It didn't last too long fortunately, and I haven't felt the same in the remaining part of the game.

Each act and each region feels different enough, except the fact you have to gain a number of sectors. The third act in Gaul is the best IMO, the story takes more importance and is richer in twists and developments, which is rare and highly commendable in an RPG.

The fact there are companions with their own personality and well-rendered historical figures is a big plus, that and the story are a big improvement on Viking. The choices may not always have a huge impact but many of them are remembered, and will come back to you. And the variations… little adjustments like a dialogue that changes depending on the time of the day. Or more significant ones depending if you play as male or female. I can't imagine how many alternatives they put in conversations, but there must be many of them.

I enjoyed the romance part too. It's not just a one-night event, the dialogues are influenced by it until the very end of the game and its conclusion. It even added a somewhat surprising option in the companion's quests. It's not a lot of extra content either, but it felt just right.

Some choices at the end of the game will change the game flow completely, and the conclusions show interesting differences in the outcome, some more dramatic than others.

What else to say? The legion battles feel quite random indeed - and on purpose, it will be worth trying the new version when it comes out. But it's fun all the same and doesn't take much time. Just .. save before :p

Some fights don't let you take your companions. Instead, one companion will go with more generic praetorians (though you may recognize known names). It bothered me a little at the beginning, but it's a good way to test other abilities. It does require to manage more inventories and level-ups though. Usually fights are done with a party of 6 max (not enforced) but it varies.

The one design reproach I have is a few occasional side quests that you play as one of your companion. It felt entirely wrong because the player's MC is not supposed to know some facts about them, and when you play them you have to select dialogue lines as if you knew those facts. It's a design to make you learn about your companion… which is just odd. And there is the fact you must roleplay as someone else. It's pretty rare and quite short thankfully, but it's a bad choice IMO.

Less critical for me, but which could be more problematic for others, is the simplified character build. No class attributes to assign, only 4 classes (each with 3 skill trees), and a reduced number of skills in comparison to Viking. The whole game feels like they focused on the essential - shorter but meaningful dialogues, core skills, core classes. Clean and efficient. The features are well-chosen fortunately, but again, you only have 3 weapon skill slots and 6 class skill slots, which is a little frustrating sometimes, even if you can swap between fights.

Expect frequent humour, but with a good taste and which blends in very well. Some of it can already be seen in the menus. Some can be seen in the character's names, or as an allusion to historical figures. There are a few references to fantasy characters too.

In conclusion: I really loved this game, I will surely get any DLC without hesitation, and perhaps try it again with a female character to see the differences.
 
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Finished my replay of Cyberpunk 2077, this time in just little over 100h (compared to 140h the first time). Didnt had the charm from the first time, i did everything possible in it. Overall i think 1.5 patch isnt such a big deal as they said, the AI is still dumber than trees, tons of glitches and the UI is still bothered by small things if you use k+m.
I wont say any spoilers but i still feel like the main story is meh but the sidequests save it, so if you want to play the game, finish all the sidestuff, besides the fact it influences the main story, there are very good and entertaining side quests.
 
I completed replaying Grandia Two a few hours ago, I've played through this game three or four times to date, and it's always a good time. The only real issue I have is the save system, which isn't available just anywhere, you have to use check points, yet there are so many around that it isn't a huge issue. It's your typical jrpg fair, with a broad story and some serious depth, and a game that actually has an epilogue, lol. Remember when that was vogue?

You have your titular hero, and he gathers a cadre of mates. Some come and go, some don't survive, and in one case, two practically share a body/mind/spirit/whatever. The story is much deeper than it actually seems at first, which only heightens this amazing game.
 
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Today I finished Cris Tales, a game I got last summer and simply didn't get around to playing it until now. This is very much a jrpg, and has some linear issues that some might not care for. Time is a factor in this story and game, sometimes in the combat as well, if you explore those possibilities.

The story is solid. You start off with just a couple of folk in the party, and acquire more during the game. Exploration within the dungeons is rewarding, so you want to linger and look around. I didn't encounter any bugs or game stopping issues with the game at all. I'm not sure it's a game I'd ever replay, mostly because of the responsive combat you must do to survive in most of the battles. Also, those characters not being used/benched do not gain any experience, so that's something to keep in mind.

The combat is rather interesting, especially the time options. You can throw poison with a mage-type, then throw your opposition into the future, for example. There is one opponent, a named maybe more than halfway through the game where using time elements is almost required or, if it's not, I didn't see a way to avoid it. There was a time or two where I wondered if I would finish this, yet I stuck around to see how the story would conclude, and I'm glad I did!
 
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I completed Expeditions: Rome
After I complete the stupid AC Vikings, it is next on my list, thanks for the thread with hints!


Meanwhile I have finished FF7 Remake, not completed.

Pros:
- I refuse to even try the original and was scared it might affect my impression, it did not!
- A visual marvel. One of the most beautiful videogames I've ever seen. Eyes and hair make a story of their own, so brilliant.
- Story is told in a proper way, it doesn't make you confused as some previous FFs and the title "fantasy" is deserved. It is not final though. ;)
- Characters are all crazy in their own ways, each and every one of them. Many will yell "cringey!", but I love this approach. I am saying this is not dark&gritty rubbish happening in some Mordor.

Not cons, but should have been done better:
- Substories are hit and miss, some are really fun, some are quite boring and some are not included (no villains stories!).
- Dance minigame is such a guilty pleasure I replayed it twice! Whoever designed it needs to be poached from Square Enix! Trust me when I say I enjoyed QTE idiocy, then there is something special. The problem? Keys you press on your keyboard are ABXY. I am dead serious. Not arrows, not wasd and not atrocious ijkl.
- Fort minigame which is nice should have been included in the main story too, not just in the DLC. If Gwent had different decks in DLC, this minigame could have different map outlets.
- No choices and consequences. It is understandable as this is a remake of a linear game, but still, could have been included.

Cons:

- The game is a tunnel crawler like FF13 was with endless trashmob respawns. If you didn't play FF13 rubbish, imagine a big budget Mars:War Logs, full of charm game yet annoying with it's exploration respawn trashmobs shenanigans.
- Combat is pretty much horrible. Unlike mentioned Mars where I liked their minimalistic approach to it. Combine builds, wait ATB to fill, summon some helpers if possible, inspect enemies so you might see what's there to steal where steal fails too often, etc etc, maybe would work if wasn't mushroomscentric. You won't have any problem with M+K, but you will feel as if you were forced to play inferior combat system to any PC game out there.
- Every boss has 2-3 tricks in their sleeve after you drop their HP to a predetermined point. Gimme a break. I'm annoyed by combat already, stop trying to make things interesting with boring filler!
- There is no end. When you finish the game (and included DLC), you will have more questions than answers. Another milk'em scheme by not having a proper end without critical cliffhangers.
- OST is pathetic. In the main game. In DLC there are some nice scores, but compared to FF15 OST, this is totally disappointing.
- For 100% you need to replay everything because some stuff is available only in a sort of new game plus. What the actual f. I am not replaying the stupid trashmob respawner for that.


To conclude, a game that will be forgotten because of it's horrible gaming consoley systems. Which is sad because characters and the (unfinished) story are very good.
 
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I finished Expeditions: Viking today, after about 50 hours in the game. I disabled the time limit for the peace of mind but it seems I was within the allocated time anyway. I started playing it before Expeditions: Rome was released, switched to that one, and resumed after finishing Rome, so it's hard for me not to compare both games.

I really liked it despite a few flaws. There were a few remaining bugs but they were rare and not important.

I liked the story, even if it was less engaging than Rome's and less personal with custom companions or in general. I also liked the variety and number of quests; there are more of them than in Rome, but they were not as gripping (which must be related to the story and the absence of voice acting). I liked the combat too, it is similar to Rome but sometimes a little more frustrating due to the the AI doing stupid things.

I didn't like the long and frequent loading times, or the constraint to heal people only in camp. The looting is somewhat exaggerated, you literally grab items from under people's nose and they don't seem to bother, except a few rare times when the items are marked as belonging to s/o. The companions don't have much depth. The camp part is partly fun, but micro-managing all the tasks becomes somewhat tedious after a while.

Of the two games, I clearly prefer Rome, but I enjoyed Viking a lot. There's enough difference to make both of them worth playing, preferably by starting with Viking. Rome is much more polished and feels like a superior product, of course.
 
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So I just finished Elex II.
I honestly don't know what to say. It's hard to take the game serious.

I don't care about dated visuals or clunky combat. I knew of it before and it didn't bother me. But the game is full of strange stuff… I just can't imagine how they decided to do it the way they did it.
 
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Don't you know?
The copied ME.

I mean isn't it obvious?
Your son in Elex 2 has the same name as Shepard's son in ME.
 
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I don't care about dated visuals or clunky combat. I knew of it before and it didn't bother me. But the game is full of strange stuff… I just can't imagine how they decided to do it the way they did it.

Now you've got me curious. What kind of strange stuff? Anything you can hint at without spoiling too much?
 
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It's difficult without spoinling because most of it happens in endgame...
 
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Last night I finished my replay of Final Fantasy three, the third time I've played this particular game again over the past fifteen years. It's a favourite of mine, not perfect by any means, yet a lot of good things packaged in a shiny container. You get four characters that are static throughout the game, and numerous classes to learn (or ignore). The story, for the most part lingers in the backround, this game is more about combat and learning which classes will serve you best, particularly in some specific dungeons.

I think my only real gripe is that the ninja and sage classes come so late in the game. The final area, the World of Darkness zone, is rather tough so you cannot simply plow in there with low job levels, or you'll get smacked silly. All in all though it's a great game and one I know I'll be playing yet again in a few years. I want to play Final Fantasy five next but I've not caught it on a sale yet, so I might pick something else out of the back log.
 
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Now that I've finished Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness, I'm in two minds as to whether I should just write a few paragraphs here or whether I should instead do a more proper official review for RPGWatch (because it doesn't look like anyone else who does reviews is playing it).

From the forum threads on the release, it looks like there were lots of views (lurkers) but not many people actually interested in the game or its release (perhaps a drawback of Early Access titles generally rather than the game's fault), so I don't know if a full review is even of interest to that many people anyway.

I'll field some feedback in this thread. Hey you, you reading and interested in this thread, which shall I do, a few paragraphs here or the whole deal for RGPWatch? How many are interested in what level of review? Or, if you'd like to do the RPGWatch review, say so, so that I don't have to bother! (heheh)
 
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lackblogger, I am certainly interested in your full review of Black Geyser. It is on my wish list and need to see how it fares in comparison to BG1 for example. As you mentioned, there is not much professional reviews online to discuss things like exploration, choices and consequences, classes, replayability, and technical matters (bugs, loading speed, .. etc.).
 
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Ok, Just for you it seems, lol, I've sent a review to @Myrthos; , though whether it's in the right format I have no idea.
 
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Just finished my adventures in Cyberpunk land. Did one playthru and then ran it back with opposite gender for main character with different skills / play style.

Overall I thought this game was incredible. Main comments:

The open world they built - basically a huge city - was an absolute work of gaming art. The kind of game you can just fire up and run around in the world having a ton of fun with random encounters. Great job blending the concept of a relatively bounded cityscape, but making it feel really big. Or said differently, really small details but really big open world.

The story and characters I thought were A+. This is what you'd expect from AAA major budget game. I loved the core concept of the story a lot.

I very rarely replay games all the way to the end. This one I wanted to run back right away. There is a lot of content and the core play styles can feel super different - blaster, stealther, tech hacker, samuri/slasher. Crazy amount of side quests you could easily miss and want to come back for in another session. And I also felt very different vibe playing the male vs. female PC. And so many character customization options. I loved playing 'my V', and it was a nice difference vs. say a Witcher vibe.

I was getting a Skyrim vibe in terms of open world, character options, replay. But way better story and better graphics/visuals IMHO. And totally different genre of course.

A couple of gripes:

Learning curve was a little steeper for me than most games. I thought the controls were a little janky at first, particularly the driving. And when driving the cars I still tended to crash into everything and everyone. I think the game was super ambitious so I'm not angry that it isn't also a world class driving simulator, and I just had fun with it eventually and laughed when I hit a wall on my motorcycle going a billion miles per hour and flew 100 feet thru the air and took like 5 hit points of damage.

I also found the braindance mechanics a little tedious, although there are some quests/story points where it plays a big role, and like I said the story I thought was just awesome, so more good than annoying at the end of the day.

Final recommendations and big picture....

I would play on hard / hardest...you can make any build super powerful by the end, so ramp up the difficulty for a challenge.

I think we should all just accept that the gaming entertainment world for the most part has moved to a point where products are sold before they are finished. I read all the crazy drama about this game at launch. I waited a long time. Bought on sale for holidays, and then played after it was all ironed out. And it was a fabulous gaming experience. They even dropped that huge patch in the middle of my first playthru. It was an upgrade, but wasn't a radical difference for me personally. Just accept that most games need to season for a while, play other stuff, and come back later on sale and when things are polished. There are so many great games in the world, don't rush it with the brand new releases. I think that's what most people who follow this site do anyway...so probably not a big news flash saying that.

For Cyberpunk...this game is now prime time, and if you've been interested but have been waiting on the sidelines, I'd say jump in now. Night City is a super fun place to hang out :)
 
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This pretty much mirror my opinion of Cyberpunk. I'm presently on my second playthrough and as you did, this time I play as a female. It's a blast to play and just walk/drive around the city and do random quests.

Just curious : What is the "braindance" you refer to? I'm playing the french version (very well done) so perhaps they just call it differently in the English version.
 
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Just finished my adventures in Cyberpunk land. Did one playthru and then ran it back with opposite gender for main character with different skills / play style.

Overall I thought this game was incredible. Main comments:

The open world they built - basically a huge city - was an absolute work of gaming art. The kind of game you can just fire up and run around in the world having a ton of fun with random encounters. Great job blending the concept of a relatively bounded cityscape, but making it feel really big. Or said differently, really small details but really big open world.

The story and characters I thought were A+. This is what you'd expect from AAA major budget game. I loved the core concept of the story a lot.

I very rarely replay games all the way to the end. This one I wanted to run back right away. There is a lot of content and the core play styles can feel super different - blaster, stealther, tech hacker, samuri/slasher. Crazy amount of side quests you could easily miss and want to come back for in another session. And I also felt very different vibe playing the male vs. female PC. And so many character customization options. I loved playing 'my V', and it was a nice difference vs. say a Witcher vibe.

I was getting a Skyrim vibe in terms of open world, character options, replay. But way better story and better graphics/visuals IMHO. And totally different genre of course.

A couple of gripes:

Learning curve was a little steeper for me than most games. I thought the controls were a little janky at first, particularly the driving. And when driving the cars I still tended to crash into everything and everyone. I think the game was super ambitious so I'm not angry that it isn't also a world class driving simulator, and I just had fun with it eventually and laughed when I hit a wall on my motorcycle going a billion miles per hour and flew 100 feet thru the air and took like 5 hit points of damage.

I also found the braindance mechanics a little tedious, although there are some quests/story points where it plays a big role, and like I said the story I thought was just awesome, so more good than annoying at the end of the day.

Final recommendations and big picture....

I would play on hard / hardest...you can make any build super powerful by the end, so ramp up the difficulty for a challenge.

I think we should all just accept that the gaming entertainment world for the most part has moved to a point where products are sold before they are finished. I read all the crazy drama about this game at launch. I waited a long time. Bought on sale for holidays, and then played after it was all ironed out. And it was a fabulous gaming experience. They even dropped that huge patch in the middle of my first playthru. It was an upgrade, but wasn't a radical difference for me personally. Just accept that most games need to season for a while, play other stuff, and come back later on sale and when things are polished. There are so many great games in the world, don't rush it with the brand new releases. I think that's what most people who follow this site do anyway...so probably not a big news flash saying that.

For Cyberpunk...this game is now prime time, and if you've been interested but have been waiting on the sidelines, I'd say jump in now. Night City is a super fun place to hang out :)
I look forward to playing the complete edition after I upgrade in 2024 :)
 
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