Last game you finished, tell us about it

I agree the son was basically a plot device to set up part three. I'm also in the same predicament. As I have many RPGs to finish yet I always play other games instead.
Yeah, I thought that part was a bit was silly. Also, there were a couple of bits where you're forced by cutscenes into fights when all my choices thus far would indicate that I wouldn't have attacked. I shouted at my screen "why the fuck did you do that?" more than once. :D
 
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Yeah, I thought that part was a bit was silly. Also, there were a couple of bits where you're forced by cutscenes into fights when all my choices thus far would indicate that I wouldn't have attacked. I shouted at my screen "why the fuck did you do that?" more than once. :D
Plot armor and forced story telling are two things I hate about the RPG genre. I still remember playing Final Fantasy 7, and screaming at my TV in rage in the 1990's.😤
 
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I just finished Enderal Fogotten Stories SE and enjoyed almost every minute of it.

The gameworld is large but not as overwhelmingly large as Skyrim. I think I ended up clearing 95% of the dungeons in the game and my playthrough took around 96 hours.

The quests were top of line. Almost all the side quests either linked to the main quests or had elements of them that related to major characters in the storyline. The writing was of a very good quality, especially the main storyline. It's not about finding your father/son here! There are twists and turns and there are plenty of morally grey characters. Some of the quests are quite linear but that is to be expected given the increased focus on the story. Quests are mostly multi-stage and often involve unqie mechanics i.e. brewing a potion to give to someone and then using a unique spell to help resolve the quest. There are quests where you have to investigate a murder or decipher some riddles to find a hidden treasure. The main story is well paced and gives you plenty of places to take a break and go off and explore/level some more i.e. wait 2 days before a map can be decoded to continue the quest.

While the underlying mechanics are based on Skyrim they have been massively tweaked and the new design allows for a much better sense of progression. Rats stay as rats - they never level up. Bandits start off as being very challenging but as you level up they get easier and easier. If a dungeon is too hard than you just need to level up a bit and get some better gear and then come back. Skills can only be gained by spending skill points so you really have to focus your character - it is impossible to build a jack of all trades. I ended up with 3 combat skills at maximum and 2 non-combat skills.

The economy is well balanced. You have to be careful spending your money early in the game. The purse strings can be a bit looser in the middle of the game. At the end of the game you will have plenty of spare money but you won't have limitless money.

The early game is moderately difficult to very difficult depending on your character build. The end game will either be easy or average assuming you have leveled up and build a reasonable character. If you play as a magic user (elemental, psionics or entropy) the game will be significantly easier than as an archer or melee build.

The graphics are similar to Skyrim SE but there are some very well designed areas like the Flooded City Temple that are spectacular to look at. The main city, Arx, also has a temple up on a hill that provides an impressive view of the city. The sounds are top notch and there are some great tavern songs much like in Skyrim.

The mod does leverage a lot of other mods to achieve what is has. A lot of the models can from other mods and well as most of the sounds. It uses a lot of Skyrims assets as well but it does it quite well and you never feel like you are playing Skyrim - although it has been awhile since I played Skyrim so if you the kind of person who has played Skyrim for thousands of hours it may lessen the enjoyment of Enderal.

There are bugs but most of them can be avoided by playing slowly. Almost all of the bugs I had were caused by me rushing to click on things before the game told me to or spamming clicks on levers etc.

I would give it a very high 9/10. It is the first mod I have enjoyed so much and it has got me a lot more interested in other total conversion mods!

The other thing Enderal reminded me of is just how much better Skyrim is than Fallout 4. I also played a bit of Skyrim and it was just so much more stable than Fallout 4. No issues playing at 144hz. No mods required to speed up loading times for my SSD. The controls for placing furniture in your house is a lot clunkier than Fallout 4 but you have far more fine grained control and it actually ends up being faster/better for creating a room that actually looks good with no graphical glitches.
 
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Enderal Forgotten Stories shows what the creation engine and a talented team of modders can accomplish. I still had a few engine bugs and CTD's that mods never fix for me.

I just didn't like either endings though.

Has there been any word on their commercial RPG game?
 
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Enderal Forgotten Stories shows what the creation engine and a talented team of modders can accomplish. I still had a few engine bugs and CTD's that mods never fix for me.

I just didn't like either endings though.

Has there been any word on their commercial RPG game?
Yeah it was announced a few days ago. It's called Dreadful River. Probably not my cup of tea. Although it isn't really an RPG.
 
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Yeah it was announced a few days ago. It's called Dreadful River. Probably not my cup of tea.
Thanks I checked it out. Seems interesting but yeah might turn off plenty of Watchers. :cry:
 
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Just wrapped up Stray
It was about a 7 hour, highly linear experience, which for 30 bucks may have most waiting until it hits the bargain bin.

That said, no regerts here.

This game is exactly what I needed this weekend - a fun adventure (from the viewpoint of a cat) exploring an interesting, dystopian environment, with some light puzzling and NPCs. It has Okami vibes at times, as you have a little robot companion that rides along with you, providing various technical functions (flashlight, hacking, communication) that you cannot, because, well, you're a cat. I often disable game music, but not here, as thankfully it only appears when appropriate and when it does it's a real treat. Wavering between industrial dread and quirky electronica mostly when entering a key location, it yanked some good feelings out of my dopamine-depleted brain.

While the game is touted as a platformer, and technically yes you're jumping around horizontally and vertically, I feel it only fair to warn anybody that buys this game: to call it a platformer is not being honest. Your little cat might as well be wearing magnetic booties. While it's a free movement game, the jumps are via prompt, and there's no way to miss. You hit the button, and you make the jump - there is no timing or momentum required. You can never fall. Pretty much negates the suspense inherent in platforming gameplay.

I didnt really care, for me it was refreshing to have this little adventure over the last couple days, and I enjoyed the ride. The replayability depends on whether you are an achievement hunter or not, and how completist you are. There were some NPC quests that I didnt complete, and I'm considering going back thru to not only complete those, but I'm inspired to create some artwork of some of the characters and environments. It's really that good, from an artistic point of view, very inspirational.

I got it on PS4, as it's the kind of game I like to play on console.
 
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King Arthur: Knight's Tale

Done after around 60h, plenty of combat in this one but it is not that complex, just got to find the right combo party and then you kick ass. There are around 30 companions so there is a lot of choice but most skills from some you find on others. Overall i think it should have stayed more in Early Access, some things could be improved and this feeling is right through the end. I wont spoil how it ends but you finish the main campaign and then the story continues through side quests, its a little weird (imagine witcher 3 main campaign ends when you find ciri, then you have to deal with the wild hunt through side quests), plus all the post campaign stuff is pretty unbalanced. This is clear they rushed out of early access.
 
Bound by Flame. It is not great game and the ending gives the impression of being severely underdeveloped.... but nevertheless, it was not so weak as to not give me any pleasure.
 
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Dying Light two was the last game I finished.

Well the only positive point of the game was Techland vastly improved the parkour.

I found the writing and quests overall to be mediocre to the point that I hated all the factions and NPC's. The damn ending was another letdown as well like the first game.

The loss of firearms put a damper to my enthusiasm. Thank god it has bows and arrows at least. Bottom-line the game was disappointing and nothing like the early trailers.
 
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Yeah, not much of a difference in my second attempt at a review of Quantum Break. Pretty much the same broad lines, but maybe in a little more depth. Still, overall pretty disappointing for a Remedy game. I love all of their titles, and QB really is the worst of the lot. It really feels like they weren't fully in control of the direction. But moreso had to fulfill a business deal with Microsoft which forced on them certain requirements. Anyways, the review.

Quantum Break started off promising, and for the most part it is a very classical time travel story. About what you'd expect from one that does the genre justice and strays away from paradoxes as much as it can. But that's part of the problem, is that it's pretty much time travel by the books. And I expected at least a unique twist to it, seeing as it's coming from the Remedy.

It seems they just didn't know or couldn't take the story anywhere more interesting, at least as far as the climax and wrapup. A wrapup which is, for all intents and purposes, pretty uninspired and even turns into regular action movie shlock. Especially since they couldn't stray away from just throwing in the macguffin that fixes everything, and doesn't even attempt to explain how exactly it could even fix the fracture.

Up until the final act it was still sufficiently enticing and could've been great had it been able to pull off some sort of plot twist or at least an emotional gut punch. But the latter would be pretty hard to do since our main character is as generic as they come. He seems to play the middle of the road every-man, and doesn't really seem very impressed with anything that's going on around him. This could due to direction, and I think a slightly more over-the-top direction could've been better. At least it would'be potentially been more interesting.

In the gameplay department, the combat is competent to sometimes great and the time abilities are fun to use, especially against the striker solders that also employ the flashing around abilities. It really turns into a fun dance as to who can catch the other off-guard first. Fights against the heavies are also fun, while trying to flank them. Combat overall is decent to pretty great. But there's also quite little of it, in the grand scheme of things. And it's also great, up until the last fight of the game against the main antagonist. For some reason, on hard, that seems to pull a huge difficulty spike out of nowhere. No other fight has given me that much trouble. The hardest up until that point took maybe 2-3 retries. That one, I couldn't beat not even after 15 tries. And at that point I was just done with it. So I cheated my way past the last fight. No idea how they balanced that one.

Graphically and sound-wise it's all-around great and has some amazing looking visuals. The time disruption effects in particular are a thing to behold. And the fights in zero-state are also very impressive. I especially love the effect of strikers, the moment they die, get caught up in the zero-state of the regular world. That never fails to catch the eye.

The one thing which could've been left out of the game entirely, and from the little research I did seem to be the marketing ploy that Microsoft foisted onto Remedy, is the tv-series style episodes that break up the gameplay between each act. They really bring very little to the whole thing. Most of them feel like filler, and at the worst time they feel like cheap cosplay episodes. Some of the time it's actually painfully obvious they didn't have anything worthwhile to show and are just stalling for time. And I hear this also caused Remedy plenty of headaches since they had to make constant modifications to the game to ensure continuity with the tv-episodes. So there's no telling how much time, money and energy was lost due to the episodes which as it is don't bring much to the table. And which could've been better used to make the game better.

The junction choices are also pretty useless and could've been taken out entirely. I played the first 3 acts twice, with different choices, and as expected, the differences are mostly of a flavor nature. You don't get NPC 1 to help you, but you get NPC 2 and things develop mostly in the exact same story beats.

I feel the whole game could've benefitted greatly by using the, most likely, big part of the budget that was spent on the tv series and the high profile actors, on a stronger story with a lot more freedom in the actual gameplay arenas. At least if the story had a strong emotional payoff with a solid plot twist or original spin on the time-travel tale, I could've forgiven the lackluster tv content and all other negatives.

As it stands, I have to give it a 6/10 or a 7/10, at the most. And as dissapointed as I am, I feel that's even pushing it a little bit. It definitely is the black sheep on Remedy's portfolio.
 
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I finished Prey (2017) recently, and it's straight into one of my all-time favourite games. I really dug the story, the atmosphere, the varying options/approaches, the choices (they really mattered!).

I loved it so much that I went to a save a couple of hours before the end and finished it again, differently. Then I went to a save before things on the station truly went to shit so I could 100% it: Looking for all station staff, dead or alive; finding all audio logs; accessing or hacking every terminal so I could read all the emails...
At the end there was still a couple of rooms I couldn't get into. I Googled it and one of the rooms was only accessible if I had made a completely different decision and changed my approach many hours earlier.

I stopped there, but one day, one day...

I haven't tried the DLC yet (Mooncrash), but I hear it's a bit of a let-down. Might give it a break for a bit before I try it.
 
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I haven't tried the DLC yet (Mooncrash), but I hear it's a bit of a let-down. Might give it a break for a bit before I try it.
Prey is one of my all time favorite games. But I also loved Mooncrash. However, when trying it, you need to accept that it has a completely different goal: In Prey you reload a recent save, when you die, like in most RPGs or action games. In Mooncrash you restart at the beginning after you die (like in the later Deathloop by the same team). This feels frustrating at the beginning (like a roguelike) until you understand that you do not really start at zero again but that important parts of your progress can be saved into every new round. After some time you understand how to use this mechanic to win the game. Once you get the feeling for this you will surely like it. And it has an interesting (and disturbing) meta-story justifying the game mechanics.
 
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Spellforce 3
Finished my replay after about 50h, towards the end it was a bit annoying because of the crap ass maps, but the story was pretty interesting and complex and has quite a few twists and its pretty long too. Enjoyed it alot, the game gives that feeling that a lot of good work, passion and care were put into it. Another remarkable thing, every line is voiced and there is a fuckton of dialogues.
 
Yeah, I might be done with Spiderman. At least for now. While the swinging around is fun and feels great, the game is chock full of other activities which are starting to bore me. I liked the ones that made me get around the map, but the combat ones are really grindy and repetitive. I did every crime encounter in every section of the city, so around 5x5-6 areas, and after progressing the story further they went and peppered the map with another 5 new combat encounters for each area. I started doing a few of them, but it got really repetitive. And seeing as each of the areas has another 3-4 hidden activities, I have a feel they'll do the same thing again later on. That really killed any motivation for me.

And as far as the story, it's ok, but I have no real attachment or care for any of the characters. It seems to bank very much on you already having an emotional attachment to the characters. Aside from the sometimes fun one-liners, the rest is pretty take or leave it. Your mileage may vary depending on how much you care about the characters and Spiderman's enemies.

The combat is also very smooth, and looks great at first , but again, it's very repetitive, and I constantly feel every fight is going pretty much the exact same way. This complaint is nothing new for most games, but they at least have other things to keep you hooked. For me, so far, it was mostly traversal and swinging around. For which I've done every activity so far.

Overall the game feels like a better, in some ways, game than the Arkham series of Batman. Especially in traversal, and maybe even the combat system is better than Batmans. An improvement over that one, which was also sort of new for the time. But that one also felt very repetitive. The one thing Batman had going for it was the setting and the characters. They are better than anything Spiderman seems to have come up.

The other nice thing about it is the city, how beautiful it looks. Again, it's a nice playground to swing around in. And it was fun while it lasted. Maybe I'll pick it up later on.

Anyway, I had a feeling I would reach this sort of point with the game, and that is fine, since my main reason for getting it was more on the level of trying to vote with my wallet and send Sony, again, the message to keep bringing over PS titles, so that maybe, just maybe, they'll bring Bloodborne over to PC? Seems to have "worked" with Last of Us; maybe it'll work with BB also. Fingers crossed. :D

Score: 6.5/10
 
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Today I finished the campaign of Fort Triumph. This game is quite a nice gameplay-mixture of HoMM (the map-part) and X-Com (fighting-part). My experience with both games is limited, but both parts felt quite competent, although they don't quite reach the intensity of the originals: The endgame was way too easy, with some "click to win"-tactics. I was playing on normal difficulty and the playthrough lasted 12 hours according to gog-galaxy.

A nice idea was the destructible environment that can be pushed at and collapsed on the enemies. Same goes for the enemies that can be pushed and pulled into buildings and into each other. This results in some funny combos, but can be heavily exploited, for most enemies can be stunned this way, making them lose there attack in the next round.

The mixture (HoMM / X-Com) works together in an "okay" way, mainly because the battles are longer than in HoMM, so that the focus is too much on those battles and less on the exploration and town-building. Forthermore, the maps are a bit unispried. I probably are going to try some random maps to see if they are better.
 
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What Remains of Edith Finch - 9/10

Quite a short walking simulator - and it's usually not something I bother with.

In this case, though - I'm glad I did. I played the first 5 minutes or so and just immediately connected with the vibe and tone of the game.

It's one of the most genuinely creative experiences I've had - and it's both very strange and very touching.

I think I might have shed tears at least twice during the 2-3 hours it took me to finish.

When I wasn't crying - I was smiling or just being really immersed in the world that's been created here.

Anyway, if you have the time and inclination - this comes very highly recommended.
 
TLDR:
+ great graphics and art style
+ great combat mechanics
+ great level design and exploration, especially later on
+ Decent and good story, told in a smart way, but one with which I failed to emotionally connect. But it was good enough on an intellectual level. Thankfully the amazingly imaginative side missions all make up for this
- some unbalanced fights


Overall, Control might be my favorite Remedy game. It's fantastic in terms of gameplay, combat and exploration. Great level design, with some amazingly imaginative architecturally impossible levels. The only part where it's good, but not really excellent is maybe the story. And not in the intellectual sense, since it's a pretty smart story, or at least told in a smart way; but unfortunately I didn't connect very much emotionally with Jesse's plot. But aside from the main plot, it's also got plenty of side missions, which again are very imaginative, fun and just plain cool.

Graphically and in terms of art direction it is absolutely stunning. Especially the lighting in many of the levels, combined with the brutalist architecture that's taken to impossible dimensions, often just makes everything seem like one of those physically-impossible perspective illusions. They artists obviously have had loads of fun creating these levels. And they're just as fun to explore, as I constantly had a grin on my face while seeing what else they came up with.

Combat is probably the most dialed-in and tightly animated of all Remedy games. You also have plenty of ways to build your character's abilities, and they even managed to insert some randomly generated loot that contribute to your character's identity in terms of abilities. This all together with the amazing physics engine they have and it turns most fights into chaotically fun dances of death. A lot of the abilities are derivative of jedi powers, but they're done so much better than any game that there really is no comparison. Everything just so tightly comes together, with yourself and enemies also levitating, and you throwing pieces of concrete or marble at enemies; it's all a serious blast.

Exploration is also very nicely done, with loads of hidden areas, and once you unlock the levitate ability exploration unlocks on a whole new level, with plenty of areas that were beyond access before, suddenly come into play. It was so fun, that I went through the whole game once over after getting levitation. And there's plenty other hidden secrets that I don't think I would've found had I not ultimately also used a guide for anything I missed on my own.

Besides the main plot which is intriguing enough and delivered pretty intelligently, there's also a lot of side missions that are just a blast. From imaginative stuff that feel like they are heavily inspired by tv-series like The Twilight Zone, to things I'm not sure where they came up with. The game is just full of little surprises, and often from the most insignificant-looking missions.

The two expansions, Foundation and AWE, do a decent job of giving you more of the same, with Foundation especially having two very cool and smart missions, that again managed to have me grinning. AWE, which is a tie-in to the Alan Wake universe, is the one I'd been expecting the most, since I'm a big fan of that game. And sadly that's the one that kind of dissapoints the most. It can't all be due to expectations, but it does feel like just a giant tease for Alan Wake 2, which Remedy have announced. I mean, the bulk of the expansion, you have almost no tie-in to Alan Wake himself, throughout the expansion; expect for some reports that you find, plus the element of darkness (which I'm glad they did not go overboard with). And a particular foe that you keep chasing. Alan Wake himself only has 2-3 short moments, which add to the mystery, but it all feels very superficial. I mean, to not be so negative on it, it's decently enough, but I certainly expected more. As I said, more of a tease for Alan Wake 2.

The only truly negative parts about Control is that for some reason 2-3 boss fights felt incredible unbalanced. Two of them could be explained to my character build (plus these fights were also done in environments where you easily die by falling off into the void), especially since I hear others did not have the same difficulty. But the last fight of the Foundation expansion, one where I'm certain I went in overpowered to hell and back, having unlocked 95% of all existing skills, having max and regen health buffed, and I was not able to finish it without cheesing it. This is also due to the way they implemented the health system, where most of the time you only regen health by diving back into the fray. So, it forces you to gamble with your character's life. And this has worked decently most of the time, but in certain fights it has proven to be more than I can handle. Suffice it to say, I was really happy they took a different approach to the AWE boss fight.

Anyway, I guess that's about it. My score would be a 9/10.

EDIT: I also just realized how chunky the game has been. Took me 48h to get through everything, but a part of that is also some of the achievements. Since I really loved hunting for them in this one, as I do in most games I really enjoy.
 
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I finished ELEX II after about 90h, took a bit longer because i explored all the 5 faction quests so it needed a bit of loading but in the end finished it factionless. Enjoyed alot the exploration as you can expect from PB games, but sadly feels like a step back from the first game in other departments. In the settlements it runs like total crap even on 3060 or 2080, from what i read dx12 official mod fixed these issues but its still in beta since forever and no idea if it will ever come out, PB isnt known for their long post game support. The game is also unbalanced, cant remember if the first game had respawn but in this one, mobs respawn every 2-3 days and the bigger in level you are, the tougher they get and more xp you get, so if you feel like it, you can probably grind til infinite level. The game also ends with a cliffhanger, so if there is no game 3, we are fucked lol. I had fun with it since i like this eurojank stuff but overall it feels like it needed 1 or 2 extra years in development.
Ps if you plan on playing it, play/replay the first game, many npcs/areas appear in the 2nd as well.
 
On Dart's recommendation I played through What Remains of Edith Finch.

What a unique and fantastic "walking simulator". This one really feels derogatory to call it that, due to how maturely it handled its story and the way it was told. It also has multiple fantastic ways of suggestive and creative storytelling. It was really imaginative and beautiful.

Nothing else worth saying, just that it's really worth playing by anyone who wants to experience a touching story about life.

9.5/10
 
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