It's been six years last week, by the way.
A couple of ados:
- The carribean theme being a possible factor in underperformance is depressing as hell. I mean, this is the only genre left standing where announcing a product set in the zombie postapocalypse or during WWII would be seen as a risk. Says it all, really. Even if you're barely getting sick of elves&dwarves: Everybody is getting tired of their favourite meal when that is served 24/7. Unless they're a weirdo. In which case: great genre. Bad target audience.
- Currently playing The Outer Worlds. And whilst that also was a semi-budgeted affair, it is remarkable how much more it relies on cheap tricks to stretch its playing time. Currently exploring Monarch, and that almost feels like Owlcat Games. You know: Having spaces and then bombarding them with paste© mobs for you to mow down over and over and over again.
I know that Josh took the criticism as to PoE1 to heart and made his designers encourage to actually think of a REASON when putting combat into their design. Like: "Okay, why do you put those enemies there?" "They are meant to introduce the fauna of this place." But still remarkable.
Mind you, these games are and always will be murder hobo sims. But killing less than 1,000 enemies over a 40-50 hours campaign is still pretty low end for this type. That's ~20 kills per hour on average. If Owlcat Games would have stats like these, there would be an integer error and the counter would re-start at zero at some point. 😄
Also, whilst the main quest is a bit conflicted/meh, Deadfire to me firlmy remains the most polished of all the major crowdfunded RPGs. At release, it was much too easy, admittedly. But that's been overhauled. It also remains the only one I've completed I think thrice. One time immediately after having finished it, just to try something out. As the main quest isn't a LOTR kind of epic done on a budget (and neither stretched to be such, see second point/paragraph), that is actually viable to do.
Deadfire is also one I'll be getting back to the in the future. And that precisely because of its setting and atmosphere. The moment where you are finished with your starting island and get your first ship to set off to adventure land -- that's the one making the game to me. It's like Monkey Island -- except in an RPG. Dwarves&elves my ass! I can get them from 9.99 out of 10 RPGs anyway. 😄
Deadfire indeed was good.