Wormerine

Oh, also Sony won't do Bloodborne2, so Nintendo did. Ah, also exclusive to switch2.

Yeah, hopefully Nintendo will do better then Microsoft with it's "coming to Gamepass on day one within a year!" back in 2022.

At this point unless Microsoft deems it unworthy to invest money in a port, it is likely make it's way to Playstation eventually. Meanwhile enjoy Indiana Jones in two weeks time.

Yeah, Kingdom Come definitely feels in some ways like a throwback title, but it is not early as obtuse or “hardcore” as I expected. Even saving so far hasn’t been a hassle, though from what I understand quest checkpoints and quit&save haven’t been there from the beginning. The biggest change from modern RPGs is that KC:D doesn’t shy from rags to riches design - you start as completely incompetent tool, and grow as you progress. And as it is a bit of RPGs that I have been missing, I have been enjoying it a lot.

Whoa! Thanks Obsidian.

Thanks. Yeah, I decided to leave Ginger be for a while, and spent couple days doing other work, including(@BruceVC) taking lovely Theresa for two dates (2nd one in Tavern gave me strong Mafia "walk lady home" flashback). I got better in fighting, gained some gold, bought an actual sword, collected some bandit ears (BTW. How do they now it's a bandit ear and not someone elses? Could I slaughter a random village and collect their ears? Does it always have to be same ear, so I won't double dip with two ears per single bandit? It feels like a shaky system). I think I am ready to go back to the main story.

No, I have been too busy trying to be a responsible citizen.

I just did the hunting mission. So far the story felt urgent so I was reluctant to wonder off. So can I safely assume that I can just follow the story for now, and there will be a more natural break for exploration later?

I would just pull a trigger and play it. I am doubtful if anyone will be willing to invest the money to give this game a refresh (though they absolutely should). Unofficial Arcanum patch is a must, like with all Troika releases. If you dealt with old Fallout interface, you will be fine with Arcanum. At least on GOG the game works from a get go. edit: Finally started to getting around to giving Kingdom Come: Deliverance a go. I like it so far, though the game works really hard to reinforce how much of a dufus Henry is. What I like less is how little agency I had so far. Henry seems to get into scrapes and challenges his betters and leaves me to deal with the aftermath. I hope the game will let go of the reins soon. I really enjoy the setting though.

I have been mulling over why Avowed missed a mark for me. 1) Combat - I think Avowed suffers from lack of unique encounters. While combat is satisfying, vast majority of enemies comprise of the same template - be it Xourips, undead or Dreamthralls, they are all essencially the same thing. Than there are couple monster enemies: bears, spiders, Wraths, etc. which are all ok, though they don't exactly shake things up too much. Where Avowed really lacks IMO is lack of proper bosses. Bosses in this game (including the final one), mostly feel like a bit more spongy basic enemies. As such the game really lack spikes in excitement. If you find a dungeon you know there will be no unique enemies to find in there - if you get lucky you will get a bit buffed up generic enemy, and that's about it. Which leads 2) Exploration - like combat exploration is done well. While artificial, finding chests and items usually requires deliberate input from the player - the sound alerts to loots existence, and it is up to the player to analyse surroundings and figure out where it could be hidden. Fun! Rewards, while not too exciting, tend to be also universally helpful. Upgrades are welcome for majority of game's runtime, and ability to scrap/sell spare weapons and armor, means that any old rusty sword is still of some value. Still, I think exploration suffers from the similar issue as combat: lack of surprises. You KNOW more or less what you will find in each chest. You know a quest is likely to reward you with unique item. Generic exploration will grand you upgrade materails, in one form or the other. If you are REALLY lucky, you might run into one of the totem fragments, which while you are unlikely to ever turn on and use, at least will reward you with story tidbit at the end. What this design lacks is an element of surprise. I don't think you need to hide something new and exciting behind every corner, but if every once in a while you allow player to find something surprising they will be more motivated to keep looking for more. And masterful example of that is, of course, the Elden Ring - which while predictable in most cases, occasionally hides a real surprise to treat the players for exploration. While of course it is tough competition, I think Avowed would be better if it had few more cards hidden in it's sleves. Small narrative quests hidden around the map? Perhaps, items that will help you in resolving main story quests in different ways? Unique items to be found by exploration only? Maybe a hidden dungeon or two? Avowed has so little special content, that it feels that game can't efford players to miss it - maps guiding to special items, all dungeons have easily findable quests that lead to it. That unfortunately, in my mind creates a clear distinction between "quality content" and "filler junk" which is not great considering how much more filler there is in Avowed. If core appeal of Avowed is to just walk around collect stuff and kill enemies, I think this core experience would need to be more varied and rewarding. Edit: For a sequel: 3) voiced protagonists - I am a bit fan of silent protagonists, but only if they are highly customisable and definable in-game. Which how it is, Envoy is remains a player Avatar, devoid of connection with the world or personality. Considering how little players can interact with the world and story, I think Avowed would be better of with more defined and compelling protagonist to drive journey. Choices in the game meant little to me as a player, as I barely had an opportunity to interact with the world and characters (beyond slaughtering everything that looked at me, and stealing everything that hasn't been nailed down), but perhaps those choices could mean something to the Envoy.

While I replayed Arcanum handful of times, I am still yet to full tech playthrough. It's such a gem. Troika's RPG triumph. I wish someone would remaster it and tweak few things here and there.

With some weeks left on my GamePass subscription I gave "Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess" a go. I quite like it so far. Art is beautiful, and gameplay is simple but enjoyable. It's top down action-strategy, where you play as samurai spirit thing, as you escort a priestess to purify Torii gates in various villages. You can assign villagers various roles to help you fend of the attackers. It feels like a throwback indie title, but with superb craft and production of Capcom.

Yeah, that really started to bother me as the game went on. Galawain's Tusk, such a hostile and inhospitable place to live! Except it is exactly the same as previous three zones, fill with same enemies. I suppose they are level III now rather than IV. There were also small oddities that just make me curious on how this game came together. World Map is very pretty, but area placement doesn't match with how we progress through them in game. Avowed doesn't have many gameplay systems, but even so, traps seem almost entirely be forgotten about aside from area no.3 in which they are used extensively. Avowed definitely has some "cobbled together" feel to it.

Yeah, I agree on all of the above. I was playing on hard as well, and had similarly 100+ of each potions, and unreasonable amount of food - 100+ mariner's Porridge could keep me going for quite a while. That said my mage was well equipped for regenerating HP and Mana. I actually found Giatta completely redundant gameplay wise, and didn't use her after act2. Not having alternative way of dispelling illusions was rather irritating. Eh, my main gripe with companions is their story content. I just found them one note and underdeveloped. It seemed that Obsidian took a step back from companions well immersed in the universe, and went for a more mainstream approach. A more generic character, with a generic problem, with just little fantasy flavour. It is such a shame to finally have animancer in the party, and have that party member have so little to say about her work, and just run around with what is essentially a magic wand.

Obsidian has been shying from customisable Grimoires in PoE2 as well. However, with how Avowed works I think there is an argument to be made in defence of such idea. In PoE2 we would memorise some spells and use Grimoires to expand our available repertoire. Avowed I think has a similar idea but: 1) switching grimoires is not freely available, unless one wants to dedicate both loadouts for casting, and even with that it's two at most. 2) it seems to me that casting spells from memory doesn't make them benefit from grimoire we are holding making them just less desirable to use. I found a decent balance - I memorised Corrosive Siphon for emergency health regen, and Pull of Eora for crowd control, and rest of the spells were overlapping with my main DPS grimoire. Still, with how current system works, I am not sure I would be interested in doing things much differently. I feel that either permitting customisable grimoire, or having memorised spells benefit from grimoires we hold would allow for better flexibility.