Wormerine

I hope they will do something fun for this one. After the blunder that was 3rd, the 4th was a drastic overcorrection and I found it a bit dull.

Finished Wasteland3, and it’s two DLCs. That’s a weird one. I feel I should like it more than I did. The set up is pretty great - easily understandable overarching objective, missions with a few possible outcomes and a lot of factions to befriend or piss off for variety of outcomes. Choices are regularly acknowledged, and the game has this rare feeling of making actual choices. Combat is fine. Not bad for an RPG, but nothing too interesting as a game system. Too bad I didn’t much care for the game. I think my issue comes with how shallow the world building is. I don’t think a variety of choices and outcomes matters, if I don’t have any strong feelings about the world and people who inhabit. Factions of Wasteland3 feel like concepts that has never been fully developed. Gangs have their particular quirks - some dress in hallowe’en monster masks, some as clowns, some to ritual sacrifices… I never felt there was an interesting characterisation behind them. And with every encounter in the game having some off-beat weird thing going on, nothing stand out as particularly interesting. I think that’s why I liked Steeltown DLC the best out of the whole package - characters motivations made sense, and setting was fairly relatable. DLC2 was pretty bad - ambitious, but bad. It mostly seems to try to squeeze a bit more juice out of combat, but the end result were lengthy, tedious gimmicky fights, that seemed to push the limits of what the game is technically capable of handling.

Which reminds me: [sorry if I posted it already before. I can't keep a track.]

I still didn’t manage to do this one without death, but I managed to get her down without touching her health, which is a good start. I think I had such troubles with 3rd and 5th as I didn’t deflect much. Deflect doesn’t discriminate between high and low, so that actually made it easier, rather than dodging. For some reason I thought you can deflect bladed attacks, which I don’t think this is the case, or health loss is minimal. The trouble is elimination posture buildup without getting hit. All bosses spared. Taking a bit of a break from SIFU (have been binging it hard) and went back to Wasteland3. I am nearing the ending, so will wrap it out and pass my final judgement.

By "well established" you mean they did a twist in BG1? Fortunately for me, I played BG2 before BG1, so I completely didn't see the twist coming for KOTOR. I was rather lukewarm on the game before that happened. For JE, I think twist works for the character we play. Flaw and "Great Strategist" did raise red flags for me as a player, but as long as it is not obvious to the character I tend to be onboard. I saw JE twist as a narrative payoff, rather than trick on the player, and in my book it is the best twist one can have.

Master Li! Man, I love Jade Empire. I wish we would get a decent sequel to it - a action-RPG fantasy kung-fu could be so fun. The whole time I was playing through Lo Wong, all I could think is Jade Empire2. I thought the flaw twist was really well done in JE2

That wasn’t my experience. I remember sniper trivialising even harder difficulties, one shotting most enemies.

If we do hot takes on ME trilogy, than here is mine. ME1 is my favourite one. I like the slow pacing and buildup, and worldbuilding is easily the best in the series. It was the only game in the trilogy when I felt like Shepard was part of the world. Combat, however, is absolutely ****e. I love RPGs, but I hate bad action RPGs, and Mass Effect1 suffers from being a bad RPG and bad action game. As such, even though not my favourite, I see Mass Effect2 as the best of the series. As far as gameplay goes it does what ME1 did well better, and ditches the bad bits. The only thing I am not sure about, is swapping Mako levels for planet scanning - both are a shade of bad, but Mako gave the world gorundeness and scope, while ME2 feels rather small by comparison. And as goofy as Mako was, I always enjoy those bits in ME1. Story wise, I actually think it is pretty strong, especially being a middle child of the trilogy. I loved it when it first came out, but I have more complaints now. I don't think any of it is bad, but it could be better. I don't quite know why Shepard was killed - just feels like an unnecessary thing you need to suspect your disbelief for. Illusive Man is awesome in ME2, but our interaction with him aren't particulary interesting. NPCs are the strongest in the trilogy, and Suicide Mission is actually a pretty cool thing to revolve your game around. ME3 is bad. Combat would be it's saving grace, but I still it is not good enough to carry the game. I won't claim it is not better than ME1&2, but that's like Andromeda having best vehicle control. Sure, but that's not really what carries the experience. My issues with combat in ME3 are mostly little details - animations looking off, running looks like you pooed your pants, and I remember being very annoying with to many actions being tied to one button. I think sticking to cover was also rolling, or something like that and it just didn't work with a more mobility that game demanded. Story of course, was pretty bad. ME3 is pretty much Throne of Bhaal to me, except it went step a further and at the end made previous installments worse, rather than wrapping them up nicely.

The exact tagline was:

Managed to beat all bosses in SIFU. I found 3rd and bosses to be massive difficulty spikes. Now trying to spare them, which proves more difficult than I expected - I am training to parry and deflect more, which I think will be good for my kung-fu. I really like the combat system, though I don’t think bosses work as well as mobs. They seem to be more of a test of particular gameplay system, than interesting challenge in themselves.

SIFU So far so good. Stylish as heck, and combat seems promising. It seems far more conventional than Absolver, in which attack chain customisation and stance switching made my brain melt. SIFU at least so far, is more standard light/hard block/parry/dodge thing, mixed with DMC style special attacks and combos, sekiro style posture and brawler style pickabale weapons. Just an hour in, so the game allows me to spam my way through most enemies. Cool stuff.

Played a bit of Diablo 4. Seems alright. Always online would make my eye roll, if I didn't expect it from Blizz at this point. It doesn't help though, that I am constantly reminded of it with frequest lag as I assume the game tries to connect to a new region. Also, I don't think I have seen an atmosphere in the game dissolve as quickly as in D4 when after pretty decent opening I started game proper, and bunch of player avatars spawned at the same time around me. Started with Druid and had a decent time as a Werebear. Decided to give Sorcerer a short go, and it turned out Druid is kinda crap. Iceshield made my sorcerer pretty much involnourable, while recovering Mana, and incinerate melted everything in my path. Ended up running into Butcher, which seems to be some kind of hunter boss - he just popped up in one of the dungeons and completely obliterated me. Dissapeared afterwards, so it seems like a more one-off event. I had my fill of clicking until things die, but outside connection issues, it seems solid.

I just hope it won't end up being another Empire of Sin.

Finished Wo Long. Yeah, it's fine. Level design and story are poor, and combat is decent but could be better. There are some interesting systems at play with kind of Sekiro like posture bar, that also acts as mana for skills and spells - I really struggled to find use for those, and spending mana on emporing heavy attack just seemed infinitely more effective. Combat revolves around blocking enemy attacks, especially charged, red super attacks - unlike Sekiro those are parried exactly the same as normal attacks, so due to long windup and clear telegraphing those are more desirable than regular attacks - any more challenging encounters came down for me to figuring out what player behaviour is more likely to trigger enemy heavy attacks. There is also notacable lack of enemy variety. That is also amplified by simplicity of counter mechanic, that results in enemies feeling kinda the same to fight, no matter their apperance. The game has odd difficulty spikes, but for the most part the game is easy. Definitely the easiest souls-like I played.

A fairly positive preview for Redfall, and even better they might be lifting always online requirement and no store or microtransactions. I am still scepting if multiplayer game will be able to support depth of the usual Arcane offering, and disappointing Deathloop has greatly reduced my expecations. Still, I am all for any good news regarding Arcane. An update on Jake Solomon. He is looking to open a new studio and work on some system driven "life simulator". He seems to be done with turn based strategy games. Firaxis allegiedly "is changing". Boy, that does not sound good. In the gaming industry things rarely change for the better.

Another discussion with Josh and more:

Looter games are just not for me, but I question how much revelance top down Diablo game has. Specifically: why would I play Diablo4, and not let's say, Destiny2 - a game that has loot grinding, but also fundamentally satisfying gameplay loop (or so I hear). I like town down RPG's very much, but Diablo is one of those franchises that doesn't really make sense to me as a top down game anymore - it is a game where one controls a single character and clicks on things for them to die - spacial awarness has not been a factor in my limited experience with the genre. It is, by all accounts, an "action-RPG" and those have progressed far in their "action" bit since 90s. Somewhere between Diablo3&4 I heared a rumor pf cancelled third-person "Dark Souls-like" iteration - and that would be such a logical place to move the IP toward. Not making it soulslike, mind you, but take a peek at how FromSoftware married action and RPG and make something similar for Diablo - grinding dugenons in crunchy, 3rd person combat would be such a more compelling proposition, than this top down clicker. Still it looks good. I would be interested if it was genre I had any interest in. If there will be an open free weekend, I might jump in, play for an hour or two and get bored, as I do with every Diablo game.

Double Fine’s Psycho-oddysey documentary shows development of one such project, and how team lead can not be the best fit for the team and the project in spite of being clearly competent. Eh, we will see if Avowed will show up in the Microsoft’s not-e3 showcase. I am still waiting for Silksong, which was allegedly supposed to be release before this years E3.

Well, none of the quest broke, strictly speaking, so that's something. Ending slide

Finished Solasta's Lost Valley DLC. What the base game did well (5e combat) the DLC does better - more variety, more fun encounter a bit more challenge and ability to run into high level enemies. I thought original's campaign decision to be fairly linear was a good direction to take considering the scope of the game. More open nature of the DLC was a bit of the mess. Narrative side of the title is still rather weak, so I can't say I had any particular feelings about the factions and without linearity I struggled to remember what am I doing and why. Completing quest became more of a checking of boxes exercised. I made lady with a pettable wolf happy, so that's all I cared about in the end. It also became abundabtly clear that even limited non-linearity of the DLC was beyond the capabilities of the studio. By the end of the game the campaign barely held together. Turns out I did final mission without realising, and was stuck babysitting a critical NPC for a solid couple hours of gametime as I was tying up loose ends. On top of that after completing their chain quests two other factions sent me to the same final dungeon, which made things a bit awkward. The ending was rather anti-climactic, but maybe it was my fault for choosing a fairly pacifit route. Convincing baddy to not fight us was even more lame than in ME1. Especially disappointed as I did a bit of grinding to get to max level, and was finally able to craft some nice weapons - that I never got a chance to try out outside couple random encounters. To top it off, ending slides didn't get my choices right, though it is hardly surprised considering how much the game struggled to keep up with what is happening by the end of it. I do hope the final story DLC will be a bit more coherent.

I am in the same boat - I watched Uncharted4 and Last of Us playthroughs when they released. I will be probably hunting for a deep sale somewhere down the line. I wasn’t under an impression that I am missing anything by not playing those games.

Dang. I was late this time

I don't quite see what point he is trying to make - it seems more like a wishful thinking. Witcher3 was a massive success. If another cinematic RPG comes a long of the similar quality, wouldn't it be a massive success as well? Andromeda and Cyberpunk mistake, from what I understand, was that instead of being a "bioware-style" RPG they dreamed much bigger and didn't manage to reach that. He also mentions Baldur's Gate3 ignoring the fact it is a cinematic BioWare-style RPG. We will see how it will turn out, as it tries to marry Larian's systemic sandbox with a crap ton of cutscenes - might very well fall into Andromeda/Cyberpunk trap of trying to do too many things at the same time.

Starfield got release date: September 6th, 2023 On June 11th there will be "Starfield Direct" showcasing the game in detail, so we will learn what it is, and if there is anything worth looking forward to.