Hawke64

https://www.gog.com/en/game/new_arc_line Not every steampunk game tries to be Arcanum, but it is THE Steampunk CRPG, so some developers seem to be trying. Granted, 9/10 times the UE5 tend to look and run poorly for me, thus, I am just watching the particular title.

Finished and strongly disliked The Talos Principle 2. It is the perfect example on how to spoil a decent puzzle game with splattering the "production values" onto everything. It also advertised the DLCs upon starting a new game. While the puzzles themselves are fine, the long runs between them, a lot of visual junk and voiced dialogues with a poorly-implemented skip function are infuriating. The lack of quick saving was irritating in the more complex puzzles and them unlocking only when I was looking at the end-game was unwelcome. So, I tried 2 of them, looked sadly at the fast travel system not working the one time I could actually use it (it activates only from the train and only for the puzzles in the other areas), and proceeded to the ending. Finished and liked Arcade Spirits 2: The New Challengers. Also started Laugh Track from the same developers (free to play with an optional donation DLC). Both are good visual novels. The former offers a lot of character customisation options, though some important parts are hardcoded (e.g. being young, non-disabled, and prone to "inspirational" speeches). Tried Vigilantes. Seems fine. Tried Insomnia: The Ark. Spent 10 minutes running in circles in the third area (appropriately called The Stop) trying to find how to progress. Then I was able to find the first door and walk 10m more, after which I reached a dark corridor with a broken bridge and a lot of invisible walls. The two issues are that the brightness is not possible to adjust in-game and the camera angle is very narrow and points downward (no target lock, as far as I can tell). While there might be an amazing branching sci-fi story with diverse and complex gameplay systems ahead, I like seeing things and not being able to do so does not encourage me to continue. Finished the demo for Tactical Breach Wizards and liked it. A quite jolly tactical game. Spent a few days on and off trying to get MIO to run and recognise the keyboard at the same time. Installed Linux Mint which solved the issue, but have not actually played it yet.

I have started The Talos Principle 2. It is an excellent example of how to mess up a perfectly fine puzzle game. Like, were the developers thinking "I want the player to stare only at the compass while they are trying to find the next puzzle room and jog there for several minutes". The puzzles are fine if easy. The TTP1 PC's rewrite is somewhat disappointing (to be fair, Larian do much worse).

I have a feeling that this is not the same game, but they do look very similar. --- Death Trash Bosses Other spoilers

I have finished the available content in Death Trash. The pace improved significantly in the Perished City area. It was a positive experience overall and I look forward to the full version.

https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/skald-against-the-black-priory-cffcc0 SKALD: Against the Black Priory is free on EGS. It is a decent turn-based CRPG, even if the ending is disappointing.

Any specific genre (gameplay/setting) you would like to try? --- Death Trash. The story has picked up, though I have not found an alternative solution for the quest I did not want to do. The Tower and the Godhunters' Prison locations were significantly larger than any previous ones, with the latter, unfortunately, being extremely light on story progression per encounter (as in, I cleared 4 large floors for 1 quest McGuffin and 1 lore bit). On the other hand, the Tower had 1 puzzle and 3 (!) quests with multiple solutions and skill checks. In terms of balance, I have found a decent 2h sword, attached an upgrade to it, and maxed out the Melee Sharp and Stealth skills, so I have a decent chance to 1-shoot non-boss foes. However, if I do not do so, they have a very high chance to 1-shoot me. The regular ranged enemies have perfect aim and just strifing is not sufficient to avoid getting shot, though it is possible to get out of the attack distance (depends). The PC does not have auto-aim either for the melee or the ranged attacks. Nor do I have the ability to restore HP automatically between encounters, while the enemies seem to do so. Thus, any 1-on-1 or 1-on-closely standing group encounters usually end in my favour fairly easily. If anything does survive the first strike, it results in a fair bit of kiting and dodging. Enemies do not dodge, at least. Reloading is almost instantaneous and automatic upon dying, so redoing a battle 3-30 times is less annoying. There have been 3 bosses so far - 1 with arena gimmicks (you can clear the arena, save, and face only the boss for 75% of its HP bar; it restores health if you leave the arena; has 1 attack and summons trash mobs at 25% HP), 1 with 2 attacks (just hitting and AoE explosives), and 1 which did not fight back but had a boss HP bar, therefore counts. The enemy variety feels sufficient, though it is mostly humans with weapons, a few zombies (regular, explosive, charging), 2 types of robots, and 1 type of turret. Also wierd dogs. I think it is possible to attack any NPC at will which is nice. Same for the locations - desert (and with meat), ruins (and with meat), underground facilities (and with meat), 1 purple forest. The equipment feels good, as every new weapon helps greatly, though it has only been dropping from the regular foes rather than being found in chests or dropped from the bosses (I did get a fairly useless but fancy-looking mask). I have found 1 armour set during exploration and purchased the one I use. Lockpicking feels pointless, as the value of the items found usually does not even offset the lockpick spent, while the XP gain is negligible (10-20% of a bandit). Regarding the above-mentioned quest, it gives an ability which might (will test) be required to access the newer areas, namely, the Perished City. From a quick look at the news and discussions, there might be more story content there. --- Update. Tested, the quest is not required to proceed. The Perished City has a better distribution and variety of pretty much everything.

Banquet for Fools. The highlight items key does not highlight NPCs or all items, so I just trotted forth past the nameless crowd in the starting fort into the wilderness. After walking through several maps with combat only (the in-game map with directions was not quite helpful), I got stuck in an ambush and decided to look for another way east after several attempts. The another way was a cave with spiders and resulted in the same outcome. The game does not have an automatic journal, which I noticed after a few hours, so I recorded what I remembered in the free-text notes. The formation being hard-bound to LMB and the dodge to the cursor annoy me a fair bit. I also discovered a bunch of smaller bugs (e.g. being able to leave locked buildings) and decided to pause the playthrough for the time being. I suppose, not being wolf'd upon loading a save is an improvement over the developers previous title, Serpent in the Staglands. Death Trash. The game had sat in my library for a few years with the release date somewhere far away. The combat is quite satisfying (the stamina is used only for rolls and stealth, but not attacks), but it has been quite story-light so far. I've visited 2 non-combat locations and cut through many more combat-focused ones. The issue is that there is no free health recovery, so I've been running with 1-2 HP for the past few hours, as I might need the limited resources later. Still, the controls are comfortable (I do not dodge to the damn cursor), the combat overall is enjoyable enough, and loading is very quick. I hope the story picks up at some point soon. The game had sat in my library for a few years with the release date somewhere far away. The combat is quite satisfying (the stamina is used only for rolls and stealth, but not attacks), but it has been quite story-light so far. I've visited 2 non-combat locations and cut through many more combat-focused ones. The issue is that there is no free health recovery, so I've been running with 1-2 HP for the past few hours, as I might need the limited resources later. Still, the controls are comfortable (I do not dodge to the damn cursor) and the combat overall is enjoyable enough. I hope the story picks up at some point soon.

I suppose, Disco Elysium is worth trying, at least to see which parts of its design bled into the adjacent genres (damned be the side panels and RNG in dialogues). The art and visual style are gorgeous, but the writing, the setting, and the narrative could be described as "Meh". You cannot fail the investigation (there is a choice-based conclusion, but it is not related to your objective), the NPC interactions are as exciting as watching paint dry, and one of the last sequences was completely lost on me, let's say, due to the "cultural differences". But the game did manage to portray minors in alignment with my opinion of them, which games rarely do. Sorry We're Closed was free on EGS a few days ago as well. If you've managed to get it, the game absolutely rocks.

Banquet for Fools

Started Banquet for Fools. It is a CRPG, the setting is original, the controls are rebindable (the feature itself is pretty, but uncomfortable, though), the party is fully customisable (like in IWD or Solasta). The developers quickly fixed the few bugs I reported. The combat is closer to RTwP and the prologue uses a predetermined mid-/high-level character. I must admit, I quite like the ragdoll effects there. The game is in EA and the full release is planned for the end of January. The New Arc Line (CRPG, steampunk; the demo ran extremely poorly) team recently posted that they use UE5 (a rather bad idea for a CRPG), so Banquet is my choice for this sale.

I appreciate the thoughtful response. However, separating art from the artist works when the artist no longer benefits from the royalties*. Rowling still does and is actively using her fortune to cause harm, regardless of how popular the IP is. When it is 6 feet underground and the fund set up specifically to finance transphobic lawsuits is dismantled, then sure. *excluding the financial aspect/from the cultural point of view, I'd say if you can experience the work in isolation from the author's biography and understand it fully.

The People Make Games channel has published Why We're Boycotting Xbox (and Maybe You Should Too). MS does own several developers whose work I am fond of, such as Obsidian, inXile, and Arkane, and, fortunately, all of them have been increasing the system requirements of their recent releases ("more graphics"), making boycotting them much easier. Some of the Arkane Lyon employees spoke out in support of boycotting their games, which takes quite a lot of courage even in France.

Just in case, JK Rowling's favourite hobby is harassing children and donating to hate groups, thus avoiding supporting the Harry Potter franchise would be appreciated. https://www.them.us/story/jk-rowling-girlguiding-girl-guides-girl-scouts-trans-ban-consent Granted, the books were not the best examples of literature to begin with. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1iaJWSwUZs

In case it might help, GOG offline installers unpack everything through the system drive, so you'd need ~140GB of free space there for it to work, regardless of the selected installation drive. This is one of the main reasons why I avoid GOG for larger games. Why the developers stopped giving a f* about optimisation is another question.