Hawke64

I saw an announcement for a DLC after 29 April, so someone is still working on the game, though I doubt that the bugs will be fixed before the support ends. While GF2 is not a Larian-style sandbox, there are still quite a lot of opportunities to break things and express your unique playstyle. Granted, I was puzzled when the (main) quest marker pointed at an NPC who was underground, but I was able to figure out where to go (to be fair, the places have very descriptive names on the map) and the game proceeded as expected. In another quest, the party was stealthily gathering evidence against the BBEG. There was an option to run into a group of mercenaries and learn from them (required a successful skill check) where the BBEG's secret base was. At first, I skipped this option, then took it, then reloaded to the first point (where the party did not know where the base was). In the knowing state, the party was able to see the quest marker and the highlighted wall marks on the way to the base. In the not-knowing state, the path was quiet and I was jogging from memory (though, there was only one floor transition marker in that part of the map). So, there were several ways to proceed and it was impressive that the game did not break and did not force a strict sequence of events (it did at some other points*). Another thing is that not all quests have markers (unsure if intentional). I had an escort quest where the NPC told me to go, firstly, to his friend who lived "near the aqueduct south from" a district I had not found yet, then to the faction HQ. I also quickly discovered that I could not save during this particular quest. So, I decided to skip the friend visit and go straight to the HQ because that I could at least see on the map. Fortunately, I found the district and the aqueduct on the way. Unfortunately, the aqueduct was on the west and not south, so I spent some time following it down until an opening appeared and the cutscene triggered. Going to the faction base afterwards was easy. So, I had to actually read the map and look at the landmarks to find out the destination and it was enjoyable. What I genuinely like is the story and the companions. The story is that you are an islander sage (so I was a very sneaky and stabby sage, I suppose) and you and your friends get kidnapped and the teacher killed (ironically, the teacher was the only one not participating in combat and just standing still in the tactical mode/covering his head in the over-the-shoulder camera mode). So, you are trying to find your way home (at least, no opportunity so far to try to conquer the continent). The premise also sets up the companions - they are the people who are willing to help you because what happened was unjust (or they broke out with you and did not have a ship, so decided to tag along). They are also the best (not as the most widespread) representatives of the respective factions. Admittedly, I do not quite understand their classes and the expected combat roles, but they seem to work well with everything - there are 3 skill trees and 1 weapon type per companion, but the attributes and other equipment can be anything, while many have abilities fitting several possible archetypes. I am generally happy with the combat, despite it being fairly straightforward on the default difficulty - the tank does CC and gets hit (also heals), the rest of the party removes the armour from the enemies and cuts into the HP. There is some synergy (e.g. higher damage on enemies without armour or suffering from a debuff), but I have not seen any reason to dig deeper into it as of now. The AI can do some positioning (e.g. the rogue can auto-flank), but allowing it to choose targets or use abilities is not a good idea. *I found it quite funny - a quest, 2 different battles where you have 2 different NPC allies. In the first case, the NPC ally can die and the dialogue changes slightly (well, can't talk to a corpse, but can discuss the outcome with the companions). In the other, the NPC ally continues fighting at 1HP, then (as one could guess) tries to cross the party and regains the whole health bar for the mini-boss battle. Another bug I found amusing is that the PC was trying (successfully) to vault over a very small tree branch (still attached to the tree) in the starting area. The traversal is fairly inconsistent in terms of things you can interact with, but fine in general (challenges in seeing things aside). --- A significant issue at the present is that it is hot af in the city and I am not brave enough to run the game in this weather. Should be better tomorrow.

Is this oil? Is it supposed to be Greek Wrestling?

I'd guess that the larger a studio gets, the fewer risks they can take if they increase the production costs. Not wasting funds on "more graphics" or full VA does not seem to occur to them. The only developers I can name off the top of my head who keep their costs in check are Spiderweb Software and The Game Bakers (kind of - haven't played Cairn).

Greedfall: The Dying World The misadventures on the continent. I have discovered that there are timed quests by failing a side quest. No spoiler tags as it is fairly inconsequential. On the Olima markets, there was a noble berating her servant. The servant lost the noble's necklace. I quickly found it and tried several dialogue options to return it to the servant. The thing was that one of the companions was disapproving, so I decided to swap the party and return later. I got sidetracked and, when I finally got back, the noble and the servant were nowhere to be found and the quest promptly failed. There was nothing in the journal to indicate that it was a timed quest, however, the noble had mentioned going to a ball. So, while it is more immersive than the NPCs waiting for me for a few in-game months, the lack of clear time limits is unpleasant. The stealth system, on the other hand, is funny. There are several notable things. When you stealth-kill a hostile NPC and save/load, sometimes the remaining hostiles spawn at different positions, including the newly freed one. Another one is that you technically can approach from the front (~45 degrees) and, when you stealth-kill the opponent, they turn their back to you. And another one is that even with 1 point in the Stealth skill, the hostiles cannot notice you farther than a few metres away in the ~45-60 view cone in front of them. The companions, conveniently, are completely invisible. There are some continuity bugs, such as a quest NPC spawning after the related quest was completed or companions referring to the non-chosen options. It does not happen too often, but it is noticeable. When the quest resolutions are tracked correctly, it feels good, though. Other than that, I've spent most of the time trying to comb the areas for loot. I do not know whether I will ever need all those crafting ingredients or low level equipment, but if it is there, I must collect it (i.e. the game might be balanced in a way that considers the player looting everything in sight and if I do not, I will be at a disadvantage later). It is a fairly meditative experience. I am also certain that the playtime would have been halved (thirded?) if I did not do it. I think there are difficulty options, but I'd like to stick to the default one. On the other hand, it makes the story progress much slower than it could have been. There is also a new "feature" - you cannot take more than one companion quest simultaneously (the PC auto-refuses) and the companion remains in the active party until it is completed. I probably could just grab 3 people and do their quests in parallel, but I kind of understand the reasoning behind limiting it to 1.

I liked the game, liked most of the options for quest resolution, and some intentionally OOC/sarcastic responses, though cannot recall the details now. The only advice I can give is to get a bag of holding early (there is a lot of loot and it is heavy) and save manually and often. Also at one point you can a small but satisfying action My second playthrough was focused on trying to kill a key NPC (the NPC and short summaries of my attempts follow)

For what it's worth, Frogwares managed to get the rights to their title back from Nacon, so I hope that Spiders will recover, unlikely may it be. Eurogamer.netFrogwares now sole publisher of The Sinking City followin...Ukrainian studio Frogwares is now the sole publisher of Lovecraft-inspired detective adventure The Sinking City.

Well, this is an excellent opportunity to test how long Steam can go offline. I did not expect the developers to actually mean it, but free stuff of the free-stuff-appropriate quality is welcome. I've finished the first 2 areas as of now. The game looks and runs worse than the original, has some odd QoL gaps (the over-the-shoulder camera and the interactive items highlight*), and the companion AI is not helpful, but everything else is fine (the controls are rebindable, the saving is actually good, the story and combat are there). The 30GB of the "highres" bloat can be removed only after downloading, like it was with Steelrising, but at least it is 1 file and can be binned without breaking things. It is disappointing to see what the publisher reduced the studio to. *the last time I had to continuously hold a key to move the camera was with NWN2. Regarding the highlights, it is hard to see anything without it on due to the excessive amount of visual noise and the upscaling (still present even if the Disabled option is chosen). Like, it's the basics of visual design - the player needs to see things, and they still failed it. But the volumetric fog and ray-tracing are in and the performance (on Steam Deck) is poor (<30FPS).

Veil of the Witch He's right. We need to increase our numbers to 9 and only then take on the undead army.

I've tried the demo of the stand-alone spinoff of The Lost Eidolons, the Veil of the Witch. The improvement in the visual design and UI are remarkable. The characters are distinct and recognisable, with a wide breadth of active and passive abilities and a good pace of upgrades, the UI and animations are expressive and quick, and the dialogues are concise and on point with the options to ask for more information. I love that the avatar is nameable and the appearance is slightly customisable. While I prefer more hand-crafted encounters and controlled upgrades, the overall experience feels like an enormous improvement over the first game. The demo offers about 2-3 hours of gameplay, the starting party, and 1 boss, so I hope to purchase it on the next sale (unless I forget). In the original game, I have reached Chapter 17 and the tier 3 classes.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/a-handful-of-bottlenecks-remain-for-morrowind-remake-mod-skywind-but-its-still-progressing-steadily-towards-release https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/morrowind-in-elden-ring-mod-is-now-mostly-playable-despite-the-fact-its-creators-entire-existence-has-been-consumed-with-interpreting-gibberish-code It is good to see several different fan remakes of Morrowind being worked on. Though, the ER one is much further from completion.

Lost Eidolons The loading screen looks nice until you start seeing the bending blades on the left. The MC generally attempts humour. The models are class-dependant. So the plated armour looks like a vest. They look too samey and I do not mean the background troops. Flattering. I was a Teenage Exocolonist (demo, bought the full game but have not played it yet) The options are good to have, though quick saving and no RNG would have been better.

I am somewhere mid-game in Lost Eidolons. It is a turn-based tactical game in a fantasy setting. It is generally playable, the controls are rebindable, the saving is functional, the writing is readable (as in coherent and grammatically correct). There are some interesting systems, such as Aides (a party member who does not participate in an encounter provides passive bonuses to another who does and gains XP) and the ability to explore the camp with the over-shoulder camera. It is also possible to teleport around via the map. The combat itself is rock-paper-scissors, with what beats what being shown in the lower right corner at all times. There are also some terrain effects and magical status effects which can work together. Now, there are a few issues that annoy me. The most noticeable one is that the character models look generic (and the characters of the same class look almost identical) and the general palette is the grey-brown of the 00's shooters. On the lower resolutions, it is quite hard to see the UI icons, while most portraits, as mentioned, are too similar to tell apart. There is an incredible amount of small talk and fetch quests with little to no player's input. Even with the in-camp teleportation and skipping, it still takes a lot of time. The character development system is functional - gain enough XP in the relevant skills and the class will unlock, the problem is that the high-tier classes and skills are locked behind the main story, so I've had the party maxed out for the last 5 or so chapters (I am at 14 of 27). As a character cannot carry an arsenal or switch between armour suits in combat, I do not understand why I would want my Barbarian-to-become to learn throwing fireballs. The story itself is generally decent (a mercenary company accidentally offs a local lord and decides to join the rebels to avoid persecution by the Empire) and the MC is a generic Chaotic Good MC with a few points in CHA. Despite the opening mission spoiling the main antagonist, it is interesting to see how it gets to that point. In terms of performance, I have not noticed FPS drops or crashes, but the game occasionally runs hot. I've had one hardlock when I tried to skip an enemy turn. Probably, I would have had a better experience if I did not play right after Symphony of War (better visual style, more complexity and variety), but I also would not have played now if I had not played SoW.

I have finished the Symphony of War DLC missions. There was quite a decent variety of missions and new units - the ones accessible earlier were noticeably easier while the later ones provided a decent challenge. The new units generally enhanced the performance of the existing squads, as I did not want to create a full necromancer squad and could not find enough War Cats. I guess, the main appeal of the DLC would be the NG+ mode. While it does not allow to carry over everything (the units are possible to repurchase for the new currency, Memory Crystals, but they start from level 1), it allows to customise the experience further than the base difficulty options. In terms of story, it provided some interesting lore, but it did not anyhow affect the main game or the ending. I have also found a guide which explained what I suspected - same units attack the same row, so having mixed squads is preferable to the single-type ones.

A few titles I was interested in are available on Fanatical for £2.25 - 3.00 each (I probably will repurchase them on GOG if they are good). https://www.fanatical.com/en/pick-and-mix/build-your-own-fantasy-worlds-bundle

I find it deeply ironic to complain about the Obsidian distribution decisions on their official forums. Nonetheless, removing the better-optimised version is remarkably customer-unfriendly, even if I own it on GOG (and EGS) and there is nothing Obsidian/MS can do to mess it up. I remember thinking that it was great that Obsidian did not shove the "upgrade" bloat onto the original game's owners and I am sorry to see that it has changed now. https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1920490/view/694259874864824927?l=english On a similar note, the Syndicat des Travailleureuses du Jeu Vidéo (STJV) union calls to boycott the publisher whose actions led to the closer of one of its developers. https://www.stjv.fr/en/2026/04/spiders-liquidation-a-tale-of-social-destruction/ Regarding DRM, if the access to the software I have purchased can be cut off on some exec's whim, then my inclination to pay rapidly decreases.