MrBrown

Yay! Endless Legend and Endless Space 2 are probably their best games, so no surprise they decided to do this.

Hmm, I'm having no problems. Maybe it's just you?

https://www.videogamer.com/news/baldurs-gate-3-dev-reveals-the-real-reason-the-games-industry-is-in-the-st-right-now/ Looks like we're having this discussion now. (About raising prices) Which, to me, is a sure sign it'll happen.

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/gta-6-costing-as-much-as-100-could-help-video-game-industry-rebound-in-2025-analyst-says/1100-6528832/ And you people complain about 70...

It's a bit weird, at some point a few years ago, it definitely seemed like they were downsizing resources for the game, with patches becoming sparser and less/smaller DLCs. Then they completely switched their approach, and the game now has two teams working for it, a "custodian" team that creates patches and balance updates (and not just small ones) for existing content, and a team that makes new content for DLCs. I'm not sure how they make money of it. I guess the DLCs sell enough, even after all these years. (I've certainly bought them all :p)

Don't think the writer understood how VI diplomacy and war works, if he constantly ended up being hated by everyone. It's really easy to be friends with almost everyone.

Hive minds have to use claim like everyone else, it's only the genocidals that don't. Fanatic Purifiers, Determined Exterminators, Devouring Swarm or Terravore. And Driven Assimilators I think. But everyone will hate you. Other ways to get a total war casus belli (meaning a war where stuff flips on conquering and not at the end of the war and you don't use claim): build a Colossus, become the Galactic Nemesis. Also you always get total war against genocidals, regardless of your civics (with a few exceptions). In practice, what I (and many others) do is just not go conquering that much until you either get a total war casus belli, or you get huge amounts of influence from vassals.

They tend to fix the biggest bugs relatively quickly, so a month after an update/expansion it's usually safe to play. The massive amounts of DLC has made it full of moving parts though and unbalanced, though. So it can be quite random, and the learning curve is high.

Well, they better hope it turns out good then.

Paradox likes to brand their games "grand strategy", but they're basically 4x games. The claim and war exhaustion systems are weird, but otherwise warring is pretty logical.

Finished Unavowed. It's pretty good, classic point-n-click adventure, but with some choices and branching in the story. And the story was nice. EDIT: Went and bought a bunch of the studios other games.

It was an attempt at a joke about Avowed.

Started Unavowed. Thought I should play the first game before the sequel comes out. Or is it a prequel, I haven't really followed development. https://store.steampowered.com/app/336140/Unavowed/

Done with Mass Effect Andromeda for now. I finished the main story, and around 60% of the other stuff. Other than some technical advancement like graphics, and a more 3D world, the game is lackluster compared to previous MEs in just about all ways. Hard to think of anything that is done better. Mostly not to infuriatingly badly, just boringly. Some of it is issues with polishing/finalizing, but some are more fundamental. I can imagine it being a huge disappointment on release with all the bugs etc.

You can't just get them because they're cute as babies, you have to take care of them when they're adults too.

I'd say Skyrim's intro is pretty short overall, you can just let the starting cinematic run while you go to the toilet or something, and you can just run through the town during the dragon attack. But, I do think alternate starts would really fit open world games. But studios seem to insist on having really linear main quests. I guess it's about pleasing all crowds.

Well, ok, some analysis. I like the basic setup of the story, and how it's different from the main series. But I have lots of problems with the story, mainly that the PC is given a hugely important title with almost religious reverence, out of pure nepotism from no actual results. And there's no reason the title or role should even exist, or given to just one person. And next to no one even comments on the ridiculousness of it. The other maim bugbear I have is that they took a 600 year trip to another galaxy, and no one apparently considered anything might go wrong, and apparently everyone expected it to be paradise on arrival. This kind of plot might suit a wackier setting with inefficient government like Outer Worlds, but doesn't really fit ME. There's a lack of suspense because the enemies apparently have a big space fleet, but prefer to have small squad shootouts on planets. None of the characters seem that interesting. Dunno how the plot develops, maybe it'll get better. As for gameplay, it's a weird mixup of ME1 and ME2/3, with wide open areas but still cover-based shooting. It kinda works ok, and is not that bad really. But most of the gameplay time is taken by planetary or area exploration, which just mounts to go to place X, press button, listen to narrative. Which would be kinda ok if all the places weren't so huge or if the narrative was interesting, so it ends up just being boring. Also, the game feels a bit unpolished. Lots of weird stuff, like stuff floating in the air, monsters spawning at your feet, the save corruptions I mentioned, which all just smells like unpolished content. I didn't follow ME:A when it was released, but I assume it was the lack of polish and uninteresting characters that killed the interest in it.

Trying to play Mass Effect:Andromeda It's like going back 25 years in regards to save functions. No quick saves, and the autosaves get corrupted often. Only about 10hours in so don't want to say anything definite, but gameplay seems lackluster.

https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/moon-beast-productions-arpg-seed-funding-diablo-cool-fresh/

https://s.team/y24/gbrjtpt?l=english

Sorry, forgot about that. Did mention it before and others were talking about it, and pillars of eternity has no dodgeroll, but yeah.

35 hours in PoE2, with 3 different characters. A bit disappointed with it. It's basically just PoE1, but made way slower and with more dodgeroll. The gameplay seems like it was made more varied at the start, but in the end I still found myself just spamming one skill all the time. Not that I'm at "the end", I'm at the boss of act2 and find myself bored with the game. Feel like playing PoE1, which for all it's faults is at least faster paced. So instead of spamming your one attack skill in an area for 2 hours, you do it for 10mins and then move to the next. EDIT: Path of Exile 2, that is.

Looks like they got more money behind it now. Maybe it's easier to get funding after BG3? https://store.steampowered.com/app/2975950/Solasta_II/

Path of Exile 2 early access, 5 hours in. Seems ok so far. They've definitely moved a bit away from what PoE1 was, to a more souls-like approach I guess? Instead of building up 1 skill to spam all the time, you actually have to think what skills to use. And the campaign seems tougher. That can certainly make the first run through the campaign interesting, but not sure what it does for game longevity. PoE1, like most diablo-clones, mostly works on the long term because of the end-game, and you don't really want to replay the same campaign through every season. So it's either a skipping option, or rushing through it, and this doesn't look like something you can rush through. Maybe they already have a solution for this, I haven't followed any of the news about the game.

Frostpunk 2 is as well, and it came out two months ago, and is generally reviewed well. (MW5clans came out a month ago).