MrBrown

So, Civ7 early access is out, and people are already up in arms about it. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1295660/Sid_Meiers_Civilization_VII/ My opinion, TL;DR: It's not bad. Nothing super great so far, but nothing super bad either. Some small QoL things that should be fixed. I might be more into it if I hadn't recently gotten into a civ reminiscence period and played the older ones. I played about 5 hours. A short list from the complaints I've seen: - Lack of variance in game settings. Ie. maps settings, etc. Yeah, it's not as varied as in previous civs, but there's still a bunch. I'm not sure, but I think the game blocks some settings if you have the tutorials set on, so deactivating those might open up more. - Bad UI: It has that problem of everything can only be done one way, and clicking on the wrong button just closes stuff. So can be annoying until you learn it. But once I found out how everything works, I found it intuitive. - Lack of automation: I miss explorer automation. Apparently some people want city automation, never used it myself in previous games. - Too many pop-ups and alerts: Compared to previous civs, the game is a lot faster, meaning more stuff happens each turn. So it can feel you're boggled down in pop-ups, but it's not a big deal. Or maybe I'm just too used to Paradox games? More my personal opinions: - The leader animations are still a bit cartoony. Less than 6, but not as realistic as 5. I prefer more realistic. - There's a bit of "bonuses to everything" problem. Leaders and civilizations give bonuses to 3-4 things, with several conditions. Buildings give 2-3 resources, with several conditions for bonuses. So stuff lacks mechanical identity, and everything seems to do a bit of everything. - One small problem I had with civs 5 and 6 is that there's lots of leader dialogue, but you never hear the ones of the leader you're playing. In 7 they have this great diplomacy screen where the leaders are facing each other... but then there's no dialogue. Missed opportunity IMO.

Doesn't seem like they've learned much. https://twistedvoxel.com/ea-ceo-dragon-age-the-veilguard-failed-due-to-lack-of-live-service-elements/

I enjoyed it a while, but then I noticed you need to play in a party to get all the season achievements. Meh.

He likes it because it's like Oblivion.

I guess it means the new ME game is still very early in development, before they need a bigger crew to create all the content. Meaning, it's several years away.

Caught a bit of a nostalgia bug, and played a bit of Civ4. Was quickly reminded of how much better 5 and 6 were. Though I could listen to Baba Yetu 24/7.

You can re-spec pretty extensively.

https://gamerant.com/dragon-age-the-veilguard-sales-underperformed-ea-expectations/ For comparison: https://gamerant.com/dragon-age-the-veilguard-launch-sales-inquisition-comparison-analyst/

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.