MrBrown

Regarding dialogue, the game makes it pretty clear what's going on, ie, "X is the bad guy, and now we need to take care of their underlings Y". I think some of it has to do with what I said earlier about the game relying heavily on what happened in Inquisition, so maybe the writers felt they really needed to be clear on things. It certainly feels more boring than say Inquisition, that had a lot of stuff like "Ok, there's a hole in the sky, let's speculate on why, and then go find out stuff about it". Another thing I wanted to note, the game uses the ME2 and ME3 approach of missions (or "quests" because this is fantasy). As in, there's central hubs where you can do various minor things, but when you go on a specific quest, there's a specific area for it and you can't leave until you finish it (personally I preferred the semi-open world approach of DA:O and DA:I). And this leads to the dialogue also being very focused on what you're currently doing, ie., "let's go there to place X". Personally, the dialogue is so far at the level that I don't mind it (because there's a good skip function), but also haven't found any that's particularly good, yet.

8 hours in. Hard to say anything about the story yet. I liked the setup. Also feel like this relies heavily on knowing what happened in DA:I, more so than any Bioware game about their preceding games. Not sure how it'll feel like for people who didn't play DA:I. I expected the combat to be more like Mass Effect with swords, but it's way more actiony. All those button combinations... I tried playing a mage, but the battle field was so full of flashy stuff I couldn't keep up with it. Warrior works better for me. Graphics are fine, most of the time. They're a bit more cartoony, but it works out fine most of the time. One exception so far is the Darkspawn Ogre, who's faces look way too cartoony.

Haven't gotten past the "compiling shaders" -bit yet. Apparently something you have to do an hour before starting one of these new AAA games.

The color palette in DA:O was less saturated. I think that's what people mean when they say it was dark fantasy.

Youtube, or internet in general, is full of content where people trash games or developers because that generates easy clicks. Seems like the only options are love or hate, with nothing in between. So I'm all up for reviews where there conclusion is "it's kinda ok". And that seems to be the case with Mort mostly, which is why I was surprised he praised Veilguard so much.

I don't have a backlog at the moment, so I'll play it on release. Not expecting it to blow me away, but would be nice if it was decent.

It takes about 10-15 completed runs to get the ending credits, as in your mom & dad reconcile. Can't remember the actual amount needed. It took me around 80 runs (not all completed) to get the epilogue for the final ending. So yeah, you have to like the mechanics to go through all that.

Hi Since this released in a few days, I thought people might want to chat about it in it's own thread. For a start, here's Mortismal's review: I only watched the pos/neg and wrap up parts since I don't want spoilers, but he really seemed to like it. Says it's his GotY, and best entry in the DA series. Seems high praise, IIRC he was really into the pathfinder games etc, more party based RPGs and stuff.

tl;dr says it's his personal GotY

I finished Drova. Will probably do a second playthrough to get all the achievements, it'll be much less annoying when you know where everything is. Overall I'd say it's a decent game. It's generally what it looks like from a quick glance on the Steam page, so if that seems your thing, you should probably try it. My two big negatives are: - The map is way too maze-like, and it can take a lot of time to just find things because you can never go somewhere in an even remotely straight line. - The main plot forces you to do things you wouldn't want to. In my game, the 2nd in command of my faction had me do some stuff under the nose of the 1st, and I was called a traitor afterwards. No option to do anything else.

Wasn't it widely reported that their deal with the Pathfinder people fell through? I remember reading that working with them (Paizo or whatever) was hard, but can't remember if that part was credible info.

I just spent 2 hours in Drova looking for a place, only to realize I had glitched into an area that was supposed to be inaccessible from that point on. So I spent the next two hours trying to glitch out, because of course I had no recent saves outside the place. Eventually I managed, and found the thing I was looking for, just slightly away from there. Apparently "near a forest" is not the same as "in a forest".

No no, you go to Vegas to get Int bonus from the surgeon, to maximize skill points gained during the game.

Don't play Drova then. It's not just the main plot, but so much of your power is locked behind joining a faction, you want to do it ASAP. As for FNV, you could just walk past the deathclaws north of the starting town, if you kept to the hills on the eastern side of the track. If you climb a bit high, the deathclaws can't reach you. No particular need for exploits.

I originally got bored with it after 5 or so runs, but then went back and started liking it and grinded all the content.

Pretty much yes, though I think New Vegas had some scaling. Also a bigger world, so there was more options. And more warnings about which way was difficult, and easier to escape combat.

From the comments: "Crazy to think VS has come so far it’s circled back to getting DLC with the games that it has been referencing."

About 20 hours into Drova and I have some negative things to say. Not having a minimap, highlights or fast movement makes this game an utter chore to play. I can relate to the idea of not guiding the player too much, but when every other quest is "talk to X, then to Y, then to Z", and I have no idea who and where this people are, it practically means I have to go through the whole town every time. The "not guiding" part only works if there's not a specific order you need to do things in. The lack of a minimap also comes into play in exploration, because the game uses elevation levels to block movement. Quite often I can see where I want to go, but I have to spend a while finding the right path there, because for no obvious reason you can just walk right up to it. Lack of fast movement comes into play because there's lots of occasion where you need to travel through places you've already been to, and hence where there's nothing interesting going on anymore. The game isn't that big though, so it's just barely below my annoyance threshold. Out of the 20 hours, I'd say about 5 is running through town searching for NPCs, running through already cleared maps, and pathfinding because everything needs to be a maze. The game does some neat things though, like the map, or the investigation mode, and the combat is pretty nicely designed, although I'm utterly hopeless at it.

Playing Drova as well. Fun so far. Never played Gothic so not sure how much it's similar to that, but the introduction gave me Ultima vibes. Difficulty is not scaling as far as I can tell, which can lead to dying a lot in an open world game. And weird situations. I was in a fight where I had a bunch of NPCs on my side, all who treated me as a big hero, despite me being the weakest of the bunch.

Or just lower the difficulty.

Mostly finished with the Diablo4 expansion and the current season. Expansion story felt like a prologue to the next one. Gameplay of the story content wasn't anything special, no interesting bosses, some were graphically nice. New endgame content feels like weird mix of several only slightly different things to do which give you different stuff. Not sure what the aim is. Balance seems wacky. There's some completely broken builds around, that Blizz feels aren't worth a day 1 fix for some reason. Due to how damage resistances work, bosses like to one shot you. Should make the numbers still more like D3, imo.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/sure-why-not-third-group-of-former-disco-elysium-devs-announce-revolutionary-new-rpg-studio

https://www.engadget.com/gaming/steam-now-tells-gamers-up-front-that-theyre-buying-a-license-not-a-game-085106522.html?guccounter=1

In this other article https://www.wargamer.com/sunderfolk/interview-gloomhaven-inspired-by-board-game they talk quite freely about how it's drawing from the Gloomhaven board game. Which I found funny, because game developers generally avoid mentioning other video games like the plague. Apparently it's ok if it's an another media? And Gloomhaven has it's own video game too.

Didn't know games still went gold https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1845910/view/4697907940253179422?l=english