MrBrown

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

That's a big negative for me. None of Bethesda's games needed bigger maps, they needed more variety in what's already there.

https://www.ign.com/articles/sony-delists-original-horizon-zero-dawn-on-pc-forces-psn-requirement-for-remaster

1. Woke. Mainly because people love to hate. 2. Character designs. Mainly because it's really easy to make youtube content analyzing it.

Dustborn must be the perfect game for you.

I think it's a good indication of how content people are with the game. Sometimes it's for stupid reasons, but sometimes it's for good reasons, and you have to read the reviews to get a general idea why. For new games with no big franchise to bring a load of expectations, a review trends tend to be more informative of actual quality, I've found.

Ubisoft just can't get it right. https://www.tweaktown.com/news/100669/ubisoft-pulls-out-of-tokyo-game-show-after-mounting-assassins-creed-shadows-controversy/index.html

Getting trashed in steam reviews.

https://www.gamefile.news/p/microsoft-gaming-layoffs-xbox-650

https://www.eurogamer.net/the-eurogamer-100

This epitome of disaster has been interesting to follow. https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/3/24234909/sony-concord-ps5-shutdown-poor-sales-launch-pc

https://www.ign.com/articles/concord-is-estimated-to-have-sold-only-25000-units-heres-why-analysts-think-its-failing