Hawke64

Finished Broken Roads and wrote a text wall of feedback for the devs. Also found a bug and a workaround for it for the Steam version (backup the remotecache.vdf file before uninstalling).

Found this gem (might be in a wrong order, but each screenshot should be self-contained; it is a single-player game):

Broken Roads. The game opens up after "just" 7 hours (if you use the Fast Mode and do not comb the locations for loot and XP, it should be faster). The combing part requires tapping the highlight key, while also hovering over everything with the cursor - the XP&loot gains are rather limited, but some interactive points are quest-related and are not possible to highlight with the key. The devs really liked the old adventure games and disliked accessibility, I suppose. The main quests are time-limited and the journal does not anyhow mention it. Nonetheless, I appreciate the opportunity to continue the playthrough, while being able to actually fail the quests (1 important NPC died, but I did not like him anyway). The combat UI seems to be console-focused - there is a wheel menu in combat and you can use the scroll mouse button to switch between the 8-item wheels. The quick item bar is such an obvious thing to have. Then again, so are the item highlights. Some NPCs the party shot repeatedly got up after the battle like it was nothing. Fortunately, most of the foes do remain dead. With the default builds, only 1-2 companions are effective in combat. My melee build is "situationally effective" - the ammo for the ranged weapons is not limited, though reloading is required, so I probably should have equipped everyone with rifles and aimed for the Intelligence + Awareness stats (so they can shoot reasonably accurately at least twice per turn). But too late now.

I've checked the Steam Community Hub for screenshots. There is some range of options, at least for the male characters.

Thymesia. It is certainly an interesting choice to put Genichiro as the first boss and the Bed of Chaos as the second (not counting the tutorial one). The hitboxes are a bit weird and the parries lack the feedback Sekiro provided, so "if no numbers above my head => the parry was successful". The difficulty gap between the regular foes and 1 mini-boss (the rest were tanky, but not challenging) and the main boss is rather large. The storytelling is fine, I suppose? The MC has amnesia and recalls the past while sitting in a remote cabin with a Firekeeper-like NPC, whose age I cannot quite determine. The recalling part is venturing into clearly separate levels and completing an objective there (to defeat a boss, find an item, or destroy something). So far there has been 1 tutorial level, 1 large main level (returned trice), and 1 boss room level (the Bed of Chaos). That is to say, there is no connection between the maps, despite them having shortcuts within themselves. The MC cannot jump up, though there is no falling damage and any dangerous fall is covered in the invisible walls. Update. The fourth boss regenerates. Not continuously, but in several timed (?) bursts throughout the battle. The third is fine. The variety of the regular enemies is humans with weapons and 1 levitating humanoid. Forgot to mention, the opponents have 2 health bars - one is the actual health, depleting which leads to the foe perishing, and the other one is called Wounds (Armour or Posture would be more appropriate). It regenerates after a delay up to the health level. The main weapon, a saber, causes a decent amount of damage to the Armour-Wounds, but very low to health, while the alternative weapons, including the always-available Claws, shred the health, but cannot pierce the Wounds (so, it definitely should have been called Armour). The alternative weapons can be set at the not-bonfires and summoned with a separate key or torn from the opponents. They also have linear upgrade paths that require defeating the foes wielding them for the upgrade materials. The controls are rebindable and reasonably responsive, and 5-button mice are supported. Dodge and sprint are separate keys. Update. 2. At the final boss and vaguely annoyed. There are 4 maps in total (the Royal Garden has 2, the greenhouse and the underground, and the tutorial is a part of the Hermes Fortress map) and the bosses' arenas. I have not encountered any major bugs. I am still confused about the order of events or why the MC had gone into those areas in the first place. Update. 3. Defeated the final boss with the power of farming (sort of) - I farmed the upgrade materials for the Bow (the free talent respec helped with quite a bit), stuck all consumable ingredients into the potion since there is nothing after the final boss, and was shooting the boss in the face with the bleeding-inducing arrows to break the armour and using the long claws to shred the health and recover my energy.

Finished Tunic. It is an excellent action and adventure-puzzle game, though I did look up the translation and some of the codes. Also got the elbow bursitis from playing (the irony is that gaming is one of my least physically-intensive hobbies). Almost gone now, though. Highly recommended (the game, not the injury). Started Broken Roads. 5 hours in and it strongly reminds me of Encased, but worse in every aspect - it is an isometric party-RPG in the post-apocalyptic setting, but the customisation options are fewer, very few non-alignment skill checks, very few interactions outside of dialogues, the highlighting does not quite work (so I miss the interactive objects unless I hover the cursor over the whole screen continiously), etc. And the last quest was to run between 2 NPCs, who were standing 10m from each other, and click on the only quest-related option available. Started Thymesia. I guess, I have played worse Souls-lites? The absence of the stamina limits is nice, the lack of customisation options is less nice.

https://www.humblebundle.com/games/dice-and-destiny £10 for Broken Roads and also includes PoE1&2, Disco Elysium, Citizen Sleeper, and Roadwarden. So, now I am happy to share the keys for the latter 2 and PoE if anyone wants them. I do not remember hearing about the particular charity before, but "a leading humanitarian organization fighting global poverty" sounds good.

It's Dragon Ruins. Not sure 1 or 2, though. https://store.steampowered.com/app/3293490/Dragon_Ruins_II/ --- Shadow of the Road I probably should have used Imgur, rather than Steam, but the quality (JPEG) is serviceable. Barely. Responding first as the MC1, then as the MC2. The small font and Japanese VA mix rather poorly. The red word means "foreigner". It is as straightforward and unambiguous as it gets and should have been translated. The same emperor that holds himself to be a direct descendant of Amaterasu and the Shinto high priest, I guess. It is rather odd, but could be worse. The GPU was running too hot, so I did not get to meet the ninjas in-game. Them jumping between trees and wearing black pajamas with the swords on their backs highlighted that it is a very much fantasy game. --- Tunic The game is absolutely delightful to play. Except the Quarry. Damned be the Quarry. The checkpoint was dead and so was I. After 4-5 attempts, it occurred to me that it might be not the best direction to explore.

Currently playing Tunic. The exploration is amazing (unironically) - I managed to enter a late-game area from the wrong side and spent an hour having my HP drained (I dropped the difficulty after 4 attempts due to the checkpoint in the area not working; it did not make it obvious for me that something was off). It was a rather interesting experience, nonetheless. I also love the manual-styled in-game manual. The map, fortunately, tracks the location, though even using the landmarks is easy. Tried the open alpha test of Shadow of the Road (published by Owlcat). It is a tactical game in the steampunk Japanese setting. The tutorial battle was as easy as it could be. The dialogues required responding as both pre-made party members (like in DOS1, if it had fixed characters) and had quite a few Japanese words untranslated, such as "foreigner" or "cup". There were some notifications, such as "MC1 was pushed towards X path" and "Relationship between MC1 and MC2 improved", but I am unsure what exactly it means in the long term (only the ending or some stat changes or quest availability). There also was a timed choice at the end. Given the checkpoint-based saving system, I found it rather unpleasant. In the second area, a forest with an estate, my GPU hit 86C and I closed the game with Alt+F4. There were no graphical settings, except the resolution, so nothing to drop (there was also some sort of dirt filter on the screen, which was not possible to disable). The cut-scenes were a mix of animated slides with in-engine scenes (think Rogue Trader). The VA is Japanese only, which was very unfortunate, considering the size of the text (not impossible to read, but uncomfortable). The story is closer to fantasy than anything too historical, thouth the god-descending emperor prosecuting the Shinto followers was somewhat odd to see. The tree-hopping ninjas in black pajamas with swords on their backs confirmed the high fantasy setting. I am unlikely to purchase, but the playtest is there and free to participate. Another consideration in regard to Owlcat:

I am not surprised, but still disappointed. With Microsoft as the publisher, Obsidian should have had enough resources to release an actually complete and reasonably bug-free title for once. Avowed is a single-player action-RPG, not a GaaS, so what's the point? Obsidian games have excellent writing and strong system design, so why was it not possible to use the funding for testing and optimisation? I guess, I should take it as an enocuragement to wait for all the patches and discounts. I will not post it on the Avowed forum, as the situation might be well out of the developers' hands, so such feedback might be unactionable, but it is still unpleasant. --- Finished El Paso, Elsewhere. It is an excellent third-person shooter with somewhat odd performance. I loved that the protagonist was noticing and commenting on things I, as a player, would have missed otherwise. Started Tunic. I like the journal and the exploration, with the controls being fully rebindable. Tried Jusant. The game thrown an error at launch ("Not all features are supported.."), which was probably related to the OS, rather than the GPU or its drivers, so I refunded. I've also tried the demo of Harmony (another DONTNOD game) and having mixed thoughts about it. I suppose, I like that the developers are trying to implement the concepts I find interesting, though the end results are mixed.

If anyone is playing on Steam Deck, how does Avowed run on it? I am actively avoiding spoilers and scrolling past the other game-related posts (going to wait for patches, discounts, and, hopefully, GOG). We also have a separate subforum for it, though it seems less active than this one.

Could anyone please share how Avowed runs on Steam Deck in terms of performance (FPS without frame-generation or upscaling) and the UI scaling (is it readable)? Dragon Age: The Veilguard was amazing in this respect (also cheaper), but it also did not use UE5, which provided horrible performance in all games I've tried on PC (arguably, not many).

Gamers have a frame of reference, while the people who are less familiar with the medium do not. And yes, mods can solve this issue, but an appropriate saving system (and some sort of Very Hard Single-Save mode) should be built-in by default from the start. Granted, I liked Lunacid despite its saving system (I had to mod in quick-saving, which also respawned all foes in the area), because the other aspects were good.

I would say that the saving system looks (have not played and unlikely to) more unpleasant than the combat. While for an action-adventure, like Zeno Clash (the only one first-person game with somewhat complex combat I can remember), relatively frequent checkpoints are fine, losing several hours in an action-RPG might be much more irritating. --- I have finished (and am replaying now) Sorry We're Closed and it was a most delightful experience - excellent writing, level design, gameplay, visual style and graphics, and music. The system requirements are most reasonable, the controls are rebindable, and there are some accessibility options (including infinite healing and aim-assist). There are several endings and I have managed to reach 2 of them (some are mutually exclusive, as I understand). There are also some side quests and collectibles, tied closely to the main story. 1 playthrough is around 10 hours. The genre is survival horror in an uncompromisingly queer British setting created by a small development team (2 people), while the story itself is about love (and not bringing a chainsaw to a shotgun fight). The game is heartwarming, engaging, and focused, and also DRM-, DLC-, and MTX-free. This is exactly the kind of art I want to see and support more. The only thing I could complain about are very few save slots (3), but Windows Explorer resolves it. Some GIF images from the Steam store page (because I did not take any screenshots in combat and would not want to spoil the story): The game is available on GOG and Itch.io as well.

Well said, though games are complex and the players' hardware and software configurations are diverse, so waiting for at least a month before playing might bring a more enjoyable experience. Still, I do believe that you will have a great time even if there are minor technical issues. I am looking forward to the game, though more accessible and environmentally-friendly system requirements would be most welcome and I shall resist the urge to pre-purchase and take a vacation.