I’ve probably talked more about XV than any other supposedly bad game, so maybe I’ve developed some sort of Stockholm Syndrome. But for an objectively pretty bad game I enjoyed parts of it and it did elicit emotions out of me at times.

The game has many problems, but maybe the biggest is the huge overambitious “multi-media experience” they attempted. The game itself suffers because its content is spread so thin as it’s stretched out over a movie and a comic and the DLCs and I don’t remember what else. An anime? Even the Royal Edition still suffers for not integrating the DLCs, and it’s kind of awkward to have to stop playing at the appropriate times to go so the DLCs for the maximum impact. And even then the planned Lunafreya DLC would have added so much to the story, but they never got around to that as the game flopped (in large parts because crucial story elements were scheduled for fucking DLCs instead of included in the game!)

I do agree that the combat is fun, and they did have a really good vibe going with the bros and the road trip. There are some really nice heartfelt moments where the game shines. And the fishing minigame is absolute top drawer, one of the best in gaming. But ultimately I look at it as a huge pile of wasted potential.

Absolutely gorgeous music though, some really powerful leitmotif work like Sunset Waltz/Valse di Fantastica and Ardyns themes.

I’m back on my first playthrough of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided after a two-month break for Blue Prince, Clair Obscur and F.E.A.R… It’s a great game, but I think I did it a disservice by taking the long break, I can feel I’m so much less invested now than I was when I began playing it.

It’s very unfortunate that the series ended on a cliffhanger, what they have here is really good and in many ways an upgrade on Human Revolution. A third game from the studio would have been a true masterpiece, I think.

He does deserve that, but I wish the single biggest modding hub on the internet and a load bearing pillar of an entire gaming culture wasn’t sold off to an unnamed party with no transparency and only vague reassurances that “nothing will change”.

What with the late stage capitalist society we’re living in, I’ve been conditioned to think that good things being sold off rarely amounts to good things.

Let’s hope this is one of the few exceptions.

God damnit we just can’t have nice things.

Even though Greedfall is hardly a great game I think it has too much charm to really fit here. I found it too memorable to really be a “mediocre slop” contender.

I said any Call of Duty from the past decade as answer to the original comment, and I still think that is a solid candidate. However, another game I played recently that qualifies I think is Sleeping Dogs. Perfectly cromulent 7/10 GTA clone but ultimately not pulling up any trees.

Bruh, FFTA is a great game and I will hear no slander of it.

These posts are some of the best content on Lemmy and bring me back to the early 00s days of reading the physical PC Gamer magazines in all their glory.

I knew what that video was before even clicking the link. Great insight into the horrible people ruining the games industry.

Great article. The entangling web of endless progression systems is one piece, but one thing they failed to mention is time gating and daily quests. It’s very important for these games to force you to play a little bit every day, instead of in large chunks all at once. This helps move the game subconsciously in your brain from “a game” to “a habit/a hobby”, and that makes your purchasing decisions very different.

Hearing the bit about rights hell and patches makes me feel a lot better. House at the End of Time followed by that final broken capital area was just some of the least fun gameplay I’ve experienced in a CRPG. And I was there back in the day getting one-shot by Gibberlings in BG1! I’m not as big a fan of the epicly mythic type of narratives and settings as I am of more grounded stories, but if it makes the combat more fun and better balanced I might stomach it.

And if the game is genuinely that amazing I might bump it a bit on my priority list. I already bought it on sale last year, but the Kingmaker slog (what is it, 200 hours or so?) kind of wore me out on western CRPGs for a bit.

Good to know again, thank you! I played through Kingmaker last winter and your description is pretty spot on. There were parts of it that were great, parts of which that were not, and parts of it that were downright awful. And particularly the latter parts really soured me on it, and made me super reluctant to play Wrath of the Righteous. If that is Owlcat’s idea of high level play I don’t really want an epic adventure from them.

I’ve played Divinity 1&2 and BG3, but I’m less high on Larian than everyone else these days. They’re fine games and fun to play but Larian’s style of writing isn’t my jam and I also think BG3 has a lot of problems that get kind of glossed over.

I missed Pillars 1, so I guess that is on some sort of to-do list. I played about half of Pillars 2 but got bored and never picked it back up.

PSA: If you play ANY of the Pathfinder CRPGs? Get blind fight ASAP. And make sure every arcane caster has a few charges of Glitterdust at any moment.

I had Blind Fight on every single party member and that final bit of the game was still a hellish slog that made actively detest Owlcat.

Thank you! I guess the question is, is sitting through 100 hours of mediocre main campaign worth it to get to Mask? My guess is probably yes, but that knowledge will likely end up de-prioritizing the game on my backlog.

Thanks a lot for the rundown! Are the other two expansions any good?

That’s good to know. Are the expansions independent or do you have to get through the base game first? Would you recommend just doing Mask of the Betrayer and calling it a day there?

I meant it’s a $30 indie game as opposed to a full price $60 game, so even if you don’t end up liking it it’s not as big of a loss.

To be honest, I was flying with a specific group of people and when the main FC/corp leader quit I sort of just quit too. So I’m not sure I’d come back regardless, unless he miraculously comes back. But it’s been like 8 years now. Also, EVE consumes your whole life and it’s kind of nice to have time to play other games.

I was doing primarily small gang warfare, as well as some Blops dropping. And bombing runs whenever the opportunity presented itself. For income I was stocking the market of our home station, which I really enjoyed doing.

What’s it like these days? I sometimes miss the heyday of like 2011-2014 EVE, but I stopped keeping track of what was going on some time after quitting. I also kind of lost faith in the direction it was going and what CCP was doing.

As someone who’s been around the block, is it in a good state now?

I guess it’s like Rust but in space? Survival MMO set in the EVE universe? Not really what I’m looking for but it could work I suppose.

It’s not a perfect game as I’m sure you’ve gleaned from this thread. It varies from individual to individual how much the RNG affects your enjoyment but I can understand some people’s frustrations.

That being said: it’s not a full price game, it’s an incredibly interesting and unique concept and it’s put together with an incredible amount of detail and care. It’s also made by a small indie studio, and I love supporting those. If the puzzle you helped solve seemed interesting and you like puzzles and escape rooms and piecing things together then you should absolutely buy it, in my opinion.

This will probably make me finally get around to playing it. I had a lot of fun with NWN back in the day, but that was more the multiplayer custom servers. The single player campaign was pretty mediocre.

I never actually played the sequel, but I remember hearing very good things about the Mask of the Betrayer expansion to NWN2. Hope it lives up to the reputation.