@tsi Ha, yeah - I guess I hadn't given it much thought in the last two decades or whatever, but MGS is definitely almost a straight up stealth game. I guess that would be a trip because my understanding of the later games is that they're more of a hybrid style of game. But honestly, I haven't played much after MGS.
I liked that it was a stealth game - but maybe that's because shooting mechanics in games back then were so bad? I dunno. I still imagine I'd love the game if I played it again. But it's probably one of the only stealth games I've ever played and liked, so I don't have much to measure it against.
Are you really that much younger than me, or did you just not really play video games until the 2000s? My first real gaming experience was like.. Mario on NES. And even that is if you don't count hours and hours of Pong and Space Invaders on the Atari.
Regarding DAV's mechanics; my wife and I are of drastically different minds about spoilers for mechanics. She (also a massive DA fan) wants to go into the game completely unaware of what she'll find - not just in terms of story but in terms of gameplay. Me.. I'm gobbling up every piece of news and reveal I can find. Basically anything that wouldn't be marked as a major story spoiler - I will watch and analyze. So she gets to hear me worrying over whether I'm going to like this game as much as I want to, but she refuses to know the reasons why I'm worried. Haha.
Either way, we've been Day One-rs for every Dragon Age game. It bit us for DA2, because that was not a good game in my opinion. Although it's grown a lot on my wife and sometimes it may even be her favorite one to play. I've already pre-ordered the deluxe DAV and I know I shouldn't but here we are. Can't even explain why I pre-order games anymore when I could just be patient and play them later for cheaper.
Not to drag the conversation too far away from video games but yeah -- Pathfinder 2nd Edition is even crunchier than 1st. To be fair, D&D is quite crunchy in combat regardless. I've played a lot of TTRPGs. It's hard to find one that isn't an absolute slog to play sometimes.
The Mongoose d20 Conan game I remember being a bit faster-paced, but it was also lower magic so it had fewer options to weigh things down. Decipher's LotR RPG was also kind of rule-light in the sense that it was a bit more of a storytelling game and less about precision combat mechanics. It was faster and easier, but could also be REALLY janky. GURPS runs the gamut because it really depends on what you're using it to do, but it tends to be very long in combat. 2nd Edition D&D was just almost too much math to even feel like a game anymore, sometimes.
The storyteller systems for like.. Vampire and stuff, are a lot less crunchy, but I also found them way less fun and rewarding. That never felt like a system designed to let you do that stuff.
But D&D 3rd and 4th, and its derivatives like Pathfinder 1st and 2nd, often feel like they come out being both the absolute best, and absolute worst, for engaging combat. Sometimes it feels great and flows really well. But a lot of times you just get absolutely hammered by bad rolls leading to just nothing ever happening and hours of combat for an encounter that, in real life, would take like five minutes.
In any case, the VERY first thing we would ignore is Natural 1 = Automatic Miss. Fuck that. Except maybe for enemy minions, who should be kind of useless and shouldn't have a strong chance of killing the heroes. But there's already too many miss or essentially 'no turn' conditions that can happen to the PCs that adding an unnecessary one like 1=miss just makes combat even slower and less exciting.
Okay, off my soapbox. I'm really excited to see what Matt Colville's TTRPG (Draw Steel!) ends up being like. He seems to understand very well that combat in TTRPGs is often a weak point and it needs to be more cinematic and less protractors and calculators and zoning out for an hour while everyone else takes their actions that basically amount to accomplishing almost nothing on a turn-by-turn basis. I've been following some of his design journal type stuff and Q&As and there's some really interesting sounding stuff in here that I wish I would have the time to actually try out myself.
Are you really that much younger than me, or did you just not really play video games until the 2000s? My first real gaming experience was like.. Mario on NES. And even that is if you don't count hours and hours of Pong and Space Invaders on the Atari.
A bit of both, I think. I'm 31 now. My parents didn't let me have a console until I was about 10, way later than my peers. I did have a Gameboy, but that was just a Pokemon Machine to me.
Regarding DAV's mechanics; my wife and I are of drastically different minds about spoilers for mechanics. She (also a massive DA fan) wants to go into the game completely unaware of what she'll find - not just in terms of story but in terms of gameplay. Me.. I'm gobbling up every piece of news and reveal I can find. Basically anything that wouldn't be marked as a major story spoiler - I will watch and analyze. So she gets to hear me worrying over whether I'm going to like this game as much as I want to, but she refuses to know the reasons why I'm worried. Haha.
Either way, we've been Day One-rs for every Dragon Age game. It bit us for DA2, because that was not a good game in my opinion. Although it's grown a lot on my wife and sometimes it may even be her favorite one to play. I've already pre-ordered the deluxe DAV and I know I shouldn't but here we are. Can't even explain why I pre-order games anymore when I could just be patient and play them later for cheaper.
There are a couple sides to it for me. The main thing is I don't want to waste my time watching something I might not play at all. The other thing is, while I'm not as concerned with spoilers as others, I like to go in as fresh as possible with story-based games.
Steam has taught me patience. I've been wanting to buy the Half-Life series, but it goes on sale like clockwork. If I wait, I can get it for literally 10% of the current price. There are very few games I'm willing to buy at full price anymore.
I'm looking forward to the Silent Hill 2 remake and the Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection, but I'll try to get both of them on sale in a few months.
Not to drag the conversation too far away from video games but yeah -- Pathfinder 2nd Edition is even crunchier than 1st. To be fair, D&D is quite crunchy in combat regardless. I've played a lot of TTRPGs. It's hard to find one that isn't an absolute slog to play sometimes.
The Mongoose d20 Conan game I remember being a bit faster-paced, but it was also lower magic so it had fewer options to weigh things down. Decipher's LotR RPG was also kind of rule-light in the sense that it was a bit more of a storytelling game and less about precision combat mechanics. It was faster and easier, but could also be REALLY janky. GURPS runs the gamut because it really depends on what you're using it to do, but it tends to be very long in combat. 2nd Edition D&D was just almost too much math to even feel like a game anymore, sometimes.
The storyteller systems for like.. Vampire and stuff, are a lot less crunchy, but I also found them way less fun and rewarding. That never felt like a system designed to let you do that stuff.But D&D 3rd and 4th, and its derivatives like Pathfinder 1st and 2nd, often feel like they come out being both the absolute best, and absolute worst, for engaging combat. Sometimes it feels great and flows really well. But a lot of times you just get absolutely hammered by bad rolls leading to just nothing ever happening and hours of combat for an encounter that, in real life, would take like five minutes.
In any case, the VERY first thing we would ignore is Natural 1 = Automatic Miss. Fuck that. Except maybe for enemy minions, who should be kind of useless and shouldn't have a strong chance of killing the heroes. But there's already too many miss or essentially 'no turn' conditions that can happen to the PCs that adding an unnecessary one like 1=miss just makes combat even slower and less exciting.
Okay, off my soapbox. I'm really excited to see what Matt Colville's TTRPG (Draw Steel!) ends up being like. He seems to understand very well that combat in TTRPGs is often a weak point and it needs to be more cinematic and less protractors and calculators and zoning out for an hour while everyone else takes their actions that basically amount to accomplishing almost nothing on a turn-by-turn basis. I've been following some of his design journal type stuff and Q&As and there's some really interesting sounding stuff in here that I wish I would have the time to actually try out myself.
The combat has become the least exciting part of the experience for me. I'm far more interested in role-play, improvisation, and character-building. I think I'm mostly alone in this at my table, but combat often feels like something we just have to get through. That's provided a unique challenge for me as a DM. How do I make combat that engages my players when I don't like combat?
Being an online player has forced me to learn on the fly. I would've guessed that it'd be easier to see your players spacing out at a physical table with you, but I can see my players opening Steam games, hear them typing and clicking away at things off-screen, and call their names several times before they realize it's their turn. I have one player who's particularly disrespectful about it, but calling him out is tricky. For whatever reason, I only call him out when another member of the group is DMing for us. It's easier to call the behavior out when they're wasting someone else's time/hard work. It feels self-serving and desperate when I do it for my own campaign.
I'm new to the tabletop scene, but I've already compiled a list of systems I want to run (likely as one-shots):
- Blades in the Dark
- Cairn
- Call of Cthulhu
- Dungeon World - PbtA
- Index Card RPG
- Mausritter
- Mörk Borg
- Mothership
- Paranoia
I think Blades in the Dark, Mothership, and Paranoia, in particular, have a ton of potential with my group.
As mentioned before, a friend of mine is big into the old-school TTRPGs. I think Shadowdark is fairly rules-light, as well. I'll let you know when we run it. Matt Colville taught me a lot of what I know about DMing. I'm sure his system will be great.
@tsi Okay, that actually makes a lot of sense. You're about 10 years younger than me. In gaming generations, that's a fair bit. Especially if you weren't getting into it young, like I did.
I wish I could learn patience in gaming, to be honest. Every once in a while you miss out on an exploit or something that gets patched later on if you don't play early - but it's hard to argue that there's much benefit in being a day 1 player, generally.
I think the strongest argument is that if it's a big game likely to get a lot of wider attention, or if you're someone that actively discusses games with other people, then you really want to play story-based games early. I feel like something would have been lost for me in my first RDR2 playthrough if I knew that Arthur would get TB and slowly die. Finding that out in real time while playing was a fucking mega gut-punch.
Experiencing the ending to ME2 and ME3 with everyone rather than after there were hundreds and hundreds of YT videos about it is something I wouldn't change.
On the opposite side of the spectrum - just by nerd-osmosis I know so much about BG3 already that I'm actually less excited to play it and more able to just wait a year or two when maybe it's cheaper.
So for a game like Dragon Age, I think I'm still comfortable being a day 1 player and hoping it isn't trash, because if it's good, I'm going to be happier that I experienced the story before accidentally hearing a bunch about it.
For lots of other things, I'm practicing my patience.
Colville's RPG is probably going to be great. I'm bummed that I likely will never play it, but I look forward to reading the rules and seeing other people's reactions to it.
To be honest, it sounds like your one player is kind of a dink. I get it being harder to call them out as the DM. Personally, I think the best approach to that (not that you asked for advice - I'm just generally ruminating about this) is probably to put it on everyone else and point out that they're breaking the flow for everyone, not just for you. But also I would argue that it is perfectly okay to point out when people are making the game less fun for -you-. Being the DM isn't a job. It's still part of the game and you're supposed to be enjoying it. If others are making you enjoy it less, you're just as in your rights as a player to say 'hey man, you're making the game not fun.'
Honestly, I've played with good groups and had lots of fun in my day. BUT it wasn't necessarily -easy- to find groups I enjoyed playing with. I like a fairly serious game. Much as I love watching Critical Role, I'd probably hate to play in a game where the Bard flies away on a butt-shaped cloud and plays an electric violin to flip people off with Magic Hand. Hilarious on TV. In game, far less so.
Unless, of course, the intent of the game was comedy and that was communicated beforehand during prep. Hopefully you get it worked out. Or maybe one of the other one-offs you want to run will end up being the game that really grabs the attention of everyone at the table.
@theknightdamien are you on IG or FB? I'd love to swap Discords or phone numbers in case this place goes kaput.
I’m in the middle of finally playing AC Valhalla after owning it and not playing it for about two years and bought for like 15 bucks at some Black Friday sale at a local Target. I just started about two weeks ago. After playing a few hours into the game, I liked it enough that I tracked down used copies of Origins and Odyssey and I know I’m literally playing them out of order but I heard good things about Origins and Odyssey when I retired from playing AC games after Syndicate. I actually played AC Mirage before Valhalla but I thought that game sucked even though it was a newer game.
What’s weird is when I played Valhalla for a half hour in the morning today, I came across one of the special weapons called the Spear of Leonidas. Not much of a spear user in the game so I pretty much ignored it in my inventory. But later on in the late afternoon I stopped by a Ross and they had a prop toy from AC Odyssey called the Damaged Broken Spear of Leonidas for sale for $11.99. Must be fate. I will play around with that spear in the game later tonight. Far be it from me to ignore the wishes of Urd, Verandi, and Skuld.
@theknightdamien are you on IG or FB? I'd love to swap Discords or phone numbers in case this place goes kaput.
I'm redhandedrevenant on Insta. I'm on FB technically, but I'm there far less often than Insta, which itself isn't super often. You can give me a holler on IG whenever and we can trade digits just in case. Although, I dearly hope, Fwoosh isn't going anywhere.
Re: AC Valhalla. I don't think I've talked about that game since the new forum happened. I hate it. One of the worst video games I've ever played. Did everything wrong that they could have done wrong. Makes me physically ill to think about how bad it was.
Loved Odyssey, though. One of my favorite games ever.
Loving Pathfinder less and less as I play. The 'army' part of the game is fucking horrible. Some of the worst-designed bullshit I've seen in a game in a long time. Unbalanced, nonsensical, and not just not fun, but actively a joy-killer. This game would have been MONUMENTALLY better if it had just been a video game of Pathfinder without also trying to be a shitty rip-off of HoMM.
There's also a lot of things I just can't figure out. Like, it feels like I'm under-powered in a lot of fights that I need to be in. But this isn't the kind of game you can grind on for levels. I'd have to spent weeks doing 'random encounters' only to really buff up my leveling. Is it my gear? Who knows. There's no indication of what's appropriate. Am I supposed to be finding the best loot as I progress, or should I be trying to buy items for minute upgrades to my stats whenever possible? If the latter, then this game sucks even worse because you CANNOT make enough money in the lower-mid levels of this game to adequately fund the army side of things and buy all the gear you and your companions may need.
I still mostly enjoy the party-based adventuring. Just not the army stuff, which as I said, is fucking trash. The worst trash. But even the party-based stuff has some absolutely bewilderingly broken bullshit in it. There's an enemy type that has like 5 attacks per round, which are these stupid whip-like attacks which can knock you prone. And there's an upgraded version that exists in like this gross miasma that offers concealment.
So... your party has like a 90-fucking-percent miss rate trying to hit it, and all it does is constantly knock you prone and then get seemingly endless attacks of opportunity every time you have to stand up again. It's fuuuuucked. Who designed this bullshit? The WORST DM I've ever seen wouldn't inflict some of this shit on a party they hated.
It feels like they designed the game so that you should really carefully plan out your party composition, prepared spells, etc, for the challenges you'll be facing. But there's rarely any clear indication of WHAT you'll be facing. So, short of scum-saving, how would you do that? And it's not like you can change your spell choices and rest again, because resting too often tanks your morale in the army part of the game that sucks and is always fucking awful and you always have poor morale to start with because, again, this was designed by absolute fucking morons.
Anyway.. I wish this game was better. I feel like I want to enjoy it more than I actually enjoy it. On paper, this is a great concept for a game and it hits a lot of the notes that would appeal to me. But the army thing absolutely ruins the game, along with some hardcore unbalanced bullshit during the regular part of the game. I want to see it through, because I love that dopamine hit from leveling up and picking new feats and shit. But goddamn. It would not have been at all difficult to make this game like 80% better than it is.
Still both very excited and also dreading the new Dragon Age. I hope I love it. I want to love it. Might even take the day off work to play it. Or like.. take the day off work to sit and watch the game download for 9 hours and then do a 3 hour update? We'll see.
Well... not sure if anyone is still reading this thread but I've been playing Dragon Age and I have FUCKING THOUGHTS. So many thoughts that I could probably film a 3-hour YouTube video talking about it.
Tangentially related, first off, I've had an experience that actually tanked my ability to enjoy the game and soured me on the entire experience straight away. I brought home this new game. Day 1. We use the XBox X every day, mind. Popped the disc in. Then out. Then in. Then out. Then in. Wouldn't read. Finally was able to DL the game from the storefront with the disc, then had to play the in-out game again to get it to read so I could PLAY it when it was done.
Popped the game out, because obviously something is fucked after a day of dealing with this nonsense. RDR2 works fine. DDII works fine. Veilguard? Nope. Gotta mess with it for 30 minutes to get it to read and play. Fuck this - took it back to the store and got a new copy.
Doesn't work either.
Wtf, right? Tried other discs again. None of them work either now. Laser is fucked.
This entire process was about a week. A week of fucking with the disc - sometimes for 45 minutes to get it to work so I could play it, totally unsure of what was going on because, until the very end, other games worked. So I was basically furious for the first hour every time I was playing this game. Over 200 dollars later, I have had my XBox fixed and am finally able to just play the game whenever I want. But obviously that was a horrible, expensive experience that just left me so angry and I'm sure I've taken it out on the game at least a little bit.
That being said - DAV is a game I want to like more than I like. Although I DO like it. I just have like.. so fucking many complaints. So many, in fact, that I'm positive I'll miss a few even if I write twenty or thirty paragraphs here about the game. And a lot of my complaints are kind of tied together.
For example, I fucking hate that the 'shield throw' is a core mechanic in this game for warriors. And it's a core mechanic because this game is such a fucking lazy rip-off of God of War that every class NEEDS a ranged attack option specifically for the fuck-stupid environmental challenges basically designed expressly for Kratos and his stupid axe. Literally. I can't even exaggerate how blatantly ripped off this is from GoW. You even use one of your companions to freeze locks to hold open doors and stuff. Like BLATANTLY ripping off God of War.
The combat is also pretty much a GoW rip-off but with more party elements. And those party elements are looser and more GoW-like than any previous game. It feels more like you have two Atreuses. You can command them to do special attacks if they're not on cool-down (which they often are because cool downs are way too long), but they're completely immune to damage and also don't really DO much damage. So it doesn't feel like party-based combat. It is a single hero combat game with helpers. It's been compared to Mass Effect, but I actually don't think it pulls off the party experience as well as Mass Effect, because Mass Effect party members still feel like party members in combat and DAV characters kind of don't.
The art style is also just awful. It's really weird in palette, most of the characters look kind of short and stumpy with big heads, etc. The bigger issue with the art direction is the monsters, that have all been neutered. At this point it's a meme to compare the original Darkspawn with the new Darkspawn. They're fucking goofy looking.
In fact, that's kind of part of a larger complaint I have about the game itself feeling neutered. AS A LEFTIST - an EXTREME leftist, at that - it should mean a lot when I say that this game feels like it was made by a committee of the right wing parody of what Leftists are like. Anything 'offensive' is so severely handicapped. The bombastic action style of combat obscures any of the actual violence going on in combat, there are no desire demons, everything feels so toned down and Disney-fied. This game feels like it was made by someone that thinks violence and mature content is icky and wanted to keep as much of it out of the game as possible.
The game certainly gets to be creepy at times, and it can be atmospheric. But even that is broken up by Marvel-style quipping and inane light-hearted conversations. No matter what convo options you tend to choose, your Rook is always going to be kind of a smiling dipshit during cutscenes and will occasionally make stupid jokes that have nothing to do with your usual convo choices.
As a minor spoiler; there's a (very fun) party member that has a gender identity crisis during the game and it feels SO fucking 'WE MUST BE INCLUSIVE.' It feels like the pet project of a trans or non-binary creator that could not even remotely imagine not putting their entire bullshit into a video game. I want to be clear what I mean with that, too. I think trans, non-binary, and all LGBTQ people can and should be in video games, including Dragon Age. Flat out. They SHOULD be included at every level and it should just be a normal part of existing within these game worlds to acknowledge the existence of all types of people. All types of people.
But this SERIES OF MISSIONS and CONVERSATIONS (you read that right) focuses so heavily on a very modern, real-world interpretation of how we approach things like gender and sexuality. The whole thing slams into you like one of the game creators wrote 'I'M FUCKING NON-BINARY' on a hammer and beat you to death with it. It sucks. It's just BAD writing. Not because the character is non-binary, but because it's written in such a horribly ham-fisted way by someone that was more interested in identity politics than making a good story.
And if I'm saying that as a fucking Leftist, you know how shit it is. I'm not even saying that this storyline doesn't resonate with non-binary people. I'm sure for some it really does. But there's a lot of possible storylines that could resonate with a lot of people that also would not fit into a Dragon Age game if you just shoe-horned them in while barely acknowledging the actually fantasy setting they're living in.
Anyway... I hope the next Mass Effect game takes a crack at this and does it better, because it's the kind of thing that really should be in video games. Just.. not written by this person.
Also there's a lot of just lazy bullshit in here - maybe because it changed what it wanted to be during the development cycle and eventually just had to be pushed out. And maybe because the people working on the game were vapid dipshits and couldn't imagine making a game that didn't blatantly copy other games. The way you pick up items out of chests, for example, basically copies God of War and feels VERY non-Dragon Age. The way you pick up coins and such, on the other hand, feels very live-servicey.
There are no helmet/headgear options, really, that allow you to see your character's face. Even the fucking HATS have stupid balaclavas attached to them. It's some of the ugliest, laziest shit I've seen in a game in a long time.
The many different currencies in the game feels very much like a clear left-over from when this was going to be a live service game and would have needed different currencies.
There aren't as many opportunities to choose your conversation options as I would have expected from a BioWare game, and those choices have WAY less impact than I would have expected as well. It's mostly a few major choices that matter and whether or not you engage with your companions at all. Be super positive or super mean and, as long as you do the missions, it won't ever really matter as far as I can tell. That 'build your world' feeling BioWare games usually give you just isn't here.
Finally, for now, FUCK the game designer or designers that were responsible for the Warrior class because they are fucking garbage assholes that clearly don't even like playing warriors so decided to just make it not a warrior. Dragon's Dogma 2 did this right - where fighting stuff is impacted by the weapons you use, and your abilities depend on those weapons.
Veilguard? Nope. Most of your Warrior abilities are fuck-ridiculous bullshit magic moves that have nothing to do with your actual weapons. Instead you do stupid fucking Hulk smashes to the ground, conjure magic weapons out of thin air to use for one attack, etc etc. Everything they can possibly do to make your ACTUAL weapons irrelevant. Which is insane. Warriors should be THE class for people that want to hit things with medieval weapons. If I wanted to be a mage, I'd be a fucking mage. Warriors in Veilguard just feel like martial mages. No identity to the class at all. Literally can't think of any other way to explain it except to say the person that designed the Warrior stuff does not like to play warriors and did everything they could to make it play like other classes and do stuff from other video games without actually thinking about it beyond 'wouldn't it be cool if you conjured a magical hammer and slammed it into the ground.'
Fucking sucks. And fuck that person. I hope they never work in video games ever again.
All that being said -- I love a lot of the weapons/armour in this game. I'd actually argue this game has better material culture than Inquisition did and is probably on par or nearly on par with Origins. The shift away from being an open world game, although maybe prompted by originally being live service rather than because it was the best way to tell the story, is perfect. I don't like the environmental puzzling and traversal 100000% stolen whole-cloth from God of War, but I still FAR FAR FAR prefer this style of game to Inquisition's open world (and I love Inquisition). And this world is pretty huge despite not being a true open world game.
I think the writing overall, and story, gets WAY too much hate and is actually very good. I genuinely got emotional a few times. I actually cared about my companions once I got a little ways in. I wanted to talk to them and listen to them talk to each other. Their stories were mostly cool and compelling. The different areas of the world, largely associated with certain party members, were varied and interesting and cool. The environments in the game look amazing.
For those saying this game doesn't feel like Dragon Age, I can see that sometimes. Other times I'd say you're crazy, because there is some SO VERY VERY Dragon Age stuff in this game. Some of the revelations about the lore of Thedas were incredible and fun. Some of it was VERY dark and creepy. There were certainly missions and beats during the game where I felt it was as dark and gritty as anything Origins and Inquisition ever did. There is the heart of a truly amazing game in here, which is probably why the stuff that bothers me bothers me so much.
SKIP TO THIS PART IF YOU'RE SCROLLING THROUGH AND CAN'T BELIEVE HOW FUCKING LONG I BITCHED ABOUT THIS GAME
Despite my many many complaints - I mean.. I'm still going to play it again when I'm done. It's still a Dragon Age game, despite what some people want to say. And while I still think it's the worst Dragon Age game - I don't think that's necessary the hard-hitting cruelty it sounds like when I put Dragon Age up there as one of the best game series' of all time. It could have been better. It SHOULD have been better. But I'm having fun, despite my frustrations.
Would you recommend it? When it reviewed decently, I was going to buy it at launch. Instead I decided to put my head down and finish Pillars of Eternity I and II before Avowed comes out.
I don't really play good games. I only make time for great games. I think I've said that here before, and I know it makes me sound like an asshole. While the critical reviews were great, the Steam reviews are only good. I'm still undecided about whether to get it. I'm a big BioWare/story-first RPG fan, if that helps.
I've mostly been prepping for my next D&D campaign, but I have since played Doom (the original). I was having a ball with it, but unfortunately it was making me motion sick (I have pretty intense vertigo) so I had to quit. It's pretty cool that a 31-year-old game holds up.
I finished Pillars of Eternity. It was fine. It felt quite dated. I never felt the need to explore the map or complete side quests. I just sprinted through the main story. I started the second one because I bought them together and it's too late to refund it, and that actually worked out in my favor. Pillars of Eternity II is excellent. It's given me that Divinity: Original Sin/Baldur's Gate III itch to see everything and complete every quest. I don't think I'll 100% it or anything, but if you like those games, I'd give PoE2 a shot. I already have as much time in it as I put in the first game, and I don't think I'm out of the first act yet.
Games with expansive open worlds, like RDR2, require a lot of mental energy to dive back into after a break, and it's a big reason why many players end up shelving them for a while.
@tsi Whether or not I'd recommend it is definitely a loaded question. It really depends on how much my complaints sound like things that would bother you. For my son (who is 10.5), this is his favorite Dragon Age game partly because of things that I hate. He's a huge fan of the God of War games, and implementing a lot of elements of that game into this game is something he likes. I, famously, do not like the God of War games at all. I still don't think that style of gaming fits Dragon Age even if I did like God of War, but YMMV on that.
Also just the idea of 'only playing great games.' I mean... obviously that means different things to different people and there are very few games ever that I'd say were great. So maybe I'm an even bigger asshole. In modern terms, I'd say great games are ME2+3, DAO+I, RDR2, GTA5, Hades, Ghost of Tsushima, and The Last of Us 1 & 2. That's, I think, my entire list.
There's a TON of games I really really like. Games I'd say are 'Extremely good.' But not great. If I had to try to rank it at this moment, I think I'd put Veilguard as extremely good/very good. If they had made a few different decisions with the way the warriors work, maybe taken another run-through over the dialogue options, and just generally tightened shit up? I guess what I mean is - if Veilguard had spent its entire development cycle as a single player game instead of spending most of it as a live service game that got switched to a single player game? Easily could have been a great game.
That's a lot of words to come back around to -- it really depends on how you feel about my criticisms. If 'God of War, but Thedas' sounds exciting to you, you actually might enjoy this game even more than I do. The story is actually good, and if the gameplay doesn't drag the game down for you like it does a bit for me, you may end up really liking this one.
Pillars of Eternity has been on my 'eventually' list for ages now. I'm just not excited to play it. Anytime I watch gameplay footage it puts me to sleep, but I also feel like it's one of those games that is way more fun to PLAY than to watch. Just can't get myself amped up enough to try it. I have heard that people who dislike a lot of stuff about Pathfinder that I dislike tend to really enjoy PoE, so... one day.
@ethanhammond That's a fair assessment. I've certainly started the big open world games more often than I've finished them. Like, I have 3 complete play-throughs of RDR2, but I've probably -started- the game like 7 times. GTA5 and Inquisition as well. You get into it remembering how much you love it and then remember how much goes into playing it and just kind of trail off or stop playing for a week or two and just can't get your brain back into it afterward.
I Love Dragon Age. Origins is one of my favorite games, although I like Mass Effect trilogy better. One of the most important parts in these games are your companions. Obviously writing and dialog as well. Well, "Veilguard" kinda sucks in all of them...
Companions...Eh. They all kinda suck. Davrin is ok as a stoic Grey Warden. Demon guy has some interesting story, when he's not talking about coffee. Emmrich if fine, but thats it. The rest are just bland or poorly written. One Dorian in "Inquisition" is better then all of them. Why isn't he a companion? Also, not sure who wrote Taash, but holy fuck...just don't talk...at all. I don't care about your personal problems, half of this world is fucking dead. We have two C-list Marvel Villains killing people. Yet, every time you open your mouth and speak in modern phrases - immersion breaks. If Sten from DAO saw you, he'd be...very disappointed.
Choices from previous games can't be moved to the new one. The ones that can (3) are not important at all. Ferelden got fucked (hello New Republic from Force Awakens) in the story too, so nothing you did in previous DA games matter anymore. It's all gone...Varric is fucking dead and none of your companions mention him. All this because they didn't want to ruin the twist. I figured it out in the very beginning, stop with your Sixth Sense bullshit, game. Where is Hawke btw? His BEST FRIEND? I didn't leave him to die in "Inquisition", he's not even mentioned here at all. I guess he died when Kirkwall was destroyed offscreen. Well...how wonderfull. The Inquisitor doesn't give a shit about Varric death either. You can make a lot of excuses about "blood magic", Solas erasing your memories, but it's all done so...mediocre? There are plenty of examples like this. In short - the developers just didn't want to deal with your previous choices. "Inquisition" build so many things for the next game (new Divine, Morrigan son and Archdemon soul, Hawke fade disappearance, Inquisitor, who wants to save or kill Solas, etc) and they didn't use anything.
The game looks really good and is very well optimized. Some locations and missions like "The Siege of Weisshaupt" and the finale battle are fucking great. BUT, then, some art style\art direction kinda sucks. Darkspawn is a good example. Combat is whatever. I don't really care about combat in games like this. On one hand, playing and smashing things as a Warrior was fun, if you turn your brain off. On the other - why the fuck did I use magic green death scythe or "HULK SMASH" powers to kill people? Don't be silly game, I'm not a mage.
I didn't like Mass Effect Andromeda (even though I complete 97% of it). This one is "fine". I'm not disappointed...but I wasn't expecting anything special really. At least you can punch that lying Bald Fuck at the end.
I haven't played the game yet, but this struck me as a fair assessment based on what I've read and how I feel about other AAA RPGs.
I haven't played the game yet, but this struck me as a fair assessment based on what I've read and how I feel about other AAA RPGs.
Yeah, it's (allowing for the fact that it's a comedy review) fairly accurate. I love Yahtz and always have, but he definitely struggles with both nuance, and with totally fair assessments of long games. No shade on him - it's his job to review games and have opinions on games. And to be funny while doing so. He can't necessarily spend tons of time on just one, especially if he doesn't even personally like it all that much.
There are things he mentions, like the 'why am I the one saving the world' question that actually does get addressed in several different conversations. But if you're speed-running the game and not worrying about every conversation and every side-quest, you'll definitely miss a lot of stuff. It's a BioWare RPG, after all. If you don't go in with the expectation that you're going to hear every piece of dialogue available to you, then you probably can accurately guess you're not going to like it before you even turn it on.
When he said that combat devolves into a mess so having companion abilities is kind of useless is also.... accurate, but not really? I mentioned this before. This game wants to be God of War SO badly and combat encounters mostly seem set up to let you do most of the work. For typical mob enemies you may only need companion abilities on the higher HP guys (like if an Ogre pops up with a lot of minions around it) or to clear larger mobs a bit faster. The abilities definitely help during boss fights.
I mentioned before - the cooldowns on abilities feel pretty long. For regular mob combat, you will probably only ever fire them off once before the combat is almost over anyway. I think this was by design, not a matter of combat getting too jumbled. This game desperately just wants you to be the one doing most of the work because this game, again, was made by someone that fucking SALIVATES over God of War combat mechanics and probably didn't even want to make a game with an actual party versus a single protag.
I dunno. I think an addendum to Yahtzee is 'if you already know you like BioWare RPGs for the story, you'll probably like this well enough.' That's where I think I land on it. The combat is good enough that I don't actively hate it the entire time I'm playing, and the lore and story keep me invested because I just love Dragon Age. Not the game I would have made, but it's pretty good still.
Again, I really feel like more time in development -as a single player game- would have been a huge benefit. You can just feel the live service slimey residue all over every gameplay feature. That's really the worst part of it all.
Well, I finished Pillars of Eternity II. I think the game fell off a bit in the end. The game gives you the option of siding with one of four factions. I felt that they were each unsavory for their own reasons. I don't mind nuance, but each of them were straight-up evil to a certain extent. Worse yet, the ending I got was anti-climactic as all hell.
I'd give it an 8 or 8.5/10. It's a notch below Divinity: Original Sin II and multiple notches below Baldur's Gate III.
Funny enough, the friend who recommended the Pillars series also recommended Pathfinder. I think I'll skip that one based on KD's critiques.
Next up is Half-Life.
I'm a few decades late, but Half-Life is a masterpiece, huh?
I think the difficulty ramps up too much at the back half of the game and the final boss is bad game design, but other than that, wow.
You can see the bones of Halo: CE, BioShock, and even the Dark Souls series in its clever level design. Glad I went back for this one.
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