DourCricket
This review contains spoilers
Final Fantasy 7 is undoubtedly one of the most important experiences in my gaming history. My father bought it for me at a Best Buy when I was like 11 or 12, very very close to when I first played Baldur's Gate (as I mentioned in that review, these two were the one-two punch of turning me into a 100% full fledged gamer). I got the PC version and that caused me no end at all of annoyances in terms of crashes and glitches but eventually I was able to beat it on my own, one of the first games I can clearly remember finishing. To this day I still recall the collapse of Sector 7 and my legit tears I cried at the death of Jessie and Co.
So basically, this game is a big fuckin' deal for me okay?
Final Fantasy 7 (from here-on: FF7) tells a very gripping tale that feels more and more relevant today than even the time when it was written - a greedy company is set on drawing out the planets lifeblood in order to increase their wealth and power, and a scrappy group of do-gooders/terrorists are out to stop them: Avalanche. This is where we enter the story - the mercenary Soldier Cloud has left this evil company's employ and is now helping out his old childhood friend Tifa, now a member of Avalanche. And if I may start with the positives- this game fucking NAILED the characters in this game. Cloud is even more of an aloof douche who slowly warms up to others, Barret is a hothead who sees only in black and white, Tifa is a caring person deeply scarred by loss but happy to see Cloud again.... So you might see the resemblence to the real world at this point right? Climate change is becoming a more existential threat day by day and very few choose to take it seriously..
Writing this review I think should focus on the changes, both good and bad, and then my overall feelings on the game as a whole. Starting with the positives, I will reiterate again that they fucking nailed the characters. I mean absolutely nailed them. Everyone was a delight, from the companion characters, Avalanche guys, Don Corneo (I know how to say his name right! After all this time!) even the added characters are mostly pretty good. Corneo's lieutenants are solid, we get enough backstory and a bit of rivalry between them that they're fleshed out. The music is just god damn exceptional but I mean obviously it is, right? The combat is much more action focused, but still ATB in its own way. You can now control each character manually and the 4 main guys from the group all play quite differently - Cloud is a powerhouse, Tifa is a speedster who can lock down enemies, Barret blows shit up from afar, Aerith is a striaght up sorcerer now... I wouldn't say the combat is EXCELLENT or anyhting, but pretty good right?
To move to a more mixed bag - the added scenes. The original Midgar portion is only 10~ hours or so in the original, but more than 25 in the remake and that is on the easy mode! So what all did they add? Some of it is damn good - we get WAY more of Avalanche, not just Jessie & co. (who is cute as a fucking button + thirsty af for Cloud) but we also see Avalanche the GROUP - not just a group of 3 people + Tifa hahaha which is neat! It also gives WAY more context to what Avalanche v. Shinra are up to - Shinra is letting them get away with shit so they can excuse their extreme crackdowns plus restart the war with Wutai - who actually get a significant amount of foreshadowing in this! The expanded Wall Market is quite good as well, there's a neat battle arena + Aerith and Cloud get even more bonding time together. The missed double High Five with her and Cloud was precious and hurt my hearrrt.. Also there's a decent amount of unlockable scenes in this - there's 3 different dresses for you/Tifa/Aerith to see as well as extra scenes on who you will speak to in a nighttime scene - I got Tifa but I watched the Aerith one online and DAMN! So good... "You can't fall in love with me no matter what, okay?" "Don't I get a say in this?!"
Which leads us too the bad... A lot of the added scenes are just damn busywork. The sewer section pt. 2 where you have to chase Corneo's pig thing..? Boring. Mako Reactor 5 adding 6 levels of the exact same fight over and over just to change the boss that's coming up? Neat idea, still boring. The added side quest hubs? I barely did any of them but honestly they sucked from what I did see so fuck it. Gameplay wise the changes are overall good but ... there's not a lot to it, honestly? The materia system seems a lot simpler and the gameplay for each character is REAL same-y. It's nice to have other characters to swap to when you get bored, but you always have to swap out from Cloud anyway to make it happen. And then there's the ending to this story...
So the big thing about this remake - it isn't really 100% a remake? The final boss is essentially the force of Destiny? Capital D destiny, to quote a dumb line from Tifa. Throughout the story there are these weird ghost things preventing our characters from doing shit at various points - we have almost no idea if other people can even see them, and when they do, they spend almost no time at all wondering what the fuck these things are about or trying to figure that out. Like, this seems pretty fucking important guys, they seem to be blocking your way pretty frequently? We learn much later on that these are the forces of fate - preventing our heroes, and occasionally villains, from changing the way things will turn out. We see Barret stabbed by Sephiroth... but he survives, because he's not meant to die! But wait, why the hell are Wedge and Biggs still alive then?? We learn that we are essentially trying to fight fate... a stupid Japanese trope, but we never learn WHY? The characters see that there is a future - even a distant one. They win! Why the hell are they trying to change things???
So ultimately what they're trying to say - the future episodes of Final Fantasy 7 remake will not 100% play by the rules of what the original game has to say. This raises the HUGE question - is Aerith going to survive?!?!?!? I would be pretty shocked if no one ends up dying buuuuut... still, interesting. And its not so much that I think this is bad - I now get to replay FF7 again but this time not actually know what will happen! Kinda awesome right? At the same time I sorta hate how it was done.. There's a crap load of gibberish being tossed around by every character and no one has a straight damn answer about what is happening here - even at the very end. We see Zak and Aerith from two different times recognize each other but.. what does that even mean??? Is Zak still alive now? Does Aerith already know what will happen? Are her and Sephiroth in NG+ mode and not telling anyone???
Find out next time, on Dragonball Z!
No wait a minute...
So basically, this game is a big fuckin' deal for me okay?
Final Fantasy 7 (from here-on: FF7) tells a very gripping tale that feels more and more relevant today than even the time when it was written - a greedy company is set on drawing out the planets lifeblood in order to increase their wealth and power, and a scrappy group of do-gooders/terrorists are out to stop them: Avalanche. This is where we enter the story - the mercenary Soldier Cloud has left this evil company's employ and is now helping out his old childhood friend Tifa, now a member of Avalanche. And if I may start with the positives- this game fucking NAILED the characters in this game. Cloud is even more of an aloof douche who slowly warms up to others, Barret is a hothead who sees only in black and white, Tifa is a caring person deeply scarred by loss but happy to see Cloud again.... So you might see the resemblence to the real world at this point right? Climate change is becoming a more existential threat day by day and very few choose to take it seriously..
Writing this review I think should focus on the changes, both good and bad, and then my overall feelings on the game as a whole. Starting with the positives, I will reiterate again that they fucking nailed the characters. I mean absolutely nailed them. Everyone was a delight, from the companion characters, Avalanche guys, Don Corneo (I know how to say his name right! After all this time!) even the added characters are mostly pretty good. Corneo's lieutenants are solid, we get enough backstory and a bit of rivalry between them that they're fleshed out. The music is just god damn exceptional but I mean obviously it is, right? The combat is much more action focused, but still ATB in its own way. You can now control each character manually and the 4 main guys from the group all play quite differently - Cloud is a powerhouse, Tifa is a speedster who can lock down enemies, Barret blows shit up from afar, Aerith is a striaght up sorcerer now... I wouldn't say the combat is EXCELLENT or anyhting, but pretty good right?
To move to a more mixed bag - the added scenes. The original Midgar portion is only 10~ hours or so in the original, but more than 25 in the remake and that is on the easy mode! So what all did they add? Some of it is damn good - we get WAY more of Avalanche, not just Jessie & co. (who is cute as a fucking button + thirsty af for Cloud) but we also see Avalanche the GROUP - not just a group of 3 people + Tifa hahaha which is neat! It also gives WAY more context to what Avalanche v. Shinra are up to - Shinra is letting them get away with shit so they can excuse their extreme crackdowns plus restart the war with Wutai - who actually get a significant amount of foreshadowing in this! The expanded Wall Market is quite good as well, there's a neat battle arena + Aerith and Cloud get even more bonding time together. The missed double High Five with her and Cloud was precious and hurt my hearrrt.. Also there's a decent amount of unlockable scenes in this - there's 3 different dresses for you/Tifa/Aerith to see as well as extra scenes on who you will speak to in a nighttime scene - I got Tifa but I watched the Aerith one online and DAMN! So good... "You can't fall in love with me no matter what, okay?" "Don't I get a say in this?!"
Which leads us too the bad... A lot of the added scenes are just damn busywork. The sewer section pt. 2 where you have to chase Corneo's pig thing..? Boring. Mako Reactor 5 adding 6 levels of the exact same fight over and over just to change the boss that's coming up? Neat idea, still boring. The added side quest hubs? I barely did any of them but honestly they sucked from what I did see so fuck it. Gameplay wise the changes are overall good but ... there's not a lot to it, honestly? The materia system seems a lot simpler and the gameplay for each character is REAL same-y. It's nice to have other characters to swap to when you get bored, but you always have to swap out from Cloud anyway to make it happen. And then there's the ending to this story...
So the big thing about this remake - it isn't really 100% a remake? The final boss is essentially the force of Destiny? Capital D destiny, to quote a dumb line from Tifa. Throughout the story there are these weird ghost things preventing our characters from doing shit at various points - we have almost no idea if other people can even see them, and when they do, they spend almost no time at all wondering what the fuck these things are about or trying to figure that out. Like, this seems pretty fucking important guys, they seem to be blocking your way pretty frequently? We learn much later on that these are the forces of fate - preventing our heroes, and occasionally villains, from changing the way things will turn out. We see Barret stabbed by Sephiroth... but he survives, because he's not meant to die! But wait, why the hell are Wedge and Biggs still alive then?? We learn that we are essentially trying to fight fate... a stupid Japanese trope, but we never learn WHY? The characters see that there is a future - even a distant one. They win! Why the hell are they trying to change things???
So ultimately what they're trying to say - the future episodes of Final Fantasy 7 remake will not 100% play by the rules of what the original game has to say. This raises the HUGE question - is Aerith going to survive?!?!?!? I would be pretty shocked if no one ends up dying buuuuut... still, interesting. And its not so much that I think this is bad - I now get to replay FF7 again but this time not actually know what will happen! Kinda awesome right? At the same time I sorta hate how it was done.. There's a crap load of gibberish being tossed around by every character and no one has a straight damn answer about what is happening here - even at the very end. We see Zak and Aerith from two different times recognize each other but.. what does that even mean??? Is Zak still alive now? Does Aerith already know what will happen? Are her and Sephiroth in NG+ mode and not telling anyone???
Find out next time, on Dragonball Z!
No wait a minute...
Metal Gear Solid! Another old game I'm replaying rather than getting through new stuff... it makes me happy okay, sue me??! Also, this game is technically new since I have never played the Twin Snakes before.. So anyway, Twin Snakes is a Gamecube remake of MGS1 make by Silicon Knights using the MGS2 engine so make it feel a bit more 'modern'. I've only played the PS1 version a couple of times and only finished it once I believe (outside watching my old pal Chad complete it once) as opposed to MGS 2 + 3 which I've completed about a dozen times together and MGS4 which I think I also only beat twice... and 5 just once. But anyway we'll get to those later
With this remake we're dealing with the same story - Solid Snake is a gruff guy who pushes people away but gets shanghai-d into a mission to stop terrorists on an island off Alaska who've take control of a new Metal Gear - REX! He finds out there's a lot of shit going on underneath the surface and learns some real important life lessons along the way - the MGS standard! They brought back all of the original voice actors here and other than Cam Clarke as liquid doing a VERY unconvincing British accent (though Liquid himself is amazingly Hammy, I like to believe it is Liquid himself who is intentionally doing a bad accent) they're all pretty damn good. The dialogue however is quite poor in a lot of places and I'm curious if this game has a new script from the MGS 1 version because I don't remember it being this shitty in some places but.. I suppose I will have to replay the original to find out!
This game in particular has a very strong theme of "Genes", and I know this from my long history of deep dives in the MGS series and also because "Genes" pop up in nearly every other line of dialogue in the game. Genome soldiers, genetic destinies, twins, etc. As you fight the bosses and talk more with your support cast you learn more about everyone's histories and how they felt "boxed in" by their past selves and where they came from - Solid with his trauma at having to kill his mentor/father Big Boss, Meryl and trying to find her connection to her lost father as a soldier, Psycho mantis and his abusive father, Sniper wolf and her lack of home growing up, Liquid even trying to escape Big Boss AND Solid's shadow and feeling like Solid stole his genetic destiny from him, etc. etc. A lot of these are overdone in their melodrama (My girlfriend rolled her eyes at several scenes..) but ultimately I think are well told. The finale is a bit long in the tooth but ultimately quite good and the inestimable Jennifer Hale plays us out with the life lesson in that we have to CHOOSE what we dedicate ourselves to and then do it, not spend so much time worrying about where we are from and searching for where we should be. There's some tragedy to the story of course since I already know how Snake's story ends but overall I quite enjoy the ride.
With this remake we're dealing with the same story - Solid Snake is a gruff guy who pushes people away but gets shanghai-d into a mission to stop terrorists on an island off Alaska who've take control of a new Metal Gear - REX! He finds out there's a lot of shit going on underneath the surface and learns some real important life lessons along the way - the MGS standard! They brought back all of the original voice actors here and other than Cam Clarke as liquid doing a VERY unconvincing British accent (though Liquid himself is amazingly Hammy, I like to believe it is Liquid himself who is intentionally doing a bad accent) they're all pretty damn good. The dialogue however is quite poor in a lot of places and I'm curious if this game has a new script from the MGS 1 version because I don't remember it being this shitty in some places but.. I suppose I will have to replay the original to find out!
This game in particular has a very strong theme of "Genes", and I know this from my long history of deep dives in the MGS series and also because "Genes" pop up in nearly every other line of dialogue in the game. Genome soldiers, genetic destinies, twins, etc. As you fight the bosses and talk more with your support cast you learn more about everyone's histories and how they felt "boxed in" by their past selves and where they came from - Solid with his trauma at having to kill his mentor/father Big Boss, Meryl and trying to find her connection to her lost father as a soldier, Psycho mantis and his abusive father, Sniper wolf and her lack of home growing up, Liquid even trying to escape Big Boss AND Solid's shadow and feeling like Solid stole his genetic destiny from him, etc. etc. A lot of these are overdone in their melodrama (My girlfriend rolled her eyes at several scenes..) but ultimately I think are well told. The finale is a bit long in the tooth but ultimately quite good and the inestimable Jennifer Hale plays us out with the life lesson in that we have to CHOOSE what we dedicate ourselves to and then do it, not spend so much time worrying about where we are from and searching for where we should be. There's some tragedy to the story of course since I already know how Snake's story ends but overall I quite enjoy the ride.
An episode with some meat on its bones! Things get weird and of course melancholy, but that's KR0 for ya. This episode goes on CONSIDERABLY longer than the first two episodes, and I think it is very strong because of that. It continues the adventures of our wayward delivery driver, cements more of his Fellowship and gives us some interesting backstory and the possible emergence of a THEME to this here game... the crushing debt of memory and regret.
Fresh off Episode 2, our new pal Ezra and Shannon have delivered Conway to a doctor, and we are treated to a memory of him with his old boss at the antique shop. What was previously hinted as a "last delivery" is now confirmed to be the places last item, and the owner is in rapidly declining health. The death of her son is now also vaguely implied to be technically Conway's fault... he awakens with a new 'skeletal' leg, almost like a wireframe of gold. No one else seems to think this is weird but it tips us off to figures we will see later. There's a new "interlude" before the chapters that I played through as well which mentioned selling debt to a local distillery... it was treated as a horrible thing, and in this episode we do learn why.
We are joined by two new companions, the primary of which is Junebug. They appear to be robots, and come upon our adventuring party after their truck breaks down along the road. The plot is becoming very circuitous at this point - we're getting item x to take to person y so that they can fix z and that will bring us back to point C where we'll meet back up with person b and yadda yadda yadda, I'm kinda losing the plot a bit. Does the plot matter at all? I'm not sure, and I don't think the game is too certain on it either...
But story isn't exactly what KR0 is about. It's about feeling, its about evoking a sense of longing and wonder about the world. It is set in our world but very little tracks and makes sense - in the Interlude chapter it seems to be set in the past, at least a couple of decades. It does however mention Junebug and her performing at that bar - is it the same woman? The same place? How did time advance, or was that interlude just a retelling of events and not canon? Or is Junebug truly a machine, on loop here despite thinking that she is free?
There's a lot of meandering about in this episode, but I do enjoy each particular part. The Junebug 'concert' sequence is an interesting take on the "One Song an Episode" style but I am not sure it matches the sequences from the first two Acts. The Distillery section is oddly paced, at first we do not see it happen but then it is called back to later. It meanders itself for a while but then we see our main guy saddled with another debt... Is this meant to be understood as Conway still sees himself as an alcoholic? Or has he kicked the habit, but now still feels responsible for his mistakes and must work to fix them? How does the subplot with the Xanadu program and the two folks in the cave actually factor into things? How does any of this fit together?
Is it MEANT to fit together..?
Maybe this game isn't for me hahaha...
Fresh off Episode 2, our new pal Ezra and Shannon have delivered Conway to a doctor, and we are treated to a memory of him with his old boss at the antique shop. What was previously hinted as a "last delivery" is now confirmed to be the places last item, and the owner is in rapidly declining health. The death of her son is now also vaguely implied to be technically Conway's fault... he awakens with a new 'skeletal' leg, almost like a wireframe of gold. No one else seems to think this is weird but it tips us off to figures we will see later. There's a new "interlude" before the chapters that I played through as well which mentioned selling debt to a local distillery... it was treated as a horrible thing, and in this episode we do learn why.
We are joined by two new companions, the primary of which is Junebug. They appear to be robots, and come upon our adventuring party after their truck breaks down along the road. The plot is becoming very circuitous at this point - we're getting item x to take to person y so that they can fix z and that will bring us back to point C where we'll meet back up with person b and yadda yadda yadda, I'm kinda losing the plot a bit. Does the plot matter at all? I'm not sure, and I don't think the game is too certain on it either...
But story isn't exactly what KR0 is about. It's about feeling, its about evoking a sense of longing and wonder about the world. It is set in our world but very little tracks and makes sense - in the Interlude chapter it seems to be set in the past, at least a couple of decades. It does however mention Junebug and her performing at that bar - is it the same woman? The same place? How did time advance, or was that interlude just a retelling of events and not canon? Or is Junebug truly a machine, on loop here despite thinking that she is free?
There's a lot of meandering about in this episode, but I do enjoy each particular part. The Junebug 'concert' sequence is an interesting take on the "One Song an Episode" style but I am not sure it matches the sequences from the first two Acts. The Distillery section is oddly paced, at first we do not see it happen but then it is called back to later. It meanders itself for a while but then we see our main guy saddled with another debt... Is this meant to be understood as Conway still sees himself as an alcoholic? Or has he kicked the habit, but now still feels responsible for his mistakes and must work to fix them? How does the subplot with the Xanadu program and the two folks in the cave actually factor into things? How does any of this fit together?
Is it MEANT to fit together..?
Maybe this game isn't for me hahaha...
There are two games I can directly credit from turning from a kid who played games, into a GAMER. They are without a doubt Final Fantasy 7 and Baldur's Gate 2. Both were hugely long Role Playing Games that told epic stories with excellent characters I got tremendously wrapped up in, as well as deep combat systems I came nowhere close to mastering hahaha. Of the two however I do believe that Baldur's Gate holds a more special place in my heart - I basically raised my love of Fantasy on the altar of the DnD 2E books I was given when I was younger, so that connection to Dungeons and Dragons Baldur's Gate has makes it all the more special. Also the ending of that game fuuuuucked me up - but we'll get to that!
So I spent a while in the previous paragraph talking about the sequel to the game I've just finished, and in fact I have a very odd history with this particular game in contrast to the sequel I love so dearly. Despite the two of them being very much a continuation of the same character and storyline (a featuer that BioWare would turn into their Magnum Opus Mass Effect, see games number 1 through 3 this year, lolol!) I did not have Baldur's Gate 1 until I believe I was in my very late teens/early 20's. My father bought me BG2 because he read the very high reviews + knew I was a fan of DnD. And thankfully he did as I do believe BG2 is the superioer game - but I spent many years replaying only THAT game (and not even its concluding expansion until several years later...) and not the first, so I had a very distinct feeling on how the game SHOULD be in my head before I actually tried it. And honestly I believe this is only my third or fourth time completing BG1... Contrasting BG2, which should be at least 7 or 8?
Anyway, BG1 was initially a pretty massive disappointment to me for a few reasons - the quests, barring a few odd exceptions, are pretty one note and straightfoward. Sarevok is a DECENT enough villain but he gets not enough screentime for like... 80% of the game basically so he's a bit weak in that regard. There are also like half dozen lackeys you have to mow through to get to him, who all have no personality. Much of the gameplay is more straightforward due to being low level DND - you have very little to actually DO for the first 5 hours or so other than wander around and shoot shit with your ranged weapons.. BG2 just has so much more going on!
But - in my later years I have certainly turned around on Baldur's Gate 1. It captures the FEEL of dnd very well - wandering around in the wilderness, doing easy enough quests and killing bad guys, with an overarching plot looming in the background of the whole thing. There's a few solid dungeon crawls, some gnolls to kick around, magic items to find... It is a bit rote, but damn if it isn't satisfying all the same. Also the music is just super.
For this review I am including the expansion Tales of the Sword Coast, but will be excluding the new Siege of Dragonspear for a couple reasons - 1. I didn't actually do everything from TotSC because Durlag's Tower is great and the werewolf island is boring - 2. Dragonspear is super-duper long and feels more like a proper minisequel like Throne of Bhaal does - 3. It lets me mark it as another complete game for my 52 game challenge!!
So anyway Durlag's Tower - SUCH an awesome dungeon. It isn't just the frequent use of clever puzzles and dastardly traps - it is the way it spins all of it together with an interesting variety of enemies for you to beat on and feels like a genuine test of your abilities up to that point in the game in a way NONE of the rest of the game does. Even the very end section of BG1 - the Undercroft maze - feels very plain in comparison as does the fight with Sarevok. Basically he's a fuckin' beast and you throw everything you got at him til' he dies. Durlag's Tower though is just full of great shit but I DID feel that the controls of the Switch version hampered me just a tad, and it dragged a bit near the end, but I was kinda ready to move on.
So in this playthrough I was Flint, a Dwarven Fighter/Cleric who is Neutral Good, and ended at a 20 rep. Not that it is particularly difficult to get to max rep, he is generally a great dude who tries to look out for the little guy! He tried to be merciful to the many douchebags on the sword coast, but it rarely worked out because his companions always blasted them 1000% so they ended up dying anyway haha... He is pretty freaked out by his heritage of Bhaal and his developing powers - he assumed that his connection with his god was giving him more powers but finding out it was an evil deity of murder doing it deeply unsettles him, and he worries deeply about his future. He hung tight with Imoen and Neera the whole game, and developed something of a romance with the latter. Flint led a pretty strict life growing up in Candlekeep under Gorion's tutelage and her 'wildness' was very intriguing to him. He partied with Khalid and Jaheria for a time but just wanted to strike out more on his own and found the pair a bit annoying... A few people fell along the way - Ajantis and Branwen and Yeslick! Yeslick sadly met his fate at the bottom of Durlag's Tower defeating a powerful demon.. which I was sad about but also a bit gleeful since he was my exact same race/class combo haha.. Anyway after conquering the tower we moved on to defeat Sarevok quickly hoping to put an end to Bhaal's plan before any more could be harmed. Flint attempted to talk Sarevok down, saying they could team up and fight the dead god together but alas it was not meant to be.. Sarevok deafeated, Flint hoped things would calm down for a time.. He was very wrong!
So I spent a while in the previous paragraph talking about the sequel to the game I've just finished, and in fact I have a very odd history with this particular game in contrast to the sequel I love so dearly. Despite the two of them being very much a continuation of the same character and storyline (a featuer that BioWare would turn into their Magnum Opus Mass Effect, see games number 1 through 3 this year, lolol!) I did not have Baldur's Gate 1 until I believe I was in my very late teens/early 20's. My father bought me BG2 because he read the very high reviews + knew I was a fan of DnD. And thankfully he did as I do believe BG2 is the superioer game - but I spent many years replaying only THAT game (and not even its concluding expansion until several years later...) and not the first, so I had a very distinct feeling on how the game SHOULD be in my head before I actually tried it. And honestly I believe this is only my third or fourth time completing BG1... Contrasting BG2, which should be at least 7 or 8?
Anyway, BG1 was initially a pretty massive disappointment to me for a few reasons - the quests, barring a few odd exceptions, are pretty one note and straightfoward. Sarevok is a DECENT enough villain but he gets not enough screentime for like... 80% of the game basically so he's a bit weak in that regard. There are also like half dozen lackeys you have to mow through to get to him, who all have no personality. Much of the gameplay is more straightforward due to being low level DND - you have very little to actually DO for the first 5 hours or so other than wander around and shoot shit with your ranged weapons.. BG2 just has so much more going on!
But - in my later years I have certainly turned around on Baldur's Gate 1. It captures the FEEL of dnd very well - wandering around in the wilderness, doing easy enough quests and killing bad guys, with an overarching plot looming in the background of the whole thing. There's a few solid dungeon crawls, some gnolls to kick around, magic items to find... It is a bit rote, but damn if it isn't satisfying all the same. Also the music is just super.
For this review I am including the expansion Tales of the Sword Coast, but will be excluding the new Siege of Dragonspear for a couple reasons - 1. I didn't actually do everything from TotSC because Durlag's Tower is great and the werewolf island is boring - 2. Dragonspear is super-duper long and feels more like a proper minisequel like Throne of Bhaal does - 3. It lets me mark it as another complete game for my 52 game challenge!!
So anyway Durlag's Tower - SUCH an awesome dungeon. It isn't just the frequent use of clever puzzles and dastardly traps - it is the way it spins all of it together with an interesting variety of enemies for you to beat on and feels like a genuine test of your abilities up to that point in the game in a way NONE of the rest of the game does. Even the very end section of BG1 - the Undercroft maze - feels very plain in comparison as does the fight with Sarevok. Basically he's a fuckin' beast and you throw everything you got at him til' he dies. Durlag's Tower though is just full of great shit but I DID feel that the controls of the Switch version hampered me just a tad, and it dragged a bit near the end, but I was kinda ready to move on.
So in this playthrough I was Flint, a Dwarven Fighter/Cleric who is Neutral Good, and ended at a 20 rep. Not that it is particularly difficult to get to max rep, he is generally a great dude who tries to look out for the little guy! He tried to be merciful to the many douchebags on the sword coast, but it rarely worked out because his companions always blasted them 1000% so they ended up dying anyway haha... He is pretty freaked out by his heritage of Bhaal and his developing powers - he assumed that his connection with his god was giving him more powers but finding out it was an evil deity of murder doing it deeply unsettles him, and he worries deeply about his future. He hung tight with Imoen and Neera the whole game, and developed something of a romance with the latter. Flint led a pretty strict life growing up in Candlekeep under Gorion's tutelage and her 'wildness' was very intriguing to him. He partied with Khalid and Jaheria for a time but just wanted to strike out more on his own and found the pair a bit annoying... A few people fell along the way - Ajantis and Branwen and Yeslick! Yeslick sadly met his fate at the bottom of Durlag's Tower defeating a powerful demon.. which I was sad about but also a bit gleeful since he was my exact same race/class combo haha.. Anyway after conquering the tower we moved on to defeat Sarevok quickly hoping to put an end to Bhaal's plan before any more could be harmed. Flint attempted to talk Sarevok down, saying they could team up and fight the dead god together but alas it was not meant to be.. Sarevok deafeated, Flint hoped things would calm down for a time.. He was very wrong!
2012
Mass Effect 3... an end, once and for all.
Every mass effect starts with a "this game feels weird" for the first few missions no matter how many times I play them. It's like I'm too familiar with all of them, so playing each one feels odd. They're also quite distinct in feel and style, despite 2 and 3 being very far apart from 1. The gunplay/power usage finally is at a good balance here. You can choose how many guns you are bringing and which ones - they all have various benefits and drawbacks, namely their weight which increases or decreases your power cooldown times. It's a nice halfway point between 1 where powers are simply too much (Biotics are insanely powerful due to the number and strength of their abilities with no cooldown) and 2 where they're kinda useless (especially on higher difficulties where powers do nothing against armor/shields). It also leads to a bit wider gameplay variety, you can play an adept pretty much as a Caster and rarely use your guns and just pop 'spells' off.
There's an increased focus on 'emotion' during the game. Characters often ask after Shepard himself and see how he is handling things. You have dream sequences throughout where you think about things that have come before. I have a mod that changes this to be more about your past actions in game rather than the boy who dies at the beginning. -I'm not sure I ended really preferring these modded dream sequences actually! I romanced Tali this time to completeion and it is a biiiiit too gooey? lol. I did ultimately enjoy it but I think Garrus is still my top boo! Shep and Tali are adorable together but I'm not sure they connect quite as well as Femshep and Garrus.. The frequent callbacks to their introduction in 1 is pretty adorable, but there are several here and I can feel the 'DLC' nature of some of the game - they didn't really intend for all of this to be played at once. But we'll get to the DLC later!
The story is MUCH more linear, but that is due to the game actually HAVING a main story, unlike much of ME2 which is basically just "get ready for the reapers I guess?". What is here is pretty good I think, but there's two issues: The Illusive Man is the main bad guy here, but he's way less interesting because we get so much less of him. Also he rambles on about 'plans' and whatnot but it really seems like he's just throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks, not actually being a mastermind. Also Harbinger is a great antagonist in 2, but is essentially nonexistent in 3. In fairness he was a bit overdone in 2, but cutting him out entirely I think is a mistake. What is present though are the highest highs of the series are undoubtedly in Mass Effect 3. The story sequences of Rannoch and Tuchanka still brought me to tears, 8 years and several playthroughs later. I feel the ending ultimately falls a bit flat, PriorityEarth is nowhere near as good as the suicide mission from 2, or even the attack on the citadel from 1.
Mass Effect 3 is a complicated game to talk about and rate. It means a GREAT deal to me, I still remember my first playthroughs vividly. I mean the Rannoch mission basically broke me as a human being haha that's damn special ya know? But ultimately I do think it is not that strong a conclusion to the series, ultimately. There is some excellent stuff in terms of endings for the characters/main side plots to the games, but ultimately I think the main conclusion with the Reapers leaves a lot to be desired. What ME3 does excel in is a MOOD throughout the game - clinging to a last shred of hope through very dark times. Even as the galaxy literally falls around you, your friends and allies are there to believe in you. The Mass Effect series has a lot of successes - its gameplay in each is exciting and a mix of guns and powers; its universe is EXPERTLY put together and the codex is brilliant; the cinematography of so many shots shows off the games beauty if not its technical prowess; its story is well-told and engaging.. but what really sets it apart? What really makes it shine all the brightest? The characters. Your companions are all fascinating and amusing and heartwarming and vexing and ALIVE, moreso than almost any game I have ever played. Getting to see how they evolve through the games, how your actions and words often come back to mean so much is often heartwrenching. Garrus, Tali, Legion, Mordin, Wrex, Liara... so much history and growth, and to be a part of that is something I don't think I will ever forget. I hope I did them proud.
Every mass effect starts with a "this game feels weird" for the first few missions no matter how many times I play them. It's like I'm too familiar with all of them, so playing each one feels odd. They're also quite distinct in feel and style, despite 2 and 3 being very far apart from 1. The gunplay/power usage finally is at a good balance here. You can choose how many guns you are bringing and which ones - they all have various benefits and drawbacks, namely their weight which increases or decreases your power cooldown times. It's a nice halfway point between 1 where powers are simply too much (Biotics are insanely powerful due to the number and strength of their abilities with no cooldown) and 2 where they're kinda useless (especially on higher difficulties where powers do nothing against armor/shields). It also leads to a bit wider gameplay variety, you can play an adept pretty much as a Caster and rarely use your guns and just pop 'spells' off.
There's an increased focus on 'emotion' during the game. Characters often ask after Shepard himself and see how he is handling things. You have dream sequences throughout where you think about things that have come before. I have a mod that changes this to be more about your past actions in game rather than the boy who dies at the beginning. -I'm not sure I ended really preferring these modded dream sequences actually! I romanced Tali this time to completeion and it is a biiiiit too gooey? lol. I did ultimately enjoy it but I think Garrus is still my top boo! Shep and Tali are adorable together but I'm not sure they connect quite as well as Femshep and Garrus.. The frequent callbacks to their introduction in 1 is pretty adorable, but there are several here and I can feel the 'DLC' nature of some of the game - they didn't really intend for all of this to be played at once. But we'll get to the DLC later!
The story is MUCH more linear, but that is due to the game actually HAVING a main story, unlike much of ME2 which is basically just "get ready for the reapers I guess?". What is here is pretty good I think, but there's two issues: The Illusive Man is the main bad guy here, but he's way less interesting because we get so much less of him. Also he rambles on about 'plans' and whatnot but it really seems like he's just throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks, not actually being a mastermind. Also Harbinger is a great antagonist in 2, but is essentially nonexistent in 3. In fairness he was a bit overdone in 2, but cutting him out entirely I think is a mistake. What is present though are the highest highs of the series are undoubtedly in Mass Effect 3. The story sequences of Rannoch and Tuchanka still brought me to tears, 8 years and several playthroughs later. I feel the ending ultimately falls a bit flat, PriorityEarth is nowhere near as good as the suicide mission from 2, or even the attack on the citadel from 1.
Mass Effect 3 is a complicated game to talk about and rate. It means a GREAT deal to me, I still remember my first playthroughs vividly. I mean the Rannoch mission basically broke me as a human being haha that's damn special ya know? But ultimately I do think it is not that strong a conclusion to the series, ultimately. There is some excellent stuff in terms of endings for the characters/main side plots to the games, but ultimately I think the main conclusion with the Reapers leaves a lot to be desired. What ME3 does excel in is a MOOD throughout the game - clinging to a last shred of hope through very dark times. Even as the galaxy literally falls around you, your friends and allies are there to believe in you. The Mass Effect series has a lot of successes - its gameplay in each is exciting and a mix of guns and powers; its universe is EXPERTLY put together and the codex is brilliant; the cinematography of so many shots shows off the games beauty if not its technical prowess; its story is well-told and engaging.. but what really sets it apart? What really makes it shine all the brightest? The characters. Your companions are all fascinating and amusing and heartwarming and vexing and ALIVE, moreso than almost any game I have ever played. Getting to see how they evolve through the games, how your actions and words often come back to mean so much is often heartwrenching. Garrus, Tali, Legion, Mordin, Wrex, Liara... so much history and growth, and to be a part of that is something I don't think I will ever forget. I hope I did them proud.
2010
Widely considered one of the best games ever made... Mass Effect 2! Another very difficult game to review, as I have now beaten it between 5-10 times. What draws me back? The very things that gives this game its nigh universal praise - the characters.
Mass Effect 2 leans back on the overarching plot of the Reapers from the first game to tell a somewhat more focused story - the Collectors are grabbing up human colonists, and Shepard needs to work for an old enemy to get to the bottom of it. You assemble a crew of misfits to hit the collectors in their home base, then take em out. Along the way you have to earn their loyalty as well - each of the 12 characters has a specific mission about their past that they need to resolve, and these are the meat of the game. Each character is superbly acted and written, I would gladly take all of them out with me on each mission. I've romanced almost every option before but this time I chose my original - Tali. In my 'main' playthrough my trilogy never quite got finished due to immense tragedy in ME3, so now I'm going back through as myself again to do it right this time.
I also installed a bunch of mods to add weapons, powers and update the graphics which make the graphics look excellent. The cinematography in the game is leaps above ME1 - each conversation and mission has beautiful shots and excellent perspective. Plenty of visual gags or just world building come from how things are shot and lit.
Comparing ME1 and 2 is often difficult for me but playing them back to back makes it more clear. The shooting in 2 is far improved in substance, it plays more like a polished shooter rather than the RPG/Shooter hybrid of the first, this is more a direct TPS with RPG levels attached to it. The missing abilities are deeply missed from my ME1 playthrough but at least things are a bit more balanced now, haha. The first game you could spam 30 abilities by endgame/ng+ whereas this one you need to be on your toes. While the first game emphasised world building and plot, this one is firing on all cylinders with the characters.
Mass Effect 2 is a superb game to play no matter what is going on. Each conversation is interesting and/or enthralling, the choices you make are impactful and moving, and each firefight is a delight of sci-fi powers and weaponry. It is a beautiful game and a compelling experience I couldn't stop thinking about this past week, and remains one of the my favorite games ever.
Mass Effect 2 leans back on the overarching plot of the Reapers from the first game to tell a somewhat more focused story - the Collectors are grabbing up human colonists, and Shepard needs to work for an old enemy to get to the bottom of it. You assemble a crew of misfits to hit the collectors in their home base, then take em out. Along the way you have to earn their loyalty as well - each of the 12 characters has a specific mission about their past that they need to resolve, and these are the meat of the game. Each character is superbly acted and written, I would gladly take all of them out with me on each mission. I've romanced almost every option before but this time I chose my original - Tali. In my 'main' playthrough my trilogy never quite got finished due to immense tragedy in ME3, so now I'm going back through as myself again to do it right this time.
I also installed a bunch of mods to add weapons, powers and update the graphics which make the graphics look excellent. The cinematography in the game is leaps above ME1 - each conversation and mission has beautiful shots and excellent perspective. Plenty of visual gags or just world building come from how things are shot and lit.
Comparing ME1 and 2 is often difficult for me but playing them back to back makes it more clear. The shooting in 2 is far improved in substance, it plays more like a polished shooter rather than the RPG/Shooter hybrid of the first, this is more a direct TPS with RPG levels attached to it. The missing abilities are deeply missed from my ME1 playthrough but at least things are a bit more balanced now, haha. The first game you could spam 30 abilities by endgame/ng+ whereas this one you need to be on your toes. While the first game emphasised world building and plot, this one is firing on all cylinders with the characters.
Mass Effect 2 is a superb game to play no matter what is going on. Each conversation is interesting and/or enthralling, the choices you make are impactful and moving, and each firefight is a delight of sci-fi powers and weaponry. It is a beautiful game and a compelling experience I couldn't stop thinking about this past week, and remains one of the my favorite games ever.
Well I think I've made a mistake here!
I split up reviewing KRZ because each episode has spent such a long time between each release it felt sort of fair to review them one at a time (and it gives me a leg up on my 52 game challenge... huehuehue...) but honestly these episodes are so damn SHORT and kinda nothing... They just get rolling and then they end.
Episode 2 starts off with our wounded Conway and Shannon now on the ZERO, but actually at a weird records office that is part of the Zero but also part of the world? Is this like a normal thing because nobody is freaking out yet so I guess we're just cool with things. You move around the odd-ball office (there's a whole floor for Bears. That's bumping this episode up a whole letter grade honestly) and try to track down directions to Dogwood drive... why is he so bent on delivering this thing? Why is Shannon on this trip with me again? I do appreciate her presence though, her dialogue options cut through the bullshit. There's also several amusing remarks about how Conway asks weird and meanderign questions lol... but hey its the games fault for being so weird! I'm just trying to roleplay correctly in this world dammit!
Anyway, then you find a weird motel/museum place after driving on the zero (which was super weird I liked it) and there's a great atmosphere to the place, but then you get abducted by a giant bird and taken to a forest where you meet a doctor who is going to fix up Conway... the end! Yeah that's it. The sequence of running through the forest is a neat way to break up the "slowly meander across this level" you normally have to do and with another 11/10 song performed in the background but... honestly even though its only happened twice, it feels almost perfunctory at this point?
Act 2 has some neat bits to it (the eagle, running through the forest with music, the bears' dept. floor) but nothing really tying it together like the first episode, where both our protagonists are obviously searching for things that aren't in this world anymore. What are we doing this episode? Looking after an old guy with a bum leg?
I split up reviewing KRZ because each episode has spent such a long time between each release it felt sort of fair to review them one at a time (and it gives me a leg up on my 52 game challenge... huehuehue...) but honestly these episodes are so damn SHORT and kinda nothing... They just get rolling and then they end.
Episode 2 starts off with our wounded Conway and Shannon now on the ZERO, but actually at a weird records office that is part of the Zero but also part of the world? Is this like a normal thing because nobody is freaking out yet so I guess we're just cool with things. You move around the odd-ball office (there's a whole floor for Bears. That's bumping this episode up a whole letter grade honestly) and try to track down directions to Dogwood drive... why is he so bent on delivering this thing? Why is Shannon on this trip with me again? I do appreciate her presence though, her dialogue options cut through the bullshit. There's also several amusing remarks about how Conway asks weird and meanderign questions lol... but hey its the games fault for being so weird! I'm just trying to roleplay correctly in this world dammit!
Anyway, then you find a weird motel/museum place after driving on the zero (which was super weird I liked it) and there's a great atmosphere to the place, but then you get abducted by a giant bird and taken to a forest where you meet a doctor who is going to fix up Conway... the end! Yeah that's it. The sequence of running through the forest is a neat way to break up the "slowly meander across this level" you normally have to do and with another 11/10 song performed in the background but... honestly even though its only happened twice, it feels almost perfunctory at this point?
Act 2 has some neat bits to it (the eagle, running through the forest with music, the bears' dept. floor) but nothing really tying it together like the first episode, where both our protagonists are obviously searching for things that aren't in this world anymore. What are we doing this episode? Looking after an old guy with a bum leg?
The stars drop away.... Kentucky Route Zero is a new adventure game, in the vein of Walking Dead where puzzles and complexity is replaced by damn good story-telling and writing.
In KR0 you are Conway, a delivery truck driver for an antique shop, looking to drop off your last item for the day. You've got 'your' trusty dog Blue (who you get to name and gender, oddly enough) with you and an old truck, and unfortunately the only way to find where you're heaaded is the ol' Route 0. You stop at a variety of surrealist destinations on your way there and chat with even more strange folks. Eventually you meet a younger lady Shannon who seems to be our secondary protagonist. She's also looking for something but... we're not sure what.
Episode 1 is only an hour or so but it seems to set up our premise and main mystery pretty well. What really sets the game apart is the art style and its music. There are several beautiful tracks, with "You've Got to Walk" as a heart-wrenchingly beautiful interlude song at the halfway mark that I don't think will ever forget. The game sets its mood with the ethereal music and graphics and I can tell I'm in for a trippy ride.
Not a whole lot happens in Act 1 so I can't score it too highly, but I'm certainly enjoying the mystery well enough and will be pacing myself on these acts to theorize what's going on:
My number one theory of course that we're all dead or something and this is purgatory, hahaha....
In KR0 you are Conway, a delivery truck driver for an antique shop, looking to drop off your last item for the day. You've got 'your' trusty dog Blue (who you get to name and gender, oddly enough) with you and an old truck, and unfortunately the only way to find where you're heaaded is the ol' Route 0. You stop at a variety of surrealist destinations on your way there and chat with even more strange folks. Eventually you meet a younger lady Shannon who seems to be our secondary protagonist. She's also looking for something but... we're not sure what.
Episode 1 is only an hour or so but it seems to set up our premise and main mystery pretty well. What really sets the game apart is the art style and its music. There are several beautiful tracks, with "You've Got to Walk" as a heart-wrenchingly beautiful interlude song at the halfway mark that I don't think will ever forget. The game sets its mood with the ethereal music and graphics and I can tell I'm in for a trippy ride.
Not a whole lot happens in Act 1 so I can't score it too highly, but I'm certainly enjoying the mystery well enough and will be pacing myself on these acts to theorize what's going on:
My number one theory of course that we're all dead or something and this is purgatory, hahaha....
2018
Donut County is a lil' indie I've had my eye on for a while and finally went on a good sale on the switch. Seemed like a decent enough "break" game so I bought it and gave it a shot. I played through the entire game in two short~ish sessions, maybe 3 or so hours? The game has two~ main characters, a raccoon fellow "BK" and a young lady whose name I do not recall.. you both work at the Donut Shop in Donut County however there is a cataclysm coming - ordering donuts through this shop is actually creating suction holes that grab people and things on the ground and pull them into the hollow caverns below the earth! The story begins with all of our characters already in the hole together, and they're all mad as heck at BK for getting them stuck here. BK is a pretty funny guy who is misanthropic and refuses to take responsibility for fucking everything up in their small town and his antics with the fellow villagers (they're all animal folks outside of our one human lady) are what lead into each level - we learn the circumstances of why they ordered donuts and then we take over as the hole coming to gobble everything up.
Gameplay wise, it is essentially a reverse Katamari Damacy. You suck up smaller things into your hole to make it bigger, then slowly consume everything on the map including people until the map is empty. There are no real 'obstacles' or enemies you need to worry about, and no fail states at all as far as I can tell, you just keep on suckin'. There's definitely a better way to phrase that but I refuse to budge. Eventually you do however get to the Big Bad's place and have to fight him using your hole machine so that kinda counts as an enemy! But most of the time you're just happily gobbling things up. This is a pretty simple but also very satisfying loop - the simple act of 'cleaning' things up.
All in all, a pretty straight-forward little puzzle game with a well told story, cute characters, damn solid music and an addictive main mechanic. It was a pleasant few hours over a weekend but I am not sure I will remember it much in a month, or let alone by the end of the year.
Final Grade: B
Gameplay wise, it is essentially a reverse Katamari Damacy. You suck up smaller things into your hole to make it bigger, then slowly consume everything on the map including people until the map is empty. There are no real 'obstacles' or enemies you need to worry about, and no fail states at all as far as I can tell, you just keep on suckin'. There's definitely a better way to phrase that but I refuse to budge. Eventually you do however get to the Big Bad's place and have to fight him using your hole machine so that kinda counts as an enemy! But most of the time you're just happily gobbling things up. This is a pretty simple but also very satisfying loop - the simple act of 'cleaning' things up.
All in all, a pretty straight-forward little puzzle game with a well told story, cute characters, damn solid music and an addictive main mechanic. It was a pleasant few hours over a weekend but I am not sure I will remember it much in a month, or let alone by the end of the year.
Final Grade: B
2007
Game number one of twenty-twenty and my second attempt at the 52 game challenge kicks off with one of the most important games of my life: Mass Effect. Reviewing this game is IMMENSELY difficult because I have such a history with it. I've loved RPGs since I was a kid, and among my favorites were Baldur's Gate, Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire. Little did I know, until reading an article on ME in a gaming magazine, that all ofthese were made by the same developer Bioware, and they were making a new Sci-Fi RPG called mass effect! I spent a year+ anxiously awaiting it, and it is not underselling it to say that Mass Effect may have been a major contributing factor to the end of my first relationship... Worth it!
All this personal history aside, I have completed this game more than 10 times at this point, and completed the sequels many times as well (the third not so many) which means it is difficult to disentangle my feelings for these characters and events outside of the larger context of the series that I am so familiar with. Do I love Garrus and Tali and Wrex so much in Mass Effect 1, or is it the combination of their characters over all 3 games? I'm still not sure of the answer to that, but there were plenty of times in this latest run where I ooh'd and aww'd over each character.
This return to the series also marks my first attempt at recreating my original save game that ultimately ended in one of the most pivotal moments of my personal life by a work of art, the culmination of the Rannoch arc in ME3 that fractured me as a person and left me more or less unable to complete that character. I am also modding the games to make them a bit more fresh, but for this game the mods were almost entirely visual to improve the textures and lighting and whatnot.
The game itself does have some issues - the gunplay is fine enough but lacks some serious polish. BioWare tried to make an RPG-Shooter and it just doesn't work that well. There's a great number of ways to build your character at first (though at higher levels you're just kinda awesome at everything) and the character classes are neat idea, they tend to just breakdown into tech + magic + shooty. Shotguns sound amazing though and have great punch... Also the presentation/cinematography leaves a lot to be desired outside of the Main missions. The squadmates are great personality-wise but don't have a whole lot to say on the whole, but that is more in comparison to the later games where, after realizing that companions are the strength of their work, Bioware leaned into building personality much harder. There are numerous planets outside the main ones to explore, but they are all featureless (but colored differently) terrain with skyboxes and incredibly cut-n-paste buildings to shoot through and that can get pretty tiresome if you're aiming for 100% completion. I do have to say though - those skyboxes are 11/10 okay
The strongest aspect I think of Mass Effect 1, and I do believe this strength has never been beaten by a game, is its world building. It introduces a superb sci-fi world with a dozen+ alien species, most of whom you can talk to about their history and culture. Not only that, there is a huge VOICED codex that will take you through the history and major items of lore for the universe you can get to any time, and various things you discover or quests you complete can add to it. It is a world very easy to get sucked into.
Mass Effect 1 is a superb roleplaying game that I have enjoyed returning to for the umpteenth time and I am proud it kicks off this years 52 game challenge. And I don't think I can offer higher praise than that.
All this personal history aside, I have completed this game more than 10 times at this point, and completed the sequels many times as well (the third not so many) which means it is difficult to disentangle my feelings for these characters and events outside of the larger context of the series that I am so familiar with. Do I love Garrus and Tali and Wrex so much in Mass Effect 1, or is it the combination of their characters over all 3 games? I'm still not sure of the answer to that, but there were plenty of times in this latest run where I ooh'd and aww'd over each character.
This return to the series also marks my first attempt at recreating my original save game that ultimately ended in one of the most pivotal moments of my personal life by a work of art, the culmination of the Rannoch arc in ME3 that fractured me as a person and left me more or less unable to complete that character. I am also modding the games to make them a bit more fresh, but for this game the mods were almost entirely visual to improve the textures and lighting and whatnot.
The game itself does have some issues - the gunplay is fine enough but lacks some serious polish. BioWare tried to make an RPG-Shooter and it just doesn't work that well. There's a great number of ways to build your character at first (though at higher levels you're just kinda awesome at everything) and the character classes are neat idea, they tend to just breakdown into tech + magic + shooty. Shotguns sound amazing though and have great punch... Also the presentation/cinematography leaves a lot to be desired outside of the Main missions. The squadmates are great personality-wise but don't have a whole lot to say on the whole, but that is more in comparison to the later games where, after realizing that companions are the strength of their work, Bioware leaned into building personality much harder. There are numerous planets outside the main ones to explore, but they are all featureless (but colored differently) terrain with skyboxes and incredibly cut-n-paste buildings to shoot through and that can get pretty tiresome if you're aiming for 100% completion. I do have to say though - those skyboxes are 11/10 okay
The strongest aspect I think of Mass Effect 1, and I do believe this strength has never been beaten by a game, is its world building. It introduces a superb sci-fi world with a dozen+ alien species, most of whom you can talk to about their history and culture. Not only that, there is a huge VOICED codex that will take you through the history and major items of lore for the universe you can get to any time, and various things you discover or quests you complete can add to it. It is a world very easy to get sucked into.
Mass Effect 1 is a superb roleplaying game that I have enjoyed returning to for the umpteenth time and I am proud it kicks off this years 52 game challenge. And I don't think I can offer higher praise than that.
Writing this review is pretty difficult as this particular game represents a great deal more than just a game. First and foremost, it represents my success in the 52 game challenge and I'm incredibly pleased I was able to do this and will 100% be attempting next year. This is also my 52nd time I'm trying to capture my thoughts and I've got a lot of them over the year to think about. This is also the end of the mainline Resident Evil franchise that I have now played in its entirety* (not re1 original) and now I have to sift through my feelings of some pretty intense ups and downs even in the past couple of weeks. If I could plan this year out a little better I definitely would have put more time between the last couple RE games but unfortunately I REALLY wanted 7 to be my 52nd game of the year so we ended up with a 0 -> 6 -> 7 progression here that I have to work around. All in all though I'm immensely glad I completed this challenge and subsequently joined the fanbase of this, overall, superb franchise.
So anyway, Resident Evil 7. There are a lot of major departures for this entry to this franchise and the biggest I think is the perspective which has once again shifted - this time to first person. I'm an enormous fan of first person RPGs so this wasn't a difficult transition for me especially as the game maintains a much slower pace than its 3 predecessors. It also has a completely new protagonist a story almost wholly divorced from the enormous canon that RE6 tried to utilize and expand all at once, with another new virus and another new batch of enemies. Where RE7 succeeds where I think RE5 and 6 failed however (and 4 succeeded at as well) with their new infections was a sense of consistency. The new 'mold' creatures (sadly there are only a handful of varieties) have a VERY strong visual identity and have powers that seem to track with their deformities. They're damn tough as well with ammo being pretty scarce again it makes for some tense situations. The most intense one for me is in the main picture - I had to make my way through a boiler room with 3 enemies, and used all of my ammo to do it. What happens when I get to the next section? 2 more drop behind me so I go literally toe to toe with both of them and just my knife.. I scraped through with some fancy footwork and a few healing items hahaa... It was a very tense moment that drained me of my resources, but the game also let me chill for a bit afterwards to build my self up again. PACING!
The gameplay continues in traditional RE fashion - you're pretty vulnerable and have to stay on your toes to start with, but you slowly build strength over time and are blasting away foes by end game - though never quite with full confidence... The RE tradition of a giant 'FU' boss continues but thankfully they know at this point it is more symbolic - you can shoot it a few times and then you get the 'Rocket Launcher' to kill it and roll credits. No need to save up boatloads of your own ammo to get the job done. Back also are a number of small puzzles and backtracking with various keys - mercifully labeled on your map! It feels good to be trapped in these weird funhouses, literally this time by one of the antagonists!
Speaking of antagonists - the story and character of RE7 are all quite good with just a couple of issues, primarily our protagonist Ethan. Ethan is... a guy. I didn't mean to end that sentence in a generic way but I genuinely tried to think of character traits and I honestly don't think he has any. Contrasted with the Bakers (all delightful) or Mia or Eveline, characters with some real interesting depth to them (not a lot of course but enough) he just really sticks out as being an outsider. It also pretty sharply contrasts with previous RE history where the protagonists are all great characters! When the game switches protagonists about 80% of the way through I was kinda hoping we would stay as Mia, a person with real relevance to the story buuuut oh well. In terms of the Bakers, I feel like they more than make up for the lack of enemy variety otherwise with the molded. Jack is a 'stalker' Nemesis type which leads to some EPIC boss battles, Margaritte is creepy and has a weird bug thing going on, Eveline and her crazed desire for a 'family'... Good stuff all around. Lucas is a POS and I really liked the revelation he was basically garbage the whole time and more or less unaffected by Eveline's madness!
Overall, Resident Evil 7 is a superb combination of returning to form for the series but also pushing it forward in exciting ways. What was before a bombastic yet empty fireworks display is now a smaller, grittier and yet much more satisfying experience. The first person camera helps makes each hit and scare that much more real, and adds to the tension of exploring this run down and corrupted home. The characters are more than interesting enough to carry the story forward and I genuinely hoped for a bit of redemption for the Bakers at the end of it, and a twinge of regret and compassion for the 'monster' that made it all happen. A riveting experience I couldn't put down, and I don't think I've really felt that from the beginning since Resident Evil 2!
So anyway, Resident Evil 7. There are a lot of major departures for this entry to this franchise and the biggest I think is the perspective which has once again shifted - this time to first person. I'm an enormous fan of first person RPGs so this wasn't a difficult transition for me especially as the game maintains a much slower pace than its 3 predecessors. It also has a completely new protagonist a story almost wholly divorced from the enormous canon that RE6 tried to utilize and expand all at once, with another new virus and another new batch of enemies. Where RE7 succeeds where I think RE5 and 6 failed however (and 4 succeeded at as well) with their new infections was a sense of consistency. The new 'mold' creatures (sadly there are only a handful of varieties) have a VERY strong visual identity and have powers that seem to track with their deformities. They're damn tough as well with ammo being pretty scarce again it makes for some tense situations. The most intense one for me is in the main picture - I had to make my way through a boiler room with 3 enemies, and used all of my ammo to do it. What happens when I get to the next section? 2 more drop behind me so I go literally toe to toe with both of them and just my knife.. I scraped through with some fancy footwork and a few healing items hahaa... It was a very tense moment that drained me of my resources, but the game also let me chill for a bit afterwards to build my self up again. PACING!
The gameplay continues in traditional RE fashion - you're pretty vulnerable and have to stay on your toes to start with, but you slowly build strength over time and are blasting away foes by end game - though never quite with full confidence... The RE tradition of a giant 'FU' boss continues but thankfully they know at this point it is more symbolic - you can shoot it a few times and then you get the 'Rocket Launcher' to kill it and roll credits. No need to save up boatloads of your own ammo to get the job done. Back also are a number of small puzzles and backtracking with various keys - mercifully labeled on your map! It feels good to be trapped in these weird funhouses, literally this time by one of the antagonists!
Speaking of antagonists - the story and character of RE7 are all quite good with just a couple of issues, primarily our protagonist Ethan. Ethan is... a guy. I didn't mean to end that sentence in a generic way but I genuinely tried to think of character traits and I honestly don't think he has any. Contrasted with the Bakers (all delightful) or Mia or Eveline, characters with some real interesting depth to them (not a lot of course but enough) he just really sticks out as being an outsider. It also pretty sharply contrasts with previous RE history where the protagonists are all great characters! When the game switches protagonists about 80% of the way through I was kinda hoping we would stay as Mia, a person with real relevance to the story buuuut oh well. In terms of the Bakers, I feel like they more than make up for the lack of enemy variety otherwise with the molded. Jack is a 'stalker' Nemesis type which leads to some EPIC boss battles, Margaritte is creepy and has a weird bug thing going on, Eveline and her crazed desire for a 'family'... Good stuff all around. Lucas is a POS and I really liked the revelation he was basically garbage the whole time and more or less unaffected by Eveline's madness!
Overall, Resident Evil 7 is a superb combination of returning to form for the series but also pushing it forward in exciting ways. What was before a bombastic yet empty fireworks display is now a smaller, grittier and yet much more satisfying experience. The first person camera helps makes each hit and scare that much more real, and adds to the tension of exploring this run down and corrupted home. The characters are more than interesting enough to carry the story forward and I genuinely hoped for a bit of redemption for the Bakers at the end of it, and a twinge of regret and compassion for the 'monster' that made it all happen. A riveting experience I couldn't put down, and I don't think I've really felt that from the beginning since Resident Evil 2!
2012
Ugh, what a slog.
Normally when I finish a game, I just write down a sentence or two to kick me off when I do write the complete review. This is the second time now that I have left that initial impression as I feel it pretty succinctly encapsulates how I really feel about the game. This game is just kinda garbage. In theory, it should be a game I love. A series I'm just getting into and am generally having a joyous time catching up on has a giant Avengers-Esque adventure bringing together heroes and plot-lines in a way to excite and amaze. Chris and Leon meet! Sherry is back as an adult and she's a badass who can't die! There' four whole campaigns!! YOU GET TO PLAY AS ADA
Awesome right? Nah it sucks. I played the campaigns in order from the main menu, and each of them at least has a very different feel to them, so kudos to the team for managing that. Kudos taken away however as none of them are particularly good at what they're trying to do.
Leon's campaign is the most "Resident Evil-~y" of the bunch, calling on Resident Evil 2 and the fall of Raccoon and several creepy locales (a church/mausoleum, a graveyard, and spooky sewers) and having Leon make some snide one-liners like in 4. However, Leon's partner is with him the whole time cutting any real tension (don't even have to care about ammo for her) and there's some element of mystery to her about what she wants but it amounts to basically 0 in terms of the plot other than her sister dying, which basically never comes back up again. But don't worry! Her sister turns into a mega-hot zombie monster that the camera loves to stare at, so there's that weirdness added in too. Also, Leon reunites with Sherry on screen for the first time in 20 years..... and they have 2 seconds, and Sherry says "I was too young and don't really remember anything" BULLSHITTTTTT. Best moment - zombies on a plane! Literally ripped straight from Air Force One and I'm here for it. Worst - Aforementioned Sherry reunion.
Campaign 2 - Chris! It's like RE5 but even worse!! Okay not exactly, I actually super liked Piers and the ending is fuckin' solid. We get some decent character development for Chris, but it is otherwise garbage. The story bops around in time rapidly, and it is pretty tough to keep track of what exactly happens when... but we'll get to that later! Best moment - Ending scenes with Piers. Worst - battle in the street with a Giant monster that is really boring and easy.
Campaign 3 - Sherry/Jake! Jake is Wesker's kid. Stupid stupid stupid... he himself is kinda okay, but mostly only when he's interacting with Sherry who is still pretty cool. Seeing more of her is fun, but Jake is often a douche-nozzle and this game tries to be RE3 but instead of being good it is bad. So that's a strategy. It is also spending a LOT of time shipping Sherry and Jake, then does nothing with it and ends. Best moment - Jake fist-fighting shitty nemesis. Worst moment - most of the other things Jake says or does.
Campaign 4 - Ada! We get to play as Ada for real! Yeah, we did that already with Resi4 DLC buuuuut whatever, we get more from her post-Wesker biting the dust. This HAS to be interesting and revealing right?! Nahhhh we get jack shit. Not even any good moments between her and Leon. Just her 'relationship' with the big bad of the game Simmons, of which we learn almost nothing and seems like an insane and one-sided thing she has to put an end to. She also has a clone who is the final boss, which seems like it could've been cool but I promise you it's not. Well, it looks okay anyway. Best moment - real puzzles again! Worst moment - stealth sections, wtf? And they suck!
This is a tough game to wrap up in one paragraph. It's trying to move action combat forward in the series, doubles down on the co-op mechanics and ramps up the movie set pieces. All the things I really hated about 5 and was meh about even in 4 when they did it right. The combat has plenty of layers to it, but it never actually CARES or makes you interact with those layers. Enemies drop bullets and health so you don't need to be all that careful, maybe a force higher difficulty would save it? Ultimately though it just doesn't feel good to play. I've played a lot of shooters in my time, and this is one of my least favorite. For the story, obviously its dumb but it always is. Characters though, the only people who grow or do anything really of note are the new partners, who only in 1 case really make an impact on things and were enjoyable to be around.
Its really four shorter games packed into one, and that is in one way very cool that they tried to" Avengers" this shit, but honestly, they just ended up "Justice League"-ing it. And I mean that in the most offensive way possible.
Normally when I finish a game, I just write down a sentence or two to kick me off when I do write the complete review. This is the second time now that I have left that initial impression as I feel it pretty succinctly encapsulates how I really feel about the game. This game is just kinda garbage. In theory, it should be a game I love. A series I'm just getting into and am generally having a joyous time catching up on has a giant Avengers-Esque adventure bringing together heroes and plot-lines in a way to excite and amaze. Chris and Leon meet! Sherry is back as an adult and she's a badass who can't die! There' four whole campaigns!! YOU GET TO PLAY AS ADA
Awesome right? Nah it sucks. I played the campaigns in order from the main menu, and each of them at least has a very different feel to them, so kudos to the team for managing that. Kudos taken away however as none of them are particularly good at what they're trying to do.
Leon's campaign is the most "Resident Evil-~y" of the bunch, calling on Resident Evil 2 and the fall of Raccoon and several creepy locales (a church/mausoleum, a graveyard, and spooky sewers) and having Leon make some snide one-liners like in 4. However, Leon's partner is with him the whole time cutting any real tension (don't even have to care about ammo for her) and there's some element of mystery to her about what she wants but it amounts to basically 0 in terms of the plot other than her sister dying, which basically never comes back up again. But don't worry! Her sister turns into a mega-hot zombie monster that the camera loves to stare at, so there's that weirdness added in too. Also, Leon reunites with Sherry on screen for the first time in 20 years..... and they have 2 seconds, and Sherry says "I was too young and don't really remember anything" BULLSHITTTTTT. Best moment - zombies on a plane! Literally ripped straight from Air Force One and I'm here for it. Worst - Aforementioned Sherry reunion.
Campaign 2 - Chris! It's like RE5 but even worse!! Okay not exactly, I actually super liked Piers and the ending is fuckin' solid. We get some decent character development for Chris, but it is otherwise garbage. The story bops around in time rapidly, and it is pretty tough to keep track of what exactly happens when... but we'll get to that later! Best moment - Ending scenes with Piers. Worst - battle in the street with a Giant monster that is really boring and easy.
Campaign 3 - Sherry/Jake! Jake is Wesker's kid. Stupid stupid stupid... he himself is kinda okay, but mostly only when he's interacting with Sherry who is still pretty cool. Seeing more of her is fun, but Jake is often a douche-nozzle and this game tries to be RE3 but instead of being good it is bad. So that's a strategy. It is also spending a LOT of time shipping Sherry and Jake, then does nothing with it and ends. Best moment - Jake fist-fighting shitty nemesis. Worst moment - most of the other things Jake says or does.
Campaign 4 - Ada! We get to play as Ada for real! Yeah, we did that already with Resi4 DLC buuuuut whatever, we get more from her post-Wesker biting the dust. This HAS to be interesting and revealing right?! Nahhhh we get jack shit. Not even any good moments between her and Leon. Just her 'relationship' with the big bad of the game Simmons, of which we learn almost nothing and seems like an insane and one-sided thing she has to put an end to. She also has a clone who is the final boss, which seems like it could've been cool but I promise you it's not. Well, it looks okay anyway. Best moment - real puzzles again! Worst moment - stealth sections, wtf? And they suck!
This is a tough game to wrap up in one paragraph. It's trying to move action combat forward in the series, doubles down on the co-op mechanics and ramps up the movie set pieces. All the things I really hated about 5 and was meh about even in 4 when they did it right. The combat has plenty of layers to it, but it never actually CARES or makes you interact with those layers. Enemies drop bullets and health so you don't need to be all that careful, maybe a force higher difficulty would save it? Ultimately though it just doesn't feel good to play. I've played a lot of shooters in my time, and this is one of my least favorite. For the story, obviously its dumb but it always is. Characters though, the only people who grow or do anything really of note are the new partners, who only in 1 case really make an impact on things and were enjoyable to be around.
Its really four shorter games packed into one, and that is in one way very cool that they tried to" Avengers" this shit, but honestly, they just ended up "Justice League"-ing it. And I mean that in the most offensive way possible.
2016
RE 0! A game I was not planning on playing this year until I saw some screenshots and gifs of the train and I was like eehhhhh it's on sale for 6 bucks lets do this!!
RE 0 takes place more or less concurrently with Resi 1, with Rebecca Chambers from Chris's campaign taking the starring role in this game. She is joined by a an ex-marine Billy Coen (I even remembered his name!!) who was convicted of the murder of two dozen civilians and his former squadmates. They both take shelter on a train in the woods around Raccoon City when they are attacked by monsters, and the two of them team up to survive. Now you might be thinking "Wait, are these horror protagonists actually doing the SMART thing of sticking together?!" Yes!! Now of course there are reasons in Resi 1 - 3 for why our main heroes are split up, but its still nice to see in this instance people making some sort of sense. Unlike in Resi 5 and 6 however there is no true co-op here - the player controls one main character at a time and can use a stick to move the other, or give them basic commands. They also can easily share their inventory items, and the games primary 'gimmick' over Resi 1 is how these are used in puzzle solving. Unfortunately, it does not work out as well as I imagined the developers had hoped...
While the split puzzle sections are vaguely interesting in theory, what they often work out to be is an exercise in tedium as you try to balance your very limited inventories with equipping two characters and holding onto all the quest items. This game has no shared 'box' space like RE1 - 2 - 3, but instead allows you to place items and ground and come back for them any time. I didn't find this too annoying as the map has built-in functions for keeping track of all items and where exactly you put them. There was only one particularly egregious example of a quest item being nearly forgotten and then forcing me to track it down near the end to continue (sup hookshot), otherwise I had a fine enough time doing the 'Inventory Shuffle' Resident Evil so enjoys.
Having two protagonists is a large detriment to 5 and 6 I feel, and this also carries over to 0, however to a smaller degree. Having another person with you certainly reduces the tension somewhat, and the player is pretty easily able to let the AI handle a lot of the wetwork if you want which automatically makes things a bit less scary. Thankfully the masterful fixed cameras and spooky atmosphere are very much done with finesse here so even though it shares a bad feature of 5 and 6 (partner character) it at least executes on the idea well enough so that it doesn't ruin the proceedings.
Speaking of partners - the characters themselves! I generally did like the two main characters, but ultimately felt like they were undercooked. They are initially distrustful but after saving each other a few times, they start to respect each other and Rebecca even lets Billy go free at the end as she promised (leading to her entrance in RE1, and sidestepping why Billy wasn't with her or even mentioned!), however, we get not a lot between the two as the game progresses. There's one particular moment with Billy going into his backstory (sort of) but it never actually returns to this conversation to show their growth after he rebuffs her. For several moments in the game I was waiting for a bit of banter between the two that would have fit right in, but ultimately never came. The main story itself is also kind of stupid - one of Umbrellas founders went crazy and injected himself with T-Virus leeches and turned into an anime villain..? RE0 is the first game chronologically to descend into dumb anime bullshit and I'm not happy about it alright?
Ultimately, Resident Evil 0 suffers from the same basic issue that RE5 did - It is aping an excellent classic of a game, with a handful of things to set it apart (albeit large things!), but just not being as clever and bold as what they're emulating. The game is cut right from the cloth of RE1, and it shows in the best and worst ways possible. The obtuse and silly puzzles, the oppressive atmosphere and environments, the anxiety-inducing camera angles, balancing health/ammo/progress... all well done and compared favorably to 1. However, it lacks a cohesive narrative, charismatic and endearing characters, a memorable setting (the Train is AWESOME, everything after that is pretty meh) and the sheer cleverness of its predecessor. That along with a faulty co-op system that I'm sure sounded great on paper but just didn't work out in practice... RE 0 is not one of my favorites, but I still thinks its good!
P.S. I picked this up after I beat the first campaign of RE6 and finished it well before I finished the third or even fourth campaign. Holy crap it is so much better lol
RE 0 takes place more or less concurrently with Resi 1, with Rebecca Chambers from Chris's campaign taking the starring role in this game. She is joined by a an ex-marine Billy Coen (I even remembered his name!!) who was convicted of the murder of two dozen civilians and his former squadmates. They both take shelter on a train in the woods around Raccoon City when they are attacked by monsters, and the two of them team up to survive. Now you might be thinking "Wait, are these horror protagonists actually doing the SMART thing of sticking together?!" Yes!! Now of course there are reasons in Resi 1 - 3 for why our main heroes are split up, but its still nice to see in this instance people making some sort of sense. Unlike in Resi 5 and 6 however there is no true co-op here - the player controls one main character at a time and can use a stick to move the other, or give them basic commands. They also can easily share their inventory items, and the games primary 'gimmick' over Resi 1 is how these are used in puzzle solving. Unfortunately, it does not work out as well as I imagined the developers had hoped...
While the split puzzle sections are vaguely interesting in theory, what they often work out to be is an exercise in tedium as you try to balance your very limited inventories with equipping two characters and holding onto all the quest items. This game has no shared 'box' space like RE1 - 2 - 3, but instead allows you to place items and ground and come back for them any time. I didn't find this too annoying as the map has built-in functions for keeping track of all items and where exactly you put them. There was only one particularly egregious example of a quest item being nearly forgotten and then forcing me to track it down near the end to continue (sup hookshot), otherwise I had a fine enough time doing the 'Inventory Shuffle' Resident Evil so enjoys.
Having two protagonists is a large detriment to 5 and 6 I feel, and this also carries over to 0, however to a smaller degree. Having another person with you certainly reduces the tension somewhat, and the player is pretty easily able to let the AI handle a lot of the wetwork if you want which automatically makes things a bit less scary. Thankfully the masterful fixed cameras and spooky atmosphere are very much done with finesse here so even though it shares a bad feature of 5 and 6 (partner character) it at least executes on the idea well enough so that it doesn't ruin the proceedings.
Speaking of partners - the characters themselves! I generally did like the two main characters, but ultimately felt like they were undercooked. They are initially distrustful but after saving each other a few times, they start to respect each other and Rebecca even lets Billy go free at the end as she promised (leading to her entrance in RE1, and sidestepping why Billy wasn't with her or even mentioned!), however, we get not a lot between the two as the game progresses. There's one particular moment with Billy going into his backstory (sort of) but it never actually returns to this conversation to show their growth after he rebuffs her. For several moments in the game I was waiting for a bit of banter between the two that would have fit right in, but ultimately never came. The main story itself is also kind of stupid - one of Umbrellas founders went crazy and injected himself with T-Virus leeches and turned into an anime villain..? RE0 is the first game chronologically to descend into dumb anime bullshit and I'm not happy about it alright?
Ultimately, Resident Evil 0 suffers from the same basic issue that RE5 did - It is aping an excellent classic of a game, with a handful of things to set it apart (albeit large things!), but just not being as clever and bold as what they're emulating. The game is cut right from the cloth of RE1, and it shows in the best and worst ways possible. The obtuse and silly puzzles, the oppressive atmosphere and environments, the anxiety-inducing camera angles, balancing health/ammo/progress... all well done and compared favorably to 1. However, it lacks a cohesive narrative, charismatic and endearing characters, a memorable setting (the Train is AWESOME, everything after that is pretty meh) and the sheer cleverness of its predecessor. That along with a faulty co-op system that I'm sure sounded great on paper but just didn't work out in practice... RE 0 is not one of my favorites, but I still thinks its good!
P.S. I picked this up after I beat the first campaign of RE6 and finished it well before I finished the third or even fourth campaign. Holy crap it is so much better lol
Time for another Beat-Em-Up! Only two of one of my favorite genres in one year..? Actually two games in one! Tower of Doom and the eponymous Chronicles of Mystara. These were arcade beat em ups from the very early 90's and it shows!
The first game Tower of Doom is pretty barebones as far as features go. There's four characters, you pick one and go through some pretty straightforward levels and punch kobolds til you find a boss. Well actually it was more like troglodytes rather than kobolds but... who the hell picked trogs btw? Those are DnD enemies that are basically no one's favorite! Oh no you're super smelly that's such a great defining characteristic... anyway you proceed through some decent enough environments, talk to 1 note townfolk (with some pretty solid art actually) and save the day from the Evil Lich... somebody I dunno. He certainly looks imposing and his final boss battle is bullshit. Thankfully these versions give you infinite game overs haha...
Chronicles of Mystara is the second game and things are a heck of a lot more polished. There's two more characters to choose from, the UI is a LOT slicker and better laid out, I could even read what my spells were!! I respect any game though that assumes I have an encyclopedic knowledge of early DnD - because I sure as hell do. This time you're out an adventure to defeat an evil sorceress, and she actually thwarts you several times through the adventure and has some cool "Shadow elves" working for her! Did the drow not have a name yet? I thought they for sure did at this point...
Mystara at least has some very segments where you actually get to fight a sweet dragon (and become legends!!), visit a gnome village, fight on an airship, go up a giant revolving tower (that moves in the background!! neat!)and general high level dnd shenanigans. Speaking of high-level, I had a lot of spells this time. I played as the Elf in both campaigns, who is basically a fighter-mage, and had a very nice time balancing the two aspects of the character. You can also free-swap characters when you die so I did try out the other classes for portions of each level just to get a taste, but I do love me some fighter-mage.
The combat in the games felt pretty solid, as the Elf I had a large variety of spells and since I didn't have to pay for each revive in the game, my spells came back with enough regularity to be fun. There were the very obvious and cool choices like chain lightining and fireball, but also invisibility, polymorph other and cloudkill make an appearance as well. There's an equipment system in the game as well as you find magical items but frankly I was not able to make heads or tails of it. I just beat up everyone and moved along!
I didn't spend an immense amount of time with the series, mostly just a few slow days during Thanksgiving weekend, but it was a good enough time. It has been in my backlog quite some time, but having a taste of DnD and a solid beat em up was a great way to pass the time. Not as complex or satisfying as River City Girls or even approaching Scott Pilgrim but damn good at what it wanted to be.
The first game Tower of Doom is pretty barebones as far as features go. There's four characters, you pick one and go through some pretty straightforward levels and punch kobolds til you find a boss. Well actually it was more like troglodytes rather than kobolds but... who the hell picked trogs btw? Those are DnD enemies that are basically no one's favorite! Oh no you're super smelly that's such a great defining characteristic... anyway you proceed through some decent enough environments, talk to 1 note townfolk (with some pretty solid art actually) and save the day from the Evil Lich... somebody I dunno. He certainly looks imposing and his final boss battle is bullshit. Thankfully these versions give you infinite game overs haha...
Chronicles of Mystara is the second game and things are a heck of a lot more polished. There's two more characters to choose from, the UI is a LOT slicker and better laid out, I could even read what my spells were!! I respect any game though that assumes I have an encyclopedic knowledge of early DnD - because I sure as hell do. This time you're out an adventure to defeat an evil sorceress, and she actually thwarts you several times through the adventure and has some cool "Shadow elves" working for her! Did the drow not have a name yet? I thought they for sure did at this point...
Mystara at least has some very segments where you actually get to fight a sweet dragon (and become legends!!), visit a gnome village, fight on an airship, go up a giant revolving tower (that moves in the background!! neat!)and general high level dnd shenanigans. Speaking of high-level, I had a lot of spells this time. I played as the Elf in both campaigns, who is basically a fighter-mage, and had a very nice time balancing the two aspects of the character. You can also free-swap characters when you die so I did try out the other classes for portions of each level just to get a taste, but I do love me some fighter-mage.
The combat in the games felt pretty solid, as the Elf I had a large variety of spells and since I didn't have to pay for each revive in the game, my spells came back with enough regularity to be fun. There were the very obvious and cool choices like chain lightining and fireball, but also invisibility, polymorph other and cloudkill make an appearance as well. There's an equipment system in the game as well as you find magical items but frankly I was not able to make heads or tails of it. I just beat up everyone and moved along!
I didn't spend an immense amount of time with the series, mostly just a few slow days during Thanksgiving weekend, but it was a good enough time. It has been in my backlog quite some time, but having a taste of DnD and a solid beat em up was a great way to pass the time. Not as complex or satisfying as River City Girls or even approaching Scott Pilgrim but damn good at what it wanted to be.
Finally a single player Star Wars game!! And it's quite good too... It's been nearly ten years since we had an enjoyable single player Star Wars game (Force Unleashed, which wasn't actually that good..) but the crazy guys at Respawn (Titanfall devs) took their shot and yeah, it's good.
The game is led by Cal Kestus, played by the younger brother of Shameless fame as a young man who survived the purge of the Jedi by the sacrifice of his tough-but-fair master, played by Travis Willingham. The game itself is an odd mix of Sekiro + Souls + Uncharted with a splash of Metroidvania. The combat is fairly tough and focused on dodging/blocking/parrying, and has a checkpoint and health system ripped straight from Souls games. Unfortunately as this is the developers first real go at this kind of game, it doesn't quite have the polish and feel to it that Souls manages in their games and there are more than a few times where you will die because the controls and animations weren't quite as good as you might expect them to be. There's a fairly good amount of enemy variety in the planets you traverse and most things are enjoyable enough to fight once you get the hang of things. Your expanding repertoire of force abilities also expands your combat options as well, though I'll admit I didn't use them that often... Once I got the double-bladed saber I pretty much just cut people to pieces haha
Speaking of Force powers, this is where the metroidvania stuff sets in. Each planet (or major section at least) has some force power that will unlock as you progress that will allow you to find more secrets on other worlds in addition to advancing the plot. This is an interesting tool that certainly helps pad out the run time and for folks who enjoy seeking every nook and cranny (and the map is just damn helpful in showing you where you can and can't go) but to me felt like more reason to just wait until near the end of the game and just do it all at once? But normally I'm not a huge fan of these games so maybe that's not what you're intended to do. The other major gameplay pillar is the Uncharted-style exploration and puzzle solving. There's MANY jumping and climbing sections which all look very nice and are generally straight-forward, but unfortunately I feel like some of them are pretty finicky and too easy to fail at in the first few attempts and it gets reeeeal frustrating.
For the story, it tells a Fine-Enough tale of a padawan trying to find his place in a galaxy gone mad. He starts an expedition to find a mysterious holocron with the location of new force sensitives
The game is led by Cal Kestus, played by the younger brother of Shameless fame as a young man who survived the purge of the Jedi by the sacrifice of his tough-but-fair master, played by Travis Willingham. The game itself is an odd mix of Sekiro + Souls + Uncharted with a splash of Metroidvania. The combat is fairly tough and focused on dodging/blocking/parrying, and has a checkpoint and health system ripped straight from Souls games. Unfortunately as this is the developers first real go at this kind of game, it doesn't quite have the polish and feel to it that Souls manages in their games and there are more than a few times where you will die because the controls and animations weren't quite as good as you might expect them to be. There's a fairly good amount of enemy variety in the planets you traverse and most things are enjoyable enough to fight once you get the hang of things. Your expanding repertoire of force abilities also expands your combat options as well, though I'll admit I didn't use them that often... Once I got the double-bladed saber I pretty much just cut people to pieces haha
Speaking of Force powers, this is where the metroidvania stuff sets in. Each planet (or major section at least) has some force power that will unlock as you progress that will allow you to find more secrets on other worlds in addition to advancing the plot. This is an interesting tool that certainly helps pad out the run time and for folks who enjoy seeking every nook and cranny (and the map is just damn helpful in showing you where you can and can't go) but to me felt like more reason to just wait until near the end of the game and just do it all at once? But normally I'm not a huge fan of these games so maybe that's not what you're intended to do. The other major gameplay pillar is the Uncharted-style exploration and puzzle solving. There's MANY jumping and climbing sections which all look very nice and are generally straight-forward, but unfortunately I feel like some of them are pretty finicky and too easy to fail at in the first few attempts and it gets reeeeal frustrating.
For the story, it tells a Fine-Enough tale of a padawan trying to find his place in a galaxy gone mad. He starts an expedition to find a mysterious holocron with the location of new force sensitives