desperately needs quality of life improvements:
1) show my cards fully, why would you hide most of the combat text of the cards I'm holding??
2) speed up the animations, they are way too slow. Not just during combat but between combat
3) allow single clicks to play the card not double clicks
4) allow shortcuts 1,2,3,4 etc to play the card currently it's way too slow and annoying to play I'll check back again in future and if it's more playable, will review the score
This game is SO disappointing because it could have been great. The new format is fine with me, I like the transition to roguelite format, as the first darkest dungeon was such a long slog. I never bothered to finish it. BUT.. you just can't make a roguelite game with hours upon hours of NOTHING in the form of the stagecoach sections, set piece animations, and pointless stops. Roguelikes will be played over and over so they must be snappy, lean, responsive, spammable, addicting, momentum-driving, lose-yourself-in-the-gameplay-grind, flow state bliss! Not slow, trudging, boring, tedious, eyerolling, watch tapping, quagmire loving mental molasses. There is a decent game underneath all this garbage but it's simply not worth your time to access. The worst thing about it is that it would have been so easy for them to remove the padding and make a snappy roguelike, after YEARS of playtesting, but clearly someone on the production team is too attached to the stagecoach as a concept, and wouldn't let it go. Then group think set in and it was accepted despite them having a deep seeded concern at how slow and boring it is. Don't fight the urge.. just get rid of the stupid thing. The sink loss fallacy... They don't want to get rid of all the work put in and yet it would vastly improve the game. They even have a slay the spire styke encounter map just sitting there - that's your encounter system right there! Just use it!
Incredibly boring. For context I'm a huge strategy, tactics and rpg nerd having sunk thousands of hours into these formats since 1990. Gloomhaven takes the tactical rpg template and adds layer upon layer of annoying, contrived mechanics in order to create difficulty but which just reduce the fun factor instead. The core culprit is the card burn system which means you run out of actions over time. The abilities are already weak (like attack at range for 2 damage.. which has a significant chance to be a 1 or 0 due to combat rolls), do on top of being weak are also scarce. I get the need to create tension and pressure but the system chosen here reduces fun an increased tedium. Exhaustion (which is when you run out of cards) could have instead been a resource that you spend on moves, like energy. The end result is that it can take two hours to complete a tiny fight in 2 rooms. Even if you are victorious, it feels like a job. Like work. Without any of the satisfaction that other tactical fighters deliver. If you love strategy and tactics and are thinking about buying, go watch one of the 3 hour YouTube walkthroughs of a single tiny scenario, where one turn sometimes takes 15 minutes just to decide which cards to burn, and imagine if that's how you want to spend 3 hours. If so go for it
Edit: lowering my score from a 9 to a 6. Oh my god the story and cutscenes are so effing boring. And they are soooooo long. It's like being forced to watch a boring movie. CD Projekt.. just give us the damn gameplay that's why we play games, leave the cutscenes to movies. The good: - Cyberpunk atmosphere is almost perfect.. the sights and sounds and people are twisted and futuristic - Gunplay is satisfying but held back a bit by low framerates and some input lag - Fair amount of Deus-ex style freedom in how you face challenges - Voice acting is stellar - very immersive - The bugs aren't nearly as bad as the anti-hype makes out, but yeah sometimes you fall through the floor to your death The bad: - There is much depth in the story and little depth in the gameplay. For me, I want the reverse of that situation. There are too many boring cutscenes and dialogue lines. I want 90% gameplay 10% story not 50/50. This is why I deducted 1 point - Combat is a little too easy. Even on very hard, I'm not having any trouble taking out big groups. I'm using an assault rifle build and just headshot everyone. While it's really satisfying, it's also repetitive and easy. Overall I already have my money's worth at 20 hours and I reckon CDProjekt did an awesome job with this game. I'd be raging if I had a ps4 but on PC it's fine and probably less buggy than many other open world releases in the past.
Zooming stuttering makes it unplayable. Contacted Epic Games for a refund after 4 hours of gameplay (most of it trying to fix issues) and 2 days after purchase. Was denied. Spent $150 australian. Avoid.
A scummy piece of rubbish designed for 1 purpose - to fleece money out of young kids who are too inexperienced to understand the gamified free-to-wait exploitation that is this game. This takes Bethesda to EA levels of corporate evil
Exceeded my expectations hugely. The world is gorgeous and immense. The combat is better than skyrim (but perhaps not as cohesive as WoW). The skills are beautifully designed in a Guild Wars style, even to the point of switching between 2 sets based on your weapons. The first 10 levels can be a drag at times, but then the game opens up and becomes a real treat, especially if you have a friend to level with. And the best thing? This is really the first game, ever in my opinion, that really nails the feeling of exploration. Just walk in any direction and enjoy the experience, there will be plenty to do (and to kill). An amazing accomplishment from the developers. If you're a long time gamer like me (25 years +) there will be plenty here to entertain - the game has depth and is clearly a labour of love. The size of the PVP maps is totally incredible. Bigger than anything else. I expected a lukewarm cheeseburger and got the gourmet degustation. Well done Bethesda
So Walking Dead isn't a game as such, it's more like an interactive movie. There's no gameplay.. it's a matter of choosing dialogue and clicking on objects to interact with them. Need to open a door? Click the door. That's as complex as it gets. My problem with the game isn't that it's light on gameplay, because that's intended and has been executed fairly well. My problem is that it's a story and dialogue-driven experience, and the story is boring. If you've ever read a half decent book, you'll be bored to tears with this material. For the hell of it, imagine you aren't playing a game and instead you're watching an animated movie; you'll soon realise it would be the blandest, most predictable, cliched piece of crap ever created. So if it's light on gameplay, and the story is terrible, what's the point? What's the point indeed. Anyway, you may as well get it since it's $5 on humble bundle and decide for yourself.
Thank god for demos!! Make sure you try the free demo on Steam before handing over the cash. As a hardcore strategy geek, I have been considering this one for a while, and have to say, I'm siding with the naysayers. Too much time spent on lame cut scenes, 'story', and other visual effects and way, way too little time spent on strategic depth. This is not a bingo. I had more fun playing Orcs Must Die than this tripe. Seriously lamenting the old school at this point.
Dec 7 2012. It's ugly, right from the title screen. The ship models are distorted and messy - they look unfinished and cartooney against the sharp, industrial look of Eve Online or Sins. The UI is also hard on the eyes, although the actual starmap looks pretty good. The gameplay is also dull. Exploring and colonizing systems is done via 'missions', which are essentially the same as other 4X games except that they take 4x the number of mouseclicks to initiate. To colonize a planet, you don't just build a colony ship.. you have to build a command ship, then a colony ship, then a supply ship, then attach an admiral to create a fleet, THEN select your destination. I've heard this game called 'deep' but 'convoluted' comes to mind. The first time you enter into combat, you're greeted with more of the terrible graphics, and absolutely no inkling as to what tactics might benefit you. Unlike the Total War series, where it's clear that higher terrain is good for archers, while hiding in the woods is a good defense from missiles, etc., instead you are floating around in space with the only discernable strategies being.. move there, or shoot that. The UI is counterintuitive at every turn. You could pick up MOO2 and learn it without looking at a single manual or forum. This game is a dog's breakfast and you will be forced to look at the manual (which is awful) the beginner's guide (which is also awful, but longer) then the wiki (which is entirely incomplete). Here's an excerpt from the beginner's guide: "Once the core modules of a ship have been decided upon, you can begin to arm the space-craft with weapons across the breadth of it's surface. The amount of weapon points available will vary depending on the hull type, size and command, mission and propulsion modules selected". This is the entire section on ship weapon design. Great, so I can put weapons on the ship. Brilliant. What's the point of having mounts in particular locations? Is there a directional advantage? Would there be a benefit to placing certain weapons in certain slots? This game is complex in the same way walking around someone else's house in the dark is complex. Here's another example - trade is fundamental to a successful empire, and these require freighters. There is no section on freighters in the manual and no in-game explanation. What are the devs smoking? All of this aside, once I got into the game and had a dozen colonies with a humming economy, several naval bases and attack fleets, I found I was having the same amount of fun that I was at the start, i.e. none. I think the recent high scores for the game are because people are impressed it's actually out of alpha 1 year after its launch. It's just a shame that the game looks 15 years out of date and is boring as bat ****. UPDATE 8 December 2012. After playing this for a whole day, this game is even worse than I thought, so changing the 5 rating to a 1. So many of the mechanics make absolutely no sense. For example, I had 3 fleets defending an outpost planet that was close to enemy territory. Sure enough, the enemy attacks.. but I can only enter combat with 1 fleet while the other 2 wait. Why? There's no logical reason for this.. if you have fleets stationed at a system, they should all be able to fight. Another example - each fleet has a home system. If a fleet leaves the system for a mission, once the mission is completed, it has to return to its home system to refuel and resupply. Why? Why not just fly to the nearest system to refuel? Basically, the developers have invented these mechanics to create their gameplay - and they are all nonsensical. They all serve to make the game more complicated, less elegant, and less logical. Combine that with the steep learning curve and lack of information, and it's just a mess. If you decide to embrace all of their illogical mechanics, you might have a great time after about 20 hours of learning the fundamentals, but I'd rather spend time on a well-made game
Damn, this game is fun. It takes half an hour to get accustomed to the mechanics, then you're away. I've been exploring a few games to get my strategy fix, and can happily say I've found what I've been looking for. Wasted 10 hours this weekend and would gladly waste 10 more if I didn't have to work tomorrow. Some reviewers will say the game lacks depth, and they're right, but I like what they've built. The game is streamlined in places where it makes sense and is really elegant and liberating. One example is the ocean travel system. If you have a unit that needs to cross water, just walk it to the shore and next turn it will build its own boat and take to the seas. No building a dockyard, then a transport, then loading the transport. This is daring, and ingenious. Basically, Warlock gets out of your way so you can engage in tactical fighting non stop for hours on end. No doubt it will lose its pull a bit quicker than some deeper strategy games, but I really don't care at this point because I've already gotten my $20 worth and will do so five times over. Grab it and enjoy!
"IAM" --- Interactive Movie --- This needs to be a new genre, because Witcher 2 is not an RPG. One of the player reviews here says the game went the same way as Dragon Age 2 and Mass Effect.. and they're right. It's not really that fun to play, but looks gorgeous. The characters are impressive but the story has glaring holes and wouldn't get a passing grade in creative writing 101. I had high hopes for CDProjekt because they're oldschool gamers and run the great **** website, but they've sold out. I can't blame them.. maybe I would do the same.. who doesn't like getting paid for what they do? It's just a damn shame that the victim of that crime is creative, challenging, deep RPGs. The consoles won - PC RPGs are dead.
Should you buy this game? Is that why you're reading this? If so, yes, it's worth the money - but only because it's cheap now. There's a lot about Demon's Souls that is beautiful, even memorable. Some of the set pieces are awesome, and the grim dark styling is refreshing in a sea of cutesy characters and colourful UI design. So what's the problem? You will never, ever see this game on the PC - because with decent controls, this game would be a complete pushover. Yes, the game presents a challenge, but if you're honest, you'll realise that 50% or more of the challenge comes from the controls. Some parts are broken - you'll see what they are especially if you're a magic user. But really, a console controller just doesn't suit a game where the slightest error results in death. It's like giving a baseball bat to a tennis player and asking them how hard it is to play a match. Overall though, it's a great production, and enjoyable, but the more you play it the less satisfying and fun it gets, as you realise more with every moment that you're not fighting the monsters, you're fighting the dual shock.
