ricesautes

DA:O was one of my favorite games of all time (scored a 10 here) and DA2 was a huge let-down (scored a 3 here). I'm only 5 hours in, so this is mostly a placeholder score, but it's returned more to DA:O in terms of scope, immersion and characters. Running on an i7 with a 1-year old graphic card, everything looks great, and I don't have any graphics complaints. I haven't experienced any crashes (yet), but I'd take a point off for very slow loadtimes on nearly every screen. Skyrim and similar games load in about 5-10 seconds on my rig, whereas DAI is taking a minimum of 30 seconds and once took about 3 minutes, to the point I thought the game had crashed. Camera and controls are a bit wonky, but not as bad as other ports I've played. The characters were better than I was expecting coming out of DA2. Will update this up or down as I progress, but wanted to plant a flag that personal experience isn't as buggy/crashy as other reviews are indicating.

As noted in my original May 25th review, when I rated a 7, I said it was very close to an 8 or 9. With 3 patches and the new Elven and Artifact DLC, the addition of lords and artifacts help fill a void. A few stability issues still and unbuffed naval still ****, but those are minor complaints. It is far and away the spiritual successor to MoM now. Will re-review if future patches and DLC change my score. MY ORIGINAL REVIEW FROM MAY 25 FOLLOWS: I've been a big fan of old school Master of Magic from the mid-90s and been trying to find a suitable modern replacement since. This is probably the closest that I've come across, although it still has some flaws that keep it from being a full love. It plays like Civ with magic versus its own style. The good: City management, troop management, magic research/casting. The game flows well, and runs smoothly. The bad: Combat stinks and naval/sea is horrendous. Combat is unpleasant since there is no unit stacking (a huge negative, imo), no tactical fighting (a la MoM), and very limited magic casting to support a fight. Also, there is DLC with some hero options, but otherwise there are no hero units available. Honestly, there can't be enough bad things said about naval. The buildable units are weak, and you are constantly bombarded by sea serpents that are impossible to counter and eliminate. The strongest available naval unit, the Galleon, dies easily and can't be buffed or spawned fast enough to actually do anything worthwhile. As others have noted, there's really only an extermination option available as a victory path. I could theoretically cast the Unity spell to win, but it kept getting cancelled by the other wizards, and there's no way to buff yourself or the spell up higher to avoid the cancellation. With a few balancing issues corrected (notably naval), I'd give this a strong 8 or 9.

The game isn't bad, but as the estimable Gertrude Stein noted: "There's no there there". I would probably give it a 5 on its own merits, but I have to deduct 2 points for ruining the luster on the incredibly awesome DA:O. Everything that was right in the original has been toned down and dumbed down. The story is meh, the characters are meh, the loot is meh, the locations are meh, and the outcome is meh. I realize it would have been hard to top the first game, but this pales in comparison to even the Awakening DLC.

One of my favorite games of all time, with amazing depth and story. I've revisited it a couple of times with some of the mods created by the community to keep it fresh. (Thanks for "Skip the Fade" mod!) The voice acting and storytelling are truly top-notch, and I actually cared for the characters. It's unfortunate that DA2 was such a letdown, being the Phantom Menace to DA:O's Empire Strikes Back that leaves a taint.

I was never able to really get into Witcher 1 for some reason, but the deficiencies, combat and plot advancement were all improved in Witcher 2. Skyrim and Witcher 2 were both tops on my list for 2011. The Enhanced Edition was even better and has added more replayability, and I appreciate that Projekt Red has actively grown and supported their games post-launch.

Bought it for my birthday that first week when it came out, due to the hype and visuals that looked like it was an updated Dungeon Keeper. It was unplayably blech. I'll give it a 2 for the number of hours that I played it. At least I had some decent birthday cake that year.

Very minor upgrade from Tropico 3. The Modern Times campaign add-on is significantly better, and should have been Tropico 4 to begin with. I can only recommend this game due to Modern Times, otherwise just stick with T3.

This is what Tropico 4 should have been to begin with. The base game is too close to Tropico 3, but this introduces significant new options and gameplay. The campaign also introduces a Timeline feature where the modernization upgrades happen year by year instead of just unlocking everything from the get-go. The campaign scenarios are pretty contrived, but has some spot-on parodies that raise a chuckle.

I got a 4-pack during the last Steam sale because my kids and I like to play tower defense games. I wasn't sure how well TD and FPS styles could ever co-exist in one package, but Sanctum pulls it off pretty flawlessly. I'd strongly recommend this title for tower defense genre lovers. The multi-player co-op is well done and smooth, although the default font-size for text chat is ginormous. Game play is conducive to both quick, casual games, as well as multi-hour slugfests, depending on your mood and time. The maps and gameplay can get a bit repetitive. If they had 10-15 maps even, they could add to the replayability. I also feel they max out the player's FPS guns too quickly. FPS mode is critical to success on some maps and with anti-air, but the monsters scale way past your guns after 20 or so stages. At later stages, it's just about impossible to lose to the ground monsters while simultaneously being just about impossible to kill the air monsters. Probably an 8 game, but +1 for an interesting concept and for critics rating too low.

When Steam recently had their summer sale, I took a chance on this title after reading the reviews here, particularly those who said to pick it instead of DA2. Very wise decision -- this game far exceeded my expectations. In a sentence, I'd say the gameplay is roughly similar to Fallout3/NV set in a medieval fantasy world, which isn't surprising given they share the Gamebryo engine. What is surprising is that the game is remarkably well-textured, well-scripted, well-voiced and overall well-executed and never crashed one single time throughout 40+ hours of gameplay. (So, FO:NV, you have no excuse why you can't run longer than 30 minutes at a time without barfing) The game is a somewhat slow boil to get fully going, but that actually made me enjoy it quite a bit more. DKS2 builds anticipation in the player to get to the next set of milestones, and it's handled in a natural manner. It takes ~15-20 hours of gameplay to earn your wings, so to speak, while feeling that you're really working for it instead of just going through the motions or filler quests. Some of the side quests are somewhat filler, but they weren't much different (good or bad) from similar games. The core main quests were pretty awesome from beginning to end, and always advanced the plot accordingly. It truly feels like you are pursuing a destiny and not just point-click-shoot. It's immersive enough that I could lose hours of time, and that hasn't happened for a long time. The boss battles were mostly hard for my archer, including 2 battles where I died 15+ times -- to finally beat the boss reminded me of days back on the NES when you had tears of joy for finally beating a hard part. The game does get easier about 2/3 through, where you're not exactly invincible but not in mortal danger either. As a huge FO3/FO:NV fan, I compare the open world and texturing to it, and find DKS superior enough that I didn't believe they were on the same engine until I looked it up. DKS is a mostly open world as well (you do move between major portions of the world as the story advances) and plays out superbly in 3-dimensions with the addition of flight. My only minor gripe is on the NPC animations when they are talking. They all talk with their arms flailing and strange head rolls/tilts. It's just a bit disconcerting and silly at times. The dialogue was also well-written and voice actors did a good job overall as well. There were humorous dialog choices, including some that will reference decisions and characters from 20-30 gameplay hours ago. It was a pleasant, unexpected touch. The Flames of Vengeance expansion add-on wasn't as epic, but I suppose that's to be expected for an add-on. It was longer than a lot of DLC, adding on a solid 15 hours (doing all side quests), but the map and scope were more limited and it felt more repetitive. Also, in the FoV add-on, you get showered with top-of-the-line equipment and upgrades non-stop. Want a skill point? Here, take 3! It greatly reduced the challenge of the add-on. Independently, I'd only give FoV a 7 or 8, but they did a nice job tying it in with the main plot line instead of just being a random "now, let's do something crazy different" like most add-ons/DLC out there. I would probably score this game a highly respectable 9, but I give it a 10 just because it's so much better than most well-publicized games out there that I want to make sure it gets some love.