Various thoughts on a variety of topics.
Not much to say about Dragon’s Dogma II to be honest, as it’s effectively identical to the first game as far as gameplay goes. You no longer have to micromanage your level-ups, which is nice, but the camera seems like it’s far closer than it used to be.
Pretty minor differences all told, so if you greatly enjoyed that (or never played it) then you may as well give this one a chance.
A storyline sequel to PoE: Deadfire, Avowed goes in a completely different direction. While as that (and its prequel) are third-person party-based tactical RPGs this is closer to Dragon Age Inquisition in gameplay style.
What it shares with the previous Pillars games are the setting details, plot developments, and emphasis on quest-based progression; you’ll get far more experience from completing quests than killing things. Many quests also have multiple ways to resolve them, offering a decent amount of roleplaying opportunity. You have far less choice where companions are concerned though and are forced to both recruit all of them and take at least two with you at all times (once you’ve progressed far enough in the main quest). Which is annoying.
Also annoying is the equipment system, which can screw you over if you don’t understand how the unique item scaling works. See, every unique weapon or chestpiece you find will match its quality tier to the highest tiered relevant item you currently have in your inventory (assuming its minimum tier isn’t higher). If you upgrade some leather armor to the Exquisite tier for example, all unique armor you find afterward will also be at least Exquisite tier. So, to get the most out of your materials, you’ll want to only upgrade one weapon and chestpiece at a time and save up enough to go straight from +0 to the next tier level (skipping +1 through +3) in case you find a better unique than the one you’re currently using.
Switching gears, ranged combat is what you’d expect from an open-world FPS: Basically you want to line-up headshots while dodging away from anything that tries to rush you (there are no cover mechanics). Melee seems a bit more dynamic with its blocking and parrying system, but I’ve been focused on first pistols and now rifles so can’t really comment on it at this time. Enemy behavior is pretty simplistic though and does not appear to change much if at all over the course of the game… which will probably get boring if you don’t switch up your weapon selection.
Honestly at this point, at level 15 with Superb equipment and having just entered the third area, I feel little incentive to keep playing. There’s the railroading going on in the main storyline regarding the companions, combat as mentioned is pretty same-y, and exploration lacks a certain something where the loot is concerned. Maybe being able to equip your companions would help? As it is it feels like a waste to find nothing but items destined to be vendor trash since they don’t fit my build.
Long story short, mostly what playing this game has accomplished is make me nostalgic for Greedfall. May just end up re-installing that instead of going further with this.
Another game similar to Slay the Spire, Zoeti‘s key differences are that it features a storyline structured like a visual novel and uses a standard card deck in battles. The former is a bit of a problem due to both the questionable dialog and that you have to skip through it on subsequent runs while the latter is more interesting, tying abilities to poker hands instead of individual cards.
Having skipped Trails Into Reverie after getting burned-out completing four Cold Steel games, I went into Trails Through Daybreak hoping for something a bit different. That was not to be; the only notable difference between this game and the last CS one is that you can now fight and defeat trash mobs on the field map using basic attacks. It’s certainly not bad, but releasing essentially the same game every year or two just gets old.
Songs of Conquest is, simply speaking, a Heroes of Might and Magic clone. If that’s what you’re looking for it should scratch the itch, but I was hoping for something leaning a bit more toward RPG instead of turn-based strategy.
Which brings me to King’s Bounty II, which is both quite a bit like previous installments in the franchise and notably different in that it leans harder on the RPG aspect. Character building is the same except that higher level skills are now gated by alignment choices, army recruitment is the same except now each unit has a maximum number regardless of Leadership score, exploration is the same although now it’s done in a ground-level over-the-shoulder view while featuring far fewer enemy encounters, and finally questing has been greatly expanded (albeit still with the same bizarrely disjointed English dialog).
For the most part I had a lot of fun going through it as a Paladin, but there are some notable oddities like Celestial Warrior recruitment being hidden (the recruiter pops up after a specific quest in an old out of the way part of the Mage Tower) and the legendary armor rewards apparently being randomized (so make sure to save before completing the Julian and Rosaline quest and various Cult of Unity subquests). For army composition I went with:
Spirits of Light -> Disciples -> Bear Riders -> Celestial Warriors
Swordsman -> Cavalrymen
Crossbowman -> Royal Mages
Raiders -> Mercenaries -> Red Dragon
Free Archers -> Dark Adepts
Wasn’t really fond of the Cavalrymen to be honest since they died weirdly often, but you can’t really complain about the Morale boost they give. Had a naked 5,590 Leadership at Paladin level 30 with I assume all totems collected (also 90 Knowledge, 15 Magic Power, and 5 Warfare), meaning at least one rank in the Glory skill is necessary (assuming no relevant equipment) to recruit the maximum number of Celestial Warriors and/or a Red Dragon. Chimera oddly require 2,500 per unit and so need an insane 7,500 to max them out which I’m not sure is actually possible to achieve even if it were worth it.
Recruitment Unlock Quests
Finally we come to skills. At level 30, and having done all quests, you’ll have 128 Skill points and 43/41 Alignment points. So you’ll have enough to both max out one tree and unlock the second tier of the opposing tree, assuming you do the latter first to avoid getting locked out of those choices. I’d suggest getting at least 8 Order points on any character in order to grab Glory and at least the first rank of Training (you can always respec after hitting max level). After that it’s a choice between maxing out either Power or Finesse; the third and fourth tiers of Order/Anarchy are garbage in comparison. I’d also strongly suggest avoiding all the money-increasing skills since you’ll have no shortage of that as long as you explore a decent amount and make use of the post-battle heal function.
Now it’s time to play through as a Mage to see how effective trying to win primarily through spellcasting is. For Paladin I ended up going Fire/Life for the Inspire, Burning Touch, and Inner Flame spells, and so for Mage I plan to go Death/Ice to focus on debuffs and Air for Chain Lightning, Portal, and Summon Chimera.
The A Dance of Masks DLC for WotR adds two things to the main campaign.
The first is a somewhat sizable questline which triggers partway through Chapter V, which happens to include a mostly optional set of arena battles against an assortment of fairly random opponents. Apart from some awkward voice acting, as if the actors hadn’t had time to re-familiarize themselves with the roles (only Regil and to a lesser extent Woljif didn’t stand out), there’s nothing much on the technical side to complain about. Mechanically it’s pretty easy and tosses a bunch of overpowered items at you on top of that. That said, the arena fights on the other hand are a completely mixed bag. While most don’t pose much of an issue, there are some that are just plain ridiculous (like the wild hunt, or that shadow monk if you don’t have Mass Heal). I certainly do appreciate the free Greater Restoration after every match though and the rewards are useful enough.
The other addition is a new quest available to the Devil mythic path if the queen survives the events at Iz. Not really sure what the point of that was honestly as it feels kind of like it’s sectioned off into its own thing and doesn’t really flow well.
I played the above shortly after quickly running through the Gold Dragon endgame and finishing up my Aeon playthrough (made some mistakes there like going Crossblooded when the Abyss STR bonus gets overridden by DoM’s +4 attribute potion and forgetting Transformation) to finally get that Sadistic Game Design achievement.
Aeon’s unique ending is pretty good and the whole altering the past theme is integrated fairly well. Gold Dragon on the other hand is mostly just annoying, with its quests sending you out into the middle of nowhere, but it also has a somewhat unique ending which at least fits the theme. Devil, as it turns out, is even more annoying than Gold Dragon since you have to wait months to work through the event chain that grants Mythic Level 9… and it doesn’t even have a unique way to resolve the final battle.
Final thing to note is that I also cleared the full-power version of Sithhud added by importing a Lord of Nothing save. It is not something I ever wish to do again. The first two phases are fine, no problem. The third though… in the third you have to kill him nine times while he gets slightly stronger after each death and constantly jumps around the arena. I actually almost ran out of Empowered+Bolstered Hellfire Rays on Ember while taking him down.
The Last Sarkorians DLC turned out to be fully integrated into the main campaign. It adds a new class (which is sort of a mix between Druid and Fighter, sacrificing spellcasting for a focus on Wildshape) and a new romanceable companion with a full set of sidequests taking place in a new multi-part location.
The companion is decent enough if you spec him toward Charge damage, though he’ll need quite a bit of buffing support. The sidequests meanwhile don’t feel out of place but are a bit unbalanced in some places. Like, why does that Bloodrager have DL37 Cleric/Wizard buffs on him? As long as you’re geared to handle swarms though (and the companion comes specifically with an anti-swarm necklace, with more available in the new area) for the most part the added content doesn’t feel unfair or forced. And more importantly, clearing it won’t unbalance the main campaign’s progression.
Something that cannot be said for the integrated version of The Treasure of the Midnight Isles DLC. That one is not balanced at all.
It immediately starts you out against level 18 enemies as basic encounters (in Chapter III) yet, bizarrely, also starts out with level 5 floor bosses. Over the course of all three quests, things never really level out with the difficulty continuously jumping around all over the place. Sometimes a boss will be a one-round joke, other times it’ll inexplicably be able to cast spells with multiple metamagic effects beyond its level or have 70+ AC or 30+ Saves. It’s just a massive slog in general and doesn’t really offer any rewards worth the effort besides a boatload of (effectively useless) gold and enough XP to get you to level 20 shortly after arriving in Chapter V.
Can’t speak for the stand-alone version yet, but if it’s anything like Kingmaker‘s Beneath the Stolen Lands DLC then it ~may~ be worth picking up if you enjoy playing around with different party compositions.
As an addendum, I also just ran through the content added by the free Love Beyond Death DLC. It’s… okay? While there’s nothing annoying about it, there doesn’t seem to be much point in actually wandering down there unless you happen to have a character specialized in Earth Breakers (since it includes the only +5 unique one).
The entire reason I had initially picked up Enderal earlier was because I was in the mood to play some sort of magical melee class of some kind. Yet I ended up, as I usually do in those kind of first-person open world games, playing a stealth sniper/assassin.
Still wanting to play a monk-sorcerer kind of thing after abandoning that playthrough I decided to re-install Wrath of the Righteous rather than try to look for something new. Both because I never did finish my Aeon run and never tried any of the DLC… and also since I’m still annoyed at missing the Sadistic Game Design achievement due to ONE ENEMY (Ashberry Hamlet’s ghost).
But first, because completionism is a disease, I had to run through the two stand-alone campaign DLCs so that I could import them for the rewards.
The first, Through the Ashes, is a low-level adventure (level 1-5) that doesn’t give any XP for killing stuff. Which is a big hint that you’re supposed to avoid combat wherever possible (your first companion being decent enough at stealth is another), and use environmental factors to help eliminate what you can’t avoid. It’s okay. There isn’t really anything annoying about it, but nor is there anything about it that calls for a replay.
The second, The Lord of Nothing (which brings you from 5-11), takes a more mixed stance. It’s much closer in style to the main campaign in both good and bad ways. Direct combat is encouraged a bit more here (although there are a couple ‘avoid fighting’ areas), but said combat is not always the most balanced (I still completed it on Core with a ridiculously sub-par Demon Dancer build though). You get access to a wide variety of items and equipment… but will only have enough money to buy a few of them.
Overall I’d say it’s worth running through them once with a Paladin or Dexterity-focused Tank build of some kind, but the replayability value is pretty low.
I wanted to clear the entire map before giving up, but the events of the Angel main quest just encapsulated everything wrong with the Mod. Specifically: The railroading. For a work that seems to champion freeform exploration, it’s insanely rigid about quest progression to the point that items or enemies tied to quests simply don’t exist until the proper queststate is triggered.
Still, I did clear ~most~ of the map (everything except Thalgard and the locations in the north-northeast part of Frostcliff Mountains) and got to level 55 so can say a few things for sure.
In the mood to play something like Skyrim I was scanning through GOG’s library when I stumbled across the sequel to Nehrim. How did they get a total conversion Mod listed like a stand-alone game? I have no idea, but it certainly makes installation a breeze.
While I remember Nehrim feeling significantly different gameplay-wise from Oblivion, Enderal is only really different where the leveling system is concerned. Basically it’s ‘just’ Skyrim with the leveling and exploration aspects of the Gothic series. Which is to say you level by killing things (which are not level-scaled) and completing quests while being able to find all sorts of hidden things hand-placed around the world and location maps. None of which so far have felt similar. The magic, perk system, skill usage, and combat are all the same (though there are some new perks).
So far, with the Sun Coast through King’s Pass areas cleared as a stealth ranged build with the Ghostblade affinity, it’s just what I was looking for… though I strongly suspect I’ll burn out before completing it.
Chained Echoes is an RPG-Maker styled kind of game with fun gameplay and exploration aspects alongside an absolutely terrible storyline. If I wasn’t so fond of both collecting things (the reward board is a nice touch) and the combat system which restores all resources at the end of each fight (highly encouraging ability usage) I likely never would’ve made it past the point your party members first join up. Just cleared the Flower Fields and Monastery area now and the plot has reached a new low… but collecting treasure chests and enemy drops remains engaging.
As for Gloomhaven, which is the digital adaptation of a board game, I didn’t get very far at all. It reminded me of Darkest Dungeon, except with questionable balancing and even worse resource management aspects. And I hate resource management.
