Coelacanth

I knew what that video was before even clicking the link. Great insight into the horrible people ruining the games industry.

Great article. The entangling web of endless progression systems is one piece, but one thing they failed to mention is time gating and daily quests. It’s very important for these games to force you to play a little bit every day, instead of in large chunks all at once. This helps move the game subconsciously in your brain from “a game” to “a habit/a hobby”, and that makes your purchasing decisions very different.

Hearing the bit about rights hell and patches makes me feel a lot better. House at the End of Time followed by that final broken capital area was just some of the least fun gameplay I’ve experienced in a CRPG. And I was there back in the day getting one-shot by Gibberlings in BG1! I’m not as big a fan of the epicly mythic type of narratives and settings as I am of more grounded stories, but if it makes the combat more fun and better balanced I might stomach it.

And if the game is genuinely that amazing I might bump it a bit on my priority list. I already bought it on sale last year, but the Kingmaker slog (what is it, 200 hours or so?) kind of wore me out on western CRPGs for a bit.

PugJesus too.

Yes, in many ways lemm.ee shutting down is a great example of the intention of a federated network at work, but it is also somewhat of a cautionary tale when it comes to centralisation. Ideally the load would be spread as such that any single instance shutting down would be reasonably painless to adjust for. There were already too many users and communities on .ee, really. Imagine what a disaster .world shutting down would be in the current state of things.

Good to know again, thank you! I played through Kingmaker last winter and your description is pretty spot on. There were parts of it that were great, parts of which that were not, and parts of it that were downright awful. And particularly the latter parts really soured me on it, and made me super reluctant to play Wrath of the Righteous. If that is Owlcat’s idea of high level play I don’t really want an epic adventure from them.

I’ve played Divinity 1&2 and BG3, but I’m less high on Larian than everyone else these days. They’re fine games and fun to play but Larian’s style of writing isn’t my jam and I also think BG3 has a lot of problems that get kind of glossed over.

I missed Pillars 1, so I guess that is on some sort of to-do list. I played about half of Pillars 2 but got bored and never picked it back up.

PSA: If you play ANY of the Pathfinder CRPGs? Get blind fight ASAP. And make sure every arcane caster has a few charges of Glitterdust at any moment.

I had Blind Fight on every single party member and that final bit of the game was still a hellish slog that made actively detest Owlcat.

Hey, you yourself most definitely count among the recurring characters around here too! Don’t think we don’t appreciate you and your delightfully colourful username.

Thank you! I guess the question is, is sitting through 100 hours of mediocre main campaign worth it to get to Mask? My guess is probably yes, but that knowledge will likely end up de-prioritizing the game on my backlog.

Thanks a lot for the rundown! Are the other two expansions any good?

That’s good to know. Are the expansions independent or do you have to get through the base game first? Would you recommend just doing Mask of the Betrayer and calling it a day there?

I meant it’s a $30 indie game as opposed to a full price $60 game, so even if you don’t end up liking it it’s not as big of a loss.

To be honest, I was flying with a specific group of people and when the main FC/corp leader quit I sort of just quit too. So I’m not sure I’d come back regardless, unless he miraculously comes back. But it’s been like 8 years now. Also, EVE consumes your whole life and it’s kind of nice to have time to play other games.

I was doing primarily small gang warfare, as well as some Blops dropping. And bombing runs whenever the opportunity presented itself. For income I was stocking the market of our home station, which I really enjoyed doing.

What’s it like these days? I sometimes miss the heyday of like 2011-2014 EVE, but I stopped keeping track of what was going on some time after quitting. I also kind of lost faith in the direction it was going and what CCP was doing.

As someone who’s been around the block, is it in a good state now?

I guess it’s like Rust but in space? Survival MMO set in the EVE universe? Not really what I’m looking for but it could work I suppose.

It’s not a perfect game as I’m sure you’ve gleaned from this thread. It varies from individual to individual how much the RNG affects your enjoyment but I can understand some people’s frustrations.

That being said: it’s not a full price game, it’s an incredibly interesting and unique concept and it’s put together with an incredible amount of detail and care. It’s also made by a small indie studio, and I love supporting those. If the puzzle you helped solve seemed interesting and you like puzzles and escape rooms and piecing things together then you should absolutely buy it, in my opinion.

This will probably make me finally get around to playing it. I had a lot of fun with NWN back in the day, but that was more the multiplayer custom servers. The single player campaign was pretty mediocre.

I never actually played the sequel, but I remember hearing very good things about the Mask of the Betrayer expansion to NWN2. Hope it lives up to the reputation.

There are several more. Some examples (light spoilers):

There are some other ways to reroll or affect RNG, but I don’t know how to hint at them without spoiling too much.

There were a couple of moments for me that made me go “wait, how fucking big is this game actually?”, but otherwise yeah it’s more of a game where you gradually scratch at the surface and peel at the corners and bit by bit it keeps opening up and opening up and opening up beneath you.

I played it obsessively for a solid month or so following its release. One of the best puzzle games ever and still a GOTY contender for me.

I know some people didn’t like the RNG, but for me it never became a real big problem. You get some control over the randomness eventually, and I also just found the drafting part of the game enjoyable in itself.

Piecing together the story and the world building bit by bit and uncovering the mystery was also super enjoyable. It’s one of the most rewarding games ever for note-takers. So much so that keeping physical notes in a journal was like half my enjoyment.

Mapocolops played through Dark Forces II recently and it was incredible watching those FMVs again that blew my mind as a child. I will always love Kyle Katarn.

However… the level design is absolutely wild! I have no idea how I got through that game as an 8-year-old!

Awesome!