Posts from Recently viewed games Auto-translated

Hmm. In what sense couldn't you? As far as I remember, I had a kobold population, and kobold districts could be built.

I'm talking about something else. At the end of the questline involving the alliance of kobolds and trolls, you can recruit the leader of either faction as a vassal, but only if you have a chaotic alignment.

Ah, but I didn't recruit any leaders, that's true.

Surprisingly good. The plot, protagonist, dialogues, mechanics, humor – all of it is very nice. I almost burst out laughing a couple of times, plus I discovered a couple of new ideas that I will definitely use if I ever run games again.

Question... what specific ideas from Disco were used when running the last experiment?

None... Because by the time I finished, I had revised the mechanics many times.

Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2



A game about spaceships in the Warhammer 40k setting. Unfortunately, I don't know how to coherently formulate my impressions into a cohesive narrative, so I'll just jump from thought to thought.
The game consists of two parts - strategic and tactical. Add in autoresolve with a crappy result for the player - and we've got almost Total War in space. But don't be scared of that - managing systems here is very simple, and space battles don't suffer from an overabundance of ships, at least in campaign mode. Actually, the strategy is simple - we move ships around systems and defend already captured ones, and also capture those not yet taken, plus a relatively small number of quest battles. Captured systems may have planets with useful bonuses. If you invest money into a planet, it will provide more bonuses. That's basically it. I told you, nothing scary. Now about the tactical part: the game shows us in the prologue/tutorial how to move ships, use active abilities, board enemy ships, and also ram enemy ships with your own. After we learn these basics, it allows us to manage our acquired knowledge freely. It's worth noting that I'm usually quite tactically inept (I hang out on the forum of a strategy game series, yes), yet somewhere around the mid-game I actively used all available ship weapon options - melta torpedoes, fighters, ramming as the situation demanded, and I wasn't above using boarding actions either. By this, I want to emphasize - there are no useless or marginally useful maneuvers in the game; absolutely all tools at the ship's disposal can come in handy. And against some opponents, the proper use of a specific weapon type can easily turn defeat into victory. Which weapons against which enemies? The answer is at this link!
Let me return to the thought I slightly drifted from - after the game tells us about the ships' combat capabilities, it no longer gives any hints on how best to use these abilities. Actually, there's nothing complicated about it - just fight against a certain xenos race once, study the features of their ships, and figure out what would be particularly useful against them. But it was still satisfying to form these conclusions on my own. Now, about the enemies themselves. I'll note that the game has a very smooth learning curve - perhaps even too smooth - first we're just allowed to fly ships around, then we liberate a fairly large sector from the forces of Chaos, who firstly behave extremely passively, and secondly - their ships are essentially the same as the Imperium's, only smeared with blood and shit - and therefore, worse. I started to think the battles in the game would remain boring, but then I was given a couple of battles against the Eldar, and I was surprised at how asymmetrical they felt - as it should be. The first impression was unforgettable - they'd fly in fast, focus fire on one ship, shred it to pieces in seconds, and start flying away. And when I tried using AoE abilities that had worked well before (which, however, don't activate instantly, but only after some time) - the Eldar just elegantly smirked under their elegant helmets at the clumsy mon-keigh, then demonstrated such feats of speed and maneuverability that I didn't bother trying to hit them with those abilities again for a very long time. Then there were Orks, Necrons, and Tyranids - the shock of asymmetry wasn't as strong with them, but overall, they also differ both in their tactics and in the best tactics to counter them.
Despite enjoying the battles, I can't help but note the weakness of the AI. As I wrote above, I'm quite weak at strategy and tactics myself, but here the AI is downright stupid. Perhaps, however, I only noticed this because of the high difficulty, which, as the developers honestly tell us, is expressed only in the AI having more ships with better stats, while I had to find various ways to adapt against a numerically superior enemy. As the strongest AI issues, I'll give just two examples. The first example didn't seem like a problem at first - I saw Ork ships smashing their own escort ships (the tiniest ships in the fleet) before even entering their line of sight - just sweeping them away with their larger ships. I thought this was actually a great way to portray the faction, especially since they do the same thing in their cinematics. When this situation repeated with the Tyranids, I grew wary - after all, the Hive Mind should micromanage its ships more wisely, but on the other hand, the Norn Queens will spawn new ones, maybe it doesn't care. But when the Necrons and Eldar started ramming their own escort ships - that's when I realized the problem is that the AI can't even set proper movement for its ships. The second example is quite extreme, but it only happened once - one of the battle maps was procedurally generated in such a way that the AI broke and just drove its ships in circles around one spot, ignoring the fact that I was shooting them from afar. To be fair, given the number of hours I've played, this is more the exception than the rule.
Nevertheless, despite the criticism of the AI, I want to emphasize again that the battles in this game are very well done. Not only do they (at least on high difficulty) encourage the player to use their entire arsenal wisely, but also in themselves - the combination of visuals, music, and sound makes the process very, very enjoyable. Even after dozens of hours played, when I see an enemy ship explode - I feel something warm in my soul. And I always set the speed to normal to enjoy the explosion process.
Speaking of dozens of hours played. My biggest complaint about this game is that it can easily drag on. I wouldn't rule out that the drawn-out nature was the result of my poor strategic decisions, but still. If I try to pinpoint the main reason for the bloat, at first I blamed the difficulty - especially since the game warns that high difficulty will lead to more invasions - but after thinking it over, I think the reason lies elsewhere. The thing is, the game has optional objectives that lead to permanently destroying a faction in Segmentum Obscurus. And these optional objectives always take place in very large sectors with a high number of star systems. This leads to two factors that prolong the game - firstly, a lot of time is spent capturing every system (though this isn't actually necessary). Secondly, even more time is spent defending all of this. At first, I even liked the second factor to some extent - I had to very carefully manage the placement of fleets in systems (their number is limited), and when I barely managed to defend all my vast holdings, I really felt the Imperium's pain as it's being torn apart from all sides while unable to send forces to all the needed places in time. But over time, this degenerated into a tedious - and, very importantly for me, a working person - very time-consuming routine. You can't rely on autoresolve, as I noted at the very beginning, and the enemy's numerical superiority and improved stats didn't allow me to just crank up max speed, box-select my ships, and send them towards the enemy. On the other hand, on lower difficulty, battles would probably feel overly simple. In short, if you're afraid of burning out on the game - only go for the systems needed for the story. If you're a bit worried but not too much - you can do optional missions, but don't try to capture every system. On the flip side, the optional quest battles are the most interesting - the story ones don't shine in this regard at all.
Now about the story. It's too simple in itself to say much about it, though it's perfectly functional. Some quest battles (not just story ones) have decent moments in terms of the overall Warhammer atmosphere, but nothing more. I really liked the protagonist, even though there's no complexity to him. He's a true servant of the Imperium - energetic and active, loyal and devoted, fearless and unyielding, and also - pious. I highlight this as a separate point because often, even when they show a good loyalist, there's a feeling that he only remembers the Emperor as a checkbox, just to remind everyone whose side he's on. And at first, it seems the protagonist does the same, but then you notice - he remembers the Emperor sincerely, seeking in Him the light and support to overcome the harsh circumstances he's in. It was very pleasant to play as such a great man, on whom our Imperium relies. And one example of bravery strongly coincided with the meta, which also made it memorable. First, my forces routed the enemy in a quest battle. My forces were already slightly depleted after the first battle, but nothing critical. Then a new wave of enemies appeared - I figured they'd show me them, I'd destroy them, and that'd be it, time to rest, especially since the NPCs talked anxiously about it, like "we won't hold out long." But after those enemies came another wave - here the NPCs started outright wailing, and I myself tensed up, as the fleet's strength was waning. Finally, after the second wave came a third wave - the strongest. The NPCs panicked, I thought "surely they won't make me fight these too, they'll probably let me retreat now," but the protagonist just calmly and without raising his voice said - "it is our duty to hold the line and not allow the enemy to approach an Imperial world. With the Emperor in our hearts, we will endure." And I realized that we truly had no choice but to endure and fulfill our duty. And that's exactly what we did. It felt very atmospheric.
Actually, in a sense, I don't even have much experience to speak about the game - because besides the Imperial campaign, there are two more (three with DLC), as well as a skirmish mode where you can play as any race from the campaign, and also some that aren't even in the campaign. And I haven't tried any of that yet, so there's still plenty for me to explore and see.

Brief summary - a good game, but it can easily lead to excessive repetition and time consumption.

Darkwood



A horror game with survival elements and a top-down perspective. Despite the unappealing description, it's a good game. Scary, unique, and set in an unusual environment that evokes the atmosphere of a creepy fairy tale. Plus, it was made by our Polish friends. The only complaint is the very strange pacing and sometimes unclear next steps. Towards the very end, I had to look up a walkthrough to understand what to do next – and I rarely resort to that. Nevertheless, the game is simply amazing and very scary, and even though it sometimes seems drawn out, it's quite short overall. I recommend it.

Divinity: Original Sin 2



From the perspective of an isometric computer RPG, it's made at the highest level with great care – no pillars, trainers, or anything else that came out in the dying genre (I don't remember what) even came close. You don't even necessarily have to immerse yourself completely or get some special enjoyment to see that this is objectively true, and that people on the internet didn't overestimate or overhype it. Excellent graphics; the gameplay is mostly puzzle-based, but not only; all dialogues are voiced; a huge amount of content; non-linearity in the walkthrough (and even in the availability of some) quests, depending on the character's build or role-playing; even a certain non-linearity in the dialogues – in many of them, of course, there is a problem of pseudo-non-linearity for the sake of creating an illusion, when you choose any option, and they all lead to the same result, but not everywhere, and there are very few dialogues in which you click through half a dozen questions and say "goodbye." In addition to this, I didn't notice any attempts by the developers to push some setting-related or role-playing agenda, when they impose certain strictly bad or good options/attitudes towards things (and they don't deliberately lean on gray morality), there are moments sometimes, but in general, everything is presented "as is" according to the laws of the setting and in the current conditions, and this is well felt against the backdrop of memories of old, worn-out role-playing games from the 2000s from BioWare and others, which were already difficult to look at from such positions without feeling embarrassed.

However, I have an unconfirmed doubt about the latter. The fact is that at the start of the game, you are offered to choose one of the pre-made characters created by the developers, with their own appearance, voice acting, lore, and background, or to create a custom one. It's enough to click on the background to feel the connection that emanates from half of them from the very first lines. Later, they are also offered to be taken into the party while they are hanging out in the starting locations. In general, I had to create a custom character and play solo, during which I felt boundless freedom of role-playing and realized that this is the right option for this game, when you are not constrained by any karma systems or the grumbling of idiots, but only by your own vision, mood for any given moment, and the correspondence of the role-playing to the form that you have defined for yourself, and not the one conceived by some random writer from the dev team. Over time, I realized that this is also a more correct option according to the plot, in which you rise from rags to riches. I just sometimes caught myself thinking in some important plot dialogue or event – how would it look if I had a full party? And the answer immediately suggested itself – it would be absurd. The same argument should be applied to battles and exploration. By a random coincidence, instinctively, I created, as it seemed to me, if not the most, then one of the most powerful possible builds, and probably the most interesting of the possible ones in this rather simple turn-based combat, which boils down to managing cooldowns and action points. The final enemies, for example, were defeated in a couple of turns and literally didn't move and didn't have time to do anything at all. Accordingly, throughout the game, we go through the plot from an outcast to a lord, while we increase our strength, solve problems to the best of our ability and role-playing, acquire abilities, acquire artifacts with unique properties, and in every possible way expand the options available to us, both in terms of combat and exploration – over time, we can start doing something more efficiently, move somewhere, where we couldn't before, and so on. As a solo character, I really felt all the new power-ups over time, it was interesting to explore some dark corners of the world, solve its mysteries, overcome obstacles, and so on. Sometimes I also caught myself thinking – how would it look with two or four fixed characters in the party? Yes, it would destroy the whole atmosphere and turn it into a tedious micromanagement. In general, at first, I thought that playing solo was an exotic thing for Original Sin, but it turned out that this is how it should be. I would not recommend the opposite to anyone. And to be clear – even as a solo character, I didn't sweat, I just played a few battles more thoughtfully, that is, it turned out not to be a form of masochism, as one might think.

Well, I'll finish with the world, since I touched on it – I liked it in terms of atmosphere and design. What I remember from the first part, which I dropped in the second act, is the bad jokes, the awkwardness, and the schizoid level and quest design, and even the plot of the second act, which is why I dropped that part when I realized that the game had gone in the wrong direction and the whole second act was feeding me crap. Here, I experienced a similar, albeit weaker, feeling in the second half of the starting location, somewhere between the tenth and fifteenth hour – at that moment I was ready to drop it, but fortunately, it didn't last long, and the game still didn't degrade to the level of the first sin. And in everything else, it was great – the level design is adequate (which is extremely important to me, so as not to vomit), the locations are atmospheric and beautiful, without tasteless excessive fantasy crap (like pocket dimensions, lava-ice biomes, portals every minute to who knows where, and other schoolboy-like fanfiction nonsense of the level of Baldur's Gate 2), cozy settlements, detailed interiors in houses, all sorts of small details – in general, it's great. And on top of all this – despite the bright sunny graphics, there are many unexpectedly grimdark moments, but not without warm, local ones. In general, as always – a good world and level design = a largely good impression.

8.8/10. In conclusion, starting with what I started with: you can put a ten for the objectively high level of everything, just in terms of the genre, in comparison with other isometric RPGs. But I can't help but lower the score for the terrible implementation of some technical moments in terms of the interface (it's disgusting), ergonomics (such a concept is unknown here), and individual moments related to them. Some actions are inconvenient to perform, some mechanics are implemented in a clumsy way, some moments work the way they shouldn't, and don't work the way they should, and throughout the game you can't get used to it, because it's not something you get used to, but something that reminds you of itself in the middle and at the end, and every time you fight this terrible technical design as if it were the first time. For this, I lower the score by even more than one whole point.
By the way, I played with two mods – for a very large inventory capacity and for a slightly higher movement speed outside of combat. I recommend them to everyone who values their time and nerves, because you have to run a lot, and because in the 21st century, struggling with an overloaded inventory (especially such a schizoid one as here) is not a challenge or a condition for immersion, but a pure form of degeneracy.

What kind of build is that?

pseudo-non-linearity for the sake of creating an illusion, when you choose any option, but they all lead to the same outcome

but it's for role-playing, you know...

we could have played together, two or four players...

I think they could, but it would be too much work. After all, the gameplay there is rather slow-paced.

could we play together, either two or four of us?

But who will control the battles?

I think it would take half a year and be incredibly tedious...

What build is that?

Scoundrel-warfare-dual wield-polymorph, plus I had one point in fire and ranged skills to always have access to speed, tranquility, and archery teleport. It turned out that all enemies, even monsters and plants, have a back that can be slashed with daggers without any problems, and that even warfare abilities deal damage to the back if used with daggers (although the skill tree is generally garbage; I only used two skills from it and leveled it up only for the bonus physical damage). I also always had a bow/crossbow with me, even though I didn't level up hunting, as they scale with dexterity – it came in handy several times. In total, you have four teleports, invisibility, a ton of control, maximum OD, 100% crit chance with the maximum modifier... I didn't even level up constitution; I still had a lot of HP and armor from items.
Towards the end, I found gear that places a mark on a random enemy, and when that enemy is killed, all your abilities are recharged, even those that can only be used once per battle, and the mark is transferred to another enemy. I used the final polymorph buff, which allows you to spam ultimates, killed the marked enemy, went invisible, one-shotted another marked enemy from invisibility, went invisible again, one-shotted the third, recast the buff, went invisible... The bots are just standing around because you're invisible, and you can cast adrenaline a couple of times each turn. From the outside, it probably looked quite anime-like and over-the-top. I haven't seen such cheesy tactics in RPGs for a long time, even in HW-Exp. And as an added bonus, this build fit very authentically with the story and solo character.

But who will fight?

Everyone for themselves. It's a turn-based system.
I played like that in the first part, and it was pretty good. Plus, disputes arise, which are resolved by playing rock-paper-scissors.

I think it would take about six months and be extremely tedious...

unless you only gather rarely, but if you don't need to finish the game in a week and have other things to do, there aren't any major problems. As for the tediousness and drawn-out gameplay, in the first part, this mainly happened because of traps that are found at every turn. But if no one rushes ahead recklessly, constantly dying, it shouldn't be as tedious. In some moments, it's actually easier because you're only responsible for your own inventory, and you can distribute the items so that everyone is responsible for something specific, plus there's different crafting available.

Everyone for themselves. It also has a turn-based system.

I can already imagine you casting spells and cursing me for making stupid moves.

Alright, so I can play once a week 😎