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Jun 5th, 2017 at 08:36:06 - Dragon Age: Inquisition (PC) |
Crammed many hours into this over the past few days, and will write initial (20-hour) thoughts.
Whereas DA1 and 2 were pretty similar, Inquisition is different in many respects. Dare I say, it looks more Witcher 3 than Dragon Age sometimes, with its horse (and horse races) for navigating a big new open world, its infinite collectibles for brewing potions and bombs and stuff, and its packs of enemies. It's hard not to make comparisons since I played all the Witcher 3 content in the past year.
The open world is nice, but these environments are so damn hilly. I'm probably not even halfway through with the Hinterlands (the first zone), and I have done maybe 1/3 of the (something) Coast. The Hinterlands is humongous. There are quests everywhere, and I hate to say that most of them are really dumb, of the MMO variety: Kill 5 wolves; bring 5 apostate mage caches; search these three areas for some books; etc. There is NO shortage of things to do.
In addition to a bajillion quests, which I am doing my best not to become lost in completing, there are oodles of collectibles in the form of shimmering shards, codex entries, picture pieces, and more. There are little observatory things where you play a connect-the-dots mini-game. Do that for all the observatory things in a zone and it points you to a treasure. Hidden caves and secrets are everywhere. I easily see why this game is so long. I wonder how long the main quest is, as I already seem to be at the high end of the recommended level range for main quests even though I have skipped like half the content so far.
Combat is much more action-oriented, and suspecting this, I made a dual-wielding rogue. But I did not suspect that lockpicking would be gone! What use is my cunning if I can't use it to pick locks? Oh well. At least I'll be able to micro-manage my party. Wait what? That's been neutered! You can go into "tactical mode" and assign individual actions to party members during combat, but honestly it's tedious. And the tactics settings are gone. All you can do is tell party members when and how many potions to drink, and to attack enemies being attacked by x character or to defend x character. That sucks. And you can't prioritize abilities with the same detail that you could in the other Dragon Age games. Why?! Well, I'm glad I picked a melee character so I can have more hands-on combat.
There also seems to be no healing magic (unless I haven't read the trees well or unlocked a particular character), so you ONLY heal with potions, which can be upgraded for greater effect. To do that, you have to harvest LOTS of plants. Like SO many plants. To do that, you need to use the "search" function, which means I run from place to place clicking left stick, which was really annoying at first and is now less so, but I'm beginning to dislike spending so much time collecting plants. I'm supposed to be saving the world, and I'm head of the Inquisition. Can't I make other people do it for me?
There is way less party banter in Inquisition, and less party member character development so far. This is probably partly because the game is open world now and therefore more spread out, so their banter doesn't seem as condensed. But party interactions were some of my favorite parts of previous DA games, and that they're so much fewer or less frequent here makes me shed a tear. Also when you're riding the horse, the party doesn't talk, and you can't collect herbs! And I'm not sure how much faster you actually go because you wind up having to jump up cliffs and things. Is the mount kind of useless? Maybe...
Oh also, last random thought goes back to combat, your allies will not automatically attack enemies in range! As a rogue, I go into stealth, my party doesn't even "appear" sometimes until I initiate combat, and that means attacking someone. Well, I'm a damn rogue. I don't want to be alone with 5 enemies because I'll die. Other times, my three party members just stand and watch. I've taken to sort of pulling enemies toward them. Maybe I just switch to a tank to initiate combat encounters. It's annoying.
Stealth works great for interrupting fade rifts though.
Ok, all for now. Looking forward to continuing and getting through more of the main story while selectively ignoring side quests and collectibles.
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Jun 3rd, 2017 at 13:04:32 - Dragon Age II (PC) |
Finished in about a week! DA2 is the lowest rated of the three, but I really enjoyed it. Bioware did a nontraditional thing by limiting the game to one city in three different years, instead of giving you an entire world or country or continent to explore. I liked that approach for the narrative it could tell, showing what happens to all these different characters over time, how Hawke (your main character) rises in renown in Kirkwall, shifting political tensions, etc. Extremely cool. BUT, the downside is that there are limited locations throughout the game. The landscape doesn't change in its three chapters. Every time, you're in Kirkwall, and Kirkwall has the same districts and the same sewers and the same homes, and outside Kirkwall the Dalish camp is the same and the Bone Pit is the same, etc., etc. The scenery became repetitive, like driving through the Midwest and seeing cornfields for miles, falling asleep and waking up and seeing more cornfields for miles. Each environment would reset every chapter, with new enemies and perhaps a new little cave, and new quests. There were a few surprises, like when I went to clear the Bone Pit in chapter 3 (the mine I co-owned with a merchant in town). In chapter 1, I helped him rid it of spiders and took part ownership; in chapter 2, I motivated the workers to get back to work; in chapter 3, a wounded horse raced into town with a cartload of massacred men and when I went to investigate there was a High Dragon, which was THE hardest fight I did in the whole game, which was crazy because this was just a side quest. But it was a huge reward for following the Bone Pit storyline across the game, a super fun intense boss battle, and a unique reward from an herbalist for giving him high dragon's blood. SO, there were a few great surprises like this, but 95% of the time nothing too exciting.
The writing is the high point. I liked getting to know all my companions, and their individual quest lines were all interesting. Aveline becomes captain of the Kirkwall guard and you can help her pursue romance with a guardsman, Merrill tries to piece together an ancient, dangerous elven mirror, Isabela's story weaves with the Qunari story, which is the focus of chapter 2, and so on. You even get to follow your various family members and see how their fortunes change over time in Kirkwall--your mother, brother, uncle, and another that I won't give away. And of course there are romances. The Hawke character can, as far as I was aware, become romantic with about all of the companions. You can be straight, gay, or bi, but this isn't Mass Effect, so no intergalactic species romance. I slept with three and wound up with Anders, one of several characters to return from Dragon Age 1. Oh, and your companions' banter is wonderful throughout the game, the way they pick on each other and tell stories and how their relationships change. There must be soooo many branches in the narrative and in character relationships in this game. I really loved the attention to story and character interactions.
Combat is nothing to write home about. I played a mage focused on healing allies and debilitating enemies, more of a control character. I feel like I played a similar character (maybe a fire mage) in Dragon Age 1, so I should do something different for Inquisition. I'd just kind of sit back, curse enemies, heal when needed, and run around collecting loot while my allies killed stuff. This was definitely a good character choice for the more difficult battles because I don't see the AI, even with my tactical commands, micro-managing healing and cursing like I did. If I choose a melee character in Inquisition though, I'll just hope the AI is good at healing! Or I guess I can always pause and micromanage allies (unless Inquisition did away with that...?).
Well, that's it really. Solid game. Moving on to Inquisition, which I've heard many great things about.
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May 26th, 2017 at 11:54:50 - Sang-Froid: Tales of Werewolves (PC) |
Clever tower defense game--and it's now free! If you've played games like Orcs Must Die and Sanctum, you'll feel familiar enough with Sang-Froid. Sang-Froid though is more story-based, and benefits from it. The game takes place in 19th century Canadian frontier wilderness. You play as one of two brothers living at the edge of a small village. Werewolves begin appearing and terrorizing the village. Your sister is a prophetess and there's this whole religious story going on (a Catholic priest, a nun, and the Devil are all characters). The French/Canadians (rough on my history here!) have some tenuous relationship with local native people, and their animism plays a role in the story too. All the variety of werewolf, maikan, windigos, will o' wisps, etc. are there for a reason related to the story.
Cool setting aside, the game takes place in phases. After some story bit, you'll be shown a map depicting how many of which kind of enemies will attack which buildings. By the end of the game, there are five buildings to defend. Enemies attack in waves, and you can filter this on the map to figure out the order in which you'll have to deal with enemies. Click on an enemy and it'll show the path they will take to their target building. You have a nice variety of traps at your disposal, and you place these on the map. Then, you can go to town and buy supplies like better axes or healing potions, upgrade your stats, and finally begin the night.
You start at your house and run around the map a la Orcs Must Die. At this point, the game is pretty much hack 'n slash as you run around overseeing your traps, triggering the ones you need to, and killing enemies. The variety absolutely keeps it interesting, and it's too complex to give a detailed example in text. So, simply, let's imagine there are two wolves heading to your house and three wolves heading to the lumber mill. I think I can take two by myself, but it would be nice to do a little damage to them first, so I set out a wolf trap. Wolf traps instantly kill wolves or grand wolves. After dealing with one, I can kill the other. But the other three wolves are going to destroy the lumber mill if I ignore them (a game over condition), and I need to slow them down while I kill the other two, so I lay a couple pieces of bait along their route. At the last piece of bait, I also string a rock net trap in the trees. When the wolves are eating that piece of bait, I run over and shoot the trap and they take damage from falling rocks. That's not going to kill them though, so I set a spike trap by the lumber mill with a piece of bait on it. They proceed there, eat the bait, and trigger the trap with their weight. They die and I win!
So like that, but by the end there are 5-6 waves per level with a lot of enemies. You'll need to build watch towers and ziplines to move faster around the map, build fire walls to reroute enemies, set up mortars for massive AoE damage, poison windigos with poisoned bait so they aren't at full health when you have to face them, set up wayside crosses and holy trees to help handle large numbers of will o' wisps and werewolves, create silver and holy bullets to snipe from watchtowers, etc., etc.
My favorite thing about the game is that you have to plan ahead and kind of know what's coming in the next waves. Your traps disappear once triggered, but will stay on the map indefinitely until they are. So you've got to make sure that enemies in early waves don't trigger traps laid for enemies in later waves. It makes it tricky to plan for like 40 enemies running all over the damn place when you want specific things to happen to specific enemies. You have to be aware of where the traps are, where you are, where the enemies are, where the next wave is coming...and also of your "shout" radius (you can shout to attract enemies to you, useful for getting them off buildings), and also of the wind! Enemies will smell you downwind, so you've got to keep track of your scent so that you don't accidentally pull enemies away from where you want them. It's a lot of fun, and never felt overwhelming in a bad way. I beat most levels first try, several took two tries, and one in particular took me four. So the game isn't that hard, but I wonder if it's my experience with tower defense.
Anyway, it's worth checking out if you like the genre! The story is interesting, setting is very cool. Combat and presentation are rough around the edges, but I can live with that.
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May 16th, 2017 at 17:09:45 - Fallout 4 (PC) |
So I've been playing this for a couple months and never posted an entry. Woops! I thought about it a couple times, but there's really not a lot to say. Let's slot it in between the other Fallout FPS games.
Worst: Fallout 3
Middle: Fallout 4
Best: New Vegas
What did I like about Fallout 4?
It's denser than Fallout 3 was. Still a large place, but more stuff to explore. By the end all the different buildings were feeling pretty same-y, but most of them told a little story through enemies, emails, computer terminals, robots, and other means. I remember going in some robotics factory and reading the employees' email-based D&D game. Or stumbling upon a doorway with a bunch of arrows pointing to it. I decided to go in, and there was a maze with tons of traps. Nice ammo and other loot awaited, but I was disappointed not to find a unique NPC living there. Like, "Ah, you made it through my maze of traps! I'm clearly a really interesting character with a neat story and a cool quest line!" There's a cool quest where you get to pretend to be a superhero, and there were a handful of other solid, memorable ones.
The interplay of the different factions was cool, and I like that there weren't too many. Some games give you sooo many factions or guilds to join, but this really had three or four (if you count the Minutemen). And I like that I didn't realize they were all going to come into conflict at first, but then I saw it start to happen and it was making me anxious! I was pretty committed to the Minutemen and the Railroad, and I guess luckily hadn't done much except meet the Brotherhood of Steel. But when the story led me to the Institute, I just had to side with them, which meant I had to assassinate the Railroad leadership and annihilate the Brotherhood of Steel. I didn't mind the latter, but the first was tough. I was like one quest away from liberating all the synths from the Institute (which I'm sure would have made them enemies).
I enjoyed the combat. VATS gloriously returns, and I made a sniper/rifle-based character to exploit VATS. I could headshot anyone with 95% accuracy by the end of the game, have a 35% chance upon kill to refill all my AP, and just constantly refilled my crit meter. Brutal. I would have liked to re-do my character stat allocation though. I initially put something like 10 perception, 10 intelligence, and 8 agility. I was thinking intelligence because you could make weapon mods and get more junk to build settlements with. Turns out I absolutely hated bothering with all that, so my intelligence points were pretty much wasted. I got the perks I wanted and started filling up luck next. But I should have had perception, agility, luck, and charisma instead I think. I didn't like not being able to effectively persuade anyone the whole game either. But I knew I was making that choice at least.
I also enjoyed the overarching story. It had some stupid plot points, but the twist about Shaun was cool. Definitely did not see that coming. If you follow the main storyline, the game is probably not long at all. I spent 54 hours, but did a ton of side quests and spent way too much time poking through garbage in abandoned houses.
What did I dislike about Fallout 4?
Poking through garbage in abandoned houses. There is so much junk laying around everywhere to pick up. Every now and then there will be something valuable, like a magazine, or some good ammo, but it's like playing slots. I just had to look at everything. What if there's a safe? Gotta read the computer terminal. Maybe some purified water in the fridge? I had plenty of everything the whole game (except the first 5 hours or so) but I still felt compelled to rummage because it was there. All that crap is components for crafting, so if you're crafting, you need to constantly be picking it up.
I've (re)learned that I really don't care for crafting games. I didn't like settlements. I ended up ignoring them. Didn't care about the settlers. Didn't want to use workshops. Never upgraded a weapon or built a mod. My weapons were fine, and I was better off not managing NPCs' farms. The build interface sucked too, and scrapping items was really annoying. You have to hold V to go into build mode, then walk around and push R to scrap an object, then push Enter to confirm. For the amount of crap you have to scrap, that should all be one button, not require like three button presses and two hands for every.single.item. So as one might expect, my settlements were in poor condition and I don't think any of them were much more than 50% happiness. And I'll give you a hint: it doesn't matter one bit!
Like Fallout 3 before it (and unlike New Vegas), NPCs were generally pretty dull. The game wasn't funny. Towns weren't that interesting. Settlements and farms were the same boring thing over and over. Fallout 4 added repeating quests that never ended that I would do several times before I realized I wasn't moving anything forward. I really hate "dailies" in single-player games if they aren't clearly marked as such. There were some weird quest moments that made no sense. For example, this one Institute quest has you going to Bunker Hill to capture a synth, but the Railroad is there trying to save it and the Brotherhood of Steel is there trying to destroy it. Not one person shot at me. I've got an army of Institute synths and coursers behind me, and no one shoots at me. So I waltzed in, completed my objective, walked past the Railroad members who were now just standing still with no one to fire at since the synth was gone, and left. Weird.
Anyway, Fallout 4 definitely had more personality than Fallout 3, but it doesn't hold a candle to New Vegas, and that is so disappointing. I was hoping it would be more like New Vegas, but I guess at least it was somewhere in between and not just an update of Fallout 3. I think I'll skip the next one unless it gets like rave reviews.
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