Recent reviews by Veltas

Even when you've already played it a lot, it's just nice to ride around Night City and kill scavs in back alleys

Elminage Original is great so far. It's got controller support, the visuals look nice (nostalgic old 3d mazes, pixelated illustrations for characters, monsters and items, it's got all the classic Wizardry classes plus a few more, it's got a bunch of races and a ton of portrait options and the ability to load images. It's got a variety of dungeon tilesets and a world map and a story that threads things together enough for it to matter. It's got some QoL features that most of these games have (but that some of these games lack) like remembering your previous turn's action selection, or letting you hit one button to all-out-attack, or letting you speed up animations/text. It's very comfortable to grind this game and the vibes are good.

I enjoy this a lot more than Owlcat's previous title, Wrath of the Righteous. I think the Rogue Trader rule set being used here is just more conducive to fun gameplay. Pathfinder's rule system assumes a tremendous usage of temporary buff effects - every fight seemed to have so much setup going on that it just was tedious. One of the more popular mods for Wrath of the Righteous is an auto-buffing system, that's how egregious things can be. Rogue Trader never feels that annoying at all.

The combat itself is quite nice. Cover and elevation mechanics work as I'd expect them to, so positioning my people and carrying out a tactic that I think would work... actually works like I'd expect it to, which is really nice. For the most part on normal difficulty, though - the combat is pretty basic. Just use cover, be mindful of which enemy groups are approaching at which angles and how long it'll be before they reach your front line, and don't forget to use your heroic abilities - and you'll win.

The premise of the story is fantastic. Games like Mass Effect & KOTOR let you be the captain of a small ship, which is cool and all, but this game lets you be the head of a noble dynasty captaining a kilometers-long ship; you're basically a living god in legal terms, and it's very exciting to explore all the stuff that happens around such a character in a world like Warhammer 40k. Haughtily ordering a member of your retinue to formally introduce you to an NPC never gets old. I also really like the Profit Factor mechanic instead of collecting and hoarding currency. This is an idea that just works really well and i'd like to see it used in more RPGs.

Presentation is nice enough, but it's easy to think, "if this game just had baldurs gate 3 levels of audiovisual presentation, this game would be utterly stunning." That's kind of a useless hypothetical thought, but i still think it. The current level of presentation quality is fine and the gameplay shines through and everything that needs conveying is conveyed - but man do I humbly wish an owlcat game with maximum budget could exist so i could try that out.

Updated review:
1 - performance objectively sucks but I don't mind it too much. I like the visuals a lot.
2 - exploring the world, camping, fighting, with your pawn homies is 10/10 experience while you're exploring and progressing your vocations. a bit dull after you become too strong; enemy difficulty does not keep pace with you at all.
3 - the main story is clearly rushed/unfinished jank, the script has a very good central premise and theme but the execution is not even remotely AAA quality. I say this as a fan of Dragons Dogma 1 which also has a jank story, too - DD2 story would've benefited much from more polish!
4 - the "endgame/postgame loop" is so underbaked it might as well not be included. whatever lessons Capcom learned from DD1's expansion have been unlearned. Once you beat the game and move into NG+, feel free to just uninstall until an expansion in a year or two offers more to do. There's no need to upgrade gear or grind to level 200 now because no challenge in the game requires anything more than the vendor gear and levels you get in your very first playthrough.

Sounds harsh? for me it's an 8/10 or so. I look forward to DLC and could see it growing into a favorite like the first game, but right now i'm happy but not in love, and just a little disappointed because i hoped for more -- but to be fair i did binge 55 hours in a few days so credit where it's due, this game was absolutely enthralling for me despite criticisms. Trying not to be "sad it ended" but instead "glad it happened."

If this game has more interesting lategame difficulty/variety patched in, and performance issues resolved - it will really take off for me. Lategame difficulty is especially dull - once you find a strategy that works, you steamroll everything and it never stops.



Original review:
Fun game. If you enjoyed DD1, it's what you'd reasonably expect out of a sequel - the same but bigger and newer. This game does a great job of making travel matter. You'll trek forever past all kinds of trouble, then eventually crest a hill and look back and see that city you started from, so far away and so small, and realize what a ways you've gone. If that kind of idea grabs you, then this is the RPG for you. The combat and enemy variety is good enough that it's still satisfying to kill an ogre or a little mob of goblins along your path as you trek back and forth across the land. There will be some chaotic and memorable moments when everything collides in combat - the enemy & pawn AI, plus the physics and all the abilities - makes for some outcomes and events during hectic battles that you really can't predict sometimes. The pawns chatter a little too much, but I don't mind so far.

The state of the game at launch is a bit unpleasant regarding performance. I've got a very nice PC and still run into some framerate frustrations in the cities. If that's important to you, then wait for patches or something to resolve the issues. Otherwise - the game is stable, I haven't crashed or bugged yet, and so I've been enjoying my travels around this continent.

the Devs ought to do something about the UTF-8 windows setting you need to enable to run the game at all. I only found out because a review mentioned it.

That aside, once the game is running I love it. Very interested in cultivating and attaining immortality!

If you ever read or watched a fantasy story with adventurer guilds and wondered what videogame actually felt the most like that, this is it. Make your parties, customize your characters as they grow, manage the guild, go explore things and handle quests. Very compelling gameplay and progression so far!

Excellent tactical RPG in combat, very cool exploration during quests with encounters and exhaustible resources. Very cool mood & social layer for the adventurers so you get to see them chatter and banter during combat, camping, and get into some drama at home base; and they either work well together or form rivalries and don't work so well together - sort of reminiscent of Rimworld in this way.

All around, this game was way more than I expected. This is such an exciting RPG

I've been trying various DRPGs, party-based turn-based, labyrinth exploring games. This genre has so much potential. This particular title has interesting classes with their own mechanics and some unique abilities, as well as a decent amount of voice acting for its NPCs and some chatter for your party members. The UI is pretty modern for this genre and it's very smooth to grind through the maze and combat. I wish there were more color palette swap options for party member portraits. I'm only a few hours in and may adjust my review later - but so far so good!

This game is pretty much the top-tier RPG formula. 1st-person grid maze dungeons are so much more imersive than any top-down view dungeon crawler could ever be, and the crude visuals of the long samey corridors in each maze floor makes you feel lost like in no other kind of game. Simple portraits for characters and enemies is all you need to understand what is in front of you and let your imagination fill in the gaps. A menu-like town where you quickly manage your resting, questing, items, and party members is all you need. The combat is punishing and grindy - but the interface is swift enough and simple enough that you can swiftly and efficiently hit buttons to make your party members do their jobs and get through it all smoothly - some of these games are a pain to grind because of the way you have to navigate the interface or due to jarring scene transitions - but this game is thankfully frictionlessly smooth in these regards. The art style is just fine, too - I like my party member portraits and I enjoy the enemies.

I wish more games were exactly like this one. Exploring the labyrinth as my characters' spell slots and resources dwindle away from battles of attrition, wondering what i'll confront next, and above all a blissful ignorance of how the game mechanics all work, some actual mystery and going with my gut because the game just lets you learn by doing and has minimal explanation for itself - what an absolute joy.

And just think, what is even the budget of a game like this? how expensive would it be really, to take this framework and add in a few hundred more monsters or items or mazes? I now totally understand why this genre of wizardry games took off as popularly as it did back in the day. I just hope it all comes back because I am so ready for more of this.

I've beat the game, played around a bit in the sandbox, did some of the sidequests, and started my newgameplus adventure. Starfield is a good game, but you should know what you are getting into. I don't think every gamer will enjoy this game, but people seeking certain kinds of experiences will enjoy it right now, even before DLC & patches & mods and all the rest that'll surely make it even more interesting in the years to come.

First - ask yourself, would you enjoy replaying Fallout 4 today? I mean in terms of core gameplay - shoot & loot gunplay, exploring little enemy-infested dungeons with environmental storytelling and reading diary/journal entries on old computers, the general idea of faction questlines being good experiences although mostly on rails with few significant player choices beyond "do the mission or walk away" -- I mean to say, Starfield has a lot of the same DNA as Fallout 4. Whether that's good or bad for you is up to you. Some people will say "Fallout 4 but updated and in space? sign me up!" other people will expect more in 2023.

And it is true that there is more. You can build a ship, and walk around in your ship, and see your companions & crew hang out in your ship - and you get to fly your ship around space (mostly via fast travel menus but there is definitely manual flying for combat). The ship building is very fun and has been a huge motivator for me to go out and grind credits to continue to develop my ship. You've also got the outpost system, which is like Fallout 4 Settlements taken to the next level - they incorporate resource extractors, assembly, cargo transfer - you can dive into this and construct an elaborate system of factories to build an empire. If the sandboxy creative side of stuff interests you, it is here. Perhaps not in as much depth as games purpose built for the sandbox, but to have all of these features in a game as wide and full of different systems of gameplay as this; well - isn't it nice to have so much in one package? I've always liked single games that do a lot of different things, and Starfield is the latest big game in this design tradition.

I personally had no performance or stability issues with Starfield at 3440x1440 with an Nvidia 3090 and an AMD 7950x3D. All settings ultra, except shadows. If I set shadows down to medium, the visual fidelity loss is minal but the performance gain is substantial.

My biggest personal gripes with the game at launch right now: Too little cosmetic customization of your character - if you care about fashion you'll be playing in first-person; the space suits can't be re-colored, and picking up a new non-matching helmet or jetpack can feel pretty bad if it's good but ugly. Also, the UI & menus are just no good. Listen to this: the L key is a keybinding to bring up your missions page. But if you press tab and are at your "main menu," the L key ceases to function and that keybinding does nothing. There is a button at the bottom of the main menu that takes you to your missions page, but L won't do it. Why isn't L just a global hotkey? Why does a keybinding work in some menus but not others? This is just one example, but this kind of thing comes up enough, and this example illustrates the types of problems I have with the UI: it's inconsistent, and this is frustrating.

A personal albeit minor gripe: melee feels bad to use. It's effective, it works - but it doesn't feel fluid. Sprinting and sliding and attacking and power attacking are so clunky. Melee could feel good, we've seen plenty of first & third person games with fun fluid melee - but Starfield... I think Starfield just really wants you to use their guns and leave the melee for the NPCs and the contrarian players.

Lastly, the writing/story. The initial story hook is not great. The "excuse" for how the player character is given their first spaceship and ends up entangled with Constellation, even the protocol indigo, feels like a novice DM at a D&D table trying to explain why the players are being suddenly inducted into the "secret society of the main storyline, the plot railroad begins here!" I would look past this in a lower budget game or at a D&D table with my IRL friends, but Bethesda, please try to be more compelling! You have the resources! This initial story hook, I played through 2 separate times to ensure I have a well-formed opinion of it; that it wasn't tainted by failed reading comprehension... I just don't buy it and don't enjoy it and it's stuck in my head through the entire 85 hour playthrough so far. Beware, if this is the kind of thing that bothers you like it bothers me. Or, if you don't expect to care about this, then good for you :)

Anyway, overall good, and I am still happy to play around in this game and excited for what is coming next as the game evolves. We all know Bethesda games on this Creation Engine platform live by the intervention of the modding community.

I've played a lot of Disgaea 5, and just recently picked up Disgaea 6. I was concerned I wouldn't like the new graphical style (new 3d compared to old 2d), but I actually don't mind the new visuals at all. I think i'd like the character models' heads to be *slightly* smaller, less exaggerated-large, but that's my personal style gripe and not a serious criticism.

For anyone wondering, the 3d graphics actually run well in 3440x1440 ultra-wide. Most cinematics still display in 16:9 with black sidebars, but the maps/gameplay will run in 21:9, so that's really nice.

This review is early - 5 hours played, only a few chapters in with a little bit of item world grinding - but from what I am seeing so far this seems fine. This is definitely a Disgaea game, and I am enjoying the signature humor style of the writing, and the character grinding & reincarnating is exactly what I signed up for.