Recent reviews by Vashra

This game is such a mix of good and bad that it is genuinely tragic, but I cannot in good conscience leave a "good" review for a game that has a design flaw so severe that it could damage someone's equipment.

>>>>> So...before ANYTHING else, take this warning to heart: This video game has some kind of design flaw which allows it to suck down *all* the resources of your GPU. The Steam frame rate monitor showed me clocking in at over 1400 frames per second. This causes the average GPU to heat up -- a LOT -- enough to overcome the ability of GPU and system fans to compensate. Running your system that hot can do actual physical damage to your GPU and/or the cards around it. I can't imagine what this game would do to something like a Lenovo laptop....

That simply isn't OK, and it's even worse that this problem has been put on the Discussion board by more than one person (including myself just recently) for *years* and neither the developers nor the publishers have addressed this very serious issue. The game itself lacks *any* way to lock or adjust the frame rate or to enable V-sych. It isn't reasonable to expect the average mainstream user to know how to throttle their GPU at a driver level, and it doesn't make any sense for a game like this to even have such a render load. This kind of thing has been seen with other games, and the devs had a hotfix out within 72 hours of the issue being reported. Come on now...y'all have had *years.* <<<<<

But even without this rather major issue, I just can't quite get to a positive review. My play experience was mixed, at best.

I will say that the artwork and the overall "feel" of the world, such as it is, was really quite good. The design staff should be proud of their work. It looks and feels a little like one has stepped into a Dr. Seuss book mixed with a tone that is just a little closer to Alice in Wonderland. But the plot is absolutely threadbare, and the entire game boils down to a single fetch-and-carry quest on par with "bring me three fire beetle eyes."

The puzzle team...honestly needed to do better. Easily 90% of the puzzles boil down to one-to-one matching exercises, in an interface that is supposed to trick you into thinking that's not quite what you are doing, or that makes it difficult to actually get the matching done already. Some of the puzzles that *were* more complicated than that crossed the line from engaging to tedious (the wire puzzle by the water pool being an excellent example...where was the clue for that thing?)

I also dislike that there's NOTHING to give you any motivation to keep putting up with the puzzles when they get "difficult" or tedious, and most of the "difficulty" is created by inconvenience, not intricacy. For example, there is a puzzle where you need to move pie slices around to assemble a picture that faces right side up. It becomes obvious this is the goal about three clicks into the puzzle. But because of the clunky interface, you have to waste time cycling the "pie" slices around over and over and over until you finally move them all into place.

I've played more than one puzzle series where the bulk of what you are doing is just going from one puzzle to the next, and even where you have to leave this puzzle incomplete until you unlock some bit from some other puzzle and then you go back and continue the first puzzle. But unlike Myst, in which each game in the series had a story of sorts unfold along the way, or The Room, where you're going from one puzzle to the next with only a few letters to keep you invested (but the letters are bloody fascinating and there's a rising sense of urgency created by the game ambiance), there's just no mystery to solve here, and no developing plot. Just like the tab in the game menu says: You caused the critters to lose their leaves. You need to get them back. That's it. That's the whole thing.

My last complaint is that I never, not once, not ever, got the "need help?" hint system to actually give any sort of bloody hint. I tried picking the top image. I tried picking the bottom image. I tried logging off and logging back on to pick the image I didn't pick last time, and I tried picking one image then the other image right after. It never seemed to matter, and neither of my copies of these images was ever "enough." I *NEVER* saw the little red light go green, and I *never* got a hint. And most of the time, I didn't need a hint on how to solve the puzzle, I needed a hint on how to work the clunky interface for that particular puzzle.

In the end, I found myself pulling up a video guide NOT because I couldn't figure out what to do next, but because I could clearly see what to do next and just didn't feel invested enough to spend the time "figuring it out" where I might accidentally reset the puzzle with a wrong entry. Somehow, the progress never really felt like progress. Yay. I got another leaf. Yippie. Oh look, another inhabitant. Huh. It was just *missing* something intangible but necessary.

Overall, it felt like a very simple, very artistic, seek-n-find with extra steps. If THAT is what you want, and you know how to manage your hardware to lock your frame rate to a safe level, then by all means, get this game. But if you were hoping for something on par with The Room series (which I loved despite being rage-quit frustrated with a puzzle or two), or the Myst series (which I adore), or Rhem (which I kinda hated and never finished), or even a little quick-do puzzle-ish game like Robin's Quest (which I liked), this ... may not be the one.

This is an *extremely* good game for its time period and genre. I really enjoyed it, and put in a lot of hours just messing around. I got it during the Chinese New Year festival sales, and I feel like I got every last dime of my money's worth from it.

I give it 9/10 stars and would highly recommend.

Pros: If you like a story-based quest progression game in a swords&sorcery genre, then this fits the bill. It's not mind-numbingly expansive like Skyrim or Witcher3, and it's not truly open-world (areas are restricted until you progress the main quest), but it's loads of fun and decent exploration. I searched through every last nook and cranny of the game world, finding hidden treasures or the occasional easter egg.

The game is relatively easy to learn, and the combat is pretty simple if you're into combat. It's nowhere near Dark Souls difficulty, and you could probably run this game on a well rigged potato. Having said that, you WILL want to download the community "patch" (Arx Liberatis) to make the game playable on modern systems (it was almost entirely unplayable until I did so because modern mouse sensitivity kinda destroys the magic system and you *must* have *some* magic on your character to make the game work...ish).

In 136 hours, I had no lag or stutter, and not a single crash or "have to reload" bug....not one. I only dropped through the world geometry requiring a reload (I never enabled the console) *once*, and I was really trying very hard to get somewhere players were clearly not meant to go at the time. ;)

The economy is great (I never struggled for cash, but you have to manage some resources like torches mid-to-end game), and most of the loot makes sense (you get a couple pieces a wee tad too late for my tastes, but I'm greedy). I only did a very minimum amount of savescum grinding out of a personal desire to max out my character for kicks and theft.

You're not buying this for sandboxing or jaw dropping graphics, you're buying this to tell/reveal/experience a single main story and save the world. Again...this isn't Skyrim and you can't "live" in this world long-term. Think of it more like decent-length digital one-shot solo D&D campaign.

My one complaint is that the absolute end scenes after *everything* was done and/or defeated felt a wee bit . . . underwhelming. I guess I wanted accolades of some sort. I'd love to see the company revisit and reboot this title someday...expand some side quests, add some content (I really wanna be able to talk to the king about a certain letter I found....). Still, I've loved everything I've ever played from Arkane, and this is another great title.

Nope. I was going to give this a try because someone told me it was a hidden gem of RP gold as a community, but I just can't. I feel just a little bit as though a good portion of the movies rather misrepresent how this game will look and feel.

Full disclaimer: I did not give this game a chance. At all. I played it for under 3 minutes.
I never made it off the tutorial beach.

First...I just don't have the patience for a top-down/isometric 3rd person view that I can't seem to adjust well. Yes I can move the camera a little bit, but I was hoping for 1st person view immersion. MAYBE 3rd person over the shoulder like Witcher 3, at the most distant. Not ...this.

I also tried changing to "windowed" mode, but there was no way to change the size of the window, so it may as well have been "fullscreen." But I *NEED* to be able to make the window itself smaller because the top 2 inches of my monitor are visually blocked by the bottom lip of a bookcase shelf (long story, very not-optimal setup right now, but I can neither detach the bookcase nor move the monitor, so I am stuck for now).

I have even less patience for the point and click movement of fully animated characters.
It looked as though the controls had the *option* of WASD keyboard movement, but the game has already applied W, A, S, D, to various other things (spells I think?) and I just didn't have the bandwidth to try to remap a keyboard for a game I don't even know how to play yet. Kinda hurt my soul that I can bloody well walk around and feel like I'm walking down "actual" streets and dungeon corridors in an ancient game like A Bard's Tale Trilogy...but this view leaves me feeling like I'm moving a chess piece on a board. I cannot imagine it being conducive to role playing. And then the overall interface was just hard to see. I was too disenchanted to even bother dinking around with the resolution. When I smacked into the ocean water of the beach with no explanation of why I couldn't walk a foot or two into the water to touch the two barrels floating there, I was just ... done.

So no. Not for me.

Seriously though...why have windowed mode if it doesn't let you modify the size of the window at all?

Maybe I'll give it a try someday when I can try it from a better setup, but I'm just not feeling this.

If you like "you kick down a door" dungeon crawls, this might be a game for you.
It doesn't have any intricate quests.
It is definitely not story-rich.
It won't feel like you're "getting to know" any NPC or joining a community.

But if you just want to pretend you've hooked up with several other adventurers in a tavern so that you can go off and eventually save your world, then you'll probably enjoy this game.

The classes all have their own strengths and weaknesses, and most have some relatively unique ability. Very few are ever essential (there's a place where you simply must have a bard in part 1, and you need a thief for an achievement in part 3, for example), so you can experiment with different party combinations or even go solo. Even in those places were you do need a certain character, if you don't like playing with that class in your party, you can leave him parked in the tavern until you need him.

I had fun figuring out which combo of spells or abilities mixed with which bard songs and such in order to best take on this or that mob. I enjoyed collecting the mostly-useful (there are some places where I'd seriously change the loot tables) loot. I ended up rolling in gold I couldn't find anything to spend it on. The blackjack in part 2 was fun and I missed having a casino in part 3. The game got a little grindy in part 3, but I leveled up just about all of my party members (and an extra or two) just messing around and doing a full exploration of the dungeons.

My only "this isn't fun anymore" complaint is that a couple of the dungeon floors in one tower of part 2 sometimes cross the line from "difficult" to "tedious" for traps and teleports that hinder you. If you are a map-nut like myself, you want to mark every single square ... but that one left me logging out to do something else just to clear my head.

I put this game series thus far (I haven't played part 4, and I'm cheap so I won't get to it anytime soon) as being a weird mix of just above and just below Elder Scrolls Arena/Daggerfall. In fact, it's easy to see how this was probably inspiration for Elder Scrolls: Arena.

The final ending of the series at part 3 was . . . underwhelming . . . but I had probably way over-leveled because I'd spend so much time messing around and just spanking mobs to spank mobs. Leave it to me to be dissatisfied with ascending to godhood.... ;)

I got over 300 hours of amusement out of it (you can probably actually complete the game series in like 30 hours, but I like to be silly and make/remake different characters and such), and I definitely feel it was money well spent.

This is an amazing full-conversion mod of Gothic II that is effectively its own game and side-story. It's very content and story rich, and the consequences of choosing this way or that in any given quest can fall anywhere from minor...to absolutely lethal...and not just for the player.

I do NOT have 76 hours of play locked into this game yet (as I write this, that's the total it says), as the littles in my household have been sandboxing all over chapter 1 for ... days, but I do have a few hours sunk into almost completing chapter 1 (I know how to trigger chapter 2 but have held back and explored the map) and I'm really enjoying it. I would highly recommend it. Also...as the game is FREE, what do you have to lose?

My one complaint is that I personally think just a *little* more cash at the very early outset would be nice, but I always think that about every game I ever play. I just hate scraping like a refugee (I mean...this main character is literally a refugee, so I guess it's appropriate), only to be rolling in money I can't bother to spend later in the game.


First Update:

I'm now quite a ways into chapter 2 and I have learned that there was no good reason to postpone triggering chapter 2 (Gothic players will understand the idea of postponing the trigger of new chapters) -- as there is very little you can "miss" by pushing the trigger. Apparently that's not as true for the later chapters, but whatever. I love to clear entire maps.

Anyhoo -- I am more and more impressed with this game, the longer I play it. Honestly, PB should flat out hire the team that built this thing, because they did absolutely excellent work.

I haven't found a broken quest yet, and when I thought I did, I tossed a post up on the issues section of the discussion board, and got a response from a Dev in *under* 24 hours. I think it's the tech support that impresses me the most. I've seen Devs offer up console commands nobody without the ability to decompile the entire mod would ever have known about just to correct for genuine glitches, and even offer to upload and repair corrupted saves. I haven't gotten tech support that good from MMOs I've paid *subscription* fees to play!

I've been running around in console mode actively *trying* to interfere with how some quests work, just to see how well the scripts get around unexpected things players might up and decide to do, and so far, there have been provisions in almost every quest I've messed around with to keep the player from accidentally breaking a quest chain. The ONLY quest I found that was disabled entirely by my mucking about is a piece of a larger quest where I killed the target mobs before getting the quest -- and so I was never asked to kill the target mobs. And that's not so much a *broken* quest as a quest that simply becomes unavailable because of the order in which you do things (which is fair). In another such quest, I was still asked to kill the mob (as if the NPC didn't know the famous mob was already dead) and was able to just say some version of "I already took care of that" and get the reward and xp. NICE.

Short of some serious console trickery or modding the mod, this mod is true enough to the faction splits in it that you CANNOT do *all* the content/quests on the same character and playthrough....and that's how it *should* be. I get slightly annoyed with games that let you manipulate faction so that you're playing both sides of some groups that ostensibly hate each other...as if neither group is savvy enough to know that you (who usually have a "reputation" as being with the other group) know that you're with their enemies.

I've now soaked easily 100 real hours into this game and I've enjoyed it *immensely* ... and I *STILL* have mostly just been messing around and not progressing naturally. I don't think a non-compeltionist would get more then 200 hours total out of this, especially if you don't clear the map every chapter...but I've paid solid cash for games with under 20 hours of total content and this is FREE, so unless you just up and decide you hate the antiquated graphics or somewhat clunky controls (and why would you be playing this mod based on a 20+ year old rpg if you had such limitations in standards?), I can't see how you'd lose out by giving this mod a shot.

I give this mod 10/10 stars for being really very well done -- better than more than a few commercial games I've paid to play.

I'll come back (again) and update my review once I get a chance to really dig in and play it, but so far it's a great game.

This is an old game, but it's a good one. This is probably one of the games that led to the creation of classics like Skyrim and Witcher 3.

Use the alternate controls so that you can have the WASD you're most likely used to from most other games of this genre.

There are really only two classes to play -- magic or melee. You *can* be an archer in this game, but it's either too hard or too easy, depending on your skills ;)

The game has three factions which are different enough that you can get some replay out of it, but overall you'll be doing the same main quest no matter which group you pick, so don't expect to go right from one playthrough to another and have it feel radically different.

The side quests are actually quite enjoyable, and most of the time you get what you need in good order. I feel like I definitely got the price worth of entertainment out of it.

Edit -- After putting in more hours and just puttering around in the console with cheats and exploits and whatnot, I have *really* fallen in love with this game and this series. I will warn you that it is best to play these games in order...there are "ah ha!" moments and plot twists that would effectively be spoilers when passing from one game in the series to the next.

The game can be frustrating for newer/younger players who might not be familiar with combat systems that require you to pay attention to animations and which buttons you hit. You *can* just button-mash your way through, but it's better to learn the strengths and weaknesses of your various enemies, pick the right weapon and/or magic (it really does make a difference), and push the buttons so that you make "combos" that are more effective.

I highly recommend this game and the series to anyone who enjoys a good story. It's not going to be as deep as Skyrim or Mass Effect by any means, but it is quite entertaining and I never found *any* broken quests (and I spent some time trying to break them by making odd choices out of proper order....)

I tried. I honestly did.

But...I do NOT understand the positive hype around this game.

I didn't even feel like I was playing a video game. I felt like I was being frog-marched through someone's interactive novel while slogging around under the not-quite-demand to find and collect tapes of someone else's Norse mythology lectures.

Here is a summation of game play:

Be dumped into the world as a *spectator* (I did not feel at any point like I "was" Senua) who moves around the protagonist as she navigates an environment that is confusing a.f.... Collect and listen to Norse mythology that I presume will at some point actually matter to the story in some way. Solve a few odd puzzles, and engage in utterly rubbish combat now and then that feels like button-mashing to me.

I don't know what it is, but I can't drum up a lick of sympathy for this character. Her quest is noble. She's supposed to be headed through the very gates of Hell to rescue her husband, or at least free his soul. Normally, that sort of Quixotic Orpheus Descending thing would be a compelling reason to venture into danger for me. Save that princess! (Even if she's in another castle). But this...this just felt like work, and terribly confusing work at that. Also...I'm not usually bothered by visual effects, but this game taxed my desire to stare at the acid-trippy graphics in some places.

I made it to the end of chapter 2 and defeated the first boss. And ... my arms hurt. The combat is just bleh. I have no love of "figure out which buttons to press to get some sort of useful combo" combat in the first place, and I wasn't sure that's what this was, because the stuff that flashed on the screen gave me no solid clue as to whether one strike was honestly better than another. Wack the mob fast, wack the mob slow and hard. Mob randomly seems able to hit you back or not. I couldn't discern anything other than a basic timing pattern out of it. At no point did it seem like "ok fast strikes hit this guy better than slow strikes, blocks work better than dodge here, etc."

I want swords to slash, arrows to fire, and a decent dice-roller in the background to say "Ok you take damage as you move in for this swing because you left your right flank open to your opponent's dagger because your protagonist has never swung a sword before, but you did hit the mob for damage because blades are always sharp and always cut when they hit flesh, even when swung by untrained idiots." I dropped the combat to easy mode because there's nothing fun about it. Mind you I wrote that as someone who does tend to do things like play Witcher 2 on "Insanity" This seemed to boil down to Slash, slash, dodge. Slash, slash, dodge. Discover by accident that "Focusing" is something you should maybe do in combat (was that mentioned in the manual? Because the game has no proper tutorial). Focus, slash while your enemies are frozen in time...whatever. I don't know, it just didn't feel *fun*.

I *abhor* that the game gives you ONE save, and that's your progress, and it saves when it's bloody good and ready, not necessarily when you'd want it to save. There's no going back to a previous save and fixing or changing anything. You're strapped into this ride and the only way to correct anything is to start over from scratch or give up and quit.

When I got to the end of chapter 2 only to discover I'd missed a lore stone and would have to slog through the entire chapter again, I was pissed. Sure...until you do the endgame you can pick a chapter to replay, but there was NOTHING fun or engaging about my progress to make me wish to do that. It's really not like I can go back and talk to a character differently, or make a wildly different choice. All I can do is climb walls and poke around in corners, trying to figure out which tiny piece of the map I missed that hides the lore stone I failed to find. AND...since the game CHANGES THE MAP based on various triggers, I may literally not be able to see/create/use the path to the stone I missed because I didn't know I needed to jump through hoop A while wiggling feather B to make that piece of the map appear so I can get to said lore stone....uh...no thanks. Again...I'm a veteran puzzle solver (entire Myst series, portal/portal2, TALOS, The Room, several casual myst clones, etc) and I found *everything* to be found in Skyrim and Witcher 3 (even started making a guide for Witcher 3 to all the silly bits not marked on the map, but someone beat me to publication) because normally I *like* searching out every last tiny corner of a game map. So for me to be bored. out. of. my. skull. and frustrated to distraction while trying to navigate this game tells me something is wrong with this game.

When I fished around on the walkthroughs here and on YouTube, only to see multiple people with a *different* lore stone showing in the last chapter 2 spot compared to what was showing in that spot in my game (despite everyone saying the positions of the lore stones are static and the game would just not turn anyone you missed blue), leaving me with no way to figure out how I could have "missed" a stone that wasn't where it was supposed to even be...I was just *done*.

This game felt like *work*.

There was no sense of accomplishment at any point. I need *something* at the end of each segment of the slog to give me *some* reason to keep going. The emo voiceover talking all about how nothing you just did really mattered did NOT do it for me.

Maybe it gets better later, but I couldn't drum up the motivation to find out. I *knew* this wasn't an open world rpg like Skyrim or Witcher, and I knew it was a borderline horror genre. The linear nature of the game isn't what bothers me. I've played linear games before. And the horror genre or the confusing world isn't it either. I quite enjoyed SOMA, and that game is *very* similar to the theme of this one, it that it tackles psychological issues, and is pretty solidly linear, and definitely very dark in theme (though there isn't really exactly any combat in that one, but whatever).

This...I don't know...it's just a miss for me. I think it's because I didn't feel like I *solved* most puzzles, I felt like I stumbled over the "seek-and-find" key to some (Oh yay, these boards are arranged like the rune I need to find. Whee.), and just randomly happened to trigger others while walking around. I'm very glad I got it on sale. I'd be peeved if I'd payed full price. I might try it again someday to see if maybe the stars just weren't properly aligned to enjoy it or something, but for now I'd have to say I'd give it maybe 2-3 out of 10 stars. :(

It took me a while to get used to not being able to actually manipulate my ship along any sort of z plane, but I have to admit that I really enjoyed this game. Don't expect a riveting story. The "main quest" is very simple, and if you don't putter around and explore, you can probably finish this game up (barring a few of the more difficult achievements) in 20-30 hours of play. But if you enjoy simple quests to find things, mine things, transport things, and/or kill things...in space...you'll probably like this game.

It's 100% space battles. You never walk on the planets. You never walk on the stations. Docking at a station means doing computer interface stuff to reload weapons, repair or upgrade your ship, or visit the bar...which boils down to reading the news, hiring mercenaries to fight by your side (works about like having a pet in an mmo), or catching a few (often useless) rumors or tips from the bartender.

There are clearly aspects of the game that went undeveloped. The loading screens mention planets being certain types (desert or ice or whatever) and how that affects missions and the market, but that doesn't really seem to apply. Still, it's very fun, and the space nebulae and such are often quite beautiful. You can alter how challenging the game is by upgrading or downgrading gear, and by moving to harder or easier systems, etc. It's not always accurate, and sometimes a "lower" (smaller) ship with end-game weapons is better than an end-game ship with end-game weapons, or vice versa...depending on play style.

I caught this game when there was a minor sale, but even had I payed full price, I can say that I felt I got my money's worth in entertainment. This is also one of the most stable games I've ever played (granted, I'm a glutton for Bethesda and EA punishment so.....). I think it crashed *once* the entire time I played it. Granted I'm playing on a system that is WORLDS above the game requirements...but still, it was nice to be able to just play something I didn't HAVE to mod to enjoy (I'm glaring at you, Elder Scrolls series!) :)

I'm all for early access, and I understand that means one will be "testing" a game that is still in development, but come on people!

Here's my 47 minutes of gameplay:

1. Install (it installed with "corrupted data" and I had to verify over 85 files before I could play)
2. Make a character. (The avatar didn't save the first time and I had to start over.)
3. Make a character. (There's really no explanation of what the classes are, but it's pretty classic "warrior, rogue, etc."
4. Try to play. (I got as far as walking to a chest next to where one spawns into the world, opening it, and mucking around in my inventory. Apparently this was "out of order, for what the tutorial expected, or something, because I then found I could no longer move - at all.)
5. Try to figure out why I can't move. (No answer was forthcoming)
6. Uninstall.

Just...yikes. The art and music was beautiful. I never got to play the game. I don't know why the WASD that worked just fine to walk me over to the chest I opened suddenly disengaged or whatever, but now I cannot move. That means I cannot play. I want my buck back. Just...geeze.

IF - and only if - you enjoy extremely antiquated games with really very old graphics, then you might seriously enjoy this surprisingly huge game. Maybe.

I play it as a survival/loot farming zen distraction, sort of like Minecraft. The map is actually quite *huge*. There are 16 artifacts you can go dungeon-crawling to find (though you can only own one artifact at a time, rulers who want to send you on other quests, random quick-quest work (fetch and carry/escort/etc) you can pick up by asking about work in town, and of course the main questline (which I may never get around to doing lol).

All in all, if you love the world of Tamriel, you might enjoy this ancient thing....but it's got ALL the buggy issues we've come to expect from Bethesda games. I'd actually love to see them remaster this into a modern game and fix the bugs. Would be neat.

Totally worth the free download at least lol.