Shadow of Mordor was a great game, I played it twice. I won't be picking this game up on launch though.
Even at decent discount on Greenman, I don't want to let WB think it's OK to wedge microtransactions into a full price single player game. That's a slippery slope & even if they don't affect it too much this time around, it's a bad precedent. I feel sorry for the devs who put a lot of hard work into this game, only to have it marred by a greedy publisher, I don't want to encourage that behaviour.
@jay30mcr: I think I'll just wait for more critics & post-launch commentary. Metacritic is a dumbing down of the system, meaningful opinion reduced to a number.
@Gelugon_baat: A game like Dungeon World has incentives for roleplaying through Alignment & Bonds with other characters. At the end of every session, you get XP for being chaotic/neutral/good etc. according to what you said your character was to begin with.
I don't expect a video game to have all the options of a tabletop & I don't expect any RPG to reward players for making dumb decisions. I would just like it if the game encouraged roleplay through mechanics like many modern tabletop games do.
My real issue with the lack of roleplay wasn't with the marketing. It was with the illusion of choice created within the first few hours. On the ship & then when I entered Fort Joy, I was able to choose the [NOBLE], [LIZARD], [SCHOLAR] & [THE RED PRINCE] dialogue options which gave me a better feel for the character I had chosen to play. These options often had me insinuating that I was above people, better than them. It helped flesh out the origin story for the character I was playing. At a certain point, choosing those options clearly started to give me mechanically negative outcomes while the generic options gave tangible rewards.
If the game wasn't so hard, I wouldn't be so worried about not getting every advantage that I could. My complaint is that it's a poor combination. The game gives you the ability to roleplay a sub-optimal character but then punishes you for it in combat. That's a bad design decision. If the game allowed you to be rude & then had social consequences, that would be expected. If engaging in the roleplay means you are unable to get enough experience to level up & actually progress in the game, then it might as well not be there.
@groowagon: The Witcher 3 is definitely an action oriented RPG. I wouldn't judge it by the same standards as a CRPG. The Witcher does allow you to get pretty OP if you do all the side missions but even games like Fallout can get easy if you get good gear & spec your character well.
I would say Divinity: Original Sin 2 is a very good game. Probably the second best I've played this year, the first being Nier: Automata. I also know that no game is perfect & I know that scores are subjective. My point is that I feel constantly frustrated when I play the game, like it's great but it could be better if they just changed a few things. I don't think a game deserves the top score you can give if there are that many little annoyances at every turn.
@Dunyas: The professional thing to do would have been for Campo Santo to contact him & ask him to take down the content. If that didn't work, then they could have used Youtube's automated process.
I'm no PewDiePie defender, his content doesn't really appeal to me & obviously I'm not down with racist slang being thrown around either. I think that Campo Santo is setting a really bad precedent here though. Not a legal precedent but a moral one. We've already seen Youtubers like TotalBiscuit & Jim Stirling having to fight this system, it's clearly not great when their whole income can be at risk just because some dev doesn't like the criticism they put up.
This is a great game but I don't think it deserves a 10. I see plenty of people saying that so here are some actual reasons behind my statement.
First off, I'm 42 hours in, just really getting into Act II, so take this with as many grains of salt as you need. I've encountered very few bugs, a few things that seem like bugs, but most of my issues with the game are in the design. Either from intentional decisions or lack thereof. The biggest problem, in my opinion, is with the quest system.
D:OS2 is a game that sells itself on not holding the player's hand on providing freedom in the way you approach quests, giving multiple solutions to almost every one & allowing you to "pick up" the quest at multiple points. This often results in the quest log showing all these events in a seemingly random order, making it very difficult to read & make sense of. I often found myself reading through 6 or 7 entries, trying to figure out where I'm actually supposed to go next. One entry will read, "you found an X", the next, "you talked to an elf who wants you to find an X", there's no recognition in the log that you've actually completed a stage of the quest, it's just out of order text. One quest in the first area required me to talk to someone, I found multiple clues directing me towards who I was supposed to talk to & it took me a long time to realise one of my companions had already killed them. I had to examine an item in my inventory to move to the next stage of the quest. It's a design decision that relies on the player figuring things out but the quest log could do a lot more to help you put together the things your character has learnt.
The Witcher 3 also let you pick up quests at multiple points. I met a werewolf before being sent on a quest to find him & the dialogue actually reflected it in the game. Through exploration, I found things in the open world but I was rarely completely lost in what to do next. My issue with Divinity is the way it gives feedback to the player.
My second problem is with the way the game lets you roleplay. Early on it seems like this game really wants to let you be free to roleplay your character. I'm playing The Red Prince, a former slave owning noble lizard. In the early hours I found plenty of conversations where I could just be rude to people, tell them they should all be my slaves & the game didn't punish me for that. Far too many RPGs force you to be the nice guy, helping everyone with their boring fetch quests, asking polite questions about their backstory & generally being a good dude. This felt very freeing at first but I soon learned that the game would begin to punish you as time went on. One interaction with some kind of spirit in a statue gave me a bunch of choices of what to think about as I felt an energy from the statue. Choosing to roleplay my character rather than what seemed like the obvious "right" option gave a kind of bad outcome but I decided to roll with it. I'm pretty sure it delayed me getting a powerful ability but it actually prevented me from completing another quest later on as well. Since that, I've often found myself making the "right" decisions based on what will get me the best stuff rather than actually committing to roleplaying my character meaning a decent part of the experience is spoiled.
My third issue is with the difficulty. Combat is hard - rock hard. That's not my complaint. Here's the problem I had with the first game: it sold itself as an open world but the enemies you can actually have any chance of defeating mean you often have only one real path to follow. This second entry in the series is slightly more open but fighting above your level is really tough. Enemies don't respawn so there's no grinding to level up. Some enemies might just be too tough to beat & the Escape function is so bad it might as well not exist; you have to be far enough away from your enemies for it to work but mostly they'll chase you down & shoot you in the back.
This combat difficulty affects roleplay as well. It may not be a great idea narratively for your character to go around murdering all the guards but mechanically you get XP & better loot than you can pick up without going on a murder spree. Not only that, but you'll likely need to murder a few people just to level up enough to face those other guys you can't get past.
It feels like the best way to enjoy this game is to simply roll with every choice, never reloading except when you actually get defeated in combat. However trying to play the game this way will almost certainly give you a bunch of outcomes you don't really want, you'll miss out on loot, story & character abilities. In an actual tabletop roleplay game, there's some human moderation & you might be rewarded for your commitment to roleplaying your character, rather than punished. This game sometimes allows you to roleplay & sometimes just throws you into party-wipe situations.
I feel like I've focused on the negatives but I do want to say that it's an amazing game & I am enjoying it. It's just that I'm torn between enjoyment & frustration at every turn. Roleplaying is fun, setting the ground on fire is fun, stealing from vendors is fun, discovering 3 other ways you could have completed that quest is fun. But switching out party members is frustrating, having to reload at least half of the battles is frustrating, having a dozens of ingredients I don't know what to do with in my inventory is frustrating, wandering around the map, trying to figure out who I need to talk to to progress in a quest is frustrating.
Like I said at the beginning, most of these things are design decisions. Some of these things might sound like complaining that Dark Souls is too hard when I just need to "get gud". I think these genuinely are problems though. There are just so many frustrating features that will cause many people to stop playing. There are just so many that I wouldn't dream of giving this game a 10.
@TAracer: I'm basing my opinion off videos I've watched (like this one), articles I've read & people I've talked to. I'm basing it off game reviews & hardware reviews.
My opinion boils down to: 1. Nintendo have been mostly selling games off nostalgia in recent years. 2: Nintendo have made some genuinely good games this year. (So far agreeing with Mike in the video.) 3. Those few good games still do not represent enough value for me to purchase a console specifically to play them. 4. I hope they continue making good games & also make business decisions that make their games more broadly available. 5. I'm not sure they will.
What about that opinion needs more research? Why do I have to buy an expensive piece or hardware to decide that I don't want to buy an expensive piece of hardware? I'm not suggesting you or anyone else shouldn't enjoy their games or that the Switch doesn't offer value to people who have enjoyed Nintendo games, I'm offering my own opinion which is as valid as anyone else's.
Looks like it's actually a good solution. Valve surprised me on this one.
Review bombing is dumb. People like to feel like they're making some kind of a difference, like their opinion matters but it ends up looking like a bunch of spoilt brats throwing a tantrum. It just gives me more reasons not to trust user reviews.
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