Recommended – Page 17

Happy about: Final Fantasy XII The Zodiac Age

24/06/2019 24/01/2025

Ever since Final Fantasy IX the series struggled to get to the same levels of love and adoration that the earlier entries received. I myself only recently got over myself to check Final Fantasy X (in it’s HD form) to discover that it was better than I originally gave it credit. XI and XIV are solid MMOs, but due to the massively multiplayer nature don’t get necessarily the same audience who loves the series for the singleplayer stories and characters. XIII was a hot mess. And XV, while enjoyable, turned out to be a bunch of cool but rough ideas, which sometimes combined into something fun, but almost as often fell apart. There was one game, however, that I did play about 10 years ago, highly enjoyed my time with it, yet, when it was time to beat the last boss of the game, got tired and decided to return to it sometime later.

Well, sometime later is now. And replaying Final Fantasy XII in its The Zodiac Age remastered version on PC was far more enjoyable than I expected.

Late thoughts on the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. trilogy

23/05/2019 14/03/2024

Despite following the development of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl ever since GSC set out to create “our own Ukrainian Fallout”, I wasn’t really into it when it came out. I admired the game for what it was, but I didn’t have fun. Yet, I still bought Clear Sky as soon as it got released and… never finished it. When Call of Pripyat was announced, I originally took it as a joke and then simply ignored the game altogether.

For years I wanted to give the series another go. And I finally got in the mood to do that. No mods, no enhancements, no fan patches, just the final versions of each game as they are. Let’s see how they feel in 2019.

Happy about: Blood: Fresh Supply

13/05/2019 24/01/2025

In the mid to late 90s I didn’t have a “modern” PC, so a lot of games were experienced at friends’ places. And somehow, despite loving Wolfenstein 3D and Doom, everyone in my circle was far more into Build Engine games. Duke Nukem 3D was the obvious choice, but we also played Shadow Warrior, Redneck Rampage, Witchaven and, of course, Blood. Every game in this list was unique, going for a specific mood, using the engine capabilities to create something memorable. And Blood, the first project of Monolith Productions, was going for horror. Back than, it was a dark, yet extremely stylish and explosive FPS with all the best Build features. Lots of scenery could explode, levels could change based on player input and despite having a rather horizontally-focused design, levels could have a lot of vertical depth as well.

Today… Well, despite being available for a while on GOG in its most complete official release (One Unit Whole Blood), I was waiting for a good engine port of the game, which could introduce at least some of modern quality of life features. For the longest, BloodXL looked most promising, but then the project went quiet. Thankfully, Nightdive Studios, who has already proven themselves in reviving classic FPS titles, announced their take on the project. And Blood: Fresh Supply is the result. For all intents and purposes, the game is as good as it was back in 97, making this an “o tempora” category post, yet the additional features are so good that Blood can be enjoyed as a completely fresh FPS, without the need for a lot of tinkering.

Happy about: The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky “Trilogy”

01/03/2019 11/03/2020

Ever since I’ve started playing games from Nihon Falcom, I’ve heard the Trails in the Sky subseries of their The Legend of Heroes franchise brought up a lot as an example of a truly amazing story-driven game with amazing character development, deep world lore and really good narrative. And since the official international PC re-release of the first game 5 years ago the talks about these games grew even harder to ignore. So I’ve finally decided to give all of the 3 games a go.

Happy about: The Mooseman and It’s Spring Again

22/01/2019 28/06/2019

It’s always a joy to see games tackling on some themes or ideas that haven’t really been explored much, and especially unexpected when teams making said games are based in Russia. But that’s the case with the two little but very intriguing titles The Mooseman and It’s Spring Again.

Happy about: Gorogoa and Donut County

04/01/2019 28/06/2019

There’s something special about the little short games that manage to cram a lot of awesome into just an hour or two. It’s not a common thing to happen, I’d say, as most titles tend to either aim at a longer gameplay time, or are very short experiments, that don’t feel like a complete experience. Even The Room series started as feeling like a really cool first part of something bigger and not as a complete package, even if the game was fun. But that’s what’s cool about two very different games, Gorogoa and Donut County, that will take you less than 2 hours to complete on the first try, yet still feel like a complete and fun experience.

Happy about: Assassin’s Creed Origins (Gold Edition)

15/12/2018 24/06/2023

Back in March, when talking about AC: Syndicate, I opened with “It’s been a while since I’ve genuinely enjoyed my time with an Assassin’s Creed game.” And I’m surprised to say, Origins finally changes that.

Happy about: Sanguine Sanctum and The Room Three

07/12/2018 28/06/2019

Time to pair up two more games that aren’t really similar at all! Though, I suppose, they actually are this time, since both of them have Lovecraftian themes. And they’re both good.

Happy about: Divinity: Original Sin 2 – Definitive Edition

26/11/2018 28/06/2019

Larian Studios have been doing Divinity series for 16 years now and if anything, I cannot call any of their games “boring”. Divine Divinity was an attempt to mix the depth of Ultima series with simplistic aRPG gameplay of Diablo, Beyond decided to add dual character control into that mix, Divinity II allowed you to read NPCs minds and turn into a dragon at almost any point in the open map and Dragon Commander was a bizarre mix of genres where you played as a dragon with a jetpack. When going with crowdfunding for Original Sin, they decided to switch from action RPGs to turn based RPGs and focus on cooperative gameplay, half-jokingly saying that the game was designed to be played specifically by people in a romantic relationship.

But despite all of these creative and fun ideas, every single game they’ve made felt clunky, not particularly good at anything it tried to be and somewhat half-baked. I did enjoy my time with Divine and Divinity 2 back in the day, but none of the other games, including Original Sin, could get me interested for longer than a few hours, either because they were boring, or plot was terrible, or something else, or all of the above. So, I’m glad, that it wasn’t the case for Original Sin 2, when I’ve recently completed it in the updated Definitive Edition package.

Thoughts on: Old Man’s Journey and Subsurface Circular

18/11/2018 28/06/2019

Another good bundle, another chance that some of the games in it are complete unknowns to you, but seem to have good reviews. In this case, Subsurface Circular most certainly turned out to be a fantastic title and from a developer, previous projects of whom I loved. Weird how I’ve missed their newer projects. As for the Old Man’s Journey… Well, not every unknown is going to turn out a pleasant surprise.