badmojo wrote on Yesterday, 21:48:

clueless1 wrote on Yesterday, 14:45:

Kingdom Come Deliverance II

How would you say it compares to the first game?

It's been 4 years since I played the original, so some details are fuzzy. However, from a general viewpoint, everything feels more refined. Graphics are about the same, maybe slightly better. The writing seems to be at least as good, if not better. I don't remember anything from the original that was better implemented than the sequel. However, I do recall how satisfyingly realistic it felt progressing Henry from a country bumpkin to near-nobility in the original. There is less of that raw feel in this game, but it's to be expected with most sequels because most of us playing this already played the original. I'd be curious to know how someone who only played the sequel felt about the game.

Morrowind
Playing as a mage has been so much fun so far. The spell creation system is extremely cool and you can make some very powerful stuff with it, but the game wisely forces you to first learn spell effects by buying other spells, and some merchants will refuse to sell you spells unless you are of sufficient rank in the guild.

So, my first step in any new town is to see if there's a Mage Guild or Temple there, and check for spells with new effects to buy. If anything seems useful (especially for utility-type spells), I'll do some shopping. I've been building up a small library of custom spells for specific situations, like one spell that boosts my "Personality" attribute 100 points for a couple of seconds (to pass persuasion checks), and another spell that lets me fly for 15 seconds (to get around more easily... VERY helpful in Vivec).

It's a really remarkable RPG, because there are so many interconnected systems and the developers really attempted to simulate a world using them. The goal of most quests is just to get something or talk to someone, but how you do it is really up to you. It never feels like your only choice is to fight some strong monster to make progress. It's such a shame how much extreme level scaling, instant fast travel, quest compasses, linear loop-around dungeons, and quest markers have ruined the series (and genre), because Morrowind is so immersive and satisfying to play.

Completed Doom 2016.

Well that was a ride. I had very mixed feelings about it during the first two thirds of the game, partly because some of its design and partly because of me stubbornly trying to play it like a typical FPS game instead of being an aggressive wrecking ball it expects you to be before I realized my mistake. But during the last third everything just clicked into place and I started to kinda love the game.

First of all the checkpoint save system never did stop bugging me. Came across a really fun combat arena and want to give it another go but the game already checkpointed? Well sucks to be you buddy! Then there's the max ammo limit, which ain't high at first. Joseph's earlier recommendation to max out ammo capacity immediately was absolutely the right thing to do, but that takes a while as you get those argent points only one per level most of the time.

But my biggest issue is what effectively became the gameplay loop. The game has three different thigs to upgrade, yourself, your armor and your weapons. All these things require points you either get by simply completing objectives and challenges, finding them along the main path or by finding secrets. And it's that last one that really became a pain in the ass for me, finding secrets felt so incentivised I couldn't just push forward and have fun shooting demons only stopping to find secrets when I felt like it, instead the damn game practically punishes you if you don't throroughly sniff through every area.

To make it even worse the map shows you items/areas on it if you get close enough letting you know they are there, and sometimes the game also taunts you by letting you see the secret area through a window or something. That already can be a bit frustrating if you can't find a way to them, but sometimes it's not even possible to get to them yet. The way to them could be in some later part of the map, but you have no way of knowing that. And if you give up in hopes it's one of those you can only get to later the game might then give you the finger, bar the way back and slap you with a checkpoint.

Therefore the gameplay loop was fun combat -> varying levels of annoyance and frustration while looking for secrets -> move forward -> rinse and repeat. I really really wished I could just enjoy the combat and be able to look for secrets only when I felt like it without getting kicked in the balls for skipping them. I guess I just suck at finding them, I found a whopping four classic maps out of apparently thirteen.

But once I had found all the weapons, unlocked the mods I liked and upgraded them, along with the argent points / armor upgrades I could stop giving a damn about secrets and just enjoy the game. The last third was just straight up awesome, combat arenas after combat arenas with the game throwing everything at you. Demons turning into red mist after being greeted by super shotgun, heads getting chainsawed off, blood and body parts flying all around. Special mention for the berserk powerup which I found to be unproportionally fun!

I don't really know how I would find the first two thirds of the game now that I know how to play it, which weapon mods to get first and where to find most of the secrets. I'm hoping this is one of those games where the second playthrough is more fun than the first, but that remains to be seen. I better write some notes for myself later so I don't need to repeat all this once I do go back to replay it.

Also points for the first part of the end credits, they were great. Especially the recreation of the cover art of the original Doom.