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I'm back at it. It's been a while since I've been able to ramble about what I'm playing, or what I've played, mainly because I've tightened my focus to a single game at a time. Granted, I do occasionally stray from my key title, but I mostly try to stick to one huge project before moving on.
There are plenty of titles I won't be talking about right now, but a lot that I'd like to discuss. Obviously, Cattails, Fallout: New Vegas and Dragon Age: Inquisition were some of my most recent playthroughs, as evidenced by my latest reviews. However, I also played:
Chantelise: A Tale of Two Sisters
Review upcoming. This one is an action-adventure game with beat 'em up and light RPG elements. It's one of four games localized by Carpe Fulgar (who translated Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale, if you remember that one). It plays pretty simply: you enter a room in a dungeon, destroy all foes, move to the next room, repeat the process. Dungeons aren't complex, either. One room leads to another, and there are no branches.
It's really not a bad game, but not a great one, either. It's lightly entertaining and its story sports a few twists. Its combat system is pretty intuitive, but it also makes for a somewhat repetitive experience. I kind of recommend it, but only if you're able to nab it during a sale, and only if you have spare time.
Death and the Fly
The Steam reviews for this are very negative, but mostly seemed either vague or hyperbolic. Stuff like "I pade ninty-nine sence for this this gmae, and it wuz still to much!" Those reviews turned out to be correct.
This one is a platformer similar to The Lost Vikings, except you play as the grim reaper and a fly. The former has magical abilities, while the latter can fly.
I only played this one for a few minutes before giving up on it entirely. It's incredibly slow and unstable (it crashed two or three times before I could start the first level), plus its tutorials are perplexing. They couldn't just give you simple directions, but had to write confusing passages that tell you what to do. Worse is that they don't explain basic mechanics very well, like Death's spells. I couldn't make it past the first puzzle without feeling a deep, internal scream of agony, and I knew then that I had to cut my losses on this catastrophe.
Gothic 3
Yeah, I restarted this one, and I'm getting back into it. I wasn't very far along before my last computer crapped out, so I didn't lose much progress. This one takes place a while after Gothic 2, and so far seems to be more promising than its predecessors. I know a lot of Piranha Bytes fans would wince at reading that, but let's face it; the first two Gothic games have aged poorly. Gothic's visuals are just a touch above original PlayStation, plus its play control is horrendous, its voice acting is Tenchu-bad and it requires a far too much effort to keep it from crashing. Gothic 2 is vastly improved, mechanically speaking, but unstable and still in terrible need of better voice acting.
Gothic 3 is a much more streamlined open worlder, and plays more like Risen. You don't have to fuss with three fucking keys just to pick up one item, and control your character mostly with WASD and a mouse. I don't care what anyone says, the old control style was awful. The game still looks and sounds dated, but I mostly find its visuals forgivable. It's voice acting is still kind of hilariously bad, though.
Cast of the Seven Godsends Redux
I reviewed this a few years ago, and wasn't terribly impressed. There were some cool things about it, but it was mostly an aggravating take on Ghosts 'n Goblins. The Redux version sports some fairer systems. For instance, you can save between levels. You get five continues per game, all of which restock after you reload your save file. So far, it's the same game with a little added balancing. I'm not sure what else the dev changed, but so far I appreciate the alterations.
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