<span class="bold">Costume Quest</span>

Just finished Costume Quest, a funny little RPG. I enjoyed playing it despite a few rough edges and i'll jump straight to CQ 2 tomorrow.

Two free games I recently discovered by chance on itch.io:


<span class="bold">Murdercide 2017</span>

A cheesy point'n'click adventure with a cyberpunk setting and a sometimes annoying protagonist, made by one member of Powerhoof (the creators of Crawl) and some friends. It's very short (the game page claims to be 10 minutes long, even though it definitely took me a little more than that to complete it), but the result is very good: detailed graphics, fully voice acted, and a silly but interesting story with a twisted sense of humour (several bad jokes notwithstanding).



<span class="bold">The Ma&icirc;tre D'</span>

Another game by the guys from Powerhoof plus some friends, this one is a sort of puzzle platformer that took part (and won many prizes) in a Ludum Dare game jam. You play as the maître d' of a posh French restaurant and your job is to take all the customers to their corresponding seats. Fortunately for you your character has the snake-like ability to lengthen and contort his body at will, but for that you'll first need to collect some lotion bottles (don't ask me why). The first levels seem pretty easy and straightforward, but after while the game will probably become pretty challenging. However, it's only a matter of mastering one or two particular moves before you breeze your way through the remaining levels. The only con I found is that you cannot save your progress and you have to play it all the way through in one go. Luckily it's not a long game so the lack of a save function doesn't matter that much in the end.



My list of finished games in 2017

Braveland: Pirate

The story was pretty half-hearted and combat got a bit repetitive. In both cases i think it's a game of the devs mistaking length for "content" and the game stayed just a bit too long.

Never really had room in my army for the most powerful unit, but mostly strolled through the game, slowed down more by using my heal spells (to save gold more than to actually win fights), which was probably irrelevant. Gold is a bit tight early, but I ended the game with plenty to spare.

Only time I lost any fights was the bank guards, partly because they seem to be placed 2-3 levels early depending on the sequence you clear the islands. Final boss was a bit of a challenge, in part b/c it's the one fight where you're outnumbered, and his special ability is pretty devastating, but I still won with about 15% of my army left.

One thumb kinda up. It's not HOMM, but it's not bad.

Albion
A gift from Impaler26, thanks a lot again

Now that I’ve finished the game I regret that creative RPG games with a great world to explore, interesting characters and meaningful story has not become a trend. Instead, we were flooded with generic games with elves/dwarves/orcs and so on. Trust me, Albion is really unique. Sure, a bit flaws here and there, some clichés but the game feels so fresh even nowadays.

Obviously the graphics and UI are a bit dated but nothing really too hard to cope with. Some sceneries are beautiful even now so it was a pleasure to watch. Seriously, I can recommend it every RPG fan!

Full list

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered

A much shinier version of the 2007 Modern Warfare game. The gunplay is still great but the very restrictive level-design does hurt the game from time to time. Also be prepared for a whooping 56 GB install to HD. But all in all a great trip down memory lane.

Offworld Trading Company
I got it from the Community Giveaway, donated by BKGaming, thanks again guys

Yet another game that I eventually enjoyed a lot but only after changing my expectations about it. I thought it’s a trading simulator. Well, it does sound like this, doesn’t it? Wrong! It’s not really a trading simulator! I would say it’s a fast paced RTS but without standard military units. You fight your opponents by more sophisticated means like hacking, manipulating and finally taking over. You still don’t believe me that it’s not a typical trading game? Then allow me to say this: playing without AI opponents is completely pointless and boring. And it should be fine for a trading game. And the other thing is you have only two markets available for trade: the local colony or you can ship your goods offworld. It’s not that much, isn’t it?

OK, so what’s this all about? Well your task is to build, extract and produce various resources and then to sell them with a profit. Everything is very simple and automated. The catch is you can only build a few structures before you run out of "claims". By upgrading your HQ you can get more but eventually you’ll reach the final limit. And believe me, it’s not much. So while you may still have a good production line for every resource available you will have to focus on some of them and accept the fact that you can’t get all of them in unlimited quantities. Obviously, you have to choose wisely. But what if the prices change and once profitable resource is not worth much anymore? In that case you should try less legal option like hacking the system and spreading a word that the particular resource will be scarce soon. That should bring the price to a high level again. What if it doesn’t help much? Well, you can try to send them offworld, maybe the price is better there.

What if it’s still not enough? How about starting a mutiny in your opponent’s factory so that they produce the resources for you? Obiously the resource which is pretty expensive at the moment. Or hiring a pirate to steal some expensive goods? Or… well, I won’t spoil the game for you, learning all those little trick is fun indeed!

But believe me: the competition is very intense, especially at higher AI options. As I said before many parts of the game are a bit simplistic so it was easier to make your opponents managing the business really well. They will play dirty tricks on you too! In fact, you can learn a lot from their behavior. In the end your task is to take over every rival company. It’s not easy but manageable. The things happen pretty fast (there is an active pause button though) so finishing each mission takes usually 0.5-1 hour.

Is it a good game? Yes but only if you stop thinking about it as a trading simulator. Do I plan to buy the shitload of DLCs? That depends, at the moment I’m satisfied with game and some minor additions are not that appealing for me, especially at the full price. Maybe during a sale…

Full list

I LOOOOVED Torchlight, Torchlight 2 even more.

To each his own I guess.

I'm with Leroux, Ironstar and Klumpen. Torchlight was one of the few games I ever bought that I stopped playing and shelved permanently without even coming close to finishing. Also one of the few I regret spending money on. Like you said though, to each their own.

Dracula 2: The last sanctuary
A direct continuation of Dracula: the resurrection.
It has the same weak points as resurrection: dated graphics, laughable animations and surprisingly easy to miss hot-spots.
However, it improved on everything else. There is more variety in the puzzles, some of which are really fun; the story is better and there are more characters to interact with; the difficulty was also increased drastically and there are many ways to die which some of you may take as a negative, but I think it adds to the game's charm.
The biggest negative is Dracula himself; he pesters you along the way but comes off as stupid and incompetent for letting you escape every time with ease.
Overall:
Dated ,like its predecessor, but improved in almost every way. Just like a true sequel should be.
8/10

So now it's a good time to play Dracula 3. It's 11/10 for me :D

Yep, I'm planing to start later today or tomorrow. I heard a lot of good about The path of the dragon.

Just finished Dragon's Dogma. It was the Dark Arisen version but I kinda accidentally ended up not actually finishing Dark Arisen't extra chapter before clearing the game so I guess I can't honestly say that I actually won Dark Arisen, heh. Confusing stuff, just like a lot of other things about the game.

Anyway, all in all I loved the game. I started playing it because I needed a break from the overly depressing and stressful Demon's Souls but still wanted to play something remotely in the same vein and Dragon's Dogma turned out to be pretty much exactly what I was looking for. First off, I'm not sure there is a single other game out there that captures the archetypal Tolkienesque fantasy quite as perfectly as this game. A big evil threatening the land, a call for adventure, a long journey and always a band of companions by your side... the game is admittedly far from perfect but its core is just right and it's sad there's not a sequel yet (and I have a feeling that Dragon's Dogma Online, despite looking very similar to Dragon's Dogma in a number of ways, differs in exactly these matters due to the simple fact that it's an MMO).

Anyway, I don't even know where to begin in breaking down what I liked and what I didn't like about the game in particular and I honestly think I'd be able to fill dozens of pages with commentary. Well, I'll try to make it brief: I think it's a great action RPG, that is, the combat is really solid dynamic stuff, better than anything I have seen in any western ARPG, and the character development and pawn system made progression very satisfying. Particularly the ability to change playstyles on the fly by switching not only the class for your main character but being able to change your entire party setup at any point was just fantastic. Having finished the game while maxing out seven of the nine classes I'm not sure how I'll ever be able to enjoy any RPG again where I'm restricted to a single class in a single playthrough. It's also great that you can hire the pawns of other players, it's fun to see what kinds of characters other players have come up with. And having a jolly crowd defeat a magnificent creature in an epic battle, with the classes supplementing each other, is pretty much as good as it gets.

Content-wise the game is solid but kinda meh. The world is as generic high fantasy as it gets and the universe and characters are neither as sophisticated as in some western RPGs nor as unique or charismatic as in many Japanese titles and simply underdeveloped. The main intrigue in the story is ridiculously simple and there's only a handful of characters who had the potential to become interesting figures (as a matter of fact there's very few characters in the game at all!) but the game doesn't go anywhere with them. It's the same with the game world: the world has a nice feel to it but it is ultimately very condensed and small and without any unique or otherwise memorable places. The same goes for the quest design. All the quests in the game are very straightforward, most are just variations of "kill x creatures", "collect x items" or "escort x to y" and even the "craziest" ones are very down-to-earth, actually.

And yet, despite all of this I just had a really great time with the game and can't wait to start a new playthrough so I can do Dark Arisen's original chapter on Bitterblack Isle, collect even better loot and finally kill the Ur-Dragon (the toughest but entirely optional enemy in the game whom I accidentally skipped). Maybe I'll also approach hard mode one day. Oh yeah, and I'll try to actually choose a love interest this time. During my last playthrough the game decided that my character's gay and chose a fella as my love interest whom I despised from the first moment he appeared in the game. For frigg's sake...

How did you beat the game without beating the Ur-Dragon first? Doesn't he drop a dozen wakestone shards that you need to fight the Seneschal?

I actually really like how the game handles romance. You get points with characters by giving gifts and talking to them, and virtually any random NPC you find in the game could become your romantic interest. In a way it can be amazingly inept, since for a lot of people the character they talked to the most was the innkeeper that changes your classes, and they didn't take measures to lower affinity, so in the New Game+ when he moves in with the Arisen and opens up a shop the player becomes incapable of changing to advanced classes on that save ever again. Still, it's a testament to the team's dedication to throw everything at the wall and try weird things.

You sort of played Dark Arisen and sort of didn't. On one hand you missed out on a massive dungeon that takes dozens of hours to complete, with its own lore, and some of the coolest enemies, bosses and fights in the game.

On the other, Dark Arisen made massive changes to the base game, chief among them the Eternal Ferrystone. It allows you to fast travel as much as you want, whenever you want. It's such an enormous convenience that I couldn't ever tell people not to use it. But that doesn't change the fact that it makes the game world feel much smaller, and the feeling of being in the woods far from the nearest town when nighttime catches you unaware, and in this game nighttime can be truly dark and not just a blue shader on top of everything, and you don't know if you have enough oil to carry you to town, and the undead rising out of the ground all around you. It was an uniquely tense experience that was the sole reason behind the day/night cycle and the lamp being included in the game, and it just wasn't present on Dark Arisen. Then again, you do lose a lot less time walking around to places you have already been to.

Questions:

Any issues running it on modern systems (what windows are you using)?

Any 'old game' challenges that game presented?

How long did it take you?

How difficult it was compared to modern games?


Thanx for that. Albion is one of the games I saw in polish computer magazine (SGK :) ) when it was released and always wanted to play. never got the chance though. Now I do so probably should at least try it.

Note at all. Windows 7. It's a DOSBox title

Isometric 2D parts were very good, sadly 3D dungeon crawling was clunky and not really entertaining. UI is poor, some fights tedious and the general design is lacking. Unfortunatelly, there are quite a lot of dungeons and you can't skip them. But the game is story oriented and that part is pretty neat.

I'm not sure but I would say 30-40 hours

I don't think I've played any modern RPG game recently (or at all, depending how you define modern). The game is not very difficult. If you are somewhat familiar with games from 90s you should be fine. As far as I remember Might and Magic 3 was more difficult


I would say it's worthwhile to try it! As long as you like good story and nice world exploration you should try it