Drakensang: The River of Time
It started really well and I really began to enjoy this game, then the awful combat system kicked in during critical times, which can be a real pain. Though I like the pause and ensuing tactical planning elements, it does not always work. For example, I could be hit by ranged weapons and despite having high level ranged combat, I could not fire back despite pause, select targeting, etc. I could set the attack up and… waited… and… waited… Nothing happened, all the while I was getting hit until my party was decimated by three low level dwarfs with crossbows. No matter what I did or where I stood I could not fire back, yet they were in clear line of sight and within range. Whether or not I was being a numpty, I don’t know - it just seemed to spoil what is a good game from being a great game.
– Real player with 80.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Character Customization RPG Games.
Like Drakensang the Dark Eye, this is a totally underrated RPG imo, and almost all the bad reviews refer to it being “unplayable” on newer versions of Windows, although it only takes a few min online to find a fix. I have Win 10 and I typed -windowed and -novideo in the Steam preferences (rightclick on the game in Steam Library and select Properties - Set launch options) and it didn’t crash a single time, which is more than one can say for a lot of older games by non-defunct companies, so so much for that. The -novideo did actually disappear later, so idk if it did anything; so as is clear I have no real idea what I’m doing but still managed to get the game to run with next to no effort. There are few loading screens in spite of large areas and the loading times are fast, unlike some other games I could mention where I end up going online all the time as I get bored waiting.
– Real player with 77.2 hrs in game
Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness
Cant recommend this yet. I have no problems with the usual early access stuff; broken game mechanics, bugged quests, and balance issues. Those are all easy to fix. However, I do have some main concerns that the small dev team may or may not be able to fix for main release:
1. Performance issues. Long load times and poor frame rates on high end machines with SSDs. Not acceptable from a game that looks like 1998. Since you get a loading screen every time you enter/exit an area or building, long loading times severely impact the overall experience. Pretty much every streamer who streamed this said the same thing.
– Real player with 66.2 hrs in game
Read More: Best Character Customization RPG Games.
Party-based computer rpg similar to NWN, Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale, et al. If you like those type this game should fit your needs. It is RTwP for those who only play one type of combat.
I think there is enough here to support for sure:
Pros:
Quite a large variety of stuff to find for the hoarder in all of us.
Melee combat is fairly robust and healing gets the job done.
The painted map backgrounds are mostly pretty.
Good variety in classes.
I will cover cons in detail since they need fixing:
– Real player with 23.3 hrs in game
Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition
Can’t express enough, nor can I make this a full review as it would take far too long, how amazing this game is. Still survives more than 18 years after launch through the Enhanced Edition and I’ve been playing since that launch. Roleplaying online for over 15 years, as well. It continues to get amazing improvements as it goes along, and I’m excited to see how much more it can bring.
– Real player with 7840.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best Character Customization RPG Games.
You know what you could be playing instead of a MMO?
Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition.
– Real player with 965.0 hrs in game
Adapt or Perish
Adapt or Perish has that addictive game play that people also find in games like Factorio for the same reason. I’ve already put in over 50 hours and i’m still learning new things i can do…………then fix them to make them better……then fix them.
This game lets you be strategic not just on the field but in the DNA engineering department as well. Other RTS games have a fixed set of assets to use that use attributes others have decided for you are useful but not in Adapt or Perish.
This game lets you really get into the true strategy of war and tactics by letting you create units, buildings and more real time in game match so you can design dynamically if you lack something you need. You can push your designs to their limits and see if they have what it takes to keep you alive and searching for Overseers. The farther you push out the harder it gets so using tactics come into play constantly and pushes your abilities to hone a better faction.
– Real player with 111.5 hrs in game
AoP is an rts that feels distinctive, which in 2019 is saying something. I play-tested the crap out of this and still have a lot to learn. The unit customization system provides many viable strategies and possible play styles. You can mimic builds and strategies from other rtses and tower defensey games if you wish. Some of your intuition about how rtses work will require adjustment in AoP’s reality.
There is no campaign. The only goal is to kill beefy Overseer units as cheaply and quickly as possible to receive a higher score on the leaderboard. If you know what you’re doing you can defeat the first Overseer in 15 minutes, but getting that first kill is only the lowest tier of real victory. The AI never runs out of resources and cannot be defeated. Enemy units and buildings spawn around your units just outside of your line of sight, and killing them makes the enemy angrier which makes the AI spawn more enemies, leading to a meat grinder of attrition. You can keep pulling up weeds in your yard until your yard is perfect, but you can’t prevent weeds from growing outside your yard. How long can you keep your base alive while hunting Overseers deep in the wilderness?
– Real player with 98.3 hrs in game
Drakensang
A party based RPG with great potential but quite unfinished and unpolished. Some people compare it to DA:O, NWN, BG, etc…(that being the reason I bought it) but that’s a big overstatement.
The bad:
1. The story/main quest - linear, blurry and uninteresting - does little to motivate the player to save the world.
2. The side quests are scarce, petty, uncomplicated and unrewarding.
3. The companions are plain, stereotyped and boring. They have no personal quests (except one), don’t develop with the progress in the game, rarely have something to say about quests/environment. Puppets with no personality, no conflicts, no banters, no life. The majority of them can be recruited too late in the game, so, for the first half, you will probably be stuck with the barking amazon and the cliché dwarf.
– Real player with 178.9 hrs in game
Ah, so this is where Dragon age origins stole all their ideas.. Of course that most likely isnt true. Judging by the release dates, the guys and gals over at Bioware were almost certainly unaware of the osbcure German title Drakensang, even tho Drakensang did come out first.
After beating Drakensang and enjoying it greatly, I couldnt help but notice similarities. Four member party- check. Pause and play tactical combat- check. Mages have magical skills and fighters get erm, fightery skills. Your archers stand back and sling arrows, you’ll need a rogue to open locks, disable traps and even smooth talk out of a situation or two. Its all done well, and made with obvious care, so if your into that sort of thing, your gonna like this.
– Real player with 138.8 hrs in game
Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition
Baldur’s Gate is truly a masterpiece. Despite it’s beauty, tactical depth and great story, the game does not take itself too seriously. This cannot be said of many other leading RPG titles, which I soon begin to find rather corny. If you like RPGs and have not played Baldur’s Gate, then this is an absolute must, you do not even need to waste your time reading this review but of course you are welcome to. If you have played the original BG and are curious about Beamdog’s boob job, I share with you my opinion.
– Real player with 425.6 hrs in game
Classics are often thought to be timeless for future generations to enjoy, but the same cannot be said for Baldur’s Gate—and it’s not because CRPGs are uncommon. To go blind into BG in 2016 is practically impossible because how modern expectations are at odds with the brutal accessibility of ’90s computer games.
Baldur’s Gate, simply put, is an sarcophagus; it is a coffin of a bygone time of design philosophies and of late ’90s player expectations, immersed in the counter-culture of D&D and of fantasy-fiction that is written in its code like hieroglyphics to modern eyes. The game’s reverence is both a nostalgic call-back as well as an appreciation of BG’s systems as a traditional role-playing experience.
– Real player with 203.9 hrs in game
Dragon Age: Origins - Ultimate Edition
Dragon Age: Origins is a God-Tier RPG. However I like to elaborate on my reviews, and so let me elaborate. I will try to keep spoilers to a minimum, but please note that I might let a couple things slip.
Now as a prelude, I’ll cover the gameplay, graphics and mechanics. Personally in RPGs this matters so little to me. I still play Fallout 2 and enjoy the hell out of KOTOR and Mass Effect. But…lets be real here. They suck. The graphics are…okay-ish? The gameplay has the pacing of tetris and the mechanics are just…old. None of it is fast paced nor are there any really cool abilities looks-wise. None of this is important to me, in fact, its clunkiness brings out a personal enjoyment. But yeah…its definitely really aged. It would also be remiss of me not to mention the fact that the game is ancient, and therefore crashes on newer PCs. About once an hour for me personally. Now I was able to fix it by way of a guide a while back, but going into it expect performance to be less than stellar. Now onto the meat.
– Real player with 182.8 hrs in game
❤ Audience ❤
☑ Beginner
☑ Casual
☑ Hardcore
☼ Graphics ☼
☐ Bad
☑ Alright
☐ Good
☐ Beautiful
☐ Fantastic
♬ Music ♬
☐ Bad
☐ Alright
☐ Good
☐ Beautiful
☑ Fantastic
☠ Difficulty ☠
☐ Easy
☑ Average
☐ Challenging
☐ Hard
☐ Brutal
§ Bugs §
☐ Bugs make the game almost unplayable
☐ Lots of bugs
☑ Few bugs
☐ Insignificant or contains humorous glitches
☐ None encountered during normal gameplay
☯ Story ☯
☐ There is none
☐ Bad
☐ Alright
☐ Good
☑ Fantastic
⚔ Gameplay ⚔
☐ Frustrating
☐ Repetitive
☐ Boring
– Real player with 170.9 hrs in game
Koi Unleashed
Koi Unleashed was a really great game, the illustration art is awesome. The music really envelops you in the atmosphere of an ancient Japan and during Boss fights it feels quite epic.
It’s a solid game that revolves around the combat with big enemy Bosses. While the game is simple and fun to play there is also an increased difficulty in controlling your party with commands at the same time as you have to avoid all the different enemies attacks and when you have to avoid boss mechanics.
The controls are great and I love that I can drop my controller and just go play on my laptop if I feel like it.
– Real player with 44.6 hrs in game
Game Review:
Koi Unleashed is an Action RPG. It looks nice, is Challenging and fun. Its Got a Good Soundtrack, The Landscapes are pretty, and the boss battles were good. Make sure to take advantage of your Runes & Crystals when it gets hard. Game really requires you to switch back and forth alot to take advantage of everyone’s powers.
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Good Music
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Controller Support (tho it recognized my Xbox one controller as a PS4 controller but was able to change this in the pause menu)
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Multiple Fighting Classes, Adds a lot of replayability to this
– Real player with 6.2 hrs in game
Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Enhanced Plus Edition
Kingmaker is rough around some edges, with a few changes to the tabletop rules that aren’t clearly stated to the player. (If you’re unfamiliar with Pathfinder, it is a variant of Dungeons and Dragons.) A large number of frustrations I have often come from either the interface not being great at explaining when something is different, or not explaining anything at all until you’re in another menu. (A game like Pathfinder really demands a character creation/level up screen that lets you preview your whole build from levels 1-20 just to get an idea of what you’re doing.)
– Real player with 255.9 hrs in game
As a cRPG this is an excellent game - great characters, great companions, great stories - main plot and companions - and a combat system that works.
As a game, it’s a mish mash of systems, ideas and a rigidly enforced ruleset that sadly overwhelms that content a little. It is a massively long game with 6 distinct acts that do not flow one after another, but intersperse themselves with a poorly explained Kingdom building mechanic that ultimately just doesn’t work and really, really gets in the way of the rest of the game. Making numbers get bigger doesn’t really make for a compelling experience, but if you don’t do it you’ll get yourself in a right mess and the game will end. It has no respect for your time as a gamer at all, and will test the very limits of your patience.
– Real player with 209.4 hrs in game
STAR WARS™ Knights of the Old Republic™ II - The Sith Lords™
Good game but there’s a game breaking bug that I cannot find a fix for. I Tried around 6 different fixes to no avail. After combat, around 80% of the time, the game will not allow the player to move. You are stuck unless you save and then load. If it happened 20% instead of 80% it wouldn’t be a problem, but as it stands, at times it’s every 20 seconds you have to spend another 20 seconds to restart.
– Real player with 169.2 hrs in game
Phenomenal game- probably the best Star Wars game I have ever played!
– Real player with 164.2 hrs in game