Dragon Age™: Origins Awakening
Dragon Age Origins Awakening is in no way an anomaly. It does what is expected from an expansion pack, adds a little here and a little there, rehashes everything that was in the original and doesn’t add anything new or major. And, like most expansion packs, stand alone or otherwise, it is only worth it for fans of the original as taken by it’s own merits, it’s not much of a game.
Awakening starts you off short after the end of the original Dragon Age, you can choose to either import one of your old characters or just from scratch. The latter option gives you an Orlesian Grey Warden background which adds plenty of interesting dialog concerning your heritage throughout the game. Importing a character however, yields almost no interesting dialog throughout the game and even in places and with characters that you original play through should have had a profound effect on you will find that nothing changes regardless of your actions in Origins. This leads to a highly disappointing experience for those of us that have actually played the original and like to think our choices actually mattered, if only in terms of storyline.
– Real player with 71.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best Choices Matter RPG Games.
If you were a fan of Origins, you would like this, featuring your gray warden and a whole new cast of colourful companions (and Oghren.) This Expansion deals with the aftermath of the war, and you need to quell another darkspawn uprising. I didn’t find the game as compelling as base, but it was entertaining enough.
However, I wouldn’t really recommend getting it as is because it’s as expensive as the main game but with only a quarter of the content. And don’t play this if you haven’t played the main game either.
– Real player with 16.1 hrs in game
Ethos 2: Fall Of Empires
Carve Your Own Path
Ethos 2: Fall Of Empires is a Historical RPG where every single decision you make affects your journey. Abilities, upgrades, weapons, interactions, quests, the atmosphere, and much more, are all affected by the actions and moral decisions you make within the game.
Become a tyrant, a hero, a lone wolf, or many other archetypes, the choice is yours!
The Story
The game takes place in the year 1453. You play as Constantine XI Palaiologos, the last Emperor of the Byzantine Empire. Your once great city of Constantinople has fallen into the hands of the Ottomans and your goal is to take it back.
You can do this by gathering troops/equipment/allies from leaders of other nearby nations in Egypt, the Balkans, The Middle East, and more! OR you can also choose to overthrow the leaders of other nations, and take their nations by force!
You may also attempt to take back Constantinople by making yourself an extremely powerful one-man-army, and attempt to take the city by yourself whenever you are ready. This can be through many means such as assassination of Mehmed the Conqueror, or by facing the entire Ottoman army by yourself.
Style
The game is very non-linear. Meaning that you can technically attempt to finish the final quest very early on in the game. Its an open-world game that doesn’t place a limit on exploration.
Consequences
Want to murder a main character that you need to complete a quest? Go for it. But expect there to be consequences. Want to become a pacifist and try to not harm anyone ever? Go for it. But expect there to be consequences.
Why This Game Is Being Made
As a massive RPG-fan, I was very tired of many AAA games giving you the illusion of ‘your decisions matter’. Because at the end of the day, choices in many AAA games pretty much only affected how much of a discount you could get at a merchants shop, or how some NPC’s react to you when you walk by.
I really want choices to matter in games. And that’s why this game is being made.
Saying that, this is a passion project for myself, and no one should expect this to be a AAA title. But hopefully it could be a really fun indie game that people can replay and have fun with :)
Read More: Best Choices Matter RPG Games.
Last Blossom: Roleplaying tabletop based scene
IN A WORD: MAYBE
IN A NUTSHELL:
WHAT TO EXPECT: Proof of concept or partial tutorial of RPG rule-set. Single scripted encounter given digital form. Made using Unreal Engine 4. Uses 8-bit audio. Simple turn-based ranged, melee and magic combat. Pre-determined characters and NPCs. Low replayability. Limited teaching instrument. Stylized low-poly graphics. Mired writing/translation. Singleplayer only.
ACHIEVEMENTS: NONE.
STATUS: COMPLETE. YET INCOMPLETE.
– Real player with 3.5 hrs in game
Read More: Best Choices Matter RPG Games.
I Loved It. It’s one encounter, 3v4, but it was so much fun. Really helped fill that D&D itch I’ve been having. If you like table top and want a combat situation then get this and play it!
– Real player with 2.0 hrs in game
Cursed Lands
An outstanding VN-RPG-quest crossover
I was expecting another bland, unnecessarily dragged out visual novel with uninspired, repetitive missions, but I was taken for a real treat here—kept replaying with different initial conditions (race, job, supporting character branching choice) over and over, enjoying every single play.
Visual Novel (VN) perspective: Story branching is rich and, as general VN WinterWolves titles go, you have an almost immediate option to go back—typically less than half a minute in gameplay, couple minutes or hours in the game world—to the last choice and change it to study other outcomes. I like this unique branching feature—it is like a quick time machine, or a very smooth and synoptic reload action that permits me to change my choice without having to repeat a known portion of play and grind once again.
– Real player with 132.6 hrs in game
I bought this game on sale, and I’m glad I did, it wasn’t worth the full price. I bought it because it was created by the same team who did Loren Amazon Princess, a game I loved. It’s unfortunate then, that this game is average at best. There are a few problems I have with this game that I feel affected my enjoyment of the game:
1. Characters/Romance
This is the big one, so i’m putting it first. The characters all had great introductions, and are really interesting. Unfortunately, the game screws this up deeply as it progresses. You don’t get to chose when to talk to the characters, their icon’s pop up when the game decides it’s time for their event to start, so you never truly get to know these characters beyond their surface introduction. The game prides itself on giving you romance options, and even advertises that you can trigger more then one romance scene. It isn’t hard, it’s like the game WANTS you to be a serial skirt chaser, and even when you do trigger these scenes, there’s no build up. Characters will spontaneously confess their feeling for you, claiming they always felt something for you. Your character will reply in kind, but you know this is false. Your POV character never felt anything of the sort, their lying.
– Real player with 41.7 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
Epic Tavern
Epic Tavern is a fun and interesting combination of management sim and tabletop RPG. After the tutorial, you start each day off at your tavern. You talk to your customers who usually have pretty interesting story lines, learn of new quests, serve them food and drinks that they may or may not like, get them super drunk, and build your relationships so that you may hire them to do your bidding. At the end of the day, you equip your heroes and send them out into the world on adventures that may only take the day, or it may take several. The success of these missions (and the events on the way) is based on the skills of the heroes and a few rolls of the dice. Many adventures have multiple approaches available to choose from to best fit the skills of your heroes, which means there’s a pretty good reason to play it a few times. After all your teams of heroes have finished up, they go back to the tavern for more alcohol abuse. Wash, rinse, repeat.
– Real player with 372.4 hrs in game
At the heart of EPIC TAVERN is a lack of focus on what is trying to be and executing both game subsystems. On one hand it is a tavern simulator with resource constraints. On the other it is a random event generator in guise with “sometimes” good story elements. You as the bar-keep are tasked with navigating both of these systems. Each subsystem has a wonderful loading screen that is viewed over and over as the game loop progresses.
You can recruit and level up your stock of adventurers in tavern play and then take them out on the road rolling dice. During dice rolls there is the “safe bet” and the “risky” chance to choose from. Even though there are about 5 “actions” to choose from it only boils down to two real choices in its current implementation.
– Real player with 202.0 hrs in game
Hardland
This is legitimately one of the best games I have ever played. The world building is truly world class, and the game is in many ways a technical masterpiece, fast travel is literally 1 frame, and the lighting… I am not kidding, rivals Red Dead Redemption 2, and this was all done with a custom engine. A team of 2, 1 Artist, and 1 Programmer.
To fully appreciate it though, you must understand that even though it kind of looks like zelda, the game is more like monkey island or another adventure game- you are solving world scale puzzles through interactions with the NPC’s and exploration, and the combat is intended as light gating for certain areas, not as a main focus of the game. It does not hold your hand at all and for this reason it can be hard to tell what you are supposed to do next. There is no journal, nor quest tracker, and the world is big and everyone seems to speak in riddles, but i promise you if you keep picking at it everything starts to come together. The first few hours are for exploring and meeting people. The dot connection will come, but you have to pay attention to the world and what people are saying.
– Real player with 42.4 hrs in game
This game for me was a hidden gem, its a flawed gem but quite a unique one as well. I should probably say that this also isn’t a game for everyone as there are some design decisions that may scare off the less adventurous.
The greatest strength of this game is by far its world building and writing. This may sound strange but you spend almost all of your time talking to NPCs, hearing what they have to say and thinking about what it means. The dialogue is almost always a prompt to continue but sometimes you have to make a dialogue choice. This sounds boring but the dialogue is really part of a puzzle for you to discover then figure out and that is what makes the dialogue so engaging. The game warns you in the title screen to pay attention to what is being said to you and they were not kidding. Some small comment a random NPC makes or some item description can lead you to an important item, character, piece of information or situation. You slowly discover this strange world and who all the players are through paying attention to your surroundings, it feels like you are a detective connecting all the dots. The writing is also quite funny, some dialogue exchanges had me bursting out laughing.
– Real player with 39.3 hrs in game
Stories of Mara
I always have a soft spot for the lore of a well-crafted world, and that is exactly what this game gives you. Summer in Mara (and Deiland for that matter) do a wonderful job of creating rich, heartfelt worlds. As such is the case it can be hard to fit everything into one game, and that is where this game fills in.
A good remimder that we each have our own story and motivations, not just “the blacksmith”
Chibig Studio remains a bit of a hidden gem in the game community. Each release full of heart and genuine care for their community. Stories of Mara is no exception.
– Real player with 4.8 hrs in game
Stories of Mara is a short free slice-of life visual novel. Only the first chapter is released for now. This episodic tale presents lots of diverse characters you could see before if you’ve played Summer in Mara. I haven’t. And I’m sure I was missing something but this game may be played separately for sure. As I understood the main chars are missing and we just have the chance to know better some of the side characters. For such a short story the number of chars was really great and the way they looked was quite unique. In general, the game is very bright and kinda relaxing. I’m not a fan of dating sims or mini games. I prefer just to read and make choices, the more the better. But here making different boat models was surprisingly great fun. The very image of MC able to fix anything was rather appealing.
– Real player with 4.7 hrs in game
The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition
This game was made for Team Triss 😍!
And oh yeah, its a great rpg in the Witcher franchise, you wont be disappointed!
– Real player with 130.8 hrs in game
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– Real player with 98.1 hrs in game
The Dreamwalkers
The Dreamwalkers is a 2D Visual Novel/Point-and-Click Adventure Game in which you can project yourself into the world of Dreams.
You play Morgan, a student in History of the Arts in Paris, who’s life is about to be turned upside down. Along his journey he will meet new friends, whose fate will be into your hands.
Features
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5 acts of an hour each. Perfect for lunch break diversions!
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Highly replayable: the story is divided into 3 mutually exclusive branches, each focused on the relationship between Morgan and one of the Dreamwalkers.
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Romance: will Morgan fall in love with this Dreamwalker or just be friend? Your decision!
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8 different endings depending on choices you’ll have to own up (and no Mass Effect-style: some endings will depend on choices made earlier in the game)
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Explore Dreams: scenes in the world of dreams can be explored in point & click phases to discover more about the universe.
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Original Universe: inspired by Neil Gaiman and Inception, we created a world where myths and reality intertwine.
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Backgrounds and characters drawn by talented artists.
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The original music is a symphony in 5 movements created by a composer and played by an orchestra!