Divine Divinity
After finally finishing this gem of a game I can only but recommend this game to any RPG lover out there. Beneath the now dated graphics lies a sound game with a complex world, rich lore and funny little gameplay gimmicks that made me smile a lot.
The good:
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Rich lore, decent story (if a bit cliché by now)
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Plenty of content (Took me appr. 70 hours to finish)
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Pretty extensive and flexible RPG elements (create whatever character you like as you go)
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Easy to get into, but challenges along the way
– Real player with 74.5 hrs in game
Read More: Best Isometric RPG Games.
Divine Divinity
Date of this review: 15 March 2018
Update (25 April 2018): Formatting fixes
DISCLAIMER: I would like to point out that I likely achieved 100% completion in this game. Because it is so old, there are not achivements so I can’t be sure, but I did complete every quest that is listed in online guides, and I fully explored every map.
===Notes About Me===
Graphics/Animation: I usually don’t care about; I still play NES games occasionally.
– Real player with 71.7 hrs in game
Konung 2
Konung 2 is weird. It’s an open RPG with a little bit of unit management.
The game is pretty complicated with lots of unorthodox features.
Yet the devs decided not to include a tutorial whatsoever, leading to players fumbling around inside the game.
The funny thing is that the first game has a pretty comprehensive tutorial.
Konung 2 is an open game. You can go wherever you want and do whatever you want.
Do some quests? Or killing monsters or maybe even killing all of the villagers.
Another aspect of the game is you can own a couple of villages and by doing so you can earn money from daily tributes.
– Real player with 68.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best Isometric RPG Games.
A scandiaviana themed role playing game. After playing this out of order with Konung 3 first, I found this one somewhat different. It was more challenging as this game has more strategy involved in it, especially with the controlling of towns. So, here is my pro and con list:
PROS:
‘Owning towns and running them!
‘Ability to recruit town members when you own a town
‘Different heroes for the main character, including female characters to play as
‘Some strategy is involved
‘Old school RPG mechanics similiar to Baldur’s Gate
– Real player with 63.3 hrs in game
Pillars of Eternity
I’ve always consider the progress of graphics and telling stories with well made CG instead of words are good things for game industry, I thought the stunning graphics could bring the game world closer to us than the classic literature did.
Yet I found myself totally immersed by Eroa ,in this game than I’ve ever been in other games before, the astunning details I read from these words,just makes me questioning if the game industry is on the right path consider all those games with great power of graphics but turn out to be a total nightmare.
– Real player with 94.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Isometric RPG Games.
The game is just inredibly boring for me, never played it more than couple of hours from the start. Comparing to old BG/IWD series and Planescape:Tormet the only advantage of PoI is the graphic.
Game mechanics like allowing to sleep only when you have camp wood or some enemy beetles opening a door you close a moment earlier to hide from it is just lame.
– Real player with 87.4 hrs in game
Archquest
Gather your party and venture forth to the city of Evertide, where invading monsters have risen from the ruins of the old city. Liberate the city block by block as you uncover the mysterious origins of the ancient city and what lies beneath.
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Create your character - based on tabletop RPG rules. Choose your class, feats, skills, and spells, and then customize your appearance by selecting your hair, beard, and skin.
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Explore the world in an immersive first-person view with grid-based movement. Each character in your party gets to choose an exploration activity, such as Search, Scout, Sneak, or maintain a Detect Magic spell.
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Engage in tactical turn-based combat. Execute reactions like Attack of Opportunity. Smash your enemies with Power Attack. Apply status effects with spells like Sleep, Grease, or Color Spray.
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Converse with your Diplomacy, Deception, or Intimidation skill against NPCs in a full-featured branching dialogue system.
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Manage your inventory and equip yourself with a paper-doll system. Craft magic items by grafting Potency Runes to weapons and armor.
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
Avadon: The Black Fortress
IT’S ABOUT TIME!
Frankly this is probably old news to many of you reading this. I’m ashamed that I didn’t know about these Spiderweb titles previously.
Gather round me children, for there’s a tale I’d like to share. Once there was a time when video games entertained the player an immersive story and provocative challenges that kept you playing for hours.
I’ve never liked the term “dungeon crawler”. To me the crawler part implies slow which let’s be honest, is generally associated with boring in the world of books, movies and video games. When was the last time you couldn’t wait to dig in to a slow book someone recommended?
– Real player with 100.6 hrs in game
Almost six years. That’s how long it took me to finally finish this game.
Not because of its difficulty, technical issues or anything like that. Instead, I have to attribute it to my own stubborn nature and the game itself disappointing me at first and, well, second glance. So yeah, with a third try last week I finally powered through and this time around my enjoyment was far greater.
The question then remains, what prevented me from doing so the first two times? Well, back then I was expecting an experience very similar to Avernum: Escape From the Pit. Oh boy, was I in for a surprise. Avadon: The Black Fortress changes up the Spiderweb Software formula on various levels. In some areas there are definite improvements to be found compared to the company’s older games. The dialogue and story are arguably better than that of the Avernum series. I would even go so far as stating that it can be more captivating than Avernum: Escape From the Pit at times.
– Real player with 85.3 hrs in game
Beyond Divinity
A good game, not a great game. You’ll read a lot about the bad voice acting (some of it’s alright, really), the difficulty (not just the combat, but staying on track for any particular quest), and how dated it is. The last one is irrelevant, because by definition every game will become dated, so this is an invalid criticism. But yes, the game has plenty of flaws. This was my introduction to the Divinity universe, and although it had its ups and downs, it was an enjoyable ride.
Like I do with every game that feels worth beating, I tried to do everything the game had to offer, including all side quests, explore everything, and genuinely give it my time and attention. This is one of the few RPGs I’ve played all the way through in the last few years for which that approach didn’t really pay off. Sometimes it did, and I discovered a big, ugly and beautiful and visually interesting world. But other times it was exhausting and aimless and felt like a time-sink. The battlefields feature of the game is unusual, and doesn’t add anything worthwhile.
– Real player with 56.8 hrs in game
I really wanted to give this game a good review, since I simply adore Larian.
This is a really funny game, and if you love environmental gags and mocking fantasy tropes then this game is going to make you laugh.
However, I really can’t recommend it.
I am currently in Act 2, and I decided to uninstall. This game is a technical nightmare.
Audio glitches are still here from DD, except, instead of being constantly jumpscared by white noise like in DD, you simply lose all SFX for a while. This pretty much forces a save and quit.
– Real player with 52.1 hrs in game
Final Foe
Final Foe is an isometric fantasy arena that challenges you to slay waves of monsters in a mysterious dungeon. Single player and co-op modes. Modifiers and boss rounds. Survive and fight to the end, until the last enemy is killed!
Main Features
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Atmospheric medieval location.
The old cursed dungeon with several gates awaits you, from which numerous enemies arrive. You can also find dangerous traps that will come in handy to eliminate enemies
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Non-target combat system.
This system works for both players and enemies. This means that any enemy attack can be dodged.
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Campaign mode.
You need to destroy enemies round after round, including a short tutorial and several boss battles. As you progress, the difficulty increases. And at the end you will find the most powerful enemy - the final boss.
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Survival mode.
This mode is one endless battle, during which more and more strong enemies appear. The goal is to score as many points as possible for killing enemies. Especially sophisticated players can choose the Ultra-difficulty level. This will allow you to get 3 times more points, but will require dodging any damage, since the character will only have 1 health point.
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Various enemies.
Endless living dead, terrible knights, insidious magicians and many others, about whom you can find out when you meet. Different enemies have different characteristics. Some are weak and slow, some attack from a distance, and some can get so angry that it will be impossible to stop them…
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Bosses.
As you progress through the Campaign mode, you will encounter several bosses. Fighting some of them will require special skill from you.
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Skill tree.
The development of your character will take place by learning skills in the skill tree. At the moment, there are 3 intermediate and 4 advanced character classes available. Each of the advanced classes has unique active and passive abilities.
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Cooperative multiplayer.
It is much more fun to destroy crowds of enemies together with your friends. This feature allows you to play in a team of up to 4 people.
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
The Final Battle
Genre - Retro Text and Picture based RPG
Used to love this game on my Atari ST (with higher quality images) as a kid.
It’s nice to be able to play it again, for the nostalgia factor. I was never able to complete it without a full guide. Luckily I can’t remember much about the puzzles though.
The controls were confusing at first, but think I get them now (use single/double/right click and drag and drop). If you lose a party member you will need to reload or restart, and it is easy to lose them (including not saving them quick enough at the start).
– Real player with 1.4 hrs in game