From looking at the GOG store it doesn’t seem to be bundled with any patch, which is actually unusual for GOG. If you’re interested I heartily recommend Restoration Project, Updated or RPU for short. It’s a combined unofficial patch/cut content restoration that’s very vanilla friendly and tidies up a lot of stuff left unfixed in the last official patch.

Yeah those Wanamingos are scary in the early game, definitely a place to come back to later. Armour can be tough to get as it doesn’t typically drop as random loot. There are two leather armours for sale in Klamath I think if you’ve gotten a bit of money now.

I’m glad you’re enjoying Fallout 2, it’s probably my all time favourite Fallout! Are you playing with the Restoration Project?

I know exactly what you mean by that early game bottleneck. FO2 can be rough in the early stages between lack of equipment and the comically unbalanced random encounters. It usually swings the other way once you can survive big encounters and sell the looted weapons after.

How far have you gotten?

Instead of jumping on the Elden Ring DLC I’ve continued to be addicted to Esports Godfather to an almost worrying degree.

It’s the clear standout surprise hit of the year for me so far, coming out of absolutely nowhere and ending up being my favourite game in quite a while. It’s a MOBA-themed deckbuilder/autobattler/team management game, and while that sounds like a hot mess it actually plays really well - at least once you get past the initial information overload.

There are lots of fun interactions between cards, items, hero abilities and player abilities which in itself creates great replayability, and constantly changing rulesets keeps things fresh even during a run. The Backpack Battles esque training minigame itself is super fun to optimise when you start getting deep into a run and have more complex blocks to play with.

I heartily recommend it if you like deckbuilders (some passing knowledge of MOBAs might help). It’s only €16 on Steam, and there is a free demo that covers the first couple of hours of a run. I recommend playing with AI difficulty on maximum for both card playing and ban/pick for the best experience (the game is a little too easy by default).

Vanilla Elden Ring felt pretty good in that regard (granted it’s been a while since I played it). As I recall between weapons, spells, Ashes of War and Spirit Ashes you had a lot of tool choices and were free to sort of make the game as difficult or easy for yourself as you liked.

Sounds like they lost that aspect in the DLC, which is a shame.

I agree with you about BG3, but not about games in general. I think romance stories are valid narratives and can add to the experience if executed well.

The presence of sex also depends on the scope and intent of the game. Ultimately, love and sex are integral parts of the human experience. And some settings - like Cyberpunk - would be strictly weird and implausible without stuff like oversexualised ads and street hookers.

I don’t think the writing is particularly good, and it is particularly problematic in Act 3. The pacing falls apart, all urgency disappears and there is also a big problem with the villains. Gortash and Orin are pretty bad characters and the nebulous blob that is the Nether Brain is not a compelling antagonist. The Emperor is a pretty interesting character, but he sadly doesn’t really play out as an antagonist - which I find a massive waste in itself. It also felt like some parts of the plot only make sense if you’re playing as Dark Urge.

The companions all being extremely horny and protagonist-sexual gives off a weird vibe, and the progression and design of the relationship system is extremely bad. As an example, Shadowheart can say you’re her soulmate that changed her whole life on like the second day you spend together! There is also a severe lack of bonding moments that are purely adventure party/friendship and not avenues for everyone else to hit on you.

There being literally 0 consequences for dabbling in Mind Flayer powers felt weird and bad and generally undercut the impact of the entire main story. There is no reason not to fill out your whole tadpole tree (including becoming half illithid), and there is no reward for completely abstaining. No specific dialogue, no impact on the ending. Not even an achievement.

Lots of small attempts at fanservice for fans of BG 1&2 feel like surface level lipservice made by people who never played the originals. The Flail of Ages being a shitty rare regular flail sold in a random shop is just depressing.

I wish they left more BG 1&2 characters alone if they didn’t know exactly what to do with them. Jaheira is mostly fine, but even Minsc felt out of place and shoehorned in and the character assassinations of Viconia and Sarevok just felt terrible. Especially since the role of both of those characters in the plot could have easily been replaced with brand new NPCs.

On a similar note, it strikes me as extremely weird that they seemingly outright refused to have any voice actor reprise their role. Heidi Shannon has disappeared from the face of the earth so Jaheira needed to be recast, but Grey DeLisle (Viconia) and Kevin Michael Richardson (Sarevok) are still out there working for example and Jim Cummings (Minsc) was asking random fans at cons to remind Larian he exists.

I have a deep love for Greedfall. I think it’s sadly pretty underrated. It’s very janky, and time and again it’s non-AAA nature rears its head, but it has such heart behind it. The good parts are worth powering through its flaws in my opinion, and it’s not like they were asking for €60 anyway.

Like you say, the lore and world building is really quite interesting and I loved what they did with the language. Managing to create and enforce consistent accents for all the natives goes such a long way towards maintaining immersion.

I’m very curious how the sequel will turn out. Teer Fradee was the best part of the game for me, so knowing that it’s a prequel taking place on the mainland makes me a little hesitant.

I’m not fussed about the minimap, I play with it off anyway. I might turn off the compass too if given the option, I like checking the PDA for directions.

The ammo though is a travesty to me. Maybe I’m overly sensitive but for me it’s such an immersion break, and these games thrive off of immersion. That’s the whole dang point! Interchangable ammo is such a “video gamey” thing that every time I loot a container and see “assault rifle ammo” I’m going to be pulled out of the zone mentally.

Tuulik was a real one and I would have been very interested in his spinoff. He was really the last bastion of the old ZA/UM as one of the co-creators of the setting (having been part of the original Elysium tabletop game sessions with Kurvitz et al). Him getting fired a couple of months ago was pretty much the final nail for ZA/UM.

But hey, at least the Disco Elysium mobile game with 0 original creator participation is still under development!

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They shouldn’t have to compromise on the unique experience and simplify it for everyone and ruin what makes them good.

When was this ever about compromising the vision or changing the games? I thought this was about the use of guides while playing.

I’m perfectly happy for all the players who spend thousands of hours scrounging every surface, making conspiracy-boards out of item descriptions and feverishly figuring out every hidden secret in these games by themselves.

It’s still completely valid to enjoy all the rest the games have to offer and look at the wiki for how you access the secret area with the hidden boss.

Arguably the first Dark Souls is one of these. Most of the classes push you towards shields as the cornerstone of defense. The studio felt like this overemphasis on shields was such a mistake they took 2 whole games (Bloodborne and Sekiro) in an almost entirely shield-free direction to teach players there were other ways.

That’s more the studio changing design philosophy rather than the game giving poor hints, I would argue. Shields are very viable through all of DS1.

But that’s literally the point of these games compared to everything else that’s out there.

I don’t think that’s entirely true. There are lots of people who play them mostly for the challenge of learning and beating the (mostly) well designed bosses.

Where else do I get cryptic puzzles and unforgiving exploration without a map full of markers?

Outer Wilds? Subnautica?

FromSoft sort of brought it upon themselves with their design philosophy to be fair, going back at least as far as Dark Souls. Selling a DLC and having it locked behind a convoluted puzzle you wouldn’t figure out without a guide was certainly a choice, for example.

I played Origins recently and heavily modded it too. That engine should not be touched, if it is ever revisited it will have to be in the form of a full remake. Which, I think, the odds of it ever happening has to be near zero.

I wonder how they’ll deal with James McCaffrey’s passing. I can’t imagine the game with someone else’s voice, and I can’t imagine just using the existing recordings from 20 years ago would be enough for a modern remake (unless it’s literally retelling the story frame by frame, I suppose).

Regardless, I’m very hopeful about this project and I’m glad Rockstar let Remedy do this. The Max Paynes are true classics and hopefully this can introduce a new generation to those stories.

Yes, definitely! Using the !community@instance.tld works well for communities, but linking to posts is a bit of a headache honestly.

I don’t know about complex, but pimping out your spouse is pretty dark (though it’s mostly played for sex jokes so I doubt it’s intentionally so).

God I wish this game turns out to be so fucking good. Please be GotY worthy, please.

Alan Wake 2 was my personal GotY last year (and yes, I also played BG3). It’s both great as a video game, but also doing something very different from other AAA games with a very unique artistic POV, which I admire. It’s also dramatically enhanced by having played AW1 and Control, as the Remedy Connected Universe is doing a sort of Marvel thing. Hell, it even pseudo-ties into Max Payne and Quantum Break.

I definitely recommend it, not least for that one specific moment which I can’t spoil. Also the soundtrack is an absolute banger, I still listen to Poe - This Road frequently.

I really, really hate Nintendo.