by Vryheid » April 5th, 2015, 10:58 pm
Pillars of Eternity - Top notch kickstarter-funded RPG by Obsidian and Paradox Interactive. Harkens back to the old D&D based Infinity Engine games but balances out the combat significantly and modernizes much of the gameplay. For me the quality quest writing and interesting character classes are the highlights, there's a whole lot of worthwhile exploration and replayability. It's a shame we didn't get a thread on the game here.
Geneforge 2 - It definitely feels like the first Geneforge, that's for sure, but the devs tried to push everything further in terms of combat and quest depth. On some level this works- I like all the new options with spells and the much higher level cap, for instance- but I don't like all the obscenely overpowered enemies that get randomly dropped in your path that you inevitably have to come back later to kill. I also feel like whereas the first game introduced you to all three factions fairly quickly, this game makes it extremely difficult to meet up with either the Takers or the Bhazarites before you've visited most of the areas in the game without ever even signing up for a faction. As such the faction questlines feel poorly implemented and out of whack. The biggest complaint I have is that the guards and important characters in general have way too much health. You can't tell the player character that they have the opportunity to be evil when apparently every soldier on the face of the planet is some augmented superman even when plot-wise they should not be.