Recent reviews by Brian Sirith

Dum de dum. Binge playing this weekend. The game is fun, the story flows, the areas stunning and detailed, the companions likeable, Bellara is the BEST! 🤩

That’s all for now. Might update when I finish the game.

It has beautiful graphics and a nice story and it was good -though the combat was boring- till the end. Then… I am hard pressed to find a game with a worse end. It wasn’t sad, or unpleasant. It was straight out we fired the writer / the writer lost his mind and was writing absolute nonessential crap. We need to move? Let’s poof magical portals! Let’s throw in random characters with no explanation! Oh here’s some more characters to join us! Let’s manifest skateboards for a getaway! The villains? We’ll get to them… someday. Maybe they’ll go off n have pizza after this. The world status? Oh cmon! It’s jolly. We think. Did you want an ENDING in the ending?

Utter crap.

How to drop a games quality from 70-80 to 10 in the last hour.

Remove the author, studio and graphics from the equation and think about it for a second. Even though good graphics are always a plus for me the important part is the story and how it is delivered. If you got this game with average graphics by an unknown author what would you rate it as?

The writing: Mediocre with useless exposition dumps. It seems like the writers want to show that they have studied the era. Good for them. The setting should be researched in any game. That does not mean that boring trivia must be discussed at length in dialogs especially if such trivia is irrelevant to the plot. And it IS irrelevant. The first time I went through such a dialog and the second time I paid attention. Thought it will have something to do with the story. It does not. The authors want to create a feel of the era by pasting parts of Wikipedia. I have read Wikipedia articles on events in the Middle Ages and it was a more entertaining experience.

The characters: When the dialog doesn’t inform us of random trivia we get some of the characters story and goals. This is blandly given. There is no witty dialog, no humour, no personality. There’s some stereotypes: the angry peasant, the oppressive abbot, the evil rich guy. Not much depth to the characters and no shades of grey. It seems like they were just writing to get it over with. And they wrote a lot of characters! Couple that with how colourless and boring they all are and the player struggles to remember who Susan is and why she dislikes him.

The gameplay: Go over and over the same areas in hope that THIS time something is happening. This is not the joy of exploring the mountain top. It is the tedium of going to the same mountain top for the tenth time in hopes that something might finally be happening there.

The language: While they tried to convey education with the font they have put little effort in conveying it in any other manner. The educated guys and the farmers speak more or less in the same manner. Thankfully they are patching the text visuals and speed, I can only imagine how more tiring it would get on a second play-through.

Animations of the menus: Slow. They are pretty but the thirtieth time you open the map you could do without them.

The mini games: I HAVE NO WORDS! Wait! I do. Is shaking 20 jars till the NPC tells you you got the right one entertaining? Challenging? Interesting? Is it even a game? Then at some point I was asked to say two Hail Maries and three Our Father prayers. It actually changed to a mini game screen and wouldn’t let me out till I clicked on the Hail Mary dialog three times (once for each sentence). That was one Hail Mary. Click. Click. Click. Second Hail Mary. Let’s go to Our Father now. Click. Click. Click… Just put me out of my misery please. To say nothing of the priest reading the absolution slooowly to each character that went for confession. The exact same text. Again. And again. And again. Is this a boredom simulator?

Things that didn’t really bother me but I would have liked: more agency over the central characters personality. More personality for that matter. At some point you find out that something tragic happened to him out of the blue. I felt nothing because there was never any connection with him. He is as bland as everyone else.

Another thing I missed is music. It can do much to set the feel of a game. Won’t quibble about that one though. It was a choice of the devs, I can get that some may like it and it didn’t really bother me.

In conclusion. If I were asked whether I would like to watch paint dry or play Pentiment, I would choose playing Pentiment.

After a significant pause.

Cheers!

Its great and its free.

Decent :P

Suffers from Owlcat being the worst DM ever. Locking options behind trivial choices dozens of hours ago. Expecting one to make unreasonable decisions. Giving one freedom that they are unable to support. You can pick up any class but... heaven forbid you try to roleplay the class. You'll get locked out of half the content. Bad events feel punitive not tragic. Your mother died. Tragic. Because you didn't loot the 3rd chest in the wilderness area in Ch1. Less tragic, more aggravating.

80 hours into the Devil path I got locked out of the Mythic Path. Now a reasonable DM would send you on a quest to atone, fix things, do something interesting to regain your Mythic. Owlcat just says: That's it. Replay the last 20-30 hours or experience the Mythic path you wanted in your next 180 hour playthrough. By Erastil! I don't have that kind of time or patience!

Think RPG with Adventure type logic. I quit adventure games to get away from this kind of story. I remember moving from Monkey Island and Phantasmagoria to Baldur's Gate and thinking: This game is soooo good! People tell you what you need to do! Objectives are clear! Now I don't expect or want hand holding but when someone asks me for a bear pelt I want to go bear hunting or to the bear pelt store. I do not expect go drinking from 6pm to 8pm in the inn at that obscure village I passed once with Bob the local smith because somehow I should have guessed -with no other info- that Bob's auntie is in the bear pelt trade.

Am I exaggerating? No. Not really.

Well... back to Monkey Island we go.

Why do I recommend it? The combat system is good, I am a fan of Pathfinder, Paizo's writing is great and the Angel path was epic and satisfying. Overall it is very much worth playing, just don't expect much :)

Why the criticism? Cause most reviews point to the bugs as a negative. The bugs I can live with. Give me more bugs! Give me worse graphics! Remove half the classes! But FIX the narrative! Please!

Great game.

THE WTFERY IS STRONG IN THIS ONE!

Set your goals, grab a notepad and a spreadsheet (yes, a spreadsheet) and of course the game wiki (no salvation without it) and plan out how to reach coronation alive. But mainly:

How will I manage to marry an already married man 24 years my senior with two children one of which is my best friend and two year older than me?

Mainly that! And **** that! I did it!

Aaaaaaaaah, bliss!

Good game.

Note: Good women in this game. Faves being Oddleif, Faulka and Castaway. Wanted to throttle Juno and the other Valka but wanting to throttle them was good too. Altogether good variety in personalities and looks. Best friends, companions, major jerks. They felt like people. Games writers sometimes forget the ‘people’ part.

And Rook - Oddlief are the best couple ever. Will take an old friends to lovers story any day.

Good game. Solid story and I like a protagonist who is just another guy with no special abilities.* For Rook only I’d get the game but the whole package is great.

Good locations, good animations, good story and good characters. And I’m in love with Oddleif which has absolutely nothing to do with this rating, I swear!

*Let me put it better: Don’t you wanna play a game where the main character is just another man with no special skills or powers that becomes a hero because of who he chooses to be and what he chooses to do? Cause that I can respect and admire. GO ROOK!

Funny little game. Watch the trailer first. I thought the laughs were worth the price.