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[Robsoie]

I'm around 9 hours of Eschalon : Book 1  and reached level 8, leveling isn't fast in that game.

What i learned :
- early game, and probably up to level 5 or 6 , don't try to fighting anything at more than 1 vs 1 , you'll have very high chance to die. roll dice for your hit chance can make a fight easy or absurdly hard depending on your luck, so try to never go for enemies that can attack you with 1 or 2 allies, especially as you're always alone in that game.

- npc in early game at least, are strong, some are -very- strong , you can use this to your advantage with some monsters that will follow you in groups of 2 or more , npc may have a high chance to trash them all.
But beware : npc aren't unbeatable : i lost the guy that could train me more in bows due to that (in Bordertown) , when after successive groups of monster i lead to him, he had then moved a bit far away from town, at some point he fought vs 5 bandits at the same time and after putting a good fight he died .

- nearly each quests i did always felt i was underleveled, meaning going near death after a few enemies, having to retreat to town to heal-sleep in tavern (health potion are oddly weak and rare, and expensive) very often, then walking back all the way to dungeon/location and continue until i finally get the quest objective done.  Resting sure can help, but resting also has several dice rolling and if unlucky you get a bunch of monsters spawning around you.
So best rest near npc locations so you can lead newly spawn monsters to them or be lucky.

Maybe it's by design but that constant retreat to town then walk back again can be annoying (and make the game progression artifically slower as a lot of time is wasted in the walking back and forth to heal within a quest)

- some maps/regions have no friendly npc, so don't even think to aggro more enemies, you'll have to save scum like crazy :
save before getting in view of an enemy, wait for him to come near (bless yourself for that +hit bonus) and if the fight didn't turned bad, save again, as said the dice rolling can lead to very different outcomes (you defeating a bandit but being near death after that, or you beating 2 or 3 bandits in a row without losing more than half your health)

- once you get high enough level and have a good +hit , the game become more interesting as you retreat to heal a lot less and do not feel you need to run away everytime you see 2 enemies at the same time and resting spawning a bunch of monsters isn't always requiring you to run to a npc for help, as at some point you're going to be stronger than the npc.

- always keep a bludgeoning weapon, it will help you to open all those closed doors, barrels and chests by striking them until they break (you can punch them, but each punch to a chest/door also cost 1 health from you). But save before as a weapon have a small chance to break during the process, said chance seems to be low but again it's all a matter of luck. And new weapons aren't cheap to buy.
You can get more lockpicking skills (though i would aim for more weapon skill) but hammering a door does not require skill points

[Robsoie]

Managed to kill that damn Hive Queen in Eschalon :  Book 1

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

By attracting her next to a bunch of powder barrels conveniently waiting in a room in that  Whistling Cave dungeon and the explosion managed to take her out

But what a super annoying place that dungeon was, basically each time i killed 2 hive drones, i had to retreat back to a town to sleep heal fully and come back, and there was a ton of hive drones. Resting in the dungeon itself was not an option of course as if unlucky you can spawn a bunch of enemies around you, and counting on luck when you're in need of healing in that game isn't a good idea, that + healing potions are rare and very expansive...

Anyways, i gave a quick try to Dungeons of Naheulbeuk , the current epic store freebie and enjoyed what i played of that dungeon crawler so far

The combat is very XCOM-like (the modern version i mean), characters skills and the new skills you'll get when leveling add a lot of depth to those battles.
From the tutorial part you'll get some fun seeing early combo you can get (like that "charge an enemy" with your Ogre and throw it through the zone of control of a couple of your other characters that will strike automatically said enemy while it move into their zone) .

Some abilities can be funny, like the Elf ricochet bow shot that can randomly hit a bunch of people, including her allies (that will complain vocally) , it gets more usefull after some leveling to prevent so much friendly fire when you're unlucky

For the banters/puns/4th wall breaking/jokes , your party members are constantly throwing some, sometime it's fun, rarely it will get a laugh out of you, sometime it's rather flat or just unfunny, but be prepared to hear -a lot- of those so hopefully it will be the kind of humour you like.
Fortunately it seems the devs understood that the humour may not be up to everyone cup of tea so they added an option to tone down the banters or just silence them (there's even option to silence the elf or the dwarf, hinting that even the devs knew they're annoying on the long term).

There's also the d&d usual tropes, the one you'll notice quickly is the Elf and the Dwarf that hate each other guts

So far it seems to be a very good game if you like tactical battles. The constant humour makes it more original than the average dungeon crawler type of game and well worth a try.

From what i read, unfortunately it seems the game will have very little replay value : the dungeon is linear and the fight locations, loots and etc are all pre-determined, there's no randomisation of the dungeon/enemies/loot.
Would have been great to have such randomisation or roguelike-like gameplay for a 2nd run after you complete the story :/

[dragdeler]

Dungeon de naheulbeuk used to be big in like 2006 it's a comedy podcast or something like that, so it probably is first and foremost about their humour, maybe way if better in french? I wouldn't bet on it.

[Robsoie]

Maybe that's why there are so much of those puns, they wanted to keep the audio things like in their mp3 series
But that's very "hit and miss" for my taste, definitively not a fan.

They added some high pitch effect to the Elf voice actress that makes her sound like some annoying cartoon, the other voices are easier on the ears.
I can easily see why they included the "Mute the Elf" option, it's extremely irritating to hear the kind of effect they gave to her voice for a long time.

After that on the technical side, it's the unity engine, so longer loading times and some odd performance issues are to be expected.
At least the tactical combat is very good. I wish they would have added some "roguelike" mode with dungeon/loot/enemies randomisation for actual replay value.

[The_Explorer]

Got a bunch of great games on steam sales, less than 100 USD for it all. All games that been on my wishlist for a while. Usually tbh I buy a bunch of junk that doesn't work or if it does...its junk

Stranded alien dawn

A slow paced (at least to me) colony builder. I really enjoy my brief experience with it. My 2nd (but close to 1st) favorite of the games I got. I can tell gonna play this a lot

Lakeside
A neat pixel sidescroller(?) city builder, probably my last favorite thing I got but I got it for a light-weight relaxing game that doesn't take much to it. Probably won't play it much but it will be nice if I need to relax

Satisfactory

My 3rd favorite game I got. I really enjoyed my brief time with it as well, can tell like factorio gets really involved later cause it was already ramping up. I like how customizable of bases you can make with it

Icarus

Probably the...controversial one. To me its vastly better than it was at release (which I did refund back then, my PC at time couldnt even play it to begin with), and its a lot more persistent (hence the mixed reviews, a bunch of people bombed it or hated the change to it being more like other survival games). But I really enjoyed my short time with it (about an hour, longer than other 3). Exactly right up my alley. I've been wanting a hunting simulator, survival game, nature game, on an alien-like world all in one that is also pretty realistic. I thought hunting call of the wild would be my thing, and its close but no don't like it. I then tried SCUM that I had for ages, turned off all the zombies, only to find out it was still not my thing...not close what so ever...and would have maybe been it if they didn't remove all the animals on the map and they made animals a mini-game of hunting.

Icarus is exactly what I've been looking for in a nature/survival/hunting/alien world game. So its my favorite lol. Probably play it the most. But I like the other games I got too.

There is ark survival, but thats not my thing and no point when ark survival 2 is just gonna be better (well hopefully).

Nvm on lakeside. 3 out of 4 isn't too bad. Lakeside is 100% made for mobile. I can't click anything, UI is huge, and also if I make UI smaller then I can't read anything. If I make UI bigger its so pixeleted can't read anything either...

well hey, 3 out of 4 is good for me lol. But actually disappointing, wanted a laid back city builder game like that. But wow, thats terrible on my screen

[Niveras]

I remember trying Icarus a while back, I liked the wrapping concept about being an explorer of a world, but the nature of exploration means you can't bring all the advanced technology with you every time you drop to the planet (can't risk it being left behind when you die). Which is a bit contrived but eh whatever.

But it also necessitates losing all your progress (constructions but especially tools) when you're done with the area. Like you found iron and made your own pickaxe but you can't take it back with you when you go up and that means you can't take it back down with you the next time you go down. Sure, you can't bring an advanced laser drill or scanning equipment, but you can't bring the things you make from materials on the planet itself?

Also I didn't quite like how things were balanced. Not sure if that was just how "open world survival crafting" games do or if it was bad balance specific to the game. Killing a wolf or a bear or a mountain lion required several minutes for me to cheese them even though one stab with a sharpened wooden spear should be enough for them to leave you alone under most circumstances. I remember there was an early mission that artificially limited what tools you can even make, but then sends you to clear out a den of wolves (1 wolf boss and like 5 adds) and all you have is a basic bow and arrow at best. At night.

Maybe the balance was also intended for cooperative play.

[Iduno]

That's certainly a review.

[King Zultan]

That's certainly a tabloid/click-bait title if I've ever seen one.

But do they answer the most important question do you fuck the bear or does the bear fuck you?

[scriver]

That's certainly a tabloid/click-bait title if I've ever seen one.

That pretty much Larian's approach to content design though. First question on all content reviews: "Will this make a meme"

[Kagus]

Boltgun is a good game. ...it's also an overrated game.

Like, it's good... The visuals are great most of the time, you've got some really chunky soundwork and they've done a great job of giving the main character "weight" with his heavy stomping around (but still great mobility). It's also super satisfying hitting a human enemy with your bolter and having them get appropriately disintegrated by the round.

That said... Wew doggy does it have some bizarre design decisions...

There's no map. At all. That, combined with how several of the levels are more "organically" designed rather than purely linear hallways means that getting lost is frequent and irritating. You have a servo-skull following around to help out, but he is uncontrollable and utterly useless due to the very few occasions he says something meaningful getting drowned out underneath the ocean of "MEDICAL ITEM DETECTED" squawks where it hovers over one of the +2 health dribbles that popped out of an enemy in the middle of the arena.

He's also the primary source of all lore/story progression, which is unfortunate given that his text tends to be on the smaller, faster side to work for the constant situational updates, and the fact that you've probably learned to just ignore him by that point.


The difficulty scaling is completely off its meds. The first couple levels are very easy-going, and then suddenly it launches a "purge" event (locking you in that arena until you've killed all/most of the enemies that will spawn in) that will completely curbstomp you unless you're absolutely prepared. Similar events much later in the game will either be deadly charnel blenders or total jokes that spawn 6 mooks that die to a stiff breeze. These are not randomly-generated events, they're scripted... They just have no consistency.


As for the enemies, there tend to be a lot of them, spawning in magically all around you, and they hit pretty dang hard (at least on higher difficulties)... This wouldn't be an issue at all though, were it not for one particular little quirk in how they're coded... Namely, every single ranged enemy in the game has perfect tracking.

Regardless of how fast you're moving, or in which direction, they will fire their projectiles so that it will hit where you're going to be rather than where you are. I totally get this in the case of the chaos space marines and whatnot focusing you down with their bolters or assault cannons, but... The nurglings? Every last one of those little green bastards can lob a wad of phlegm at you with pinpoint accuracy at speed, and the damage racks up.

This isn't even getting into the topics of the enemies with homing projectiles or the boss/miniboss which automatically hits you for 20-30% of your max health every second if it has line of sight.

All these things together add up into promoting a rousing, heart-pounding, exciting and fun gameplay style of... Keeping your distance, and cautiously peeping your head out of cover to pop off a couple shots before hiding again.


And then it just... Overstays its welcome. It just kept going, and going, and going, feeling like it was dragging on for the sake of it, and then I finally reached the real big boss fight after the showdown that I'd assumed was the big boss fight a couple levels prior... ...and then I learned that the game had two more entire chapters, as I'd only just completed the first one. Apparently I'm not the only one who had similar feelings... 31% of players have the achievement for beating Chapter 1. ...Chapter 3 has only 9%.


I dunno, it's just... It's so close to being a rock-solid classic. But then it just steps on its own stompy toes. Stomp-stomp.

[Iduno]

Anyone else see anything about Pathfinder games adding spyware in a new update? All I have is a single source, so it's tough to know how true it is.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Robsoie]

just checked the steam board in which people are voicing their disgusts, and noticed in the pathfinder news :
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1184370/view/3684558162501614258

Important notice on update 2.1.5m
After reading through your comments and taking into consideration your concerns, we would like to apologize for the whole AppsFlyer and EULA update situation. What we considered a technical thing turned out to be a huge privacy concern for a lot of our players. We value our players the most, so we will do the following:
We will completely remove AppsFlyer from the game with a hotfix coming by tomorrow evening.
For those who have already accepted the new EULA, all collected data will be deleted after the hotfix.
The EULA itself will be restored to the previous version. Any reverse is also a change, so we will kindly ask you to accept the “old” EULA one more time.

Our community means a lot to us, and we are not ready to sacrifice our relationship for some marketing budget optimization. Thank you for taking the time to explain your concerns to us. And once again, we are sorry for the inconvenience this update has caused you.

Looks like they decided to revert in the next update, but personnally i think that for a company to decide to add a spyware in a game to gather more data from you and make money from it, my trust toward that company is dead regardless of how good their game can be.

[Frumple]

Yeeaaah, if they done done it once, they gon' done do it again. It's a fundamental destruction of any trust you can reasonably extend to the company in question, because they've proven they're able and willing to reach the point that sounded like a good idea, and then act on it.

... now I kinda' regret picking up WotR earlier this year.

[Persus13]

What happened was an update for Wrath of the Righteous introduced an application that would send info on your computer's IP address, platform, OS, and when you first launched the game. There's a lot of game companies that make similar requests (Steam for one), the main issue is that usually its an opt-in thing and Owlcat did it to a game that was already out and didn't allow an opt-out and continue playing.

They literally called an emergency meeting the day the patch rolled out and quickly posted a patch to revert it, which is a level of quick response I appreciate.

[delphonso]

Yeah, sucks they did that in the first place, but there response was about as good as I could hope. Still unsure how I feel about all of it, as you said, plenty of games already do the same.