BLAEO — Backlog Assassins Extraordinaire

Mskotor

Next update (works only on profile page)

February 2020 update

Overall backlog progress :

27% completed

55% beaten

1% unfinished

2% never played

15% won't play

What Remains of Edith Finch (Q2 2017) ⭐️⭐⭐⭐☆

Story-rich Walking simulator
2 hours | 9 of 9 (100%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- good for short sessions
- it did get me bit teary

The bad
- bit on the short end, so character stories are really short

Conclusion:
Solid walking simulator that's a bit on the slow end, with not much interaction or puzzles. So if you don't like really slow games with "just" uncovering people backstory it's not for you.

Story: We arrive at our childhood home and learn short stories about other family members. Finch family had "curse" on them - in each generation all but one family member dies. This one member has kids to continue bloodline etc.

Gameplay: It's walking simulator, what do you expect?? You walk around, look on walls, read some old newspapers. Sequences where you learn about family members story allow to jump or play simple mini-game. Each finished story unlocks character portrait on family genealogy tree. That's mostly all.

There were moments when I did not want to progress, as it required me to do something I did not want to do. I do not write it in a "bad sense". Quite the contrary. Game made me invested enough into the story, to care about some of the characters. While at the same time I played Pillars of Eternity for nearly 60h and did not care about any of the characters.

There is a chapter selection after we beat the game, if we missed some achievement or want to re-play story.

Graphic, music, bugs: Graphic is fine, but nothing extraordinary. Same for the music. And game is bugless.

Pillars of Eternity (Q3 2015) ⭐️⭐⭐☆☆

cRPG
59 hours | 21 of 48 (43%), base game only

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- graphic is really nice
- good optimization for Unity game
- created world is interesting
- quite a lot of interactions triggered by skills / abilities (like intimidation or diplomacy in talk, or specific athletic prompts in the terrain)

The bad
- character AI is lacking, they get stuck in corridors and can't find their way to enemies
- inventory system is messy and does not remember our filters
- no mini-map
- whole interface lacks a lot of customization
- not possible to sort journal by location
- possible to sell objects needed to complete side objectives...
- characters do not instantly auto-target new enemy after previous is defeated
- companions are easy to miss, as there are no float markers and they look like generic NPCs
- companion quests are bland and uninteresting

Conclusion:
I tried to start this game few times, but was fed up after an hour or so. Finally fact that it was only game that could run on my laptop, at 10 FPS, persuaded me to really give it a chance :hehe:
If you like old style RPG where most of things are done manually this game is for you. Otherwise leave it be. If I'd play vanilla version after release I'd drop it mid-way with 2/5 rating, as game didn't even have something so basic as character respec or inventory sorting on release.

Story: Our caravan is attacked on way to the city, and we end up in storm that "enables" us to see people soul / essence. Which pushes us into quest to save the world. Not amazing description, but game makes up for it with interesting backstory for the world, gods etc. On the other hand companion quests are bland, and in one case it literally boils down to going to one location to talk with NPC. So there is no complex interaction with companions, like in BW games for example.

Gameplay: Isometric RPG which is quite similar to Dragon Age. Only that companions are dumb. And will get stuck on a way to the target. Or not cast any useful spells even when we try to configure (very basic) AI. So it's not "pick characters and order them to attack" game-style. We need to constantly micromanage who characters need to attack, when use healing abilities, move ranged characters away from attackers etc. Character may be left with 10% endurance, and they will not use ability that will recover this endurance... It may be something old-RPG fans will love, but it was just annoying for me.

Character pages are full of data, but don't list something as basic as "which weapon is best for this character". Inventory is a mess that is sorted by name. Not by category or rarity. So even if you try to sort armors by type you will have "Heavy, Light, Medium" order, which is totally unintuitive. It's even worse when it comes to sorting weapons. Sword, magic, shields, pistols are all over the place, instead of being nicely grouped together.

There are no markers on the map or in the walk mode, so you don't know if there is new quest. You'd need to click every NPC over and over again to double check if they have new quest, or if you did not miss them before. Which is especially bad for companions. I literally missed 2 essential characters (and combat on easy difficulty was really hard), as I thought they are general peasants without much interaction. Like if they could not add markers that are turned off by default, to not angry hard-core-fans. I did try to look for a way to turn on markers with mods, but only encouraged angry players that wrote "general location in quest description is too much, I want Baldur's Gate with no hints at all!", and that even this bare bone help should be removed.

There is optional "rebuild your stronghold" quest. But it's nothing like upgrading Normandy in ME2. More like "castle where you can sleep will look nicer" thing.

Characters have health and endurance. Endurance regenerates after the battle, while health does not. We need to eat food or rest in a camp to regain it. And frankly I don't understand whole idea behind it. Character will faint in a fight when endurance drops to 0. And it happens way before health can even reach 50%. Normally endurance is used to cast spells / use weapons and health is health. And here endurance is like health, and health is I-don't-know-what-for. Only thing that matters when you send character with 0 health to battle (yes, it's possible, as endurance regenerates) is that it will permanently die if it's hit by something. And we need to re-load save to restore companion. Otherwise their companion quest fails and they are no longer accessible.

Graphic, music, bugs: Graphic is nice. But zoom out could be bit bigger. Music is fine. Game is in general bugless. But I don't know if companion AI is badly made, or it's buggy. You may send 4 fighters to attack a boss. 3 characters will take position in front and attack. 4th will stand behind them, trying to "go to" target that is "taken" from this side. They will not move around to attack from side or back. You need to click them and move them manually. If caster summons creature it will stand next to them, without attacking anything - again you need to micromanage it etc.

Q.U.B.E. 2 (Q1 2018) ⭐️⭐⭐⭐☆

Puzzle
7 hours | 15 of 29 (51%), base game only

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good
- interesting, more complex puzzles than in previous game
- we have some backstory now

The bad
- it's not possible to run, which makes moving on longer distances annoying

Conclusion:
I liked it. It is not masterpiece on a level of Portal 2 or Talos Principle, but it is solid and enjoyable.

Story: We wake up inside QUBE and are given a task to yet again destroy it! But this time we have some backstory to it, so it's closer to Portal than original QUBE.

Gameplay: Our suit allows us to change color of the white surfaces (just like portals in Portal can be put on white areas). Green power makes a cube that can be moved around. Orange makes block that can be pulled out / in to the wall. And blue makes field that act like a "bounce platform". Game also features sprays that make cube slide around, fire, buttons that control fans etc. So there is quite a lot of variety in what we can do.

Learning curve is fine, there is no need to think for a long time to understand how to use new item or power. Which is important, as game does not give any hints what you should do.

Puzzles are nicely designed. I found them a bit on the easy-normal end. And I consider Talos Principle to be on the normal-hard end. But I think it may be because I played a lot of puzzle games in the past. First time I learned about momentum in Portal 1 I was like "woahhhhhh". Now I enter a room for first time and I'm like "oh yeah, momentum again". Things were nicer when we were kids :sadness:

Graphic, music, bugs: Graphic is fine. Music rather ambient. Game is bugless.

Side note

I moved few games from won’t-play to beaten with “played enough to count beaten” tag. It irked me the wrong way to have them in won’t-play category, when I spend 37h in FF XII and could not beat last boss.

I went home for some time, and I managed to fit my flight between “huge storms that prevents people to travel” and “coronavirus is spreading and that prevents people to travel”.

Also not only SSD and RAM prices started to go up because of the new console production, but also because coronavirus halted production of many components in China… So I did right thing by ordering PC at the beginning of February.

(Did you know that in USA 80% of active drug ingredients comes from aboard, mostly China and India? Without China export, USA would not be able to make any antibiotics or blood pressure drugs.)

Vito

Damn, sounds like there are quite a few things that Pillars of Eternity could’ve done better. I have it in my backlog, but it’s one of the games I hesitate to start because of the big time investment (on the other hand, I’m already about 30 hours into Factorio and it felt much shorter…). I do like cRPGs, but I’ll keep the things you mentioned in mind.

I like the bars on the side of the reviews: “Activated: xxx” and “Beaten after: xxx”. That’s an interesting piece of info you don’t see everyday. I’ll have to look that up for some of my games as well. I know that there are sometimes several years between activating and playing games :D

Mskotor

I like the bars on the side of the reviews: “Activated: xxx” and “Beaten after: xxx”.

I knew I forgot about something. My main point to add those was Pillars of Eternity. I won it on SG (and forgot to add tag into post :P) and wanted to beat it as it’s SG win. But I couldn’t, I bounced off every time I started it. Till now.

And looks like I’m not the only one that points to the combat micromanagement problem and endurance / health problem:
https://steamcommunity.com/id/saqs_cookies/recommended/291650/

Another problem (not listed above) is that UI doesn’t have many customization options. Sure, you can turn off everything to make game more cinematic-like, or temporary hide “Mskotor dealt x damage to Troll” box. But it re-appears constantly which is annoying.

But it’s not possible to change how health bars shown above character heads work:

party health (or more like endurance…) bars are always visible, even when they are also visible on the character portrait. Which only clutters whole view. We have 6 party members + possible pets or summons. So it gets really messy, and it’s not possible to turn it off
on the other hand enemy endurance bars are always hidden, and it’s not possible to turn them on by default. You need to click or hover over certain enemy to see how close to death it is. It does not even lock on the enemy you’re currently attacking, to show it above their head when you do something else (like pick character to make them use ability). If you un-clilck enemy to order character to do something - you don’t see enemy health anymore

So how I played? I was ordering party to attack something, wait for it to explode (only reliable way to know it’s dead, and not only knocked off), and switch to another target.

Vito

That does sound a bit tedious and annoying…I like it when you can customize the UI at least to a certain degree…I’ll keep it in mind should I try the game in the next months (but I’m not so inclined to do that right now anymore). Do you already have a next game you’re working on?

Mskotor

Things that can be changed from menu:

hide offscreen pointers (show where team members are in relation to where you look on the map)
colorblind mode
solid HUD color
big heads (ugh)
actions icons on portraits (without this one you will not see what actions characters perform in battle)
hide selection circles (hides green circle on the ground in free roam mode)
show party endurance as numbers

Apart from that you can turn off whole UI, with exception for character portraits. And that’s all. You can hide menu buttons / action history box etc, but it resets constantly.

I play Prey now :D And it’s niceee. I do see some flaws here and there, but it’s nothing mayor. Also UI in Prey is pretty much fully customizable (even when it’s FPS…). Not to mention modding scene for Prey is alive and well, so you can customize it even further. When PoE is dead here, and all I could find is “better texture for character model”. There is UI mod, but “it’s supposed to bring back old Infinity Engine look”. And it’s kinda messy

Arbiter Libera

Beaten after: 30 months

Thanks for reminding me I have a character created in 2017 and I still haven’t gotten around to finishing Pillars of Eternity.

Mskotor

You’re welcome! Hope you will beat the game soon, to not get closer to “Beaten after 40 months” mark :D

Arbiter Libera

I just find myself burned out on long RPGs, Maybe it has something to do with isometric because i had no problems with action RPGs. Should give it a spin.