Done with
The Bard's Tale 4.
And that was very good
but.
"But" is definitely the name of the game.
It has sooo many issues that should have been fixed... and some aspects that are just badly designed. And should have been changed for director's cut!
So the most glaring change: a huge visual downgrade. No it's not "a different style", they gutted most of anything to get a decent framerate. And they got it, but the game lost so much charm... mostly in cities, which range from "not very good" to fucking hideous in Skara Brae below (good thing that it's only the hub and probably the zone where you'll spend the most time... right...?).
And the game still chugs constantly, like when you open loot... but not 100% of the time now so... progress?
The game also had bugs. Lots of bugs.
It has arguably more bugs than before, but I can't compare.
But if you consider 'character skills resetting at random", "characters not responding", "combat grid getting stuck", "animations getting stuck for 1min+" to be problems... yeah the game has plenty of that.
And when I say plenty, I mean I had to quicksave/quickload EVERY 5 MINS. Not an exaggeration, and even then that's behind kind to the game, some bugs repeated multiple times over the course of 30 seconds. Good thing that you have a quicksave now, and not only checkpoints...
Everything related to the UI, and entering combat (since it's almost seemless it's also pretty much slapping the combat UI on top of the game world) is outright broken.
I have never seen that in any game, ever. I don't even want to know what their code looks like, but "pig pen" is probably the closest approximation.
No game breaking bug or crashes to report, at least...
But after all that crap, the game is genuinely fun. The story is just okay (but it's a D-RPG, so, eeeh whatever), but it has very good voice acting, and the gameplay is very, very solid.
Puzzles are classic stuff for the genre, usually not too complicated (though near the end it starts becoming a decent challenge), fairly well explained, with some really nebulous hidden secrets. It's not as varied as
Grimrock 2, however. It works well, but I would have liked some more surprises. On the other hand, it is also much more accessible.
Myst it is not.
Combat is a lot of fun, and much, much better than most D-RPGs. Based on a 4x4 grid, heavily focused on controlling ennemies and comboing your limited amount of skills on each character, there's plenty of fun to be found, and you can really break the game in your own way. I like that.
It's not very similar to the old games though... but their combat wasn't super thrilling, so...
The big issue here is the depth of the combat: while 75% of the game is very fun, you get all your important skills, and you reach a plateau for your regular gear (outside of some unique ones with their owns skills and passives - they're great, but quite rare)... and then you just get marginal stat upgrades.
The last part of the game kinda sucks for that reason, by that point you have your combos, and you just spam them, blasting away all ennemies with ease.
It's nice to end up OP, but maybe not for a quarter of the game.
And in the same way the pacing and story, despite being just okay in general, it really runs out of steam in the last part.
It really feels like extra stuff added for little more reason than padding. That doesn't help the gameplay getting stale at that point.
In the end it's a very good game, but severely hampered by being a technical mess, and stumbling around out of breath at the end.
I still liked it a lot, but I rushed the last part because I ended up bored. Too bad really, had it stayed as interesting as it was, I definitely could have excused the constant issues. But it's a bit too much for something called a "director's cut" that adds almost nothing, not even a sort items button.
