There is a new patch coming out soon (beta is available now) which addresses a lot of issues in the game and I expect will make the early game even more fun, and the mid game more interesting. That’s already likely many hours of incredible gameplay right there!
So I’d recommend it, but as usual, with Paradox titles, the more you wait, the better the game gets. The remaining issue right now for me is the late game. They plan on rolling out more events, diplomatic incidents, and other mechanics to keep it fresh, but we won’t be seeing those for a bit yet, I think.
In the meantime what we have is pretty terrific early game of exploration, and expansion, and a solid mid game of grand strategy light that is addicting as hell.
Yeah. It is really good. It’s a much bigger, longer game than 1 or 2, and the devs have not relented in the slightest on the tone, atmosphere or quality of the game. Even the tiniest side quests have a full dose of soul-wearying, heart rending revelation within them (and/or a jolt of sardonic wit).
I have over 300 hours in, and I’m currently taking a break from the game for a few months so that I can replay it fresh with the DLC.
Wait what? Why would you WANT to grind for levels? @_@
Er, anyway, FF13 was largely reviled for being extremely linear (no world map for the first half of the game, lots of corridors to run down) and hard to follow (a lot of the story only makes sense if you read the ‘log’ entries in the encyclopedia thing.). FF13-2 was better received and mostly addressed those issues, but is a little weird standing on its own, and still doesn’t compare all that favorably to older entries.
If you want a solid JRPG, I’d recommend Tales of Zestiria over FF13, though it’s a whole $20. Zestiria isn’t my favorite Tales of either, but it’s the first one to actually get a PC release. You could also go back in time for Tales of Symphonia, but I’m really not a fan of that one, sooo…
It used to go like this: You spend many hours of the game provoking random encounters, moving on when the XP you get for your trouble starts getting thin. Then when you get to the actual plot battles, you wipe the floor with the bad guys. Afterward, a new area opened up where the XP is sweet again. Repeat until the game is beat. Then somebody had the idea that the sense of challenge in the game should be more-or-less constant. So, the world adapted to you as you advanced, making actually leveling less powerful, and sometimes even a burden. As of Final Fantasy 8, you started getting recommendations that you rush through the game as low-level as possible, so it will take fewer hours to beat the end boss. You never get the satisfaction of putting in a lot of honest work that pays off in easily making a meaty vapor out of the big bad. Basically, it ruined RPGs.
Opinions on this vary, naturally. But at least Final Fantasy never started handing out Daedric armor to wandering goblins.
For $7.99, I can stand a mostly linear game. I’d hate to pay full retail price for such a game.
Picked up “Enter the Gungeon” and “Halcyon 6” due to their popularity. I don’t usually buy Early Access games, but “Halcyon 6” looks to scratch that FF2/Star Trek itch.
Must be an error. I see “Tales from the Borderlands” at $8.49, but the “Borderlands Take Over Your Life” bundle is $26.20. That seems right. And as someone who’s played the games, I can recommend the bundle for sure. The original game is kind of lackluster, but the other three games are a lot of fun.
Not really - it’d help with knowing who a few of the people are, and the overall setting, but the gameplay is significantly different. I’m sure you could find a synopsis for the earlier games online, if you want.
See, this is never how I played RPGs, even “back in the day”. Except for Dragon Warrior, and F*** that game, it wasn’t even good when I was 13. A properly designed RPG does NOT “adapt to your level” (FF8 is, to my knowledge, the only FF game to do this, and it was mostly just as a means of inducing you to use the OTHER power up system in the form of junctioning or whatever they called it - you could still grind to completely trivialize the game, it just didn’t happen automatically by having lots of random encounters.) - you can grind if you WANT to, but the game shouldn’t encourage it. A properly designed RPG is one in which if you do not grind, but instead fight essentially the number of random encounters that happen on a single “pass” through a given area, that the boss fight will be challenging but not impossible.
Then people CAN grind, if for some reason they enjoy doing a trivial task over and over again in order to make a potentially interesting task into another trivial one, but the game should not make you WANT to do that.
Honestly? I’d say the time investment is more valuable to me than the $8 or $20. I’d sooner pay more money for a rewarding game than spend my time on FF13.
I think it would definitely help to google up a synopsis for flavor and to quell the phantom feeling that you’re missing something critical (you’re not). There is actually very little that is crucial from the first two games. Also, there’s a conversation you can have early in 3 where you can simulate the choices you made/would have made in Witcher 2, but even there it only affects some dialogue and one optional quest.
Even as far as knowing who people are - you’ll get enough of an idea just from how you interact with them: this guy’s an old frenemy, that chick and Geralt have a complicated romantic history, etc. For that matter, that’s pretty much how these characters are dealt with in the first two games - there’s a bunch of references to stuff that happened in the books, but I never felt left out despite not having read them.
So, no, there’s no compelling reason to play the first two, except that they are also really good (though they show their age). I should say that it was pretty neat to catch up with various side characters from the previous games, but it’s not like other series where you’d seriously be lost or missing out. You could always pick them up and try them after playing 3.
Here are the important things you really might want to know from The Witcher 1 & 2. Are you ready for these dread spoilers?
[spoiler]The Witcher 1 opens - yes, opens - with Geralt escaping the Wyld Hunt and returning, more or less, from the dead. This bunch is barely important in that game and in fact is explored seriously in Witcher 3, so you basically didn’t lose anything.
The Witcher 2 ended, no matter what else happened, in a massive political mess that weakened several key powers and gave an outside Empire a chance to invade, which in part set off the basic grounding for The Witcher 3.[/spoiler]
Yeah, that’s about all you really need to know. Characters in this span several decades’ worth of stories , and two previous games, so they went to considerable lengths to try and make it accessible.
Picked up Stardew Valley at 20% off. First I’ve noticed it on sale. For the kids, but I might play it. I’ll probably pick up Thea: The Awakening (TBS, fantasy, with RPG elements) at 40% off. There’s quite a few on my wishlist that are on sale at greater discounts: Recettear -75%, Ticket to Ride -70%, Mad Max -66%, Craft the World -80%, more… this is a good sale for me. Don’t know when I’ll get around to playing the games already in my library, though.
If anybody’s looking for an inexpensive game that might yield a lot of play time, check out Fight the Dragon. It’s an ARPG with user-created content. You’ll probably only get a lot of play if you like creating maps. My kids and I have nearly 1000 hours, but only a fraction of that is actually playing the game, the majority was spent in the editor. Community is small and friendly and might perk up a bit due to the sale. Content quality varies widely. Quite fun multiplayer, hard to pick up randoms, has split screen MP.
The full version of Rainbow Six Siege (thread) is really good, we still play it a lot. It’s a pretty unique game and really well done if you like R6 type games or small last team standing sorts of games.
I don’t see why they didn’t use bundles as a way of offering interesting sales packages, since they dropped the flash sales. Course, they also dropped pretty much all the other ways of offering interesting or amusing diversions for the sale, too. Really feels like they kinda just shrugged this time.
Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight is 20% off. Imagine Dark Souls (lite) meets Castlevania. It’s about 5 hours long, but I really enjoyed it. Challenging but approachable, with excellent visuals and a wonderful soundtrack. snowmaN Gaming did a short review that convinced me to buy it a few months ago. Highly recommended.
Thanks for the heads up, I was unaware of that. I ended up picking up a Steam Controller, but from Amazon, as they’re also selling for $35, but with options for free shipping. Turns out Steam charges $8 for shipping.