August update
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Tales from the Borderlands ⭐️⭐⭐⭐⭐
Interactive Story10,8 hours playtime, 35 of 35 achievements (100%)
- Tons of humor
- Story is not predictable
- No performance problems (like in Batman)
- Gortys
Cons:
- Could be longer ;D
Conclusion:
I started "Telltale games" with TWD1 and god, it was one big emotional trainwreck for me. Wanted to replay it with different choices, but discovered that they don't matter, as game always ends in the same way. And it kinda ruined TWD2 for me, as I knew that my decisions won't matter. So why should I care (and overall Clem was less likable here). I also played in Wolf Among Us but didn't like it at all.
I heard that Borderlands is good. And I wasn't disappointed. I can't see single flaw in this game, apart from that it could be longer. It's involving, it's funny, it's unpredictable. Dialogues are well written, voice acting is good. I can't remember when last time I had so much fun with a game (thanks to my monthly posts on BLAEO I can say that I haven't played in such "entertaining" game in at least 10 months).
And disclaimer: I played only in Borderlands 1 and didn't like it. I didn't like it's "humor", I didn't like setting or MMO-like gameplay. That's why I was bit skeptical about Tales. So you can enjoy it even when you didn't play / like FPS games.
Screenshots
Hatoful Boyfriend: Holiday Star ⭐️⭐⭐⭐⭐
Visual Novel9,5 hours playtime, 13 of 13 achievements (100%)
- It's still story about pigeons with unpredictable ending
- Gameplay is the same, so they didn't mess it while trying to "improve" things
Cons:
- Less consistent than original game
- There are literally 2 or 3 decisions in whole game
Conclusion:
It's something that should surely be played after beating original game (preferably with BBL ending), otherwise game will have little sense most of the time, so IMO it's really newcomers-unfriendly. We don't get proper character introduction here and action takes place in the same time as base game.
Apart from that it's really nice come back to St. PigeoNation's Institute for Humans and Pigeons. Cooooooo! (And Everybiride that liked original game should play it!). But it's different from first game in that we don't date pigeons here. It's more like "find who stole Christmas tree" kind of story (tho it ends totally unexpected, just like story in the original). Main plot revolves around Christmas theft, rest consist from short "dates" and Q&A panel that can be accessible directly from main menu. So it feels like it's shorter than original.
Screenshots
Sherlock Holmes: The Devil's Daughter ⭐️⭐⭐⭐☆
Adventure Detective SG win11,8 hours playtime, 25 of 25 achievements (100%)
- Good detective game that combines looking for clues with very simple puzzles
- Graphic and sounds are ok
Cons:
- Immersion breaking "memory"
- Back story that gives connection to cases isn't good
- Chasing sequences
- You can came up with most ridiculous conclusion and still complete the case
Conclusion:
Overall it's nice game that allows you to play as a detective. You do this by making simple psychological portraits (tho they aren't necessary), connect clues from the scenes and look for necessary data in in-game archives. Cases aren't connected in any way, so without background story they could be played from main menu as "chapter one" "chapter two" without any loss for gameplay.
Only thing I didn't like was one sequence where Holmes kind of move back in time to "see" with his own eyes scenes that took place 20 years before on some jungle expedition. I understand that he can visualize that crate was pushed, someone fell, order of someones actions or smth. But this was just stupid. Plus game gives you ability to solve cases in few ways. It may look nice, but IMO Holmes as great detective was always able to find the truth. Not accuse someone innocent with stupid explanation and be like "yeah, case closed". It'd be better if case could lead into few conclusions, but it'd be our job to pick right solution. Not show screen with "you and 7% of other people picked up this solution" at the end of the chapter, it's not TWD game.
No screenshots, as I don't find in this game anything worth showing xD
- Good graphic (tho I played with graphic mod)
- It's still Gothic
- Story is good, with unexpected plot twist
- Addition of simple sea combat
- Combat is ok (tho still feels like Gothic xD)
- Piranha Bytes didn't make mistake from Risen 2 with arcade/platform last boss
- You can transform into a parrot
Cons:
- It's still Gothic (and you may not like that you still see the same animations; mine iron, dig up chests and kill scavengers)
- Bad optimization that required manual file modification for more stable framerate
- Constant drops to 10 - 15 FPS during combat (most probably some memory leak, as it was more often after long session)
- Graphic glitches after too long session (purple water, textures that doesn't load)
Conclusion:
What can I say? It's still good old Gothic. Only in v52 edition. And I like Gothic, so it doesn't concern me much. But if you don't like Gothic (or don't like to play again in slightly better Gothic) you won't like Risen 3 (and other games from this franchise as well).
But optimization problems sometimes are serious, so if you don't like to play in half-broken games it's not for you. I played half of the game without using experience (necessary to grab few achievements), so I learned to kill enemies efficiently with only basic abilities. So after I spent all this hoarded exp enemies died like flies. And I beat last parts rather quickly.
Screenshots
I also consider this game as first step in my achievements-OCD therapy. And I won't go back to grind remaining 3 achievements! It's really not worth it to waste time and play in something I don't enjoy just to have another 100% game.
Next month gaming theme:
I really like this game so far. But it does suffer from some stupid game mechanics that were so irritating that I had to use few mods to make the game better i.e.:
- All quests on the map - having to go to journal every time to check where is closest quest is bad game design
- Auto loot - at first devs gave players too small weight limit, so they started to complain. CDP Red firstly increased limit, then added chests to store unnecessary loot, and lastly switched all ingredients weight to 0. So there is no point in having to confirm every time “yes, I want to get that flower, thank you” when ingredients doesn’t waste space in inventory anymore
- Disable storybook videos - I don’t need to see after every death unskippable animation that shows what I did few min ago
- Fast travel from anywhere - Having to walk to nearest sign for fast travel is waste of time and makes game unnecessary long
- Increased creature loot - Because killing bunch of deer to get 1 piece of meat looks weirdly
- Indestructible items - It felt like witcher swords are made from paper and get destroyed way too quickly
- Sort everything - only way to make crafting less irritating (also alchemy and inventory, but it’s not that bad there). But trash recipes are still there (they can’t be sold), so it’s partial solution
I’m writing this, so I won’t have to repeat this next month when I will write my summary post. I will focus there on story, combat and other game mechanics with indication that I didn’t play in vanilla version.
(Btw after you learn how to “use alt” in combat and that most important ability is gourmet game feels way too easy on Blood and Broken Bones difficulty xD Tho I will leave Death March for New Game+. And amount of filler content is the same as it was in DA:I. All those “ ? “ marks that are simple “go and kill everything” jobs and cover whole map are nightmare for “clean map maniacs”.)
What a nice update, MSKOTOR– in both appearance and content!
It’s interesting what you say about Tales from the Borderlands. Although I’m usually up for a Telltale game (played three, two more in my backlog), I never thought I’d play TftB because I’ve never played Borderlands and no nothing about the characters and universe…and the content of the trailer didn’t make me think it would be my thing. But maybe I should give it a chance someday?
I’m still on the fence about activating my copy of Sherlock Holmes: The Devil’s Daughter. I’m kind of interested, but the truth is I probably won’t make time for it. It’s funny how almost all of what you said about it was “bad” in some way, yet you gave it 4/5 stars. :D
I never played Gothic, and I only played a couple hours of the first Risen. Coincidentally, I also have a key for Risen 3 that I’m not sure if I want to activate or not. Once again, I just probably wouldn’t make time for it… :( Oh– and congratulations for your achievements-OCD therapy progress. Can you hook me up with your therapist? Mine isn’t helping. :p
Interesting thoughts on The Witcher 3. Do you know if those (or any) mods work on the GOG version of TW3? I don’t have the game anywhere, but if I got it, I’d get it from GOG someday. I think I’d use all of those mods except for Increased creature loot. What “level” is “Blood and Broken Bones” difficulty– easy? normal?
omg we are the same people
I’m also not sure if I would like Tales from the Borderlands and don’t know if I should activate Sherlock Holmes: The Devil’s Daughter (still sitting in my key library)
Most mods should work on both versions of TW3. There’s also a unification patch to make GOG GOTY version mods compatible with the Steam version (and vice versa).
TftB is really different from Telltale games I played so far (I can’t compare it with Batman or Game of Thrones tho). IMO TWD and Wolf Among Us were games about choices - kill / let die; moral stuff etc. And in Borderlands plot is based only on humor and the way you response to people. You don’t have here big moral choices, have to choose lesser evil or greater good. Sure, there are choices, but for me they were secondary thing. Normally I’d say “go and watch some gameplay on yt ;D”, but it’s not an option in story-driven games >_<
For me 3 stars are games “they aren’t good but also aren’t bad, broken, unplayable ports from consoles”. Devil’s Daughter is a good game. But it does have it’s flaws. From trailers you can expect slow paced game where you walk around with a pipe, look for clues and connect dots. And there are few moments that broke this image. 2 chase sequences (someone shoot at you and you have to run and hide behind old trunks or rocks >_> ). And this one sequence “20 years back”. Fact that in some cases you can came up with 3 or 4 different conclusions is something I dislike. Others might like it, and don’t complain. If you’re fine with something like this rest of the game should be fine.
As for Risen - depends if you played in better cRPGs. Like if you already beat Witcher 3, you would probably not like it. Risen 3 can be really time consuming and feel really old, so if you want to play in good games skip it. As it’s average game. And nope, my therapist would have less time for me, I already killed few other patients to have all their time for me! So I won’t recommend them to you >:C
Blood and Broken Bones is hard level. Enemies have 20% more health and do 130% more damage. And on Death March (insanity level) they have 80% more health and do 230% more damage. So game will look more like Dark Souls than easy RPG xD (On easy level enemies have normal damage and -50% health).
Thanks for the repl(ies), Mskotor.
Yeah, it’s weird sometimes when you have a cerebral / slow-paced game– with a sudden action sequence and OMG you die if you don’t run away! From the YT you linked (thanks for that), it probably wouldn’t be my favorite part of the game, but I’d make my way through it and move on (and hope there’s no “survive the chase sequence without getting hit” achievement).
And yeah, that’s my impression of Risen. Not bad, but you might as well play something better. My itching to play list suggests I have better RPGs to play (cough Skyrim cough).
Thanks for the clarification(s) on The Witcher 3. If I ever play it someday, I’ll no doubt play on Normal or even Easy.
Yeah, skyrim is better than Risen 3 xD Not on story level, but on world / exploration level.
Hm, how do you visualize in post such colour bars like in “own profile”? Inspect own page -> copy generated code, or there is some formatting command to insert and generate these?
Then, you have 100% achievements and not so many time spent. Do you read achievement list/guide before playing game? Or do you manage to make so many saves uniformly distributed through the game, so that after first walkthrough, it is quick to locate ‘places’ to play missing content / earn missing achievements?
I personally find most achievements a waste of time and only small amount of them actually corresponds to some nice experience which I would like to get from game (example: multiple endings, special/secret events); thus it is interesting how to optimize the approach.
And thanks for ideas of mods for Wicher 3! Will most probably get this game some day and it is great to note possibility of fixing small things. Such things as weapons half breaking after a fight or wasting too much time for travelling with no value for game may be really unnecessary. Not the best ways of building a ‘challenge’.
Then, you have 100% achievements and not so many time spent.
This is something that constantly amazes me. Whenever I check achievements on dedicated pages I have at least twice the amount of time as most others and more likely three times the amount of time spent when I’ve decided to get all achievements for one reason or another.
If achievements are for story parts, and they require different routes - you can be sure that people used complex walkthroughts to beat it, if they managed to do it in weirdly small amount of time.
Like in Risen 3 I was able to get all 3 achievements for joining fractions (theoretically I’d need 3 playthroughts to do this), as I pushed story of each fraction to the point of “yeah, you can join us”, make save, join, reload. Or in Skyrim, where I knew I can’t miss guild quests, as there are achievements for that.
Most detailed guides are made on one xbox forum => here. You know, just stick with it and you will have 100% in no time. Thankfully I never played like this, I only check what are requirements for achievements. So I’m not beating whole game using only assault rifle, if there are achievements for using pistol and shotgun as well.
I’ve recently noticed that console forums tend to have the most detailed walkthroughs as well. I wonder if this is because it’s not as easy to cheat on a console as it is on PC. I would hate playing games following a guide but it does seem like a quite popular option. Anyway, I wouldn’t suggest its weirdly small amounts of time for game completion it’s more like I’m wondering what the hell I’m doing that no one else seems to care about :)
Exactly the same story :) If I happen to see such statistics, I almost always notice that others beat or even complete games much faster than me. And I don’t do any grinding, I don’t farm achievements etc. I often don’t play hardmodes if they don’t seem to bring fun proportionally to expected time spent. For me most fun comes from understanding and learning mechanics, unveiling plot, looking at / listening to / experiencing fine things, in which some artists/coders invested a lot of work, and of course from “drive” if gameplay provides epic moments.
Well I read lore texts in pleasant games, PRGs usually have a lot of them.
And if there is nice music in game, I can leave music playing for a long time while doing something else in my room, but I didn’t count this. Still, sometimes difference in how others do things is so big, that it becomes strange. Was wondering, am I so incredibly slow in experiencing things or it is a simple difference in approach. After all I wouldn’t mind getting all I get but a bit faster. There is so many great things to explore.
For me most fun comes from understanding and learning mechanics, unveiling plot, looking at / listening to / experiencing fine things, in which some artists/coders invested a lot of work, and of course from “drive” if gameplay provides epic moments.
I’ve been known to play a lot of games about half way through several times just because learning about the game world and mechanics is the most fun part of a game for me and at some point, well before the end, in a game I start to feel I’ve learned just about everything there is to learn so I tend to start losing interest. I’m quite forgetful though so I’m able to enjoy this procedure a couple of times before I’m at the point where I’ll never forget anything about the mechanics ever again :P
It’s both copied from site and custom made. I picked up bar from top of here and changed values + added animation.
<div class="list-progress">
<div class="progress-bar progress-bar-striped active game-completed" style="width: 27%">27% completed</div>
<div class="progress-bar progress-bar-striped active game-beaten" style="width: 47%">47% beaten</div>
<div class="progress-bar progress-bar-striped active game-unfinished" style="width: 9%">9% unfinished</div>
<div class="progress-bar progress-bar-striped active game-never-played" style="width: 4%">4% never played</div>
<div class="progress-bar progress-bar-striped active game-wont-play" style="width: 13%">13% won't play</div>
</div>
You have to change percentages to match your own progress. Without progres-bar-striped inside div class bars won’t be animated.
As for achievements you can read about it here. So yeah, I basically check what have I to do to get combat / gameplay achievements (most of the time it’s “kill x enemies with this ability”, and they’re fun to do if they’re not too grindy), and if there are any missable story achievements. But I want try to stop checking story achievements. It’s killing fun when you play with a guide to not miss something, and you don’t make your own decisions. But think “I have to pick up this option, as otherwise I won’t unlock this achievement”.
Right now I want to try and win every single gwent card in Witcher 3, as there is achievement for that and I won’t be able to grab some of them later in game. But I don’t follow any guide for that (part of my OCD-achievement therapy xD).
About those 3 games:
- Tales from Borderlands are “Telltale game”, so you get all achievements for beating game once. Not much of a challenge
- Sherlock Holmes is similar, as there are no missable achievements. There is only 1 where you have to do something, but it’s enough to replay beginning of one chapter few times (bowls game)
- Hatoful Boyfriend - again achievements for simply beating the game
I have so much 100%, as plenty of them are Artiflex Mundi HOG games. And it’s enough to sit for 4 - 5h to have 100% in them. Or quickly replay game after beating it once - like in Event [0], Toby Secret Mine (few levels), Aragami (stealth approach on 2nd playthrough is way quicker than genocide run) etc.
Yeah, inability to fast travel from anywhere and all those “ ? “ marks are just filling content that’s supposed to make game longer. It’s similar to Skyrim, where you had to repeat the same boring draugr dungeons over and over again if you wanted to “clear” whole map from tags.
But there are few times where you are supposed to see cutscene after leaving location (it’s scripted), so it’s best to wait with fast travel until you walk out from building after story part (so don’t teleport from inside buildings immediately after hearing dialogue). Otherwise game will go crazy and will hang up on load screen. Nothing big thought, just reload save after dialogue and leave place in a normal way.
Thanks! These bars are so self-explanatory, better than words <3 Good image in my opinion is always richer than an elaborate sentence.
About guides, I don’t like playing using these either. This happened to me a number of times, starting from early childhood, during adventure-quests. From one point of view, it is not fun to waste hours figuring out what to do next, when issue is either in not noticing something obvious from creator’s point of view, or in logic behind the expected sequence of actions being particularly obscure/obtuse, and guide helps to get over it without too much frustration. But then there is a risk to start checking guide while it is not necessary, during minor procrastination (losing “aha” moments) or desiring not to miss “something” (losing exploratory/choice feeling), and in the end playing through guide does not bring satisfaction. To such an extent that I felt that I would as well not have played the game at all; so I always try to play game without any information, even not seeing achievement list, and afterwards when I have beaten the game or have played a lot a non story driven -game, may check if there is some extra content to which achievements may point (still there are spoilers even then).
This habit very often ends in getting let’s say 40% of achievements and thinking after checking the list, that I could as well really use some extra abilities and rare tactics more often, would have only improved gameplay if I would be pointed to this from the beginning, but it is not worthy to play again just to get these; or to make some specific char build; or to get some rare weapon in the middle of game etc. As I see, it is always a trade-off between trying to make experience complete or fresh and interesting, during limited time (oh this age of over-saturation by fine content). I am leaning strongly towards first-experiencing myself, but there is a certain field to optimize even this ;3
Thanks for extra warnings, too :) This is logical yet it is easy to forget considering events which would be unavoidable without mods.
This comment was deleted over 6 years ago.
looks great
I just want to say one thing.
You play witcher 3 for the story. and its a really good story don’t get me wrong.
But you are heading into it with the same mindset as me and while I loved going through it on blood and broken bones the first time around despite it being pretty easy my new game+ playthrough on death march is painful.
its NOT too hard for me but you do need to do side-quests to level up and seeing as how I basically did every single quest the first time around a second playthrough is more for games that you love the gameplay of…dark souls for instance.
so yeah I’m still trying to do my DM run cause I want the cheevo so I can 100% it but its going take awhile.
Ha ha, when I wrote this post I felt so OP…. I read your reply, went back to playing and found wood-monster that killed me in one hit, as I stopped to use shield xD And only main and secondary quests (plus killing requests) give normal amount of exp. “ ? “ are waste of time, as most of the time it’s only exp for killing monsters.
Yeah, story is really good. And I really like those moments when you see results of your actions. Like I save some guy on another island, and he showed up later with bandits that killed refuge camp… that was sad.
And what I like about possibility of NG+ is that I wouldn’t repeat my mistakes to collect all diagrams xD Non-witcher craftable gear is pretty shitty, but takes so much space in crafting window.