October 2025 Update

Next update (works only on profile page)

Activated: 10/2025

DOOM Eternal (Q1 2020) ⭐️⭐⭐⭐☆

Beaten after: 1 month

Action
19.5h | 24 of 50 (48%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good 👍
- Good, very fast-paced and fluid combat
- Clear map and easy to track collectibles
- Big variety of enemies and ways to kill them
- Weapons are quite generic but they do work well
- Doom guy backstory is interesting and not staple "hero was born through sweat and sacrifice"
- Chainsaw kills to generate more ammo fit well within the combat
- Game looks very good, and music works extremely well with what is happening on screen

The bad 👎
- Weapon upgrade system is a bit of a drag. By the end of the game I had all weapon upgrades, but I would not be able to fulfil required "kill x enemies in y ways with this mode" to fully master a weapon, without the "skip requirement to kill enemies" tokens
- It is not possible to fast travel on the map selection screen
- Praetorian suit upgrades feel more like a filler than something that adds more depth to gameplay
- Even if multiplayer mode is optional, the game requires online connection to Bethesda servers. Game will be dead after developers decide to plug off the servers

Conclusion:

It is a good brainless kill feast. No "deep" storyline about fight for survival or raise of a hero. Just enough to have some background in the otherwise fast-paced and brutal shooter. If a game is too hard for us, it's possible to easily change difficulty. If we die multiple times in the same spot, we can opt in to use sentinel armour, which makes us basically invincible. So highly recommended for anyone who wants to do a bit of destruction 😈

---

Details

📘 Story ☑ Bare-bone ☐ Average ☐ Good

We need to stop Daemon invasion. That's all. Our story is to kill 3 priests to stop the invasion. Our past ally (unsurprising) turns out to be our enemy. There are few flashbacks from Doom guy past, the guy must have a few hundred years behind his belt at this point.

🔄 Gameplay loop ☐ Boring ☐ Average ☑ Good	The game is mostly linear with semi-open maps. We go to the location, kill all demons, doors open, and we can progress to the next area with some fight. Pretty basic. There are optional collectibles (enemy figures, music tracks) and gameplay-focused pick-ups (cheat codes, weapon mods, suit upgrades, ammo/health/armour upgrade crystals). They make the game easier, but are not required to progress. Each level has a map station that remove the fog of war, and an optional fast travel available at the very end of the map (to load the previous checkpoint and pick up missing collectibles). Fast travel is not available from the mission selection screen, so it is not possible to start the level mid-way just to grab a collectible. If we miss anything, the map needs to be replayed from the start.
🪄 Abilities ☑ Basics (walk, jump etc.) ☐ Magic / powers ☐ Advanced combat	There are no magic powers or complicated skill tree. We can run, double jump, dash, wall grab. Abilities are more tied to weapons than to the Slayer himself.
🎮 Controls ☐ Clunky and stiff ☐ Adequate ☑ Fluid and enjoyable	There are some easy platforming sections that don't require lightning fast reflexes. We grab platforms and edges from quite far away, dashing away from enemy attacks is easy, and we are not stun locked. There are no combo sequences to remember or parrying to do.
🥊 Combat 🏹 ☐ Boring and generic ☐ Average ☐ Good ☑ Great	The game was made for combat, and it is good in combat. Encounters are fast and unpredictable. Staying still means quick death, so we need to move all the time. Land a few blows on a stronger enemy. Look around for mob enemies to refill ammo/health/armour. Move away from the barrage of rockets that fly our way. Environmental resources are very scarce, and we can't use 'one favourite weapon', as we will run out of ammo very fast. Cutting enemies with the chainsaw generates some ammo. Doing a glory kill on a stunned enemy refills some health. Setting the enemy on fire drops some armour. All those actions have their recovery timers, so we can't easily cheese mobs to refill armour or ammo. It is very hit-and-run gameplay. Each weapon has two mods. e.g. shotgun can throw grenades or work like flak cannon; mini-gun generates a protective barrier or work as a mini turret. Mods are unlocked by finding mod kits on the map, while mod upgrades (faster reload, less charge-up time etc.) are unlocked with weapon points. Weapon points are awarded after beating mandatory and optional level encounters plus level challenges (kill x enemies with a weapon / perform x glory kills on enemy z etc.). So weapons have a layered upgrade system, but not overly complicated. There is a good variety of enemies, where each have their specific role. Mobs (source of ammo and health via glory kills), flying-ranged enemies, tanky enemies, swift-medium range enemies, tanky-close range blade wielding soldiers. Boss encounters are rather basic and there are only a few. They are not grand or precisely designed like Hollow Knight bosses. Just big bullet sponges with powerfull attacks.
🤖 Game AI ☐ Brain dead ☐ Really basic ☐ Average ☑ Smart and responsive	Enemies have complex strategy, and are highly mobile. Even bulky enemies will jump around like kangaroos, so if fat enemy was on the left shelf 2s ago, doesn't mean it will be there when we turn around. Mobs tend to simply move towards us, which makes them more predictable. Rest of the enemies will move away from us, if it gives them better shooting angle or ability to flank us.

💸 Microtransactions ☑ None ☐ Skins ☐ "Time-savers" ☐ Direct purchase ☐ Custom currency (gems etc.)	🏆 Achievements ☐ None ☐ Story progression ☑ Few collectibles / easy to get ☐ Grindy collectibles / hard to get ☐ Require multiple playthroughs	💾 Save system ☐ No saves ☐ No saves, progress carries over ☐ One checkpoint, too rare ☑ One checkpoint, frequent ☐ Manual saves
📊 Performance ☐ Can run on potato ☐ Medium requirements ☑ High requirements ☐ Too low for what is visible on screen ☐ Optimization disaster	🌌 Graphic ☐ May look good 10 years ago, but not now ☐ Blurry textures / geometry problems ☐ Average ☑ Good ☐ Beautiful	🔊 Sound ☐ Nothing to remember ☐ Good voice acting ☑ Good weapons & effects ☑ Good OST ☑ Music flows well with the action
🦚 Customization options ☐ Resolution, volume only ☐ Basic graphic settings ☑ Advanced graphic settings ☐ Adjustable HUD ☑ Accessibility options	🧭 Map ☐ No map ☐ Basic ☑ Detailed ☑ Minimap ☐ Fast travel	Details:

Are you ready for Christmas? It’s not even the end of October, and shops are already full of Christmas decorations 😅

I do miss times when Christmas decorations were appearing in shops at the end of November / start of December. It felt more special, that “Christmas is just around the corner!”. Now it’s spread across the whole 4th quarter of the year. I know it drives sales, as people have more time to pick up stuff, so good for corporations and economy. But it feels like part of the magic is gone.

August-September 2025 Update

Next update (works only on profile page)

Activated: 01/2025

Kingdom Come: Deliverance (Q1 2018) ⭐️⭐⭐⭐☆

Beaten after: 9 months

RPG Action
77.5h | 21 of 82 (26%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good 👍
- Strong modding scene which fixes a lot of issue with the game
- It has all the good parts of RPG. Good story, interesting characters
- Skills are mastered by performing them, similarly to skills in Skyrim
- We can't read until we get a quest to go to a scholar to teach us 😂
- Eating and sleeping 'survival' mechanics are not really obstructive

The bad 👎
- "Hyper realistic" bow combat without reticle is an unfunny joke. Fixed via mods.
- Very realistic and complicated melee combat, which feels a bit turn based and thus clunky
- Melee combat is always us versus many opponents. It's possible to die at a high level from peasants, if we don't find a way to obscure enemies' path to fight 1v1 or 2v1. It is not possible to effectively block opponents that are surrounding us, and it can lead to partial stagger-lock
- Henry gets dirty so fast... We can get a bath, go uphill to castle and already be covered in mud tip to toe
- NPCs and animals spawn literally in front of us
- Saving mechanism is annoying. And adds a lot of unnecessary padding to already long game
- Not possible to completely remove fetch quests from the journal
- Speed of walk or horse riding is not the same for us and NPCs, which makes escort missions annoying
- DLC content baked in game but not accessible. There are hound trainers to train our dog, and it's possible to pay them to get skills, but dogs are not available in the main game
- Fast travel is more like autopilot, where the character 'physically' moves from point A to point B. If you 'fast-travel' through a city, and there are a lot of NPCs in the path of the horse, you will be stuck until they clear out. And your character on the 'fast-travel' map will be stuck. It is a bizarre way to implement it
- It is not possible to sleep in 'someone's else space', even when no one is using the spot. The game will allow lying down and start the sleep timer, but then it cancels, and some random NPC says "you can't sleep here", and walk away. I am not riding across the whole map to use the one piece of flour that is not 'occupied' by anyone, when I'm in the military camp and no one uses this dirty pile of hay at the moment...
- Herb picking animations are so slow... thankfully there is mod to skip it entirely
- So many bushes are invisible walls that can't be walked through. Just why. It's not a Pokemon game

Conclusion:

Would I play the game, knowing how it will be? No. It has very good graphic. Detailed map. Interesting setting and non-trivial or predictable story. But then comes boring, repetitive and unfair combat. A lot of game mechanics that waste time. I'm sure I would have way more fun beating Hades and Talos Principle 2 (which would sum up to time required to beat this game with all side quests solved). I did see warnings before playing that combat is bad and clunky (or amazing, and super realistic, if you look at it like this). And it is exactly that. Walking sim with good level design and meh combat.

---

Details

📘 Story ☐ Bare-bone ☐ Average ☑ Good

We are a son of a smith. Our village is plundered by invaders. Our parents are killed in front of us. But we survive. And take an oath to have revenge. Along the way we listen some boring bits about the Czech Republic and Hungary politics, get to know all the lords of the land and become the best warrior in the province. The game is fairly historically accurate when it comes to reproducing the realities of that time, but the story is fully fictional.

🪄 Abilities ☐ Basics (walk, jump etc.) ☐ Magic / powers ☑ Advanced combat	We can run / jump (in quite clunky way), ride horse. We can't swim. We learn and improve skills through practicing, similarly to Skyrim. There is no ability tree, and skills are made available based on level. Most of them feel like a filler, though. Like there are around 10 different combos to unlock for sword combat, but what are they good for when they are interrupted by an enemy attacking us. And 99% of time we fight one vs many, which ends with us getting hit a lot.
📇 Inventory and menus ☐ Basic ☐ Detailed ☑ Over complicated	The menu doesn't look scaled properly. The right half of the screen on quest log is taken up by unnecessary map. There is so little space for quest updates that quest tasks are displayed on top of the quest list in sort of overlay. The inventory is half-taken by a big image of how Henry is looking. Default item sorting is just obnoxious (and can be fixed with mods). There is no ability to mark items as rubbish and sell in bulk. Detailed weapon and armour stats also work as this weird overlay on top of the items list.
🥊 Combat 🏹 ☐ Boring and generic ☑ Average ☐ Good ☐ Great	Love it or hate it. No other option, I'm afraid. I was in the "ugh, not again" camp. At first, combat is impossible, and we will die after being hit twice by a peasant. The game requires a lot of practice fights with wooden swords (it is free at least), before we get enough sword fight and defence skills to not die immediately. There are 6 directions in which we can attack (head, arms, torso sides, central stab) that are decided by where we point the mouse before the attack. And 90% of time, an attack like this will be blocked. So instead we need to point the mouse in one direction, and then change direction mid-way we press LMB to start attack. While still observing where our opponent is holding the sword, do not select the direction they will easily parry. Which rarely worked for me. Another option is to learn combos, which require multiple light/strong attacks in different directions. Which never worked for me. The last option is to train enough with wooden swords to learn how to do parry. Which is what pushed me through this game. Don't try to out-smart enemy, where you will fail 90% of the time. Just wait for the green "parry" shield to be displayed to press "Q" and land one effort-free hit on the enemy. Rinse and repeat. Doesn't work well when there are multiple enemies around, but then the first two ways to fight won't work as well. Bow fight is a joke without aim reticle (the game hides the aim crosshair when the bow is equipped) which makes it impossible to use it, unless you are a masochist. I did archery. To shot bare bow, you need years of extensive training. When people train at the club, they put something bright in the grass to "have something to aim at the arrow" (like orange ping-pong balls), as there is a big offset of where you think the arrow will fly and where it does. You aim at grass 0.5m to the right of the target, and the arrow hits the centre of the target. And devs wanted to re-create a mechanism like this in active combat, by simply removing the reticle 🤯 I did install the mod to restore the aim reticle, because I wanted to enjoy some bow-shooting. Not to ignore bow as unusable tool like most of the people do. Otherwise, even at max possible level, we are quite squeamish and can still die if we are ambushed by 5 peasants with spears. My solution to this was to max out scout ability, and simply avoid all combat. Except for story-related quests, but there we usually have allies with us, so we are not in 1-against-many situation.
🤖 Game AI ☐ Brain dead ☑ Really basic ☐ Average ☐ Smart and responsive	Enemies are brainless. Will either shot arrows at us (if we are far away) or chase us in a straight line if we approach.

💸 Microtransactions ☑ None ☐ Skins ☐ "Time-savers" ☐ Direct purchase ☐ Custom currency (gems etc.)	🏆 Achievements ☐ None ☐ Story progression ☐ Few collectibles / easy to get ☑ Grindy collectibles / hard to get ☐ Require multiple playthroughs	💾 Save system ☐ No saves ☐ No saves, progress carries over ☑ One checkpoint, too rare ☐ One checkpoint, frequent ☐ Manual saves
📊 Performance ☐ Can run on potato ☑ Medium requirements ☐ High requirements ☐ Too low for what is visible on screen ☐ Optimization disaster	🌌 Graphic ☐ May look good 10 years ago, but not now ☐ Blurry textures / geometry problems ☐ Average ☑ Good ☐ Beautiful	🔊 Sound ☑ Nothing to remember ☐ Good voice acting ☐ Good weapons & effects ☐ Good OST ☐ Music flows well with the action
🦚 Customization options ☐ Resolution, volume only ☐ Basic graphic settings ☑ Advanced graphic settings ☐ Adjustable HUD ☐ Accessibility options	🧭 Map ☐ No map ☐ Basic ☑ Detailed ☐ Minimap ☑ Fast travel	Details:

July 2025 Update

Next update (works only on profile page)

Activated: 08/2024

Escape Simulator (Q4 2021) ⭐️⭐⭐⭐☆

Beaten after: 11 months

Escape_room, Co-op
13.5h | 19 of 25 (76%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good 👍
- Interesting puzzles that require thinking outside of box
- Hoarding clues, so your partner can't progress
- Can design and play own rooms via the community editor
- Free cross-over rooms (e.g. Portal or Talos Principle) are big and detailed

The bad 👎
- Basic game rooms are a bit claustrophobic
- Some tokens are just annoying (not fun) to find
- Some numerical puzzles feel more like guessing game than "do it based on the clues"
- Game is buggy and level reset may be required to beat it

Conclusion:

A good escape room simulator. Can be played both in single and multiplayer. There is good variety to puzzles, no issues with cooperation. The only negative is that rooms are quite small, and game can bug out, so quest items can't be interacted with. Restarting the level helps, but it means lost time to re-do the same puzzles again.

---

Details

💸 Microtransactions ☑ None ☐ Skins ☐ "Time-savers" ☐ Direct purchase ☐ Custom currency (gems etc.)	🏆 Achievements ☐ None ☐ Story progression ☑ Few collectibles / easy to get ☐ Grindy collectibles / hard to get ☐ Require multiple playthroughs	💾 Save system ☐ No saves ☐ No saves, progress carries over ☐ One checkpoint, too rare ☑ One checkpoint, frequent ☐ Manual saves
📊 Performance ☐ Can run on potato ☑ Medium requirements ☐ High requirements ☐ Too low for what is visible on screen ☐ Optimization disaster	🌌 Graphic ☐ May look good 10 years ago, but not now ☐ Blurry textures / geometry problems ☑ Average ☐ Good ☐ Beautiful	🔊 Sound ☑ Nothing to remember ☐ Good voice acting ☐ Good weapons & effects ☐ Good OST ☐ Music flows well with the action
🦚 Customization options ☐ Resolution, volume only ☑ Basic graphic settings ☐ Advanced graphic settings ☐ Adjustable HUD ☐ Accessibility options	🧭 Map ☑ No map ☐ Basic ☐ Detailed ☐ Minimap ☐ Fast travel	Details:

Late with both posts for June and July, but life happens 😅 Didn’t have much time to play, even less to come here and do a short summary.

I currently play Kingdom Come Deliverance and Epic and I do enjoy it. Minus the combat. Trying to shoot a bow in game, without reticle is mad. I did practice archery, it’s hard enough to shot a bare bow to a stationary target. Not to mention try to hit rabbit or enemy mid-movement. And sword fight is overcomplicated, plus it’s pretty much always that we are stacked against a few enemies. Not 1 on 1 duels.

But. This is a game from glorious 2018. Time before games were full of microtransactions and time-savers nonsense. I don’t need to pay for experience boost or easier combat. I can download “show reticle when using bow” and “easier parry” mods without paying a cent, and enjoy the world building and story. Not to rage-quit due to combat 😎 And no devs requiring me to be always-online to check game file integrity, and revoke my access to single player game, as I am a dirty cheater. Ha. Screw you, capitalistic gaming industry.

People recently managed to push Stop Killing Games initiative past the threshold to be considered by EU. It doesn’t mean there will be any change in law, and gaming corporations already prepare their legal departments to lobby against it. Maybe even produce ads that keeping offline access to single player games past the publisher expiry date, in preparation to release a new game in the series, will get people raped. Just like moto industry did to fight right to repair by independent providers? 😐

We will see. I would like to have European law that would require games to have info at the front cover in big font “this game will no longer work a year after release” [we need to make grounds for release of battlefield 8]. Or that if a decision was made to kill servers in a multiplayer game, no new sales of game or DLC would be allowed in prior x months. To not have people grab a copy of a game in shop to learn 2 weeks later the game will become e-waste month after purchase.

June 2025 Update

Next update (works only on profile page)

Activated: 06/2025

Two Point Hospital (Q3 2018) ⭐️⭐⭐⭐☆

Beaten after: 1 month

Simulator Management
4.5h | 1 of 61 (2%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good 👍
- Disease description and hospital announcements are funny

The bad 👎
- highly repetitive and focused on copy-pasting working solutions over and over again
- not possible to re-train staff
- there is too much micromanagement when it comes to staff

Conclusion:

I see how this game can be good for people who enjoy very repetitive simulators. For me, it felt like a waste of time, to keep going through the same paces by re-making the same rooms over and over again. There are a lot of optional things to unlock with points received for achieving level objectives, but then scrolling through list of available objects (decorations, different benches, vending machines etc.) nothing stood out to me with "o! I want to unlock this thing!". Staff is rather dumb and can walk around the halls instead of treating patients. Training new staff abilities is painful and slow, hoping to find a new hire on the list of available staff with desired trait is futile. Everyone wants to be promoted all the time, there are no "average Joe" that would be just fine with their level 1 ghost-sucking and basic machine repair.

May 2025 Update

Next update (works only on profile page)

Activated: 12/2024

Ghostwire: Tokyo (Q1 2022) ⭐️⭐⭐☆☆

Beaten after: 5 months

Action Light Horror
17h | 0 of 66 (0%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good 👍
- If you're interested in Japanese culture there is a lot of historical lore to learn - Good soundtrack

The bad 👎
- Combat is really basic
- Enemies are not interesting and are very predictable
- There is a lot of padding (like in all Ubisoft games), so it IS a typical open-world "climb a tower" Ubisoft creation
- Story is very standard and ending is easy to predict
- Game requires 3rd party video codec to show cutscenes, that doesn't come with Windows or K-Lite codec pack. Either manually install from Windows Store, or manual installation via PowerShell is required

Conclusion:

The game starts as a mild horror, with us having to sneak around paranatural enemies in order to survive. And quickly turn into FPS with copy-paste enemies, map filled with endless supply of fetch quests and collectibles, and short main storylike. If you like generic "Ubisoft genre" you will be happy with hundreds of graffiti, spirit clumps, food types, clothes, small figures etc. to collect. Otherwise, you will be bored rush through main story and think "oh, it's over already?".

---

Details

📘 Story ☐ Bare-bone ☑ Average ☐ Good

Akito rushes on the motorbike (never a good idea) to the hospital to his dying sister. He gets into a car accident, suffer near-death wounds and is reanimated by a phantom of KK - a former cop who was fighting supernatural phenomena while still alive. Akito wakes up to realize 1) his body is not fully his own any more 2) everyone in Tokyo is gone, after making contact with spooky mist. He does the only logical thing - keep rushing to the hospital to see his sister. On place, it turns out his sister did not disappear in the poof of mist, but is instead kidnapped by clearly out of whack guy in a samurai mask. Mumbling about using Akito's sister to resurrect his family. From this point game obviously focus on Akito fighting city full of "visitors" - creepy being from the underworld - in order to safe his sister. Change from whiny crybaby to man up Schwarzenegger that fight oversized underworld bosses is rushed and not believable. And I won't be surprised if you know how the game ends, after my brief summary of first 1.5h gameplay.

🔄 Gameplay loop ☑ Boring ☐ Average ☐ Good	The city created for this game is very detailed. But also very empty. We can meet: visitors that try to kill us, cats that can sell us some junk (if we care enough to grind money to have funds), and dogs that can be pet. On top of that, there are a lot of spirits that "need just this one thing done for them before they can move on". Which is your usual fetch quests "go-kill-retrieve" slop. We run around the deserted city to the next objective. Use talismans to absorb spirits along the way. Collected spirits are later transferred via a phone booth into the "real world" to restore people there, and we get experience points and some funds in return. Problem is the number of spirits we can hold at a time is very limited, which means we constantly run between phone booths and spirit clusters. Like a person who drank too much coffee and need to constantly run for a toilet. It does break the flow of the game. It is possible to grind for cash and buy more amulets (so we can hold more spirits), but it makes the soul-absorbing loop just a bit less tedious. Not eliminate is entirely. Some experience is also gained from fighting enemies, but then combat is not great. So pick your poison.
🪄 Abilities ☐ Basics (walk, jump etc.) ☑ Magic / powers ☐ Advanced combat	We can run, jump and have limited "hover" used to jump between rooftops (if we fancy). On top of that we can shoot energy with our hands, but it boils down to having 3 guns: green is assault rifle, blue is shotgun and red is rocket launcher. Ammo is limited, so shots can't be carefree. Especially if we don't spend time unlocking "Ubisoft towers" that contain bracelets, which act as passive damage boost for our abilities. It is possible to increase the ammo capacity, but it requires running around the city to find hidden statues. On top of that we have a bow (the only offensive tool we have at disposal when KK is "not available") but environmental ammo is very scarce, and the main source are cat shops. Which is expensive. There are immobilization or protection amulets, but they suffer from the same issue as arrows - can't be found around, need to be bought. There is a "scan" ability that is used to track spirits in handful of mission, and to highlight collectibles/visitors in 30(base)-50(upgraded)m radius.
🎮 Controls ☐ Clunky and stiff ☑ Adequate ☐ Fluid and enjoyable	Controls are fine. Thought there is not much that can go wrong. There is no parkour or precise movement required. We run around or go on the rooftops to jump around (easier to avoid visitors that way).
📇 Inventory and menus ☑ Basic ☐ Detailed ☐ Over complicated	The only menu I was using was the map for fast travel. The rest of the interface is focused on reading material on Japanese folklore, or to track hundreds of available collectibles. All long-winged cutscenes can be skipped if we die in the middle of a boss fight.
🥊 Combat 🏹 ☐ Boring and generic ☑ Average ☐ Good ☐ Great	Like I mentioned above, there are basically 3 types of weapons. Assault rifle for generic enemies. Rocket launcher for mini-bosses and enemies with shield. And shotgun, which I was using after running out of rockets. We shot with our hands. Enemies are brain-dead and always charge at us. So it's enough to walk back while shooting to end all encounters. Some sneaking is possible, and enemies can be one-hit killed that way. But then usually the rest of the enemies will notice us, and it goes into the usual gun fight. Some enemies have typical close range approach, while others can shoot various objects at us. And it is funny to see visitors looking as high schoolers, throwing classroom objects in our direction. After we deal enough damage we can expose the enemy core. At this point we can shoot it once or twice more to destroy the visitor, or extract it (which takes time and makes us vulnerable for attacks, but also conserves ammo). If we don't destroy the core within few seconds it will reset and visitor will be back at full health. Each weapon have ultimate fire mode, but it mows through ammo like crazy and leaves us dry after few seconds.
🤖 Game AI ☐ Brain dead ☑ Really basic ☐ Average ☐ Smart and responsive	Enemies have no strategy or thought. They just charge at us. The same goes for bosses. And there are no NPCs to see if they would have any brain power.

💸 Microtransactions ☑ None ☐ Skins ☐ "Time-savers" ☐ Direct purchase ☐ Custom currency (gems etc.)	🏆 Achievements ☐ None ☐ Story progression ☐ Few collectibles / easy to get ☑ Grindy collectibles / hard to get ☐ Require multiple playthroughs	💾 Save system ☐ No saves ☐ No saves, progress carries over ☐ One checkpoint, too rare ☐ One checkpoint, frequent ☑ Manual saves
📊 Performance ☐ Can run on potato ☐ Medium requirements ☑ High requirements ☐ Too low for what is visible on screen ☐ Optimization disaster	🌌 Graphic ☐ May look good 10 years ago, but not now ☐ Blurry textures / geometry problems ☐ Average ☑ Good ☐ Beautiful	🔊 Sound ☐ Nothing to remember ☐ Good voice acting ☐ Good weapons & effects ☑ Good OST ☐ Music flows well with the action
🦚 Customization options ☐ Resolution, volume only ☑ Basic graphic settings ☐ Advanced graphic settings ☐ Adjustable HUD ☐ Accessibility options	🧭 Map ☐ No map ☐ Basic ☑ Detailed ☐ Minimap ☐ Fast travel	Details: - gameplay is flashy and city is fleshed out and well detailed - Japanese voice acting is in the same style like if you'd watch an anime

Activated: 09/2024

We Were Here Expeditions: The FriendShip (Q3 2023) ⭐️⭐⭐⭐☆

Beaten after: 8 months

Co-op Puzzle
3.0h | 12 of 12 (100%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good 👍
- No walking-padding sequences like in the previous title
- Interesting challenges that require thinking, navigating and good communication
- Puzzles can be solved in "easy" way by getting fewer points per challenge, which will make it easier to play with kids
- Puzzles can't be solved or brute forced by one player
- Game doesn't have a "big backstory". Which is good, as the backstory of previous games was not great

The bad 👎
- It has only 3 puzzles, thought it is so cheap it is worth paying 3 EUR for it

Conclusion:

I do like it. Feel less bloated than the previous title. No unskippable cutscenes and no average voice acting. No bland villains to defeat. Just puzzles. Main characters survive a storm at the sea and end up on an island. Need to solve 3 puzzles to build the boat to leave. Each puzzle has a "completion level" which is signified by a ticket obtained at the end. Bronze - silver - gold level. To beat puzzles with brown level we don't need to have perfect communication or think very hard, which makes it more approachable for kids. To obtain gold tickets we need to be way more efficient and organized. There are more figures to describe in "select right character" puzzle, more trials to complete in "one played guides the other" puzzle, and more points to get in "generate points by creation of synergy between tiles on a map" puzzle. While previous game had all-or-nothing approach.

---

Details

💸 Microtransactions ☑ None ☐ Skins ☐ "Time-savers" ☐ Direct purchase ☐ Custom currency (gems etc.)	🏆 Achievements ☐ None ☐ Story progression ☑ Few collectibles / easy to get ☐ Grindy collectibles / hard to get ☐ Require multiple playthroughs	💾 Save system ☐ No saves ☐ No saves, progress carries over ☐ One checkpoint, too rare ☑ One checkpoint, frequent ☐ Manual saves
📊 Performance ☐ Can run on potato ☑ Medium requirements ☐ High requirements ☐ Too low for what is visible on screen ☐ Optimization disaster	🌌 Graphic ☐ May look good 10 years ago, but not now ☐ Blurry textures / geometry problems ☑ Average ☐ Good ☐ Beautiful	🔊 Sound ☑ Nothing to remember ☐ Good voice acting ☐ Good weapons & effects ☐ Good OST ☐ Music flows well with the action
🦚 Customization options ☐ Resolution, volume only ☑ Basic graphic settings ☐ Advanced graphic settings ☐ Adjustable HUD ☐ Accessibility options	🧭 Map ☑ No map ☐ Basic ☐ Detailed ☐ Minimap ☐ Fast travel	Details: - I saw people complain that game is buggy, but I did not saw any bugs myself

April 2025 Update

Next update (works only on profile page)

Activated: 08/2024

We Were Here Forever (Q2 2022) ⭐️⭐⭐⭐☆

Beaten after: 8 months

Co-op
15.5h | 39 of 39 (100%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good 👍
- This game is less buggy and more polished than the previous games in the series, but it occasionally still needs to be restarted to reset a buggy puzzle
- Puzzles are interesting and less cumbersome, except the "whale-sound" challenge
- No issue with always-on mic that needs to be changed in the settings

The bad 👎
- Story is really meh
- Voice acting is very average

Conclusion:

Asymetrical Puzzle game with improved graphics and average voice acting. Some puzzles rely less on the partner, and could be solved single-handedly. Which is not a good thing when it makes your partner a bit obsolete. It is the longest game in the series, but some of the gameplay is spent on backtracking and watching unskippable animations. It does not negate the fact that the co-op puzzle genre sits in an abandoned corner, and it would be hard to find a better game in the genre. So I do recommend it, but you need to know that it is not without flaws.

💸 Microtransactions ☑ None ☐ Skins ☐ "Time-savers" ☐ Direct purchase ☐ Custom currency (gems etc.)	🏆 Achievements ☐ None ☑ Story progression ☐ Few collectibles / easy to get ☐ Grindy collectibles / hard to get ☑ Require multiple playthroughs	💾 Save system ☐ No saves ☐ No saves, progress carries over ☐ One checkpoint, too rare ☑ One checkpoint, frequent ☐ Manual saves
📊 Performance ☐ Can run on a potato ☑ Medium requirements ☐ High requirements ☐ Too low for what is visible on screen ☐ Optimization disaster	🌌 Graphic ☐ May look good 10 years ago, but not now ☐ Blurry textures/geometry problems ☑ Average ☐ Good ☐ Beautiful	🔊 Sound ☑ Nothing to remember ☐ Good voice acting ☐ Good weapons & effects ☐ Good OST ☐ Music flows well with the action
🦚 Customization options ☐ Resolution, volume only ☑ Basic graphic settings ☐ Advanced graphic settings ☐ Adjustable HUD ☐ Accessibility options	🧭 Map ☑ No map ☐ Basic ☐ Detailed ☐ Minimap ☐ Fast travel	Details: Game is still buggy and requires checkpoint restart to continue

Activated: 12/2024

Dungeons of Sundaria (Q4 2023) ⭐️⭐☆☆☆

Beaten after: 4 months

Co-op, Dungeon-Crawler
17,5h | 8 of 13 (62%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good 👍
- This game is so bad you start to enjoy how broken it is
- All armors are fully color customizable
- Depends on your preference, being so powerful to OHK mobs and mowing through bosses before they can finish their introductory lines can be seen as a positive or negative
- Loot constantly feels like a substantial improvement, not useless grind
- Enemy design is given way more attention than I would expect from a low-budget title, with each level having unique designs
- Long list of abilities to choose from
- Resuming game mid-level doesn't restart the level progress

The bad 👎
- Game is abandoned by the developers
- Can select any race for any class, even when it ends up not being able to aim (bulky lizard race as an archer obfuscates the aiming reticle)
- Platforming is not great, and you will repeatedly miss a jump and die
- In one instance, the same annoying huge damage-area boss spawned 2-3 times during one fight. Repeatedly. Which meant I had to kill 3 instances of the same boss. He was not supposed to respawn mid-fight and re-say his dialogue 🤣
- Voice acting is painful to listen to

Conclusion:

This is the type of game "that is so bad it makes it funny and entertaining". The first level is long and slow, then it gets ridiculously easy when you can mow through both mobs and bosses. I had to ask people I played with not to attack the boss, for the boss to have time to say their storylines. But then sometimes the boss keeps saying dialogue lines even after it's dead. Big difficulty spikes do happen, and the game is not well balanced. I have beaten the last mission before I was able to beat the second-to-last, as enemies there were OHK me. There are slight geometry problems during platforming. Or a pit we need to jump into to progress, has a 90% chance to kill us due to the fall damage. Enemies can do crazy break dancing after they are killed.

💸 Microtransactions ☑ None ☐ Skins ☐ "Time-savers" ☐ Direct purchase ☐ Custom currency (gems etc.)	🏆 Achievements ☐ None ☑ Story progression ☐ Few collectibles / easy to get ☐ Grindy collectibles / hard to get ☑ Require multiple playthroughs	💾 Save system ☐ No saves ☐ No saves, progress carries over ☐ One checkpoint, too rare ☑ One checkpoint, frequent ☐ Manual saves
📊 Performance ☑ Can run on a potato ☐ Medium requirements ☐ High requirements ☐ Too low for what is visible on screen ☐ Optimization disaster	🌌 Graphic ☑ May look good 10 years ago, but not now ☐ Blurry textures/geometry problems ☐ Average ☐ Good ☐ Beautiful	🔊 Sound ☑ Nothing to remember ☐ Good voice acting ☐ Good weapons & effects ☐ Good OST ☐ Music flows well with the action
🦚 Customization options ☐ Resolution, volume only ☑ Basic graphic settings ☐ Advanced graphic settings ☐ Adjustable HUD ☐ Accessibility options	🧭 Map ☐ No map ☑ Basic ☐ Detailed ☐ Minimap ☐ Fast travel	Details: Imp enemy has a very loud and annoying dying sound

March 2025 Update

Next update (works only on profile page)

Activated: 12/2024

Impostor Factory (Q3 2021) ⭐️⭐⭐☆☆

Beaten after: 3 months

PixelArt VisualStory
4h | 1 of 1 (100%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good 👍
- we can run, which speeds up boring walking stretches

The bad 👎
- the mechanics are exactly the same as in previous games. Collect glowy balls to progress the story, without any sort of minigames
- story is not very engaging "you're stuck in a time loop". And then progresses into "run to the right, as a big chunk of the game is showing someone else's memories, to learn their story without much player interaction
- feels like a basic prequel of To The Moon rather than a full standalone game

Conclusion:

We're invited into a mansion for a demo of some device. The game quickly turns into a murder mystery, as our hosts get murdered and we're the main suspect! Thankfully, time get rewinded, so we get a chance to find the real killer. But in the end the hosts always die, and we can't find the killer. Then the game turns into a long sequence where we walk through someone else's memories, and our gameplay is limited to clicking on the characters to initialize the dialogues. It feels like a visual novel at this point. And then there is the matrix "reality-breaking" ending that doesn't feel right. And points to the events shown in To The Moon. So the whole game looks like a prequel to the original, with cut mechanics (no minigames) and the ability to run.

---

Details

💸 Microtransactions ☑ None ☐ Skins ☐ "Time-savers" ☐ Direct purchase ☐ Custom currency (gems etc.)	🏆 Achievements ☐ None ☑ Story progression ☐ Few collectibles / easy to get ☐ Grindy collectibles / hard to get ☐ Require multiple playthroughs	💾 Save system ☐ No saves ☐ No saves, progress carries over ☐ One checkpoint, too rare ☑ One checkpoint, frequent ☐ Manual saves
📊 Performance ☑ Can run on potato ☐ Medium requirements ☐ High requirements ☐ Too low for what is visible on screen ☐ Optimization disaster	🌌 Graphic ☐ May look good 10 years ago, but not now ☐ Blurry textures / geometry problems ☑ Average ☐ Good ☐ Beautiful	🔊 Sound ☐ Nothing to remember ☐ Good voice acting ☐ Good weapons & effects ☑ Good OST ☐ Music flows well with the action
🦚 Customization options ☑ Resolution, volume only ☐ Basic graphic settings ☐ Advanced graphic settings ☐ Adjustable HUD ☐ Accessibility options	🧭 Map ☑ No map ☐ Basic ☐ Detailed ☐ Minimap ☐ Fast travel	Details: Apart from a bit smoother animations, there are barely any upgrates to graphic in comparison to 2014 Bird Story

Activated: 12/2024

Moncage (Q4 2021) ⭐️⭐⭐⭐☆

Beaten after: 3 months

Puzzle
3.5h | 15 of 15 (100%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good 👍
- nice spatial puzzle design, which is logical and doesn't require guessing
- music is kept to a minimum, which helps with focus
- the background story that is told through background photographs is a nice add-on

The bad 👎
- quick switching between panels while zooming in/out can be cumbersome

Conclusion:

It is a nice game. Not too hard, and it doesn't require looking for obscure environmental pieces that need to be aligned, like in some The Witness puzzles. It can be easily played in short bursts, as we resume right where we ended. Not x steps earlier due to the game checkpoint system. I would not buy it at full price, but at discount, it's a nice addition for someone who likes enviromental "align stuff to progress" games.

---

Details

📘 Story ☑ Bare-bone ☐ Average ☐ Good

There is some background story of a young man going to war. Although it's nothing more than a filler to make the transition between new box facets more interesting. We learn the story by collecting photographs hidden around the levels.

🔄 Gameplay loop ☐ Boring ☐ Average ☑ Good

Each box facete shows a different environment/place. We can zoom into the facete to interact with the objects within it. When we zoom out, we can combine objects from different facets. E.g. align pulley wheel connected to a trap door, with a pulley connected to a weight, to spin the "composite" pulley and move the trap door; or align robot's arm from the factory with excavator arm from the warehouse, for the "composite" robot arm to reach into the warehouse and drop box in the factory. A good description of this game is "what you see is what you get". Image adjustment doesn't need to be pixel-perfect, as the game has reasonable bounds where it helps players to snap images together. There is also a basic hints menu. After we unlock all 5 box facets, new sides will override those that lack objects we can interact with.

💸 Microtransactions ☑ None ☐ Skins ☐ "Time-savers" ☐ Direct purchase ☐ Custom currency (gems etc.)	🏆 Achievements ☐ None ☐ Story progression ☐ Few collectibles / easy to get ☐ Grindy collectibles / hard to get ☑ Require multiple playthroughs	💾 Save system ☐ No saves ☐ No saves, progress carries over ☐ One checkpoint, too rare ☑ One checkpoint, frequent ☐ Manual saves
📊 Performance ☑ Can run on potato ☐ Medium requirements ☐ High requirements ☐ Too low for what is visible on screen ☐ Optimization disaster	🌌 Graphic ☐ May look good 10 years ago, but not now ☐ Blurry textures / geometry problems ☐ Average ☑ Good ☐ Beautiful	🔊 Sound ☑ Nothing to remember ☐ Good voice acting ☐ Good weapons & effects ☐ Good OST ☐ Music flows well with the action
🦚 Customization options ☑ Resolution, volume only ☐ Basic graphic settings ☐ Advanced graphic settings ☐ Adjustable HUD ☐ Accessibility options	🧭 Map ☑ No map ☐ Basic ☐ Detailed ☐ Minimap ☐ Fast travel	Details:

February 2025 Update

Next update (works only on profile page)

Activated: 10/2024

Cyberpunk 2077 (Q4 2020) ⭐️⭐⭐☆☆

Beaten after: 3 months

RPG
50h | 0 of 57 (0%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good 👍
- Unlimited respec options
- The story is good but kind of short
- Very good system performance test 🤣 (though I think Wuhang already dethroned Cyberbug here)
- Cyberpunk climate is oozing from the screen
- A lot of attention to body and clothing customization
- Very good voice acting

The bad 👎
- Doesn't matter if we beat missions stealthy or aggressively
- Ending doesn't take into consideration our choices above "if you beat side quests, an extra road to the same ending will unlock"
- Abilities feel lackluster
- NPCs are brainless. They walk around, dragging their feet like a zombie, stuck in the same animation loops
- Enemies are very basic and their design is copy-pasted
- So much customization and we never see ourselves. Mirrors don't even show reflection unless we "activate" them
- Inability to change car paint color seems like a big omission
- It is painfully obvious that racing is rigged in our favor (competition waiting when we hit an obstacle, or rubber-band chase if we drive perfectly)
- During normal driving other cars move away to make us a path, like we are an ambulance with sirens on
- Physics can go bonkers, and walking past a stack of boxes or picking up a cup will send objects flying
- There are only 2 enemy robot designs in the whole game - flying scout and walking tank
- Interactions with Jonny don't matter, and the secret ending is unlocked after picking specific responses in one dialogue
- Starting background (badlands, street kid, corpo) doesn't matter
- Police can still spawn in the field of vision, and police chase sequences are very lack luster

Conclusion:

This game is like an empty easter egg. Very beautiful on the surface, and missing essence on the inside. Great customization options? Too bad we will never see changes to how we look unless we check the inventory. A lot of quests everywhere? Too bad they are basic filler, the main plot is short, and romance quests feel more polished than the main storyline. Romance storylines also take together more time than the main story, which is kind of weird considering V is working around the clock to not die. Big city full of opportunities? There is literally nothing to do, except visit clothes and cyberware shops. Or stealing a car to drive around without purpose. Tons of abilities to unlock and weapons to customize how we play? It doesn't matter if we play stealth or gun blaze, quests have exactly one end. Stealth only makes everything very long.

---

Details

📘 Story ☐ Bare-bone ☑ Average ☐ Good

There is a lot of lore for bookworms. Worldbuilding + atmosphere is very good. With a big help from the graphic quality. I played the main story for a bit, and got to a point "ok, let's focus on non-filler side missions now". I completed everything and went back to the main story. And I was literally one mission away from point-of-no-return. 5 out of 8 Act 1 missions feel like a long tutorial that ends with us getting the first cyberware. Act 1 concludes with two short missions where we see Johnny and learn how he died. Followed by 9 missions shared between Judy and Panam, which feel like side quests to build a romance with those two, not a part of the main quest. 4 Arasaka-focused missions. Which feels like the main missions, because we learn more about our condition, that Johnny will slowly "overwrite" V, unless we find a way to break into Arasaka and learn how to save V etc. This ends Act 2, and springs us into a short ending. Where we attack Arasaka tower alone, with Rogue or Panam. When I saw I had 3 choices of ending I thought "great, I can replay this and see how different the game ends!". But it doesn't matter. Alone/Rogue/Panam paths are 2 missions that focus on different ways to get into the Arasaka tower. But then paths converge, which kills replayability. For the whole game, we were doing everything to save V. And the game ends with "meh, doesn't matter". Feels like red/blue/green ME3 endings, where on the surface it looks like choices through the game meant something, but in the end, the illusion breaks. Wonder if it's because they were planning Cyberpunk 2 already, so having diverging endings would make it hard to execute.

🔄 Gameplay loop ☐ Boring ☑ Average ☐ Good	Fast travel to mission, do mission, fast travel to next mission. The city is dead, and there is nothing to do. NPCs have nothing to say. There are a lot of "go and retrieve x" gigs. You can drive around instead of fast travel, but it feels off. Other cars will move to the side ever so slightly to give you space, so you don't hit them. Police lose interest after a couple of seconds (unless you go and kill civilians on purpose). Environmental food is often a flat texture, and V can't even eat it. The only way for us to eat food is to use it in inventory. Even part of the main story, where Jackie eats Chinese food during a long conversation is not animated properly. He is dunking chopsticks into a flat noodle texture and lifting pink cylinders to his mouth. Cylinders are not part of the dish when you look into the box. I think of GTA V released 7 years earlier, or 10 years younger Skyrim, and there was so much to do there, apart from going between the main missions. Pickpocketing people. Being caught during a crime and having a conversation with guards (in CP police shot us immediately). Interesting crafting. Going into a taxi to reach the destination. Using NPCs and environment to create your own stories. There are no environmental interactions in Cyberpunk. Except going to a cyberware clinic or clothes shop. V's flat can be used to see iconic weapons collections or change outfits. You can invite your love interest, but they have literally one dialogue to say (the same as they say if you call them over the phone). We have a long list of contacts in the phone book, but those NPCs also never have anything to say.
🪄 Abilities ☐ Basics (walk, jump etc.) ☐ Magic / powers ☑ Advanced combat	There are a lot of abilities to unlock, but towards the end I was spending points just to use them up, and unlock some environmental actions (doors that require technical ability to open, dialogues that are locked behind the cool level). None of the abilities felt impactful. I focused on stealth gameplay with Intelligence and Technical. Intelligence focuses on having small boosts for smart (homing bullets) weapons, longer hacks (magic) queue, and getting back some RAM (mana) after we kill an enemy. Boosting RAM amount or its regeneration speed is a cyberware job. We load 2 hacks "into" the enemy (overheat + overload, disease + blind etc.) and wait a few seconds for the said enemy to die. It is very unsatisfying. If we get caught by an enemy netrunner, they reset my optics or send overload. Which means graphical glitches for few seconds or getting slight electrical damage. I played on normal, and the game was so one-sided I ended up not carrying if the enemy noticed me. Just upload overheat twice for a non-lethal takedown and boom, perfect stealth mission. With enemies dancing around as they burn. It get boring quite fast, so I decided to have a bigger challenge and use a dildo as a main weapon. Without investing anything in strength. And I was still breezing through, KO enemies with 2 hits and non-mobs with a handful. With weapons, you can slowly pick enemies one by one with 3 - 4 headshots. I saw on higher difficulty enemies are simply more bullet spongy. Which is disappointing and not something I want to experience.
🎮 Controls ☐ Clunky and stiff ☐ Adequate ☑ Fluid and enjoyable	Controls are good. There are no invisible walls, so if we invest in the double or higher jump we can go wherever. There is very basic parkour, things like jumping over barriers. If we get hit by a car we drop on the ground like a plank, and see "getting up" animation. Car driving can feel a bit soapy unless we drive a big and heavy car. Fist fights are very basic with the ability to do dodge and light/strong attacks.
📇 Inventory and menus ☐ Basic ☑ Detailed ☐ Over complicated	The only menus I was using were map, loadout, and abilities. There is inventory, but it's full of junk and it's easier to compare weapons on the loadout screen. Never found use for crafting, crafting materials are not abundant and it's easier to buy cyberware or hacks after we get a lot of cash from selling junk that we find. Weapon comparisons work well, with a clear indicator of stat change. Weapon icons don't clearly state weapon damage buffs (headshots, bleeding, poison, electricity, etc.) which is a bit annoying. Changing weapon scope/sight is a pain, as it can't be done when the weapon is un-equipped. We need to firstly equip the weapon, which makes its available mod slots visible.
🥊 Combat 🏹 ☐ Boring and generic ☑ Average ☐ Good ☐ Great	I already partially described it in abilities. On normal difficulty, it feels too easy and boring. On higher difficulties, enemies get bullet spongy. There is no level-scaling or "this area has stronger enemies". After the initial "beware, everyone has a skull symbol as they are above your level" we won't find a challenge. Even boss fights (there are like 4 - 5 of them) can be easily beaten by spamming hacks and some rifle damage. The only boss that put up a bit of a fight was the last one, but only because he has a few phases. The second to last boss bugged out and hang up in the middle of the room. Allowing me to shoot them without worry. Except for very early in the game, I never had to use a med kit. I forgot I have grenades. And used overdrive (intelligence tree ultimate perk) a few times for health regen during the fist fight side quests (I was a nerd with no strength, and it was the only way for me to get health regen). Going through slow stealth gameplay with manual takedowns doesn't feel engaging, as hiding the bodies inside a container counts as lethal action. So we need to pick up the enemy and walk with it outside of the patrol zone. Instead of quickly stash it away in a closet or dumpster.
🤖 Game AI ☐ Brain dead ☑ Really basic ☐ Average ☐ Smart and responsive	Meelee enemies will rush towards us. Ranged enemies will hide behind the cover, and wait to get headshots. Neutral NPCs are brain-dead and just roam around. They can get scared because we drive too close, and jump under our car in response. If we hit NPC car they will always try to drive away ASAP, while shouting some random texts. They won't stop the car, they can't get out. This means they sometimes hit other cars in proximity, which puts more cars in panic mode 😐

💸 Microtransactions ☑ None ☐ Skins ☐ "Time-savers" ☐ Direct purchase ☐ Custom currency (gems etc.)	🏆 Achievements ☐ None ☐ Story progression ☐ Few collectibles / easy to get ☑ Grindy collectibles / hard to get ☑ Require multiple playthroughs	💾 Save system ☐ No saves ☐ No saves, progress carries over ☐ One checkpoint, too rare ☐ One checkpoint, frequent ☑ Manual saves
📊 Performance ☐ Can run on potato ☐ Medium requirements ☑ High requirements ☐ Too low for what is visible on screen ☐ Optimization disaster	🌌 Graphic ☐ May look good 10 years ago, but not now ☐ Blurry textures / geometry problems ☐ Average ☐ Good ☑ Beautiful	🔊 Sound ☐ Nothing to remember ☑ Good voice acting ☐ Good weapons & effects ☑ Good OST ☐ Music flows well with the action
🦚 Customization options ☐ Resolution, volume only ☐ Basic graphic settings ☑ Advanced graphic settings ☐ Adjustable HUD ☑ Accessibility options	🧭 Map ☐ No map ☑ Basic ☐ Detailed ☑ Minimap ☑ Fast travel	Details: It has beautiful graphic and devs make sure game supports all newest Nvidia bells and whistles. AMD and Intel counterparts are introduced with delay, Nvidia must still pay for game to be their tech showcase 🤣

January 2025 Update

Next update (works only on profile page)

Activated: 12/2024

Divinity: Original Sin - Enhanced Edition (Q4 2015) ⭐️⭐⭐☆☆

Beaten after: 1 month

RPG
63h | 48 of 54 (89%)

⇱ Click to show summary⇲

The good 👍

It has a well-thought and executed co-op campaign. I did not think a game with choices could have co-op built in.

Combat is very interesting and complex. "Throw oil, that can be then ignited for explosion, and as you fight poisonous spiders, they will also re-ignite and explode as poison clouds are explosive" level of detail. Think Magicka in how you can mix different elements to make big booms.

Each main character has a "trait list". Like material / spiritual, obedient/independent etc. 9 pairs in total, and when we consistently exhibit a trait in dialogues we get it to be the "main". Which gives stat bonuses. Being independent gives +1 to willpower, and being spiritual gives immunity to fear. It is a nice touch to building a character.

There is a lot of lore to discover, but because the story is not interesting it doesn't feel important.

Character creation is flexible, and it's possible to make a warrior with necromancy magic, or an archer with high crafting. But in such configurations, they won't excel in either, so it will be a problem at higher difficulty. It may be fine on low difficulty to have a character with 8 in strength and intelligence (as opposed to pure warrior or mage that would end with a 12 / 5 split). But gear is stat-gated ("you must have at least 12 strength to use this sword" or "spell cooling time is 10 turns on a character with low intelligence") so it's an unviable approach where enemies hit very hard.

The bad 👎

Characters run so slow it takes ages to move around. Would not be surprised if at least 10h of my gameplay was spent waiting for characters to run across the map to where I pointed.

Equipment has endurance stat, and there is no "repair all" button. For both traders (who repair for a fee) and self-repair (for which we need to learn skills and have repair tools at hand). It is not fun to click 6 times "repair" for each 4 characters to be ready for the next few fights. The same applies to identifying equipment, everything above "junk" quality has hidden stats that need to be identified. It also requires clicking on each single item, no bulk identification is available.

Inventory management is just awful. Each character wears multiple items, and there is no fast way to compare if the new "God quality" shoes you just found are better than the "Unique" quality you have used for the past 2h across your 4-squad party. There is not even a rough indication with red/green text if the item has better stats vs the item the current active character wears.

There is no quick auto-heal after battle (sleeping bags, portable camp in a safe location). So each encounter ends with you swapping characters so they are told to eat to restore 10% health per click. Or wait a very long time for a basic healing spell to reset and be cast again.

Don't try to heal your warrior with carrots. Carrots may look innocent, but they give -1 to strength. This means all strength-requiring gear can get un-equipped. If you miss it, you end up fighting using a naked unarmed dude 😅

Default camera setting is "cinematic". This means it jumps around the battlefield, and we end up miss-clicking and walking towards the enemy instead of shooting them with an arrow.

Enemies have idle animation, which also moves their "click hitbox". The cursor was 1 pixel away due to their idle animation when you clicked? You move towards them instead of attacking from a distance. Even aiming at their "circle" below their legs is not safe.. as legs can also move. The only safe option is to remember to aim centrally at the biggest part of their model... I never before had an issue in an isometric game to miss an attack because of enemy idle animation.

Very steep difficulty spike after the tutorial.

Only 2 main characters can be respec ~3/4 into the game. You lose all abilities, and to regain them you need to find a trader with a specific skill book. Not all traders have all the books, so you may find yourself on an adventure to find the trader that has a higher-tier ability that you want.

Camera sometimes can go bonkers and zoom closely, zoom out, or just "fall" into some canyon we were looking over.

I understand this is a turn-based game. But why characters are so limited outside of combat? I unlocked a new character with a healing ability. Great, I can heal now faster post-combat! Right? Right?? Well, not really. When the mage plays long and pointless healing spell-casting animation, I can't click the other character and select their healing ability. It's locked. I need to wait for 1st character animation to end to do anything else, even if it's a different type of action like drinking a healing potion. Just ugh.

Animations are too long in general. Combat looks nice, for people who want to spend 200h in a game. But I want to click, attack, and move to the next character.

You gave a character a lot of perception, to spot those nasty mines? Great! They will shout "watch out, I spotted a trap!" right before they walk into said mine, killing your whole squad as there was an oil patch nearby that exploded after ignition.

Story is really shallow, and it's obvious after a few hours what will happen at the end of the game. And the whole "revealing hero history" trope is just an uninteresting drag. Like having a detective book pointing out who is the killer on the first pages, and then trying to create an atmosphere of mystery and "who could that be??".

Some quests just expect you to guess what needs to be done. No logical hints or backstory. I did follow Vanilla guides sometimes (they pop up first in search results), and saw devs adjusted quite a bit in the Enhanced Edition to eliminate some issues. But there is a moment near the end of the game, where I spent an hour in the inn, picking up and inspecting each possible piece of junk (chairs, cups, plates, fireplaces etc.). And would not be able to progress without a guide. And when the user who asked for a solution on Reddit asked "how did you figure out how to progress??" get "I didn't, I also found a solution somewhere else". Good work devs.

Some puzzles rely on the teleportation pyramids. Too bad that the use of it is so cumbersome. You throw the blue pyramid with he-character across the chasm, go to she-character inventory, and click to "use" on the red pyramid to teleport the whole squad to the blue pyramid. Now he-character needs to manually pick the blue pyramid, so each of the main characters "owns" one for the next time they need to be used. In theory, they can be put in quick slots, but when the pyramid is thrown out, it's un-equipped. So it would need to be put back after each use. And can't have both pyramids on one character, as some puzzles specifically require having one on each to teleport around in sequence. Or just the fact that the same character will not have both high strength to throw the pyramid far, and the perception to avoid mines that are surely found around the landing zone.

Persuasion is based on a rock-paper-scissors mini-game where AI always cheats. It's impossible to beat it, unless you have considerably higher charisma than your opponent and use the auto-outcome option. With a bit of help from F5/F9.

Shouting "When it rains, it pours" when it's raining (and it rains in game 80% of time), and "It's heating up!" when passing by the campfire. Why do characters repeat this one line endlessly, it's unnecessary and irritating.

You have a door key on one character and click doors with another. "Magic pockets are used to move the key from character x to character y and you open the door" pop-up window appears that needs confirmation. Just why?? I don't care, just open the door and "move" the item in the background if you must, due to some limitation of the Original Edition engine or something. It applies to all usable items - pick axe, shovel, runes.

Game sometimes "hangs" during combat, where it doesn't know what to do. It will move to the next enemy, show it's their turn in the queue.. and nothing. It just "thinks" for 10s or so before the enemy decides to move or attack. It doesn't actually hang, as it's still possible to move the camera around. It's just that nothing happens with combat.

Conclusion:

Predictable story without "badass companions" or any NPC. Ancient gameplay, where someone thought to move a turn-based table-top physical boardgame too directly into a PC interactive environment. And very good combat, if you don't mind lengthy animations and high tactical difficulty. I value story way more than combat, so even on the lowest difficulty level, it was an unnecessary drag for me. It is not necessary to know events from the 1st game to understand the plot in 2nd, so if you are not focused on complex combat I would skip it in favor of the sequel. It does look like devs ironed out a lot of those bad and tedious mechanics from the original game.

---

Details

📘 Story ☐ Bare-bone ☑ Average ☐ Good

It is such a disappointment! Minor spoilers ahead. Two Source Hunters (members of an ancient guild, which has a holy mission of killing black-magic-wielding mages) are sent to investigate a murder in a small town. On the suspicion that black magic was involved. It quickly turns out that the city is under siege by the undead skeletons and orcs. Not long into the story, we find a star stone, which teleports us to a historian-imp, who records the whole of history. He tells us the story: Once upon a time TWO generals stopped the Void Dragon from devouring the reality. And they became guardians of a box, in which the dragon was trapped. Our true goal is to stop the Void Dragon, the imp says. We are chosen by gods, but he has no idea why. If we fail the universe will be lost! Half of the game focuses on uncovering the story of the mighty generals while trying to have a "big revelation moment" that we are the generals. It feels so weak and shallow, that I'm surprised anyone would be shocked by the "revelation" 😐 There is some backstory of a powerful mage/villain who goes insane and tries to release the Void Dragon. But yawn. The main villain is shallow and predictable after all.

💸 Microtransactions ☑ None ☐ Skins ☐ "Time-savers" ☐ Direct purchase ☐ Custom currency (gems etc.)	🏆 Achievements ☐ None ☐ Story progression ☐ Few collectibles / easy to get ☑ Grindy collectibles / hard to get ☐ Require multiple playthroughs	💾 Save system ☐ No saves ☐ No saves, progress carries over ☐ One checkpoint, too rare ☐ One checkpoint, frequent ☑ Manual saves
📊 Performance ☐ Can run on potato ☑ Medium requirements ☐ High requirements ☐ Too low for what is visible on screen ☐ Optimization disaster	🌌 Graphic ☐ May look good 10 years ago, but not now ☐ Blurry textures / geometry problems ☑ Average ☐ Good ☐ Beautiful	🔊 Sound ☑ Nothing to remember ☐ Good voice acting ☐ Good weapons & effects ☐ Good OST ☐ Music flows well with the action
🦚 Customization options ☐ Resolution, volume only ☑ Basic graphic settings ☐ Advanced graphic settings ☐ Adjustable HUD ☐ Accessibility options	🧭 Map ☐ No map ☑ Basic ☐ Detailed ☑ Minimap ☑ Fast travel	Details:

This game does not have 2 stars only because I see how deep and enjoyable the combat can be, for the people who enjoy micromanaging the battlefield. I will start to play the second one by looking for QoL mods, to remove as many “leftover” drag mechanics as possible 😅

I’ve beaten Cyberpunk 2077, which will count as Feb game. And even when combat feels lackluster (or I just get OP by doing all side missions), the story is good and engaging. The ending is not great though.

December 2024 Update

Next update (works only on profile page)