Recent reviews by Raith

Absolutely love it, the inability to create my own decks prevented me from getting the older DOTPs but this one finally has the primary feature I want, custom deck creation.

It's no MicroProse Magic The Gathering (AKA Shandalar), but it's the closest we are gonna get in this day and age.

Absolutely fantastic, game of the year quite easily for me. Hell, I would say that this is easily the game of the new millenium so far, damn near nothing can even remotely come close to how much fun I have had with this game. It might damn near supplant Baldur's Gate 2 as my favorite game of all time.

Ok, I've gushed about it enough but I haven't said a damn thing about the game proper. The gameplay is fantastic, this game encourages exploration out the ass, there are secrets and easter eggs everywhere. Combat is satisfying and magic is powerful with many great area denial abilities. The story is cliche, but in a good way in my personal opinion. It really feels like a good old fashioned campaign of D&D with great friends (and that one ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ but you'll figure out which companion that guy is.) Dialogue and writing overall is quite good with plenty of humor and it never really takes itself seriously.

Character customization is pretty strong, at least in the vein of what your character can do, not appearance so much. DivOS follows a classless system that is flexible enough to allow for multiclassing to become every bit as powerful as specializing is, though the game does stumble in the area of having a few non-combat skills be mostly useless in many situations. Lockpicking for instance can be very useless, since every chest has a key which can be found via exploration or pickpocketing, or by simply bashing/blasting the chest itself open if you so desire. Now as to customising your characters appearance there are limited options, but at the very least it is possible to dye your armors a different color so that you can look a specific way, though it can be difficult to find enough dyes to get your clothes set.

When it comes to loot, DivOS went the randomly generated route. Randomly generated loot has some pros and cons, just like hand place loot does. The cons of randomly generated loot is that to many the loot never really feels special and will often be useless for people in the party and in DivOS that can certainly be the case at times. However I also submit that randomly generated loot encourages exploration every bit as much as hand placed loot does. People often cite Morrowind as an excellent example of the glories of hand placed loot, with many otherwise useless caves holding a valuable artifact that rewards you for exploring it. While certainly true, it is really only rewarding the first time around, since you will always know that that item is there so you always know to go there to get it. Morrowind veterans, myself included, know of dozens of place to get powerful artifacts with minimal effort, and while fun it can rapidly become a ritual for the game, which can swing either way of being great or terrible. DivOS on the otherhand opts for a more Diablo-esque loot system, with randomized loot that encourages you to seek chests and fight bosses for the best stuff which I find to be quite enjoyabe as well. Ultimately I enjoy both systems provided they are done well, I just felt it was something you need to know.

Graphics are perfectly passable and enjoyable, it is always simple to tell what everything is and the art style of the game is quite good with few standout ridiculous armors or weapons, barring most of the robes unfortunately. Sound design is as per usual for all Divinity games absolutely excelent, with an amazing soundtrack made up of excellently remastered tracks from past divinity games as well as many new tracks. Voice acting, what little there is of it, is enjoyable...at least the first few times you hear it, but it will eventually drive you to hate it, or love it. Personally I have taken to loving some of the idle chatter of some NPCs, and hating others.

Game length is quite satisfying as well, sitting at around 60ish hours from what I understand. I personally took significantly longer since I wound up developing a taste for reloading boss fights to do them over and over again, but I can confidently say that of my 200 hours as of writing only 20 of them were spent on the game back when it was in early access, and I enjoyed all 200 of them a great deal, and look forward to adding more via coop and mods.

I can go on for a while longer, but for the sake of simply ending this review I'll just say that I can't recommend this game enough, Larian created a true classic with this one.

Disharmony is an excellent expansion pack to a fantastic game that adds a lot of things that were missing from the base game, the one problem I have with Disharmony is the Harmony themselves, they aren't properly balanced with the other races and tend to be drastically weaker than everyone else.

I cannot recommend Endless Space enough, seriously the game is absolutely fantastic and is an excellent space 4x for those out there that want some MOO or GalCiv action.

Absolutely fantastic, this game is fun as hell and I can't stress that enough. Between the amusing dialogue and the interesting mechanics I find myself wishing the game was much, much longer. Absolutely love it, hope there will eventually be a sequel.

Warband is by far and away one of the most enjoyable games I have played in the past decade. Words cannot stress how great the game is, and how much fun you can have with it.

The game is basically a medieval sim sandbox, there is no overrarching quest so ultimately it is on you to make your own fun.

Want to be the head of a caravan and go around the world buying and selling wares while occasionally fighting bandits? Sure you can do that.

Want to be a vassal of a king and lead an army in his name? Yep thats in here.

Want to be a lawless wretch attacking whoever you want and taking everything by force? No problem.

Many will say the ultimate goal of the game is to create your own nation and potentially conquer all of Calradia, but personally I never wanted to do that, generally preferring to be a vassal and aid my lord in becoming the king of a unified Calradia.

Oh and another thing that is great about this game is the modding community, seriously when, or if, you ever get fed up with vanilla, or maybe you just want a bit more oomph to vanilla, there are plenty of mods out there for you to try.

X3: Albion Prelude is an excellent game, that can easily have you going from desperate dog fighting fighter pilot one hour, merchant prince the next, all the way to leader of your own personal Armada.
It has excellent graphics, exceptional gameplay, and a level of detail that, quite frankly, can easily drown someone who is not prepared. I solemnly recommend this, but at the same time, learn what you are getting yourself into before playing X3: AP.
If you DO take the plunge, say goodbye to friends and family, you won't be seeing them for a long, long time.

I cannot stress how cool this game is. Alright, so you like Civilizations... so you like Galactic Civilizations, well this game is just like them, but better, and getting better all the time. Not only does it allow you to design your own Starships, but it lets you set their scale as well. Want a ship bigger then a star system? Ok, easy enough, its just gonna be expensive and take forever and a day to make, but still it will be there, all bigger than a star system and all. And thats not all, this game has a massive sense of scale, EVERY planet is colonizeable in EVERY star system, and each star system has a minimal of 2 planets to colonize with the average being 3-4. Not to mention that every time you play a new galaxy is made, that YOU choose how many star systems are in, I personally made a galaxy that had 700 star systems, (though you can go MUCH MUCH higher, your really only limited by what your comp can handle.)
But anywho, check this game out, its fun as hell.