Recent reviews by Volatile Schemer

i think my story with this game is pretty much the same I have to tell about each 4X out there.

The empire-building part is superb. There are so many opportunities to min-max and squeeze value from all of the game's systems that I am completely sucked in.

Unfortunately, the AI opponents are barely servicable, the geopolitical system is non-existent (even though they have a "diplomacy" faction), and battles are impossible to lose (regardless of how good they feel). I'm always way ahead of all my opponents very soon (even my current playthrough on highest difficulty - which boils down to AI's clumsy cheating - seems trivial). And since the game is outright won in the early stages it soon becomes a just drag towards the inevitable victory.

I will also say that while Amplitude's "creative flair" is still there, it does feel a little bit dimmed. Factions don't feel as flavorful as they did in EL1 and ES2 and the music isn't as good. Visually, though, I found the game stunning.

So, for the very good empire-painting part this still gets the thumbs up, but if, like me, you hoped for a vibrant political struggle - or at least a semi-competent AI - I'm afraid the wait it still on.

Game's unique core concept and mechanics are actually very good and would have made for a nice 15-hour game. Unfortunately, devs bloated their relatively simple idea into 9 DLCs and 255 achievements (many of them grindy or about doing stupid things).

The above may sound like weird criticism, but I have a bit of a completionist streak and my attempts of actually completing this game have been gruelling. It just became extremely boring after I got proper hang of all mechanics, but the devs just kept on piling their samey content on me.

So, if you want to have a short, unique experience with it I suppose it's worth a recommendation. But if, like me, you are a something of a completionist and would buy it with the intention of doing all campaigns, scenarios, and achievements, I'd say stay away.

I have nothing say about Biogenesis itself really because the disastrous 4.0 patch is making it hard to experience it. It's not just bugged, it's fundamentally flawed. Not sure why they'd invest this much effort into making the game less fun.

Avowed was a huge letdown for me. Every aspect of the game starts out strong only to devolve to unacceptable levels sooner rather than later.

I was hooked on the main story at first but eventually it turned out very basic and it actually retconned the lore established by the Iovara dialogue in Breith Eaman back in PoE 1. It was pretty easy to predict what the story was early on but the dialogue tried to convince me I’ve learned something shocking on the few occasions where main story was pushed forward. Avowed uses the voice-in-head trope, but this time the entity that does the talking is deeply autistic at its best and pure gibberish at its worst. It was grating but at least it was lore-accurate. It was even worse when I got to talk to some local scholars and scientists and their theories have been laughably uninsightful. All of this clumsy opaqueness was there of course only to cover how shallow the main story is.

Side quests are not much better. There’s literally been a single memorable side quest (voiced by the great Matthew Mercer aka Eder/Aloth in one of his more subdued roles). Mostly it’s been just boring, whiny people moaning about their mundane problems who gave me MMO-style go-kill-collect tasks.

Exploration has actually been great from start to finish and felt satisfying without making me feel like I’m playing a puzzle game. Too bad most of the loot I found through said exploration was outright useless. Companions are there. They have their stories but again they are too thin and dragged out too much to be interesting.

Combat felt superb throughout; it’s fast-paced and both attacking and defending was very satisfying. Unfortunately it’s also trivial and extremely repetitive. I played on Path of the Damned and I only had to repeat a few boss fights I started when undergeared in the first region and from then on I only died a few times when I got done by the game’s radial menu (it’s used mostly to issue commands to companions but after it closes there’s a short moment when it doesn’t register keystrokes properly so instead of dashing I’d end up jumping and thus unable to dash/block). It was kind of early in the game when I started to feel I was doing same things over and over again. Enemies have very little variation, there are no specially designed fights, and abilities I gained only made the already easy combat even easier.

Items and item progression also felt good at first. I found a weapon that fit my playstyle early on so I was happy I could just upgrade it until I find something with better affixes later in the game. As it turned out, however, bonuses on unique items are outright weak, there are no synergies between them so there’s no tinkering with builds, and ultimately the game is so easy that gear doesn’t really require any optimization. Item upgrades eventually proved awful as well. In each region I needed to upgrade items three times with common materials and then upgrade its rarity with rare materials.
Those first three upgrades are done fairly quickly so for the most part looting areas other than those around bosses is aimless. All of this is painfully formulaic and thus not fun.

My biggest complaint towards Avowed is that the game is extremely streamlined and dumbed down, a far cry from the brilliant Fallout: New Vegas. I’m afraid that Obsidian Entertainment, who used to be my favorite developer, is no longer even an RPG company. Shame.

It starts great with beautiful graphics, juicy combat, and a main story which I was already invested in after Trespasser. I was a little disappointed that I was no longer controlling my team members but I will condede that this change made the gameplay much smoother and more enjoyable than the CRPG/ARPG hybrid from Inquisition.

Items system is very enjoyable. Everything is pre-designed and companions only wear gear dedicated for them so for once they look good no matter what they have on. There was one irksome element, however: in order to find or upgrade an item I needed to stumble upon one of its fixed locations (usually merchant or chest; first find grants the item, subsequent upgrade it) but even though I achieved 100% exploration some of my gear was still not fully upgraded (I must have missed some obscure, untracked chests). Tinkering with builds is great, but the stats page offers insufficient data (like, it's said that a Defense stat provides flat damage reduction, but the actual percentage value is never provided). Generally speaking, skills, items, and combat carried my enjoyment of the game for the longest time, but once I finally figured all things out it did become a bit repetitive. Landing that Perfect Defense or firing an Area Ability in the middle of a horde of enemies never got old, though.

Quest design was for me by far the worst thing in Veilguard. It looks like the management looked at some surveys and saw that companion quests were what players liked the most in previous games so they went full in on it. Too bad that rather than focusing on what actually made them so enjoyable they just made sure they'd fill most of the playtime. Companions themselves were likeable but their quests were dull, dragged, painfully formulaic, and most of the time I felt like I was running a kindergarten rather than a team of Thedas' elite on an urgent mission to save the world. The regular sidequests were at Inquisition's MMO-esque worst. I'd have a seemingly random coversation with someone and it would somehow turn into a quest. Then I'd find an item or kill a demon and that would, to my surprise, progress the quest. There wasn't a single clever piece of storytelling as almost everything, apart from one aspect of the main storyline, was just a different shade of using some mystical mumbo jumbo to boo-hoo gain power. The role-playing aspect is miserable. Using Mass Effect terms you can be a kiss-everyone-on-the-forehead paragon, joke-around paragon, or focused-on-task paragon.

Writing and voice acting was in my opinion very good. I've heard a lot of bad things about it and I've seen some out-of-context YT videos but other than a few cringeworthy moments the dialogues were a pleasure to listen to. The, um, "progressive" elements and their obtrusive delivery were indeed grating (like using a term coined in 20th century ad nauseam in a medival-with-magic setting) but they are given relatively little screen time. Music was a huge letdown. I can't recall a single memorable piece save maybe for one near the end of the game but it too was nothing to write home about. Exploration two important annoyances: often there was a chest right next to my location and I never knew if I just haven't spotted the way in, haven't unlocked a necessary companion to open the way, or was it only reachable from a room further on the map.

To summarise, while it was clearly given a lot of care and development time ultimately I'll remember it as a large single-player RPG with no memorable quests. As such it's impossible to recommend.

Outright the best RPG ever. I can only hope something eclipses it - or at least comes close - in my lifetime. Excels at everything, bar maybe character progression (perks are boring for the most part). An amazing landmark in gamedev.

Competent DLC to a wonderful game which is ruined near the very end by one utterly ridiculous fight. You need to kill enemies while they're on special power-up tiles, but they either don't move onto said tiles opting instead to fight your AI-controlled companions or are mowed down by those companions before they even have chance to act. The game is actually punishing you for having powerful pets. Utterly ridiculous design which leaves a very bitter taste after I've had a blast with the main game.

The most positive thing I have to say about this game is that it's not a scam. They've put in a shift and the game is kinda big, but the quality of it is so low that I've been cursing my drive to complete games I start throughout. In all things that a CRPG is supposed to do well - story, companions, quest design, role-playing, builds, combat - Black Geyser fails miserably. Even its most unique feature, the greed system, is criminally undercooked. Writing is probably the weakest point; it comes off like something acceptable in a rushed mod rather than a professional product.

I can only recommend it to people who'd be overjoyed to just play a clone of Infinity Engine games no matter how low the quality, or to those who would like to support a developer who clearly cares about the genre and will maybe create something better in the future.

This abomination of a DLC is now ancient but some things just need to be said. It is the most cynical release from a major publisher I've seen to date: they created three small maps which they populated with mobs and bosses recycled from the main game. The actual content to beat is a gruelling and mind-numbingly boring arena combat with 75 identical rounds split into 375 (!) waves of enemies. Only variance in this torment are the annoying handicaps that you're given each wave. To top it all off experience gains for kills are off and the meager loot drops are blue at best.

The titular Mad Moxxi is a cool character with some great lines and a nice voice actress behind her but that alone does not atone for how abysmal the release is.

Edit: They actually changed the bundle type to complete-the-set so now you only pay for DLCs you don't own and thus the original review is inaccurate. I guess I'm also changing recommendation to yes because the game was actually improved a lot with the DLCs. Thank you Stardock for the store change. Took you a while, but still.

Original review: I really hate being petty and posting a review that doesn't discuss merits of the game but the fact that I'm being price-punished by Stardock on the DLCs - by not being allowed to purchase the Ultimate Edition - just because I actually paid premium to get the base game early on irks me too much.

I remember it being a mediocre game back when it was released. Is the complete game any better? I do not know because I refuse to be blackmailed into paying more just becuase I own the base game.