Recent reviews by BYTEzel

I played the original version a long time ago and started to refresh my memory of it by playing the enhanced version.

This version feels "retro but the right way". You still have the look and feel of the original game, but with higher resolutions and better overview. It runs fluently. Even though I did not own an SSD, waiting times are non-existant. The journal is searchable which makes getting all information pieces together much easier.

Regarding the game itself: I think it is critically acclaimed for a reason. I really enjoy the story which revolves around unraveling the mystery of your own immortal existence instead of beating a well-known antagonist. The focus of the game is shifted towards its well-written dialogues and during the course of the game you get to know yourself and your companions better.

From my point of view, the weak side of the game is the combat and Planescape Torment may overestimate the value of its fighting system. It feels like working through a menu and waiting instead of a tactical experience. In the beginning, there are only a few fights which can be solved by clicking on the enemy and waiting till one party has finally landed enought blows to strike the opponent down. You get most experience through dialogues and finishing quests and I found myself asking from time to time "why am I bother leveling or equipping better gear when I fight so rarely?". In the later course of the game, the environments gets more hostile and shift the focus from dialogues to fighting. Leveling beforehand pays off big time but on the other hand you usually have your set of spells/features you select, pause, throw in some healing potions if required and rinse and repeat.

All in all I find it a very rewarding and interesting experience. This may not be a game for everyone since you have to read through a lot of written dialogue. But if you enjoy reading a good book and enjoy oldschoool RPGs, this is a must-play.

Dark Souls has a different approach to the genre of ARPGs: I'm used to many dialogues, where I explore all options to fill my to-do-list of quests. I use my handy log to check every item of it and the minimap helps me find the right places and persons. I'll decide my outcomes of the situations by selecting an option in a dialog and in between I'm fighting a little bit for the sake of variety. I quickload when I would like to check "what happens if" or if something goes wrong.
Dark Souls crashes these traditions and offers something completely different. Instead of a fully told story you get small chunks of lore. Instead of elaborate dialogues, you struggle to find somebody which is able to speak. And instead of a minimap and quest log you get... well...nothing.

But why is it some of the greatest ARPGs I've ever played?

Its core gameplay is outstanding. Fighting in DS is not a minigame, it is an intense, strategic experience instead. Every weapon type feels and plays different. Every enemy has its pattern and allows for certain type of counters. You are not limited to a certain playstyle - you can tank and hit hard or roll around and backstab like a maniac. You have to consider your environment or you find yourself at the edge of a cliff or cornered in a room. I've never played a game which keeps me focused this much. This is especially true for the boss fights which are without doubt one of the most spectacular I've seen so far.
Another import gameplay loop is the exploration. The level design and atmosphere is amazing. DS teases you with items in spots which you cannot reach immediately but when you keep it in mind you may find a hidden passage to it. If you can reach it directly, you are almost guaranteed to run in an ambush. Even the most simple of enemies can hurt you pretty bad when they get a strategic advantage - so again, you are always alerted when moving through new areas. However, you learn to pay close attention - DS does not use cheap tricks like spawning enemies behind you. They are always there when you enter the region and after some time, you get pretty good in reading situations. It is very satisfying to think "if I were an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, I would hide here" only to find someone actually lurking there.
Furthermore, DS is known for its shortcuts - after pushing towards a new area, you find a ladder, elevator or a simple door leading you back to known grounds. These moments always feel really satisfying especially when there were enemies in between which you now may never need to fight again.
There are much more details which add to the immersion: After starting in the game, you won't see any loading screens (till you die). There is no save and load, when you die, you will be reset to your last bonfire/savepoint. Every enemy will also be reset (but not the bosses). Also everything you do is permanent. When you make a decision in a dialogue, you have to live with it. If an NPC dies because of his storyline he is dead for good. This fits the grim and dark fantasy world you play in very good.
The sound is also something which deserves credit: The orchestral music is only played is not some background noise but instead used very carefully. Ambient sounds are more common and add to the atmosphere. The voiced dialogues are very enjoyable and well written.

But let's now talk about the aspect DS is famous for: Its difficulty which started a genre of "souls-likes".
To be honest: DS is a challenging, but not a hard game. I've played a lot of games and in some of them I've died a lot too. DS is not different in this regard. The thing with DS is: Its is opaque. The tutorial is very limited and the first area you probably visit throws in all ugly situations you may face in the whole game: Enemies shoot you in the back from a vantage point while you fight a group of others. Their behavior is pretty erratic - sometimes they walk towards you very slowly only to make a surprising jump attack. Ambushes everywhere. You get staggered from the amount of sh*t thrown at you while you still try to familarize with the controls of the one weapon you have. DS does not explain any key mechanic like iframes, use of humanity, weapon scaling, skilling, hides bonfires behind secret walls, places important merchants in easy to miss spots.
So in short you will hit a brick wall in your first hours. This caused me the first two times I've played the game to quit - because if the designers do not care, why should I?

The key to all this is knowledge. Yes, of course you get more skilled with the controls. But when you know where to find certain items and how to use them, the location of NPCs, where to place yourself in a fight, the situations in the game gets predictable fast. You will find lots of different items supporting your playstyle while in the first areas you won't have any options there. In my opinion, DS is delibaretly designed in a manner to unite players against its own odds: You can get help from other players by messages they left on the ground and can even summon them in certain spots. Even the story is not told so that you figure it out by ourself and with others. But without any help it is easy to miss complete areas of the game and make it much more harder than it can be.

Unfortunately, there is one design decision I cannot get behind: Bonfires are never close to a boss arena. Additionally, you usually have some enemies in between. Since the bosses are designed in a way that you need to figure out a strategy to beat them, you will run the same way again and again. This does not add to the difficulty since most of the time you can avoid fighting and run past them and serves no other purpose than prolonging the game in a cheap way. To me, it sometimes felt like a walk of shame and led me to looking into a strategy guide more often in order to reduce the amount of runs.

In conclusion: When you manage to topple the brick wall you will face, you are in for a very rewarding and intense experience. But this includes figuring out stuff by yourself or use some online guides, wikis and from time to time walkthroughs. So I cannot recommend this to everybody but when you have the will to occupy with a game, you will have a deeper connection to DS than to most other ARPGs.

I feel the urge to write a review to this game since there are some negative ratings in Steam, however, they seem to focus solely on technical issues. So for starters: They are some serious issues about getting it to run properly - on my system it crashed with Access Violations, afterwards it was very dark and the gamma had no effect and I was not able to see the health bar of enemies. After some fiddling around, I managed to get it to run somehow.

But besides from the technical issues, I've come to the conclusion that it is not a fun game which I would recommend to a friend.

I played Gothic 2 vanilla as a child and had good memories of it. After playing and enjoying Gothic 1 recently I decided to refresh my experience with it. And boy, was it a ride.

The basic Gothic formula is: You start as a nobody which has no clue of anything and you will be treated accordingly. As the game progresses, you get mightier and a new sword, armor, spell rune really makes a difference. Furthermore, you can choose between different factions and based on this choice, you will experience the story differently (replay value!). The game is - especially considering its age - very atmospheric - people react to the things you do, chat on the streets with other NPCs, walk in the pub after working hours.

Having said that, let us come to the thing that ruins everything: Gothic 2 Gold/NotR is very hard, but for the wrong reasons.
The developers choose a pretty cheap way of making the game harder: Being scarce on the XP. It's not enough to "git gud", no, you have to do your research, you need to know:
* how to invest your learning points - it is no problem to skill your character completely wrong in the first hours to make the game unplayable. You need to know which skills have which effect on you.
* which choices to make and what to say - if you for example join a faction at the first opportunity, lots of quests (=xp) will be gone forever.
* where to find stuff which is often hidden. Sometimes specific merchants have important items at a specific chapter without you knowing.
* also what to do with the items - you drank your permanent dexterity potion right away after finding it in the beginning? Better restart the game, stupid.

And it is not like the game explains any of these mechanics. You want to be a fighter? Than you better know, if you should invest in strength or your 1-/2-hand weapon skill. Oh, you want to play as an magician and invest your hard earned XP in mana? ♥♥♥♥ that, you gotta skill as a fighter first because you won't put the mana to any use in the beginning.

Due to the few XP, you are being weak in the beginning of the game. In Gothic 1 you had a pretty decent time after joining a faction, getting your armor and gear and were able to move much more freely around the world. In NotR, you carefully walk around, try to pull enemies one-by-one from groups, farm XP from easier mobs and quests until you finally are able to get better stats. In the beginning, 1 Learning Point (LP) = 1 Stat, like Strength, Dexterity. But after some levels you realize that building up your stats get costier the farther you progress - you need to invest 2, 3, 4 up to 5 LP for one stat. So the feeling from Gothic 1 where everything ♥♥♥♥♥ you up in the beginning but than you became god-like does not kick in in Gothic 2 NotR. You will be reminded of your weakness constantly. You are getting LPs much easier later, but investing them has nearly no effect at all.
And if you want to get a glimpse of people who achieved this god-like state in NotR, google for character builds for this game. Common strategies include:
* beating up all citizens of the main city in order to get XP
* rob everybody for XP and apples (What, you don't know that eating 25 apples gives you +1 to strength? Get your research straight, idiot!)

Is this what you want to do with your free time? Is this playing a game or exploiting every possible game mechanic to beat it?

To top all that: There are tougher monsters and NPCs which are nearly unbeatable but became ridicoulusly easy when you apply a certain spell on them. After finishing off the enemy you get not the satisfaction of winning a fair fight but instead that cheating and glitching your way through the game to show him who is boss. Example? In the later chapters, you need to kill 4 mighty creatures. From my point of view, they are nearly impossible to kill with a 1-hand melee fighter. So if you summon some minions you are able to distract the boss and give it a few hits - this is doable. Or you simply cast the "Fear" scroll, watch the boss which is 3-4 times your size turn into a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ glitchfest, shrinks together and flee from you until it eventually get stuck in some doorway and you hit it till you get the job done. Am I "gitting gud" now?

Gothic 2 makes you your ♥♥♥♥♥ and make you *work, work, work, work, work*. In hindsight, there were many enjoyable moments but all in all I was overwhelmed how few fun I had in between those. The reason I'm gaming is to have a fun time and part of this is some sort of challenge. But Gothic 2 Gold/NotR is not a challenge, it is a piece of work. I feel actually relieved that I beat the game because now I can uninstall it in peace and never touch it again.

But this is not an indication of a good game I would say.

I really enjoy horror games and the idea of a depressing and hopeless scenario where you are lost in a city where a plague is breaking out seemed interesting. Following many recommendations I finally bought the game and played it.

But...I simply don't get it. Unfortunately, the game fails at one of the basic aspects: Create an immersion so that you care about what happens. The game introduces itself with a weird cutscene, even weirder character selection screen and continues with pointless dialogues which are trying to sound very intelligent but fail miserably. The answers you give also seem to have no effect either. After the first talks you are free to stroll around in foggytown only to experience that there is a very limited set of villagers which look like they were animated from the team of POSTAL 2. After some blocks I saw a lady burning on a pile of failure, some crappy animated villagers around. After that they all randomly walk away. Nothing else happens. It seems that the developers given up.

Maybe I missed the point of this game, but the only horror was to read the dialogues :(

From my point of view, Undertale is one of the greatest games I've played so far. It has a cleverly written, touching story, simple but motivating game mechanics, an amazing soundtrack and a lot to laugh about.

However, the start was a little bit rough though. I was not sure what to expect and needed some time to adapt to the little confusing mix of quirky characters, bad puns, internet humor in contrast to the deep storyline including many decisions which unfolds more in the later part of the game. After the first playthrough - which took about 6 hours and a lot of random decisions - I started fresh and was amazed by the storytelling and moved by its ending. What I enjoyed most is how the game breaks the fourth wall. This is nothing unusual, but most movies and games do it for the sake of unexpected jokes while here the player gets an important part in the game itself. And furthermore how it feels like a total different game, if you chose to resolve the encounters in the opposite way.

I strongly recommend trying out this game and not to be discouraged by the first "What should I do?" and "What kind of weird game is this?" thoughts. Among all advices about this game not to read anything before playing it there is something which would've helped me: You get the most rewarding and interesting outcomes if you stay on your path consequently. Which is basically murdering everyone or resolve everything in a peaceful manner.