Recent reviews by m4rkab

proselytized a legendary wildebeest and it came with its entire flock which i adventured across qud with for several hours as they were all steadily killed by psychic assassins or teleported away by spacetime vortexes. i waterbonded with the legendary wildebeest and it became my best friend. in a horrifying act it was killed by (you guessed it) another psychic assassin.

i decided i would no longer have any companions because they would just become collateral damage until i became best friends with a soupy sludge who i turned into an octakaidecasludge by pouring every liquid i could find on it and then vomiting on it. it kills everything it fights in one turn. hopefully it will not meet the same fate as my last best friend

Played much more than my Steam stats suggest, but on a disk copy about 10 years ago, and so I've done just about everything in this minus Knights of the Nine.

I will say that the game can be a bit of a mess to play. It's as clunky as anything, and I am the kind of person who enjoys Morrowind, but Oblivion's combat always drove me up the wall until I modded it so everyone was less of a damage sponge, which would be my recommendation for anyone who wants to play it. It is also incredibly buggy, so it's pretty much a requirement to get the unofficial patches. All that being said, it's still worth playing and I would recommend it, especially if you get those issues cleared up. The writing is great, with the Dark Brotherhood and Shivering Isles questlines being standouts, and there are a ton of random sidequests around that are almost more engaging than the main content. You will also meet NPCs who are actually interesting, which is a nice change from Skyrim and most of Morrowind. And it has a good modding scene, as could be expected of any TES game. Despite the playdoughy graphics, it does have a lot of charm and is absolutely worth a playthrough.

Morrowind is my favorite game and one I've been playing off and on since 2006. It's certainly the most creative of the TES entries and Vvardenfell feels like an incredibly alien world. The quests generally aren't like Oblivion's writing-wise, but they do tie well with the setting. The writing surrounding the main quest in particular is amazing and the game does a great job immersing you in its world, with its unique culture, environments, architecture, flora and fauna, and methods of travel. It's definitely a bit dated but as long as you're willing to cooperate with the dice roll combat for the first few levels you get the rare experience of playing a game that doesn't scale every single enemy to your level, so while you start out completely useless you end up so strong barely anything can touch you.

It is probably more particular than Oblivion/Skyrim regarding its audience -- beyond the diceroll combat, the journal is vague, there is no fast travel, and quest markers do not exist. NPCs will give you directions that are sometimes wrong. Keep UESP open if you need their interactive map, and it's not a bad idea to keep a physical list of the quests you're working on just for clarity. You might also want to grab MGE XE for graphics, something to adjust the leveling attribute modifiers (otherwise optimal leveling in this game is very frustrating), and some bugfixes since they'll do nothing but improve the experience.

One of my favorite games of all time. I love the western setting in general but the writing is excellent, the NPCs and especially the companions are great. I enjoy playing every one of the DLCs and the vast majority of the quests are a ton of fun. Also don't know of a game that's done factions better than this.

There is no getting around the slightly clunky gameplay (same as FO3) but I found it very easy to get used to and even to start enjoying. If you like great writing, worldbuilding, and the actual ability to roleplay, FNV is one of the best games out there. Put some bugfix mods on it for sure, some graphics mods if you're into that, and have fun.

I am incredibly glad I found this by recommendation of someone in a discord server because this is one of the best things I have ever played and an amazing experience. I love every character in this game and got so attached to all of them on the first run I still can't bear to go back and try any of the dark achievements.

The writing is excellent, the world is fascinating, BEL/S and Pyreworm are my favorites and I bought the DLC right after I finished the game. My only complaint is after playing a lot of Choice of Games type stuff this came off as quite short at 61k words, but honestly at 4$ it's very much worth it. I would recommend it to anyone! <3

the only step up fallout 4 took from 3/new vegas is the combat but honestly i'd have preferred it if it got better at literally. anything else.

your ability to RP is severely restricted, since you're given a pre-established backstory right off the bat which is a significant step down from new vegas. the player should be able to create their main character, or if not, have a well-developed one to use (which fallout should still not have), and (to no one's surprise) bethesda can't do that properly. there's a massive disconnect between you and your character, because your character cares about a spouse and kid you saw for 5 minutes and don't give one solitary ♥♥♥♥ about.

dialogue options are severely limited. the strict 4-panel thing does not work in a series like fallout. you can't tell what you're saying and there's no opportunity to rp like you could in 1/2/3/NV with your wide range of dialogue choices. it's truly mind-boggling that someone at bethesda thought this was a good idea -- they've publicly said now that it 'didn't work as intended'.

the """"renovated"""" perk/skill chart is also a horrific idea. all it did was force bethesda to put all the skills from the other games into the perk chart, which makes the perk chart boring because half the time you're taking perks that skill points would have taken care of and it's just number increases. number increases are not exciting. nobody cares, and you're not taking them to further your rp purposes like you might in fnv taking something like sneering imperialist. you're taking them so you can kill things with your chosen weapon and you're going to take the same things for every character for that reason.

tied into this, the elimination of skills eliminates skill checks, which are practically integral to fallout. your character could be really good at one thing, and really horrific at another, and it would show when you interacted with someone. now it's just charisma. you just have to have good charisma nothing else matters. it just contributes to making every one of your characters feel the exact same.

radiant quests just exist to pad game length and are an exercise in pointlessness, particularly since they make up such a large percentage of available quests. everything that isn't a main quest (and hell, some things that are main quests) are incredibly linear -- there's no branching paths to any of them, just go there, shoot/collect that, and come back. even with this desperate focus on charisma there's no option to talk enemies down like you could do with lanius, ulysses, and dr. klein in new vegas -- if they were in fo4 you'd just have to kill them.

next to the improved combat, the only good thing i can say about this game is that the companions were written a hell of a lot better than fo3's. i loved a lot of them. but that doesn't make up for the tire fire that is the rest of it.

if this was anything other than fallout, it would be fine. bog-standard, but fine. but i can't play new vegas or fallout 2 or even fallout 3 and then come back to this because it hurts to see what fallout has become and what bethesda is going to continue doing to it. this isn't a rpg, and this isn't a fallout game, it's bethesda turning fallout into a corpse and picking bits off to appeal to the lowest common denominator. i loved fo1/2/NV and even 3, but seeing where bethesda's going now i dread to think what they're going to do to this series next.

i would 100% have recommended this game before episode 5

they *seemed* like they were doing a pretty good job with making the choices matter, episodes 1 through 4. the dialogue was a little cringey at times, but not too bad, and the story and the characters made up for it. then episode 5 released.

i have played mass effect 3 without the extended cut and i'm pretty sure that was still better than the finale for episode 5. way to completely step on the entire 'choices matter' line they've been selling to us since the game came out, not to mention the sheer number of plot holes it leaves unanswered. i was completely astonished this was where they chose to go with it, because even disregarding the fact that none of your choices matter it just makes the entire game pointless.

tl;dr: episodes 1-4 are still in the 75%-100% score range for me so if this looks interesting to you only play them. as one other review i saw on here reads, the cliffhanger in episode 4 is better than the actual ending.