Recent reviews by Ignatius J. Reilly

I wasted a couple dollars and 13 hours on this game.

Basic as they come. Get items, get better items, clear dungeon, yawn. Blah blah blah. It all works, but in the way you'd expect your toaster to work, and I doubt you get excited every morning to find it turning your bread slightly darker.

Pretty much a sucker for any game that involves DnD rules in even the most superficial way. I played this game through only for that reason. Otherwise, it's very dull. And the writing. Oh, it's so bad! Every line lands with a resounding thud.

And the combat is... servicable? I don't even know. It's not exciting, but not bad either. Character building is the same. Everything's very much a cheaper version of something you've seen before, and probably enjoyed a lot more.

If you absolutely must have some rendition of DnD in your life and you've played through ToEE/NWN/BG so many times you've memorized every monster's stats, then get this game, I guess. Otherwise, don't even bother. It offers nothing new other than cute art and bad jokes.

All the hardcore RPGers tell me this game is awful and a signifer for the downfall of society, but I can't help but enjoy it! Maybe it's because it was my first true open world RPG. Or maybe it's that tiny cave you see right when you leave the first dungeon which draws you toward it with promises of adventure and you do eventually clear in addition to thirty other caves within a 400 yard radius only stopping when you realize it's like five AM and you have work in the morning, but who cares about groceries and rent!? I'm living in Cyrodil now! And my only concern is to find out what's on the other side of that hill, and yes, that's right -- it's yet another dungeon!

With bad level-scaled loot.... Er... And why is that bandit wearing Daedric armor?

But forget all that! The fields are allliiive with adventure!

This is my most played game ever, outside of time-suck garbage like WoW and Diablo, so I figured I'd give it the review it deserves. (So you know this is going to be super objective and not gushing at all.)

The biggest problem I have with this game is that it made Pillars of Eternity inevitably a letdown. When Obsidian set out to make that game, I could only help but think back to my time with this game, whcih was a non-stop do whatever the hell you want however you want thrill ride adventure. With lots of severed limbs. Because I chose to focus on the Gun Runner's Katana. I mean, that's how great this game is. In a game that offers you a 50 Cal sniper rifle, you can still make it work with a really sharp and really fast sword. Balance!

Anyway, so the combat works... Well enough. I mean, it's VATS, which is ♥♥♥♥, but JE Sawyer did some tinkering and made VATs not so much God Mode. (Enemies close distance faster even in VATs or something... I don't know.)

SO that's nice. But that's not the point or reason to play this lovely game!

What really works is that you can basically play this game in anyway you'd like. Or at least close enough. Or at least the developers at Obsidian did everything in their power to let you decide your own fate. And what an undertaking that was because you've got about three different times where you can make HUGE path changing decisions, plus several factions all reacting to this, plus different endings, and other considerations, so that comes down to like forty-seven million different routes you can take, which isn't as infinite as real life, but still pretty good!

Plus dozens of well-thought out quests that can be handled in all sorts of ways that have meaningful and immediate impact on your game world. Y'know, like every other RPG worth it's salt. I mean, why would you play an RPG that didn't have that? For the guns? So you could build a village or some ♥♥♥♥?

Listen. If you're a new FO fan and you haven't given this game a look either because you heard it's too buggy to get out of the first town, (no longer true) or only glanced at the Metacritic and saw it was 80 because Bethesda paid off reviewers to keep the score down and not have to pay the agreed upon bonus, (forever true) or because you think it's just some weird side-story ♥♥♥♥ or a half-assed expansion, then I can confidentally tell you to forget all that, because it's nonsense.

You've been lead astray!

THIS is the FO game you have been waiting for. Play THIS one. I bet you're reeling after the latest FO4. Maybe feeling a bit down, perhaps clinically depressed and wondering how long it will be until Bethesda takes another half-hearted crack at it. Well, the good news is you don't have to wait! You have the best modern FO game right here! And it's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ awesome!

A bit unforunate. A very fun tactical RPG with turn-based combat, which is exactly what I need more of. And the combat in this game is done fairly well, is balanced, and requires real tough decisions to be made. All of that is working quite well.

However, I blame my disappointment on the scenario design, as about halfway through you're forced to fight a ton of battles within an arena. All manner of exploration is removed and it just starts to feel like a grind. The combat IS good, don't get me wrong, but not good enough to withstand this slog. Games like FFT can afford to do away with exploration because the character building and combat dynamics are so friggin' deep, but here after six or seven straight samey arena battles, the combat simply can't mange to stay fun. And all you have to look forward to in terms of power is a point or two into a skill you already have.

After so many fights in a row, patterns start to emerge and it all sort of starts to feel samey. For example, my Wizard will start every fight casting Posses x2, then Fireball, then Itch, then use up the rest of his Spark spells. While there is a consideration of prioritizing enemies, other than that, you generally employ the same strategy in most every fight, and I think the Arena reveals this flaw.

Had these fights been more broken up and spread out over several areas replete with exploration and people to talk to and things to find, I might not have minded so much. I think 10 or 20 real big fights would have taken me right to the end, and I would have been happy. This Arena thing just isn't working for me. I feel as trapped as my characters.

So I can't really give a positive review because the Arena takes up such a huge part of the game, or at least feels like it, because it's so underwhelming compared to the sections that came before.

I am terrible at this game, but I'm sure someone who could get the hang of it would have a blast.

Definitely a quality over quantity product. Make no mistake, this is a five dollar game with about five dollars worth of gameplay here. While some games at that price have managed to entertain me for hundreds of hours, this one is quite easily beaten, and once that is done, there isn't much else to do other than max out all of your perks, if that's your thing. You can also run Trial mode and simply try to see how far you can get through a randomly generated stream of foes without dying.

But otherwise, it's a very fun experiment in healer-centric game play, and plays more like a puzzle/strategy, than an actual RPG. There ARE stat increases, but it's a small part of your overall success. Most of the game play lies in knowing when to use which skils, such as using the skill that sacrifices one of your tank's limb HP for Mana then turning that into XP bonus or a much needed limb recovery spell. It's fun, and very engaging. There's a lot of quick decisions to be made. I particularly enjoy the meta game play of sacrificing Mana to get your XP modifier as high as possible while still effectively supporting your tank.

My only issues (other than length, which is a small nitpick) is that, at least for me, two of your eight total skills were somewhat underpowered or simply uncessecary, which sort of takes away some of the strategy. Though that may come down to the way you play. Others might find more use for the barrier and double attack spells, I hardly ever found any need for them.

Balance issues aside, it's a wonderful little game with nice music, and I hope to see more games from this developer, because they seem to have some unique ideas amongst them.

It's an open world game with repetitive quests and an uninspired progression system. From the moment you start the game you're tied to a formula for advancement, and despite the big open vistas and unknown world to explore, the experience is very limited due to the nature of the questing system. There are only a handful of quest objectives, and the entire game revolves around that. Beyond that, the general flow is, clear area A, fight boss, clear area B, rinse and repeat, all the while doing the same handful of quests over and over again.

Item progression follows suit, with all upgrades being straight stat increases. The only meaningful change you experience in you character is being able to run and jump much higher at later levels, which is definitely cool, but not enough to make up for the other areas, where you find you're shooting the same guns, but doing bigger damage. (You might think of Borderlands here, but in that game, you could modify how your guns operate as you levelled and focus into different types of game play experiences.)

The gun combat is also very frustrating, with your shots based more on gun stats than your aim, so you have frustrating moments of firing point blank and missing. (You can increase Gun skills, but that only translates to increased damage when your gun hits.)

I also found the music to be grating, but that's all up to personal preference. It draws too much attention to itself due to it's bad synth, and sounds more like a collection of irritating beeps than anything approaching an actual melodic beat. It didn't really fit the world either. Not something I'd usually comment on, but here it actually detracts from the experience.

I know this is a small indie produced game, and you have to give credit for trying something so ambitious, but that doesn't excuse the fact the end product is disappointing. It's just not that fun.

No one will read this review, because the game's old, but I've been really into this old gem, and wanted to give it some love.

This is the best openworld RPG I've ever played, and I've played damn near all of them. (New Vegas might come close, but is crippled by Bethesda's idiotic VATs combat.)

The game's heart is driven by a well balanced progression that feels really damn good. The satisfaction of growing from an unknown, unliked hero who runs away from wolves to a master swordsman who slays mighty beasts has never been captured so well. Sure, every game does it, but here, you feel that change viscerally, and it's damn satisfying. Starting the game not as the Savior of Mankind but a hopeless wimp might rub some people the wrong way but I can't get enough of that sort of thing.

I also very much enjoyed the main city. Very convincing as a living place. Damn near every person you meet has something going on. You could easily spend five hours getting things done in the first city alone.

The map is huge, and rewards exploration, and while games like Oblivion might also offer that, here your exploration is lended a sizable amount of tension, as you never know what might be lurking around the corner ready to tear your head off, or what treasures you might find.

Another thing I found well considered is that each piece of gear carries a significant amount of weight. Though you may only wear a few sets of armor throughout the game, getting that first upgraded fills you with a sort of glee as you start to imagine all those difficult places you may now be able to explore. It also adds a certain element of realism to the entire experience, which aids in the immersion, which is nice in a game like this.

Choice and consequence isn't a huge part of the game, but in choosing who you ally with, there is plenty enough of that, if that's something you worry about. And many quests do give you at least one or two minor options in how you complete it.

The plot and writing aren't anything special, but the intaraction between all the guilds and your hero is well done, and it's perfect for a game like this, where your only wish is to be left alone as you run all over the map. The voice acting is stellar. Bad, but in a way that knows it's bad. So it's good!

The game obviously isn't terribly pretty, and it can be hard getting it to run on new operating systems (check the guides), but if this is your jam, then you better make some toast, because Gothic 2 is a big delicious helping of open world goodness!

6/10 IGN GOTY!!!

No, but seriously, guys. It's pretty good.

On paper there's a lot to like here, but after giving it an earnest try, it's a pretty underwhelming experience. Robust survival and crafting systems paired with an open world RPG, which together don't add up to as much as you'd suspect. You're better off getting a very good open world RPG (of which there are many) or a good survival sim.

My biggest issue is that the game does a bad job of integrating the two. Currently in Chapter 2 I have 23k gold and want for nothing. Piles of loot are thrown at you that end up as nothing more than vendor fodder to further pad your pockets.

The only way food plays into the game is maintaining the well-fed buff so I can recover quickly between the tough fights. Farming is merely busy work. With your piles of gold, you could just as easily buy enough food to last you the entire game. So you don't really need to bother with these various farming systems, just get a big sword and kill things.

Quests are fairly generic, and poorly written, with tasks like get me ten of these, go kill this thing, talk to this guy. I found none of them terribly compelling. Fetch quests, and lots of them.

A lot of dungeons are either a one room gimmick or a few corridors, and never anything more than that. And after a point, all of these dungeons are filled with items far weaker than what you have. Open world design is always liable to suffer from this issue, but it certainly doesn't help here. I would recommend the designers more carefully consider where they place items, or at least not place them so liberally. I was excited when I found a well-made Scimitar, then I found three more, and then only became irritated because I had run out of bag space due to all the other "fat loot" I had amassed.

Doesn't help that the writing is bad enough to pull you out of the experience. I can usually deal with a bad story if the game play is there, which it really isn't. But here you could skip all of the dialogue and probably improve your experience with the game, that's how poor it is.

I was into the crafting, but even that is pretty limited, and with all the gold you'll amass it quickly becomes non-essential or nothing more than a distraction. You can make your own weapons/armor, but at best it'll be marginally better than what you could find, so the satisfaction is limited.

I will say that the combat is very satisfying. I like that enemies pose a significant challenge and require you use your skills wisely. Others might disagree. At times it does become a bit of a chore when you just want to get from point A to point B. Chain chugging Speed Potions to avoid fights is not uncommon.

A great concept but poorly executed. If the designers had found a way to balance the exploration, RPG elements, and the survival-crafting, (not making gold so easy to come by, perhaps) it really could have been something else. As it is, there are two games here, and they are at odds with each other.