What game are you playing?

[gerey]

If somebody still hasn't played it I would suggest holding off until Owlcat are done with the last DLC and maybe even a few months after that.

That's going to be another year at the very least. You could complete the game once by then, depending on how much leisure time you have.

There's really no guarantee either of the two DLC will tackle the last act and flesh it out.

[rusty_shackleford]

I don't think it's good enough to be worth playing a second time, so you should probably hold off until all the DLC releases. Go play something finished.

[WaterMage]

Played Salt & Sacrifice for some hours. Is ****.

Is Inferior to Salt & Sanctuary in EVERY aspect. The gameplay loop is find a mage, hit him twice, he reports, repeat for 20 minutes and a enemy suddenly hits you with a short sword, taking 1% of your life but sending you to the other side of the map.

Honestly I only got frustration in this game

[Fitz]

Yeah, Rusty is on to something with the last comment. Not to mention that the already tedious encounter design from Owlcat becomes even more tedious the second time around.

But my suggestion for waiting more is because Owlcat are actively trying to balance out the game's difficulty. Right now if you want any challenge you are going to have to play on Unfair and that doesn't really make a lot of sense. Not only that but I'm sure they will add more stuff for Icono/Dogmatic/Heretical specific runs. In short the game overall will be more complete and more polished. Of course there is replayability in the game, but are you really a gamer if you don't have a massive backlog. It might just better to tackle those games that have been waiting for ages and jump on to Rogue Trader once Owlcat are done developing it. Not only that but I'm sure the price will drop lower as time goes by.

[gerey]

Playing Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist, sequel to Ender Lilies for about 3-4 hours. It's largely similar to the prequel, though it does add a few new mechanics to the mix. Chief among the new additions is the ability to assign different weapons to your homoluciai, three for each, though the usability of some of the weapons is questionable, but that's perhaps down to my playstyle.

It's still a very solid metroidvania with nice visuals and very good music, though it strikes a bit too close to its predecessor in all aspects, but especially the story. We're once again controlling an albino girl with amnesia through a kingdom in disarray, though this time at least we're navigating it during the collapse, not years after the fact, so there's still humans and non-corrupted homoluciai around.

I'm curios to see how the game ties into the prequel, if at all.

That being said, both Ender Lilies and Ender Mangolia are solid games.

[TheEmptyRoad]

Well, I WAS going to play Total Warhammer III. But since apparently I need an internet connection to play the SINGLE PLAYER CAMPAIGN. I’ll just play something else.

**** Denuvo.

[LemonDemonGirl]

Playing Code Vein again for the second time

[KnightoftheWind]

Completed Alice: Madness Returns, after hearing about it for years. I had previously attempted to play the first game a year or so back, but ran into issues so I decided to skip it. Despite the loud fan hype surrounding this game, it's just your average 3D platformer with some hack and slash combat included. The game suffers from "Unreal Engine 3 syndrome", in that you can tell it was made using that engine. Everything has a bloomy, brown-grey look to it that does the otherwise imaginative environments a disservice. It really looks and feels like a console game from the period, unlike the original which had a great aesthetic from what I've experienced. This flaw extends to the enemy roster, most of whom are bland blob creatures that are repetitive as hell to fight, with 'some' new enemy types being introduced then promptly thrown away upon completing a world. I felt the game began to overstay it's welcome, and by the end of Chapter 3 I just wanted it all to be over.

There's nothing in this game I haven't seen a dozen times before in other 3D platformers, and the gimmicky minigames they force you to go through do little to ease the monotony of it all. No more than a 5/10 for me, but I'm glad I finally played it for myself.

[Tinky Winky]

Decided to give Jagged Alliance 2: Wildfire after ignoring it for over a decade, which turned out to be.... horrible. The mod is basically the same as the vanilla game with lamer maps, poorly implemented story that doesn't even matter, and absolutely ****** tweaks. You can tell the mod is very obviously "designed" by clinically autistic nerds who are obsessed with muh reality while having absolutely no clue on how to design a game. Very rare enemy drops, big but boring map with tons of locked doors, and how every sectors have tons of camping enemies that play hide and seek on you, which can only be dealt with save scumming as you have to determine how to approach the said enemies without being interrupted. (This is also my problem with the vanilla game, although this mod has made it 10x worse)

And finally, the ******* ending section:

► Show Spoiler

The autistic ****** that designed this **** decided to put 3 ******* unbreakable locks right before the big bad, you need Trevor, or maybe anyone with high enough lockpicking skill to open the doors. Maybe there are keys available but I can't find any of them during my playthrough.

[DemoGraph]

Despite the loud fan hype surrounding this game, it's just your average 3D platformer with some hack and slash combat included.

B-b-but muh raep!

There's nothing in this game I haven't seen a dozen times before in other 3D platformers, and the gimmicky minigames they force you to go through do little to ease the monotony of it all. No more than a 5/10 for me, but I'm glad I finally played it for myself.

The same could be said about soulslikes.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Honkai Star Rail

I am now moving on to the third world of Penacony, aka space Las Vegas. Apparently it is this large hotel in space that you go to, sit down in a bath and fall asleep and get sucked into a shared dreamworld like in Inception, which is where the Penacony civilization is located. Overall liking the look. The main city area is larger and has a little bit more going on in it than prior main city districts. I wonder if there are more city districts and if they are just as large. I must be 4 or 5 hours in and have only just reached an area with mobs to fight.

► Show Spoiler

Is this place run by the mafia?




Does she have a big plushie of Pom-Pom's race over there by the window? I thought nobody knew what Pom-Pom was.






We arrive at Penacony. Apparently it is a hotel in space.






Supposedly, this porter is a boy.




















I like the art deco interior.














Getting into the bath and to enter the dreamworld.






Meanwhile, elsewhere.




Dr. Ratio's Japanese voice actor, Shunsuke Takeuchi, is very very good in this scene. He is able to convey someone who is very frustrated by his coworker doing reckless things that makes the success of the job dubious. He is curt and agitated without coming across as being mean.




Now in the dream, falling into the city.










This is a neat ATM, I think.




Little kids dressed like rich guys buying clothes trying to impress a woman? What is going on?




Interesting.






You can walk up to certain NPCs and change them from and to calm/happy/angry/sad. I changed this guy from calm to happy, but his face remains the same.




You get to experience the memories of a prior Nameless/Astral Express crewmember as he is getting chewed out by Pom Pon. You get a dialogue option to pick as to which current AE crewmember voices the old AE crewmember in the flashback. I picked Pom-Pom, so I had furious Pom-Pom chewing out wimpy Pom-Pom's meek voice.








Looks like the enormous palatial interior of one of those casinos in Vegas I have been to.




















Playing some casino games.




I like how this hungover guy is barfing rainbows.




There is a kid with a mustache and another kid who is dressed like grandma, and they are at a bar drinking (soft drinks?). What is going on?!






Can anyone on Penacony even afford interstellar passage? Does this guy have access to some sort of teleportation spell or a private spaceship?




This guy is "financial advisor" and runs a bank? What on earth is going on?!?!?




Oh, it's a race of little people. I guess those little guys earlier were buying gifts for that lady trying to woo her.




You can touch a TV and turn into the character displayed on it.






This feels a little like that old Toy Story game where you played as Buzz platforming through huge levels, though here you can't actually jump and instead have to walk up to a blue teleporter and press A for it to teleport you up onto a bookshelf.






Sampo takes us to a shop that offers to put people into recorded dreams, so now we are in Sampo's dream where everyone in Penacony is a trashcan.










To get around to different levels of the city, you get into a pod and then solve a minigame where you bounce the trajectory of the pod around to reach the other side.






Minigame from an orthogonal perspective where you can slide mirrors/portals around so that the characters can cross impossible bridges.








At last, it is time to fight. The Penacony mobs are unusual.

[DagothGeas5]

I don't usually post here, but I wished to share just how beautiful this game is to me. I am talking of No Man's Sky.
Today I was exploring space and found a freighter in distress. After dispatching the pirates, the captain invited my character on board and, for reasons I am still unsure of, he gave him command of the freighter. I can now store my and more ships I might both make or buy in the future, I have access to a crew, storage, the freighter itself, and the ability to even send people off on expeditions. I am currently in the process of finding the materials to restore the freighter before departing, and the journey itself is, as always, such a beautiful thing. I highly recommend it, even just as a game to spend time to when sick or to play with friends. I have yet to try the multiplayer, but my single player experience has been nothing but a thing full of wonder, and any troubles have been truly part of the journey, like finding the correct materials and traveling across systems to find them, or, when things are truly dire, finding precarious refuge inside the ship's cockpit while stranded on an inhospitable planet, or digging a hole into the ground to hide until night comes and the temperature lowers, just to name a few.

[Tinky Winky]

Finished Eternal Senia, another game that's in my backlog for a decade... which also turns out to be absolutely horrible, even shitter than JA2 Wildfire
This **** currently has whooping 97% positive reviews on Steam and yet I can't find any redeeming quality from it outside the animu drawing and the emotionfag story (which is the exact reason why weebs love it, I suppose). The game is extremely janky in every aspect possible without any of the soul you'd usually find in low budget janky games. The level design is non-existent full of linear hallway filled with trash mobs, mmo tier dungeons, mmo tier loots, and static minibosses that do absolute nothing other than wasting your time. The core mechanic is laughably also bad, it's basically a ****** Ys clone with no backstab and unresponsive rpgmaker control, which means you can not avoid getting damaged unless you use the skills, but that doesn't really help since you have a very limited MP pool with the only consumable being enemy drops. Storywise, it's your typical melodramatic animu tragic that's written for 15 years old girls, not so bad maybe, but wait - there are tons of ******* 4th wall breaking NPCs with unfunny jokes, which completely invalidates any seriousness in the story and make the whole plot looks like a parody.

I know it's a freeware but being a freeware does not excuse for it's low quality, there are thousands of free flash games that have higher quality than Eternal Senia, even free meme games made by soycucks like the Chudjak RPG, Chud's Retribution and MegaChud have more efforts put into them. Overall another **** that's overrated by weebs because they have pretty much no standard outside muh animu girl. At least it only last about 3 hours long, so it really doesn't feel like a torture, unlike Stalker 2 or Gothic 3.

[KnightoftheWind]

Despite the loud fan hype surrounding this game, it's just your average 3D platformer with some hack and slash combat included.

B-b-but muh raep!

There's nothing in this game I haven't seen a dozen times before in other 3D platformers, and the gimmicky minigames they force you to go through do little to ease the monotony of it all. No more than a 5/10 for me, but I'm glad I finally played it for myself.

The same could be said about soulslikes.

Souls-likes have a similar problem, and I don't play enough of them to get sick of it all, but I'd assume Souls-like games still have a "hook" that keeps you playing. Maybe you're an experienced Dark Souls fanatic and can transfer 90% of your newfound skill over to something like Lords of the Fallen, and have a great time dunking on trash mobs and tryhard bosses. A game like Alice: Madness Returns just feels like a worse version of your average Mario game, mixed in with some DMC-lite combat that's good enough, but not really engaging. Certainly not with the boring *** enemies you'll be fighting the whole way through.

I like what they're going for, but the game is in the wrong genre, 100%. Alice should be a survival horror game, an FPS or even a point and click. Something more immersive and mind-bendingly weird. A platformer game has to have a certain logic to it, a rhythm. The platforms always have to be squares or rectangles, there always needs to be **** that moves up and down, and all that. It's too logical for something that's supposed to be illogical and dark. Or just make it a graphic novel, tell your story without subjecting players to 10 hours worth of hand-me-down game design in a ****** engine.

[KnightoftheWind]

Decided to play through some Wii JRPGs to scratch them off my backlog, the first of which being "The Last Story". A game by one of the former top men of Square, Hironobu Sakaguchi. I have to say I'm pleasantly surprised by how fun and engaging it is, it has a unique style of real-time action combat, where your character (Zael) attacks an enemy automatically depending on the direction of the left stick, and this leads to combat being quick and intuitive. You don't have to button mash to execute moves in this game, although you do seem to unlock ones you can do manually as you play. As far as I know this is the only modern game I've seen attempt this style of play, aside from retro titles like Ys I and II. But this is different than the bump combat of those games, so it's not exactly the same.

The characters are likable, at least compared to your average JRPG, and I appreciate the fact that you no longer have to press a button to prompt dialogue from most NPCs. They simply talk whenever you pass by, and you can choose to stick around to hear it or leave. The English voice acting is also pretty good too. Overall things seem to have a great pace, which is refreshing compared to a lot of the older JRPGs I've attempted, which are as slow and as stale as they come, despite their positive reception (i.e Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VI). It's a shame this game's been left on the Wii and it probably didn't sell very well given that the rest of Mistwalker's releases were on mobile, aside from Phantasian. This game could benefit from a quality remaster for PC.

[methoxetamine]

Finished WitchSpring R and The Legend of Nayuta: Boundless Trails, both were quite short (17-20 hours each). I loved WitchSpring R, it makes me want to try out an Atelier game finally. Nayuta is only worth playing if you really love Falcom and already played every Ys/Trails game. It was fun but I would've rather been playing something else

Started Triangle Strategy

[Kalarion]

...

As far as I know this is the only modern game I've seen attempt this style of play, aside from retro titles like Ys I and II. But this is different than the bump combat of those games, so it's not exactly the same.

...

Too Human did this as well, if I understand what you're saying correctly.

[J1M]

Got endings A + B on Nier Automata, working on C now

Does getting each ending require an entire playthrough?

It's very streamlined, you can play the game completely blind and still end up with the main endings (A through E). There are also endings F through Z which are all failure endings that you get for various reasons

Or save yourself the tedium and watch this youtube video if your goal is to appreciate the effort that went into the game:

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Honkai Star Rail

Still on Penacony.

The protagonist POV shift/chapter select system introduced here is very refreshing. Very sad that MMOs haven't done anything similar, since it would widen the story if you could play as a Mogu or a Garlean who is not aligned with, and is hated by, the traditional protagonist factions.

► Show Spoiler

More puzzles where you bounce a pod between plates to reach a destination. They start off as being shallow with only one solution, but later on in the miniature scale city one of the puzzles had two end points, which was interesting.






Firefly tells me her sob story about how she is crippled by and dying of a medical condition in the real world and has chosen to spend her last months/years of her life in this dream world where she can run around freely. I don't know why she singled me out to go running around the city at night and tell me this.






I forgot to record footage of it, but the interior dungeons in Penacony have been pretty engaging. You get limited charges to activate ramps that allow you to walk onto the walls, and there are treasure chests on the walls. So now whenever I enter a room, I am looking at the walls and the ceiling trying to figure out a path and looks for where treasure chests might be.




The new girl gets tossed up by a monster and impaled, then explodes into a puddle of water. Apparently she's dead. (She was heavily shilled as a playable character last year, so obviously she is not dead, which kills any tension this might have had.








It is frustrating how someone died, but the characters stand around with the same blank/neutral/wooden expressions on their faces as before. Characters seem to only be able to have facial expressions in the 10 second pre-rendered cutscenes.




These orthogonal perspective puzzles are neat.










This guy Aventurine has me forcibly teleported to him (borderline kidnapped), and now he's trying to tell me that the other adventurer I was running around with earlier, Acheron, is actually an "Emanator" (don't know what that is) and that I should change sides to be with him instead of her. I had to look up the codex what an Emanator was, and apparently it's just a super powerful person. Why should I be bothered by this? Superman is powerful, but no good soul fears him. And this guy is about to tell me that Acheron killed a villain - Duke Inferno - offscreen. That only makes her sound more reputable to me.








I was peeved that Aventurine says that I have a choice to either go back to Acheron, or to go with him, but then once the cutscene ends I have no way to chose what I do. The only path forward is to go with Aventurine. Truthfully, I would have probably chosen to go with him anyway in spite his inferior moral standing because he is a lively character and thus somewhat entertaining to watch onscreen, versus the boring as a doorknob Acheron.




This guy brings me to a hotel room, where I find a young lady asleep in the bathtub. Now he's saying that she's actually dead (she explodes into water bubbles shortly after), and that he had nothing to do with it. This guy is not good at first impressions.




It is annoying how this villain has a sword at his throat, and then these two characters have a five minute long conversation about philosophy and the meaning of life and so on. And then this scene is followed by Acheron and the robotic character Sam standing around and doing more faux intellectual talk and mastrubatory speeches. The story does feel like it is up its own *** here at times.






We get a formal character/chapter select system to play as other characters' POV chapters, which is very much appreciated. A lot of the best storylines in Granblue Fantasy had zero involvement from the game's main protagonist Gran. Serialized box purchase JRPGs like Trails are able to change up protagonists every few installments, but for whatever reason subscription RPGs shy away from having you play as another character like Illidan, Thancred, Ryland, etc, for more than 15 minutes.








The advantage of this being a live service game also available on the phone is that I can get in bed to rest my back and hold my phone up with the brightness set to dim, and make some progress going through the dungeons until I become tired and then turn it off to fall asleep.




Finally, some sorely needed tension and interesting drama with the Aventurine-Sunday confrontation and he gets sold out by Dr. Ratio. It also helps that I am playing as a voice acted character with his own hopes and dreams who is invested into the plot and has people who hate his guts, rather than a voiceless character who wanders around with no investment in what is going on, and nobody dislikes him.

[Tinky Winky]

Honkai Star Rail

The protagonist POV shift/chapter select system

Betrayal at Krondor did it 30 years ago and it did not rely on the predatory waifu gacha system.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Honkai Star Rail

The protagonist POV shift/chapter select system

Betrayal at Krondor did it 30 years ago and it did not rely on the predatory waifu gacha system.

Yeah, I know singleplayer box purchase games have done it. Suikoden 3 did it. I was thinking in terms of the three main types of serialized RPG business models (serialized RPG like Trails, subscription MMORPG, and F2P gacha), but so far only the first type has done protagonist switching where you play as a different character for at least several hours. The other two are either averse to do it, or don't have a formalized system around it.

[Rienen]

I've never been a huge wuxia person, but have been trying Hero's Adventure and Tale of Immortal. I bounced off Sands of Salazar when I tried it, so I'm hoping one of these might resonate with me.

[Finarfin]

Finally got Battlefield games running on my pc so I will be playing Battlefield 1,V and 2042. Will also install BF3 later on.

[J-12]

It's a wonderful game and i've been replaying it from time to time since it's release back in the most cursed year ever of 2018.
It really does capture the perfect gameplay formula - a simple yet compelling story, very fun characters and dialogues, great graphics and the soundtrack that hits me right into nostalgia.
My favorite parts would probably be the dialogues with shopkeeper. He's all-around great character and he does have a lot of stories/fairytales/philosophical life-advices/etc. to tell, which all are rather thought-provoking and do give you something to think about as you getting trough the levels.
Apparently the game did pretty good in terms of sales, they released a free DLC few months after release, it was really hearthwarming to return to, getting to chat with the characters i really liked one last time. It does feel different replaying the game these days when you can go right into DLC though.

For me this game is solid 10/10.

Fast-forward to 2023, the studio releases the loosely connected prequel - "Sea of Stars".

This game did a lot to explore and explain the lore behind many things in the first game, which i found to be pretty cool, but beyond that i don't like this one. It's not "bad-bad", they just lost the FORMULA. You will read in every review that it is extremely pretty looking game, and that is true, but that's about the only good thing i can say about it.
The game is FF6-style RPG and is very basic in terms of that, as in that most items you find won't allow to make some special builds allowing to play different from what things other player in their playtroughs would be able to do, it's all just stat boosts, new items mean you will do adequate tanking/damage dealing in your current area and i think this was a big missed opportunity.
As for the story, in a genre like this the connection to characters is key, but its just not there, the two protagonists simply have zero depth to them. There are some side-characters that do make you feel for them, but it's very slim pickings. At the mid-point in the story the writers really just decided to throw EVERYTHING into the blender and the game's setting turns into a mess, i won't spoil it for those who'd want to play it, but i at that point just gave up on trying to follow the plot.
After finishing the game once it turns into collectathon where you must find 60 items scattered across the game of which you might've found half or so, all that for unlocking "true ending". As for me - i just couldn't be bothered anymore, first ending already took me what felt like 50 hours which is way too long, so i watched it on youtube and was done with it. That was a very underwhelming and annoying way to increase playtime to say the least, not to mention that the "true" ending just ruins the only somewhat impactful event of this game.

And so, it's been 7 years since "The Messenger" and it's DLC released, with it's story ending on a cliffhanger and setup for sequel.
I did read somewhere on steam forums that apparently studio does plan to do something else with it in the near future, but im not exactly filled with hope after all these years that they can do anything with it, if they can remember the formula after the blunder that is their second game and repeat it one more time.

If you read all this - go play it. I cant imagine the kind of snob who'd regret it and i can't recommend it enough.

[Jordy]

I've played so much Sudoku that I find it depressing... but I keep playing it.

[DoubleOO7]

Been having fun with the finals, also plan on getting my ultra modded Skyrim game going once I get my sdd to store my mods.

[LemonDemonGirl]

It's a wonderful game and i've been replaying it from time to time since it's release back in the most cursed year ever of 2018.
It really does capture the perfect gameplay formula - a simple yet compelling story, very fun characters and dialogues, great graphics and the soundtrack that hits me right into nostalgia.
My favorite parts would probably be the dialogues with shopkeeper. He's all-around great character and he does have a lot of stories/fairytales/philosophical life-advices/etc. to tell, which all are rather thought-provoking and do give you something to think about as you getting trough the levels.
Apparently the game did pretty good in terms of sales, they released a free DLC few months after release, it was really hearthwarming to return to, getting to chat with the characters i really liked one last time. It does feel different replaying the game these days when you can go right into DLC though.

For me this game is solid 10/10.

Fast-forward to 2023, the studio releases the loosely connected prequel - "Sea of Stars".

This game did a lot to explore and explain the lore behind many things in the first game, which i found to be pretty cool, but beyond that i don't like this one. It's not "bad-bad", they just lost the FORMULA. You will read in every review that it is extremely pretty looking game, and that is true, but that's about the only good thing i can say about it.
The game is FF6-style RPG and is very basic in terms of that, as in that most items you find won't allow to make some special builds allowing to play different from what things other player in their playtroughs would be able to do, it's all just stat boosts, new items mean you will do adequate tanking/damage dealing in your current area and i think this was a big missed opportunity.
As for the story, in a genre like this the connection to characters is key, but its just not there, the two protagonists simply have zero depth to them. There are some side-characters that do make you feel for them, but it's very slim pickings. At the mid-point in the story the writers really just decided to throw EVERYTHING into the blender and the game's setting turns into a mess, i won't spoil it for those who'd want to play it, but i at that point just gave up on trying to follow the plot.
After finishing the game once it turns into collectathon where you must find 60 items scattered across the game of which you might've found half or so, all that for unlocking "true ending". As for me - i just couldn't be bothered anymore, first ending already took me what felt like 50 hours which is way too long, so i watched it on youtube and was done with it. That was a very underwhelming and annoying way to increase playtime to say the least, not to mention that the "true" ending just ruins the only somewhat impactful event of this game.

And so, it's been 7 years since "The Messenger" and it's DLC released, with it's story ending on a cliffhanger and setup for sequel.
I did read somewhere on steam forums that apparently studio does plan to do something else with it in the near future, but im not exactly filled with hope after all these years that they can do anything with it, if they can remember the formula after the blunder that is their second game and repeat it one more time.

If you read all this - go play it. I cant imagine the kind of snob who'd regret it and i can't recommend it enough.

Sea of Stars is a ****** game

[J-12]

Sea of Stars is a ****** game

There's nothing of that sort of stuff in that game.

[Kalarion]

► Show Spoiler

It's a wonderful game and i've been replaying it from time to time since it's release back in the most cursed year ever of 2018.
It really does capture the perfect gameplay formula - a simple yet compelling story, very fun characters and dialogues, great graphics and the soundtrack that hits me right into nostalgia.
My favorite parts would probably be the dialogues with shopkeeper. He's all-around great character and he does have a lot of stories/fairytales/philosophical life-advices/etc. to tell, which all are rather thought-provoking and do give you something to think about as you getting trough the levels.
Apparently the game did pretty good in terms of sales, they released a free DLC few months after release, it was really hearthwarming to return to, getting to chat with the characters i really liked one last time. It does feel different replaying the game these days when you can go right into DLC though.

For me this game is solid 10/10.

Fast-forward to 2023, the studio releases the loosely connected prequel - "Sea of Stars".

This game did a lot to explore and explain the lore behind many things in the first game, which i found to be pretty cool, but beyond that i don't like this one. It's not "bad-bad", they just lost the FORMULA. You will read in every review that it is extremely pretty looking game, and that is true, but that's about the only good thing i can say about it.
The game is FF6-style RPG and is very basic in terms of that, as in that most items you find won't allow to make some special builds allowing to play different from what things other player in their playtroughs would be able to do, it's all just stat boosts, new items mean you will do adequate tanking/damage dealing in your current area and i think this was a big missed opportunity.
As for the story, in a genre like this the connection to characters is key, but its just not there, the two protagonists simply have zero depth to them. There are some side-characters that do make you feel for them, but it's very slim pickings. At the mid-point in the story the writers really just decided to throw EVERYTHING into the blender and the game's setting turns into a mess, i won't spoil it for those who'd want to play it, but i at that point just gave up on trying to follow the plot.
After finishing the game once it turns into collectathon where you must find 60 items scattered across the game of which you might've found half or so, all that for unlocking "true ending". As for me - i just couldn't be bothered anymore, first ending already took me what felt like 50 hours which is way too long, so i watched it on youtube and was done with it. That was a very underwhelming and annoying way to increase playtime to say the least, not to mention that the "true" ending just ruins the only somewhat impactful event of this game.

And so, it's been 7 years since "The Messenger" and it's DLC released, with it's story ending on a cliffhanger and setup for sequel.
I did read somewhere on steam forums that apparently studio does plan to do something else with it in the near future, but im not exactly filled with hope after all these years that they can do anything with it, if they can remember the formula after the blunder that is their second game and repeat it one more time.

If you read all this - go play it. I cant imagine the kind of snob who'd regret it and i can't recommend it enough.

We have a thread for Sea of Stars, it's in the JRPG forum here. Thanks for the recommendation of The Messenger I wasn't aware the devs had done anything prior to Sea of Stars. I'll check it out.

There's nothing of that sort of stuff in that game.

The sow exaggerates, but not by much. There's an explicitly pro-****** backer message in the Hall of whatever-it's-called:

There's a ton of general wokeness in the game as well. But I have to admit I was taken in completely by mr. Sidekick (Garl). His ending scenes were really well done.

[Tangerine]

But I have to admit I was taken in completely by mr. Sidekick (Garl).

I saw your review and agreed with most of it, but I could not stand Garl and I think the leads' development suffered because of him.