SirOptimusPrime

I don't think I'll ever be able to describe what it's like to go down that elevator with the Emil "fragment" and see him almost mindlessly reconstructing Kaine's hut in that field and the song plays and holy fuck it actually puts me in tears. How he has his "valuables" that he moves around. Or the two "real" final bosses that really pound the theme of perseverance in extremely awful, terrible, hopeless times... well, that shit just works on me in a crazy way. Uplifting existentialism is the best way I've seen it described, even though ultimately the only uplifting part is that life doesn't care about you, your purpose, or your fears because your existence doesn't matter, but that's okay. How much your existence "matters" isn't the point, and both E and super secret ending hit that theme home. Even the famous four asterisks, philosophers in name and purpose (or lack thereof?), or side quests? They all link to that central theme in one way or another. It's thematically consistent and I fucking love it.

Plus a whole lot of my love comes from the first game's ties, and I'm okay with that. The stuff that exists adjacent to that game + Drakengard is still amazing, but the whole package gets pushed into my GOAT contenders.

Warframe is a grind, but in the end you can grind for everything in the game without spending $$$ on anything. Yes you have to farm to get that far, but it is truly FTP if you want it to be. That said, ~400 hours in I've still got things to grind for and definitely to learn, and I haven't even touched the new "open world" portion stuff. There's a ton to do, but a lot of it is abandoned by the devs post-release and mechanics seem to only get cursory touch ups, at best. Destiny 2 at least stays pretty consistent in its vision, something that Warframe can't get away with claiming. It's so bad that several (fuck, most) of the major bosses at the end of planets that have existed forever in Warframe are downright garbage fires.

As you get further into the midgame-endgame of WF, it starts to approach a really ability-driven "hero" game, so if you're not into tons of ability usage a good chunk of the frames will be pretty boring to you. That said, plenty of the warframes are designed around shooting real good like.

It's also way faster than Destiny 2, like by factors faster. It feels so smooth in comparison to how clunky D2 is (to me, of course) and I can barely play D2 now that I've gotten into how fucking fast Warframe is without even utilizing a frame designed to go stupid fast. This also makes the game less "tactical" at times, where it comes closer to an ARPG where you shred screens at faster and faster speeds in a group. Optimize the numbers and some mechanical skill is the name of the game for WF.

tl;dr - if you like ARPG's more than shooters, grind and all, hit up Warframe. GRIND AWAY. If you want to play other games and have a life while seeing progress, play Destiny 2.

e: Somehow I forgot that Warframe explains almost nothing to a new player and is a severe learning curve to overcome. So that's another potential positive or negative to consider.

Hey duders, I would love to rep GB as a space ninja while I grind my life away. Could I get an invite?

IGN: gsna.prime

Finished it and I think the first Original Sin pre-Enhanced Edition is a better if more busted game and my only complaints are the armor system, forced initiative leapfrog, and the godawful pauses between enemy actions.

Armor needs something like a sliding scale that affects saving throws vs. CC (100% armor = 100% save, but then a decrease modifies a base save) or at least anything but DPS Race: The Game. Initiative only matters in so far as you want to have more initiative than the enemies on one character because the game forces the turns to go You, Enemy, You, Enemy,..., etc. and there's no reason to alter initiative other than ordering your party's turns in that mess.

The pauses could be my machine, I have no clue. I cranked everything at the start and only experienced these crazy X-COM 2 hangs in the last few fights.

That said, the endings are all actually pretty neat and the companion arcs that I took (Fane, Lohse, and Ifan) were good. I especially loved Lohse's for the last "setpiece" moment that leads up the conclusion and Fane's relation to the final area. That awesome Ultima, Gothic, what have you reactivity of the world is still around and I still get a kick out of Healing a wounded NPC and getting unique dialogue about it.

Classic difficulty was a good Goldilocks and the majority of the fights were just plain old fun with a fair bit of rage for those pauses and an AP system that is strictly beneficial for the enemies thrown in for a good laugh. But I'd rather each and every fight be a meaningful combat that requires some tactics at the very least and cleverness if you want to take on a higher level squad than the trash mob + overwritten dumpster fire that was Pillars of Eternity.

@pezen said:

Came in here to say all of this, and in addition that the ending to this game was a welcoming "happy" ending. As happy as it could be at least and that it was certainly bittersweet.

It's gonna be really sad seeing people unable to get past ok-not-great combat to find what's incredible at the core of this game. Ah well.

Played 13 hours on PC because I couldn't sleep much. Playing on a 970, mid-tier i5 something, 16gb RAM @1920x1080 borderless windowed.

Performance-wise the only times it dropped <60fps is when I switch from major hubs (e.g. Lobby to Shuttle Bay) and even then it's maybe 1-2 seconds tops. It runs very smooth and plays well with mouse sensitivity nudged up a bit from the default. Crashed twice early on, but there's very aggressive autosaving that meant no real lost time. After those 2, haven't had a crash or real technical error.

I'd advise anyone that likes System Shock 2 or the original BioShock to give it a go, or anyone that wants to explore a big, open area with tons of squirreled away secrets and cool sidequests. Where there's not too many of them -- at least that I've found, though I haven't tried locating every employee via Security stations -- there's two quests in particular, one involving a tabletop roleplaying game and another with two of the players, that I found really satisfying on a mechanical, character, and pacing level. It's like SS2 if that game didn't control like a hunk of dogshit and with Shuma-Gorath hiding as a coffee mug every third room.

I can't forget to mention how open-ended some of the solutions to simply opening a door there are in this game. All I'll say is that you will learn to look out for half-open blinds and a nearby folder.

I have my gripes with this game, but it sure ain't the fashion. Currently enjoying the hell out of this weird miscolored (pants could use some work) swordsman-esque-but-not-really look. Quickstep for life.

I'm almost certainly over exaggerating by saying that I've never wanted a sequel more, but I've gotta say that I really hope the positive coverage here gives a hope for another adventure (hopefully a point-and-click adventure, if I'm being honest) in this little world. By the end I was absolutely eating all of it up and I didn't even care that it controls like an Ultima game if they only used four of the keys on the keyboard but what stuck was Zstats and other such nonsense.

I could watch Ryan Rand chew up scenery all fucking day.

@bongchilla: I think OP is talking about Mu, the "lost civilization/content"

This is making me itch to finally play one of the however many copies of this I have. Too bad I'm only just knee-deep in Wasteland 2 because I still need to take Wiz8 off of my CRPG checklist. I took 7 off a year or two ago and it's only expected that I experience the hellish abyss of Arnika Road for myself.

Very fun writeup, too, if I forgot to mention.