@michaele82: Playthrough B is definitely the low point of that game. I put it down halfway through and came back months later to finish it just in time for the GOTY casts.
Plus I think, knowing about the endings and all the hype, that the end isn't nearly as good. I could see it being great if you played it blind, but it's a bit overhyped imho.
There's even a /r/patientgamer subreddit where we discuss games we've played that are well out of the zeitgeist.
If you have a big steam backlog, you really don't need to be buying games on release, or heaven forbid, day-1 before reviews. That said, I'm still getting Divinity: Original Sin 2 because I love that studio, but I try and limit my day1 indulgences to only a handful per year.
This was actually one of my favorite games of the year. I loved the secrets, the lore, the art style, the minimalist storytelling, the speed of the combat. I'm sad to hear it had fps problems on console, I didn't have that issue on pc (played it at locked 30).
Did Star Ruler 2 slip past you? It was my #1 with a bullet. Unfortunately it wasn't marketed very well and had a lot of similar-looking competition. But it did novel (and good!) things with diplomacy.
I'm personally really curious as to WHY the performance is so bad. What I'm seeing on screen doesn't make me think it should be especially taxing on a decent PC. The destructibility? The fact that the environments are stitched-together independent physics objects? I really don't know.
As for the gameplay, I think it's terrific and a big step up from the last offering. Especially the strategic layer. The difficulty is more reminiscent of the original source of inspiration, XCOM:UFO Defense by Microprose. If you only want to play it once, I don't see the problem in putting it down to easy.
One thing your article neglected to mention is the excellent change in mod support, compared to 2014's game. You can easily make targeted balance changes, without requiring a computer science degree, through the .INI files. The mod community have already got a plethora of mods out on the Steam workshop and Nexus.
Yes, unionization is the key recourse here. This is a BIG problem for the industry, scaring away many potential game programmers like myself.
The indie scene is an interesting pressure release valve that has developed by freer access to dev tools and, I believe, the desire to avoid being ground to dust by a big dev studio.
Good choice for an article, Ian, we need to keep pointing light at this issue until conditions dramatically improve for the creatives who are working so hard for our entertainment.
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