@noboners: I've updated the review with my thoughts on the different passengers. Overall I don't think my feelings on the game changed too much since writing the above; the game might be a little overlong, especially with the new content added on top, but it didn't really suffer too much from diminishing returns either. They made sure there was always plenty to do, old and new, throughout that runtime.
This is going to be quite the wild week, looks like. Strap it on in.
Best of wishes for Jeff Gerstmann and whatever he does next. I'll do my part to ensure old games still get their due around here (if only in the written format).
@imunbeatable80: I got pretty lucky with next episode's random selections, so this adherence to the results sometimes pays off. My good fortune won't last I'm sure.
@rorie: Nah, you're good. It's a big time investment since there's a lot of content and it takes a while to get good enough to make steady progress (the early stages are the hardest). Worth it though, as the Souls combat is really fun and the weapons/stances offer a great deal of variety.
Definitely curious how that Final Fantasy game they're working on next is going to turn out. Like, whether they'll make it friendlier because of the external license or double down on the challenge because of all that edgelord promoting they've been doing.
Re: Specializing in traps, there are definitely some RPGs where you'd want to do that. I can't say if Technomancer is one, but it's advantageous in UnderRail and games of a similar nature where there's one of you and several of them and you need a way to control the crowd and/or environment. (Radiant Historia's resident trap expert was also OP as heck, but that had more to do with the combat system that game uses.)
I've yet to play a Spiders game - oddly enough, I'm in no hurry given everything else on the backlog - but the one Cyanide RPG I've played so far (Aarklash) wasn't so bad, so maybe those will be a little less disappointing.
Oh, but speaking of poorly-rated BioWare knock-offs, sounds like you might want to check out The Waylanders eventually. For science, at least, if not for a good time.
Mento's comments