Replaying Primordia. Getting ready for the new WadjetEye release tomorrow.

Victory at sea opus 1 : the best naval game I never played, each time I use it, same funny naval excitation^^

Some say that the ships graphs are medium, but when you manage large fleets (20 ships), you need not to zoom on ships. And for me, there are correct and adapted level, I play for naval tactic, not to go on cinéma to view ships...

I did mods for this game : the thema is naval WW2 but I created at this time 2 mods :
- WW1 naval warfare mod
- Pre-Dreadnought naval warfare mod

They are here :
https://www.gog.com/forum/victory_at_sea#1744659757

And I plane another mod about cold war naval warfare : it's possible to do that because all usefull parameters of ships are moddable under CSV Excel files, and the scale of graphs ships allows some "illusion" about their time if you use "unzoom" a little (you have to do that whent you manage large battle, to have a better view of the operations)

In the entire ships collection, there are some ships that have a "old look" (I used them for my WW1 and Pre-dreadnought" mod, and some others have a "modern look", I will use them for a "Falklands was naval warfare and a Cold war naval warfare I plane, with different scale of vanilla game

Victory at sea is the dream fir a naval player...
It does not need a high config OS and the naval funny pleasure is here

Promo is here for a few days : for 3,29 euros, you may get the better naval game I have seen in my life of naval wargamer. It has no a ultima high "historical simulation precision", and the "campaign mode" has in my opinion no real interest.

https://www.gog.com/en/game/victory_at_sea

But when you use the "Custom battle" mode to build your own naval battle (after choising your ships in the entire collection), you discover that the game is a real gemm, a "must to have" for a naval gamer. A naval dream...

I tried the 2 following opus (Victory at sea Pacific and Victory at sea Atlantic, but I asked for refund : in my opinion, these 2 opus are not so good than Opus 1. They are also very different because not "pure naval games", you have to construct farms and industry, manage lot of things that have no any link with naval warfare and that have no any interest for a naval gamer. In addition, opus Pacific seems no longer supported and Atlantic opus need an enormous high OS configuration to run.

But concerning Victory at sea opus 1, you may buy it "closed eyes" : a great loved naval game.
If some players are interrested to have new ships, they may contact me on the gog forum of Victory at sea 1, I will do for them all ships they want to have in game.
If some users want to learn to mod the game, I may also help : it's very easy, but there are some things you must know to avoid parameters settings errors

https://www.gog.com/forum/victory_at_sea#1744659757

EDIT : also, note that in all videos, you may see players who use the game like a RTS game : ok, it's a normal thing because this game is a RTS^^

But more interessant is to know you may use it like a "turn per turn" naval game : the speed of game is entireley customizable (4 levers awailables), and in addition, you may pause/unpause (when you want) the game and keeping all other functions (cameras, orders, control of dameges, etc) exactly like if you were admiral and said ": Wait a minute, please, I have ton examine my tactical options in this battle..."

Then, you are in capacity to use the game like a "turn per turn" naval game where you choice yoursel the length of turns, and to play it without any crazy precipitation.
It's very funny to play large battles of 20 ships vs 20 ships, I never have had this funny sensation in any other naval game.

The great regreat I have with this game is that custom battle may not be saved during game. But it's a minor pb because the game has no any bug. Therefore it's a pity to have not this function, too bad to abandon a funny battle when real life need it^^.

Some ^users say that this game is a little bit "arcade game" : It's 1OO% false, it's just a naval game very easy to take in hand because all things have been made in correct way.

If you conduct custom battle, you see that it is very important to zoom in before to fire, to identify with precision the parts of ennemy ships you want to hit (engines, guns, etc)
If you play the game with crazy precipitation, you can not do that and you say : ok, it's a arcade game, because you have not seen the gigantic tactical potential of this game for a naval gamer

You may not simply click the mouse cursor on the ennemy ship to hit it, like in a arcade game : you have at the same time to identify exactly the part of th ship you want to hit, and to estimate yourself the course of the ship : if you do not take in mind the speed of the ennemy ship, the speed of your ship and the distance between the two ships, you will fail all your fires.
Really funny game, I have to say. For less o 5 euros, great naval pleasure !

Bioshock

I currently playing Dungeon Siege

Man, I forgot how much fun this game is. The seamless world, old-school party system, and that chill vibe it's hitting all the right nostalgic notes. I love how you can just zone out and let your party do the work, but still jump in when things get tough. The world feels huge even by today’s standards, and the soundtrack still slaps. It's crazy how well this game holds up after all these years. Honestly, more people should talk about this one. Anyone else revisited this gem recently? Or maybe have any mods/recommendations to make it even better?

"feels huge even by todays standards"

Not sure what you are refering to, it doesnt seem to me newer games have per se larger gameworlds.

Unless you refer to really super old games like from the 1970s and early 1980s of course.

Control Ultimate Edition

Clair Obscur
Iit's amazing, only 10 hours in, but I'm loving it so far. :)

A year or so ago, I went through absolutely everything:

Dungeon Siege 1 - main game, Utraean Peninsula (multiplayer map), Yesterhaven, Legends of Aranna, Return to Arhok.

As far as DS 1 goes, the most important thing here is the play order. Don't install LoA before playing through the base campaign (and UP/Yesterhaven if you're interested). The reason being that LoA introduced some pretty drastic balancing changes and they do work retroactively, meaning it greatly upsets the original intended experience.

Otherwise, use dgVoodoo to get a good resolution with scaled HUD. Played in 1920x1440 with HUD size from 800x600. High res textures can also be a nice touch:
https://www.moddb.com/games/dungeon-siege/addons/dungeon-siege-high-resolution-textures

Also, gold cap increase, the base is staggeringly low:
http://ds.gemsite.org//web/index.php/mody/GET/detail-165

Lastly, a mandatory mod if you want the multiplayer map to be enjoyable past the first difficulty (includes the gold cap mod above too):
https://www.nexusmods.com/dungeonsiege1/mods/160

Dungeon Siege 2 - went through all 3 difficulty levels with Broken World and hit the level cap (100). Some mods I'd recommend:
https://www.nexusmods.com/dungeonsiegeii/mods/21?tab=description - fixes a bugged lore book in Broken World

https://www.nexusmods.com/dungeonsiegeii/mods/82?tab=description - can help with conversations getting interrupted when taking damage (especially party banter in hostile areas).

https://www.nexusmods.com/dungeonsiegeii/mods/3?tab=description - Makes it so that all the characters, not only the ones in your active party, get the skill points from quests that reward them. Meaning you can freely mix and match the party at any point without worrying that some of them are missing skill points.

Dungeon Siege 3 - finished the game as Lucas (most story relevant character). No mods.

Atomfall

Can't say much about it yet, just started. I have my doubts about how well the world and setting go togheter, apoc/post apoc in a bright colorful world with no day/night cycle and no weather ? We'll see.

Clair Obscur.

Well, combat is TB + QTE. If the devs had crammed pickpocketing in the game it would feature my personal triad of poo.

Thing is, everything else is so damn good that ignoring how much the combat isn't my thing takes no effort.

Lumiére blew me away not just in how it looks but also in terms of presentation, it's a kick ass prologue that managed to get me fully committed.

I'm a few hours in past the prologue and it's already a memorable experience.

115 h in Gothic 2 Gold, and in Chapter 3, lvl 32. I almost cleared the first map (Khorinis) of enemies, and most of the second map (Valley of Mines). I… killed all orcs that I had found. I haven’t touched the third map (with the expansion) yet.

Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days. God, that game is a mess. It will literally give you headaches from how the camera works. The first one is way better. It's still crap but the story is decent and the characters are way more interesting compared to the second one. It's a pain going through it.

SaGa 2 remake, been doing some endgame stat training for my human. Her stats are in the 50s, which still feels rather low for this point in the game.

(In particular, the strength weapon she uses, treats strength as though her strength were 70 when it's lower than that.)

Old World, playing with the most recently added nation (Aksum) and leaving steels all over the country.

I finished DS1 + expansion some years ago. My general feeling was that it was ok, but a bit boring maybe, A bit like playing some simple desktop game where you just click click click, which is not always a bad thing, not everything needs to be super complicated and needing to read a 200 page manual to play.

Mostly my feelings were positive, but I think some features annoyed me. I think one was that you were amassing insane amounts of stuff from your defeated enemies and then sold them in some store. Maybe it was so time-consuming or something, when your inventory got full you had to travel a long way back to the previous town to sell your stuff and clear your inventory, and then back to where you were the last time etc...

I recall the expansion made that less irritating, you had some spell with which you could turn those items to money, not getting their full price that way but still.

Also did the expansion introduce some kind of teleports that lessened a lot the back and forth running? I recall thinking "at last!" when I saw the teleports.

Dungeon Siege 2 + expansion: I have installed it several times and started playing it, but somehow just lose interest already during the tutorial in the camp. I even get annoyed in character creation, trying to figure out what kind of character you want to play. In the first game you just chose your gender, right? Or was the only option playing as a female, because that is how I remember playing it... doesn't matter I guess, still not much of decision-making to start the game.

I just feel that the simplicity of the first game was its strength, and now they just made the sequel more complex just for complexity's sake...

Dunno, I have to try it again because I just always loved watching the game's trailer back in the day, thinking "Man I can't wait to get play that fabulous game!".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUz6LSbTaf4

You really have to play on Hard difficulty. Because that is the only one that will actually make you engage with the game. Pausing, positioning, withdrawing etc. Normal and easy are as you say - click enemy until game ends. On hard, just rushing into everything will very often get your party wiped.

And again, if you played the original campaign with LoA installed, you had the game vastly easier than intended. Hard on vanilla DS 1 is hard.

That's why I always take 2 mules. That allows you to pickup pretty much everything without backtracking. And I love the aspect of the game when you finally, after a long trek, run into the next city/trading post. The game is meant as a long trip from point A to point B. Not grinding the same areas over and over or constantly backtracking.

Transmute was already in the base game. And the gold loss is very high until you level up your Nature Magic a lot. I only used it on the multiplayer map. As I was going through it solo and thus having only a single character inventory available, I pretty much had to use it. But I multi-classed in the multiplayer map anyway (to use buffs of my fighter), and ended with hundreds of millions of gold.

There were some in the expansion, yeah. But you still had to walk to them. The multiplayer map also had fast travel points. But the original campaign was not designed around that and I feel like it would actually detract from the experience. "FINALLY!! After several hours, full mules and barely any potions left, I reached the next shop. So let me just.... teleport to town I guess?" Completely kills the vibe IMO. You could still just walk back of course, but pushing on instead of backtracking is so much more satisfying.

They went a lot more conventional in DS 2 and the game definitely lost a lot of its identity. Still a fun game, but a far cry from the original. By far the worst was the gutted party controls. You can only ever directly control one character and only affect the others through stances, which barely work half the time. Compared to full manual control of DS 1. Hated that by far the most about the game. That and the removed potion drinking animations.

And yes, you can choose gender in the first game. Though it defaults to female and canonnically, the Farmer from DS 1 is female (the default skin, so the redhead ponytail).

I have to restate - play on Hard without the expansion installed. The combat actually becomes engaging.

But otherwise, yes. It was simple, but very fun. The sequel mostly tried copying what was mainstream at the time (skill trees, 3 difficulty system, simpler but inferior controls etc.) And sacrificed a lot of the identity for it.

The game is still a blast in single player. There is also new gear to run into all the way into the level 80-90 range, so the 3 replays are not that boring. You also get an extra party member slot in every new difficulty, up to 6 on the final difficulty. Also, the party banter between the various characters keeps things fresh. One major positive over the 1st game is the story/narrative and the party member characters actually having... well, a character. And every NPC is voice acted.