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ArbitraryWater

Internet man with questionable sense of priorities

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ArbitraryWater's Favorite Video Games of 2021 (that came out in 2021)

List isn't final until I write the inevitable write-up, but uh. Here's the thing. This year and new releases? Didn't actually play a ton of them, to be honest. Between going very hard down the "playing and streaming older stuff" and my general indifference to a lot of 2021's supposed heavy hitters, I think 2022 is gonna hit a lot harder.

List items

  • It's still pretty fuckin' buggy, it took me literally 120 hours to finish, and has a genuinely terrible army management layer, but hot damn this game is why I love CRPGs. Finally, the stupid escalation and power creep of any given Pathfinder campaign brought to its natural conclusion with a campaign built around the premise of being a literal demigod level power

  • The conclusion to Hitman is more hitman, and upon further reflection, quite possibly Best Hitman? Kind of hard to separate it from the other two games, but Hitman 3 with its two predecessors is one of the single best packages in video games

  • The video game that dares ask: what if we made Resident Evil stupid again.

  • Card Fuckery and Fuck Cardery

  • Recency bias may be in effect here, but even if the campaign runs out of steam before it finishes, this is the most relevant and interesting John Halo Fucks Shit Up has been in a literal decade.

  • By law there has to be a Monster Hunter game on any given list of mine the year it comes out. That said, I sure didn't play very much MH Rise in the last six months! On the other hand, there's something to be said for feeling satisfied with what I did play. Need I remind you that Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate literally ruined my grades.

  • an actual hell nightmare

  • This year's "Game I'm into that you've never heard of" Just a deeply, deeply stupid throwback FPS that I also kinda love

  • Dedicated yelling button.

  • Eurojank Doom 2016

  • By golly Solasta is going for it, and by golly it deserves to be commended even if the campaign it ships with is the most "babby's first homebrew campaign" I think I've ever seen

3 Comments

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chaser324

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chaser324  Moderator

Started playing Wrath of the Righteous a couple of weeks ago, and while I am enjoying the writing and characters, I'm just not a fan of Pathfinder character building and combat. It's definitely an improvement over Kingmaker though.

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ArbitraryWater

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@chaser324: See, I appreciate that they’ve just put the raw insanity of Pathfinder character building on full display here. It’s a Russian-ass CRPG with actual production values and a pretty marked improvement over its predecessor, which was already excessive. To be clear it will be a cold day in hell before I ever try to run another tabletop campaign with PF1e, but simulated in a video game it’s a lot more palatable.

That also said I think the ruleset and the demands of the combat are simply too much for RTwP half the time, and I spent the last 2/3rds pretty much exclusively in turn-based. Also, uh, the crusade management stuff somehow fails to correct the problems of the Kingdom building stuff and adds an extra layer of bad Heroes of Might and Magic on top. Respect the audacity, but until they patch it into competence I would just suggest anyone skip it.

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chaser324

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chaser324  Moderator

@arbitrarywater: Combat was almost entirely incomprehensible to me in Kingmaker until I switched to turn-based, but I did start to understand and enjoy it a lot more after I made the switch. I've been playing WotR in turn-based mode from the outset.

And I'm sure that fans of the tabletop game would've been upset if anything in the ruleset had been streamlined too much. It allows for a lot of flexibility and experimentation, but for someone with limited exposure to Pathfinder, it also means there's a lot of room for error.