Recent reviews by inkyblackfire

And I have played twelve hundred hours,
and I would play twelve hundred more

In general I can recommend it, especially if you enjoy building, decorating etc, it's the strongest point of this game. The world, despite being so vast, feels a little bit empty and I get quickly bored with exploration. The notes are imo poorly written and the villagers lack a bit of life. It's a good thing they roam the perimeter now, but their pathfinding is extremely funny, which I suppose is to be fixed later (please stop sleeping in a pile on the stairs leading to your beds).

I love the difficulty settings are so elaborate! Finally a survival builder where I can turn off the survival.

The core game is a bit too grindy to my liking, I doubt I would put the time in if my husband didn't bring me all the blocks he's unlocked during his gameplay. :P That said, I do have fun with it so it's a positive review. There's a potential.

For the longest time, I've been on a fence about this game. Finally, a month after finishing it, I'm able to write a review - and sadly, I do not recommend Veilguard.

Let's just state I'm a big Dragon Age fan, I've played all previous titles multiple times. It has to be said, while the core of DA has always been the same, no game from the series was really like the others and it would be silly to expect it from it now. Still, Veilguard has somehow managed to come as the weakest of their siblings, providing the player with the most forgettable experience of all Dragon Ages.

My biggest issue with the game: it holds your hand. It holds it so tightly and persistently it gets sweaty and uncomfortable. The plot is linear, the exploration unrewarding, if you can even call it exploration - mostly you'll run into invisible or even visible walls that can only be unlocked when the game tells you it's the right time. The combat, after finetuning the aim snapping settings, was even fun (at least for melee combat rogue), but the companions are absolutely useless. You have aggro almost all the time and they can't deal with the easiest opponents by themselves, serving you well only as vessels for their special abilities. The world looks pretty - yes - the landscapes has always been a strong point of Frosty engine and that's the only thing that feels cool about exploration. The environmental "puzzle" treat the player like an idiot and the only thing missing is a giant neon arrow pointing at levers/crystals you're supposed to trigger next to unlock way to the next loot chest. Worry not, if you manage to get lost in a straightforward mechanics of it, the NPCs will eagerly point you at the right direction. Repeatedly. Until you're yelling "shut up!" at your screen when hearing another "we must find the crystal to open this gate" cue.

The game plays itself. It requires little to none player input. You're there to click at glowing buttons to "upgrade" your shops and weapons. To click dialogue options, but instead of usual NPC->player line of choice->NPC-> player line of choice scheme, there's a bizzare implementation of whole chunks of dialogue that play as a movie after you choose one dialogue option, leaving you but a passive witness to whatever the writers seemed fit to be said next. There's no way of molding your Rook into something too, they feel hollow.

Romance content is a joke. A few very short scenes with almost no chemistry.

I lost a ton of respect for Hans Zimmer for signing under a creation of such vile, unfitting and overall "generic fantasy adventure music 10h" soundtrack.

It annoyed the hell out of me, the game kept forgetting its own lore. It annoyed me that most of the time, it felt like playing a TTRPG and being the only player trying to remain serious while the rest of the players keep laughing at what the GM describes. To the tune of Zimmer's circus theme, cause why not. This vibe was only strengthened by the fairy-tale like alignments. Good guys are good, bad guys are bad, simple, easy, no shades of grey. The de-humanisation of adversaries has somehow made the game the most racist and xenophobic of all from the series, while the goal I suppose was the opposite. Overall, it feels like all the edges have been meticulously sanded off. Any team conflict is resolved faster than you can say "Dragon Age The Veilguard". Any faction that could have a darker side is void of it, we got kind-hearted assassins and pirates who don't steal.

To sum it up, I've wanted to like this game, but it failed to make me care. And that's the biggest flaw. There'd been a potential that's been lost somewhere in 10 years of production and the finished product feels like a diluted version of what could have been.
If anyone needs me, I'll be replaying flawed but juicy Inquisition.

A game that lets you live your wildest dreams, such as earning a living by catching butterflies, being gifted a real estate for free or having friendly neighbours.
Jokes aside I didn't expect to be so enthralled by a game that looks like it was advertised for kids. Turned out the house decorating system is great and I'm also dying to get to know the villagers' backstories (the emotional baggage will end me). The daily schedule of villagers gives the player the impression of a living village, with npcs having their duties and habits. There's also romance. <3 For those who get bored fast Palia has a bunch of minigames, including simple but fun temple puzzles, arcade, agility tests and a game of cards you play with other players. The community is friendly and very helpful. Overall 10/10 cozy game to relax after a long day of trying to earn for a house irl.

I'd love to say I recommend this game. I've been saving for it for a while and waited the moment I can play it with anticipation. It's still objectively very pretty, nicely voice acted, interesting story-wise.
BUT
I do not recommend a game that doesn't launch on win7 even if minimum requirements say it should be able to
I do not recommend a game where support team cannot help me fix the launching issue no matter what they try
I do not recommend a game which I bought mainly for the online mode which keeps randomly disconnecting making me lose rewards in this already overly grindy mode
I do not recommend a game which I bought for a lot of gold mainly for a poorly working online mode and now the same mode is being released separately for a lot less gold.
There's far too many bugs for a far too high price. There's a faint risk you won't be able to play it at all if you don't have another machine you can run it on, all due to mysterious activation error. So go ahead and buy it if you like to gamble.

I came here for 'a grim world of perilous adventure' and this is what I've got. Now, after spending over 300h in Ubersreik I'm still not tired of slaying rats.