Posted February 21, 2015
But then again, I liked PS. The visual novel / RPG hybrid approach was rather inspiring to me, as it showed me that one could make a rather interesting game using Ren'Py.
Your negative opinion of it seems to stem from the fact it's a rather expensive indie game, which leaves all sorts of amusing questions open, but two things need to said: 1) there's a free demo on the official site, and it's long enough for anyone to see if they'll enjoy the game 2) is $20 for 13 h of entertainment really overpriced? I can think of a number of games, indie and not, that offer less for more - to paraphrase you, think of all the shitty GOG games you could buy for that money.
Which brings us to the "standards" part of your rant. Sure, I agree. GOG agrees. Plenty of other people agree. It's just that no one agrees exactly what those standards should be. Which makes them less standards and more arbitrary decisions. Since GOG is a company that sells games for money, it makes sense for them to choose a financial view of standards - if it'll sell, allow it onto the store. Now, they apparently don't think the Winter Wolves games would sell, so they're not here. Fine. As long as we can all acknowledge that's the reason why it is so.
Guess I'll just go sequentially and respond to each statement in order.
Let's begin.
To start, I made it clear that I had more complaints about the product, but given that it was rather late at the time, I didn't feel like running through every single one.
If I was getting paid to write the review, that would be a different story. But I wasn't.
Also, it has to be said, I'm not under any particular obligation to dissect every single game I list here, nor do I have to defend my opinion since you liked it and feel you need to defend it, as if you're going to change my mind about it somehow, convincing me to sing the praises of some shitty game rather than tearing it apart.
Not going to happen.
But I digress.
Two "minor" complaints, both of which speak to the overall poor quality of the product.
The art assets issue speaks to the general laziness, the need to pad because the product is ultimately extremely flimsy, with the cliched story, ridiculous premise, boring characters, almost nonexistent and exceedingly poorly implemented relationship meters, the writing being bad not only in a storytelling sense, but bad in regards to basic spelling and grammar, the same boring recycled sound being used over and over again, the same pictures being used over and over and over until any polite thought you have regarding their quality is replaced by the cold knowledge that it was all ugly from the start, the near complete lack of animation which made every already boring fight even more so since it was less visually appealing than staring at a wall, the continued monotony of "exploring" each sector, which is ultimately as exciting as clicking a mouse to fill spaces on a bingo card.
The problem with the final boss is a continued reminder that the difficulty, the flow of the turn-based combat is ultimately broken.
With a final boss, you're supposed to have a sense of accomplishment after defeating it, that feeling of a hard fought battle won. It's the last thing the designers are presenting to the player on an interactive level, so it needs to be good. It needs to be memorable.
But between the combat system being poor to begin with, the encounters being boring and the characters' abilities being lackluster at best and badly presented to boot, it was a continued example of the "well, if we add more hit points to the boss to make the fight longer, that makes it better" approach.
It doesn't, though. It doesn't serve to provide a good experience. It only draws out a bad one.
Now, onto the next attempted point.
Yes, I did spend 13 hours running through it. Was it fun? No. Was it enjoyable? No. Was it compelling? Pardon me a moment while I turn my head to avoid spitting coffee on my monitor while laughing.
I spent 175 hours on Soulstorm, a game that makes me happy THQ is no longer in existence.
Some games aren't played because they're good, or enjoyable, or fun.
Not by a long shot.
I would say there are a grand total of two good, pleasantly memorable things about Planet Stronghold.
1. The game saying I might want to save after the final boss fight so that, if an add-on or expansion comes out, I could play them with my current character.
I laughed for a solid 5 minutes at the absurdity of that notion.
2. I got a foil trading card that I could give to someone. The garbage I slogged through will allow for someone else to hopefully get a game that they enjoy.
That's a hell of a lot more than the actual experience of the game provided, and that was pure luck.
Next - my negative opinion of the game stems from it being a boring, poorly made piece of shit that happens to be overpriced as well.
No more. No less.
And yes, I could have gone with a demo of it. But given that I saw a bit of Let's Play video with it, I had a small amount of preexisting knowledge about it.
It already looked bad, but I thought that maybe it would improve, or at the very least be awful in an amusing way.
Turns out my sliver of potential optimism was horrendously misplaced. That happens sometimes.
But I finished it because I'm not buying or renting games for them to sit in a stockpile that will never be cleared.
If it's ended up on my plate, for whatever reason, I'll eat every last bite. Even if it's rancid shit.
As for the argument of whether or not 20 dollars for 13 hours is overpriced?
Well, you used a word that I absolutely would NOT - entertainment.
If it was actually good, it'd be a different story.
This is the whole inherent subjectiveness of opinion thing. It's why we call them opinions and not facts.
You liked it. That's fine. More power to you.
I still think it's a piece of shit, and more power to me for thinking so as well.
Kinda wish I could have had your experience, honestly, because I have to keep wondering why in the holy fuck I spent a night running through Planet Stronghold.
Very bad judgment/masochistic tendency on my part. Thankfully, I don't have too many more games with a high chance of being awful.
They're getting a bit tiring.
Lastly, in regards to standard? I figure someone at GOG had the same thought I did - that if Planet Stronghold is an indicator of overall quality, they might want to pass since it'd be laughable to put that up on the front page and attempt to hype it to consumers.
If GOG put Planet Stronghold on the front page, I'd be wondering what kinds of illegal drugs the good people at GOG Central were indulging in at the time that business decision was made.
