It totally does change. In the very beginning, while you have only one character and his combat skills are low, you have to watch him swing and miss for what feels like an eternity per enemy and there's nothing you can do but watch and drink potions if his HP drop too much. Soon enough things change, though, and combat becomes very fast-paced and chaotic, especially once you have a large party. At that point you can barely follow what's going on on the screen, characters can go down in one or two seconds if you don't watch out and you also frequently slaughter a dozen enemies in like ten seconds. In theory there's active pause to handle all this chaos but as I mentioned: the AI behaviour makes it impossible to properly utilise it as giving orders to individual characters usually overrides whatever the other party members were doing, making the kind of coordination that's common in other slower party-based RPGs impossible.

Finally finished my playthrough of Jagged Alliance 1!
I spent rougly 28 hours on it according to GOG, and I had to start over, because of the mistake I made in the begging (well, at least I thought I made mistake).
It took me 14 in-game days to complete the campaign, and I didn't take all of the sectors, as I didn't want to deal with the last few sectors in the last part of the map.
It's definitely a good game, but it became a chore near the end and I just looked finally finish it.
While, the game is mostly good, there were few things that were annoying. Such as, the enemies can attack you even when they are critically wounded. Sometimes you must search for the last enemy in the sector, all the while in turn-based mode, which can take a lot of time. Bobby traped crates are a nuisance, and don't get me started on land mines, so be sure to have a metal detector equiped. Also, if you want to take processing plants and not have them destroyed, equip silencers or kill the enemy quickly as possible.
One of the best thing in the game, is the freedom it gives the player, non-linear gameplay, a large pool of merecaniers to choose from, crafting and sheer depth of the game, and all of this in 1994!
Anyway, go and give it a try, but you must have time and patience to complete it!

Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood

Good story, good shooting, the two playable characters are unlikable murderous assholes but that's all right as they're meant to be that way. It did feel kinda weird to be blowing away Union troops by the literal boatload in the first couple levels, but enemies changed after that. I ended up liking Bound in Blood more the original Call of Juarez. Speaking of which, it kinda blew my mind when I realized at the end of this game that spoiler.

My two major complaints are the duel mechanics - I hated them at least and most of the duels make no sense story-wise, and the fact that guns, ammo and cash dropped by enemies don't shine to make them easier to find. Now you might say this is realistic, and I might agree if it weren't for the fact that enemy corpses disappear within seconds. By the time a decently sized gun fight is over, most of the corpses are gone, and good luck looking in the sand or tall grass or whatnot for the loot.

I played the game in 4k (DSR), and while the framerate sometimes dropped below 60, it was well worth it for the quality increase.

Interesting. Thanks for the detailed explanation! I remember there was some popular total conversion mod for Dungeon Siege that adapted Ultima V to the engine, if I'm not mistaken. It's supposed to be much better, with more story and less linear hack and slash. Can you imagine that to work or do you think the game mechanics in themselves are so bad, that even with a different setting and story, and possibly more balanced encounters, it would still be a snorefest?

I 'played' a benchmark called Uniengine Heaven 4.0 .... Quite sobering as the framerate barely stayed over 30. Thought I had a decent new graphics card? Hah, not by far. A good reminder that I need quite a bit more power before thinking of a new monitor, be it with higher resolution or higher refresh rate than 60Hz.

Tomb Raider Anniversary

Well, I enjoyed the game and its graphics and atmosphere but found it frustrating me with checkpoints and the awful 'rage' combat system. Fiddly and with far less finesse than the new trilogy of TR games, but still good fun nonetheless.

I added following games to my list:

11-11 Memories Retold - okay telltaleish game about WWI, I wasn't impressed with writing, but what they were trying to do was quite cool nonetheless
Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair - 2nd entry in Danganronpa series, I liked it, but not sure if as much as first one
Disco Elysium - omg, this was mind-blowingly awesome ride. I couldn't praise this game enough, even if I wrote an essay, so I just won't.
GRIS - beautiful game, I recommend to play it even if just to witness all those animations + story moved me, but I think it might not work for everyone.
Pathologic 2 (+The Marble Nest) - if not for Disco Elysium, this would be my GOTY. This remake is an improvement in almost every regard over the original Pathologic, such a shame it didn't sell well.
Replica - I absolutely hated it, some endings didn't seem realistic at all.
Sanitarium - awesome game with bad controls (last puzzle especially gave me a lot of troubles)
To Be or Not To Be - I had a lot of fun with it, probably the only Choose Your Own Adventure game I really liked.

Reventure (Linux / WINE) - 9/10

What a trip, this ismy game of the year.
It's a "short" game about the question "What happens when I..." we probably all ask ourselves a lot in adventure games.
Instead of running into walls with that question, here it is the core of the game and you are encouraged to try as much nonsense as possible.My favorite scenario was "Ok, I am a cat and I will save the princess from the dark lord using only this chicken" and it actually worked. xD
You can kill or hug absolutely everyone and everything in this game and the results are sometimes hilarious.
There were two solutions I tried the devs didn't seem to have thought of, but apart from those there's really a lot you can do.
The game is a love letter to Zelda and at the same time criticizes it and turns those points into puzzle elements which make you find certain paths and select the right order in which to collect items, since every additional item reduces your agility and at some point you just break down completely, so you can't just carry around tons of tools all the time and have to think about what you really need for your current plan.
Some endings have aftermaths in the world to the next runs, which adds more variety to the world and also a few shortcuts later.
I got all 108 endings in 10 hours and only needed a walkthrough for a few of them when something didn't work out the way I thought it would and you were supposed to do it differently although that didn't happen often and right at the end of the secret content there's a massive trolling moment, but I won't spoil that.
The difficulty is just right for me, even the challenge rooms were doable and I had to do them three times, because I did let myself get fooled by the deliberate trolling.
I highly recommend that game, the only real gripe I have is, that although it is a Unity game and it wouldn't be much work to port it to Linux/Mac, it's still Windows only, hopefully that will change at some point, since I know people who would really appreciate this game but don't use WINE.

The Spiral Scouts (Steam)

This is essentially a puzzle game. The art style is nice and fairly unique (it’s like paper cut-outs in a 3D diorama). The humour is rather juvenile (based mostly on sex, drugs, and farts), but I enjoyed it. The puzzles are in a semi-open world format, so they don’t have to be done in a particular order. The puzzles are not particularly difficult, most can be figured out with a few minute’s thought.

If you enjoy juvenile humour and puzzle games, I’d certainly recommend this one!

Oxenfree, Dec 16 (GOG)-I had fun with this unusual game. Its less horror and more atmospheric/suspenseful. Looking at the different endings online I guess I got a marginal one. Oh well still fun.

Full List

Nice list :)

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Now for my own entry....Haunted Legends 6 - The Dark Wishes(Collector's Edition-PC)

In this game you play an alchemist/wizard/professor of some sort(I guess the detective from the last 5 games or so retired? :\), chasing the same dwarf(or little person as most call him) named Saint Germaine(or SG in the older games), who has begun hatching plots against your students in some bizarre scheme to get his hands on yet another magical McGuffin.

(The extra mission(CE only) adds in another hour or so of gameplay)

Pros: The game looks nice, has some somewhat decent voice work(as usual), there are some easy(yet not too easy) hidden object scenes, and the music is also nice to listen to as you play.

They have also added in a variable difficulty(so things like hint/skip timers and other things can be adjusted to one's preferences), and a nice achievements section(with objects representing each one to collect) & bonus object(to find as you play) section as well.

Cons: The game shows multiple IRL locations at the start on a "magic map" but you only go to 1 of them...so it's a tad misleading.

Some of the puzzles are a bit tough(slide an object past other blocks puzzles, etc), but can be skipped. Also some of the english text on documents is a bit oddly worded(due to it being made by a foreign company).

Nitpicks/misc: I still don't know what the dwarf wants(supposedly future installments fill players in on this some more) beyond him being cursed into his current form & wanting to become human again. Also I miss the detective protagonist a bit.

Now onto the next game: Haunted Legends 7 - The Secret of Life

Another one....A Salem Witch Trial(Steam-Visual Novel)

This is a short visual novel that takes place during the salem witch trials.....the mayor/town leader asks you to find the culprit, and you must ask questions/notice some things(usually by revisiting some places after talking to others) and then talk to the town leader to determine how the game will end.

Pros: Semi-decent backgrounds and somewhat interesting plot(albeit cliched).

Cons: Short(I finished all endings in 65 minutes), the music can get repetitive, and you cannot load during the credits(you need to quit out via the steam window and then start it again to load a save to see other endings).

Nitpicks: Some minor spelling/grammar mistakes(likely english is not the dev's main language or they proofread sloppily), and some lines of dialog aren't labelled correctly(as to who is speaking).

Conclusion: A nice little visual novel/game if one wants to waste an hour or so and has a dollar or 2 to spend....any more than that isn't worth it for what one is getting, imo, though for that price point it might be worth it for some who are into the genre.

Why would anyone laugh at that list?

well there's muddy sneakers and he finish 42 games so far.. :-/ that's exactly triple compared to 14 my score