Posted December 10, 2024
Its been well over a year since I beat this game and I thought that I would come back to point out a few things about my review I wish I could have changed or could have expanded on as well as help out a bit more with playing this game. GoG only lets you type so many characters per review and as far as I know there is no way to edit them. That kinda sucks for anyone that makes a mistake while reviewing like I feel I made a few of.
Ill go down my review and fix some stuff I talked about with the limited space I have so lets do this.
“As of writing this I just beat this game and I think its a good game with a lot of positive aspects to it like music, visuals, gameplay, and exploration.”
This is more a prelude to the other stuff but this game is objectively not a good game due to how many game breaking bugs it has and the fact it was rushed near the end. What I should have said, and what I really felt, was that this is a good game wrapped up in all this horrid stuff that ends up turning it into a bad game but the good in it was so good that I pushed through the bad to experience it.
“Sadly, this game has A LOT of issues with it that prevent it from being able to be played comfortably. The biggest problem with Version 1.2 of the game is the unacceptable loading times for any area thats outside. 1 min loading times long. You also can get stuck in walls and combat has you stagger a lot when you get hit making 1v2 or more fights frustrating. The 1.7 patch fixes a lot but brokes a lot more like HP regeneration being too high and making some enemies near unkillable.”
This isnt a joke. You start the game and load into areas in the town that are small and think “ok its a bit long but eh” then you go outside and it hits you with THAT loading bar. Go inside a small house then come out? Wait that long bar. It happens a lot. I also mention some enemies being near unkillable and while that is true you can eventually get strong enough to do more damage then enemies can regenerate, at least in the first 2/3’s of the game anyways. Bosses you just cant beat with the regeneration bug. Also, a lightning enemy that shoots projectiles based on frame rate will insta kill you with the uncapped framerate. Why they didnt program the game to unlock the framerate with just loading only, the world may never know.
“You also have a lot of softlock potential in this game and I will list 2 major ones right now:
Do not kill the rebels in front of Kumra (Talk to the guy to the left of the gate more then once and go though all his dialogue to get in) and don’t provoke the pirates in the hideout to the west of Fort Mogal. Doing these 2 things seems to softlock your game forever. You should also keep at least 1 of each thing in your inventory. Find a weird skull? DONT SELL IT YOU MIGHT NEED IT. I wish the game marked key items for this reason.”
These are 2 major ones that I ran into. I also ran into one in the main story quest where I had to talk to someone in the main town but could not get to them no matter what I tried. I dont mention it here but I do mention how to get around it when I give advice on how to go about this game. This also makes my “this game is good” comment not jell well with me suddenly going into all these issues. Like I said, Good game wrapped in badness. You have to fight to experience the good but ultimately making it not really that good because of that fight for most people.
“Now heres how I recommend playing this game:
Download Patch 1.7 and an application to limit the framerate. I used RivaTuner. In the root folder you can find config.exe and can checkmark windowed mode. This will let you tab out to change FPS on the fly so you can put it to unlimited for exploring and back to 60 for when an enemy wont die and you know its the HP regeneration bug. Go fullscreen for dark areas.”
Nothing wrong here. This is exactly what I did and for the most part I only switched to capped FPS in dungeons. I should have mentioned too that your stamina is affected by the uncapped frames and makes it drain mega fast and that is not good for combat and traveling around. When I eventually got super strong I would sometimes leave the game uncapped just so I wouldn't have to keep swapping over. Of course like I said, it doesn't always work, but it does sometimes.
“Dump points into two handed/painspots/clubbing and artifact but do artifact last (max stats is 200) and follow the story route that has you do missions for both Hiss and Dolin Grog/Irfan Orkan until you get the mission from Irfan that makes you end the Hiss missions (you will know when you see it). You may wanna bring some late game partners with you that start off at pretty high levels if you find them.”
This is the thing that made me wanna write this. While this info is not wrong I don't go into detail on why I put stats like that and what they do. Character limit and all.
I ended the game at level 53 with my clubbing, two-handed and Armory maxed out. Armory helps absorb blows better if I recall so I really should have put that in there. I also mention putting points on artifact which is like…what? I had no idea why I said that.I think I had saw somewhere that its a great skill to have but my artifact skill was 26/200 by the end of the game and my Propellant/mechanical skill was 126 so unless you need some points in it for certain things then the other skill gets you great stuff.
I mention the quest route to take and while I dont have a save where I can go explore what I said in detail I do remember it being pretty obvious when you could just straight up end the Hiss missions. Do NOT do his missions when you get a chance to cut ties with him because that is where that town softlock got me. Irfan is where its at if you want avoid that bad softlock. Maybe there was a way but I couldn't find one for hours no matter who I talked too and no one that played this game talked about that route. It's not worth it.
I also mention right at the end to bring late game partners with you. Thats not wrong but to be more clear on it, the first handful of people you meet are just not worth playing with. If I recall EXP is not shared or you get less. There is SOME quark to it. I do know that that makes getting a partner not worth it until you're going to leave the first half of the game into the second open world. You are very much going to need partners for the final levels to help out!
Here is another small piece of advice to help out too! In the town of Umir there is a lone shed/house with a weapon called the Mother-In-Law Poleaxe that is a very nice weapon to use for a while. I would suggest going for that when you can if you find combat really hard and is two handed so it scales with that skill. Later you will get much more powerful stuff. Not much more to say then good luck! If you can get past the garbage that is having to mess with the frame limit every so often as well as make sure you don't fall into the big soft locks then I think you will find a lot of enjoyment from this, especially if you're an old school RPG fan
Ill go down my review and fix some stuff I talked about with the limited space I have so lets do this.
“As of writing this I just beat this game and I think its a good game with a lot of positive aspects to it like music, visuals, gameplay, and exploration.”
This is more a prelude to the other stuff but this game is objectively not a good game due to how many game breaking bugs it has and the fact it was rushed near the end. What I should have said, and what I really felt, was that this is a good game wrapped up in all this horrid stuff that ends up turning it into a bad game but the good in it was so good that I pushed through the bad to experience it.
“Sadly, this game has A LOT of issues with it that prevent it from being able to be played comfortably. The biggest problem with Version 1.2 of the game is the unacceptable loading times for any area thats outside. 1 min loading times long. You also can get stuck in walls and combat has you stagger a lot when you get hit making 1v2 or more fights frustrating. The 1.7 patch fixes a lot but brokes a lot more like HP regeneration being too high and making some enemies near unkillable.”
This isnt a joke. You start the game and load into areas in the town that are small and think “ok its a bit long but eh” then you go outside and it hits you with THAT loading bar. Go inside a small house then come out? Wait that long bar. It happens a lot. I also mention some enemies being near unkillable and while that is true you can eventually get strong enough to do more damage then enemies can regenerate, at least in the first 2/3’s of the game anyways. Bosses you just cant beat with the regeneration bug. Also, a lightning enemy that shoots projectiles based on frame rate will insta kill you with the uncapped framerate. Why they didnt program the game to unlock the framerate with just loading only, the world may never know.
“You also have a lot of softlock potential in this game and I will list 2 major ones right now:
Do not kill the rebels in front of Kumra (Talk to the guy to the left of the gate more then once and go though all his dialogue to get in) and don’t provoke the pirates in the hideout to the west of Fort Mogal. Doing these 2 things seems to softlock your game forever. You should also keep at least 1 of each thing in your inventory. Find a weird skull? DONT SELL IT YOU MIGHT NEED IT. I wish the game marked key items for this reason.”
These are 2 major ones that I ran into. I also ran into one in the main story quest where I had to talk to someone in the main town but could not get to them no matter what I tried. I dont mention it here but I do mention how to get around it when I give advice on how to go about this game. This also makes my “this game is good” comment not jell well with me suddenly going into all these issues. Like I said, Good game wrapped in badness. You have to fight to experience the good but ultimately making it not really that good because of that fight for most people.
“Now heres how I recommend playing this game:
Download Patch 1.7 and an application to limit the framerate. I used RivaTuner. In the root folder you can find config.exe and can checkmark windowed mode. This will let you tab out to change FPS on the fly so you can put it to unlimited for exploring and back to 60 for when an enemy wont die and you know its the HP regeneration bug. Go fullscreen for dark areas.”
Nothing wrong here. This is exactly what I did and for the most part I only switched to capped FPS in dungeons. I should have mentioned too that your stamina is affected by the uncapped frames and makes it drain mega fast and that is not good for combat and traveling around. When I eventually got super strong I would sometimes leave the game uncapped just so I wouldn't have to keep swapping over. Of course like I said, it doesn't always work, but it does sometimes.
“Dump points into two handed/painspots/clubbing and artifact but do artifact last (max stats is 200) and follow the story route that has you do missions for both Hiss and Dolin Grog/Irfan Orkan until you get the mission from Irfan that makes you end the Hiss missions (you will know when you see it). You may wanna bring some late game partners with you that start off at pretty high levels if you find them.”
This is the thing that made me wanna write this. While this info is not wrong I don't go into detail on why I put stats like that and what they do. Character limit and all.
I ended the game at level 53 with my clubbing, two-handed and Armory maxed out. Armory helps absorb blows better if I recall so I really should have put that in there. I also mention putting points on artifact which is like…what? I had no idea why I said that.I think I had saw somewhere that its a great skill to have but my artifact skill was 26/200 by the end of the game and my Propellant/mechanical skill was 126 so unless you need some points in it for certain things then the other skill gets you great stuff.
I mention the quest route to take and while I dont have a save where I can go explore what I said in detail I do remember it being pretty obvious when you could just straight up end the Hiss missions. Do NOT do his missions when you get a chance to cut ties with him because that is where that town softlock got me. Irfan is where its at if you want avoid that bad softlock. Maybe there was a way but I couldn't find one for hours no matter who I talked too and no one that played this game talked about that route. It's not worth it.
I also mention right at the end to bring late game partners with you. Thats not wrong but to be more clear on it, the first handful of people you meet are just not worth playing with. If I recall EXP is not shared or you get less. There is SOME quark to it. I do know that that makes getting a partner not worth it until you're going to leave the first half of the game into the second open world. You are very much going to need partners for the final levels to help out!
Here is another small piece of advice to help out too! In the town of Umir there is a lone shed/house with a weapon called the Mother-In-Law Poleaxe that is a very nice weapon to use for a while. I would suggest going for that when you can if you find combat really hard and is two handed so it scales with that skill. Later you will get much more powerful stuff. Not much more to say then good luck! If you can get past the garbage that is having to mess with the frame limit every so often as well as make sure you don't fall into the big soft locks then I think you will find a lot of enjoyment from this, especially if you're an old school RPG fan
Post edited December 10, 2024 by Alma Elma