Since August '24 onwards:

1. Dungeon Siege (base game = "Kingdom of Ehb" map) - 69,5 h.
2. Legends of Aranna (the expansion of Dungeon Siege) - 39,5 h.
3. Return to Arhok (the bonus pack of Dungeon Siege) - 4 h.
4. Dungeon Siege 2 (base game = "Champions of the Second Age" map)
5. Broken World (the expansion of Dungeon Siege 2)
6. Paraedolon (indie game, by Kira)
7. Dungeon Siege 3 [+ Treasures of the Sun (expansion)] - 30 h.
8. The Dark Eye: Drakensang
9. Yurei Station (indie game, by Atelier Sento)
10. Two Worlds - 133 h.
11. Castle Defense (an expansion of Two Worlds 2)

Most probably, that's it for me this year! The reason is that I have started the main game of Two Worlds 2 and surely the year will end, before I finish it.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Another of those games I've played numerous times but never got around to actually finishing. It's a typically good Lucasarts adventure, although it's from that brief window before they stopped killing you in games, so you do need to pay attention to saving.

As an adaptation of the movie, it's interesting how they kept the moments of you just doing the same stuff the characters did in the movie to a minimum but instead figured out ways to make the puzzles more complex; e.g., figuring out how the get in the catacombs from the library in Venice. There's also a bit more self-referential comedy, which I'm guessing was probably largely from Ron Gilbert's contribution. Elsa and even Brody are treated a lot more as joke characters compared to the film.

If it isn't that much of a trouble, please include me too, SCPM!

Journey to the Savage Planet Employee of the Month Edition, Aug 5 (Xbox Game Pass)-Contrary to what most of the internet thinks I found the only redeeming qualities of this game to be the snarky voice acting of the AI companion, the absolute ridiculousness of the Kindred CEO, and the overall humorous writing. All gameplay elements: platforming, combat, collectathons, and crafting were all well and truly bad. True to its name this will likely be the 4th best game I complete this month. It does get points for letting me play as a dog and incorporating little barks and whines throughout. Minus points for not being able to pause the game. The expansion did not add anything to the game and the Vyper AI was not nearly as good as your Kindred AI.

Full List

Done, I set it to your earlier post #407 if that's okay. :)

Thank you, I'll use that post as a base.

Tales of Arise (XSX Game Pass)

Latest in the Tales series. It's a bit boring actually. The characters are a bit dull, and they absolutely never shut up. They talk all through the story, they talk when you're not doing the story, they talk through the cutscenes, they talk about how urgent something is for ten minutes. Then they talk about it some more. It's like an entire Anime season that they decided to stuff some linear fighting segments in between the story. Way too many cutscenes as well.

As if that isn't bad enough, the combat is just as bad. Your screen is so full of action that you cannot see where your character is half the time, or which direction you're facing, or which enemy you are targeting. There are many attacks to unlock. Too many! In the end I just button mashed my way through the entire game and that worked just fine. I assume that my special button mashing technique wouldn't work on higher difficulties. Oh yeah, the characters talk all through combat as well, they seriously never shut up.

I got too far into the game before I realized that it was never going to get better for me, so I finished it still. Don't play this game, if you want something similar but way better, then play another Bandai Namco game- Scarlet Nexus instead, much better combat, story and characters.

I forgot to sign up for this! Not good! Please include me, thank you! :)

My list so far:

1-Guns, Gore and Cannoli 2
2-Warhammer 40k Dawn of War 2 (complete!)
3-Warhammer 40k: Boltgun
4-Trek to Yomi
5-Prodeus
6-Strangeland
7-The Legend of Heroes: Trails In The Sky SC
8-Warhammer 40k: Battlesector
9-There Is No Light
10-Colony Ship
11-Northern Journey
12-Deus Ex Mankind Divided
13-Blacktail
14-Postal Brain Damaged
15-Turok
16-Blazing Chrome
17-SPRAWL
18-Pampas & Selene: The Maze of Demons
19-Valfaris: Mecha Therion
20-En Garde!
21-Warhammer 40k: Space Marine
22-Hardspace: Shipbreaker
23-Warhammer 40k: Space Marine 2
24-Breathedge
25-We Were Here
26-The Last Faith
27-Tales From The Borderlands
28-Ghost Song
29-Moonscars
30-Beyond A Steel Sky
31-Wrath: Aeon of Ruin
32-Spelunker Party!

The "infinite multiplayer" list (might count as completed, might not)

-Warhammer 40k Dawn of War
-Warhammer 40k Gladius
-Warhammer 40k Darktide (see a pattern yet?)
-Monster Hunter World
-Deep Rock Galactic
-Helldivers 2
-Jupiter Hell
-Dead Cells

"In progress" section

-Warhammer 40k Sanctus Reach
-Orcs Must Die
-Valheim
-Synthetik

Abandoned

-Bioshock 2
-Celeste

Conquest of Camelot. Just a coincidence that it's another Holy Grail-inspired game. Just a generally well-made Sierra adventure based on King Arthur. The SCI graphics are quite nice, and the MT-32 soundtrack is especially beautiful. Puzzles are mostly well-designed. There's an under-the-hood morality system that affects your ending, but it's pretty easy to figure out how you're supposed to behave (if you see someone poor, give them some money, and if it's you or your knight's life, don't be selfish).

The biggest problem is the same problem a lot of adventures in this period had, which is the inclusion of lame "arcade" sequences. You have the option of reducing difficulty at the cost of points, but I found that even switching to easy didn't help because of how picky these sequences are. I ended up passing the game on normal after a lot of retrying. These sequences are always annoying because they interfere with the puzzle-solving and exploring that is the heart of the genre, and they're too simple and laggy to be fun for anyone who likes twitchy games.



Child of Light. I got this for free at some point. I'd always been interested but hadn't gotten around to playing it, but I figured I should get to it before the benevolent and all-wise overlords at Ubisoft decided to unburden my account of it.

I remember a lot of the reviews said the game was quite beautiful in its presentation and sort of alright in the gameplay, and I would firmly agree with that. It is quite beautiful, but the combat system is...eh, it's alright. It's an active time battle system similar to a lot of JRPGs. You control two characters at a time and can switch out with other party members depending on the situation. Two feels a bit slight. They tried to dress it up with things like you having an elemental buddy who can heal characters or slow down enemies as long as his energy bar is full, but ultimately the combat system still feels somewhat underdeveloped and I never really felt like I was truly having fun with it (I played on Expert difficulty because the menu makes Normal sound almost like a walking simulator/just story mode). It's just something to get through while progressing. I do appreciate that there's very little grinding in the game - almost every encounter will end with at least one, if not most, of your characters leveling up. As long as you don't avoid fighting, you'll be in good shape to tackle bosses.

The story is kind of sweet in a children's book sort of way. All the dialogue rhymes, which is a cute touch. The characters are a likable bunch. The game is just short enough that I felt like it finished before it started dragging too much. I wouldn't say people are missing out on a lost masterpiece and that we've been robbed of sequels, but it's not bad.

Harold Halibut (XSX Game Pass)

Narrative driven experience, and when I say narrative driven, I really mean narrative driven. You literally don't do anything here expect go from one person to another and talk to them and then do fetch quests for them. Not even simple puzzle solving- just talk and fetch stuff. I actually do enjoy "walking sims', but they need one very important thing- an actual narrative that has some sort of hook or enticing reason to actually see the narrative through. This game struggled with that. It was slow, long and often just dull.

On the other hand, the presentation is great, it has a stop motion look to it (it is not stop motion however) and the voice work and soundtrack is quite good. I suppose the story is more for someone that wants a simple feel-good narrative rather than an actual mystery, for me though, it was too long and slow.

Full Throttle. I just had an itch to replay this one, doing it through the DREAMM emulator this time. It mostly went well, except for a couple of crashes during the motorcycle fighting section. I had some trouble remembering some puzzle solutions, but my wife, who was watching over my shoulder while playing on her phone, had some really insightful observations. I should play adventure games with her more often. She didn't like the ending, though.

You might be interested in Shadows: Awakening, the direct sequel. I really liked that one.
Note that Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms is an outdated version of the first part of Awakening, inlcuded in that edition.

Yeah, grabbed that one when it was free recently. No DLCs but those probably wouldn't matter that much. But it's not going to work on my system anyway, with 32-bit OS and no dedicated graphics.

Ah, yes, that would be an issue.
Too bad, I think it's a very good game - not in depth an ARPG as Diablo or Grim Dawn may be, it's more on the "casual" side with some great visuals and enjoyable fights.

Well, I downright hated Diablo 2, and found Torchlight just... pointless. The one ARPG I really enjoyed was Divine Divinity.
In general ARPGs are games I can get through rather quickly, at least by my standards, and quite... brainlessly, for lack of a better term, so they work if I just want to add another game to the finished list, if I'm coming after a long and complex one, or if I'm too worn out but nevertheless want to play something, but not something I generally seek out or expect much from. Was saying on another thread that I'm don't even know if HK:TI would make the top 50 games I ever played, if I'd somehow manage to make such a ranking.
So, yeah, S:A is there for... someday, maybe. On another computer...