Playing through Soul Reaver 1, I encountered a few bugs through the game. Mostly just graphical and nothing too bad, turning the camera would fix most of them.

Then there are some that are worse. Whole areas just disappearing so you can't see anything but your character and the HUD.

I pushed through these and got right near the end. There was a block puzzle where you're meant to to drop some blocks from a higher level to a lower one so that you can complete the puzzle on the lower floor. Trouble is, if you've already put a block underneath where one falls, the one falls INSIDE the other one, and then you can't move either one. If you save and reload, THE BLOCKS FROM THE HIGHER FLOORS DISAPPEAR FROM THE GAME. Apparently this is fixable by using the dev console to reset the area so you would have to replay that. Otherwise, the only fix for this is RESTARTING THE ENTIRE GAME (which I would assume console players would have to do).

Don't believe me? I'm not alone: https://www.reddit.com/r/LegacyOfKain/comments/1hcqwrf/progress_impossible_due_to_bug_at_oracles_cave/

This might be a bit long, but I want to be detailed. I first played this way back when it first became free to play. Back then, certain things were free from the beginning that no longer are e.g. when I reactivated my account, I still had my Pureblood Inquisitor and Chiss Bounty Hunter despite never spending on the game, and my companion had three crew skills instead of one. I quit when they first removed things like this and made it very anti-F2P. I recently came back to try it and oh boy, it's really not good.

Skill trainers used to be needed to increase your ability levels and get new ones when you levelled. This was changed so that you now get all your class skills automatically as you level, which is fine and convenient but... the skill trainers are still left in the game, even though the only skill you can get now is speeder bike training to let you use those. A sad relic of a game now uncared for, and a telling sign of where the focus is now for the developers (hint: it's your money).

WRITING/STORY: You choose different characters, and each has their own story. Class used to be restricted depending on your story, but now these are mostly independant of each other so that you can choose a Bounty Hunter with stealth, or a Juggernaut Inquisitor. This is fine, choice is great.

The problem is the stories do nothing to make you feel personally invested. Nothing you do seems to have any real connection or importance to your character, and your character has no personal goals other than what other people tell them to do. Quests consist of NPC's telling you their problem and eventually telling you what they want you to do to sort it out. Typical (bad) MMO stuff, really. Which is disappointing, since this supposedly gets praise for it's writing, but I sure didn't see why.

GAMEPLAY: There's a LOT of running from quest giver A to objective location B, and back again. Sometimes you go from B to next objective C, and then D, and then all the way back to A. There are a few ways you can travel around faster, but a LOT of your time in this is spent just travelling around. Okay in some of the prettier environments, I guess, but most aren't that pretty and it gets boring fast because nothing at either end or even in between is interesting enough to be worth it.

The combat is your typical hotkey, ability windup/cooldown MMO. Cycle your abilities in the most efficient order, rinse and repeat for each encounter. It's... fine if you like that sort of thing, and abilities are mostly your typical star wars things: lightsabers, vibroswords, force powers, blasters, all with the expected sounds and graphics. Nothing particularly stands out as being great or terrible here, just a bit dull and repetitive.

GRAPHICS/SOUND: The soundtrack is a mix of music from the films, and music from the KOTOR games (which this game is some vague time skip sequel of in terms of timeline, Revan of course features in the game as Bioware's Star Wars poster boy). Sound effects again are familiar to star wars fans.

The graphics are... serviceable. It's aged better in some ways than others. Some characters just look... off, and some environments look bland, but some of the more forested areas for example can be quite nice.

OVERALL: The game feels kinda dead. Not in the number of players (though it is dead in some areas), but in the care and polish that is given to older content. It feels abandoned and forgotten by the devs, who have just moved on to focus on the shiny new stuff that brings in the money. As with many MMO's late in their life, the developers are only helping the game die faster because of their focus on new endgame content for the old players fully invested in it, whilst forgetting to make the new player experience any better or more inviting. The stories are bland and uninspired, the quests are repetitive, and the combat is passably mediocre. No single part of this game makes it good enough to hold the interest of a new player who values their time. In the immortal words of Yoda "That is why you fail".

At it's core, this is a cryptic puzzle game. Some of the puzzles are quite logical, some are mindbending, but workable, and some are impossible if you do not know certain real-world pieces of information. Now, you can just look up these things, but I am not a fan of a puzzle game that requires you to look up information outside of the game (or the game's files, see Doki Doki Literature Club for a game that actually did that well).

What am I talking about? Avoiding spoilers, imagine there's a puzzle that requires you to translate a hint using a code. Where's the code? Well you have to either know the real world code system, or look it up, and then use it to translate the hint to solve one of the puzzles. This to me is immersion-breaking, and just one example.

There are a couple of other puzzles that either require you to know certain other bits of real-world info, or have a VERY specific kind of puzzle-solving ability.

Another criticism is that too many puzzles revolve around numbers, and places to input them. Like, I don't mind a few number puzzles, in fact I usually quite enjoy them, but if you want variety to your puzzles, this isn't really the place to look. It's one screen, and a lot of the puzzles come down to "Find/figure out and input the correct numerical sequence(s)".

The game also seems too reliant on references in it's endings. From vague Lovecraft references to Pac-Man, Back to the Future, and Papers Please (this game had the same composer, I believe), a lot of endings also feel quite samey in that you destroy the city in some way or another.

All that being said, solving some of the puzzles does feel quite satisfying, but I feel for most people, they'll hit a wall and either give up or start using a guide, and to me this is the game's biggest flaw. If the game was more self-contained, it would be a lot better. By that I mean, if the puzzle solutions didn't require you to know things outside of the game (other than the usual basic language/math skills a lot of puzzle games use), and worked more on making it's setting interesting rather than relying on real-world references, I think it would be more interesting, engaging, and enjoyable as a result.

If you want a very challenging puzzle game with little reward, you might like this. Otherwise, I'd suggest avoiding it, or just watching someone else play it.

EDIT to add: Some parts also feel VERY tedious. You will probably want to get an Autoclicker program or set a mouse macro for a certain part, unless you like doing nothing but clicking your mouse A LOT for no better reason than "Number goes up with each click to solve puzzle." If you don't have all the clues when you do that to solve the next part, you have to restart and do that all over again whenever you want to re-attempt that puzzle.

SPOILER-FREE REVIEW! (Updated)

Disclaimer: I received the Premium Edition for free as a download code came with the purchase of a new GPU.

With that out of the way, I'll get straight to my thoughts.

Starfield is, in essence, much like Fallout 4. In the shooting, AI, crafting systems (mostly, I'll come back to this), and more. If you've played that, this will feel mostly familiar. The main differences are the aesthetic, obviously, and the addition of space travel and planet exploration.

So lets break this down into the game's different components.

SHOOTING: The shooting feels much like Fallout 4, perhaps a little smoother, but... mostly the same. There are no new mechanics here really. Using cover is a case of literally moving behind it and crouching if necessary. If you haven't played Fallout 4... then shooting basically amounts to either running and gunning, or crouched silenced weapon sniping (the "Stealth Archer" build made famous by Skyrim). Nothing really innovative or amazing here. It does the job, it can be fun at times, and sometimes watching enemies flip through the air from janky physics on a headshot is hilarious for all the wrong reasons. Thanks, Todd.

PLANET EXPLORING: The main new attraction, I suppose. You get a spaceship very early on and can use it to land on pretty much any planet you like. Systems have a recommended character level, but you can ignore that if you like. Travelling to another system means choosing one of the planets to arrive in orbit at, then waiting to see whether there's any enemies in orbit. If there are, SHIP COMBAT begins (see next section). If not, you can choose a point on the planet to land at, some landmarks will be shown to you in the orbit view so you can go straight to those if you like, or choose somewhere in the wild and explore. So what do you find by exploring random planets? Erm... usually not much. You might find native creatures, plants, and/or resources which you can scan to learn about, and you might find some location of vague interest like I found a sentient microbe colony. Other than being a bit of a different sight though, there wasn't any meaningful interaction to be had. That basically sums it up really, that there is a lack of *meaningful* interaction. You can also build outposts (think something like Fallout 4's settlement building and you're not far off) but all in all while exploring random planets may be interesting for a little while, it's a very shallow and unrewarding experience.

SHIP COMBAT: Since I mentioned it in the last section, I'll cover it here. Ship combat happens usually upon arrival into a planet's orbit. Enemies begin some distance away and close in as a group. They seem to spawn in groups of at least 3, sometimes more. and their AI basically consists of trying to joust with you. That is to say that they'll charge you at full speed with all guns blazing, pass by you, and continue going till they can turn around at sufficient range to start another strafing run. Rinse and repeat til they or you are dead. Lasers strip shields well, (which must be removed to damage the hull), ballistics are best against hulls, and particle weapons are better than the other two because Todd made them perfectly balanced. Missiles also exist.

QUESTS/STORYTELLING: Oh dear. Todd, it's 2023. I know you've repackaged Skyrim like 69 times, but we've moved on, Todd. Games have improved. Yes, really! No, Fallout 4 wasn't much better. In fact it was in a fair few ways worse. Actually, that's unfair of me. Some old games had excellent writing (*cough Planescape Torment cough*), but that's beside the point. This game really feels like it's behind the times in it's quality of writing. It's not bad per se, it's just extremely bland and uninspired. The voice acting is good and even great in some places, but the script those poor VA's were given is just dull and lifeless, no matter how well they speak the lines. Much like Fallout 4, I find it difficult to be interested in what the characters are talking about, or the stories they have to tell as everything is told in a very... vanilla kind of way.

CRAFTING: Okay, so you've beaten the tutorial, you've listed to some quests, you've gone exploring and gathered materials, and you want to pimp out your gun/ship/underpants/whatever. So you go to a crafting bench, because you need one of those and can't just make stuff in your inventory. Okay, that's fairly reasonable, Fallout 4 had that too, as do a lot of other games. What? I still can't? Oh, I need the right crafting skill. Brb, checking the skill chart... so weapon crafting and armour crafting are tier 2 skills? I can't get them at the start? Well, okay, I guess...

So I spent 4 points (read: 4 level-ups) in tier 1 science, and now I can buy my first weapon modding point. Right, let's get to the bench and... huh? What's this "Research" thing? I have to go to a research bench and spend more materials to RESEARCH the mods that I a) gathered the materials for AND b) wasted 4 levels in skills I don't care about just to get THE FIRST TIER of this *&%$ing skill unlocked AND c) spend points ON the skill to be able to make them? FFFUUU-

SKILL TREE: There are 5 categories of skills: Physical, Social, Combat, Science, and Tech. I know, Tech is branch of science, but this is Todd we're talking about. Thanks Todd. Anyways, Each category has 4 tiers, and each tier has 4 or 5 skills usually that you can put points into to unlock new actions (I hate that that is a thing btw), or to make what you already do easier or more effective. Each tier requires a certain number of points spent in previous tiers to become accessible. Actions you cannot do without putting skill points into them include: Pickpocketing, using your jetpack, bribing NPC's, most kinds of crafting, targeting different ship systems in space combat, and more. It is immensely annoying to me that it takes like 10-15 levels to get the ability to do all the basic things you might want to do but the game arbitrarily gates you off from. Fallout 4 did it too and it sucked then! Levelling is slow and grindy, exacerbating the problem.

PERFORMANCE: The game says it requires an SSD. While this is not technically true, it stutters immensely on a HDD, even if the rest of your system is up to (or well beyond) the game's specs. I know SSD's are the standard now, but this strikes me as somewhat poor optimisation nontheless considering just HOW bad it runs. AC Valhalla and the Witcher 3 (even with the new update) still look and play well, and there's no excuse for this to me. The game does also has numerous bugs of course (Thanks again Todd), one of which caused me a CTD.

SUMMARY: The game overall feels like Fallout 4 in space, without the radio or... anything interesting really. You have your pirates, your bandits, occasional alien wildlife to contend with, and well-acted but uninspired writing. The inventory limit is low, and being overencumbered disables fast travel which is a bit annoying as always, but... eh, it's manageable. Ships can be customised too, but it's really nothing amazing, you just choose some prebuilt parts to slap on and that's it.

Overall, there are many different mechanics to this game, but every one of them feels shallow and uninspired. Is it really bad? Not really, but I wouldn't recommend you spend money on it, either. Play Fallout 4 if you haven't, it's way cheaper and mildly more interesting and enjoyable. Or better yet, play an entirely different game and get a better experience for your money. 2023 has had a few great releases already, and this... is not one of them, sad to say. I wanted it to be great, but it's just another mediocre offering from Bethesda retreading old ground with a new coat of paint. Thanks, Todd. It just works.

Brettonia is a fun and interesting faction to play. Their early game has a special event where you're frequently attacked, so that you can build up your lord's levels and your Chivalry fairly easily. Chivalry grants bonuses to your faction as you increase it, and a lot of Brettonian campaign objectives revolve around building it up to high enough levels and then undertaking quest battles against Greenskins and the like.

The French Arthurian flavour is fun and along with their economy and roster, really distinguished them from the other human factions. By the endgame I had an army comprising mostly of grail guardians as my main line, grail knights on the wings, peasant archers with a mix of poison and fire arrows behind them, royal pegasi to harass and cause terror, a grail reliquae, a unit or two of trebuchets, and of course, the Fey Enchantress herself leading and supporting her troops. An expensive army to be sure, but one the ai had no answer to in the campaign, and immense fun to play.

All in all, well put-together. Also, it's free! If you have the game, download Brettonia and give them a try! I'm personally biased toward Carcassone, but that's cos the Enchantress is cool and I like her starting position the most. Treat the other Brettonians with honour, make friends, eventually confederate if you want, and while the diplomacy goes well with them, go and wreck those useless Border Princes. Because passive factions are annoying and tend to stab you in the back when you're not looking and your armies are halfway across the map fighting Norsca or something.

Warning: I attempt to keep this spoiler-free, but some minor spoilers may be within.

Missed Messages is a short but very human story. You begin in your room, a young female student, and you can spend your time either working, or goofing around on your laptop or see what's going on with your roommate. Time advances as you do various things, and within a few minutes of real time, the story will reach a conclusion based on what you do, who you interact with, and how you interact with them.

The key part of the story, as far as I found, is your roommate. Without spoiling too much, she's a decent, fairly normal young woman who is not very happy. The reason why, and the effects it has on her, I'll leave you to discover but I want to say that it is VERY well written for what it is (at least, the options I picked were), and one of the two endings I got (yes it has at least two, possibly more), showed a very real conversation, and even said it was inspired by real events or something like that.

The game is very short, and there isn't actually a lot to do, it's a short point and click with nice artwork and dialogue choices that determine what happens, what you talk about, and what ending you get, so why do I recommend it so strongly?

Simply put, I've suffered depression, and I have friends who have too, and some of the conversations in this are VERY reminiscent of those very real, very human times of supporting each other, being scared, uncertain, and being there for each other.

I highly recommend it for anyone who wants a story that feels very genuine and heartfelt, even as short as it is (and hey, it's free). If you or anyone you know has or does suffer from depression, I think you might relate to the characters and/or events in this game, even if just a little bit.

The game itself is very fun, the characters you can choose play quite differently to each other, you level up, gain new abilities and equipment upgrades, you can make healing items or thrown consumables, swap items with your team and more. If in a party, your characters can even have conversations with each other and you can choose how to act towards the other characters.

Exploration is done in real time, and if you run into some enemies it becomes a turn based combat system. One party takes a turn, then the other. If you're playing co-op, when each player acts within the turn is totally up to your party to discuss and decide. You have as much time as you like in your turn to strategise with your team, set up combos and more. For example, I played a mage, and my partner played the berserker. I could nuke before she rushes in, or she could move to one enemy, do an attack to earn an extra turn, then I do my attack now she's clear of the blast radius, and THEN she could do her foll-up attack. There are so many strategic options with such a simple and elegant control scheme, it's very impressive.



The developer has said that it probably won't be finished unless it does a lot better than it has. If you are willing to take the risk on playing an awesome game that might never be finished, maybe enough interest and support can convince the dev there is enough interest to finish it.

I really want to recommend this game. The concept is great, the artwork has charm, and there are some good and interesting elements to the gameplay. My experience with it has been like this: I started the game, did the tutorial. I was enjoying it, trying to be helpful and honest to people, when I'm told that I need 20,000 cash to save a family member. This is an astronomical sum for the early point in the game I was at, and I had a very limited time to get that money together. I've read from guides that you're supposed to get this money from blackmailing tenants (sometimes even planting false evidence to incriminate them), which is not really how I wanted to play the game at all. I read that a short while later, you need to raise another 20,000 for another family member, which just sounds pretty crazy to me.

So it's yet another game with an illusion of choice, but if you want to help your family, you HAVE to play it in a certain way. It's just not possible to be a nice guy and save your family. If you don't mind having this choice forced on you, then you may still get some enjoyment of it, but I much prefer it when you're not forced to choose between being evil or letting your family die.

It's a shame really, the game had a lot of potential, but I really dislike being forced into "choose your evil" choices.