I make things with computers. Preferably artsy things, but I also like to work on random scripts and pipelines. I like D&D & video games, but don’t always have time to play them. I like pet chicken. I watch soccer, especially NWSL & USWNT, as well as some WSL and whatever happens to be on.
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Dragon Age: Origins. Playing on the Deck, and it’s taken a while to get used to the remapped PC controls. The game definitely feels 15 years old. Still, the story and characters are good.
I see some similarities to newer games like BG3, like the idea of the camp, and having a large number of companions to switch between. I actually didn’t like this in BG3. I think the Lighthouse setup in Veilguard, while mechanically similar, felt, and fit into the story, much better.
I just played Dragon Age Veilguard, and I’m now playing Dragon Age Origins, which was released 15 years ago. The difference in graphics and animation are startling. And it has a big effect on my enjoyment of the game. Origins is considered by many to be the best in the series, and I can see that they poured a ton into story options and such. But it doesn’t feel nearly as good as playing Veilguard.
Amazing graphics might not make or break a game, but the minimum level of what’s acceptable is always rising. Couple that with higher resolutions and other hardware advances, and art budgets are going to keep going up.
Well, it crashed on launch, for one. I saw there’s a ‘4GB’ fix, but that doesn’t let me launch from steam, and I wanted to stream to the steam deck, where I do almost all my gaming these days.
I really loved Veilguard, but I’ve definitely seen people who played Origins complain about it. I thought the characters, story, and combat were fantastic though.
I miss good arcade racers. I don’t remember the name of them, but I remember on the Xbox or 360 there were some really fun ones where you race around cities and nice landscapes. You could just jump in with friends and race. These days any racing game I try is like a job. Oh, you want to race? First drive to the garage, pick your car, talk to the mechanic, then spend 20 minutes driving to the race track. Mario Kart is about the only fun racing game I can think of, but I’d prefer something with real cars.
Marvel’s Midnight Suns has similar top notch graphics, and somewhat similar mechanics, but with deck building added. I don’t remember if there’s a class system.
If you like the d&d mechanics, check out Solasta, which I like a million times better than BG3. The graphics aren’t as good, but it’s also not as gore/horror focused.
I really liked Earthless, which is similar to Cobalt Core but adds grid movement.
Galactic Glitch was pretty fun, too.
ColorSpace is annoyingly challenging, in an addicting sort of way.
I also played a lot of ‘Survivors’ games. Most of them sucked, and surprisingly few worked well on Steam Deck, but Sea of Survivors was fun.
I’ve played more BG3 now, and maybe I’m an idiot, but I can’t figure out how to block anything. E.g. I’ll stand at the top of a ladder to block enemies from climbing up, but they’ll happily climb up and walk right through me. Or standing on a narrow beam, and somehow they go to stand next to me on the narrow side to push me off? What am I missing? How are you able to block any space?
Huh, I’m not sure I agree. It’s fairly straightforward to represent any volume as a 3D grid, and depending on how the game system does the math, it’s easy to count cells on any diagonal. I think the controls are a bit messy, but Solasta has a totally usable 3D grid for things like flying, and also shows how area effects like spheres or such affect surfaces on different levels.
Oh gosh, I vaguely remember the pausing & queueing up action thing. I usually played 2 player, and I’m trying to remember if that paused everyone or not.
Yea, I saw Midnight Suns as a mashup between something like XCom and a CCG. I haven’t played too many CCGs, though I did enjoy Slay the Spire. I see the cards as adding some randomness to the game, but as far as the tactical positioning it doesn’t really change things for me. I remember the environment actually factoring in quite a bit… pushing people into things, or throwing things. I guess the lack of grid didn’t really hurt that, but I wonder if I would have enjoyed it more if the grid had been there. Ultimately I don’t know if it’s the grid itself, or just a fundamental shift in style of gameplay that leads to me not enjoying these games as much.
I friggin love Solasta. Our tabletop D&D game kind of fell apart, and this was the first thing I found that gave me that D&D vibe. My wife liked it right away, too, so this gave us some quality together play time.
The graphics & acting probably don’t come close to BG3, but I honestly don’t care. The battles are very fun. I think the UI is easier to understand and use than BG3, at least to start. Main actions, bonus actions, spells, etc. are all very clearly marked. Another fun feature is that you can create characters outside of games, and level them up, too. I’ve spent a good amount of time just making characters, looking for interesting results. At in person games I tend to always play the same kind of character, but being able to explore lots of different classes in an easy way was a big unexpected bonus of the game.
There’s also a ton of user created content.
It often goes on sale for $15. Definitely worth checking out.
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Playing Solasta. Our D&D group had fallen apart, and we just didn’t seem to be able to get a new game together. Solasta scratched that D&D itch like no game before it has. My wife got really into it, too, so we ended up adventuring for hundreds of hours together.