Recent games I've not finished
- Pathfinder Kingmaker. So promising until you discover the map is an infinite maze of horror with half the locations being... well. Full of not much at all. Meanwhile you move around that world map on a timer that also counts down towards your next kingdom events... so it feels like a constant race vs the clock to achieve, yeah what exactly. Exploration of nonsense?
I'm sure its a good game underneath, and I like lots of aspects of it. But this just killed my appetite around Chapter 3 (out of 5?).
- Total War Three Kingdoms. Battles are dull, factions feel overinflated, and the duel mechanic is ridiculous. Sure, it works in movies when a battle is raging around two important people caught in a fierce duel. But in Three Kingdoms, what it comes down to is 18 retinue units standing around waiting for duels to finish when the battle has already been won. And noooo you can't interrupt them because that would be dishonorable...
But that on its own would be fine if the unit roster was more interesting... but its really not. You get spears, halberds, swords, bows... and the same assortment +a horse. Oh yeah, there's a trebuchet. And then there are a few tiered versions of those units. Yay? Its just too bad your retinue is still limited to an even smaller selection per type of general class. I don't know. It all strikes me as a reskinned mobile game. Its shallow as can be. The campaign map is mildly interesting. So what happened yesterday... I fired up TW Warhammer 2 for comparison... and oh wow, Three Kingdoms feels SO lazy now. And the graphics... it confirms too that 3Kingdoms really wanted to be released on iOS or something. Cartoony outlines versus ultra high detail, check. Lack of assets and world variety, check.
Never could bring myself to even finish a single campaign.