Recent reviews by Ruddager•Rustin

This game is a solid, challenging co-op shooter that mostly doesn't disappoint in delivering belligerent chaos, emergent physics mayhem, and lots of hilarious deaths. The guns are mostly chonky, and blasting devastators to pieces, melting hulks into hissing piles of junkyard slag is always satisfying. Turning the tables on some huge fortress you've airstruck out of existence is a rush, and being overrun by the titanic mob you didn't realize was 5 meters behind you is even more of a rush. Overall, the community in-game is friendly and cooperative. Even when I start a match thinking "I've done this way too many times now," I almost always leave having a good time and sometimes making a friend.

Where this game 'went wrong' was framing itself as a live service game and enabling all the expectations that come with live service in the 2020s.

For sure, there are some pretty ridiculous bugs (hellpods tossing the extract vehicle off the map, zombie automatons following you around, falling out of the world, stuck on geometry, etc), but most bugs are of the stupid hilarity variety or mildly annoying. The dogsh*t netcode is the worst offender. The gameplay loop is good at what it does, but it is narrow and always will be. And Arrowhead definitely shouldn't be tinkering damage values and armor penetration as much as they do. But their framing this as live service has opened such a can of worms that players expect them to deliver the f*cking moon for a refreshed experience month-over-month, then Arrowhead attempts to respond in half-measures, and the players rage when they inevitably fail to deliver. ZERO OUT OF TEN STARS now that the update has made my one go-to weapon do less damage!

If this were simply presented as a $40 co-op action shooter rather than "the greatest live service experience ever," would any of this even matter? If you are new to the game showing up today, will you even notice a problem? Do the tweaks affect game play any more than somewhat reducing the efficacy of some strategies? I now play exclusively on Level 10 Super Helldive, or whatever, and pretty rarely have I been in failed missions even in pick-up games with randoms -- when the team stays together, we win, and when it doesn't, we lose. I'd say the success rate in Super Helldive has felt something like 80%? Players can generally use whichever strategems they want and this doesn't change. Over 260+ hours, I've been in successful missions with players using most stratagems in the game. Tinkering weapon values have done nothing to change the amount of victory-over-defeat, nor has adding a few new mission types or enemies or weapons changed the big-picture reality of the narrow-but-entertaining gameplay loop.

The expectations of "live service" have created this dumbsh*t symbiosis between a vocal minority of the player base, who stereotypically tantrums like a stale meme whenever they perceive their meta has been f*cked with, and the upstart developer Arrowhead, who has fallen into the trap of trying to 'fix their mistakes' by floundering lamely around demands that can't actually be satisfied. Arrowhead's fatal mistake was the naivete of convincing everyone that this would be a forever evolving experience when in reality it is an awesome, affordable arcade shooter with limited scope. They were never the developer to deliver the promise of live service, and it's a shame they claimed they were; now the on-demand obsessed gamers can't appreciate what they have beyond b*tching about what changed and what they didn't get, spilling out the clown awards like they are f*cking P.T. Barnum.

TLDR: Don't accept this as a 'live service' game because it isn't one. Accept it as a fantastic $40 arcade shooter that gets random updates. Do not expect anything more than that and you'll find the game is awesome.

The FInals is a great, imperfect FPS carried mainly by the intensely destructive physics, fast-paced mayhem, and pretty solid gunplay. The same things that make the game great also work against it.

The pace and destruction can be so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ bonkers that developing consistent 'strategy' gets tossed out the window in favor of destroying said window, the entire building, the entire block -- literally. Which is hilarious and surreal, but also makes it hard for actual team coordination. Lots of deliberate, coordinated attacks will disintegrate fast into unreal destruction where entire burning buildings collapse on people (and the cashout). Playing only tournaments (ranked or otherwise) tempers that situation, since the sort-of finite number of lives in tournaments lead people to play somewhat less recklessly. The guns feel pretty chonky, but be ready to get good at unloading an entire magazine into a face if you want kills. Winning is extremely satisfying. A match can flip in a second if your team times a steal just right, and some players really hate this aspect of the Finals, but it does seem completely part of the point -- don't listen to anyone that says there's no way to actually defend a cashout to completion, you absolutely can with coordination. There is also no pay-to-win, which is great, and generally things feel balanced (people super disagreed with this at least in season 1 re: light build being way too glassy, but with the right loadout/team it makes no difference). The cosmetics, the aesthetic... I don't know. It turned off most of my friends from joining me on this one, but it's a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ vibe for sure. Kind of 'Ready Player One' tech/sci-fi culture pastiche? Most of the battlepass is not worth buying at all, but I'm glad I did it once.

Slightly burned out on it now, but for sure I'll come back in future seasons. It's free, so go for it. It is great for a very specific and insane pace of FPS. Lots of your friends will hate playing this ♥♥♥♥ and get mad that they lost a cashout because an entire shopping mall fell on them.

I just finished my first solo playthrough, rounding out at about ~165 hours. Still working on some co-op games. Without a doubt, this game is a new high watermark for the medium of videogames--lots of these mechanics and this style of character-driven storytelling have appeared before, but none have gelled as well as they have in Baldur's Gate 3. Visually solid, passionately acted and written, and with so many meaningful choices that even after 165 hours in one playthrough, I can very clearly see I've missed scores of hours of branching content only accessible if I'd reacted differently.

The one true weakness of this game is that it's mostly faithful to Dungeons and Dragons. It feels much like a homebrew 5e campaign built in the lore of Faerun; Everyone brought their set of DnD books and a bottle of wine, but the already gin-buzzed DM has a few very definite ideas for big changes. Initially, having to lock into a race and a class felt pretty limiting despite the ability (and encouragement) to multiclass, and that after meeting a certain early Act 1 NPC, re-specs for a modest amount of gold are always possible. In terms of the larger plot, you've got a fairly standard retinue of antagonists. Evil drow and duergar, goblins, mindflayers, petty gods, tyrannical mayhem and diabolical control plots. It's all very familiar. But within just a couple of hours, I was so engrossed in the richness of the production and the breadth of the choices that any notions of the lore being tropey completely faded.

That now classical Bioware-style of plot narrative driven by companion characters is alive and well here. This distinctly felt like something rooted in Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Knights of the Old Republic, BG1 & 2. Yet this is on a completely different level in terms of presentation. It's tough to put my finger on it because again, in some ways, lots of this has already been done before in terms of the companion romance and approval, characters dying from the story, morality, full voice acting and motion capture. But I also felt myself emotionally engaged in a new way. Partly it's because companion stories feel so relatable and so complex: losing parents, betrayal, abuse, dogmatic ideologies stress-tested by real world dilemmas. As in life, there are so few moments of truly binary morality. There is no good and evil; There is only relativity. The longing for security and certainty. The pathways to overcoming trauma, or succumbing to it--by reflex or by intent. Something about these character narratives feel much closer to emotional reality than those in many other game stories. Every situation has branching options, and from a certain angle, any of them seem like 'the right call.'

But I think the engagement mainly comes through this somewhat intangible notion of authenticity achieved through an amazing production environment and process by Larian. For example, It's very clear from interviews that Astarion's actor understands trauma and abuse experiences first hand; Neil Newbon's phenomenal acting conveys this genuinely, and so does Stephen Rooney's character writing. But it becomes a transcendent performance because of how intertwined the acting and writing are with Neil himself. Likewise with Jennifer English who plays Shadowheart--she met her real life partner, the performance coordinator, while doing motion capture for this game, literally performing in the space with the person who'd become her significant other. It's tough to qualify, but you absolutely can feel all of this while engaging with the characters. So when you finally get to confront Cazador in Act 3, you truly are ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ seething in your heart and can't wait to carve some vengeful runes into his back. And after you learn the truth about what the Mother Superior, aka Viconia DeVir, did to Shadowheart, stealing her memory, imprisoning and torturing her parents, you are absolutely primed to light her up with a solid sunbeam shot. Even the less grave interactions in the game, like the goofiness of Fork, or Araj Oblodra's vampire fetish all feel so intensely true to the actors. That amazing confrontation in the House of Hope, and the wildly flamboyant musical number and hooking up with a succubus clone of Raphael, are worth the price of admission alone. It is beyond clear that these people ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ love this game in a way I have never really seen before, and their roles and stories obviously developed synergistically around their personalities. Like a great campaign of DnD in real life, the glue that bonds the emotional resonance is roleplaying among people you trust.

And all of this contextualizes the excellent turn-based combat by Larian. Lots of encounters can be solved through *laughs* peace. But when it comes time to "turn someone inside out," this game does not ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hold back at all. Larian boiled down all the lessons learned from Divinity Original Sin into battles that are dependably fierce, dynamic, and approachable from a huge variety of tactical angles. Oh, you will believe your build is so broken, so OP... and then you encounter Gerringothe Thorm for the first time, or some level 16 lich ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ from BG2, or even a clutch of Githyanki assassins on a bridge. Ahh yes, you're not so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ OP now, are you, big shooter? Your build is no longer broken. But your heart is. And so is your F8 key.

Obviously, none of this is new. This game has earned a mind-numbing amount of praise from basically everyone who's played it even a little bit. No need to be really convincing. I am writing this just because I finished this at 4:30 in the morning and am still a little woozy, and I was genuinely moved by this equally as a piece of art as a challenge of tactical skill. Because this represents a truly amazing step in the medium of interactive stories. Because this was made with a ton of soul and artistic ambition and care by people who love each other as much as their craft. Thank you so much, Larian, for blowing my mind.

Now venture forth, and annihilate an entire village of goblins with an arsenal of exploding wine barrels. 10/10.

Not too far in, but far enough to leave a review. Jagged Alliance 3 offers fun, challenging, imperfect modern tactical combat. It's got a ton going for it, and much working against it -- there are some definite issues, but nostalgia, for sure, is what works against JA3 the most.

Lots of negative reviews are framed with 'ah yes, I've played JA2 for YEARS, and I played 1.13 for even longer than vanilla, and this game is GARBAGE, and overwatch is BROKEN.' If you've spent the last 20 years replaying the intensely niche ecosystem of JA2 1.13, this is going to be a hugely frustrating transition. Ammo and weapons are simplified, as are combat mechanics, the tighter battlefields, and the limited economies. But if you spent the last 20 years playing numerous other squad turn-based tactical combat games, you'll find this game is a firmly modern offering with a slight a retro twist, only deviating a bit from the modern tropes. And mostly this is a fine thing.

A lot has happened since 1999. Several tactics-focused RPG(-ish) franchises come to mind playing this. Obviously XCOM and Phoenix Point, but also to a lesser degree the Pillars of Eternity and Divinity Original Sin games. The later games PoE and DOS retained the classic tropes of deep inventories, crafting, vast customization, sprawling maps, and endless tactical combat possibilities (which can sometimes work against those games); the former games in the New XCOM mode evolved modern tropes focused on arcadey minimalism by dropping complex inventories, offering fewer combat skills and items, tightening maps. Classic tropes games are a 100+ hour experience, and modern tropes games clock in closer to 45 hours. Classic tropes games have so many skills that you need hotkeys, and modern trope games can fit everything on a controller. Lots of other examples are around like Xenonauts, but most go generally down either the classic or modern tropes path.

Jagged Alliance 1 and 2 are undeniably in the classic tropes zone -- they were the games that defined those tropes in the first place. But Jagged Alliance 3 is solidly in the modern tropes zone. And franchise nostalgia makes you want to frame this game as a classic tropes game when it totally isn't. This is a modern tropes game in the skin of a Jagged Alliance classic.

'Overwatch is broken' -- like it actually has been in every modern tropes tactical combat game since the new XCOM. XCOM 1 and 2 both were balanced around overwatch being ultra powerful mechanic for controlling space and dishing out damage at the cost of burning ammo. I especially made entire merc builds around overwatch in XCOM 2. JA3 is likewise balanced around overwatch being a bread-and-butter tactic. For sure, I have stomped squads with just one very well placed machine gunner. But since JA3 has ultra intense resource scarcity, especially for health and ammo, overwatch is even more powerful for and against player success. It's not an inherently good or bad mechanic, but just a now very expected mechanic in this genre.

But, oof, that resource scarcity changes everything in this game. Diamond mines are finite, and so are meds. There is no longer an online shop to get shipments of guns and ammo. And if there's a trader anywhere, I've yet to meet them -- I think I read there's one at some point? Weapons, ammo, and gear are mainly cobbled together from loot. For me this has translated mostly to moving way faster through the map than in JA2, where money was easier to come by, and so was time healing and training more mercs.

Is stealth useless? Not exactly. Not completely, at least. You get to take the first shots, get time to set up some 'WOW IT'S TOTALLY BROKEN' overwatch, and do get a decent bonus for a stealth kill. The real time element makes it far less effective, on one hand, requiring fast decisions and snappy micromanagement. It forces you to make fewer quick decisions rather than plotting out an intricate ambush.

So. The smaller inventories, the smaller economies, smaller maps, shorter deployment times, fewer abilities -- all of these design decisions point to this being a modern tropes, arcadey tactics game meant to last under 50 hours and played rapidly--the antithesis of Jagged Alliance before. But it is the state of the art now in an era where console and PC games overlap.

Does this make JA3 a ♥♥♥♥ game? I don't think so. Really, the modern vs classic tropes dichotomy is a whole ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ vibe, man, and one has a preference. This game deviates only a bit from the modern trope formula. There are no % indicators -- the UI has enough information and mercs offer audio context to still generally gauge if you're in range. There are action points instead of numbers of actions per turn. Absolutely, there are level design and balance issues with certain encounters (look, how many landmines do we really need? And this ~10 man ambush leaving the abandoned mansion cellar with almost no cover? Good god... what? Why?). The economy is definitely too lean at the moment. Coming from tactics games with better RPG elements, I'd really love more character customization for the one character you can create, and to see the actual gear mercs are wearing. Beyond those shortcomings, the combat is great and pretty responsive. For what this game is, it does well.

But two things. One: It's 2023. No game is ever done at launch any more. The patched experience in six months will rebalance a ton, if the devs are on top of this. And two: MODS. I can easily see that with mods, this game will be rock solid in about a year. The community will fully iterate on this in a way that improves the vanilla experience, and also offers whatever truly broken ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ the people demand.

The experience as it is now is a firm 7/10. If you like the genre and liked new XCOM, you'll probably like this. If you played JA 1.13 for too long, you'll dive onto your grenade. If you need something newish with the depth of all the classic tropes, like flea market sized inventories and scores of abilities and absurd combat strategies in a 100+ hour package, DoS2 is the best turn-based tactical combat RPG from the last 10 years.

I can say this is the most entertaining game I've played in 15 years, hands down. The last games that hooked me so were Diablo and Civilization--much different genres but similar levels of addictiveness and immersion.

So my current colony is doing well. It is almost entirely self-sufficient, well protected by thick stone walls, and earns tons of silver by producing and selling huge quantities of hard drugs to other colonies. One of my colonists is Ronen, a sentient bi-pedal fox who loves crafting and loves her minigun. But she also loves alcohol, ambrosia, and cocaine; she has a "massive addiction" to each of the three. This has lead her to develop aggressively spreading carcinomas in her kidneys and life-threatening liver cirrhosis. I tried to rehabilitate Ronen. Weaning off to sobriety. But even with massive quantities of methadone to ease the withdrawals, she still flew into an unquenchable rage and senselessly eviscerated the colony cook with her minigun right where he stood in the walk-in freezer.

I made a difficult but necessary choice: the colony has begun harvesting kidneys and livers from captured pirate and tribal raiders and stockpiling them. Now Ronen need not halt her addiction at all; she can keep drinking her booze and huffing her lines as much as she'd like, and when the cirrhosis and carcinomas return, Donkey the doctor simply replaces Ronen's fouled organs with fresh ones from the organ stockpile.

10/10 would shamelessly enable sentient minigun-toting cokehead foxes via organ harvests again.