Stuff which I have been playing and looking forward.

Well, given the good news about GB, I decided to give up on the idea of trying to find somewhere to post the stuff which I have written, and continue here.

The Hundred Line – Last Defense Academy

Easily my GOTY, Danganronpa and Zero Escape are some of my favorite games and having both Kazutaka Kodaka and Kotaro Uchikoshi together (plus other people) is really cool. Talking about the game is a bit trick, I don't want to give any spoilers (and I am avoiding them), but it is a combination of Visual Novel and Tactics game, where 15 students must defend an academy for 100 days. I am having a blast playing, I do hope I do well enough. Please give it a try.

Tainted Grail – Fall of Avalon

I have been following and play this one for a while, its official release is May 23, but before that it was in Early Access, it bit Elder Scrolls (specially Oblivion/Skyrim) meet part of Gothic and Dark Souls (mostly in the aesthetics and themes), is a bit jank, but that is part of the charm, plus it feature it own take on the Arthurian myths.

Old World

I talked about this before, but Old World mix of Crusader Kings inspired character driven gameplay and the 4X elements work really well, plus all of it DLCs, such as Behind the Throne, Wrath of the Gods and so on, have been excellent, even the disaster systems which was introduced in Wrath of the Gods, work great, better that I expected.

Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlords

Given the confusing state of who holds what of the Wizardry franchise, the remake existence is by itself quite amazing.

But how, as a port? It pretty good too! Digital Eclipse made it a way, where you can even set the general rules based on some of the main ports of the original game (plus other stuff you can customize), or set how each rule will work individual. This is allowing you so see how each port would change something and what this changes mean. Plus some quality of life improvements. The visuals look fine, while I was a bit unsure of moving from the sprite base to 3D enemies, since I like more the sprites it works well.

I say, if overall a does a very good job, it allows you to customize the experience and, again, given the confusing state of the franchise rights, this is an accessible way to play the original.

But if you want something else, maybe Wizardry: The Five Ordeals might be worth checking it out, or you can look at some Wizardry inspired dungeon crawlers, In fact, I have a old blog piece about it - A Handful of Wizardry Successors where I list some of them.

Looking Forward

Europa Universalis V

While its existence was well-known, I mean, there were all those Project Caesar developer diaries, I expected it to be EU IV with some Imperator elements (specially Pops), but I was caught off guard when it actually, EU IV + Vic 3 (Markets and Trade and Pop) + Imperator + CK III and so on.

Someone which I know had changed to play it, and told me that is truly ambitious game (almost too much), it is a very early stage however, so he also told me there is some performance and other issues, which given early version make sense, and the game itself don't have a date. So we can expect things to change, until the release. Also, a lot of stuff which appeared in DLCs in the previous game will be in the base game.

Anyway, there are a lot of things, at least for me, to look forward – I will go by topics.

• Initial and Final date: This is really cool, starting in 1337 and finishing by close to where Vic 3 start, meant that the game time frame is way longer that before. But more than this, 1337, the situation is way different, Black Death is around the corner, a lot of countries are in different initial setups, in terms of borders, but in resources and estates.
• Sliders: I didn't expect the old economic sliders from EU I and EU II to be back as a mean to customize your country, it appears that unlikely there, where move them was a bit hard, is way easier.
• Armies: They now will appear, from what I understand to have a more transitional organization aspect, going from levies to full professional ones, this will mean, that, again from what I understand, in early game, have ability to levy tropes from the whole population and some professional troops (which the game calls regulars), draw from the soldiers pool of the population, the latter came from a pool inside your total population (the Manpower), but the first, since it drawing from the population itself, it means that economic activities can stop, as you pulling them out of fields and factories.
• Armies II: Armies are now represented by multiple figures instead of a single one and, from what I read, their visuals will change as tech improves and even reflect how organized they are. Also, army composition will appear to be much more detailed.
• A Bit of CK III: It appears that not only character will be visually represented, but we might even get some CK aspects, as marrying actual sons and daughter, instead of abstraction of them, pointing generals and cabinets and so on.

Mount & Blade: Bannerlord – War Sails.

I really like Bannerlord, despite some issues, but there was some silence which was broken when they announced not only this expansion, but also a lot of changes and improvements to the base game.

The expansion itself, as the name suggest, will add naval combat and in such scale that I wasn't expecting, like those battles look huge, you truly have tons of ships clashing out.

Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era

I am optimistic about this, which might be the first time in, a very long time, that I was looking for something which Ubisoft would release… mostly because until now, Ubisoft have not handle very well the franchise, I mean, the developers tried, but find themselves in an uphill battle between the heavy expectations after Heroes III and dealing with Ubisoft…

While, and I know this might sound heretical, HOMM 5 was, fine for the most part. But from there things go downhill, with HOMM 6 and 7 begin pretty bad, and Ubi not helping much, by often cutting support and even trying a confusing change of the franchise name, from Heroes of Might and Magic, to Might and Magic Heroes...

But now, maybe things can turn around, Unfrozen, the people behind Olden Era, not only claim that Ubisoft have little influence and will (from what I understand) do mostly distribution, but they (Unfrozen) really understand the franchise in all its glory, one of it earliest developer diaries is they talking about the obscure lore of the series, such as the mix of Sci-fi and Fantasy.

They even got Paul Romero on the soundtrack!]

Not related, but did anyone else noticed, that out of nowhere, suddenly Might and Magic X, the only time Ubisoft tried to do a Might and Magic CRPG (developed by Limbic) suddenly now have achievements? I don't know why... Its online features have long gone (thanks to Ubi) and it last news was in 2014... Also the update was signed as the "MMX Team", which make me wonder they still exist?