Recent reviews by SkullCollector

I am not one for technical details in games, I'm afraid, so it's all about the mouthfeel for me. In short to start with: it offers a rich body, excellent aroma, but the aftertaste is a bit lax. TL;DR at the bottom.

It's gorgeous, is what it is. Incredibly detailed, both in its world as in its worldbuilding. I love lore, personally, and you can argue about its place in a game like Doom, but it's well executed, suitably archetypal without being on the nose about it, and presented well with only the occasional forced exposition. Well done.
The interface is easy to read, the weapons handle nicely and overall design is superb. SFX are right up there, too. But that's not what I write this review for.

For the first half of the campaign, I played on Hurt me plenty (normal difficulty), because frankly I'm not much of an FPS player anymore. I was struck with how much downtime there is between the high-octane action you'd expect of a game like Doom, not least because Doom instrumentally defined that so long ago. There are obvious arenas that you can easily anticipate looking at the map, while the in-betweens are often barely populated with enemies. Many secrets and collectables are conveniently placed in these lull places or after an encounter, so you have all the time you need to seek them out, and since you can only fully upgrade Doomguy if you do, the incentive for it is high. But wait, a majority of the upgrade secrets is placed in your path anyway. I'd have preferred higher stakes there.

So I switched to Ultra-Violence (hard) for the latter half to see if that did anything. Exactly the same amount of enemies, unlike older Doom titles, but they turn into even bigger bullet sponges and just hit harder. Since it's not that hard to dodge charging hell knights or pinkies, you'll find yourself in a good spot most of the time. Nightmare is the same, only Ultra-Nightmare introduces permadeath. I'd have preferred more enemies on harder difficulties.

Two things, now. The game really wants you to go on and the game really wants you to hold down the trigger. How does it do that? Forcefully.
First, there are pickups everywhere. You find health and armour before every encounter, throughout the encounter, and after the encounter. Also quite a bit in between encounters and secrets. Ammo is plentiful, which I think is a great plus because the game is all about your guns, not armament logistics. Glory kills give you health, too, and with a rune trial even armour. If you do the rune trials, which are arcade reward instances, you can actually reliably get infinite ammo for all but the BFG and Chainsaw near the end of the game. Fun, but makes the game easier still. I'd have preferred riskier phases of the game with less of a safety net.

Secondly, enemies soak up ammo. The tougher ones first appear as minibosses, but become more common as you go on and subsequently ask for stores upon stores of your ammo unless you pick the exact right gun for the enemy and wait for it to present its weak spot, which is neither high-octane nor terribly exciting after the first two dozen. So you do hold down the trigger on that chaingun and you do fire volley after volley of your shotgun - for one enemy. I'd have preferred more enemies to slay, not just bullet sponges.

All that said, I really enjoyed the campaign. It was nostalgic and cathartic, it looked and sounded gorgeous, and it was great to chill out with for an hour or so. It doesn't often get your heart racing, though, which I thought was odd, but not necessarily bad. Through all that criticism, the game still felt fun. Again, mouthfeel. It might have brought the je ne sais quoi of retro games into the new age and actually got me longing for some Quake or UT.

Speaking of multiplayer games.
Doom's MP is cool. It does exactly what you want it to do. It's fun, it has deathmatch and TDM, it has adapted an old favourite of mine from UT that was Bombing Run, and the maps are really well cut. Large enough to not feel like tunnels, but small enough to ensure constant skirmishes with opportunity to be clever.
Why does it force you to unlock the entire arsenal step by excruciating step, though? You can play with fellow beginners at the start, so you're at no real disadvantage without a full host of weapons, but as soon as you're thrown out of there, you face off everyone from your level to max prestige. Including weapons you won't see on yourself for a while.
Cosmetics are nice and customisation is cool, and thankfully there are no MTX. They unlock a little slowly just to keep you playing, but the production value is very high. I like them.

TL;DR great fun, cathartic nostalgia, if a little slow and short; nice multiplayer with an oddly unnecessary progression. Get it.

Another one of those classics for which I have not the slightest clue if anyone else considers them classics. To me, Divine Divinity oozes nostalgia with its timeless fantasy story as a bundle of self-aware tropes and real heroism. Its old-school RPG character progression still feels unique, although at times misleadingly intangible when it offers choices that sound good but don't work well. Through all its flaws it is easy to cast the verdict of death by a thousand cuts, but frankly it offers so much charm, fun and a jump back through time to an era when games were easier, that I still love it and would recommend it without any qualms.

It's like someone went out to make somebody's day and chose a game to do it.
It's like someone felt like distracting somebody from everyday's turmoil, even if just for for a moment.
It's like a comforting talk with a friend.

You can't help but smile, wondering if there's anything you missed; anything you could do to make it last another moment. Realise, then, that it's the little things that make you stop to admire them, that give you pause just to take it all in. So cherish this as you may all the other little things that make you smile in life.

This game might very well have defined my childhood and forever formed what I expect of an RPG, along with classics like Divine Divinity and Neverwinter Nights. Back when patches were got from magazines and expansion packs actually meant something, this was up there for me. I still play it when I want a hit of nostalgia or when all I have with me is my laptop that can't run high-performance games. And that's on modern hardware, back in the day it was gorgeous and demanding to the point that my old PC had to rest for half an hour before I could do anything else. Good times.
I have a combined 500+ hours in this for sure and only bought it on Steam for easy availability.

Before I go to a TL;DR pros & cons list (see below), here's my opinion:

You're the classic hero, a chosen one to rid the world of an evil scourge. There's not much to it until you think about the twist: a warrior stored in a rune, an immortal and special little snowflake whose tales have survived an apocalypse. You're not a commoner witnessing an event and moving to arms, you're not a soldier rising through the ranks, not an arbitrary divine pick. You're always meant to become the hero of the story because you were a hero in wars before.
With this, you've also arrived at the hook that keeps the game rolling. You can't die, you can't exactly lose. When you fall, you resurrect at a bindstone. But that doesn't make the game easy - it takes thought and some strategy and a number of fights are an honest challenge if you're not prepared as a character or have stacked up an army to support. That said, if you like the thrill of perma-death or the prospect of immense consequences to a lost fight, this might not be for you. It's a heroic epic with you in the centre and only very few things can go horribly, game-breakingly wrong. 'twas a different era, after all.
Have some fun with it, don't take it too seriously, but enjoy the story. It's got wit, it's got snark and if you play games for their stories, you won't be disappointed.

Back in the day, gameplay was a bit buggy. As the kid I was I didn't understand what that meant, but none of the ones I encountered were game-breaking, perhaps mildy infuriating at worst. The latest versions have got rid of most of the bugs I remember and if there are any left, I haven't found them.
With that out of the way, SpellForce managed to balance RTS and RPG quite well for being one of the innovators. You had many ways to accomplish your quests, from sneaking around with your hero party to building up an army to steamroller the whole map. Of course you could easily exploit a near-infinite time window to fortify, gather resources and power-up your army to the max, but it's up to you to limit yourself for more of a challenge or if you'd rather build an epic army to impress your foes and allies alike. Minmaxers will find this game very easy, be aware of that.
Character progression was great. Your skills meant something and there wasn't a single specific progression that would eclipse all others, they all had their ways to shine. Just like you'd expect, you could be the tanky warrior going balls-deep into action or you could be a kitey wizard ranger and nuke from a distance. All viable, all great. But you can also branch out too much, wide as the ocean, deep as a puddle and so on.
Note: Melee classes have a bit of an upper hand here. They're not terribly OP, but mages do have to rely on support to shine. Once you get rune warriors, the above still stands, though.

Different races have different strengths in the RTS part of it all, but most often the game has picked what you have for you and the rare times you do get to make your own choice between, say, elves and orcs, it doesn't really matter. Mostly you'll find them all equally supportive and they all can overrun your foes if you want them to. Not much to say here, but you'll find yourself having a knack for one or the other at some point.
The RTS part was a bit cumbersome, overly shiny and maybe not quite thought-through. Its flaws notwithstanding, it's still a great asset and an integral part of the game and you can relax and have your mind off of things for a while when building a base. (SpellForce 2 got this part just right, it's far better in this aspect, but it's different enough to warrant a separate review.)

Quests.
There are a lot of them.
You'd expect to find a lot of fetch-and-kill quests, and you'd be right, but they're still... different. You often can't just take the quest, walk a few paces, pick up a thing and come back. More often than not you'll find yourself making a note in your journal to keep an eye out for a thing on your travels, at some point forget about it or get really frustrated because you just can't bloody get it. But then, just as you tossed that quest out your imaginary window, you find that thing. You're overjoyed and soonest you can, make your way back to the quest-giver five-or-more isles back. At their core, these are still simple quests. But they're packaged beautifully in story and nifty mechanics. Many of them are also linked, which is always nice.

The stuff that I have the fondest memories of is above. The story is quite dear to me, but I don't want to spoil anyone, so I won't.

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TL;DR

Pros

• Great story if you give the hero setup the benefit of the doubt
  
• Marvellous graphics if you're into nostalgic games
  
• Okay balance between RPG and RTS gameplay
  
• Balanced character progression
  
• Cool quests
  
• Excellent humour (some references are from a different era, but oh boy the snark)
  
• Great expansions, though the main game is what I mostly refer to here

Cons

• Aged graphics - it might make it hard to immerse yourself if you haven't played it before, but it's still gorgeous
  
• Fairly easy - perhaps not a negative, but it's worth saying -, don't expect sweaty palms unless you're reeaally into the story
  
• Some of the travelling is a bit tedious, expect to traverse empty plains, especially if you haven't planned your journeys thoroughly
  
• Very little choice in which race you build your force with in the RTS aspect - it's always a fitting thematic pick, but you don't get to make it
  
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  Give SpellForce a try, if you're into the good old days of RPG, you won't regret it. SpellForce 2 is also excellent, but different enough to advise not to expect the same thing. It's also considerably newer, so graphics aren't as out of touch as the first instalment.
  
  Edit: Also a thing to keep in mind, the multiplayer is dead. It was underpopulated when it was still a thing, but obviously nowadays this is to be taken as a sole SP game. I only ever once played MP with a mate - it was a solid experience, but not much else.
  
  Cheers.

I just removed my positive early access review to start over with clean slates.

With the release of a standalone "expansion pack" which added nothing that couldn't have been added as a complementary DLC, Uber is dead to me.
Their entire business philosophy is sub par and nowhere near tolerable, and has been so for a long time.

Granted, the game is excellent RTS. PA:TITANS adds cool features and makes the game experience all the more enjoyable, despite minor caveats which mostly stem from Uber's idiocratic Reign of Dev anyway. Nonetheless, I recommend boycotting them. All they seem to do is entertain their favourite weekend project long enough for it to bring in some profit, then all but abandon it in favour of more and even ask for another grand crowd donation for another cash cow (which incidentally failed, too). Regular updates are meant to play over this, which works quite well, too.

If you want to buy PA (or rather, the expansion, as it's the exact same game with more content), do it for the game's sake, not to support the devs. They took EA for an idol and consquently lost a lot of followers; now another one.