Recent reviews by Regular Human Bartender

I've played a handful of games of DRG:S and clocked a bunch of hours on other survivor/shmup games and this, by far, has left the best first impression.

I'm biased, because I love DRG in general and mixing the bugs, classes and biomes I love from DRG with the survivor style gameplay formula is a great combination I didn't think I needed.

Couple with the mining gameplay, where you can alter the terrain in order to create killboxes and escape routes is great fun.

I'll definitely be sinking more time into this game and am looking forward to seeing what they add.

Rock and stone!

I panic dove under the ship during the extraction and died...for democracy.

Final Fantasy 3 is a huge return to form and builds massively on the formula of the previous two games.

The third game goes back to the custom name protagonists - but this time they have things to say and people value their place in the world and the things they do for them along the way.

Whilst the second game had (imho) an awful levelling system - the third game goes back to basics with the 1-99 levelling but in addition to that, they introduce jobs!

Jobs are aquired throughout the game and range from the traditional party comp of warrior, monk, white and black mage and get expand into the worlds of summoning, geomancy or become a dark knight or dragoon to name but a few jobs you can assign to your heroes.

The gameplay is more forgiving in the sense that you aren't spammed with random battles every 5 steps, like the second game, whilst at the same time this game has had the toughest boss encounters so far, which has been very enjoyable.

The world map is even bigger this time around, ranging from a whole floating continent to ruins under the sea floor. There's plenty to see and do in this expanded adventure.

Whilst the story still plays it pretty loose, the build up towards the end was fantastic - and that soundtrack! *chefs kiss*

I managed to get around 11 hours out of it to 100% - but this is largely due to me playing the pixel remasters back to back so I'm becoming very familiar with the menus and spells - so can get through things pretty quickly.

Spawned in with only my pants on.
Crafted some basic gear.
Gathered some stuff.
Crafted a Pokeb....PalSphere.
Caught a sheep lookin' creature.
Named it Marshmallow ^_^.
Built a basic shack
Found out I can pet Marshmallow .
Made some kebabs using meat from previous sheep kills.
Fed the kebabs to Marshmallow. .
He seems happy with Cannibalism...
I go and fight more creatures using Marshmallow as a shield.

So far so good.

FF2 is both a step up and a step down from it's predecessor.

It's much bigger than the first game and the main characters this time around have personalities and actually interact with the world around them, instead of just being spoke at.

What it doesn't do well, however, is the gear/levelling. You're tasked with levelling up weapons and spells individually, rather than just getting stronger yourself and then upgrading your gear.

This results in a bit of a grind if you want to swap your characters weapons or "classes" around mid/late game as they're basically useless until they level their proficiency up. This couple with random stat upgrades which, if memory serves, isn't really explained all that well...levelling just felt confusing. But I was making progress, so it is what it is.

The game built up to a good finale and after spending some time grinding those last few achievements I managed to 100% the game in around 17-18 hours which was a pretty big up from the 10-11 the first game took.

7/10

Rarely do I ever binge play and complete a whole game in a single day - The Forgotten City was one of those exceptions to the rule.

It hooks you very quickly with a setting begging to be explored and a mystery begging to be solved and I couldn't help but play it from beginning to end, just because I didn't want any parts of this story to slip my mind.

I won't spoil anything, but if you enjoy a good mystery and don't mind talking out most situations instead of fighting - pick this game up and give it a shot, you won't regret it!

9/10

With 186 hours I have finally completed the game...

Baldurs gate 3 isn't a revolutionary game by any means, but an evolution.

It takes the classic CRPG formula and really drives it home, much like DOS2 did, but on a grander, more theatrical scale.

If you're a fan of D&D you'll feel right at home with all the spells, items, monsters and lore and even if you're not - you'll still be in for a wild ride.

The companions each have their own well crafted backstories, which honestly had me more concerned for their fates over my own. I loved hanging out with each and every one of them in all my playthroughs and seeing their characters develop from confused, scared individuals to world saving heroes and villains. ]

The combat is outstanding, making higher difficulties really question how builds work and going back to paying Withers to try new ones. My most recent playthrough went from a frustrating start to Act 3 due to the constant missing, to feeling like an absolute beast on the battlefield - all because I took the time to research the classes, status ailments, gear, etc.

So why did it take me so long? Well, this is one of my main gripes of the game...Act 3 can be pretty intimidating.

On my first couple of forays I ended up giving up the ghost and rolling a new chracter - not only because the first 2 acts are so fun and well crafted, but act 3 was HUGE and I has pretty overwhelmed with things to do, companions closing stories, old stories coming back to life in Act 3 and not to mention the impending doom .

My other complaints would be that the difficulty can spike out of nowhere. You'll find some battles pretty comfortable and then around a corner you'll be overwhelmed by enemies that hit more than you, move faster and have higher skill pallets. Not to mention you're at constant mercy of the dice rolls and whilst they can be mitigated - all too often I have had enemies survive on 1/2 hitpoints, miss 95% chance to hits, failed conversation rolls that weren't that hard...but that's the dice, baby! Fortunately you can mitigate this with good stat allocation, skill management and usage.

I'm now wondering if it's worth taking a break, or jumping back in to do a full good playthrough (I finished the game as the Dark Urge - WHAT A WILD RIDE!). But whatever I decide, I highly recommend this game. It honestly isn't one to be missed.

10/10

The one that started it all.

It's a bit bare bones in comparison to today's RPG standards but that doesn't mean this updated classic isn't still worth a run through.

It took me just over 11 hours to 100% the game (a bulk of that was trying to find + kill you know what) and I'm looking forward to booting up FFII and continuing my way through these remasters!

Dropping a quick thumbs up for HF1 after sadly having to give the opposite to HF2.

Great game, great DLC, loads of mods + hell of a lot of fun.

Booted the game.
Made a dude with a micro penis.
Sky dived into the map whilst handcuffed.
Cut up my underwear for cloth.
Made a bag.
Ate a mushroom because I was hungry.
Mushroom was poisonous unbeknown to me ...
Killed a zombie/puppet and looted a few houses.
Felt positive about my situation .
Realised I was slowly dying due to mushroom poisoning.
Notice I have diarrhoea.
Proceed to ♥♥♥♥ all over my trousers and shoes.
Get really confused about how to resolve this.
Wished I had that underwear from before...
Literally ♥♥♥♥ myself to death in a bush.

11/10