Flix 5,116 Posted November 29, 2019 Share Posted November 29, 2019 I've been playing a game called Ember that I got on GOG. It's pretty fun so far. I estimate I'm about 15% into the game. Here's some of my screenshots. It has that indie-feel to it, so don't go expecting Pillars of Eternity level of depth and writing, though the music and dialogues are similar. The inventory and item manipulation remind me a lot of the original Divine Divinity. The aesthetics and visual designs remind me a LOT of Torchlight. Even the magical Mcguffin in Torchlight is called "Ember." Character building is done almost entirely through items. The only things you get on level-ups are attribute points. Having high enough attributes allows you to wear certain types of armor and weapons, and in turn these items have various skills attached to them. So skills are acquired through equipment and can be swapped out on the fly. There is a lot of crafting in this game, and I have a feeling crafting (or lack of) can make or break a character. There are separate crafting stations for Armor, Weapons, Food, and Alchemy (potions) and tons of components for all these types of crafting. There's even fishing and mining (with the correct equipment) that will provide more crafting and cooking materials. The lore is actually pretty interesting. I found myself wanting to click through all dialogue options to learn more and even read all the books in the first library just to get immersed in the world. I'm not sure how long it will hold me. The combat is slow paced and somewhat difficult, even with a party of three characters to control. The combat is real-time w/ active pause but you can only have 3 skills per character active and the only consumables you can use in combat are health and energy potions. Sacred Reborn keeps calling my name. But for now I'll keep playing Ember for a nice change of pace. 1 Link to comment
gogoblender 3,069 Posted November 30, 2019 Share Posted November 30, 2019 As usual... love your review topics! That word ember...is this game at all related to the movie I think came out a while back...not sure of the name now, but something ember in the title. I know Knuckles is an ardent fan of these indy games... In fact a lot of the people I know have slowly progressed away from online, mmo, to smaller games like this, from very passionate coders with lots of nifty details. I think the graphics are fair, and really like the music. A good respite from the...*gulp*...thousands of hours you've put into Sacred? gogo Link to comment
chattius 2,526 Posted December 1, 2019 Share Posted December 1, 2019 At bad weather and a weekend with family: mainly 'Catan' the original board game and not the computer version. At volunteer firefighter night duty: Sacred2 D2F, only time I can play it to nowadays. My singer barbarian seems to stay young forever :( Tuba - the brass music instrument: not a computer game but real music. Our firefighter brass band plays at events and the money goes to our firefighter pot. Bass guitar - our third trains for a school band concert with her at the electric cither and I do the bass at training. Dogs ... two daughters out of house, third visiting a full day school, ... Frisbee, dog scooter, they miss the older daughters SOCCER ... a big outch ... The local soccer team has 2 goalies and both injured. They asked me to play, me a grandpa. I was nicknamed Gibbon when I was a teenager and played goalie. I am short legged and long armed because of a virus disease at main growing phase. The game was at night, flood lights, red sand ground. What to say: jumping and landing on the ground hurts a lot more nowadays. So I transformed into KINGKONG. Playing hard with full body contact instead waiting on the goal line. Hurts a lot less and the opposite team must have been surprised by my style. We won 5:3. Last game without me was a 0:3. 1 Link to comment
gogoblender 3,069 Posted December 1, 2019 Share Posted December 1, 2019 While sick for last two weeks... Diablo 3 here for me.. ayup... still pretty addictive... we'd stopped playing it for a while because my computer kept freezing everytime too much action on screen Schot fiddled around with the settings and updated drivers... voila... enter Diablo 3! gogo Link to comment
Flix 5,116 Posted December 1, 2019 Share Posted December 1, 2019 23 hours ago, gogoblender said: That word ember...is this game at all related to the movie I think came out a while back...not sure of the name now, but something ember in the title. "Ember" seems to be a very popular word in video games lately. Like I said it was a big part of Torchlight series which I'm sure you played. There's also Emberfall which is a MMO coming soon, not to be confused with Guardians of Ember, the MMO that came out a few years back, and last but not least we have to mention Lost Ember which is an adventure exploration game that just came out last month. 23 hours ago, gogoblender said: I think the graphics are fair, and really like the music. The music is definitely above average. I found the soundtrack stuck in my head all throughout the week. Each region has its own distinct music which gave the game a lot of character. On 11/30/2019 at 4:30 PM, gogoblender said: A good respite from the...*gulp*...thousands of hours you've put into Sacred? I finished Ember today. It was a nice break. Overall the game took 19 hours to complete. Replay value is low, since you pretty much experience everything on one playthrough, though there are a handful of quest dialogues that offer different choices they are mostly superficial difference. I went everywhere and did everything, so the 19 hour mark is pretty much all the content "maxed out." That's pretty short for an RPG, but it was all pretty consistent quality. A good story, decent characters, no bugs, altogether worth the price if you get it on sale. 1 Link to comment
Gilberticus 374 Posted December 6, 2019 Share Posted December 6, 2019 We got an Xbox 1, with Minecraft on it. Not too stoked with Minecraft, so I'm looking at the free category. I see something on there called Neverwinter; I think I've seen that title mentioned here, I might give that a try. Link to comment
gogoblender 3,069 Posted December 6, 2019 Share Posted December 6, 2019 32 minutes ago, Gilberticus said: We got an Xbox 1, with Minecraft on it. Not too stoked with Minecraft, so I'm looking at the free category. I see something on there called Neverwinter; I think I've seen that title mentioned here, I might give that a try. my cousin has that console loves it gogo Link to comment
Flix 5,116 Posted December 9, 2019 Share Posted December 9, 2019 Maps are fun! Inspired by our imagineer Schot who has put together so much awesome stuff for us, including brilliant Sacred maps, I decided to try to do the same for the game I recently finished, called Ember. The game's world map is broken up into over a dozen different puzzle pieces, so I spent an evening assembling them all into one giant map: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1S6AeVxX07SB_moN2_CEHoUt8CHtIXJBj I even got a comment from one of the game's developers on Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/app/339580/discussions/0/1753519941883604119/ Link to comment
Robi Dean 8 Posted December 9, 2019 Share Posted December 9, 2019 I play lots of Destiny 2, Fortnite. Been going old skool with Kingdoms of Amular Reckoning and thinking of playing through the Mass Effect series 2-3 and andromeda. Link to comment
Flix 5,116 Posted December 9, 2019 Share Posted December 9, 2019 3 hours ago, Robi Dean said: Been going old skool with Kingdoms of Amular Reckoning I absolutely love that game. I replayed it again a few months ago. And there's so much content - a single playthrough was 130 hours! THQ Nordic got the rights to it last year. Here's hoping they issue a remastered version like they did with TItan Quest. 1 Link to comment
Robi Dean 8 Posted December 9, 2019 Share Posted December 9, 2019 9 hours ago, Flix said: I absolutely love that game. I replayed it again a few months ago. And there's so much content - a single playthrough was 130 hours! THQ Nordic got the rights to it last year. Here's hoping they issue a remastered version like they did with TItan Quest. OMG I would die and play it again and again. I'm streaming it too. Wink wink. twitch:psiguy3 Link to comment
gogoblender 3,069 Posted December 9, 2019 Share Posted December 9, 2019 14 hours ago, Robi Dean said: I play lots of Destiny 2, Fortnite. Been going old skool with Kingdoms of Amular Reckoning and thinking of playing through the Mass Effect series 2-3 and andromeda. 14 hours ago, Robi Dean said: I play lots of Destiny 2, Fortnite. Been going old skool with Kingdoms of Amular Reckoning and thinking of playing through the Mass Effect series 2-3 and andromeda. Never heard of this game before... got the trailer... holee molee! Great voice acting and the game looks insane...is this a stand up or a mmo or something? It looks so polished k... they could have done better than that "amular" name...but..i guess everyone is using up all the good names these days ? gogo Link to comment
Flix 5,116 Posted December 9, 2019 Share Posted December 9, 2019 Kingdoms of Amalur is strictly single player, but it was meant to earn the profits to fund a big MMO set in the same universe (it was known as Project Copernicus), however due to funds mismanagement, the game didn't earn enough despite selling millions of copies. They had just gone into so much debt creating it (even borrowing from the state of Rhode Island, a loan which they had to default on), that it was basically impossible for them the recoup the costs even if they had been the number one game of the year. Some would say this is what comes from having a former baseball player (Curt Schilling) at the helm of what is a very complex process of game development. He had passion and willpower in spades, but the financial aspect sunk the studio and all future projects. The game itself is incredibly well polished and a delight to play, despite all the drama that surrounded its creation and the bankruptcy of the studio. There are so few bugs and balance issues (especially compared to our poor Sacred 2), that my dreams of a THQ remastered edition are really limited to just making the interface scale at higher than 1080p resolutions, and to increase the level cap to account for the extra expansion content the devs released just before the studio closed. 1 Link to comment
Dragon Brother 619 Posted December 9, 2019 Share Posted December 9, 2019 1 hour ago, Flix said: The game itself is incredibly well polished and a delight to play, despite all the drama that surrounded its creation and the bankruptcy of the studio. There are so few bugs and balance issues (especially compared to our poor Sacred 2), that my dreams of a THQ remastered edition are really limited to just making the interface scale at higher than 1080p resolutions, and to increase the level cap to account for the extra expansion content the devs released just before the studio closed. I have to agree, the game was a blast! 1 Link to comment
Dax 481 Posted December 10, 2019 Share Posted December 10, 2019 Speaking of the downfall of a game studio, does someone remember Icewind Dale 2? There´s an interview with Mister Urquhart where he describes how the little rubber boat, aka Black Isle, struggled to prevent the Titanic (Interplay) from sinking, but got finally sucked into the slowly rotating whirlpool, following its parent company. In a desperate fight, they stitched Icewind Dale 2 together in a single year. A little later, the plug was pulled and both companies de facto ceased to exist. Sad. Link to comment
Robi Dean 8 Posted December 11, 2019 Share Posted December 11, 2019 I heard someone bought it and may make a sequel or spiritual successor. THQ Nordic bought them up. Learning to play SMite. Link to comment
Popular Post Gilberticus 374 Posted December 18, 2019 Popular Post Share Posted December 18, 2019 Short answer: building a casino named The White Wolf for Geralt. The long answer: through the years, I've made many Sacred 2 characters. Sometimes, it's not enough that my Seraphim is destroying the Great Machine for the light; I'll give her a backstory, family, hobbies, etc; all written in a folder on my desktop. So, sometimes I spend as much if not more time with these little stories as I do with point allocation and character development. With all that time spent on a character, I'm not very enthused to just stamp a proverbial "The End" stamp across their forehead. Someone might say "that's easy, you just find a new game, and try to find skills comparable to your Sacred characters". True, and that's exactly what I do. But sometimes, it's not quite that easy. Transitioning Sacred characters into Inquisitor Martyr, for example. There are two male classes and just one female class. I don't think some of my Seraphim would have a hard time being an Assassin with the subclass of Sniper or Infiltrator. However, I think some of them would prefer to be a Crusader, who's a big, bald dude. So, how do I swing that? The answer I came up with for myself was making a world in Rising World that I named "The Undying Lands". Men and women are born in a castle that I've named "The Academy", since every type of workbench is present in the basement. They try their hand at a variety of professions, then go off and build a home to practice the skills they've learned. When the proverbial call to arms is issued, their souls leave their bodies, which then grow whatever body that the land in distress needs. Some might say "dude, that's a lot of freaking work just to explain to yourself why your Seraphim is now a male". Yeah, it was. But I also did it to justify impulse-buying Rising world years ago. Normally, I don't put much stock into reviews and forums; everyone knows that you watch people play it on Youtube. But I got myself all excited because I saw someone on the Rising World forum clam that the game was like Skyrim combined with Minecraft. I saw a few nice-looking pictures, and thought "how freaking awesome is this! My character'll wake up, kill a few warlocks after breakfast, have lunch in a woods where I gather a few alchemy ingredients, then come home and build my own castle! No more Hearthfire crap, no more downloading mods that aren't fully navmeshed; I'll build my own!" Rising World is nothing like Skyrim, nothing at all! But who's the bigger putz; the person who claims that Rising World is like Skyrim, or the guy who impulsively buys Rising World without doing the proper research? And of course it took me more than two hours to realize that the claims I read were total crap. So, the scenario I created above is the only enjoyment that I get from rising World. Of course, one could say "you spent $15 bucks, man, let it go!". I can't do that, because it means I spent $15 on something that I'll never touch again, where I could have bought a mineral and enjoyed that bugger every day til I die. And that's exactly how I roll; my grandfather bought me a quartz cluster over thirty years ago, and to this day, I look at it with the same amazement that I had as a child. Anyway, I've done about every possible ending that I can on Witcher 3. I don't want to give many spoilers away for those who haven't tried it yet, but there are several endings where Geralt retires. Sometimes, in some endings he still does a contract or two, sometimes he retires away from adventure period. Sometimes, he hits the road again, and one ending is open-ended. So, I thought to myself "what if Geralt found himself wandering around my Undying land and decided to stay?" As I understand it, Geralt's hobbies are 1) women 2) pugilism 3) cards, and 4) Dice. So, I'm building him a casino that encompasses all of those things. Phew, that was a crap-ton of typing for me. Y'all have a safe and happy holiday season 2 Link to comment
Augmint 109 Posted December 19, 2019 Share Posted December 19, 2019 (edited) Hard drive crashed so had to buy a new SSD and re-install Win 10 Currently downloading the 3 games I previously had on Steam - Sacred 2, Grim dawn + Ashes of Malmouth, and Shadows Awakening. Only played a couple of hours of the latter - seems very quest orientated once you reach the market/bazaar. Played about 100 hours with the CM patch for Sacred 2. Throwing potions were interesting. Found the lycanthrope 2 piece set (?) that gives %LL early on. Only found a low level tinworas and no officers sabres. Used to readily find them. Got a ranged inquisitor build in mind using testas annihalator - high RPH, high % stun from Ruthless mutilation and callous execution. EDIT - and tried the same things I did the first time I had trouble with getting Sacred 2 to run (used the redistrib pack, dll, run as admin, set compatibility mode to Win XP SP 3) ... no luck. May be recent Win 10 update. Gonna read through more Steam community threads. Edited December 20, 2019 by Augmint 1 Link to comment
bhj 24 Posted December 20, 2019 Share Posted December 20, 2019 Path of Exile (and ofc still eve online) Link to comment
gogoblender 3,069 Posted December 21, 2019 Share Posted December 21, 2019 11 hours ago, bhj said: Path of Exile (and ofc still eve online) Eve Online.. of course! ...but really? Is the game engine and content keeping up with times? :0 gogo Link to comment
gogoblender 3,069 Posted December 21, 2019 Share Posted December 21, 2019 On 12/19/2019 at 9:43 AM, Augmint said: Hard drive crashed so had to buy a new SSD and re-install Win 10 Currently downloading the 3 games I previously had on Steam - Sacred 2, Grim dawn + Ashes of Malmouth, and Shadows Awakening. Only played a couple of hours of the latter - seems very quest orientated once you reach the market/bazaar. Played about 100 hours with the CM patch for Sacred 2. Throwing potions were interesting. Found the lycanthrope 2 piece set (?) that gives %LL early on. Only found a low level tinworas and no officers sabres. Used to readily find them. Got a ranged inquisitor build in mind using testas annihalator - high RPH, high % stun from Ruthless mutilation and callous execution. EDIT - and tried the same things I did the first time I had trouble with getting Sacred 2 to run (used the redistrib pack, dll, run as admin, set compatibility mode to Win XP SP 3) ... no luck. May be recent Win 10 update. Gonna read through more Steam community threads. Good hearing that you're back in the PC Gaming business! When i finally upgraded to SSD the difference was so enormous. And regarding Throwing Potions... Yes I have an affinity for them... Specially the DarkMatters one ^^ gogo Link to comment
bhj 24 Posted December 21, 2019 Share Posted December 21, 2019 16 hours ago, gogoblender said: Eve Online.. of course! ...but really? Is the game engine and content keeping up with times? :0 gogo Yep eve looks amazing (let me show you) Link to comment
gogoblender 3,069 Posted December 23, 2019 Share Posted December 23, 2019 C'mon.... those arent in game.... err... are they? gogo Link to comment
Dax 481 Posted December 23, 2019 Share Posted December 23, 2019 The screenshots look good indeed! I remember when I played the X series back in the day. Too bad Egosoft screwed up over and over again. I heard it takes a while until you make your way in. Is eve really that difficult? Link to comment
bhj 24 Posted December 23, 2019 Share Posted December 23, 2019 yep they are Heres one of the latest ships that was added to the game (Zirnitra) and the other one is just me moving around doing my thing just now @Dax Is really eve that difficult? Well yes and no The thing with eve is there is so many ways you can play it And so many things you can do So mastering everything is gong to take awhile So as long as your not a millennial that want instant gratification like Yesterday eve is a awesome game for you... Everyone in here should ofc start playing eve right now (Let me know if anyone does (Before you make an account) and ill make your eve startup a bit easier) Link to comment
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now