Fable 2

After over two years of playing it on and off, I finally finished Fable 2 yesterday.  I thought it was a really good game, but not as good as the first.  I like the idea that you can now buy shops and houses, thus creating a constant income for yourself once you get a few of the more profitable businesses under your belt.  I didn't like the fact that they removed armor and replaced it with a dress-up Barbie type clothes system.  I remember my character at the end of Fable 1, decked out from head to toe in the best armor in the game.  He looked almost like a walking tank, definitely not someone you would want to mess with.  I have to admit that my character at the end of this one did look cool, but in a stylish Jack Sparrow kind of way.  One of the hooks in an RPG game is that your always looking for better loot, and Fable 2 really doesn't do that well here.  There isn't a wide selection of weapons, and once you find a legendary you won't be going back.  As you progress farther into the game, you do find a wide variety of different clothes that can be mixed and matched.  The game also has various dyes that you can find, which can be used on your clothes to create all kinds of different looks.  That does make up for it a bit, but it's not a replacement for a nice suit of full plate armor.

Fable 2 has a distinction from other RPGs in the fact that your character isn't really restricted to any class.  There are three sets of abilities; one each for Strength, Skill, and Will.  Strength is pretty obvious as to it's benefits, the other two are for thievery and magic respectively.  Although you can specialize, I always spread my points out among all three.  Here is where no armor comes into play, as your defense and health are directly ties into various abilities.  You can't survive long without investing in some strength abilities, and skill is pretty much a requirement to use ranged weapons effectively.  I didn't do much with magic for the first half of the game, but did pick it up later on.  By the end I was using powerful area attack spells first, then finishing off whatever didn't die with blade or blunderbuss.

Your actions also dictate the appearance of your character.  Getting knocked out in battle will produce very visible scars, and continued use of magic will begin to show as powerful runes start to appear all over your body.  The same can be said of your morality, or lack thereof in some instances.  Spend time killing and robbing innocent people, and you'll begin to grow horns while your eyes turn blood red and your face starts to crack and darken.  Likewise, the people of Albion will react to your appearance.  They'll cower in your presence, or simply run away in fear.  On the flip side, if you play the good guy like I did, your character will appear radiant and full of life.  I couldn't go anywhere without mobs of people following, wanting to give me gifts or just stand in awe.

One of the most interesting aspects of the game is how you can affect the world.  The story takes play over several years, from starting out as a young child to late adulthood.  Even in the beginning, the choices you make have a drastic impact on the world.  One example is you can do various jobs for people to earn money as a child, one of them entails finding some lost arrest warrants for a local guard.  He'd like to clean up the streets, but needs those warrants to do it.  Of course there's also the criminal element, and they'd like to make those warrants disappear.  After you return as an adult, your choice has a pretty big impact on that particular section of town.  In my game it had a thriving economy and virtually no crime, so it's pretty obvious the path I took.

Another interesting thing about Fable 2 is that even when you aren't playing, the game still takes that time into consideration.  When I first rented it, I managed to get to Bowerstone virtually penniless with only the scraps on my back.  I walked through the streets, going from shop to shop as I realized it would be a long time before I could afford anything.  Doing quests didn't seem to pay much out, so I started working jobs at the local blacksmith making swords.  When that got old, I switched over to serving beer at the local inn.  I managed to save up enough to actually buy the inn, so that meant I now had an income that paid out every five to ten minutes.  It wasn't much, but it was a start.  After a couple more hours of play, and a crap load of swords, I had saved up enough to buy the blacksmith as well.  So thats' how it went for awhile, and thus also how my Albion real estate empire was born.  Shortly after that I quit playing the game for several months, until I managed to work a deal in trade and was able to start back up again.  As noted above, the game keeps track of time even when you've long forgotten, so I received a huge payment of several hundred thousand gold for all my back rent.  Naturally I took all of that cash and put it back into buying properties, and before I knew it I owned over half of Bowerstone.  By the time the credits rolled, I owned about every building in the game and had well over 3 million in gold.  Fable 2 doesn't actually end, so I was able to keep playing to finish up everything I missed.  After the end, there is one last major piece of property to buy.  Castle Fairfax, home to the main villain for the entire game, is put up on the market with a 1 million gold price tag.  By that time money was of course trivial, so I bought it first thing.  After that I was pretty much done with the game, but I at least went in and looked around before saving.  The castle is gigantic, comes with it's own butler, and is just all around cool to own.  All in all it was a fun ride, and now I feel I'm ready for Fable 3.

Elemental

This was from awhile ago, version 1.06.  I haven't played another game yet, just too many other good games to distract me lately.  They've released up to 1.08 now, but I'm still probably going to wait for 1.1 before I get another huge game like this one going.  Overall I only had a couple crashes straight to desktop, which is not nearly the problems that others have reported.  As an owner of GalCiv 2 plus all of it's expansions, I still very firmly believe in Stardock as a developer and I know they will support Elemental for years to come.

So this game had passed 300 turns, playing Resoln, on a large map, with 5 other opponents on normal difficulty.  The game placed me on a fairly large continent, I ended up only meeting the 3 other factions who started close by.  Umber was directly west, Altar somewhere close by as I hadn't uncovered enough of the map to see exactly where.  Gilden started to my south, but we didn't run into each other for quite awhile.  I first encountered them while sending a pioneer down to lay claim to that area, only to find out it was already occupied.  I didn't really feel like going to war, so I left them alone until Umber asked me to join in attacking them.  By that time I had a pretty nice-sized army, so I managed to steam roll over their defenses pretty easy.  Two of their cities fell quickly, after which their king went into hiding and I have so far been unable to find him or any of their cities.  I really didn't like their random names so I just used Forgotten Realms city names instead.

The map of the known world, at least by the scholars of Resoln.  The mighty empire of Umber is off to the west, with several Altar cities to their south.  The three of us seem to be the major powers on our continent, so we've avoided fighting each other so far.  Our efforts have mostly been to eliminate the kingdom of Gilden, which somehow manages to hold on to at least one city somewhere.

The kingdom report for Resoln indicates almost all of our income is being paid out in troop wages.  Aside from Umber, our armies are the largest and strongest.  Spies report that Gilden's army has been almost wiped out, with Altar's about half the size of ours.  Umber is definitely the strongest, but their research is lacking so their armies are many but poorly equipped.

The dynasty of Lord Zamiele, Emperor of Resoln.  Interestingly enough, his first son Mordred married the princess of Altar very early on in our relations.  Normally we would be sworn enemies, but I think this marriage has helped to keep tensions low.  Ironically, the marriage was Altar's idea.

Neverwinter, Resoln's capital city and seat of power.  It's come quite a long way from the dusty hole in the ground it started out as.

Zhentil Keep, our second city, was founded near an old growth forest to provide materials that were very scarce in the early years.

The city of Neverwinter, with Zhentil Keep far in the background.  Our sovereign is making his way down the road, gathering up troops for war.

Our sovereign and two of his sons are marshaling their forces together into one large army.

Here are two of Gilden's cities that fell during the first war.  At that time our army consisted of spears and leather armor, as we had been unable to locate any source of metal.  Luckily Gilden had plenty, so we ended up with not one but two productive metal mines.  With our knowledge of smelting, we were able to increase their output even further.

Waterdeep became the third city founded by Resoln, serving as a bridge between our capital and Gilden's conquered lands.  It was also close enough to harvest the nearby fire shard.

After years of war, and capturing two of his greatest cities, the King of Gilden is somewhat curt when we negotiate.

Lord Mordred leads his demonic army out into the wastes.

New Phlan is a younger settlement near a beach to allow building a harbor and exploring the sea.

Luskan is our last and smallest outpost, placed strategically to counter the ever-expanding Umber Empire.  With it's founding they are unable to expand their territory any farther east, not without declaring open war.  An Umber city can be seen not far in the distance.

All roads lead to Rome...

At least in my game they do.  It's been several hundred years since the war with Persia ended.  We've managed to keep a steady alliance all the while massing troops on our respective borders.  It's the end of the 1920s; dirt roads have given way to rail lines, with small towns evolving into bustling cities.  Skyscrapers and factories decorate Rome now, but much of the rural area is still used for farming.

Peace lasted for quite a while, at least during the time I was building up my cities and researching new technology.  I began to go around to all my cities and switch their focus to production, which did serious damage to not only my tax revenue but scientific research.  It was needed, because otherwise it was taking way to long to build anything in all but my most production heavy cities.  America was pretty weak, I asked my military adviser about their army and he just laughed.  Persia and I had just signed a cooperation agreement, so I felt secure enough to move most of my forces down to my southern border.  New York fell first, then Washington, Boston, and so on.  Like a row of dominoes all lined up, I moved in my infantry units with cannons for support and they couldn't do anything to stop me.  They didn't even have guns, so honestly it didn't feel fair.  I guess I can't be blamed if they didn't bother to do any research.

I've also met a couple new friends from across the sea, so in the interim I've again switched back to producing military units instead of buildings.  By this time most of the unrest in the conquered American cities to the south had all but disappeared.  Legions of workers were moving across the wilds building farms, mines, trading posts, you name it.  My first oil derrick was just finished, so I finally have the oil I need to start building fighters and destroyers.  I think I'll focus on controlling my entire continent, at least before I decide to start moving troops across the ocean.

After over 300 turns, it feels like the game is only just getting started.

King's Bounty : Crossworlds

This one kind of irritates me, mainly because I put quite a bit of time into the first game before basically finding out that it would probably be best to skip it and start with Armored Princess.  Luckily I hadn't made it very far before Crossworlds came out, so starting over again didn't hurt too much.

So far I'm glad I switched, as they've streamlined things a bit as far as unit abilities and character development go.  You now start the game with two reserve army slots, where before you had to spend runes in the mind tree to buy that ability.  This may not seem like much, but having two extra slots to swap armies in and out really does help.  It's very easy to lose in this game, that is if you aren't really paying attention to your troops on the battle field.  Using tactics is a necessity, if nothing more than to minimize losses.  The size of the army you field is tied to the amount of leadership you have, and in the beginning you don't have much.  With Crossworlds I've found that using smaller numbers of tougher troops, namely the new orc units you can hire almost right outside of the first town.

He does have a limited amount, however, and pretty soon I had used up all of the standard run of the mill orc warriors.  By that time I had cleared out many areas of the map, had obtained a sea chart which enabled travel to another island, and obtained several new spots to recruit troops.  I managed to luck across a pair of snakes boots; an artifact that adds to initiative, movement, and attack of all snakes in my army.  Luckily I had run into a local villager who had a nasty problem with snakes in his basement, and after clearing them out was able to hire them into my army.  Royal Snakes are pretty nasty to begin with, being that they can attack without retaliation.  When you add in the bonus from the boots, they can be downright deadly.  At least I hope so, because as it stands now I don't have nearly enough leadership to hire as many as I'd like.

I'm sure Crossworlds will get more play time, as the HOMM feel is definitely there.  The only difference here is you aren't building up cities, but your hero instead.  I've started a Warrior, which from what I can tell is the easiest class due to the leadership bonus and increased rage generation.  Speaking of which, they've opted to drop the rage chest from the first in favor of a pet dragon.  He's certainly not intimidating, but does get the job done.  I'm not sure if I'm going to miss having 4 different rage spirits or not, guess we'll see.  So far it seems that the abilities you get for the dragon are more focused and powerful, so that's a big plus.

Marvel : Ultimate Alliance

I've been playing through the PC version of Ultimate Alliance over the past few weeks and, aside from the initial shock of having to use the keyboard, I'm enjoying it quite a bit.  I initially started with the plans of using every character in turn to try and unlock all of their alternate outfits, but quickly realized that wasn't going to happen.  At a certain point in the game you get to form your own custom super hero team, so I decided to stick with the following:  Iron Man, Venom, Wolverine, and Dead Pool.  As soon as I earn enough rep to unlock another member, I'm planning on adding either Cyclops or Spider-Man.  This is with the very excellent packaged mod from marvelmods.net, otherwise I couldn't play Venom and that just wouldn't work.

Needless to say it looks much better on the PC, with the added bonus of being able to turn off the bloom effect that I hate with a passion.  I've managed to make it over half way through, this time taking special care to complete all the optional objectives that eluded me on the 360.  At the end it actually goes back through and shows you the long term consequences of what you did or didn't do, so this time I decided to do a few things different.  I've focused Iron Man on ranged attacks, specifically his plasma disc.  With the right gear and enough points, he can kill almost any normal enemy with one hit.

The problem is that he's weak as a kitten, and enemies tend to swarm over him when fights start.  If I can't get him up and into the air, he usually ends up dead.  Wolverine and Venom are specialized in close quarters fighting, with extra attention spent on Wolverine's regeneration.  It's really helpful during those tough boss fights, but unfortunately it doesn't help when either you or the AI happens to walk him off a cliff.

Dead Pool has kind of been split down the middle, with average close and ranged attacks.  His swords are pretty nasty against bosses, and if I can keep them at a distance his dual pistols can bring some pain as well.  Of course any comic book reader also knows that like Wolverine, Dead Pool can regenerate his health.  This saved me during one boss fight, as the entire team was knocked out and he was healing faster than being damaged.

Dawn of Discovery

This one is from awhile ago, but since my PC was wiped I lost the save and all the screenshots.

The Imperial Cathedral, in all it's splendor and glory.  The amount of nobles you need, not to even mention their seemingly endless list of demands, is mind boggling.  This was my largest noble district at the end of the Master Builder scenario.  One objective was to build the cathedral, the other was to pack 5000 nobles on to a single island.  Not an easy feat, especially once you begin to understand the ins and outs of how this game works.  The amount of things they demand quickly becomes a pain, not to even mention that space is of course the most precious resource of all.  Aside from multiplayer with a friend, I haven't tried it with Venice expansion yet.

The shot above shows my massive, and I do mean massive, production district.  Situated on the north west corner of the island, everything was made here.  Raw materials such as wheat, hemp, beef, salt, etc. all had to be carried in by ship.  I arranged this district, at least at the start, with the idea of keeping market buildings as close as possible to every production building.  That went out the window as demand shot up for this, or down for that.  The nice thing is that you can idle unnecessary buildings, thus lowering maintenance costs if money is a problem.  Master Builder is played on easy difficulty, so you don't have to worry about Corsairs demanding to paid off or they start sinking ships.

Combat in Dawn of Discovery is pretty non-existent, at least for me.  Granted that on Master Builder I probably wasn't intended to see much, but even on the medium sandbox game I played before I never once had to move troops or attack the AI players.  All combat was confined to the ocean, and it was always against the Corsairs.  I'm not really complaining, as there's so much going on in Dawn of Discovery I don't know where I'd have time to fit combat in.

Elemental : War of Magic

I've managed to get a pretty good game of Elemental going, at least from the evil Empire perspective.  Here's a nice shot of my capital city:

This was on version 1.06, since then I haven't really played it.  Version 1.08 is out now, but with all of the major changes coming I'll likely hold off until 1.1 is released.

Halo : Reach

Halo : Reach was released last week, even though I'm not a huge Halo fan I still picked it up after reading all of the glowing reviews.  "Best Halo Ever" and "Fitting End for Bungie" were some of the phrases that stuck in my head most, so I couldn't really stop myself in the end.  I played Halo 3, quite a bit actually.  I managed to finish the campaign on legendary, but never really delved much into the multiplayer.  I mainly stuck with consistent groups from local gaming forums.

So back to Reach; after finishing the single player campaign on normal, I'm not exactly sure what to think.  On the one hand I really enjoyed it, but on the other the ending was very anti-climatic.  Another thing that bothered me is the fact that there were no large set-piece battles, at least nothing like in Halo 3 where at one point you're tasked with taking down a Covenant Scarab.  I did enjoy the fact that you're never really on your own in Reach, there's always other UNSC allies about.  Most of the time it's in the form of your other team members from Noble squad, but you're also thrown into several large pitch battles with regular marines as back up.  No offense, but they can't take nearly the punishment a Spartan can.  I found myself feeling bad at one point, as I'd no sooner rescued a squad of marines early in a mission to have them wiped out near the end.  It's not their fault, maybe if I had reacted a little quicker a few could have made it.  I thought about replaying that level, but a near death experience sobered me up pretty quick to that idea.  Keeping myself alive should be higher priority, as it's to be expected that a few grunts are going to die.

Some of the newer elements really add tactical depth to the game, like the armor lock and jetpack.  The armor lock creates a hard shield while yours recharges, while the jetpack is pretty self explanatory.  The armor lock saved me many times during many tough fights, especially against the larger brutes with the even larger guns.  Even being close to where one of those hits can damage you, so having the armor lock as an option was a life saver.  The only problem is it, as intended, has a time limit.  So when you manage to pull off an armor lock just before that big brute smashes in your face, realize that he knows it has a time limit too and will wait patiently if need be.

So no big set piece battles is a downer, but I'm loving all of the new vehicles.  The space flight levels were easy to control and lots of fun, even flying the vertibird choppers from building to building was pretty easy.  I'm notoriously bad about smacking into buildings, but luckily that didn't happen here.

Civilization V

Put in about 4 hours last night and really love it so far. I don't really miss anything they've dropped, religion was a major concern initially. The combat is much better and more realistic than any of the past games, with ranged units being able to weaken enemies from a distance before other forces sweep in to mop up. I wasn't really sold on having a finite amount of resources, until I realized how much more valuable it makes your units.  You don't really appreciate that swordsman unit until it costs your last resource of iron.  I'm running the game at 1680x1050, everything maxed, and it's still smooth as glass for the most part. If I zoom out far enough, the frame rate does take a pretty big hit, but that's to be expected I guess. Specs: Intel C2D 3GHz, 4GB, EVGA 8800 GTS 512MB, Win 7 64.

So I'm around 200 turns into my first game, large map on the default difficulty. I went with Rome and have so far managed to found 6 cities. At this point in the game I don't have many options to expand; the Americans have settled to my south, the city-state of Warsaw lies to the east, west is the coastline, and the north is frozen and has impassable mountains. For the first several thousand years, everyone played nice and didn't step on any toes. Of course you've got your back-room deals, like Ghandi wanting me to form a secret pact against Egypt for instance, but for the most part it was all about protecting your own territory from the roaming hoards of barbarians. Warsaw had the only supply of horses around, not to mention the only iron mine, so naturally I started buying them off pretty early. Egypt was doing this as well, so every hundred years or so I'd have to hand Warsaw some more cash to keep their loyalty firmly in place. At the time I was bringing in more than enough gold to cover that, so it wasn't a huge concern.

At some point, I'm not exactly sure when, Egypt asked that I help them wipe out Persia. By this time we were pretty close position wise, they on the other side of Warsaw, not to mention had pretty profitable trade and research treaties going. I told them I would help, not really even thinking much about it at the time, but they had to give me 10 turns to build up an army. They agreed, but about two turns later I changed all of my production over to city improvement and work production. About 8 turns later Egypt declares war on Persia, then Ramesses comes and asks if I'm ready to fight. What little military I had was committed to keeping my cities safe, so I politely declined. Ramesses wasn't amused, but he kept the war going any way. It lasted a good while, but eventually the Persians wiped out his armies and took his capital. With only one city left, surrounded by Persian armies, Ramesses withdrew all of our agreements before being eliminated a couple turns later. It was almost like he was trying to pull in every last bit of coin to pay off Persia, but it didn't help.  By this time I had built up my army quite a bit. Two more iron mines were claimed, as well as numerous wild horses. I had reinforced my cities with crossbow garrisons, and was in the process of moving my main attack force of knights and swordsmen towards the outskirts of my territory. I had originally planned on attacking America first, as New York was very close to both my capital and a major production city. Workers had cut a road through the wilderness and connected the two, with America just a short distance south. It would have been easy to move all of my troops along our roads, marshal just south of Rome, then easily invade and take New York. That was the plan at least, until Persia and Warsaw went to war. I'm not sure who attacked first, but I'm guessing Persia. Warsaw not only had iron and horses, but a gold mine. As their closest ally, they had been giving me a portion of those resources for quite awhile. Naturally I jumped into action and moved all of my swordsmen and knights into their territory to help defend. This proved to be a problem, as Persia had several city-state allies and one of them was directly on my southwest border. Ragusa started sending crossbow troops into my territory, marching directly towards my coastal city. I managed to throw together a quick defense with my own crossbow troops garrisoned in the city, as well as some knights pulled from the war front.

Back in Warsaw; Persia had several spearmen, crossbows, longswords, and cavalry moving in from the east. It was a tough fight, as I lost several of my older units that had some nice promotions. Warsaw's tiny army of crossbows were wiped out, but we managed to push the Persians back into their own territory. I was beginning to move reinforcements down to prepare for an invasion, but Darius offered a peace treaty so I decided to accept. Little did I know that didn't include Warsaw, so their war continued. Darius moved right back into their territory just I pulled all my forces out. I wasn't officially protecting them, so I couldn't really do much else besides declare war again. At this point I had already succeeded in invading Ragusa, so I could safely turn my attention towards Warsaw.  It was obvious they couldn't last much longer, so I declared war on them and invaded.  Ghandi scolded me for my "warmongering ways", but I wasn't about to let Persia take them over! So now Warsaw is mine, Darius and I are playing nice for the time being, and I just discovered gunpowder. I think it's a perfect time to turn my sites back to the good old USA.