Whatcha been playing?
I’ve been playing a ton of “The Roottree’s are dead.”
It’s a very cool detective game akin to obra dinn and golden idol. Highly recommend if you’re a fan of the genre. Besides that I’ve also been checking out a bunch of playdate stuff :3
I finished Pathfinder: Kingmaker after putting 250 or so hours into it and now I feel kind of empty. I still don’t think it’s a particularly great game, but after spending so much time on it you develop a sort of Stockholm syndrome. There are things about the game I enjoyed, but also endless frustrations. The ending chapters especially were an absolutely insane slog of numerous terrible Wild Hunt encounters that seem completely mindlessly thrown together to up the “challenge”. It’s a shame, really because there is a good game in there somewhere if you’d only scale back the bullshit. It could also do with some editing in general, I don’t think it justifies being so goddamn long.
Looking for the next thing to fill the void has been a bit of a challenge, I’ve been at it with Kingmaker for so long it’s been tough to switch focus suddenly. I started Weird West, which I bought on the last GOG sale and the beginning of it seemed alright, not sure if it will stick though. I also played through the first couple of levels of Desperados: Wanted Dead or Alive which is an absolute classic that I never played back in the day. The AI is pretty dumb, but immersion breaking stupidity aside it’s still super fun to approach it as a puzzle and work around and abuse the dumb AI.
Still, my brain might still be in the CRPG frame of mind after two months of Kingmaker so I also installed Arcanum with the Multiverse Edition modpack. Perhaps this is the time I finally play through it.
Have you heard of Robin Hood: The Legend of Sherwood from the same developers? A very similar game in many ways, with some of the most beautiful pre-rendered backgrounds I’ve ever seen in an isometric game. And yes, the AI can also be played around with at will, although it feels a bit more sophisticated compared to Desperados.
I never heard of it back in the day, but I did see it suggested on GOG when I looked at Desperados. I might consider grabbing it the next time it’s really cheap if it’s really that good. Better than Desperados/Commandos you reckon?
The old isometric games have really aged so gracefully. Desperados looks absolutely fantastic still imo and Baldur’s Gate 2 also has some fantastic isometric art (sprites not so much). I bet they’d look even better on a good CRT, too.
I’ve never played a Commandos game for some reason, so I couldn’t tell, but I would say it’s about on par with Desperados 1 in terms of gameplay, if perhaps a bit less punishing. Cutscenes and voice acting (at least with the German version I played) are considerably worse however and I have no idea why.
I can confirm that these looked magnificent on a high quality CRT. This was a transitional period, when 3D graphics were not able to deliver the same amount of detail as the best 2D isometric graphics just yet. That said, everyone knew that the clock was ticking, since the advantages of fully 3D graphics were obvious and, unlike today, technological progress happened at breakneck speeds.
I was particularly fond of isometric RTS games back then. I spent the most amount of time with Age of Empires II (of course), but there were many others, like Cossacks (2001) from GSC Gameworld (who would later develop S.T.A.L.K.E.R.), which didn’t look as good as the inspiration, but boasted far larger maps and enormous numbers of units on screen. With American Conquest (2002), they refined the concept and overtook the original version of AoK in terms of visuals, with huge and detailed sprite work, as well as even more insane unit counts that pushed CPUs of the time to their limits. The gameplay was almost on par as well, with quite a bit more depth. It’s ridiculous just how much more sophisticated it is compared to Cossacks, despite there being only 1.5 years between the two. America (2000) is a more obscure title from this era, essentially a Wild West clone of Age of Empires. It’s quite solid, but unremarkable compared to the other games mentioned here.
Another Eastern European series I was fond of was Sudden Strike, set in WW2, as well as its sequel and countless spin-offs and expansions. There’s a model train charm to the detailed visuals, despite the not exactly charming setting. Fiendishly hard and realistic, but for all of its realism, it unfortunately decides to ignore the context of many battles, especially the war crimes that happened around them, which is troubling, since you can also play from the German perspective. Blitzkrieg (2005) is quite similar in terms of gameplay, although with a more sophisticated engine that blends 2D and 3D elements. However, when the groundbreaking Codename Panzers with its amazing fully 3D graphics and tight (if unrealistic) gameplay and mission design came out in 2004, all of these more technologically conservative WW2 RTS games instantly felt outdated, even though it came out right in the middle of them. They still had their value though, since Codename Panzers wasn’t trying to replace them in terms of gameplay, focusing on decision making instead of simulation.
Similarly, Desperados 2 (2006) made the first game feel a century old. From the same camera distance as the first game, it both looked far better than the original and had the advantage of dynamic lighting, more fluidity and a freely rotatable camera. Up close it was a bit blocky, but this was to be expected back then.
Many of the titles mentioned above can be rather troublesome on modern systems, so I highly recommend checking out their pages on the PCGamingWiki, which is a truly invaluable resource.