Silverfall: Earth Awakening

Years ago, I eyed up Silverfall, an isometric action roleplaying game developed by a now-defunct French company Monte Cristo, wondering whether I should buy it. I decided against it -- which was a smart decision because there are dozens of more interesting and entertaining titles in the genre out there, especially these days. However, last year I saw someone on my Steam friendlist pick up the game and its standalone expansion Earth Awakening -- most likely entirely for collection purposes -- while they were next to free on sale. Against my better judgment, I bought them too but with the intention of actually playing through them. (Don't do that.)

Weird West

In my Prey: Mooncrash post I speculated there was more than family reasons behind Arkane Studios' founder and president Raphaël Colantonio quitting in 2017. Since then, in an interview, he has added that there had been "creative anxiety" involved with delivering big titles, having to make products rather than focusing on other things. Neither did he seem too happy about the Prey name that had been bestowed upon his last project.

Hades

Pyre (2017) is almost like the black sheep of Supergiant Games, I feel. At least I personally lost all interest after seeing how it did combat encounters as some sort of sportsball matches. I think the game was received positively overall but at least my perception is that Pyre was a low point for Supergiant after Bastion (2011) and Transistor (2014). The studio pretty much fell off my radar after that.

Torchlight III

The story of Torchlight III began with the founding of Runic Games back in 2008 by brothers Max and Erich Schaefer (co-founders of Blizzard North and creators of Diablo) and Travis Baldree (creator of Fate), plus others not relevant to this post. Runic released the first Torchlight in 2009 and its quite successful sequel Torchlight II in 2012. In 2014, Baldree and Erich Schaefer left the company to found Double Damage Games. I remember thinking that it was a considerable loss and a bad omen for the action RPG series. And indeed in 2017, instead of continuing Torchlight, Runic released Hob, an isometric action-adventure game.

Grim Dawn

Titan Quest got an anniversary edition update last year and I went back to see how the game was. The update combined the base game with its expansion, Immortal Throne, and included bug fixes and balance tweaks, but otherwise everything was exactly as before. . . which is not all that good actually. It is hard to believe I went through the game's all three difficulty levels with two characters back in the day. But maybe there were not that many games to play then.

The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing: Final Cut

The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing probably could have used a shorter name. It does not even form a nice acronym like the names of many other action RPGs, although I suppose calling it Van Helsing works. The name became even longer when NeocoreGames decided to combine the game trilogy into one title -- the Final Cut.

Victor Vran

Victor Vran is an action RPG made by Haemimont Games. I think it would be safe to assume that Bastion was a big source of inspiration for the developers as the game shares a lot of features with it. The game mechanics are largely similar but do make an attempt to have bit more depth and variation.

Transistor

I bought Transistor, the second title from Supergiant Games, before I had actually played Bastion, which I had purchased earlier. If I had played it beforehand, I probably would have skipped this one. Many things are slightly different but at its core, Transistor uses the same formula as Bastion. I guess the developers did not try to fix something that was not broken.

Bastion

Bastion has received an overwhelmingly positive reception and sold over three million copies after its release in 2011 which is quite well for an indie game. But there are also more mixed reviews – the game's Wikipedia page summarizes some of them. I largely agree with them and, in my opinion, the reasons for the mixed opinions make Bastion maybe not quite as good a game as it is considered to be.

Diablo III (and Reaper of Souls)

Diablo III and its expansion were 50% off sometime last fall, and I decided to finally buy and play the latest iteration of the genre-defining action roleplaying game series by Blizzard Entertainment.

Path of Exile

I wonder if I should give Path of Exile another go. After my quick dip -- about a month ago actually; a week before the beta ended -- I have learned that the game has more depth in its mechanics than I thought. Then again, there are also reasons why I never got beyond Act 1 in the first place.

Dungeon Siege III

At some point Square Enix decided to acquire the Dungeon Siege franchise from Gas Powered Games, apparently to fill up a gap of dungeon crawler genre in their portfolio. And thanks to that, we now have Dungeon Siege III, which was released in 2011.

Sacred 2

I got couple hours into Sacred 2: Fallen Angel before I came to the conclusion that it was basically the same game as the first one -- just with a 3D engine -- and ended up quitting the game for pretty much the same reasons. Why play Sacred 2 when one could instead play Torchlight 2, which is actually fun.

Torchlight 2

And so, the much anticipated sequel to Torchlight is finally here. The biggest features of Torchlight 2 are probably its multiplayer and the more expansive story and how it's spread across four Acts, each with their own environments, very much in style of Diablo 2. There are numerous other new things and improvements as well, but the same rewarding and meaty combat is still there.

Torchlight

Few times I have wished I had an entry of the first Knights of the Old Republic on this blog as I would've liked to check what I thought about it. No post can be found of Torchlight either. I guess I played them both before I started this or for some other reason didn't just write about them.

Fate: The Traitor Soul

The whole Fate series is sort of a poor man's Torchlight. But it still is something to play while waiting for Torchlight II to come out. Fate: The Traitor Soul -- the second standalone expansion -- is again basically the original game (or the previous installation more precisely) but with more things.

Fate: Undiscovered Realms

Fate: Undiscovered Realms, a standalone expansion to Fate, followed the original game three years later. It continues with the same concept but has some lazy and outright weird design choices.

Fate

Fate (or FATE) is the game Travis Baldree made before Torchlight (I think he worked on Mythos between them), and if you've played the latter, you will find Fate very similar. In fact, they are almost the same game, Torchlight is just an improved version.

Dungeon Siege II: Broken World

I have played Dungeon Siege II and its expansion through twice already but something made me start a new game once again. This time I decided to make a weapon and a shield using Fist of Stone (melee and nature mage hybrid) character instead of the usual dual-wielding pure melee build I favor.

Games You Should Not Play: Sacred

Diablo 2 was released in 2000, and its expansion, Lord of Destruction, in 2001. Sacred was released 2004, four years after D2. That's a long time to look and learn how a great action rpg is done. What did you do during that time, Ascaron? 'Cause Sacred surely ain't a good game.