Drakensang: The River of Time

Drakensang: The River of Time is a prequel to Drakensang, released a year (in Germany) or two (North America) after the first game. As far as I could tell, the subtitle doesn't refer to anything specific (even though the locations are by a river): it's merely something characters say when speaking of the passing of time. The main story is less of a world-saving epic in this one; for the majority of the game I didn't even know what exactly the main quest was even going to be about.

Drakensang

There always seems to be another Dark Eye video game adaptation I hadn't heard of before, although in Drakensang's case it's because I had mixed it up with Drakengard, thinking they're the same game. And as I don't play Japanese games, I had ignored it until I happened to watch some video featuring less-known roleplaying games and I realized my error. Drakensang seems to have carried 'The Dark Eye' as its subtitle (the other way around in German: 'Das Schwarze Auge: Drakensang') but now the game is being sold without it.

Disco Elysium

When I listed my top 10 favorite games of the 2010s back in June of 2020, I wrote I was doubtful there would be a need to add anything from the decade's games I hadn't yet played at that point. However, there was one game from 2019 that I was thinking would make the list once I got to it: Disco Elysium. I didn't want to drop anything from the list now so I have just added this masterpiece as a +1 to it.

Pathfinder: Kingmaker

Owlcat Games have been better than Mundfish in their claim to be an international studio based in Cyprus, seemingly having avoided bigger controversies so far. The masquerade seems to be holding up even now with their newest game, Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader, which came out a couple of weeks ago. Russia has not really been mentioned in the headlines the game has made up to this point.

Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition

I picked up my paused Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition run again. Actually beating the game took longer than I recall it taking back in the day, though -- I could swear I used to get through it from start to finish over one weekend. Maybe due to not playing it for years I had forgotten the best routes to take for optimal time saving.

Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition

I beat the original campaign of Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition at the end of 2021 already but only earlier this year finally returned to do the expansion, Heart of Winter, as well. I've always done the expansion just before beating the main game but this time I decided to do it differently and import my characters to the expansion after defeating Belhifet. That wasn't as smooth of a process as I wanted, and while I did get it sorted out, something else came up and the playthrough went on a hiatus.

I bounced pretty hard off Solasta: Crown of the Magister

I was looking for one more game to play during my summer with game pass and ended up on Solasta: Crown of the Magister, a game on my wishlist. However, I didn't get far into it before I uninstalled it.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire

With Obsidian Entertainment now under Microsoft, the Pillars of Eternity games being on the Game Pass is hardly surprising. Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire is even available as the full, Ultimate Edition. I wasn't expecting it to be a huge improvement from the mediocre first game due to this one's reception having been pretty lukewarm as well, but I was still looking forward to continuing my character's journey.

Pillars of Eternity

Pillars of Eternity was quite cheap a year ago in the beat-the-average tier of Humble Paradox Bundle. I paid less than 6€ for it but I could've waited a few months more as the game became even cheaper at the end of the summer when the definitive edition was on the house for Twitch Prime members. But I did get the game's expansions (practically) for free thanks to that.

Divinity: Original Sin - Enhanced Edition

When I was younger and read a lot more fantasy novels, I used to have a rule that if there were talking animals, the book or series wasn't for me. There's just something with animals being capable of human speech (more than parroting words) that puts me right off. It also tended to be a sign that there were other things I disliked. I guess the rule might apply to video games too.

Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition: Siege of Dragonspear

In hindsight, I could have skipped going through Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition and jumped right into its whole new expansion, Siege of Dragonspear. Beamdog's quality of life and content additions haven't changed the game enough to warrant a complete playthrough for someone like me who knows it inside out. Then again, thanks to that I could easily tell what hadn't been there in the original game. Beamdog's work tended to stick out.

Torment: Tides of Numenera

Torment: Tides of Numenera had a highly successful kickstarter campaign. Harnessing the nostalgia people have for Planescape: Torment and promising a spiritual successor to it, inXile Entertainment managed to gather more than four times their initial goal of 900k USD. That's a lot of money even when considering the cost of game development. Then again, simply throwing currency at a game is not guaranteed to make its story good enough to be comparable to such a classic.

Planescape: Torment - Enhanced Edition

It had again been 7 years since I last played Planescape: Torment and I thought it was time for another run of the old classic. But before I got to it, Beamdog announced they were releasing an enhanced edition of the game in April (last year) and I ended up waiting for it to get cheap enough to do my playthrough in it instead.

Shadowrun: Hong Kong

Shadowrun: Hong Kong was included in a Humble Bundle and I thought might as well buy it and play the third game too. It pretty much matched my expectations -- it is very much just more of the same.

Ember

I suppose Ember made its way onto my wishlist by appearing to be an isometric RPG with real-time combat with active pause. And I suppose its journey continued into my game library because of a heavy discount. The reason why I played it till the end, I do not know. I probably should have requested a refund but it did not occur to me to do so until many hours into the game.

Tyranny

I recall the announcement of Tyranny being a slight surprise in last year's March. Promising the game's release still within the passing year when Pillars of Eternity's last expansion had come out only a month earlier seemed to leave very little time for development. I guess having the tech already worked out in PoE allowed Obsidian Entertainment to finish the project faster. Picking the same date for release as Dishonored 2 (Nov 11th) was an odd choice, though.

I also got to play Tyranny unusually soon after release for a patient gamer as it was gifted to me by a certain Frenchman. (Thanks, Kane!)

Shadowrun: Dragonfall

First a DLC to Shadowrun Returns and later a standalone Director's Cut, Shadowrun: Dragonfall is the second Shadowrun game from Harebrained Schemes. It is not a sequel to the first game, which is maybe bit of a shame. Instead you make a new character for this adventure that takes place in Berlin, Germany.

Shadowrun Returns

I had not realized Shadowrun Returns was a tablet port until I got into the game and noticed the barely existent interface. Touch controls fit this kind of an "isometric" RPG superbly, though -- way better than, let us say, a first person shooter. Thus it being designed for tablets did not really lessen the experience too much. Still, more hotkeys, tooltips, and a more expansive GUI in general would have been nice to have on the PC version.

The Temple of Elemental Evil

After releasing Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, Troika Games set two teams to develop games simultaneously. One of the projects was Vampire: The Masquerade -- Bloodlines, which was released in 2004, and after which Troika Games closed their doors in early 2005. The other game was The Temple of Elemental Evil (released in 2003). Like Bloodlines, ToEE is an RPG and -- sadly enough -- similarly riddled with bugs.

Changing the Nature of a Man

I finally managed to finish my journey in Planescape: Torment. Luckily, much had been forgotten since my first playthrough, which was maybe 7 years ago, and things were new for the most part. I could still recall the main plot, though, which is bit of a pity in a story-focused game like this. However, I had fun, and that is the most important thing.