Weregamer's Game Musings

After two plays through XCOM 2, in giving that a rest, just in time for the release of Grim Dawn. I kick-started this one, and though it failed to pull me away from Path of Exile while in beta, the complete game is more satisfying. Also, PoE league endings (which dump all your characters and stash contents into the base league) generally flush most of my interest, it's so anticlimactic to see the cool bestest loots, fruits of your labors, suddenly just drops in the bucket of what you've seen throughout the life of the game. Back to GD: The influence of the folks who worked on Titan Quest is very obvious, especially in the class and skill system which is pretty much a straight port. But the interesting addition of a Wild West flavor, and a bit of effort into various types of storytelling makes it more appealing to my current tastes, and the clean integration of firearms with magic is cool. Despite the similarity in the shallow high concept description, the setting is not muc

The first week or two after Heart of Thorns went live, I was a bit disappointed. Playing on, first because four of my friends and I always play together on Mondays, I got a little more of a philosophical handle on how the expansion changes the game, and I'm no longer ambivalent about having bought it - I love some parts, and I just had to learn that the "different kinds of fun as you feel like it" game design is now painted in broader strokes - especially you should only go into one of the new zones if you feel like the activity that is going on in it. Roughly speaking, HoT adds four things to the game: A new character class, a new "elite" subclass for each class, a new form of progression at L80, and a bunch of new zones with their story. Of these, the zones are the most visible and important, and the mastery tracks are the most novel and IMO successful, so I'll leave those for last. In thinking about these changes together, I think I see a philosophica