Ah sure I was afraid I might have forgotten something. Though again a very different category and not the kind of game I’d play. It would be more accurate to say I guess that Black Myth is the first game out of China that seems like it could make it big in the full price AAA single player action market. I can’t recall another Chinese game of this type that has held similar promise.
It’s the most impressive video game to come out of china, the first that seems poised to generate significant buzz internationally. Whether it will be any good I do not know, but early demos had been very impressive. So I’d say it is hotly anticipated, you were just late to the party. It may not be that original in gameplay but how many AAA productions are strikingly original nowadays? None that I can remember.
I dislike most if not all party members. Like not always actively dislike, but don’t care much what happens to them. Even if the writing and voice acting is more than decent. Too grimdark and fucked up is how I would describe it. It’s like Larian took all the criticism about previous games being too lighthearted and overcorrected. And not in particularly relatable ways, feels more like they sat down and brainstormed intensely in nerdy excitement and with little depth or restraint about what would be cool and extreme and fucked up, and oh wouldn’t that be awesome… creating freakish caricatures with oh so dramatic and cursed backgrounds rather than you know, relatable flawed characters. Of course I only feel like this because much is done very well and so any missteps are more striking.
I love the turn based combat but sometimes it does feel like a chore, I wish I could do real time sometimes or purely rules-based AI, and switch to turn-based only when shit goes wrong. For those fights that really do not pose much of a risk and are not that interesting. Someone might say on the difficulty so no fight is trivial, but that can tire one out as well as now every fight can be a major obstacle and sometimes you just want to move the story on a little.
It is a very good game and makes an admirable job of showing you the branching paths and impact of your decisions. Presumably creating incentives to replay, but personally I was just satisfied to get my own story and knowing how it could have gone different in many ways. Also well written, they tend to get flak for their writing, but compared to most video game writing it’s pretty good.
You may be forgetting that Kaliningrad is another Russian harbor in close proximity. Don’t know if there’s any credence to assertion that Gotland is in danger, but just saying.
I got burnt out on the first one. Pretty setting and some neat ideas aside, I do wonder how many people would be interested in a sequel to this. It wasn’t exactly gripping in story or gameplay to begin with. Though I’m happy it was made, it was something unique at least.