I thought a "work" game was odd, so I watched a let's play of it. Even though there were two guys laughing with each other, I found the game too boring for me. I watch LPs for any game I'm curious about.

I have a "one year minimum" rule.

The problem with rating anything is that it's all subjective. When people say that a song or movie or game sucks, they almost never say "it's because I don't like that genre". They just say it's bad, making you think that the quality is bad. If you gave me the absolute best games of every genre, I would still say I didn't like some of them, because there are genres I just don't like, and not even the "best" games will win me over. Plus, just because you do like a genre, does NOT mean you're going to like everything in that genre.

There are people who will love something more than it deserves, and others who will hate something more than it deserves. Ultimately, nobody's opinion on something is all that useful; only you can decide if you'll really like it.

Two titles come to mind (which, fortunately, isn't saying much, within my 74 GOG games): Divine Divinity and Shadow Man.

Now, this isn't to say my point of view represents some kind of 'absolute truth', they both may be amazing games, but I just couldn't get myself to like them.

First, Divine Divinity was suggested to me as a great cRPG with great story, humour and something to do with non-linearity, so, I conceded and bought it. And, man!, what a disappointment it was... everything in that game feels like a chore to me. Way too much grinding, boring characters, boring story, difficulty levels all over the place, an outset town that takes too long to finish, when it should have been nothing more than a tutorial level of sorts, voice acting that ranges from awful to passable, and that humour that was highly praised has eluded me so far. It just doesn't feel rewarding to me, everything has to be done according to the suggestions and tips found on official forums, or you'll never move far in the game, which is a way of them showing players that, say, want to play a Survivor with exclusively Survivor-skills a giant middle finger.

Shadow Man was entirely my mistake: I really *love* the Soul Reaver games and I thought Shadow Man was like them. As it turns out, I was wrong. Broken gameplay mechanics, basic enemies that take longer to kill than most bosses in any other action-adventure game, no clue whatsoever as to where to go or what to do (there are NPCs that give you hints, but they're cryptic as hell), terrible sound design -- seriously, the guy who came up with the gunshot sound effect when you're in the land of the dead should rot in video game hell with that sound on infinite repeat! -- and plainly bad... everything else, aside the lore and the settings.

There are like five games I've been looking forward to playing, all listed in this post. So I hope y'alls have terrible taste. You do, right? Don'tcha?

Catacombs Pack It was a waste of money... I brought it thinking Id software will listen my prayers, on GOG.com are customers whit a lot of money who want their games ... doom, quake, wolfenstein...etc.

The only thing I'm disappointed in is myself for being too lazy to play most of the games I've bought.

Nevermind

Sadly, I think that is up to ZeniMax. And I personally don't see a contract with them happening anytime soon. :/

Most definitely Giants: Citizen Kabuto for me. I bought it based on various gushings of praise from the user reviews and a retrospective or two, which has taught me to not entirely trust the user reviews here for the older games. The game certainly looks nice and is indeed quite funny, but the gameplay is so shallow and dull in comparison. The so-called 'RTS' sections are just plain shit (I mean they really are awful) and only the first race, the Meccs, can be somewhat enjoyable to play as. The game only gets worse when you switch to Delphi and then to Kabuto, and the final few levels really do feel like the devs couldn't be bothered to test them for difficulty or fun.

Other than that, all my other GOG purchases have turned out to be very good choices for myself.

I bought that at the time on the strength of the mech demo and the reviews in game mags. I too was disappointed by later levels. It's like they designed only part of a game then just winged it with the rest.

Still I had shallow fun with it but only for a short while at a time. I'd also be interested in a sequel that could flesh out the gameplay more.

There's only one way to make sure: watch gameplay videos of the games in question.

I'm near finished with IWD (first playthrough, "Insane" difficulty level), and I am liking it quite a lot. I'd say I like the combat part more than I did in e.g. Baldur's Gate 2 (which I otherwise liked quite a bit), where a hard fight meant that there was some überboss which had 99% resistance to everything, would resurrect itself after the first death, and would constantly use instant kill spells on your party (lots of reloads, until you finally were lucky enough to not be killed by the spells). I like the IWD "crowd control" kind of combat a lot more, using the druid and mage area damage spells and trying to lure the enemy hordes to my carefully planned ambushes. Frankly, I felt the combat in BG2 was harder than that of IWD, especially considering I was playing BG2 in normal difficulty.

But yeah, I think it certainly makes or breaks the game what you choose in the beginning (e.g. I presume a party of only thieves, bards and druids might prove pretty difficult). Fortunately it has premade characters so you don't have to do everything from the scratch, but I did that anyway in order to get better characters. Some of the premade ones seemed a bit lackluster, like a mage having a bit lower intelligence etc. Naturally I want a mage with INT 19, or at least 18. And high constitution to all!

The party creation part was possibly the hardest part of the whole game, but I liked it anyway. Googling for suggested parties, making some kind of combo of those suggestions, selecting the best races for classes, and making sure I was putting ability points to correct abilities for each class. It was pretty stupid thought that it made sense to reroll the ability points so many times that you get near max amount of them, I didn't see the point. Just give me the max points and let me decide where to put them, damn it.

You know, I really understand why you - or anyone - would dislike Divine Divinity. The points you make are completely valid, and what's more, I actually agree with you. Aleroth is the most long, arduous, tedious starting village I've ever encountered, and every time I want to start a new adventure, I groan at the thought that I'll have to trek through those interminable bloody catacombs again. The voice acting is indeed pretty awful - one of the very rare cases where the French dub is actually better than the original, to my surprise (I bought DD on GOG to try the English version).

And yet.

From the first hours I've put into Divinity years ago and right until now, it still remains one of my favourite RPGs. When I first played it, I had never experienced something so "openworld" before (I was bred on JRPGs, so I was used to complete linearity). I also loved how there were many possible responses to any given situation, so many dialogue choices that offered a good amount of roleplay, and so many delightfully silly interludes (like the two skeletons having a metaphysical conversation on the impossibility of their existence, and consequently falling into heaps of bones). I loved how the huge maps were full of little secrets and rewarded exploration (I'm nothing if not an over-zealous map completer). I loved how you could mix and match your skills how you liked, without being stuck in a class. And the soundtrack was haunting, beautiful, unlike anything I've ever heard before (again, I was bred on JRPGs, I was used to a different kind of music in my games).

Like I said, I understand why people would dislike the game. But to me, it still has a lasting charm, warts and all. I'm currently playing through it again, and I still love it. :)

The Catacomb games weren't owned by Id, though. They were made as part of a deal with Softdisk, and in the case of Abyss-Armageddon-Apocalypse, were just made with the engine from Id after Id had split off from them. So if they're promising of anything showing up here it would be of the other Softdisk-published titles like Rescue Rover.

As for the game that disappointed me the most, probably Inquisitor. I (like a lot of people I think) got excited by the whole "be an inquisitor, investigate heresy, torture your victims for their confessions" thing which turned out to be a lot smaller portion of the game compared to the bland poor-man's-Diablo dungeon crawling.

It's three iterations of three levels, and as someone who enjoys these kinds of stories, their take on it was certainly not that bad.

Before reading my post, please hide any dangerous objects. I would prefer not to have them thrown at me.

Total Annihilation: I played this one when it was relatively new, and enjoyed it. I'm also a big RTS fan. So what could possibly go wrong? Well, apparently my taste in RTSs have changed enough for me to not enjoy this (and yet I do find the original C&C and StarCraft to be fun). It just managed to feel bland, boring and a bit slow.

Quest for Glory. I've not tried all of them, but the first one, ugh. I don't like King's Quest, Space Quest or the Larry series, and this game still have the main issues from those games. Thus I did not like it.

Might & Magic 9. Alright, so I kinda knew that this one would be bad. I just expected it to be bad in another way. It just did not feel well balanced at all.

Inquisitor. If this game did not have so much potential, I would probably have shrugged and moved on, because it's not terrible. Everything just feels too slow, but I love the amount of descriptions & dialogue, and the atmosphere was really good as well. Just up the movement speed, lower the downtime between combat and make combat a bit faster and you'll have a winner.