Second purchase: "Eador: Masters of the Broken World". I've had my eye on the game since it was first released. When it came out, there was lots of talk about bugs and such, but there's been several patches since then, so when it went on sale, I checked out the forums again, and decided to dive in.
I got Baldur's gate 2 enhanced edition and Surgery simulator 2013 for under ten bucks. good games. good deal.
I noticed that A few items on my wishlist were on sale, so I picked 3 of them up: 7 Grand Steps -- I saw a Let's Play of it that looked moderately interesting. 7 Wonders: Ancient Alien Makeover -- I think I played a demo (unlimited play but it had these really annoying ads in it) of one of the 7 Wonders games a couple of years ago -- it was just 'ok', but a bit too easy. This one sounded better. I'm a sucker for match-3 games in any case. Armada 2526 Gold Edition -- a 4X game, so 'nuff said. I've heard mixed things about other games in the series. It was on sale so I figured I'd take a chance.
Remember Me is one of those games I really want to like but just. Ehhhhh >.< (I should still finish playing it though) Anyway considering getting Fallout 3 (I've already got New Vegas and played Fallout 3 like. Years ago, but didn't play any of the DLC and got stuck with the terrible terrible, ending), but I don't want to make more purchases until I've ensured I won't like. Starve or something in the remaining half of the month XP
I bought Castle Crashers, Deus Ex Collection, Fallout: New Vegas, and Eador: Masters of the Broken World
Picked up Dishonored. BTW, played a bit of the earlier games. So far I can't exactly recommend any of the ones I've tried, though I may give Eador a little more time. Seven Grand Steps is a bit of fun, but it goes on and on and on for far too long and gets repetitive. I'm not someone who's actually into video game stories, so I suppose others might like some of the role-playing aspects, but they seem more like multiple choice guessing games (guess which one will give you the biggest reward). But some people like that... The boardgame aspect of it is fun but there's too much of the same without enough variation. 7 Wonders: Ancient Alien Makeover -- this is a match-3 game with some gimmicks and minigames. It has the standard Match 3 mechanics with some added minigames and buying crap and stuff like that which seems thrown in for the heck of it. I only pay attention to the match 3 part, and that's standard, but not quite up to the standards of others I've played. In other words, I'm going back to Bejeweled 3 Eador is a flawed game without a lot of the character that other similar games have. The combat is very similar to games like HoMM and King's Bounty, the interface needs work, and with the limited play I've put into it, most of it just feels grindy. I'm always more interested in strategy over tactics, and so much of it feels like it serves no strategic purpose, they are simply there to level up and collect loot. You can fight in a tower, but when you do that, it looks exactly like the combat map for an outdoors area. It's just a weak game, imho.
Yeah that was my experience with Eador :\ I wanted to like it but every time I tried to play it I ended up wishing I was playing a different fantasy strategy game. (like Dominions, probably because the overland map reminded me of it ) I managed to get a bit more money so I shouldn't starve at least, (...or more like, overheat 'cause what would actually get cut if i overspent was air conditioning) although I haven't bought anything new. Kiiiiiiiind of interested in The Secret World, but since it's an MMO that really depends on what one of my friends is doing with it as to whether I'd actually play it, and thus whether I should bother. (and even if I could play with friends MMOs aren't really my thing usually--although i might be a bit biased against them, the last MMO I played was Diablo 3 and it was basically a single player/small group RPG that inexplicably decided to graft on a bunch of MMO elements >.<)
Tried Eador a bit myself, have enjoyed it somewhat so far but I can see what you're talking about. Which is a shame cause I really like a lot of the concepts and mechanics.
I have a lifetime subscription to it since I really enjoyed the beta. And then I got stuck and thoroughly frustrated once I got to the third zone of the first region. It has a lot of positive aspects to it -- interesting quests that are (probably) nothing like anything you've seen before in an MMO, with interesting mysteries and puzzles to solve, lots of exploration to find points of interest to piece together the story of the zone you are in. But it also can be quite cruel and require grinding to fix problems in your build (and sometimes those 'solutions' are not adequate, which means more grinding). Because there are solo-only areas, getting stuck and unable to proceed any further is a real possibility (that's what frustrated me). Sometimes I'm not sure if the problem is in my build, or in me (the combat does require certain hand-eye coordination at times, which is a weakness of mine). That would be fine if we were dealing with a group, but what happens with the solo-only dungeons? I got stuck, and couldnt' proceed, and felt so frustrated that I just quit in disgust (After grinding a bit in the easier zones, then starting a brand new character with a completely different build... that I hated because it was not a kind of playstyle that I enjoyed). Anyway, I'm an older guy with bad eyesight and bad reflexes, so ymmv. It's definitely not your run of the mill MMO, and I mean that in an entirely good way. And I may actually give it yet another try one of these days. Who knows, maybe I'll do better.
The Secret World was great in theory but the execution was fairly poor. Character creation was ugly, costumes/clothing is unreasonably expensive, the class/skill system is pointlessly complex and confusing in being so free-form, and the balance is absolutely terrible. You go from okay areas to hard ones to easy ones to hard ones then to even harder ones. It wasn't fun, for me at least. I liked the idea, I liked aspects of what they did, but on the whole it just didn't work (for me, anyway).
