I politely disagree. Baldur’s Gate III teaches you absolutely nothing about its rules and systems. You are expected to discover the rules and systems on your own. Things like crowd control, the actual numerical advantages of height, and repositioning while in dialog are never explained.

It is the most frustrating aspect of Larian games, imo.

I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a patent Microsoft just hasn’t been willing to license use of.

I remember when the Sixaxis came out. It was missing vibration. It was because Immersion sued Sony (and ultimately won) over patent infringement of rumble motors. Sony ended up having to pay somewhere around $100 million.

As I see it, it’s a confluence of things which have captured the zeitgeist:

• Larian D:OS games have been very well received.
• Baldur’s Gate and the Infinity Engine games are beloved.
• Final Fantasy XVI, the big JRPG for the year, is squarely an action game and some view that as off-kilter. Baldur’s Gate 3, the big CRPG for the year, is squarely an RPG.
• D&D is a big property and new D&D games often gain a fair bit of attention.
• People seem to appreciate having no in-game purchases.

These five things, in my opinion, have pushed Baldur’s Gate 3 to the front of media outlets and, in turn, to the forefront of conversations.

In addition to the mentioned Godot, Monogame is available as well.

Mage Knight. This game threw me in to an unbridaled rage with how much I loathed it. I couldn’t understand why it was rated so highly. So, I went to BGG to see just how so many people could like this awful game.

Turns out everyone plays it cooperatively. Not a soul plays nor recommends the competitive mode; the mode I was playing in.

I’m a former game dev and I can tell you, at least from my experience, there was no golden age where developers and customers were treated fairly. It’s the primary reason why I left. Hell, I once interviewed at a place that showed off how the offices had beds in them, as if that was a selling point.

That said, I’d probably be someone who you’d consider “doesn’t care about the bad things these companies did.” I’m just too fuckin’ old to be mad about shit all of the time. If I was only going to patronize folks and companies who matched my own set of ideals and ethics, I would be more than just gameless. I would be homeless and penniless as well.

What I do is simply detach products and services from those who provide them. I can buy a thing from a person I find distasteful. I don’t have to invite them out for a drink and I certainly don’t have to avoid taking them to task for their poor or unethical behavior. Moreover, ethics and behavior are saleable. If someone comes around who offers something comparable to something from someone I find distasteful, then I can go patronize the new person instead. I have jumped ship from many service and product providers for that very reason. If you want my business, then you better ensure you’re either the only person who can provide what I want or ensure you’re the person I want to buy from.

specifically*

Seems like you’re ultimately annoyed that you can’t faceroll the game with simply bigger numbers in certain stats.

That’s not it at all. What I want is the freedom to approach the game using the mechanics of the stats, the way the game had worked for decades before. If that means “faceroll[ing] the game”, then so be it. I thought the final boss of Verdict Day (among many others across the series) was incredibly difficult but I didn’t have a problem with it because the game let me respond to that difficulty with building my mech rather than requiring me to be dexterous and having intimate knowledge of action game mechanics. AC6 just doesn’t play like the mech sim I expect the series to be. It plays like an action game and demands I master the action. It feels less MechWarrior, more Titanfall. I know that’s a reductive analogy and all three games are fairly different but hopefully my point gets across.

And you also seemingly have a hate boner for Dark Souls.

Then you’ve misread. I adore the Souls series. That doesn’t mean I want my From games to be homogenized in to it.

You’re also gonna have a pretty unsuccessful time chasing the gameplay of your childhood too. I firmly think if you got the AC you think you wanted, it wouldn’t reach those expectations at all.

I disagree. For what it’s worth, I wasn’t a child when Armored Core first released on the PSX; so, I’m not really chasing childhood nostalgia. Regardless, I thought Verdict Day was brilliant. Granted, it was ten years ago but it was nearly fifteen years after the original AC.

The thought of such a video being fifty minutes long makes me nauseous.

I recoiled when I read, “my dad actually owned a PS2 when I was born.” Oh time, you cruel beast.