Disagree with this. Quite a few instances where it was unnecessarily verbose. First time meeting Gideon is an example.
Sure, at times the descriptions could be shortened. But I didn't feel like I had unmanageable info dumps thrown at me. I mean, after playing PoE I have developed a strong allergy to filler text, and it didn't trigger while playing the game...
I agree that they could have trimmed 20% of the fat and instead used the resources to better explain the more important details. But still, I think that the writing was good enough for the most part.
Regarding your specific exaple, I disagree that there is no need to describe the portraits. We see a tiny image of a guy with a scar on his face. It's hard to understand if it's from a monster attack, a burn mark, or his wife found out that he cheated on her with a mutant... I don't mind a few extra sentences.
How is it good combat? Its serviceable, but barely. It features the worst combat out of all the games they have made.
It's good combat because it is relatively tactical. You cannot bumrush the enemy and win, especially at the endgame. For example, the fight in the armory - There is no way you can win this without careful use of cover, consumables and gadgets.
Sure, some claim that the combat is "just shoot in the legs and then the arms and throw some grenades, and that's it", but if so, then this can be said for almost every video game ever created
ITS had made only 2 additional games, so even if the combat in CS is worse, it's still vastly superior to the majority of other games.
Elaborate on this, I found the soundtrack to be absolutely forgettable and the graphics are nothing to write home about.
I liked the soundtrack - especially the main and the factory themes. But I guess it's subjective. The graphics, for a studio of 5(?) people, are very good in my opinion (The Heart, especially). How many games did you play, made by a studio with employees that can be counted on one hand, that have better graphics?
Yes, which is why I cant believe you said the combat is good, theres no variety, theres nothing interesting to find there, its a check list.
As mentioned, the combat is only "good". Having a real weapon variety would've made it great.
You never got the feeling of finding good stuff that changes how you approach encounters like in fallout when you got better armor at an earlier stage
As always, you need to consider fun itemization vs balance. In fallout, if you cheese your playthrough and get the power armor early or steal the bozar, it would be fun as hell, but only for a few minutes. Then, your entire gameplay will be ruined as all the fights will be trivial. Basically, you activate easy mode.
In CS, while you never find "Uber powerful" items and never feel like the terminator after finding a super cool gun or armor, you always have fun and challenging fights (well, maybe except fighting the 1000000th frog...).
If one belongs to the "muh balans" club, and doesn't care about balance at all, I can understand how he can become frustrated with all the +1 itemization.
In my opinion, the itemization in CS should have gone a step or two in the direction you suggested, but not too much.
. Yes, I saw that the reference build uses "Lone Wolf" but I wasn't sure whether the creator just wanted to do a solo run or if he considers this the optimal build for a melee fighter. So, I figured I'd just take it for test drive and see how it plays. Results are mixed so far: Evans is useful at least at the very start of the game, but he's also fragile compared to my main character. Will be interesting to see how it plays out.
