Is this the one with the weird multiplayer stuff where you fight other people's orcs, and sometimes they're suspiciously like level 100 and super annoying to kill? And it has stupid sexy shelob?

I never finished it because of those things, but otherwise the core gameplay was alright.

Dying Light's gameplay is pretty good, but I like immediately got a mod to fix the idiotic weapon break system. It's the extremely tiresome "Your hammer breaks after hitting 20 zombies" system plus "you leveled up! now you can use a better hammer with bigger numbers!". Easy enough to mod to taste.

The story, however, is kind of bad. You don't really get any choices, which is fine, but what happens is not satisfying. The DLC is also fun, but the story ending is trash. I just uninstalled it after instead of doing any of the extra bits.

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Hades, on the other hand, is very good. No complaints.

That's what I meant. In the story they're super dangerous walking nuclear bombs. In the first game, it kind of lives up to it in the game play. You have a massive fireball (with knockdown!), blood magic shuts down the whole field, and more.

But by the third game, mages are more of a "control" class. If you want to actually do damage and kill monsters, you want to play a rogue. It's extremely disappointing.

I wanted it to be more like dragon's dogma where you summon meteors and tornadoes. Instead it's like some ice cubes and a campfire.

The first one is a love letter to the original Baldur's Gate games. Tactical group combat, real time with pause, fantasy. It's an original setting that tries to subvert some Tolkien ideas. It's pretty good, though it does feel a little old-bioware. The story is a basic "global threat -> gather allies" with a touch of political intrigue. The romance is kind of badly done. It's peak "give them gifts until sex happens".

The second one suffered from being extremely rushed. Much asset reuse. It also made the game more "action-y" because I assume some souless suit said that kids don't want tactics they want biff bam ACTION. The story tries to do something interesting in that it follows a single city over a long period of time as tensions rise. It's not as bad as people say, but it's very flawed. The romances are okay. Internet shitheads absolutely lost their minds that gay people exist and might mistakenly think you're interested until you say no thanks.

This one also switched to the dialogue wheel instead of giving you informed choices about what you'd say. It does a subtle thing where your actions in cutscenes and stuff are informed by what style you often pick.

The third one barely holds on to the origins (pun intended). It really wants to be an action game like mass effect. That kind of sucks because we already have mass effect, and I wanted something different for my different game. The story is okay and has some good beats. The characters are really good. The romance is much improved. The gameplay is kind of okay. Mages are really nerfed despite the story saying they're super powerful and dangerous. The world is big and has a lot of shallow quests. There's a shit mobile game style "click a button and wait an hour" mechanic. You can mod that out. The story is also a "global threat -> gather power ". I bet critical analysis of the story is fascinating because a lot of it is kind of suspect, politically. But most gamers are like critically illiterate and probably didn't think about it.

Fun aside: the first game has a "sex scene" where one of the character's naked state is less revealing than her ridiculously revealing "armor ". The third game you can actually see nipples in the sex scenes, but I think they haven't crossed the line to show a vag or erect dong (though I haven't done all the romances). Lots of folks are still ashamed of bodies.

You can import saves from one game into the next. There are a lot of choices to make in all of them.

And that's my off the cuff typed on my phone quick summary of the games.

One of the things I really like about Fate as a rules system, is that is built in. Every character has a Trouble and other aspects. So if your trouble is like "Manners of a goat", you can be like "Wouldn't it be fun if I completely insulted the Baron at this dinner??" If everyone agrees, you get a fate point.

The DM can also "compel" you on aspects in a similar way.

One of my players has an outstanding bounty and there's been a lot of "You know what this scene needs? Razor to show up." compels.

That's what I always say. Targeted advertising should be illegal. Contextual advertising is acceptable.

If I'm on the star trek wiki, serve me ads for star trek, sci-fi, and whatever. You don't need to know anything about me specifically.

We'd still need to do something about like ads that take up too much space, hurt page performance, or introduce malware, but removing the stalking would be an improvement

I'm more of a Himedere, and it's a lot of fun when the group is into it.

I did a really good dungeon with a puzzle once. Part of how it worked resulted in players unexpectedly getting split up and not being able to find their way back, while also being at risk of freezing to death. One of the players was like "I've never been so stressed in my life", but like in a good way, and I took that as the highest praise. I was so proud of them when they figured out the dungeon

I had fun with my warlock familiar, Vincenzo. He had the "Vincenzo Special" where he'd invisibly fly up to someone in combat and rip one straight from the depths of hell to flavor his Help action. I'm still a little bit a teenage boy I guess.

Healthy parenting would go a long way. See some of the other comments in this thread.

You can also have settings on your local network. If you're afraid of your kid casually finding something inappropriate, you can set that up stuff locally without involving the government. A determined kid will still find a way to get stuff, so this is more a safeguard against accidental discovery.

Investing in quality education would also benefit everyone.

the only way to protect kinds (like little me) is to block the porn.

This is false.

Parents have a number of options available to them that do no need to involve the state.

This is what I always say. Put the tickets in order and we'll do them.

Management always pushes back.

Yeah I don't think this covers externalized costs