Borderlands 3: Siren Song

[Part of the Wasted Land story]

After some quick study, Tannis is fully sirened up and destroys the defenses to the Calypso's Cathedral and main base, letting the united Crimson Raiders attack the compound where Ava slays Troy, avenging Maya and absorbing his energy which activates her latent siren gene. Tannis takes her as her apprentice.

Unfortunately Troy had already begun unlocking "the Great Vault" having discovered that the moon was actually the key. Within was meant to be a universe destroying creature that his sister Tyreen wanted to absorb to cement her godhood - she was just running an errand on an Eridian homeworld to kill her father while waiting.

With that out of the way Tyreen warps back to Pandora only to find Lilith and Moze already waiting for her and is wiped out easily by the Mechwarrior. Alas the moon is now too close to Pandora and there's no stopping it anymore except through self sacrifice. Taking her siren powers back from Tyreen's corpse, Lilith becomes the Firehawk once more and uses her gift to fly up and then self detonate on the moon, pushing it away - resealing the Great Vault and saving Pandora.

Will we ever see her again? Probably because there's that Borderlands movie coming out.

Total War: Warhammer and NBA 2K21

OK games that I didn't get into.

I didn't like Cris Tales due to bad design, but these two just aren't my style.

NBA 2K21

OMG I played a sports game? Yeah, well I tested it out at least - and it was alright! Obviously more fun if you aren't playing solo and you definitely need controllers because keyboard is just wonky. I mean hold num-pad 5 down (and release at the appropriate time) to shoot? Blergh. I did like that the Women's Association is available here too, and I almost exclusively played using them because... why not? Ultimately not one for me, but basketball enthusiasts would enjoy this.

Total War: Warhammer

My last experience with Total War (Troy) was a complete disaster. This time around the battle field is set for the fantasy armies of Warhammer, and it thankfully plays MUCH better thanks to shorter loading times and an advisor who gives more tutelage.

Alas this too isn't for me since I find the Total War battle system to be boring, to the point where I explicitly prefer to auto-resolve every fight. Sure, you can command little guys into various formations on the battle map but rather than watching them you'll be watching their status bars and the enemy status bars and hope their bar goes down faster than yours. Super dull.

I suspect they even knew this, and included buttons to speed up time on the battle field... or better yet, just skip the battle sequence altogether with auto-resolve which is what I ended up doing most of the time. Anyway, if that part still sounds ok to you then this might be one to take a peek at. For me: uninstall.

Troy: The Saga and the Fall

The Iliad lives on.

Troy: Fall of a City

You already know the outcome.

This one season miniseries depicts the Trojan war mainly from the perspective of Paris and reminds everyone that the actual siege takes 10 whole years.

While I did like that the Greek gods actually show up and play a more hands on role in the story, it is also marred by some stupid decisions plot wise, not the best acting, and some questionable casting.

Yep, she's ready for some action!

All up this doesn't really have a lot going for it, especially since you already know the end. Not recommended, but I give it one and a half tunnels out of five.

A Total War Saga: Troy

Too much patience required.

By now most would know the story of how a massive army was raised to take back an unfaithful wife who fled with her lover to the city of Troy and all the action and excitement there of.

This game decides not to do that and instead starts out right when Agamemnon decides to give chase. Now, you can play as a variety of people each who have their own goals with some being easier than others (good luck, Odysseus).

Getting Attack on Titan vibes...

On the world map you move your armies around,  upgrade cities, gain currency, use diplomacy to gain allies, build boats and the like (yep, you want to launch a thousand ships? Enjoy waiting for that to be built).

For combat, you get a more tactical over view to command your army and use your heroes special abilities. Don't expect any Dynasty Warrior stuff though, its very much more a "wait and see" approach.

Neither of those are appealing to me, and the final nail in the coffin? Extreme loading times. Five minutes for an initial load is OK, but five minutes every time you go into battle, out of battle, and waiting for other factions to finish their turn... way too much.

During the tutorial I thought I'd speed things up by "auto" battling which resulted in King Agamemnon and his army (the suggested "starting guy as he is the easiest goals") being wiped out by some random robbers but the tutorial just carried on as if all was well. WTF?

Truly a trojan horse of a game, with beautiful packaging but inside is just full of shit and death, followed by more shit. I give it zero sieges out of five. Not worth playing!

Insight: Don't auto battle unless you have a one million percent chance of victory I suppose?

Dying Light: Oh Baby

[Part of the Dying Light diary - spoilers ahead!]

Hoping to catch up with Jade, we go talk to a group who help smuggle people into the next sector: Old Town. This involves a trip through the sewers and a betrayal as said people also work for Rais. They have no chance against us.

On the other side a new map awaits, and find "the Loft" a safe zone run by Troy who has a bad habit of sending us to where Jade is not. We also run a side quest of getting the water running again, and since there are three separate places to do this, we split up and hit one each - followed by the main valve which is guarded by a sole volatile.

Having fought a mob of them previously, this isn't very dangerous. We also hit some quarantine zones including the Striped Dragon Hotel where we meet a new type of zombie: the baby. Its cries drain health AND summon runners. Not a good combo which puts it on the "kill on sight" list.

Never hesitate if you have the shot.

Insight: The skill to cover yourself in zombie guts which makes you undetectable to zombies (other than volatiles) combined with the neck snap skill previously mentioned makes many horde encounters a cake walk. It also saves ammo and weapon durability.

Futuristic Medieval Fantasy: Atlantica Online

Finally a game where I can drive up to a centaur shaman in a bright yellow sports car and then whack it with my sword, magic and cannons then go pick up Joan of Arc, Anck Su Namun, Napoleon and the spartan Leonidas to take part in the Battle of Red Cliff in China. I think that sentence sums up the WTF time travel factor that's going on in Atlantica Online. Despite age consideration, almost everything in the game feels clunky and the constant popups of other people winning / doing stuff that have to be manually closed don't help. I do quite like the music though, and the combat system is... different.

"Different" doesn't always mean "good".

Each fight is an instance where you and your enemy take turns to command your team (of up to 9) to annihilate the other. There's a small level of tactical play to be had but I can't really say this is an improvement to the standard combat present in other MMO's. It actually reminds me a bit of the old Final Fantasy games complete with lack of useful terrain but with more importance on positioning. I understand that there's a second mode of combat that expands on this which hopefully is better but I haven't reached it yet being only level 56 (out of 150 I think) as of this post. At least leveling is fast, I mean you even get XP from idling. Powerup by going AFK?

Quests are as basic and grindy as you can get, with no branching paths (so far) most of which involve being a courier or to kill a number of fairies/robots/fairy-robots combination and a lot of long distance running. Huzzah for the auto move feature. There's even an auto fight feature if you want the game to play itself for you I imagine. I don't think Atlantica has a whole lot going for it, but for some unfathomable reason I keep wanting to follow that sparkly trail to the next quest just to see how much more whacked out the game can be. Still, I can't really recommend it. If you really want to play a F2P Nexon game give Mabinogi a try instead. It's way better. :)

Update: I just got to the main world map and it is hilarious. The map pretty much tries to emulate the real world (scaled down) with cities and all, specifically during eras of unrest. From Babylon, to Troy, to Yggdrasil, to Sydney and Uluru (yep, Australia is one of the hardest zones. Lol!). The overland zones are strangely very sparsely populated with enemies too (they make up for it in the hostile dungeon zones).

Also it's very funny to be selling stuff to Colombus and chatting with Caesar while an army of players mounted in tanks AFKs nearby. Similarly while wandering through the Troy battle field I turned a corner to find someone chilling in a Ferrari. Lastly there is a housing system of sorts but it looks a lot more like a customizable warehouse than an actual home, the one I went into anyway.