Neverwinter Nights 2 Enhanced Edition

Neverwinter Nights is a series I'm not overly familiar with; I never played the original at all, and even though I did try out 2, I never got very far in since it's running on janky, dated code that makes it unpleasant to play on modern Windows.  I was hoping the Enhanced Edition would improve upon this, but tey don't seem to have put a great deal of quality of life improvements in this remaster.  It runs at higher resolutions and without weird animation bugs but it still has weirdly long load times, weird collision detection and a somewhat clunky UI (get prompted to save before I load?  seriously?).  I also had a controller plugged in that would vibrate during the bigger hits and couldn't find any way to disable it in the options.  Not to mention several options just seem to not work; I disabled switching characters when I click on them and it still happened.

As for the game itself, it's based on Third Edition Dungeons & Dragons, which is pretty jarring for someone who isn't overly familiar with the tabletop game and previously only played the Baldur's Gate titles.  You can freely swap between classes after gaining levels (with some exceptions) and now gain upgrades in the form of Feats and stat upgrades to tweak your character more and more into a niche playstyle.  Alchemy, crafting weapons and armor, and thief skills are now also available to any class, and there are so many sub-races that I just started getting choice paralysis before very long because there's so many damn options and no way to know which ones will actually benefit you or not (at least not without playing the game to death and memorizing every one of its maps).  Like Icewind Dale most of these seem to be pretty moot since the primary focus is just on endless dungeon crawling and combat, so there's little benefit to picking anything not geared specifically toward that.  Crafting armor and weapons and alchemy also seems pretty pointless when you can just buy most anything you need for a pittance; I get that it's there for completeness owing to the more open-ended, roleplaying focus of the table top game, but if it's not going to benefit you in a video game adaption, why include it?  The story also just feels very generic overall and the voice acting is honestly pretty crappy for a 2006 game, so... yeah.  I got bored of it real quick and just found myself replaying Baldur's Gate 3 again, rather than retreading a 'classic' that's aged like an isotope of hydrogen-5.

Developer: Aspyr Media, Obsidian Entertainment
Publisher: Aspyr Entertainment

Released: 2006, 2025

Platform: PC, Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, XBox One, XBox Series

RWBY: Grimm Eclipse

The first game based on the web series RWBY, which billed itself as an action game inspired by the likes of Devil May Cry, Kingdom Hearts and Mystic Heroes (one of many offshoots of the Warriors franchise).  It's a relatively straightforward action hack-and-slash experience, pitting you against waves of Grimm as you travel about the landscape completing various objectives (usually in the form of defending an objective or defeating waves of enemies).  Your health operates somewhat like the Halo games, with an Aura meter that regenerates over time and a health bar beneath that which gets depleted once your Aura is emptied.  Defeating foes earns experience points and levels, which can be spent to upgrade one's basic attacks, special moves or core stats, and the game supports co-op between up to four players.  Later DLC adds in a Horde Mode (wherein players try to hold out as long as possible against hordes of Grimm, purchasing defensive emplacements with money earned by defeating them) as well as all four members of Team JNPR as quite powerful bonus characters to play as.  A decent little beat-em-up style action game, though if you're not a fan of RWBY it's one you can safely pass on.

Developer: Jordan Scott, Rooster Teeth Games, Aspyr Media
Publisher: Rooster Teeth
Platform: Playstation 4, XBox One, PC, Mac OS, Switch (Definitive Edition with all DLC included)
Released: 2016, 2017, 2021

Puzzle Quest Galactrix

Puzzle Quest was a low-key hit in 2007, combining a match-three puzzle game with elements of turn-based strategy games and RPGs in surprisingly effective fashion, and it was popular enough to appear on almost every platform of the time.  Two years later a spinoff game set in a 4X-style space setting would appear, and unfortunately, it did not fare nearly as well.  The game now used a hexagonal grid with variable gravity depending on whether fights took place in orbit or in space (with the former causing new pieces to slide in from the top while the latter would cause them to come from whatever direction was closest to the board's edge) and reworked mechanics to have ship shields and weapons.  It is because of the new layout, however, that the game becomes an exercise in sheer frustration.  Clearing one combo in the center of the board can - and frequently will - cause new pieces to slide in and set off huge chain reactions that refill one player's shields (basically free health regeneration - something the original implicitly avoided), inflict massive damage to their opponents and give them more mana to do more of the same, and will frequently grant an extra turn on top, so every fight feels less like a battle of strategy and more like a roll of the dice to see who can set off a battle-deciding mega chain first.  The game adds diplomacy and crafting systems that use similar board mechanics too, which just results in more of the same frustration, and the fact that one's only decent means of making money is winning fights to get resources to sell makes it a grind-heavy game to boot.  Galactrix stands as proof that tampering with a simple, but effective formula can be disastrous.

Developer: Infinite Interactive/Aspyr Media
Publisher: D3 Publisher
Released: 2009
Platforms: Nintendo DS, Playstation 3, Xbox 360, PC