It's time for another Humble Choice! And, with that choice comes the question: is this bundle worth the money?
I've played a bit of each game on offer and thought I'd lay out my personal opinion for anyone who may want to pause or pay early for these games.
I'm going to be up-front here and give you my overall verdict on the bundle immediately, but if you want to know WHY I came to my conclusion please continue to read.
The Games:
Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, Fallout 76 + Fallout 1, Thronebreaker: the Witchertales, Othercide,Shady Part of Me, Scourge ringer, Fobia - St. Dinfna Hotel, and Five Dates.
The Verdict:
PASS - Unless you're really into d20 based strategy RPGs (like Baldur's Gate) or 4x strategy games (like XCOM).
Now, for a more detailed rundown of my reasoning for those interested. We are going to chop this section up into categories of "hits", "potentials", and "misses".
The Hits
Lets talk first about the best this bundle offers: Pathfinder.
Pathfinder: WotR continues the same style that prior Pathfinder games have found success with, and does a great job. Within an hour you're fully immersed in a huge battle with freakin' DRAGONS.
It isn't reinventing the wheel, because it doesn't need to. The game delivers on the same elements that they know work well, and they do a great job. Estimated to take about 50 hours to complete the main storyline, and over 100 for a full run, this is a title well worth your money... If you enjoy this style of game!
Unfortunately, while I think a couple of other titles in this bundle could nearly be considered "Hits", none of them really wowed me enough to actually make this tier.
Potentials
The majority of the games in this bundle I think fall into this category. They have potential to be fun, and could be worth your subscription... But it's going to depend a lot on your subjective playstyle.
High on this list is Thronebreaker: the Whitchertales, which basically is GWENT with some story and rpg elements built into it. The downside here is that, for MY experience, the minor changes to the way GWENT works here as compared to how it worked in Witcher 3 is, honestly, a bit of a downgrade. Further, there are annoying mini puzzles now and then which feel like a barrier between me and another round of Gwent. The story seems okay from my brief taste, and it is still fun, but it really just makes me want to boot up Witcher 3. I'm sure for some folks this would be a great game but it just didn't quite hit the way I think it was meant to for me.
Othercide:
I really want to like this game. In fact, I DO REALLY like this game. You're a vampire clan fighting other vampires in a 4x turn based strategy game. I dig the melee focus, the theme, and the mechanics... But what I don't love is the art style. Initially, it's super novel and I really enjoy the shades of grey and red being the only colours... But over time I feel like having a bit more colour in the game would be really nice.
I will definitely be playing more of this one, but I do feel like it's not a title that everyone is going to vibe with.
Scourgebringer is another game that I'm probably going to come back to for more fun. It's a roguelite platformer that feels vaguely Metroid-inspired in it's art style. A key feature is your ability to almost perpetually fight in the air. The downside is that the difficulty ramps up pretty quickly, and similar to games like Binding of Isaac, you probably are going to get the most out of this game if you're willing to sink in enough time to thoroughly learn the meta.
Lastly for this category we have Fallout 76 and Fallout 1. Fo76 is another game that just really makes me want to play an earlier game in the series. It's... Good, for what it is, which is a multiplayer Fallout game. However, given that it's 25 years after the bombs fell, the world being as vibrant and liveable as it is feels a little off for the narrative. This may be one I need to get further in to see the appeal of however so I'm leaving it in Potentials instead of dropping it to Misses. Either way though, the game has been available for a long time and I feel like if you were dying to play it enough that it could make this Humble Choice a "must purchase" for you, you probably would already own it.
Fallout 1 is more my jam, but this one is simply the old game which has been like 3$ on GoG.com for years so, it's not a big addition to the bundle.
Misses
Shady Part of Me:
I flipped this back and forth from potential to miss several times. It's a really neat puzzle platformer split between a girl and her shadow. It has some neat mechanics but the story it's built to tell feels like a bleak lost childhood, and mostly just filled me with a moroseness and a desire to go play blocks with my own toddlers. For myself, this game was a definite miss. I can see folks possibly digging the indie style but it just didn't do it for me.
Fobia:
This game felt like a poorly designed key-hunting game. The horror elements are okay, but nothing to write home about, and a lot of the models and graphics feel super dated despite being released only a couple of years ago. I'd you like horror games, prior bundles have had MUCH better offers. I don't feel any need to finish this or dive further into it.
And that brings us to my biggest miss. The largest flop of the bundle for me:
Five Dates.
Do you feel a burning urge to semi-control a boring movie about dating during the pandemic quarantine?! Because of you do, this garbage-fire is for you!
I admit, I'm not the demographic I think this is aimed at, so maybe there are folks who would really like this but... Gosh I just don't see HOW. You pick between five girls to date, choosing a top 3 in an obvious move to gain replayability.
I just... I really hated this game. I don't like dating in the first place, and I certainly don't want to be taking on the role of some chotchy douche-canoe as he makes idiot decisions.
I honestly regret that this is even part of my steam library.