So yehhh, free game that after a few minutes into it tells you why nobody wants to pay for it. The story is bad, really bad, really really bad. Movement speed is so slow that I usually was able to fetch tee or coffee in the meantime. Now try to imagine you solving puzzles that require moving around a couple of screens... . And then riddles... my god the riddles. Some of them are straight up retarded, some of the not logical and some childishly easy. The last category applies to the main boss/monster. I figured out how to ......... spoiler spoiler.............. kill it in the middle of the game... yes. Great design... . So after some time, washed off of any traces of fun, I have finished the game and before the final cut scene I knew what will be the conclusion... Seriously people, it was more than obvious from, again, the middle of the game... . JUST DO NOT WASTE YOUR LIFE ON THIS GAME. Better have a beer, meet friends, call your mother, anything but this game.
I'm usually very, very critical about games but here I'm truly in trouble finding anything serious to complain about. The game is turn based but sadly no initiative is implemented. There is a round for the enemy and another one for you. This limits somewhat the tactical possibilities but I'm really pulling on straws here. This is it. This is THE ONLY bad thing about this game. Now the bright side. The music & graphic are just sooo fitting into the steam punk climate. Excellent job:) Characters and abilities are also well thought through and one can easily put a few teams for nearly every mission. Sometimes I was struggling with certain crew combinations but these are really seldom cases. Depending on the scenario one can take from one to 4 characters so spreading love among you crew is necessary. Every character can take three items: A weapon and two utility items. The choice is again very, very reasonable. Also mission goals, timers and alarms causing turrets to show up or spawn new enemies are really nicely done. The story is ok. Just ok but also for a game that was for me serving as a casual time killer I cannot complain. It was really very light entertainment :) If you search for this type of game and like some strategy on top of this cream pie then do not hesitate and get this title.
The game is certainly an interesting title and for its time considerably advanced. I have played this time several times and from today's respective, ignoring some nostalgia, I do have somewhat mixed feelings towards this title. First of all it is very decent strategy/management game but the AI and controls over units are very outdated and somewhat idiotic. If you get to space and ground battles you will immediately know what I mean. The path finding is of the legendary ridiculousness. I have lost many ground battles just because traffic jams :) . Anyway, dumb AI is a part of old games flavor so if you can stomach it then you are in the clear. Not to spoil too much I find the early "fleet of doom" very anti climatic if you can avoid its sue victory with a puny destroyer... . it is a big mistake of developers. If one is vigilant there is no way to loose planets to dragslans. Planetary combats are also somewhat silly. If I come with the loaded fleet I wan to deploy all my units and crush these alien scum...ups I mean unfriendly and confused sentient lifeforms. Another exploit is an instant deployment of stored units form a "magic hat" to anywhere. For instance if your planet is just about to be invaded, you can deploy up to 3 star bases to the orbit in absolutely no time by puling them from the storage... Next big part of the game is colonization/planet management/science. I must admit that this part of the game is really nice and I had much fun here. The sequence of happiness modifier buildings, factories, power plants, research centers etc. is really thought though. The only three minuses that I see are 1) no way to remover tile blockers (you can build space ships but cannot level a mountain or move snow hills away....), 2) with many planets I had the impression of playing civilization 4 that is in my opinion is close to the dreadest form of micromanagement memory training, 3) lastly, If I invade an alien planet I want to level buildings down, purge inhabitants and colonize with the rightful new owners ;). The game is not letting you do that... . At the end I should mention monotony... . Yes, the later part of the game is really monotonous and consists of series of invasions of dragslan planets. I find it mildly boring but not that much to press delete. Concluding. It is a game worth your time if you like old-shool strategy games. I would wait though for some sale to get is for a few $/Euro.
The game is rising so many mixed feeling that I cannot simply hammer 4-5 starts like many other happy commentators. I'm actually surprised by a large number of positive comments. Anyway, back to the game. The story is ok-ish although close to the end it gets outright idiotic. The last mission (if you are lucky to get there) is simply a nonsense and boring, just a waste of time. It is almost as if producers run out of steam and had no idea how to finish of the game... . Moving on. Navigation is ABYSMAL. You may be a fanboy of this game but cannot, simply cannot negate that any sensible way to set way points is just rubbished by the used mechanics. On top of that come crashes. Many crashes... . The game is so bugged that you need much resolve to get till the end. Luckily there is a large sadomasochistic fan-base for this game that by trial and error found ways to avoid most of the crashes; still be prepared to do many replays and don't count on patches. Last negative point, I promise. It is very hard to control which weapons and when are deployed. If your ship has many of them it is also very very likely that of one type only 2-3 will be used. It is most likely caused by the insufficient energy or something but there is no way (I could nit figure it out) to tell when the problem appears. At the end there is so much micromanagement that it robs the minuscule amount of fun you ma still have... . Now the bright sides of the game. Yes, there are some but not many so don't get your hopes too high. Graphics and scenery is nice (explosions of energy bombs are far too bright and you will be constantly blinded by them). Music is also quite pleasant. Concerning the game's mechanics, I found the ability to attack subsystems really nice (like in homewolrd 2 but you can completely disable subsystems). This is also the second way to drop enemy's shields (aside from hammering with energy shells). You may adjust your strategies accordingly and gives you some nice flexibility. Concluding. It is very specific game for very patient or bored players. If you fit in one of the two categories just go for it.
DLC offers a nice combination of new cards, mechanics and playable classes to the main game. It is somewhat short but I still had much fun. New enemies are ok. Not to hard and not too easy but as you go through the missions the game play gets a bit too repetitive and somewhat too easy. In particular bosses are underwhelming. I have been playing the missions after finishing the main campaign so perhaps I had too good the equipment on my disposal. Even so, a few euro for an additional few hours of fun is a fair price :)
Well, in spite of all the very optimistic comments the truth gameplay experience is not really all that sugarcoated. I have got this game on Steam right after the Cove was released (so no final dungeon) , was observing how it was evolving over the time, played through updates and the final version. Now after an extensive gameplay I must admit that the game is so very unbalanced that it will divide all players in about three groups: 1) New and casual players who will go as far as level 3, perhaps 4 and get quickly repelled by the steep difficulty ramp. New players who survive will move to tho next categories. 2) More involved players, some of them still remembering the hardship of THE famous Nethack, who will search for strategies and will manage to reach level 6 with various characters. At this point most of these players will get fed up with the random generated deatblows on characters who took weeks to build. 3) Very dedicated players who like to be punished and feel pleasure from chains of failures. Think about an archetype of a good sadomasochist. So why all this whining, you may ask? I do admit that up to the level 4-5 I had lots of fun with the game, the idea with heirlooms, statues etc is fresh and nice, boss fights in the first 2 levels are tough but still fine if you approach the issue with the right strategy. I'm convinced that the gross of the positive comments are coming form this bit of the game. Yet, as you reach level 5 everything seems to become less and less balanced. All my negative comments are to the LATER GAMEPLAY. Not the easy or fairly mid game. Here are my thoughts: -Skills are fine but the scaling of them is appalling if you compare how fast resistances of the enemy are going up. It's a classic scissors approach where you are given allure of leveling up but in fact you just try to catch on with the enemy e.g. For your +5 damage the enemy gets 10 plus a bonus 25% resistance or dodge 25. - At the highest dungeon levels the death rate is actually much higher than at lower levels not because the enemy is smarter than you. There is simply no good strategy to defend or quickly defeat the enemy who is pounding in you with a great effect and you score a bunch of misses and do silly damage. - Heal as you get pounded but just take a look on the scaling of all heal skills. Your team is half dead before you can get anything sensible out of them. - Bleed and blight are getting seriously weak if you check how little damage they do per round. You can pile them up but then every time you have to overcome the resistance... so not much help here either. -Camping is the very last think you should do and buffs are now limited to 4 battles. So if you get ambushed you loose one already at the start, get massacred and your guys freak out from stress. -Trinkets are useless for little benefits they provide. -Handling quirks does not mater because your 6 level characters can die easily with 3 blows at the highest dungeon. So why to invest any money? -Level 6 has NO benefits for the gameplay. No super quirks, no 3rd trinket slot, nothing. Just measly bonuses in damage and resolve :/ The game is a simple meat grinder made to be initially nice and challenging but only very few people are meant to finish it. Not because they are smart or so. It is a test how much time and resolve you can muster before you become disinterested.
Well, I will spoil all the joyful, positive comments on this game with my more critical one. First of all, the game is nothing more than a stand alone add-on to the main game with some additional units. If you know the main game you will see myriads of copy passed mechanics and tactics. Graphics are nice at the beginning but the longer I played the more annoying they became. I find "extra" dynamic animations during the combat the most annoying and you cannot turn them off. Now the gameplay. I played with a mage in the main campaign a in this scenario. In both cases at the beginning you must be careful what you attack and must scavenge all, runes, leadership flags and so on avoiding tougher opponents. This is actually the only part of the game where I had much fun. Later on when you get biffed up and start recruiting Trolls/Cyclops/Dragons/Giants/Demonologists /Paladins/T-rexes you steamroll everything without losses. And all this regardless if the game says "easy" or "lethal" opponent. It happens somewhere between 25 and 30 level. This is the moment where battles start to look the same and the game gets really booooooring... . Yes, the game is terribly unbalanced. One might say that it gives numerous alternative strategies with hordes of various units, special abilities and spells but in reality it boils down to kill kill kill, resurrect, resurrect, resurrect, end, 0 units lost... . I guess the greatest issue in the game is that you have a limited supply of various units and you are forces to pick those that you can maxed out (well, THE original King's Quest was like that so no surprise here). Another issue is totally unbalances spelling system. I think I was typically using not more than 7-10 spells out of 50 or so... One might ask, but what about the story in the game? My answer would be: What story? A player is confronted with text containing some quest important information warped in a load of unnecessary rubbish and all this just to click "yes I accept the quest" or "no I do not" (If you are lucky, because most of the quests are so linear that you have no choice at all). Consequently I was diligently reading a first couple of "dialogs" and after that just clicked yes yes yes and was reading the quest description in the logbook... . You can try to immerse yourself in the story (if you have that much much time) or do it my way skipping all the the fillers.
