First off this game is absolutely beautiful to look and listen to. It pulls you in with wonderful graphics (both scenery and use of abilities) and a nice score and voice acting (most characters at least). This game is a micromanage combat RPG (really more of a tactical combat game) with 8 characters to use (4 at a time) with a good amount of abilities w/ skill trees that allow for easy to understand and employ combos. There's a simple but effective loot and equipment aspect to the game. There's only 4 equipment slots as opposed to a dozen or so for other games. I love this because it allows you to focus on getting a few great items instead of worrying about an entire litany of items that are required to make your character effective. Combats start off very straight forward and become more and more complex as the game moves along forcing you to develop and evolve your strategy. It also forces you to know the capabilities of each character as they will be split into 2 groups of 4 from time to time and certain characters are critical to success in certain combats. It'd be wise to save a lot, as loading multiple times is probably in your future (that was a pro to me... I can understand how that'd be a negative for others.) Now for the downsides... It's extremely linear. The story seems both contrived and bland. They clumsily try to build character relationships but they too are forced and hollow. There's no real "role" playing aspect to this game unless the role is "destroy everything". It's also combat after combat for most of the game. For the most part that means that there is no replay value to this game as it will be the same song and dance unless you want to switch up your skill trees. All in all I was very pleased with this game. I don't know how many hours I spent on this game but I enjoyed every minute on it. It was a great tactical game that allowed me to kick down the door, kill the monster, loot the room, and blow off steam.
I picked this game up on a GOG.com sale and I didn't know anything about it... So I went into the game with zero expectations and ran into the best game I've played in a long time. It has amazing art, a top notch soundtrack, a brilliant narrator (seriously might be the best thing about this game), and constantly changing weaponry, tactics, and foes so combat never feels stale. All the weapons and special abilities are all viable and are capable of finishing the game with, so you don't have to worry about a weapon that you like becoming obsolete later in the game. It is pretty short (took me less than a weekend to beat it) and the story is pretty mediocre. There's no real role-playing factor in the game (so don't get fooled by the genre) other than the end where you get to choose one of four endings, but there again, the narrator totally makes up for it. I'd strongly recommend this game.
This is going to be much like my review for the original Braveland. This game is a fun turn-based, hexagonal board game in the mold of Heroes of Might and Magic with a map progression in the Mario level selection screen realm. There's no real story and the game is pretty straight forward and linear. Only three times do you get to choose something different, the first two you either chose left or right at a fork in the road that leads you to the same path, and the third is how you want the end of the story to read. There's also a quiz after the second to last battle with 3 questions that will reward you with a prize if you answer all 3 correctly. There are no second chances if you fail. So pay attention during the game. There are 3 difficulty settings. You get to level up your hero (that never fights) but that increases the potential size of the armies you control. You can acquire 4 types of gear that benefits your armies. You have to spend money to recruit most of your army. Money is obtained mostly by defeating the enemy and minimizing your losses during combat. THERE IS MUCH LESS MONEY PER COMBAT THAN THE LAST GAME. So there's more of a grind. There are 3 separate respawning points that you can grind out on to get more gold. There's about 35-40 different enemies (some from the original) that you can run into and they each have their strengths and weaknesses that blend together with other enemies. Almost every unit you have gets a special ability at some point. This game also introduces talent/spell trees to give a little more flavor of what strategy you want to take. It's a lot more interesting than the last game but the game still only takes about 3-5 hours. It's worth it if you get it on sale but I wouldn't pay the full asking price for a game that you can beat after you get home from work and before you go to bed.
This game is a fun turn-based, hexagonal board game in the mold of Heroes of Might and Magic with a map progression in the Mario level selection screen realm. There's no real story (Your village is razed and sacked... get revenge!) and the game is pretty straight forward and linear. There are 3 difficulty settings. You get to level up your hero (that never fights) but that increases the potential size of the armies you control. You can acquire 4 types of gear that benefits your armies. You have to spend money to recruit most of your army. Money is obtained mostly by defeating the enemy and minimizing your losses during combat. There's about 20-25 different enemies that you can run into and they each have their strengths and weaknesses that blend together with other enemies. Almost every unit you have gets a special ability at some point (except peasants.) You have 5 spells that you can eventually use in combat (from direct damage spells to buffs.) It get redundant pretty quickly but the game only takes about 2-3 hours. It's worth it if you get it on sale for 50% off or more but I wouldn't pay the full asking price for a game that you can beat after you get home from work and before you go to bed.
As far as concepts go, these games do something a little different than what I'm used to in that you need to command villages to really advance further in the game. Some characters can use diplomacy... other need to use force... and some are a blend. You get to hire lots of mercenaries/cohorts (and they are pretty much a necessity) and build up your group and your villages. Those villages start to give you tribute after a while. It was also pretty cool to get a Nordic vibe from a game like this... I don't recall any other game doing that. Potion crafting was a nice touch. Lots of magic items to bolster your character and his minions. That being said, combat is pretty bland in that you just click and everyone swarms/shoots the target. Anyone can be a target and that means big mistakes if you forget to sheath your weapon. "Man I got a lot of good loot! I should sell it to the... STOP KILLING THE MERCHANT!" So you should save constantly. Not just for that reason... but because occasionally you run into an enemy that will completely wreck your world. Movement and gameplay are pretty slow if you don't know how to speed up the game. There really isn't explanation or tutorial on how to do anything in the game so you have to figure it out yourself. Story is pretty gimmicky "Dude found an all-powerful artifact, got corrupted, someone needs to stop him, and that someone is you" and never really develops from there. When you assign people to villages, they take the merc with the highest appropriate skill. So if you don't want to lose that person in your party you have to do some fancy party reassignments to give up the guy you want. Grinding is pretty essential in both games... whether it be for tribute, skill gains, or leveling up. It was pretty fun for a while but it got pretty underwhelming fairly quick and wasn't for me. Beat them, deleted them, won't be going back.
Pros: It starts off as a lot of fun. Waves upon waves of baddies to mow down, increasing in power as the game goes along. You can find, or buy, new guns through-out the game to combat those ever increasing powerful aliens. You can upgrade your Speed (how fast you move), Strength (how much ammo you hold), Health, and Accuracy (increases damage too!) Basic objectives are kill every alien and blow up every teleporter that is bringing these punks to fight you. It's a whole bunch of mindless killing and requires very little tactics. There also happens to be secret areas that contain weapons and money if you blow up certain walls... which is always a plus in my book. The high score board at the end reminds me of good old arcade games. Cons: Enemy AI is sorely lacking... many enemies will just get stuck behind a wall and not move. Stat increases are capped at 3 each, meaning you quickly max out your 4 skills. Old weapons become pretty worthless pretty fast (that grenade launcher you loved? complete garbage about 2 levels later) In conjunction with weapons becoming ineffective, ammo drops are still random in later levels meaning your gonna get shotgun shells near the end instead of those plasma bullets you REALLY need. Overhead map control is clunky at best. Sometimes you can see all the way to the edge... other times only about 3/4 of the way... Meaning that baddies can see you but you can't see them. Meaning if you are low on health you can expect to get mowed down. Or if it's the rhino looking thing with lasers on its back that doesn't miss, you're gonna get shredded. It's hard to know if you are hitting or doing any damage to an alien. You can pump dozens or hundreds of rounds into a monster, only to find out you were probably hitting that crate instead. Overview: I very much enjoyed it for about 3-4 hours... but then it became very frustrating and repetitive. Wouldn't buy at full price but worth a run if it's on a GOG sale.
I don't know if there is one redeemable thing about this game. I had never played it before but was/am a huge fan of C&C and Starcraft and the overall RTS genre, so I decided to give it a try. Terrible decision. There is no tutorial to speak of (that I found) and was thrust right into the game. I made some troops, sent them out, and BLAM a giant explosion out of nowhere that killed all my troops. Started over, made some troops, BLAM something called chaos popped up above my troops and they all started to shoot each other until only 1 was left standing. There is no obvious rhyme or reason to anything in this game in the 2 days I played it before I gave up. Money gets deposited into your bank at an unknown interval. Troops have no description of what they can do (and once again, no tutorial on how to use them.) There are up to 5 "cards" in the corner that have no description or how to use them... They are extremely powerful but you have to accept that you might blow up all of your troops trying to figure them out. The absolute worst part of this game is selecting your troops and their path traveling AI. They'll get to where you want them to go however they want, devoid of logic and reason. It's not Point-A to Point-B most times... sometimes it's A to C to D through an enemy base to E to F and finally to B... And that's only if your troops decides to move in the first place. It might be enjoyable to those who have a ton of patience to figure it out, but I would personally encourage everyone looking at this game to just move along.
