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The voice over, the lore, the music, even some of the graphics are beautifully done and clearly compiled with care and love for the source material. Tom Baker delivering the narration? Great idea! But the game, the core game, is UNPLAYABLE. Ironically your first weapon is referred to as 'accurate' but it fires four or five shots at random and never in a predictable pattern. Two of your constant weapons are indistinguishable except that one fires slightly faster: both are a scatter shot that has no precision at all. Damage states are non-existent. Shoot someone and if they don't die they are still running/gunning for you so you are endlessly wading into gunfire you cannot stem. Headshots are encouraged but nearly impossible. There's no way to duck or take cover so it's a war of attrition, just running blindly, firing blindly, hoping you hit something, hoping not to take so much damage that the guaranteed hit-scan shots of the enemy take you out. Your ammo isn't infinite either and your melee attack is useless. You can pick up enemy weapons but they're usually almost dry. It just isn't fun. You don't feel like a warrior, you feel like a target with limited means to defend yourself. Then there's there's the bugs, the places the game was clearly rushed (those in-game cutscenes are really rough) no clear level goals, randomly invincible enemies, inaccurate jumping puzzles. It's a mess at the heart of the game, which is a shame. Surrounding this broken FPS is a well told Warhammer tale, but it is simply not worth the aggravation to revisit.
It's nice when the worst you can say about a game is 'I wish there was more of it!' I was expecting a stylish X-Com game but what you don't see advertised as much is the real time exploration and puzzle solving sections which I also enjoyed. In addition to tactical gunplay in ambushes and arenas against foes and bosses with different abilities you'll have some section where alone or as a team you operate mechanisms, find weapons and gear, and disarm explosives. The cast is colorful and likably manic. The setting is suitably grim-dark but not pretentious about it: this is a neon funhouse of doom. You never feel cheated by this game: surprised sometimes but not cheated. You can play through sections you botch quickly and without much penalty. You can survive a couple mistakes and, as long as you don't have Ironman on, you can always reload if you get a team wipe. And there's other nifty elements too. You can provide autographs for fans and testimonials to build your brand, and depending on your choices they can attract different sponsors who provide new benefits. There's hidden caches and unique weapons you can only find by backtracking or accomplishing harder hidden puzzles, but all of these are optional unless you want to fully optimize your team. The story has some twists and turns too and the announcer has a LOT of recorded dialogue so his play by play isn't too repetitive. All told it's a solid, speedy, satisfying blending of genres.
This is like a strange but enjoyable combination of Fallout and KKND (Krush Kill and Destroy) where you command little teams of vehicles, travel to spots on instance maps, fight off bandits, and do other tasks. It's not open world: each mission is a self contained area, and each mission is pretty quick, but there's plenty to play and the old school isometric graphics do look great. The docked star is for the translation which is pretty loose. The cutscenes in the form of comics are very rushed in translation and sometimes have little to do with your missions at all. There's also a couple pathfinding issues like running into what seems like terrain you could knock over or the A.I getting confused. But overall, a nice speedy and appropriately dusty and a-punk-alyptic looking game. There's some nice quality of life additions here too thankfully, like a tutorial, the fact that heroes automatically leave exploding vehicles, and you always know where everything is thanks to the mini-map. Could have used another pass for translation and maybe a little more variety, but you can't go wrong with a car combat RPG, especially at the price.
This is all the management and collecting and tactics of Heroes of Might and Magic but with a much more dynamic rather than static concept. You aren't building houses and breeding creatures, you're finding places that house your units (sometimes going on quests to unlock them) and after you pay for them with gold and leadership (which you increase over the game by exploration or leveling up your character) they will serve you faithfully in the numerous battles to come. Enemies are dynamic too, moving around on their own accord, so powerful enemies can sometimes be outrun or even tricked and avoided to get at what they guard. Quests are everywhere and surprisingly deep, like one that seems to be an ordinary 'kill the monster' quest that has the option to hear things from the monster's side of the story! King's Bounty is absolutely charming. The animation, the design, the little touches are just brimming with love for this genre and this world. Units all have unique actions for when they defeat a stack of enemies (the priest kisses his amulet, the vampire does a sword flourish) and there's morale and specific unit behaviors to consider when you combine differing types of units into one army so they feel alive. Humans don't like fighting beside undead. Berserkers you can't control at all so they just rush into battle by themselves. Some units are scared of other units and panic, attacking at random. It's addictive to see what units are out there, how they interact, what spells you can find to aide them. It all revolves around exploring and moving, it all looks crisp and beautiful, the music is catchy (if a bit repetitive) and thankfully changes in each location and battlefield type. If you like Pokemon, if you don't mind a few iffy translations that don't break the game, this is a wholly unique and captivating fantasy adventure!
I played the demo and loved it so much I pre-orderded the game which is VERY rare for me. I'm not disappointed at all. It's not only all the blending of simple but just challenging enough gameplay, piles of upgrades, quirky characters, and of course terrifying hallucinations as the demo promised but there's more islands to visit, more options for fishing in different depths, more music, more seemingly random events so every time you set out for deep waters it feels new. For instance stop by the Stellar Basin...and look carefully at what lurks beneath the archipelago. See if you don't jump the first time you hear your fog horn answered by another fog horn. Turn around while crab fishing and witness a giant tail covered in spiny fins disappear beneath the waters. It's not all horror, there's beauty too. You'll have pleasant days of just drifting around, exploring, finding quests and you will see some sights to fill you with wonder instead of terror (no spoilers). You can get tired of the grind of mini-games and slow travel but there's always something to see, something to do, something to collect, someone to talk to. At night some fish come out that aren't around in the day and they tend to sell for more. But be careful, you can literally start seeing things if you get tired enough, and if it isn't on the map it might not be a boat or a dock you're looking at despite the lights bobbing up and down in the fog... Excellent experience! Stable game with no crashes ran fantastically. Voice acting isn't there and interactions are sparse but it fits the theme of isolation, routine, and the creeping unknown turning a regular profession into a fight for survival. Good rule of thumb: if you can't do something, upgrade. This is not an unfair game, just a challenging one that needs some patience.
This game is the definition of 'ahead of its time' but luckily it still handles fairly well! It's a toy box of concepts crammed into a uniquely 90s post apocalypse where everyone wears leather, big red mutants tout chain guns and there is always grunge. It's completely over the top but it's charming in it's escapism. Your melee weapon is a rotary saw attached to a gun barrel! That's pretty metal. Apart from the stylish theme this is an FPS that can turn into a driving game almost on demand. If you find a working vehicle walk into it and suddenly you have a relatively smooth transition from first person shooter to car combat. You can pull off drifts, aim your weapons, and plenty of foes that would take tons of bullets to down splatter when you hit them at full speed. I love the detail of switching to FPS driver's view complete with the hero's hand steering the car. The FPS sections are smooth and responsive with all your weapons stored in one centralized gun you gather ammo for the various functions of. You've got bullets, rockets, a sniper rifle...it's all the old faithfuls, and it's never not fun to blast the surprisingly varied gangs and mutants you face. Slight issues abound. The initial control scheme is wonky: arrow keys with Control as your fire button. You can change the keys thankfully and you can even hold the mouse button and steer by moving it around, but this too is a bit slippy. Dodging is the only real strategy to on foot fights and it's not so easy when you can barely lock on. There's a few precision targets too you need to free-aim to hit which might be frustrating. Also I was frequently annoyed by the screen-filling white flashes following an explosion. It doesn't even mean your'e injured: it was just a way to hammer home the shock of the blast...and it didn't quite work. Still, this is a fun game, and ambitious game, and one you can tell heart and soul went into!
This is like a GTA style take vehicles to locations to start missions along with side activities to do...only those activities ALWAYS involve blowing everything to pieces and watching it fall over! It feels like a game fairly ahead of its time in terms of a ridiculous amount of the environment being destructible. If you smash into a light pole it explodes into fifty little pieces that bounce according to physics. Throw a barrel against a wall and it will break through the plating. Take any building apart down the foundation and then smash the final toothpicks holding it up with a hammer to watch it all crumble to the ground. It's extremely fun for awhile, and the upgrades you earn with salvage is an incentive to search for scrap and knock down towers. I like that as you weaken the hold of the EDF other martians start to rebel, similar to The Saboteur. Places that used to be patrolled by enemies will start to be populated by friendlies who will restock your ammo at caches. The story is nothing special: EDF are bad, killed your bro and your homies, go blow them up. No nuance. And that lack of polish is why the lack of a star. This game feels ABSOLUTELY out of your control. What blows up, where your charges land, what you hammer hits, if your vehicle stays upright, where the enemies run to, how many bullets it will take to kill them, time limits for missions...it all feels a bit random. But it IS pretty. Nice texture work tightened up. Things go boom in spectacular ways casting up clouds of red dust, the sound design if great, there's always something to do, and it's not too unforgiving, allowing you do overs if you fail or die or just don't do as well as you'd like to. If you don't mind a game feeling more like a physics puzzle occasionally interrupted by enemies, this is a fine choice.
I saw the reviews, I saw the gameplay, but I figured maybe things would be different if I played the game. But Sedna is just bad. The graphics are fantastic...but that's literally it. Real time combat and stealth is finicky and just not fun thanks to twitchy controls. There's little feedback so plunking away at baddies with guns or special abilities is unsatisfying and it's difficult to tell if you're actually doing anything. You can pause the game eventually but your commands work simultaneous to the enemies so no real strategy is possible. The voice acting is grating. The puzzles don't make much sense. I'm disappointed: I wanted this to be a pleasant surprise but it feels like something that didn't get enough tender loving care in terms of being a game so much as being a pretty looking interactive fan-fic novel.
If you prefer base-building to constantly fending off enemies, this is a fine game. It helps that it's VERY very pretty with smooth water physics, little scrambling peasants going about their tasks, sea birds sailing around, the fog of war a pleasant map texture...etc Voice acting is top notch. There's a lot of missions, some completely optional, during campaign episodes. It's just a very Zen experience of instantly constructing your buildings, making supply routes for all the resources, sailing around trading and going on expeditions. It's just so comfy! Soft music, a variety of voice over lines whenever you zoom, your advisor constantly providing support, the sounds of the sea. Sign in if you like a nice balance of managing, exploring, and trading.
I LOVE the general feel of this game: trapped in the crushing depths of a post apocalyptic ocean fighting mutant raiders and killer robots. The tactics here are actually way more forgiving than Halfway where you had to basically be standing in front of an enemy to have any hope of hitting them even with a gun. You don't need to mess with buying ammo or fixing gear thankfully either. You have a mini game of managing your sub with fuel and fixes which is decently engaging, making each location feel like more than just another randomized room to explore. The menus took a bit of tooling around with but worked out fine after some practice. The graphics are charming and atmospheric. The music is synth Heaven. I had to get the soundtrack. There is ONE major issue with this game...the writing is terrible. Right off the bat after a solemn text crawl describing devastation and gloom the characters start glibly cracking wise about situations that really should be more dangerous. One of the default names is 'Pickle'. Characters make text quips after being shot that suggest they're more annoyed than injured. It really brings down the mood of isolation and dystopia the rest of the game builds. It doesn't even fit with the little voice acting there is which mostly consists of enemies grunting or your characters cooly acknowledging orders. Some people don't mind a game with a sense of humor, but the humor here is pretty (to use an inappropriate expression for this game) dry. If I'm going to get immersed into a game enough to ignore the sometimes repetitive levels and situations I'dve preferred for the game to tell a more interesting story in a more dedicated way. As stands at least it's a nice breezy turn based tactical game with some lite managing elements.