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I really like the painterly look of this game and the main cast is clearly having a good time and have fun personalities even if the story they fall is very simple (darkness bad, light and plants good). The parkour is pretty and ideally running around and up and over pretty landscapes is fun in theory. This is not a sequel or a prequel to the original theory but a reboot, but it's not irritating. The problem is this has been dumbed down hard. The Prince cannot run, he just speed walks everywhere (probably because his sword is way too big to be practical). Combat is just blocking forever until an opening presents itself then jamming several types of attack until a meter goes down and it's always one on one. The part that made me most annoyed though was the fact The Prince will not grab onto certain ledges if he's not going the 'right' way He'll just slide off some surfaces, jump the wrong way, or just stop moving forward and fall. And whenever this happens he'll scream and moan and need to be rescued. After the sixtieth time of The Prince falling, screaming, and reappearing far away from his goal I got annoyed. This is clearly an analogue to the sands of time rewind power, but there you could choose how far back and to where you started when you messed up. Here it's decided for you, the cutscene is unskipable, the screen changes color anticipating your failure, and frankly there's times he REALLY should have grabbed onto a ledge instead of just gave up and died. Then there's the hundreds of glowing life seeds you need to collect in enemy free environments after you finish each level. Fun for awhile but so spread out you get bored looking for them. A valiant attempt to revitalize the franchise and try something new, but it needs to be fun as well as new, and this wasn't quite.
This feels like a high quality Tom Clancy flavored alternate future novel with tight unit controls and, without a doubt, the prettiest explosions I've ever seen in any game to date. Things don't just blow up, they erupt into realistic columns of smoke and fiery ruin, sometimes with visible shockwaves. Chatter is thankfully very varied to the point your units will chatter to each other if you zoom in close enough and they're inside a vehicle or a building. You can't have a great RTS just because it looks good, but unlike even Command and Conquer 4 (which I loved) this feels much more down to earth and dependent on pushing field advantage instead of turtling behind a base. I was worried the chaos would become too much but thankfully the campaign divides up the action into squads moving to objectives, and the AI is pretty good at keeping itself alive (shooting by themselves, taking cover...etc) Nice music, fun characters, zoom in on some lovely graphics and I might have mentioned the very pretty fireworks.
Same voice actor, upscaled graphics...lousy writing. I don't remember Styx being such a snarky pop-culture savvy character. It cheapens the world of the story rather than enhancing a 'gritty' feel, which may be what they were going for? It doesn't help that your goblin thief moves like he's on ice. Some things he flat out will not do just because of the position he's in. Drop? Nope. He's not in exactly the right place. Attack? Nope. You can't just use your dagger whenever you feel like! That's crazy talk. It looks nice and the same flavor is here but I found it buried in slippery controls and really cringey writing.
I can't hate a game so clearly crafted with a love for Warhammer lore and a game that's sadly no longer in print but was my favorite Warhammer iteration. Everything a fan could want is here. I'm willing to accept one combat action a character when there's a lot of characters and a LOT of the mechanics here to play with. Tons of info is available to calculate every turn based action. For every action there's a reaction. Firing a gun leads to arm fatigue. You want to avoid traps? Spend a turn to attempt perception. You're surrounded by enemies? Your unit may flee unless bolstered by an ally or your holy sign which both you and the enemy can steal to route the foe. Everything you can do the enemy can do too, and AI seems pretty solid. It looks nice, sounds good, I like that you have some wiggle room to run around within circles designated by action points so you can jump a bridge to escape or clamber up a roof to get a sniping perch. That said there has been some pathfinding issues I've seen and I'm a little sorry they swapped out wound points for a standard HP meter which makes fights WAY longer than they need to be. That said the campaign experience of the table top game is here and it it's illustrated beautifully. Is it perfect? No. But it captures the atmosphere and essence of a game I used to love.
This really should have been a much shorter, tighter Bioshock style linear experience. The story, the voice acting, the cutscenes all look great! It's an original notion with a lot of exploration for both drama and dark humor. The fully designed locations look fantastic, stylish, and fun to explore. The innumerable patches that are still going on HAVE improved a lot of aspects of the game as well, from the U.I to the balance. But the procedural generation is the stumbling block. Characters cannot handle the complexities of the environments for long before getting stuck or floating in place. Combat is clunky but constant because it's way too easy to be spotted, and once you are spotted every enemy will immediately know where you are. The harsher aspects of survival have been shaved down thankfully but they're still there a bit annoying. You'll never have enough food which is thematic...but so is getting infections from bandages (which is also a thing) and neither is particularly fun. There's just not a lot you can do when you're in trouble, being chased, or sick. You ARE the underdog, I realize that, but if you feel completely powerless you aren't so much playing the game as trying to avoid its mechanics. This is a wonderful and creative story constantly fighting against a clunky game that overstepped its boundaries. You cannot ever fully predict procedural generation which is part of the appeal of it, but its also the problem We Happy Few cannot quit surmount despite considerable improvements.
This is NOT a game that takes itself seriously in the story department, but it is one in terms of gameplay. The amateur voice acting and goofy humor is endearing thankfully rather than try-hard. It's a bit like a combination of Gauntlet Legend's stoic but bombastic approach to generic fantasy with light parody elements more like Shrek. Units have a ton of personality in animation, design, and lots of situational dialogue. Someone cares about a game when even the generic wolf enemies can be seen merrily rolling on the grass while they wait for you to ambush. There's a ton of modes here to play around with: three campaigns alternating RPG and RTS mechanics, a bit like a stripped down version of Spellforce. You either command one unit and go around collecting better armor, fighting monsters, completing tasks or you have something closer to lite Warcraft with buildings and units you send into skirmishes. When you beat the three campaigns there's a sort of open world RPG scenario for several different RPG classes and maps you can play with the RTS mechanics as well. It's a lot of content for your buck and it works smooth and speedy, for your high fantasy fix.
Games like Dragon Age claim they are set in a 'dark' fantasy setting, but they don't compare to a game in which each decision feels ambiguous and has so many layers you'll never quite know whether what you did was right...but what you did will have consequences. It helps the voice acting is REALLY good. You may find yourself just setting back to enjoy the story enfold as characters banter, and I always used the 'more info' button to hear the deeper concepts at play. This game will push some uncomfortable buttons and even if you go by morals you will almost always end up with someone very unhappy at the stand you took. I personally LOVE that the writers didn't coddle me. Everything won't always work out perfect because everyone around you has a different perspective on what 'working out' means. People you like may decide to compromise their morals for the greater good, and you will have to decide if it's worth their disapproval to make the same choice. Likewise choosing skills feels more impactful when they are IMMEDIATELY required and all over the place. You put all your experience into haggling? Well now a dying person will get a placebo instead of being healed by your medicine skill because you thought about yourself and not about others. You will flat out not be able to harvest plants without the expertise, but if you focus on that you aren't improving your lore or lock picking or any number of other skills. Each playthrough feels like sacrifices made and new options opened up. You will NOT see everything this game has in one go by design. The star off an otherwise enthralling and daring story is for the fighting honestly. It feels clunky and boils down to clicking a lot. Luckily this version of the game comes with some DLC style super weapons so you can breeze through combat when they crop up. Still a shame that one of the pivotal aspects of the game isn't tighter and feel less like flailing away at random. A fine story, an okay game.
My initial impression of this game was a very simplistic even generic party-based RPG with CCG elements, but I'm thankful to say playing further in I kept stumbling across new wrinkles in the gameplay, new ways to play and combos to set up. This is the kind of game you do get wrapped up in because of how customizable it is. You're always collecting gear to upgrade that gear with gems, enchanting it with materials you find, encountering events that need skill checks that exhaust cards so you need to rest to recover them...and THAT opens up a whole new mechanic where your party takes actions around the campfire like holding conversations to strengthen their bonds or getting unique cards. Get bored of your team? Collect new unit types and swap them out for your three person team any time you're back in town, and all of these have three unique types of cards to play around with. I ditched the relatively straight forward warrior for a blood mage and had a blast inflicting status effects like bleed and then crushing enemies by switching the bleed type to burn with another card so my mage could clean up with a well time spell. The animation is stylish and fun and always moving just a little to make it feel lively. Combat animations are visceral, fast and satisfying. There's no spoken dialogue except the narrator at the beginning but the music is nice and the sound effects on point. If you like micromanaging a team and their decks and equipment and classic dungeon crawling scenarios this is a nicely made and polished tribute and update of Jrpgs and rouge likes of old. This DOES have that Civilization addiction quality though where you will not be able to without great efforts to stop shooting for that extra level of experience to update your character, investigating the new dungeon that just appeared, solving the quest, seeing what new things are at the stores back in town...etc!
This brings back great memories but it makes a difference when I'm no longer a kid wondering why it was so hard to kill enemies and why I kept getting lost. This is the king of game that rewards exploration, learning the complex but intuitive controls, and knowing how to deal with problems that often seem to far outclass you. It reminds me a lot of Rune but with multiple characters or Enclave but with more of an emphasis on your choices to determine what weapons you carry by what weapons you find in your travels and you choose which weapon skills to specialize in by earning experience instead of just gold. This game is dark thematically as well as visually: lots of dim corridors, barren wastelands and lonely temples. It also feels very brutal. You can die quick and the toughest enemy that leaves itself open will literally get carved into meat by your blade. GREAT FUN. Take the tutorial, have patience, and you'll have a lot to do, places to go, and monsters to slay.