Note: This game may be one you play with a controller. Experience felt pretty smooth. The setting reminds me of Shadow of the Collossus reimagined as a mix of Zelda and Issac. The demo doesn't give much to go on but the general gameplay loop is you run around a dungeon collecting loot, leveling up, and killing monsters. Seems the primary mode of fighting is Sword-without-Board with dodging but I did get a longbow that not only gave me a ranged option but I also was able to use it to solve a simple puzzle. So I'm interested to see where the combat will go deeper into the game with mid-, late-game loot. However, the titular Sword of the Necromancer is where the unique selling point with the ability to revive monsters you slay. There's not much to go on but they seems they take on the route of Pokemon with each monster has their own unique move set and stats. Overall, despite it being short I liked what I saw. And will be keeping an eye on this game.
So if you played this demo at a PAX, you played this demo. It's pretty short but the guys that were repping Thunder Lotus were pretty cool and responsive to questions asked to them. Which is a good enough reasons to support them. Also, there is gonna be a color-blind mode in this game. I thought to ask.
If that title sounds appealing to you, then you will enjoy this game. I got it and beat it last year and I would say it was one of the best games to come out last year. As far as the gameplay loop, it's a hack-n-slash ARPG with a map generation and item pool similar to your Binding of Issacs and FTLs. Your skills and abilities depend on what character you pick and as you progress through the story and levels, you unlock new classes, skills, items, and upgrades at a reasonable pace. Comparing it to your other RougeLites it's the most approachable as it's honestly pretty forgiving as you can't really get screwed over by RNG in a run due to a bad map or lack of endgame items. I would say what makes or breaks a run is what skills you're character has unlocked and those are permenantly unlocked for the rest of the game. However, this doesn't mean you can faceroll the controls and win. Each character/class makes use of different playstyle and there are skills that they can unlock that benefits ALL of your classes. Skills like making you invincible to extra damage to elites. Thus the game is more akin to an RPG with a skill-based albiet gentle learning curve. The narrative is the main selling point as it revolves around a family of bad-ass adventures trying to hold the line against the wrath of a jelous entity. The music, narration and art direction give this game a nice sense of impending doom and escalation as the corruption slowly starts to spread around the home base every time you return. The only criticisms I have are replay value and the end-game grind. Before I finished the final boss, to leveling up all my classes to get their said ablities I wound up running the highest level possible over and over again to grind experience. Also I found the game quite easy in the end and had exhausted every single cutscene the game had to offer. And then once I beat the final boss... that was it. You're done. But those are just nitpicks to an overall solid core.
If you played a lot of Blitzball in Final Fantasy VIII, then you will love this game. For those who don't know what that is, the best way I would describe this game is as an RPG-version of Basketball. The goal is to try and outscore your oppentent and how you do so can depend on who you decided to send it. Smaller characters, for example, are faster but they score less points. There is a fair amount of detail that can affect your strategy for the game from how you level up characters to whether you want to chance the game's equivalant of a "Three-point shot" to even what players you can field as they may dislike each other. The story is told mostly through text and visuals, which sucks if you hate reading and loved listening to a narrator with a sexy voice tell you how good you are at kicking ass. There is a snarky anouncer but for the most part it's told in the style of a visual novel. But if you take the time to read it, you will find a world and lore that is deep and complex. And while it's mostly static, the watercolor look to the characters and environments are GORGOROUS to look at. The story revolves around you being sent into exile for the crime of being able to read and are picked up by a wandering band of fellow exiles. And now there is a chance of escape thanks to a celestial event known as "The Rites". As a reader, you are now tasked with helping the members of your team escape exile and return to civilization. That's essetially the story as most of it is told based on who you decide to spend time with and how games play out. All in all, Pyre is a really solid title to add to SuperGiant's catalouge and well worth picking up. It's different and not for everyone but I'd rather a developer try something new than sit on their laurals.
I made that title, not to be mean, but as a warning for those who don't play games but like the game's artstyle. You will get a nasty surprise. I've seen some people say that the game is not as hard as YouTube makes it. Those people are lying because they are WAY better at games than they wanna admit. And kudos for being modest about that, ignorant or otherwise. This game's difficulty is a bit of a throwback to games like Contra and Ninja Gaiden on the NES but without the limitations of the hardware that usually made those games unfair. And even though I died to some bullshit like not seeing an enemy/projectile thanks to the foreground blocking it from my view, at no point did I feel like the game was unfair. It gave me all the tools that I needed to win, I just had to prove to myself that I could do it. And I always found myself feeling accomplished when I saw the words KNOCKOUT come up on the screen. Still, there are a couple glaring roadblocks that prevent prefection. 1) The run-n-gun levels. Those are easily the worst additions in the game that are clearly an afterthought. But you have to do them to get coins so that you can get upgrades that will help. 2) This is a game that needs a controller to play. I've been working with the keyboard and there is no mouse support. While not impossible to beat, if I could use a traditional WASD setup with my Mouse, the game would be WAY more fun for me to control. Still that aside, I would easily recommend this game. Any game that gets me frustrated enough to hit the RETRY option instead of QUIT is fantastic in my book.
I picked this game up on a whim after hearing a YouTuber saying it was good. And he was right. A strategy game done in the style of Might n Magic, you are a princess that has traveled back in time to stop a demon invasion before it happens. How do you do that? Build an army and roam the land destroying other armies. Although I didn't get that far, the sheer variety of units you can recruit is hilarious. My army was being lead by a bunch of giant cobras by the end of the first area, with pirates backing them up later on. Your units can range from standard rank-n-file infantry to animals to giants to demons to even dragons. All you are limited by is the amount of gold you have as some of the more awesome units are more expensive and take up more "slots" in your army. So it comes down to a balancing out your army that covers all situations yet is a good value for your limited funds. Also when units die, they're dead. So you have to replenish your army every now and then to deal with the challenges and that requires more gold. And the best way to get gold is by defeating armies and here's where I ran into a problem. See there are no respawning enemies in this game which can be a good and a bad thing. It's good because it means running through areas you've already been to is easier and less tedious. However, because gold is so important in replenishing the lost troops it means that you can't grind weaker troops for important resources. And that can be a problem because you can run into armies with units that you can't beat and you don't have the resources for the appropriate unit type. And on top of that, I can't seem to find a decent walkthrough on what armies you should try to beat first, what's an ideal unit composition, etc. So for the most part you are on your own. All in all, this game is fantastic. If you are looking for something in the style of MnM and Ubisoft has been disappointing you lately, pick this up. Just prepare for to be challenged.
"A great but flawed RTS game with fantastic space combat. Would recommend playing with the Forces of Corruption expansion"
"Basically, a Star Wars re-skin of Age of Empires 2. A theme that works in terms of mechanics and unintentional comedy." Note: If you want to do multiplayer with this game, there is a service called Game Ranger that supports this game. The service basically supports a lot of old games where the servers are down (e. g. GameSpy). Here is the link to the website: https://www.gameranger.com/
