This game tries to show you a slower and more deliberate tactical shooter, it tries to dazzle you with fine textures and attention to detail. But do not be fooled; when you hear Microsoft Sam talk to you this is a portent for the ills to come. You've seen everything this game has to offer after the first map, out of nine. The eight and ninth map are just previous maps reused - unchanged. There's a lot of great stuff in here that is just never given time to shine. It's like they faced issues in design and didn't care to bypass them. The design decisions that stand like barriers between you and fun are plentiful. On top of this the unlock system is grindy and offers no significant cosmetic or gameplay advantages beyond a few exceptions. 80% of the game takes place in corridors, and most of them are not wide enough to fit two players. Most of my enjoyment with this game was making fun of it. I got it at 75% off and I am still disappointed; stay far away at the asking price of 30 euros. There is nothing here for you even if you are 40k fanatic. Watch a let's play.
This is what it says on the tin, a mech game where you go around blowing up small sandbox maps with objectives, enemies, and a some light context for why a 75 ton warmachine turned the local gas station into a fireball. Gameplay is solid, sound is fantastic, and it has enough variety to satisfy even those who usually aren't. My one complaint is that because this is an isometric game the guns accuracy is a little peculiar and doesn't always hit exactly where I'd want them to. They have a firing arc that is visualised but because of the 2D nature it can be come a little hypothetical at times. You can solve this with skill, but even when I got the hang of it I still found it a bit annoying. The options are a little barren in the menues, but console can tweak pretty much any graphical option you can think of. The game has a linear story campaign that's a little barren. If you find it too barren, if you find yourself a little bored; remember to switch to Freelance mode. You ride a vehicle of your choosing with the loadout of your choosing with the pilot of your choosing, and this is where the game really shines. If you're not intimidated by having options you'll probably be very satisfied with what you're getting out of the pricetag.
The entity you play as really doesn't face much oppossition for large swathes of the game, so your primary antagonist will be puzzles. This is not a problem, as the puzzles are based on the entity's skillset which changes based on how many helpless people it has consumed. Changing the size of your entity through eating and discarding bodymass switches up your skillset which means even small puzzles might mean threading the needle of when and where to use your abilities such as throwing spide webs and using harpoons. However, the game does pull a few punches, presumably to not be frustrating, and some puzzles feel a little simple when the mechanics seem to allow for much more. But they do make you feel clever when you complete them, and they are all stepping stones to later and more complicated challenges. Other than that the controls are very satisfying for the first half of the game. Your entity being small or medium, you can use a gamepad for comfortable navigation; or if you are using a mouse you can do some very subtle manipulation. I personally enjoyed rattling doors to lure in victims, then gently opening them and pulling the unfortunate soul into the maw. However once the game reaches its endgame your bodysize is simply so large and so drawn-out you can and will get stuck frequently between objects. A later mechanic of avoiding bombs can be very frustrating when your tail is still in danger but you can not see it because your head is a screen away. However, aside from this the game handles smooth and goes by at a quick pace. The final mission gives you multiple ways to approach the threats that prevent your ultimate victory, and this is quite frankly great. I wish there were more of these segments thrown in here and there to give the player some creative mayhem inbetween all the puzzles. A bit short, quite fun, atmospheric, and with a little 'The Thing' twist at the end to give you a frighten. Quite fun.
The game is graphically superior, and feels better to play than its predecessor. Yet the enemy behaviours and attack patterns are all grossly more generic and simple, most using no tactic more advanced than walking up to you and repeatedly attacking you. The maps are smaller which means you rarely get a chance to use the movement system beyond going left and right repeatedly. The combat is, as a result, a downgrade in terms of variety and involvement. To compensate enemies react faster and are more aggressive, but because attack animations do not have any wind-up this just means trial-and-error dictates success rather than dynamically engaging with and overcoming your foe. The puzzles are interesting enough, par for the course with this sort of game and while they wont blow the mind of someone familiar with videogame puzzles; are perfectly satisfying to complete with a few twists and turns to keep it from becoming predictable. The game, however, lacks a brightnes option which makes the mandatory night-time a pain to play if you, like me, have a mediocre monitor. Why a simple gamma slider isn't available is anybody's guess. But in the end my real problem comes with the combat being tedious, and this is one of the few games I quickly leant towards an 'Explorer' playthrough of. I did not feel engaged and I just wanted to switch it to Easy and focus on exploring and solving puzzles. The combat simply wasn't interesting enough for me to bother learning, which I consider a huge detriment. However worse is that even on Easy the game really is not. Difficulty is almost entirely based on your ability to predict attack patterns and side-strafe them accordingly; which means in the end there might as well only be one difficulty option as the slider changes little. For me it meant that after several hours of good-hearted attempts of getting into the game and overcoming the tedium I just became frustrated and gave up. I much prefer LoG1 despite the more interesting visuals.
The art is beautiful, the music makes the atmosphere, the presentation is overall nothing short of wonderful. It is one of the few times I've really felt that me, as a player, have become immersed in the story. However the gameplay itself is a fairly simple adventure game with the context of your actions largely stripped away. Rub thing on thing. Did it work? No? Try different thing. Work? Okay, try thing in the new thing. This in of itself is not a problem, not every game needs to be mechanically deep, this certainly doesn't need to be to be enjoyable. My biggest problem is that the game board lacks basic organisational tools like card spawning in a user-defined place for organisation. That and that you have to move the mouse more than in a first person shooter, I had to stop because my wrist was hurting too much at times. The board is a mess and you have no tools to counter-act it, unlockable or otherwise. But the absolute killer is that the game is filled with routine grind that never ends. It is not deep, it does not change, it is not interesting or rewarding; the same few actions simply allow you to continue playing the game. Grinding the same action repeatedly should not be a game mechanic past the introduction; it directly contradicts the exploration element. This game has little substance past the dressing and flowery dialogue. A good plate-spinning game should reward you for your performance, not reset you to square one because one out of your 28 plates fell.
The game is a really interesting take on fantasy adventures, where you play as 1-3 predetermined characters and have a small quest to complete. You go about the overworld beating up monsters and looking for loot while preparing for the final confrontation. It plays a lot like Heroes Of Might & Magic if the battles were changed with small character-vs-character RNG based fights. While it is a really cute and novel concept that, ideally, lets you and possibly some friends go on a short DND-esque adventure; almost everything is dictated by a d100 diceroll. From attacks, to movement in the overworld, to dodges, special abilities, loot, hostiles; everything. In effect it means that in terms of how good you can get at the game the answer is "not very". While there's a lot of knowledge based decisions, you are still ultimately deciding whether a 40% chance of success is worth it or not; this is presuming you are in a situation where you are privy to the dicerolls or allowed to influence them. In a way it is very reminiscent of something like Darkest Dungeon, or XCOM: Enemy Unknown; but with all the skill elements stripped away. The kraken may or may not attack you, and you may or may not have an answer. The game also has a nasty habit of indulging in double jeopardy. A failure to a diceroll, might mean and immediate punishment, a follow-up punishment, and then later as a consequence of "your" failures; additional severe punishments. This means that once you start making mistakes you are down a slippery slope of misery. The game proclaims at the start it is a "hard" game, but it really isn't. It is very shallow, you are just statistically unlikely to win. A game that can be won using the exact same decisions on the easisest difficulty as the hardest difficulty is not terribly exciting. In the end, a lovely idea but it fails in execution. It also contains an egregious amount of grind to unlock basic gameplay abilities and equipment through an in-game store\currency.
Reus is a puzzle game about building the ecosystem of a planet through the divine powers of manifesting minerals, plants, and animals; and transmuting them to improve them. You do this to the sole benefit of human tribes that live on the planet, and who are quite frankly greedy little pests. By helping people, they provide you upgrades to your abilities, and these abilities let you create more powerful natural resources for the humans to exploit. The goal is to make the human civilizations as bountiful as possible without letting their plenty go to their heads. It's a gentle balancing act that sometimes involves you putting your divine foot down and wiping out belligerents to ensure balance in the ecosystem. Reus is, mechanically, not very complex, but makes up for it in the depth it goes into. Every single resource planted, such as a mineral, is modified by the environment they are placed on and have an entire tech tree devoted to them. Combining resources that benefit from each other, such as animals that feed on specific types of plant, takes equal part experimentation and planning. Where Reus lacks is in that the game, while played in increments of 30, 60, or 120 minutes, can be over after only a few hours of gameplay depending on your skill. The main line of progression is completing challenges to unlock new natural resources, which in turn let you unlock new challenges. So on and so on. However once the relatively meagre supply of challenges are completed there really isn't too much you can do other than play for your own personal high score. This hasn't dulled my enjoyment of the game, but it does leave you wanting more; for good and bad. Where it excels is that the things it does it does very well. There is not a spare ounce of fat here and everything is presented with crystal clear focus. This is a great game for experienced and inexperienced players alike, and it is exactly as challenging as you allow it to be.
If you're looking for a grand sweeping narrative this is not it, but it has enough story moments to keep you going and the combat encounters are varied and creative enough that I never felt like I was going through the motions. Though that said the biggest enjoyment I derived from this was the voice acting and the bridging of the earlier Baldur's Gate games, so perhaps I should specify that this is a game for those of you who played BG1\2 and want more rather than someone looking for a standalone RPG experience. Some simplistic and uninteresting quests but overall decent with some really interesting set pieces thanks to the newer engine.
I've sunk hundred of hours into Battle Brothers and I still have yet to see everything, and I still enjoy it. A wonderful tactical game with superb writing, and one of my favourite games of all time.
Aside from some minor balancing issues this DLC adds a lot of content for a relatively modest price tag. All the strengths of the Beast & Exploration DLC without most of its weaknesses. My only real complaint is that some of the starting origins feel like they haven't been given quite as much as forethought as they require, the first 15 days of any of the more exotic origins can be very challenging or a breeze depending on some map RNG. But ultimately I prefer something slightly janky and different to the alternative of it being too sanitised. If you've already put a few dozen hours into Battle Brothers this will breathe some fresh air into your experience.
