The mechanics, graphics, voice acting. Still good, or at least good enough. The only downside that disappointed me again and again, was the writing. Not all of it. Some background stories are great, heartbreaking even. But the solutions to a lot of the cases felt generated after a repeating principle: I find the likely murder weapon, imply the motive, find the time window and the likely culprit. And then I do the exact same thing again for another person, who astonishingly has a motive, a window of opportunity and a similar weapon. For me the parts of these cases felt generically glued together which took away a portion of the fun I had when I started investigating. The extra effort that was put into the story to keep the case interesting backfired and felt unreal, ridiculous even. And so I put the game down again and again. Play another case month later, finish the case and regret the time I spent with it ... to pick it up again a few month later ... to be dissappointed again. It is not a bad game, but it is not good either.
I had to pause after every completed level and picked the game up again month later. The controls are tight and the combat mechanics are well executed, but the level design is repetetive and the huge levels got me bored again. Also the difficulty is ramped up by unfun mechanics: - Scripted doors that close behind you - Scripted enemies enter rooms from secret doors behind you - Spawning machines that rebuild infinite masses of enemy robots - Installations with invulnerability fields - Spawners are hidden in places where every corridor looks the same - Sustained hits spin your ship, so you loose orientation (Good luck reorienting, because the whole place looks the same upside down.) - Timers Does that sound fun to you? Check the GOG and steam achievements. Very high drop out rate. Just about 15 % made it through the first levels. For most people it wasn't a fun experience. Even though the reviews are often stellar, only dedicated fans completed the game. I read, the devs ran out of money in 2019. I can understand why. The controls in this game are good, but the story and level design is meh. And even though a lot of people were waiting for a successor to "Descent", "Overload" feels stale. I can see this as a good training exercise for spatial perception and reaction in multiplayer. But for single player, this is just a mediocre experience that probably does not merit your time.
Answer me this: If an attacker has a 80 % hit chance and the defender has a 40 % chance to parry. How high is the chance, that the attacker misses 3 conscutive times? Here is a hint: a) About 10 % b) About 2 % c) About 20% d) About 15 % e) About 5 % The answer is at the end. Most negative reviews have their origin from a simple circumstance. Human brains suck at probability assumptions. We do not memorize all the results and we focus on outliers. This happens to all games that use a RNG (Battle Brothers, X-Com, Blood Bowl etc. etc. etc.) "How can it happen, that i miss all the time with an 80 % to hit chance and the AI gets one crit after the other?". The RNG in this game works as intended and you, if you play it smart, will soon have no problem winning same level encounters without a single loss. The games fault is, that it is overloaded with unintuitive and unexplained mechanics (this makes it only 4 stars out of 5). *************** Answer = c) Chance to hit something = 80 % Chance to miss = 20 % Chance to NOT get parried = 60 % Chance to hit the enemy is: 0.8 * 0.6 = 0.48 So the chance to miss is 52 % Chance to miss the three times in a row is: 0.52 * 0.52 * 0.52 = 0.14 In a random encounter with 10 vs 10 there will be a lot of hitting and missing (even though the enemy gets usually just 1 parry.) But 3 misses in a row will happen sometimes in nearly every or every second encounter. So, should you get this game? Only if you neglected EVERY answer and chose: F) For "F" you with your stupid mathematics. I SHALL TAKE MY MIGHTY WAR HAMMER AND SMASH THE HERETIC AND PURGE THE ABOMINATION! FOR THE EMPEROR !! Congratulations, you are a complete nerd and have everything what it takes to master this game.
This game unfolds a new layer with every session i play. At start there are only a few minions, that can use different abilities on different positions. But the more minions you unlock, the more synergies between these charakters become available. And not only minions, but equipment, stat points, magic spells, artefacts which all can be transformed, combined, exchanged ... You also have to household mana, rage, consumables, space to heal and train your minions. This game brings some interesting new mechanics to the genre. And things that seem to make no sense when you first see them, develop with time into something useful. Let me give you an example. You usually would approach a battle with the intention to kill all enemies. This will let you gather more resources. To achieve that, you could do physical damage, magical damage, or stress damage, which would lead to a heart attack and therefor also kill. But now you just unlocked a minion, that has next to the more less expected features also a build option to rise the enemies chance to flee. Huh? I wondered. Why would you want to invest in that? An already beaten enemy that flees, does not benefit you. But then you find a spell that would turn enemies into vampires which can join you ... if they flee and survive the battle. And suddenly you have a new goal in mind, turn your troop around, make place for that one specialist, and make her work with the rest. And your next battle will be to infect a victim, stress it out, keep it alive, buff it if needed, make it flee. And all that while you try to keep your team alive and get rid of all the annoying enemies that do also their best to remove unwanted conditions. I really like this game. It has an adjustable difficulty that teaches the game or gives a challenge. It is not too grindy. It motivates with unlocks. And last but not least: All I need to know is in game (e.g. enemy descriptions with stats and abilities once you met them), no more Alt tabbing into Wiki's.
I did every puzzle and sidequest I encountered and completion took me on max difficulty about 50 hours. It is remarkable how much work went into this title which is rather cheap considering its content. I found that there is pleasantly much deck building opportunities and content. (But I am a gwent amateur). I soon found a combination that would work wonders and started stomping through enemy lines ... but found out in the middle and late game that I had to rebuild my deck twice completely to overcome certain enemies. Inbetween there is lots of fine tuning and not only the standard battles will rattle your brains, but tons of puzzles that use entirely unique cards and mechanics that shall keep you entertained. The story told is intriguing and gives interesting (and oh so satisfying!) moral choices. I never left with the feeling that all options and outcomes were something that I did not want. They fit to my playstile. If you liked Gwent in the Witcher series, but do not care for multiplayer, this is a sure buy. If you do like the multiplayer, then consider that this game uses cards and mechanics differently, but it offers lots of treasures (cards and goodies) to be found which will be added to your Gwent account if you own one or wish to start one after you played Thronebreaker. The artwork and voice acting are also marvellous. If you like the witcher world and are a strategist, there is no way you could go wrong with this one.
I played the first two missions and tried for about 4 hours, but in both missions I had trouble with scripts that would not trigger. SPOILERS: In the first mission you are supposed to burn down an enemy encampment, but first I had to leave and reenter the camp with another unit before the option would pop up. In the second mission you are supposed to bombard enemy positions with artillery fire (I read a guide after I tried for several hours and had completed it with major difficulties), but the artillery was never available. I really like the idea of the game, but I hate the guess work that is necessary to proceed and that you cannot advance until certain radio options are available. The game is very cryptic at what needs to be done and is unforgiving if you dont do exactly what you are supposed to do, or do it at a time the game did not foresee. E.g. it seems if you save at the wrong time the whole process can become stuck, but you are never told that you are waiting for a specific event to happen or what exactly is missing to trigger said event. The games concept, setting, voice acting and crash free experience would merit 4 stars, but what I consider game breaking bugs make it 2 - 3 stars only. I do not recommend a buy. Maybe further down the road this gets patched (This review was written on the 14. May 2021).
This humble servitor is pleasantly surprised with the program. I was on the edge buying this on GOG because of the localisation issue (One could not change language ingame and was stuck with subpar translations of an otherwise well written story). Well, this has been fixed! Chose the language you desire from the ingame options menu. Furthermore it runs smooth on my notebook too, which only brings an Nvidia MX 250 2 GB card to the necrons tomb (Below minimum system requirements). - The mechanics bring a smile to every turn based strategy fan - High replayability - High customisation of units ... - ... and difficulty settings (from Snotling-wuss to Emperors-iron man) - Intriguing story - Great music - Interesting voiceovers
