Bought this for nostalgia reasons. Some tables are fine (Android), some are pathetically bad, especially on Windows 11 PCs. Fun to waste fifteen minutes, while the pizza is in the oven.
This is a a great follow-up from the Mimimi games. Actually, I find the story way better than Shadow Gambit, proving that a supernatural theme can work, when placed in the right setting. It still misses some of the more refined tactical possibilities from Desperados or Aiko though. What I miss the most is that one can't read the dialogue of the heroes. Often I'm planning some setup and at that exact moment someone starts explaining a thing. So I don't know what they were talking about. Unfortunately the game still has quite a lot of (graphic) bugs. Cones that won't go away, even if disabled. Heroes that get stuck behind doors or in mid-air when jumping down. The most annoying is that when you open a saved game, often heroes start walking all on their own, leaving their hiding place with lethal consequences. Four stars it is, minus one for the bugs. But if you like Desperados or Aiko or Blades of the Shogun, this is a welcome addition.
Mutant Year Zero was a tough game, but it was fun. The dialogues between Dux and Bormin (and between the ghouls) were hilarious and I played it a couple of times with different teams to get the most out of it. Miasma Chronicles is MYZ reimagined. It's bigger its 'badder', but it isn't necessarily better. Take the fighting duo. Robot Diggs is stereotyped as a loud-mouthed black person, what was funny half a century ago. White hero boy Elvis doesn't resemble Bormin, nor Dux, but rather the pretty boring Magnus. From the first moment in the game I found he had no charisma at all and it doesn't get better after some missions. The story is thematically the same as in MYZ, but darker, much darker. Something has happened to the world, a global catastrophe I presume, and instead of mutated ghouls we now have mutated frogs, who like to kill people for an unknown reason. Just like the ghouls in MYZ worshipped the Ancients, the frogs worship the Miasma. The third person who joins the team is Selma, I mean Jade, who has a bad character and a secret she refuses to tell. This means a lot of bickering. Fighting is a lot harder in Miasma and that is not always a good thing. While there was a steady stream of new weapons and new add-ons in MYZ, this seems not to be the case in Miasma. While the inventory in MYZ was simple and easy is has been made more complex in Miasma. The buttons on my gamepad do not always respond like they should do and often open the wrong menu. It's something I haven't seen before on other games and pretty annoying. Some weapon features take a long time to cool down what makes the battles even harder. There seems to be something wrong with the overall balance, an upgrade has been rumoured to be in the making. Let's hope so. Something I like very much are the dialogues in the village centre while you walk past the villagers. These are so good that I often stop walking by to eavesdrop for a bit.
If you are one of those players who can watch their Banished village for hours on end, this is the game for you. No hurry, no disasters, no violence. It's zen, with beer...
I would like to give this game 3 stars and a half, but I had to settle with 3. 3 because while the game is fun in itself, the story is absolutely unbelievable, like sending one man to the moon to save humanity, but only give him oxygen that will last for two minutes and a half. Luckily there are air canisters floating around about everywhere...
