Without a doubt one of the most staisying JRPG experiences I have had in years. Simple straigtforward game with some fairly unique story elements, an amazing hand made sountrack, and just so much LOVE put into the two games. I mean it. The developers put heart and soul into these games, and it shows. Treat yourself and buy these games!
A great game that is the right mix of crunchy and cozy, that lets you explore spcae, meet new races, discover mysteries, and sometime blow stuff up really good. Story has been paced pretty well, and allows plenty of time to "do your own thing". No complaints at all on my part.
Once upon a time King of Seas was given away for free. Having played Sid Meirer's Pirates I downloaded the game for some nostalgic fun. Mad it through the tutorial to my first mission, to deliver some wood to a nearby port. Enroute, I traveled in a straight line and three level 7 gunboats spawned right next to my level 1-2 sloop. I just went full sail in a straight line to the tutorial port and delivered the wood. I hoped it was a bug and I could outrun them. While in the dialogue screen I watched the gunboats follow me from half across the map, and close in. I hoped I was safe in port. The port did not care who I was, and the level 7 gunboats killed every ship in the harbor including mine. Main menu, or restart game was my option. I uninstalled the game. Never spend money on this.
Which is really sad. I have loved and adored Spiderweb games since the 90s, and would recommend any and all of them. But for some reason, something is broken in Avadon 3 and the text size is comically small, even if you toggle all the possible resolution and text size options. Others have complained about it, but not enough to warrant a change sadly. I really like the setting of Avadon. Like all of his games, the world is well thought out and the dialogue and NPCs come to life through their writing. I even prefer it over Avernum and Geneforge, which is why I am so disappointed that I cannot continue with this one. But my eyes hurt trying to read the super small text and games should be fun.
I didn't have high expectations for $3. I downloaded this and played the whole "game" in one lunch break. Nothing you do really feels like it matters. It's just clicking on text with some pretty basic dialogue and some "choices" which boils down to siding with the jerk player or the other two halfway decent role players, and there are meters to show who you are getting along with but they don't seem to really matter. So your basically really reading someone's fan fic of what a rough OSR D&D session would be, that is uninspired, not fun, and short, and then the GM asks you if you like it and if your honest they throw a toddler tantrum and the game ends. There you go, if that sounds like it's worth $3 knock yourself out. In retrospect, I should bought a soda and a candy bar and listed to an OSR Let's Play podcast and would have had a more satisfying experience.
I came to this game with a lot of experience from Civilization, Space Empires, and the Twilight Imperium Tabletop game. Whether it is the obfuscation of the tutorial, unclear information regarding resources, the fact that boundaries don't really seem to matter, which makes expansion kinda iffy, and the overly complex mechanisms of settling planets, I just couldn't break into it. ' There are some nice visuals, and there is definitely something here that will appeal to some folks. But I just found the same experience could be found elsewhere in other games.
Which unfortunately ruins what is a pretty interesting game. It's like OG Resident Evil meets Enter the Gungeon. The Exploration, atmosphere and environmental story telling is thematic and strong. It reminded me of wandering the Spencer Mansion in the old Playstation Days. Combat is, okayish. I am ok with the controls being kinda poor if the goal is to heighten a sense of vulnerability in the player. But given other design areas, it seems like that is not unintentional. The controls are poor. They are poor with a controller, and even worse on mouse and keyboard. And it's not like there arent games like this out there with WAY better control schemes. But the real killer is that if you play anything above easy, there is no option to save your game progress outside of completing a level. Some levels take anywhere from 1-4 hours to complete. Assuming you don't get murdered by a boss, if you run into one too early you can end up leaving a level too soon, and with no ability to return, your end game is already lost. God forbid you have kids, pets, or any outside responsibilities, you will lose hours needlessly because the developers have stated online that they do not wish to EVER include a save and quit option. Unfortunately this just straight up ruins the game for me. Which is sad. There is a workaround such a random save point appearing within a level, but that is not a viable substitute for save and quit. On easy mode the game autosaves every two rooms, which is nice. Honestly though: I am not sure the game is worth the built in frustration to continue.
Pros: A pretty faithful adaptation of the tabletop title. Having the computer crunch the tabletop numbers and dice rolls is nice. Looks and sounds great. Cons: Where to start? Poor Optimization, there is a bug that the more saves you have the slower the game gets until it crashes and becomes unusable. Maps are small, making faster mechs more useless and no possibility to evade or avoid conflicts which seems to be part of some of the mission designs. Speaking of, the only way the game knows to make things challenging is to outnumber you 3 to 1 on almost every mission. That is being generous. It is not uncommon to try and run your 4 mech lance against up to 5 enemy lances in a single mission. Be prepared for attrition, and then spending ages trying to repair your mechs and heal your pilots. You can never field more than 4 mechs. Ever. You can own and hold 3 lances, but you can never send more than four. It feels so wasted when there seems to be no reason that you should deploy that many. As a whole this reflects the whole design of this game, there is some disconnect between mission design that seems to expect you to have multiple lances on a large map. An instead, you are shooting your way out of a 1 on 4 dogpile in the center of the map every mission. Lack of supporting units is the final frustrating element for me. No scout shoppers, signal probes, resupply or repair drones. Even some air support would be nice. These were elements in Mech Commander and I loved it. I so wish that vehicle support was an option here, but it isn't. Overall it is very fun for awhile but then the main issues will begin to drag down the enjoyment of a game that feels like it has lost so much potential. Honestly, if you can find mech commander Gold somewhere, with it's cheesey cut scenes, it's arguably the better game.
This is more of just support for a real hidden gem if you've never experienced this series. It's a well written, and interesting world with choices and multiple methods of making your way through the game allowing for a variety of approaches and outcomes. They simply don't make games like this anymore, and I highly recommend this experience to anyone who has ever been curious. You won't regret it.
I want to start by saying that I really love this game. I love the art, the music, and the setting. The gameplay is pretty easy to learn, but there is some real difficulty in mastering it. Especially against human opponents. I like that each hero has a distinct play style, and it is easy to find a particular style that fits you well. There are lots of little touches like animations and flavor text on the cards that really impress. Playing with other humans is where the game really shines, although ut has an annoying bug/feature that a player who lags will be booted from a game, and can never return. This means your fellow players must now decide between starting over or continuing without your buddy. There was hope this would be fixed in a future update. Sadly, the developers have opted to rebrand the game, and will refuse to offer the current DLC with additional heroes and multiplayer fixes to GOG customers. Fundamentally making this inferior to other versions on the market. It's a very sad turn for a game that could be more than what is offered here.
