I didn't expect too much going in, but damn...I was really hooked after the first few hours (currently around 50 and still not finished). The game is amazing, not perfect obviously, but very VERY much worth the money and a steal while discounted. Let’s get the BAD out of the way... only 2 complaints that I can really mention: one is that the campaign is based on a timer and while it makes perfect sense in the lore, it’s still annoying for me and I'm sure others. Second thing is, of course game balance...for a first game from a tiny team its actually quite good, but it really depends how good you are at tactical games like this...I'm bad at them and I find this game quite easy, so just don't expect some big challenge. Sure, there might be other nitpicks that some more “entitled” players complain about like “omg you have a 2 second loading screen” when the game transitions from one screen to another…but come the F on…I swear people complain about the most insignificant sht…ugh. Other than that the game is outstanding: Story is ok, but the characters really makes it shine, all of them are well voice acted (not fully, there is a lot of text in between cutscenes) , the humor is excellent, lighthearted and yet very well written and with a dose of self-awareness that I love. Music is great and sounds in general are really good, with things like attacks sounds sounding very powerful. Graphics are beautiful, hand drawn art tho animations are a bit "simple". Big one is COMBAT/Gameplay of course and I’m having a ton of fun with it. There are a ton of characters each very different (in both their abilities and personality) and combining them will lead to different playstyles with a lot of “combos” to kill enemies way faster than they can kill you. On top of that you have a light kingdom/character-reputation building game in between the combat, where you upgrade buildings and build relationships with characters. So yeah, overall, I love it and highly recommend buying it.
I didn't expect too much going in, but damn...I was really hooked after the first few hours (currently around 50 and still not finished). The game is amazing, not perfect obviously, but very VERY much worth the money and a steal while discounted. Let’s get the BAD out of the way... only 2 complaints that I can really mention: one is that the campaign is based on a timer and while it makes perfect sense in the lore, it’s still annoying for me and I'm sure others. Second thing is, of course game balance...for a first game from a tiny team its actually quite good, but it really depends how good you are at tactical games like this...I'm bad at them and I find this game quite easy, so just don't expect some big challenge. Sure, there might be other nitpicks that some more “entitled” players complain about like “omg you have a 2 second loading screen” when the game transitions from one screen to another…but come the F on…I swear people complain about the most insignificant sht…ugh. Other than that the game is outstanding: Story is ok, but the characters really makes it shine, all of them are well voice acted (not fully, there is a lot of text in between cutscenes) , the humor is excellent, lighthearted and yet very well written and with a dose of self-awareness that I love. Music is great and sounds in general are really good, with things like attacks sounds sounding very powerful. Graphics are beautiful, hand drawn art tho animations are a bit "simple". Big one is COMBAT/Gameplay of course and I’m having a ton of fun with it. There are a ton of characters each very different (in both their abilities and personality) and combining them will lead to different playstyles with a lot of “combos” to kill enemies way faster than they can kill you. On top of that you have a light kingdom/character-reputation building game in between the combat, where you upgrade buildings and build relationships with characters. So yeah, overall, I love it and highly recommend buying it.
It's mostly an open world crafting/exploring/combat game with an interesting dynamic faction mechanic. Problem is everything in this feels so unpolished. I know it's an indie, probably from kickstarter...but the combat...oh boy...it's a disaster. I just cannot get over it. People are comparing this to zelda...idk if these people have ever played a good game in their life, coz this is not it chief. It's buggy, the camera is terrible, your character clips through enemies and if you target lock the enemy you're gonna get motion sick because of all of the above. The game is also pretty lifeless and exploring feels boring, the story is interesting tho and the enemies are cool, but from other reviews it sounds like variety is lacking. Maybe if they give it the Nomanssky treatment and keep patching it one day it will be good, but right now it's a hard pass.
I really wanted to give this game lower then 5 stars since It has quite a few negatives I can mention...but I can't...there is so much love and attention put into it by a very small team...it deserves the score. So about the game... Negatives: the things that pissed me off the most are the platforming mechanics. They feel like a chore and the controls are pretty bad (character slips after landing, jump is based on how long you press the button so its inaccurate) and the puzzles themselves seem to be there just to waste your time, its not difficult just annoying. Other then that the game has weird alt-tabing and resolution issues (you have to go windowed and drag the screen to make it get to 1440p for instance... and there is no mouse support. I didn't have the controller issues other people are complaining about tho. Positives: I really like the combat mechanics...the game is a bit laid back and slow, so anyone can pick it up, meaning there isn't much in the way of challenge, but it is quite unique. Its not turned based but not quite real time either...its timing based, almost rhythm based, you have to look at the enemy animations and react accordingly (parry,block, attack, jump). I liked it a lot, I just wish it got better/ more challenging over time. The things that stand out the most tho are the humor, the story and the bosses. All those I found very well made and they carried me to the end. Also the final boss is quite spectacular...really blew my mind and was totally unexpected. Well done. Big thanks for GOG for recommending this and to the devs for making it, hope to see more from them. Cheers.
TLDR I very much enjoyed this game. Saying it's the next FTL is a bit of a stretch tho. Except for some of the combat feeling similar they are in fact very different. While FTL has no story to speak of, but massive amounts of replayability(i have 300h in it), this game has a fantastic Sci-fi story to keep you going, but it's unlikely that you will want to play it over and over again after finishing it. Let's break it down a bit: Story- its great, I was really invested in it. Reminds me a lot of Mass effect...about the end of humanity and how insignificant we are in this infinite place and how machines will outlast us. Very strong part of the game. Music- fantastic, very much FLT-like, but there isn't much of it sadly. User interface- It must be mentioned...it is phenomenal...the best most beautiful UI I've ever seen...every button, every screen, every transition is just a pleasure to look at. Graphics- really nice pixel graphics Combat, the big one- very enjoyable, for a while. FTL style customization of your ship and real-time-with-pause combat between you and your enemy. But, instead of a more personal feeling that FTL offers, where you have your small crew that you name after your friends etc and care about them...here as an admiral the combat is very much impersonal. Also there isn't that much depth to it sadly, I'm pretty sure someone who is really good at it will find a build to beat everything easily. But it gets you interested all the way to the end and provides many tense moments. Also as far as I can tell, starting the game again is pretty much pointless, since the game doesn't generate enough "random OMG" moments like FTL did. Overall- I enjoyed it a lot, for 23 bucks I spent 26 hours playing, so I say it was worth it, very much so. If they could invest more into it and maybe add an "Adventure mode" or something...with more random events, more impactful items etc they could make this the next FTL and I hope they consider it, I would love to play more.
If what you want most is value for money, then this will not offer that. The quality is there, definitely, fantastic art/music/hearfealt story...but for only 1 hour or so of gameplay/story the price is steep. They could have at least given us the sountrack then it would have been almost worth it. I don't regret buying it, I just hope to see more next time.
I was sad hearing that they weren't making FTL2, but after playing this game for 10 min I realized this dev team is absolutely outstanding when it comes to making original and very deep games with crazy amounts of replayability. Unlike FTL this game is more about strategy and less about “random LOL moments” and I understand this might put some people off, but for all the people who complained that FTL was too random or that there’s too much RNG, this is what you NEED to play. This game has zero RNG and every move you make has a huge impact on the outcome. I for one am a huge fan of real-time-with-pause type of games and I’m very bad at puzzles, but still I was hooked for 3-4 hours non-stop when I started playing this. It is a testament to this team’s skill as developers and designers that they can make such addicting and fun games, even when they make puzzle-turn-based-strategy games like this that require a lot of brainpower. I hope to see more soon from them and thank you for another great game. Highly recommended to anyone, especially if you like TBS.
Let's talk about the bad things since there isn't much to say: -bugs/crashes. Quite a few sadly, nothing gamebreaking tho -it's way to easy to beat -this might be a minor thing, but I for one wanted to get into the gwent multi-player game, but Thronebreaker doesn't make it easy.While the game mechanics are the same, the cards have completely different text. So even if now i know every card in TB, I have to relearn every single card text from scratch Now the good: -I laugh when I see the "female protagonist" label on steam, most of the times these are just games that try to appeal to the mostly male gamers playing, so the characters are usually bad, but here all the characters and especially Queen Meeve are, lets just say, exceptional. Some of the best ever written -the voice acting is phenomenal, and remember that the game has no cutscenes etc, you're looking at pictures for the most part so to have this amount of quality va was a shock, a pleasant one -the art is beautiful, but even better is the in-game(when you're playing the cards) graphics, I played a lot of card games and this is by far the best I've seen in terms of animation, interface and I would say even atmosphere- which is strange to say in a card game -music is great tho a bit more tame then in the witcher -Gameplay: it's superb. Forget that little minigame you were playing in the witcher 3,this is truly a masterpiece card game, so much fun to create decks that just obliterate everything or have insane combos.Other then the card game you'll be playing a top down, exploration game and of course a "choose your own adventure" type of campaign, where you make decision that will affect the story/characters and the cards you can have in your deck -fun-factor:I've gushed enough about it already, needles to say it's a ton of fun and make no mistake, in true witcher fashion it's highly repayable as well,with different endings etc. Overall I say It's a must buy for this price. Thank you once again CDPR.
Let's start with the good: -games looks nice (both graphics and art style) -narrator is amazing -music is good -and the idea to have you trying to find the right choices to lead you to your ultimate destiny by failing again and again is near genius Now the bad: -the game crashed a couple of times and also has stutters from time to time -loading screens are very long -you can't skip 90% of the dialogue even if you heard it 100 times before -gameplay is extremely repetitive, simple and button-mashy...it literally takes no skill after you have all the gems and a few talents, I guess it's made to be fast so you can skip most of it, but that's just bad design IMO -the story feels contrived and has a lot of dodgy moments like: you fight 50 enemies to get to the end of the lvl and the story just ends because you apparently got ambushed by 20 The really bad: -I was infuriated to find that after you discover all the "truths" aka important facts about the items/people in the story the game LITERALLY HOLDS YOUR HAND AND PUSHES YOU TO THE RIGHT ENDING almost by force. you can still make choices but you know they're wrong so why bother? Whats the point of having a game that is based on failing if it just throws the right answer in your face after just a few mistakes (and those mistakes need to be made in order to progress in the first place). for me that was insulting and made me feel like I wasted my money on this...because it just took a dump on the core concept of the game: Getting better and more knowledgeable by failing. I give it 3 stars even if it deserves 2, because it's cheap for what it offers and it does have a lot of potential if they manage to polish the game more and actually make the story/story pieces less contrived and of course, if they actually let the player fail next time and find the pieces of the puzzle on his own rather then hand holding.
