This is one of those games that, no matter how old it gets over the years, will always be a treasure - at least to me, at least for as long as I live. May you find it as wonderful as I have.
I didn't play the whole game, only the early bits but it just feels like an early access title, which is pretty bad when you're doing a remaster. It's solid for a beta but not as a full game, at this price point, when the original works just fine and is available for half the price. I cannot recommend it in its current state. In my wholly subjective opinion, the general attitude toward the game is good (plenty of gameplay customization options), it's just the execution that can't keep up. For example, I guess a minimap didn't fit in with how they wanted the UI to look like, but the feature itself is important for planning and navigation. You could have both if you make the minimap toggleable. Give it 6-9 months and see what happens.
Is this revolutionary and mind-blowing like WC1 back in the day? No. Is this the best of its genre? Can't say for sure but I guess not. However, it is, to me, a golden example of how a finished game looks like: the devs had a clear vision of what they wanted, they plotted the course there, and executed it carefully. I didn't encounter any bugs, graphics are clean and efficient, the ship handles smoothly, the towers have clear roles and perform them well, and as a whole, the game is as intuitive as can be. I'll give 2 examples. When you use your warp bomb (which summons an explosion in the target location) to collapse a building, the physics makes sense, allowing you to guide a tall building's fall, which in turn cuts of an attack route without having to invest resources into it. In the Last Bastion, you'll encounter a shield generator tank that creates a bubble protecting nearby units. Since it blocks all projectiles, I thought: wouldn't the above mentioned warp bomb work? In a regular game, I wouldn't expect it to because devs tend to like their mechanics, but here it worked, because logically, a projectile-blocking shield can't do diddly squat about anything that teleports behind the shield. Like the title says: it's a solid game that is definitely worth playing if you enjoy a tower defense and shooter combo. Game gets bonus points for essentially being the Scrin campaign in C&C3 if you had a proper invasion force rather than a mining fleet with some security.
As someone who grew up on WC1 and Blizzard games in general, this is quite the eyesore. I'm glad I picked it up while it was free, otherwise this would have been a lightning fast refund. 1, Everything is clunky, in ways that even WC1 isn't. Normally, if your units blob up or get in a weird line, you can micro them around nicely. Here, each time you give a new order to a unit, it staggers, meaning that if you're used to microing like mad during a battle (as you should be), you're actually hindering your units. 2, In a mission, my hero got stuck standing still, unable to participate in the rest of the map. However, it wasn't a problem because... 3, ... heroes feel unnecessary. Every map is the same: max out your supply, attack, lose half your dudes becaues the AI keep rebuilding towers behind you, which is a kinda neat tactic albeit somewhat autistic, replenish, repeat. Sometimes you can include a kind of World War 1 trench warfare step, where you put towers down during an attack on the enemy base so that you can catch a breather as enemy troops and peasants keep trickling in. 4, I couldn't find anything to enjoy. I had to use cheats to speed things along because after the trailer, I expected something grand but... there's nothing. Story and characters are so bad it's like the plot and their lines were written on toilet paper and coasters during breaks. I really wanted to like this game. :(
It's like Graveyard Keeper but in an innkeeper setting and without the grind. Cook stuff, brew stuff, serve it when you feel like you want to open, rinse and repeat. It may be my lack of awareness but this is the first innkeeper game where magic is put to use, so that was refreshing to see as well. The way the game is set up, you can't really fail, the work you put into it feels rewarding. Especially when you send rude customers home with the mop. On the "downside", if it must be called as such, the things you can cook/brew feel unnecessarily varied and without the sense of distinct tiers of tech. There's no plot but the atmosphere combined with the gameplay loop covers it up nicely.
At first I thought "wow, the graphics make me feel like I'm playing with the royal family from Battle Chess! This is hilarious!" and picked this up. Then *everyone* started complaining and crying about things that if I complained to my boss, let alone my mayor or even prime minister, I would get laughed at while getting thrown out, with all the ridicule and shame that comes with. If this was about a young baron who inherited his father's lands and has to get to grips with the local issues I'd be fine with it but as a king, you really shouldn't be forced to deal with peasants who can't find their sons or your own daughters who smear feces on each others' pillows. So I ducked out before I wasted any more time on fixing King Pushover's dumb life.
TL;DR it's a very, very much hit-or-miss game. This game is great if you: - specifically enjoy teetering on the edge of defeat - the game's resistance to your victory only makes your determination harder - if you worship RNGesus This game is bad for you if: - you play games as an escape from the misery of your life and generally unwind - you prefer to outsmart a problem than enduring it like a donkey - you hate leaving your fate to RNGesus - you hate the type of game design where RNGesus is the state religion, each encounter has correct and incorrect answers (meaning that having them all written up for you trivializes many of them), and the saving system reeks of tryhard sweat (in this case, checkpoints each morning, meaning that if you so much as misclicked, you'll have to do at least an entire day all over again, which is just wasting your time, meaning that they might as well have used the traditional saving system) The story was promising, I liked how the characters grew and interacted - then I got hit in the face with the "muh survival game" horseshit, combined with the "muh leveling system" (which would be fine if merely surviving was manageable and I could afford to gear specific characters for combat but in the end, it's entirely up to RNGesus (like when you're hitting for 3 dmg on average then a random guy with a bow does 14 on a crit (have I mentioned that the save system was bullshit?))) which I can respect as an option for those who enjoy this type of adversity but not when I can't avoid it. I would have given it 5 stars if the devs could keep in mind that there's a difference between a survival game and a misery simulator like this. The most important skill in pulling through this game is emotional and physical endurance to sit through hours upon hours of your characters being miserable. That's not my cup of tea but I know it is for some, hence my recommendation.
