First of all, I've got just under 40hrs in this game and really enjoyed it. Nice visuals, clean mechanics, good music, few bugs, and perhaps most importantly, a lot of variety. That being said, I do have one complaint; the difficulty scaling. Each time you beat the game you'll unlock the "Covenant level" above what you just played. There are a total of 25 levels, each adding some negative modifier to the run, eg. starting with dead cards in your deck, or extra enemy health. At early levels I found the difficulty scaled perfectly along with my skill. As I got better at playing the game, the game got tougher to play. However, this began to break down around when I cracked the double digits. During the course of a run, the difficulty of enemies increases, obviously. To keep up with them you have to upgrade your own cards, tune your deck, and play smart. That's great, until that doesn't keep you on pace with the enemies anymore. See, Monster Train has a lot of very powerful combo possibilities. The "Holdover" upgrade, for example, allows you to keep a spell card in your hand after you play it. Combine that with a good spell that's free? A run can become unstoppable. But if you don't find a Holdover? That "good" spell... isn't enough. You need the "broken" combos to succeed. Maybe you see where this is going. I found the game was becoming less about good tactics and more about what luck I got in the roguelike. Now, part of the fun of randomized runs is that you don't get exactly what you want, you have to make the best decision in the options available to you. But I felt like those decisions stopped being as impactful as simply whether X card showed up or not. You could argue that if I was better at the game, maybe it wouldn't matter. But in my mind, if I need to grind card combos or look up guides online, the fun is already gone. So I stopped at lvl 12. Even so, I got 40 hours out of the game until then. 5/7 - Not endlessly replayable, but a good amount of fun.
The other reviews overhype this game, here's why: This is not a brilliant tactics game. It's D&D 3.5. That's it. It's a system from 2 decades ago. It's servicable. It's customization comes at the cost of many newb-trap options (eg, if your ranger doesn't take Point Blank Shot > Precise Shot, you are in trouble). This isn't even a good implementation of the system, IMO. ToEE < NWN It tries to do away with the grid, but ends up with something so much worse. I regularily would rage in frusteration as my charcters wandered off in the LITERALLY opposite direction from where I clicked. It thinks fights against dozens of enemies are fun. Your party of ~7 dudes will be in fights with 20+ enemies. It was fun the first time when I'm hitting 9 enemies with a fireball, but gets old. Enemy diversity sucks too. Having to manually "Read magic" on every single picked up potion and scroll, gets boring. I started to have a lot more fun when I started leaning on the console to cheat in items. Never ones that would give me an advantage, just save time, eg. Potions of Heal so I didn't need to keep resting to regain HP. Wands of Identify so I didn't need to keep resting to use magic items. Scrolls of Restoration so I didn't need to keep resting for debuffs to go away. etc. I did cheat in magic items at game end. But that's cause there's a bug where you can't craft after your wizard reaches max level, so I spawned in only what I would have been able to craft. Even with the community patches this is a buggy mess. I was also a little upset to realize that the no new content verison actually does make some changes that affect game progression, much for the worse, IMO. Ok, here's the thing though. The feeling when my Paladin crit his Smite Evil on a Balor and does 95 damage in 1 attack? That was sick. Cleaving through 4 goblins in one swing? Sick. Figuring out how to win that tough fight vs a temple priest? Sick! 3/7 - Only for the desparate, thank goodness for cheats...
I was decieved by the top review and I write this in the hopes you will not be. This game is a dumpster fire. There are 3 different characters, yes. But they all have the same moveset, except different moves do different amounts of damage. This in no way helps aleviate the repetitive nature of the game because there's 5 different enemys. The RPG elements are all just "bigger number = better" upgrades, there's no interesting choices. And even that part isn't fun because you can't see any of the actual numbers, so it's not like there's interesting builds to be made. Plus the fact that you essentially get enough XP that you always have all the abilities for the different characters. Kinda pointless to make me spend the points, no? Playing on controller is a nightmare because all the in-game text talks about keyboard buttons. Great to know I've got bonus damage to my CTRL attack, which one is that again? Challenging boss fights? No. These are not challening boss fights. These are mind numbingly grindy boss fights where you will spend 15 minutes doing the same patterns over and over again, fighting endless wave of endless wave of ads, until eventually you die to some BS attack because your NPC allies stole all the health potions. Oh, yeah, if you haven't been scared off yet let me talk about our intrepid heroes. 2 out of 3 will always be controlled by the AI. The 2004 dumb as bricks AI. And unluckily for you, half of these fights are impossible if the AI isn't helping you. Remember those endless waves I was talking about? Yeah, what do you think happens if the AI is more intersted in walking into walls than protecting you from endless waves? You have to fight the endless waves yourself. Except they're endless, so how exactly are you going to progress on the boss fight itself? Pray to you favourite forgotten realms deity that the game gives you a lucky break I guess. I got more tilted playing this steaming garbage than I did playing a Dark Souls-like a few days ago.
I think this game is solid and reasonably well designed, however, it's not really the game it's marketed as, and not really the game I was hoping for. First of all, it's a 4x game mechanically, yes, but not in spirit. This is almost the definiton of a spreadsheet game. Technology isn't discovering new things, it's just increasing your numbers. Expanding is just getting more hexes that generate those numbers. Exploring? Nope. The combat system is really weird too. Your power is based on how much of your current turn's money you spend. Which means if you make any purchases (like, say, more armies) your total power will plummet. Why do all my armies become weaker when I purchase a new one? Mechanically it is ok, but thematically it doesn't really work. And that is my biggest problem. When I'm expanding I want to get cool resources and places. In this game I'm just bumping up my numbers. When I'm discovering new technology, I want to be uncovering seafaring or iron working. Instead I'm just improving by number production? Building cool buildings or wonders? How about just increasing city population which, how did you know, increases some numbers. All of that being said, I could still enjoy a game like this. The problem is I feel like I've played better elsewhere. Offworld Trading Company immediately jumps to mind. It's realtime, which is a bit different, but gives the exact same number tinkering feeling in a faster time with a lot better flavour. Btw, current top review says the game is abandoned on GOG. It's not. I just double checked and I have the most recent update.
A good game is made of several elements working in tandem. They merge together, like pieces of a puzzle. Together creating something greater than the whole. But the downside to this is if even a few pieces are damaged or missing, the result suffers all the more. That's the unfortunate case for Deep Sky Derelicts. The best puzzle piece here is the presentation. The music, the artwork. They evoke a grimy space twist on Darkest Dungeon. The lore and setting are unique, and provide a good backdrop for the varied and unusual cast of characters. Unfortunately there's a bit of overlap there with the damage pieces. The lore (often delivered through long journal entries) is weirdly written. Several times I'd be reading and suddenly need to stop and re-read a sentence. I'd think I was reading too fast, but actually, the sentence just didn't make sense. Perhaps a translation issue? Or a non-native language issue? Either way, it was enough to break my immersion. Now, the truth is that contrary to what I said at the start, all these pieces can work if the core gameplay piece is really, really good. Unfortunately, I think it might be the weakest element. For a deckbuilding game, I felt like I didn't have control over the deck like I wanted. It would help if I could better compare between my different equipment options, but they're all muddled together in an incomprehensible mass. This could be alleviated through good hand cycling mechanics. Unfortunately, those are mostly absent. Additionally, the combat isn't all that fun. It's basic target prioritization, then focus fire. Vast majority of the time the non-damage cards are inferior. I'm suspicious that unequipping all utility cards to have decks solely of damage would be a valid strategy. The cool combos that I expect are also missing. I recently played Steam World Quest, and the difference in interesting deck building, character difference, and synergies is painful. 3/7 - A misguided design wrapped in an attractive package.
I was a bit hesitant about the game after I first came across it on a twitch stream. It looked like a quick attempt to invert the Darkest Dungeon setting without the fantastic graphics. That was not a fair estimation. Yes, this is a spin on the Darkest Dungeon system of combat. And, yes, it doesn't have the wonderful graphics that DD has (or the brilliant narration, or the lovely soundtrack). But, BUT, it does manage to stand on its own feet. Once I saw the graphics on my actual monitor rather than my phone screen I realized they were actually quite decent. I like the painterly style, and the animations were acceptable. The combat system is interesting, and pushes the DD style in different directions. You have two avenues of attack; health, and sanity. Building parties that attack one or the other (or even both) is a fun little challenge. There's a solid selection of different unit types, each of which can work in different ways depending on the upgrades chosen. I have only played one playthrough. It took me just short of 20 hours. I did it on the second difficulty "More Pain". I'm not a tactical genius by any means, but I'm familiar with the genre and this difficulty was too easy. Well, mostly too easy. I had 2 teams that could pretty much demolish any enemy parties. Except the final boss of the final floor. The final boss is an absolutely brutal, borderline unfair fight that chewed through all my existing soliders and through several additional freshly created teams until I finally figured out a composition that could defeat it. All that to say, if you're considering this game, I'm pretty sure you've got enough experiece in the genre to punch of the difficulty a bit. Personally, I'm not overly inclined to another run just now. Maybe in the far far future. I'm confident that many other players would get much more gameplay from this game than me though. 4/7 - Not just a Darkest Dungeon clone, keep an open mind and give it a spin
I've played Shadowrun: Returns and Dragonfall. Enjoyed them both, Dragonfall I thought was a brilliant game, Shadowrun: Returns was good, but didn't have the killer story and writing that Dragonfall did. Unfortunately, Hong Kong throws that better writing out the window and ends up even worse than Returns. Good stuff: 1. Matrix has been improved a lot. Still needs a bit of tweaking, as the stealthing does not really feel good in an engine that is clearly meant for turn based combat. However, the puzzles are a huge improvement to the previous system. Enjoyed hacking now, so a success. 2. Setting is really cool. Not quite as cool as the Kreuzbasar in Berlin, but still neat. The Middle 1. Dialogue options were very hit or miss. Sometimes I really appreciated the slight variations given to me and the small changes they had in a conversation. Other times I was left frustrated when none of the options matched what I wanted to say. The Bad 1. Not clear enough what choices would do. In order for choices to be interesting, the consequences for those choices have to be (at least somewhat) clear. Too many times I was left confused, having no idea that a choice I made earlier would lead to this path. Sometimes imperfect knowledge keeps things interesting, not here. 2. Combat is not really improved over previous titles. The AI is dumb as bricks and spends half its time wandering back and forth between different points on the map trying to get into a good position. Which doesn't matter half the time, because the flanking system in this game is so confusing and unreliable. 3. Map design leaves a bit to be desired. Multiple times there were large objects that pretty clearly should have provided cover but just... didn't. If you've already played Dragonfall and Returns and are looking for more to scratch that cyberpunk/Shadowrun itch, then you can give this a shot. Otherwise, I'd recommend a pass.
