The corruption and cheating are absolute top-tier, one of the best-written Japanese H-games in that respect. The gameplay has an interesting premise that pushes the protagonist into being corrupted (not that the player needs any extra encouragement to do this anyway), but ultimately the only possible challenge here is from trying to get the least-corrupted ending and see the least H along the way, which probably won't be what most players want from a corruption NTR game. But anyway, questionable gameplay aside, definitely check this out if those themes are your bag, I doubt you'll find much better out of Japanese RPGM.
It's a mix of Civilization and Total War with some mechanics of its own that set it apart. I'll focus on those. Food production: You have farming and herding, with farming being more productive but also more labor-intensive and requiring more micromanagement. BTW, on your first game, you'll have to play as a farming faction, but the tutorial really is helpful. Recruitment: Units are recruited instantly, within your turn, and the recruited units can move as soon as you end the turn. They can be disbanded at any time and if you disband them in friendly territory, they may return to the recruitment pool within a few turns. And yes, this means the defender has serious advantages when it comes to capturing cities, especially if they don't have to care about farms being pillaged outside (herders ftw!) Combat has sort of am unusual semi-auto-resolve system. You don't manage your troops during combat, but they fight on the world map (no separate tactical maps for combat), in real-time, according to the orders you give them during your turn. Combat is WEGO, so all sides carry out their orders simultaneously. It's probably the part of the game that will create by far the most headaches to a new player, or even an experienced one sometimes. Frankly, it's like herding cats. You can become a better cat-herder with experience but you'll never be fully in control or get all the outcomes you want. Trade is somewhat hands-on, potentially very lucrative, and should occupy a good chunk of your playtime trying to get the most out of it. Especially if you have a large empire and navigable rivers available. In all, I find it to be a satisfying 4X/grand strategy game but the combat system *really* takes some getting used to. I'd have given it a 4 if not for some glaring performance issues in combat, with FPS going down to single-digits. I have a fair amount of tolerance for this in a turn-based game but YMMV.
An ambitious roguelike-FPS-management-tower defense game. Normally when you mix this many elements it can easily turn into a half-baked mess, but here it comes together into a satisfying gameplay loop, as long as you don't mind repetition. I wish I could write an indepth review, but because of the character limit, I'll condense it into bullet points. Good: - Spacebase construction is awesome. You really get a lot of options for how to customize your base for security. You also get a full refund on demolishing rooms, so you can experiment as much as you like. - Playing as the commander and managing everything yourself means the gameplay loop is pretty varied, with base construction, fighting, crew management, exploration and resource management. - Decent selection of weapons, both projectile-based and hitscan. - Tons of unlockables add a lot of replay value. Bad: - Early-game aliens are hardly a threat once you know what to expect from them during resource harvesting. You can set up your harvesting ops to be like a big bug zapper, with no room for escape. This contributes to the repetition a lot of people complain about. - In my playthrough, I managed to win just as I was entering what felt like the mid-game. Though this was probably a fluke, and you can customize the win requirements on game startup. - Repetition. Now personally I have a high tolerance for this, but I can definitely see why a lot of players come to dislike the gameplay loop. Most roguelikes light a fire under your *** to keep moving, and throw all kinds of random events your way. Here, the dominant strategy is to work slowly and meticulously, minimizing risks as much as possible, and there's a lot less RNG. To summarize, the game made a hell of a first impression on me, but the lack of challenge did start to wear me down. That said, I'm jumping straight into a second run with higher difficulty settings and I hope future updates will make the gameplay live up to its potential.
I had a good time with B:I as a story-driven single-player experience, but it falls down a bit when looked at in terms of the gameplay and story. The upgrade system in particular is unbalanced and actually annoying to use. There are DLC upgrades that are flat-out cringeworthy (+50% damage against the strongest enemies in the game? Sounds like something that came from a corporate suit, not a game developer). The ending is absolutely WTF-worthy and unsatisfying as the story contorts into almost Final Fantasy 8 levels of nonsense to deliver its plot twist for the protagonist. Still, before that there are plenty of cool setpieces, the gameplay is fun enough, if unspectacular, and the game definitely has a very distinct setting as well as a couple of memorable characters. Definitely worth a playthrough, but neither life-changing nor revolutionary.
Yes, the pixel art is appealing and the Lovecraftian setting is something you don't often see. And there's nothing *fundamentally* wrong with the gameplay. I had no major issues with responsiveness or control. My complaints come down to many ill-advised design choices, which include: - The way most characters are designed around gimmicks, rather than strengths and weaknesses. The ghoul, for example, has an ability that stuns enemies around him for quite a while. But fail to use it properly and the character gets mauled in seconds. The thief similarly has a stealth ability that lets you attack with complete impunity while it lasts, but is almost defenseless outside of stealth (and dodging actually uses up the energy you need to enter the stealth mode). Maybe these ideas looked cool on paper but the implementation is really unsatisfying to play. - Events which can have purely negative outcomes if you pick the wrong choice. Leaving it up to either trial & error or having a guide on hand. - A storage system that saves items between playthroughs. This can completely break the game, allowing you to faceroll your way through with tons of stored medkits and other aids. In a roguelike, each playthrough should be self-contained except for unlockables. - Too many status effects. Many/most enemies will make you bleed, poison, daze, freeze, burn and/or stun you. Floor traps (which are absolutely everywhere) will do the same. Constantly having to use consumables and losing control of your character is not my idea of a fun action game. In summary, a decent effort with good intentions, but the gameplay is too flawed and the writing doesn't carry it either in my opinion. Maybe hardcore Lovecraft fans will find something in it, but if you're in the market for a polished roguelike, look elsewhere. I struggle to even justify 3 stars, but I feel 2.5 is fair for the good presentation and technical implementation.
OoB is an operational-level wargame of intermediate complexity. Somewhere in between Advance Wars and one of AGEOD's games. The way the missions are designed, you get resource points each turn that you can spend on units, but there is a time limit. This deters turtling and keeps things tense - you have to pace yourself in offensive missions, which is most of them. There is a supply system that keeps you from overextending (though some units can get around this) and opens up opportunities to cut enemies off. The Efficiency, repair and entrenchment systems encourage keeping enemies engaged instead of just dogpiling one at a time. The campaign structure is linear but the secondary objectives, unit selection, tech tree and difficulty settings provide some level or replayability. On sale, it's absolutely worth the asking price as the missions are quite beefy and well-designed. The Pacific Campaign included with the base game on GOG is fun and varied - by the halfway point, I've managed a fighting retreat, a naval raid, a big fleet engagement and a major battle between aircraft carriers. Stability: Crashing isn't much of a concern - it's happened 2-3 times in dozens of hours of play. The game can autosave every turn, you can quicksave anytime and loading is quick. Much more serious is that the game often hangs when launching, and it hangs in a way that prevents me from using the task manager to terminate the application. When this happens, all I can do is ctrl+alt+del, sign out of my Windows account, sign back in and launch it again, whereupon it always launches properly. Achievements: You're going to need the base game + Rising Sun. Overall they're not difficult, mostly coming down to leveling up unit types and racking up kills with single units, but some unit types don't see much action - e.g. anti-air units rely on planes coming within range. For those, a continuous campaign, e.g. Morning Sun -> Rising Sun, makes it much easier.
Pros: - Large and varied open world. - Satisfying guns. - Unusual setting with good atmosphere. - Unlock equipment of your choice (mostly) with diamonds you get from the world and from missions. Scavenge more advanced weapons you haven't unlocked yet, but at increasing risk of jamming. - Fire can be used as a tool to box in enemies or make a getaway. Cons: - Very little enemy variety. For what it's worth, they do try to flank and can catch you off guard at times. - The malaria system is kind of annoying, at least the mandatory missions that give you pills and nothing else certainly feel like something that could have been done via cutscene. - Missed opportunity with the factions. While they do have interesting characters, you never see them fighting each other outside story missions, you can't interact with them outside of towns except via bullet to the face, and in general I feel more could have been done to help add variety. - The weapon upgrades are mundane - one recoil reduction and one durability enhancement. - The buddy system is not as well fleshed-out as it might have been, serving mostly as a second life if you go down. Kudos though for having so many lines of voice acting, though every line is spoken so fast and dry that it can be hard to appreciate. - Most importantly, there's just not enough to do. Unlike something like GTA which gives you a plethora of activities, however frivolous, here you're always slogging through jungles or deserts, usually trying to avoid enemy checkpoints that would just deplete your resources. The collectibles and varied environments help a little, but it's still undoubtedly a repetitive game that feels like a chore if played for too long.
