Concept is good but overly difficult just to mask that there are only 3 maps. If you die you start at the main checkpoint and enemies respawn. No manual save and upon dying you get debuffs as well. First map was enjoyable, but abolutely hated the second map and couldn't progress due to difficulty.
I quite enjoyed Snipre Ghost Warrior 3 so checked this game out on sale as well. One of the most frustrating and unfair games I played. Compared to SGW3 there are some key elements which make this game unfun. 1.There is no save when you finish an objective. You need to go to a very far extraction point or somewhere where the game autosaves. If you die you need to repeat the whole thing again. 2. The number of enemies compare to SGW3 is x5. Of course one soldier sees you the whole compound is on you and they hit you with an assault rifle from +300 meters. So back to the save system if you completed an objective you need to reach a far point but people can shoot you, you can get stuck in geometry and ppl can shoot you, you can fall of from 3meter ledge and die ecc ecc. And you repeat the whole thing again. Not to mention that the game has 6 maps? In SGW3 open world was fun because it gave you the option to do reconnaisance and plan but here you can mostly reach the objectives via corridors. SGW3 is challenging yet fun and casual experience once you learn the mechanics. This game is just pure frustration and just wants to piss the player in every turn. It also doesn't really have a story or any npcs to interact. I don't recommend this game to my enemies really. 1 star and I'm too generous here.
The Surge 2 was Deck 13's magnum opus but somehow it didn't vibe with the people and initially underperformed so much so that they left the souls formula for their next game. And it is such a shame, I gave it a shot for 6 bucks, what can go wrong and man this was such a journey of a game. The game has a relatively small but super interconnected and very vertical open world and so much different weapons and armor sets. You can make different builds combining armor, weapon and implants. Combat is very precise and they invented this directional parry which honestly made me not try this game for a long time lol. The bosses were hard but so satisfying to debunk their moves and strategies and beat them finally. People criticises the story. I think a lot of them havent' played the first game that's why. Altough I agree that the game does a poor introduction to the story but from early-mid game it keeps up and I was genuinly invested in it. And while it is a souls-like it doesn't treat its story esoteric, it is quite a story driven action rpg actually. The ending was a let down a bit but the journey was fun. The only real issue which tested my patience was the screen tearing. I have a low-end rtx 3050 gaming laptop still I hoped for a better performance given how old the game is. Instead it put my laptop to its limits ha-ha. I guess though that it works fine on a decent gaming desktop. Super underrated game, I highly recommend trying it on a sale. I beat it in 33 hours, but did my fair share of grinding, and backtracking for finishing quests so the average playtime I guess is 20-25 h.
I liked AOD quite much and there was no question to buy this game even in early access state. Let me state that this is the most hostile game to the player I have played. The game has the same dna of AOD: intentionally short experience with replay value, going soldier or diplomat route ecc. In case of Colony ship I just dislike most of the design decisions by the dev. Like there are non combat skill checks like lockpicking but even though each party member can tag set skills, the main character needs to do 80% of these checks. Sometimes you can ask a companion to do it, but mostly the game doesn't let it. Why? The game is also very linear and narrow in scope. Each area has 3-5 side quests at best, which if you take the soldier route mostly end with combat. And here comes the problem. The game is mostly a series of combat encounters. And I just hated the combat. Already a big minus that combat is not like in most games that you explore then find an enemy group and engage in combat. Here there is cutscene with dialogues and then automatically start an arena combat. I don't like it. Also the arenas are small, you cannot really move much. The mechanics are deep but the combat itself is very dry. Not much weapon types, limited type of gadgets, feats are very uninspired and top of that you're intentionally in disadvantage in every fight. The game is like a twisted Monty Python comedy. The adventuring team is the most stupid one in the whole ship. They constantly go in ambushes, traps ecc. In every combat enemies jump at you in numerical advantage. They also have higher stats than the player. And since you fight in a small arena, you cannot retreat and fight back from a more advantageous position. Also with each subsequent update the enemies are more lethal without giving more tools to the player. I just felt fatigue from this game after doing more and more encounters with a combat system which I dislike. I really enjoyed AOD but I feel that devs went nuts with this one.
I was a backer of this project back in the day, and I tried it only after the 3rd big patch so really wanted to enjoy it but like most other gamers I think this game is not worth to play. Put it straight this is not a classical party based crpg. If you expect heavy story like a Shadowrun game, or emphasis on exploration and worldbuilding like Underrail or a mix of both like DOS 1-2 then you will be disappointed, it is not like those. MechaJ is essentially a detective game where you need to find things to advance the plot. The city is a cyclopean labyrinth with no distinct flavour, everything looks the same, dark and ugly. No side quests or memorable npcs, barely any lore bits, combat is not good but at least works. My playthrough looked like this: after the okay tutorial mission (bridges) I needed to find someone who told me to find someone else teleporting me with a taxi. After hours of meaningless wandering in the labyrinthian district I found the guy who gave me objectives and asked me to return to previous guy, but no taxi this time, so probably I was expected to find a way back in the labyrinth. That was the moment where I uninstalled the game. The navigation in the city was difficult, everything is dark and blurry, there is only a sematic map, which barely helps. But with the lack of story and meaningful content a proper map would make this game a breeze to finish. Honestly this game feels like a very bloated proof of concept. It is not fun and doesn't have depth. I mean these guys are indie developers who should make a game which they want to play. I don't think they want to play this game, hell I don't think anyone wants to play this game. Just avoid it. This is just a terrible product no matter how cheap you can buy it.
Near the end of 3rd chapter a critical dialogue option didn't trigger for me. I reloaded to an earlier save (losing more than 2 hours of play time) but the bug remained. There is another review which mentions a gamebreaking bug on an earlier chapter. The game in itself would be nice altough there are better games in the genre. My one star is for this lazy re-release which leaves gamebreaking bugs in the game.
Underrail seems to be a 1 or a 5 game, there is no in between. Need to say that the game is not a flawless masterpiece. It still has rough edges (looting for example), it has a very cryptic quest progression, player needs to do some research before starting the game and the game is sometimes unfair, and finally not to speak about the last area which is too demanding for a lot of builds. However despite these flaws or bad design decisions, it is still one of the best crpgs possibly ever made. The meat of the game is the character creation and development. Do your research before, not jump in it blindly coz the game will punish you. However if you understand the system, you can create a lot of different builds which will be viable and fun. There are just so many ways to play this game, and a good build is not necessarily a perfect build. It will have weaknesses, but the game gives you the tools to circumvent them. A lot of people replays this game because of the versatility of the character generation. Combat is straight forward, enemies are tough though. And they are same people like the player. They can be stealthy, ranged, melee, psy. If you build your character properly, you will beat them, if not there are possibilities that you simply cannot progress further and need to reroll. If you are constantly save-scumming it means your build is not up to the task and you need to restart becuase with a solid build you don't need to savescum. The other thing which I really liked was the setting and lore\story. It is unlike any other. It is cyberpunk with a mix of post-apocalyptic, sci-fi and horror. There are no big expositions, info-dumps, gamey big revalations. The player needs to gather the pieces from different sources, speaking to people, explore sites, reading journals ecc. Exploration is fantastic as well. Lastly the game is not inspired by the old Fallouts as people claim but more by earlier games like Wizardry, Ultimas ecc. that is why the high difficulty.
Dungeon rats is the dungeon crawler version of AOD from the same developers. Checked the gameplay of the first level on Youtube and I kind of liked what I saw. It seemed to be the Temple of Elmental Evil of Age of Decadence. Sadly I was wrong. The first act has some dialogues and lore bits which makes the hacking interesting, but from the second level it becomes a non stop fighting scenario. There is really no other content apart from some walking and exploratino. Also the amount of healing supplies becomes more and more limited from the second level so the game becomes an actual rougelike where you can easily fail the game if your team members took too much damage during encounters and you can't properly heal up for the next fight. It happened with me, I went quite far, but ultimately couldn't proceed further. I had zero motivation to start over though. I think the game has 2 major flaws: the devs overestimated their combat system. It was tolerable and functional in AOD becuase it was a part of a narrative and choice driven rpg. But in itself it is very limited and dry. Making a purely combat game around it won't appeal to most I think. The other thing I didn't like that the setting itself was not used at all. It cried for faction politics, quests, discovery of this interesting prison mine ecc. But there is only combat in a mostly linear fashion. You cannot trick some encounters using alchemy or crafting you need to do the fights as they are or fail trying. There is zero appeal here to an rpg fan, especially for those who didn't play AOD. I admit I'm an rpg fan, not a tactical combat game fan so despite liking Age of Decadence very much, I was not the target group of this game. Maybe if you like tactical games you will enjoy it, but to me it seems an experimental project of the devs to check their combat system with a party. I didn't really like it, but for some it can be enjoyable. Just prepare to die and reload a lot because the game is brutal and unforgiving.
Temple of Elemental Evil is a game which fans of the genre know as one of the last top-down crpg but most of the gamers never tried or played because of its bad fame as a buggy, badly written, mostly dungeon crawl oriented mess of a game. Myself haven't tried it for years because of the above mentioned notions, but now here we are and after 45 hours I can safely say that I'm happy with my purchase. Some of the criticisms still have valid points. It is not a story oriented rpg, it very faithfully simulates an actual pen and paper adventure which happens to be very dungeon heavy and I think here we can end with the critisism. Because the patched Gog version is surprisingly stable, I encountered only a handful of bugs, nothing game breaking and furthermore there are fan made patches (Circle of 8) which smoothes the experience further, add extra content ecc. So why I liked it? First the turn based combat in the game is excellent. In the first 4 levels it is very tactical, which magic spell you learn and use actually matter and it is rewarding and varied. I actually really like the combat in this game. Second is the graphics and artstyle. I think it is one of the most beautiful and detailed isometric rpgs out there. It puts Pillars of Eternity to shame despite the fact that Toee is a decade older than Poe. There is a huge amount of detail in the locations and environments. And here is the famous dungeon. Generally I prefer the more story oriented rpgs. I always considered extensive dungeons just a padding and lazyness from the developers. This is the first time however that I found a dungeon actually interesting. It is not just about corridors, halls, infinite monsters and loot. The dungeon is built up as a believable environment where people actually live and of course do evil things. It has its own society, own npcs, quests and combat encounters, but it was interesting and exciting to explore all the way around. True the game's story is not good, nor it is a focus. Still the game manages to show some well written npcs, some reactive choices in the quest, multiple endings. And owerall I enjoyed the writing. Same as the story it is not the focus of the game but I had my fair share of laughs. The game uses some decent humor and doesn't take itself too seriusly which I really apreciated. So I could beat the game and I enjoyed it enough to continue my adventure with Keep on the Borderlands which is a standalone story mod of Circle of 8 team. Sadly it didn't have a good relationship with my laptop as it caused so many bugs and glitches that I needed to uninstall it as I became more and more frustrated with it. But this review is about the base game right? Final thoughts: Temple of Elemental Evil was a very positive surprise for me, I enjoyed it and I start to understand why it still belongs to the pantheon of classic crpgs despite its bad rep. If you like the genre I definitely recommend you to try, you won't be disappointed.
I find it shocking how many negative reviews the game has, like if it was a forgettable, mediocre experience. The truth is far from it, however the game it's problems and issues. Truth is that the game starts out slow and kind of uninspired. The first 5-7 hours can give an initial wrong impression. Also ppl expected from the title to be the "real" Fallout 3. However it is not like the old Fallouts at all. If I can compare this game to another, I would compare it to the 1st Baldur's Gate. Another negative aspect that this game is old-school in every sense of the word. It is not like Original Sin games that are modern and innovative with old-school mentality and principles. This game actually plays like an rpg from the 90s with all good and bad. I can understand if someone wants freshness and innovation. And the last nail of the coffin is that the game has bugs, side quests can get broken even in the Director's Cut. Still I think this game is a gem. A rough one, but a gem nevertheless. The world building is fenomenal. There are factions, locations, npcs all fleshed out and interesting. There are a lot of side quests, most of them are well written, the game offers some choiches during its playtime which affect the plot somewhat, and in general the game has a lot of content. I found the story good with a lot of quality writing. It definitely kept my attention during the game. And lastly the gameplay. It is very combatheavy, but the combat itself is solid. Easy to learn, difficult to master. It is not complex but definitely well thought out, and well balanced. Props to the devs that they balance the game with 7 characters in mind. First I thought it will be too chaotic but they designed it really well. So overall I really enjoyed my time with Wasteland 2. I had my fair share of frustration because of the dated features and bugs but hell I loved this game. It is flawed, but I enjoyed it more than DOS1 and Pillars and I'm definitely interested in Wasteland 3
