Overall Slain: Back From Hell is a good combat platformer. The visuals, audio and music are incredible. However the level design is a bit bland and the overuse of parry and "baseball" mechanics sucks the fun out of many encounters. I played the Valfaris games before going back to play this, so maybe that raised my expectations too much.
Every part of the game is masterfully done, from the game play and level design to the visuals, audio and music. I did not encounter any bugs and it performed very well. Unlike the prior Valfaris game, this one is an auto-scroller shmup. Shooting and special weapons require energy, which charges slowly on it's own or by your melee weapon. The constant mixing of different attack types feels great. You also get an ability to boost out of tricky situations, this is limited and requires recharging. The difficulty on normal felt perfect to me, there is a harder setting as well as a challenge mode. My one gripe is the game occasionally uses changing cinematic camera angles during game play. I found it difficult to dodge and shoot during some of these sequences. The game is quite short, but in my opinion that's fine for this type of game. The extra modes and variety of weapons will have you playing it multiple times.
One of the best action platformers I've ever played. Well crafted in all aspects and a perfect length. The overall difficulty ramps gradually, so you shouldn't get too frustrated. The boss design is great with fun mechanics.
I was able to play this for 6 to 8 hours with no crashes, using a fresh GOG install with the Buffout 4 and Load Accelerator mods. They nailed the atmosphere and did a great job with the world building. The voice acting, writing and story seemed good from what I seen so far, I enjoyed learning about all the factions. The mod is difficult and a little punishing in some ways, but I really enjoyed that in comparison to Bethesda baby mode difficulty settings. The problems started when I started exploring the Isle of Dogs. The game started consistently crashing when entering certain cells. Prior to the the crashing I noticed more and more degraded performance (small freezes and frame drops) that I suspect is some kind of scripting issue. I'd recommend waiting for the FOLON team to work out some of issues before playing. The crashing issues are very frustrating because the mod is genuinely great and you want to keep playing.
I've been playing management/simulation games since 1990. Workers & Resources takes all my favorites over the years and combines them into one incredible game. As expected for a game this complex, it is difficult to learn. But the UI is great and the campaign maps let you learn at your own pace. There is a set of tutorials for specific aspects of the game, but I'd recommend just hopping straight into the first campaign instead. I haven't yet come across any obvious bugs or in-game system that doesn't work exactly like it's supposed to, which is a pretty amazing feat for this type of game. The visuals and audio are nice and it performs well even once there's a lot going on. The music is great and it'll be stuck in your head hours after playing.
Season Pass 2 is already worth the asking price, and the final DLC isn't even available yet. The Last Sarkorians adds a new class and companion that ties into the main campaign very well. I was pleasantly surprised how much effort went into properly integrating this new characters story and personality into the various events and decision outcomes. He feels like he was always part of the game. The Lord of Nothing is a good conclusion to story that began with the Through the Ashes DLC. It plays out in a more traditional fashion, for those that were put off by the more scripted and puzzle based approach of Through the Ashes. It also adds some great new kits, spells and feats to the base game. I'm not sure why people are complaining about this content not being included in the Mythic edition. If you purchased the Mythic edition in the past, you already got what you paid for. I'm happy to see new content still being added, for less than the cost of a single cosmetic item in some live service games.
An epic cRPG in the vein of the old classics like Baldur's Gate (1 & 2) and Icewind Dale, but unique enough to stand on it's own. Wrath of the Righteous and Kingmaker really made me fall in love with the Pathfinder rule set and setting. There is a ridiculous amount of content here. The game includes the standard cRPG portions and an additional "Crusade Management" mode with combat similar to Heroes of Might and Magic. The management portion can be turned to "auto-mode" so you can ignore it if you wish. The game has some nice replay value. The general path through the game remains the same each time, but different mythic paths and decisions can add a lot of variety to each run. In fact, there's almost too much content. You may start getting burned out by the crusade management portions and over tuned combat encounters near the end of the game. At this point in time, the game is free of major bugs. However, the game allows you to play two different combat modes, "Real-Time with Pause" or "Turn-Based". The turn-based mode is still ridiculously buggy, both mechanically and technically. Your characters will occasionally lose their turns or not be able to perform actions like they should. The turn-based mode also makes the game slow down to a crawl over time, forcing you to constantly restart the game to get acceptable performance. The real-time with pause combat mode does not have this performance issue. The load screens are also fairly long and very frequent. In my opinion, the DLC in the Mythic Edition is good and worth the value. Although I think the addition of "The Treasure of the Midnight Isles" breaks the game balance of the main campaign a little. There's still a lot of misinformed hand wringing over the data collection and EULA. Owlcat acknowledged and quickly stepped back on the attempted data collection a long time ago. And if you're using Windows and/or Chrome to read this, you're already being data harvested to the max.
I found this module to be a breath of fresh air after finishing the annoyingly over tuned combat heavy finale of the main campaign. The game play is more puzzle based role-playing with a bit of combat that you are not punished for avoiding. XP gains are scripted based on exploration and accomplishments, shopping is extremely limited, and trying to brute force combat encounters is not going to work here. It's great to see the devs have the courage to try something a little different. It's not for everyone, but I always enjoy these mini-campaigns where I get to create another character in the same general setting.
