Great little game full of references to classics like Journey, Ico, Shadow of the Colussus and Abzú, but still maintaining a distinct personality and style.
Unsatisfactory gameplay, with no rewarding progression. Unsatisfactory loot drops not worth grinding a map over again. Unsatisfactory character progression, especially on early levels. Unbalanced difficulty that can not be bypassed with moderate grinding do to the insignificant improvements at level-up. Clunky and inprecise movement paired with no satisfactory visual and audio feedback on hit: swinging and slamming with a twohanded hammer feels like bashing a wooden stick. Freeze and similar mechanics block flow of combat and are more a nuisance then a real challenge. Beautiful visuals cannot save this game.
Feels like a generic annoying american shooter with a paint of Star Wars to attract the masses. Boring corridor levels, not many enemy types, bullet sponge enemies and the same boss-droids makes you wish the game ends soon... and it does after 6-8 hours. If this is considered one of the top Star Wars games then its time to raise the bar or stop playing with nostalgia goggles. Technically outdated, the game was barely watchable with with high resolution textures and and widescreens mods found on moddb. Cliffhanger ending in typical sequel cash-farming mentality.
The game concept as pitched by the developers clashes with the actual outcome of the game. Choices, encounters and outcomes feel meaningless and shallow in the overall heavy presence of the RNG mechanic who takes away any kind of interest in replaying the same content with minimal to irrelevant different results. The basic gameplay mechanic your facing will be randomly leveling a character, in the same short endless repeating Groundhog Day pattern, and hope to reach the same endboss with a well developed character. Repeat until your satisfied and then choose the hero and engage in horde mode against waves of mobs until the final boss decides to go full bullet hell mode and suck the last drop of enjoyment out of the game. Thats what basically this title is, behind its beautiful pixel art graphic and great music. Good concept, bad execution.
For a player not familiar with this kind of games its a great low difficulty and fun game... until Commonwealth Campaign 6 where, even on easy difficulty, the game suddenly becomes the most frustrating, tiresome, and end in the end, unfun game despite the promising start.
Minimalistic style is an art choice and can be liked or not, but in this case the design is so simplistic and reduced to the bone it lacks any personality. The world map design is bland and navigating is just boring. The static 2d illustrations have a completely different style, black and white with high contrast, which clashes yet again with the face to face portrait dialogues with colored gradients. User interface and basic user experience are completeyl lacking: in the first minute the palyer is presenetd with three different interaction prompts: a dark-blue link with a dark-yellow hover intearaction; quickly followed by a down pointing gray arrow that barely changes intensity on interaction: third and last is round button, already checke out , that needs to be clicked again so it switches to a green background. Basic errors that no prefessional should ever made. Gameplay wise the most common ineraction is reading text, which is too thin and has bad aliasing. Same problem suffered by the only 3d object in the game and even the 2d illustration. No settings to change that. Storywise, the random encounters often start and finish in the span of a few days and its ok, but there is a major accusation point against the traveling protagonist and it gets never addressed, not even when failing the journey and immediately prompting the users to start a new run. Careful planning can be destroyed by rng encounters and can quickly tranform a somwhat passable gaming experience in a waste of time. It feels like a project slapped together by a bunch of high school students at its first year.
More then just a simple classic monster dungeon slashing game, this title is a steampunk heaven, dark story filled trip, with cheesy lines to lighten the mood and more references to pop culture then one could recognize. Beautiful graphics, free high res texture DLC pack and fitting victorian gothic music. Great and varied level design. Lots of different monster types and a huge variety of unique classes and abilities to get rid of such monsters. Levels full of hidden content that require some careful exploration. On top of giving you a nice companion that can be upgraded to different roles and utilities, you soon get to manage a base filled with strange characters and a tower defense minigame, if you fancy, otherwise send your captains to do your dirty work. Game is accessible by everyone not familiar with the genre with a friendly casual difficulty option that feels like godmode. Normal diificulty allows to finish the game without having to min-max gear or have to fiddle with gear enhanchments or gold farming. Controller is supported but camera zoom and rotation are not available. Additional adventure mode allows to play random generated missions that vary in difficulty and can be a great challenge for those wishing to continue slashing monsters. The game crashes randomly in the item enchanting menu, with no available fixes on GoG, Steam or the developers forum. Controller bug makes navigating the radial equipment menu a pain.
If it wasnt for Totalbiscuits review this game would have just gone the way of the forgetfullness. Now complains on the title and marketing aside, the game is a nice little well crafted and entertaining action rpg. The upgradable abilities and repeatable nature of the core mechanic allow for a smooth progression helping overcome the enemies. Some irritation regarding npc charging from outside the fixed field of view and recuiring split-second decisions that not always are triggered when the last weapon animation hasnt finished its cycle. Some framerate slowdowns even on high-end machines. Upgrading the main weapons allow for new paths and shortcuts. The same weapons used in combat have magic abilities that consume alot of magic, magic that is better saved to heal afterwards since the health drops in smashed objects is too random. Health is not replenished when starting the next chapter. Small bug found near the end the observatory level with enviroment not correctly rendering near the shooting flame balls puzzle. Recommend buying it on sale for around 9 bucks as it relatively short, unless you try to unlock all endings on the card deck.
Surprisingly fun and different, compared to other brutal roguelite titles. RNG is still present but can be overcome by choosing and training carefully the party members. Many difficulty settings available. Background music is nice bet gets repetitive very quick. Some user interface elements and tooltips are too small. Negatives: food supply in the beginning is way too low. Understandable that they aimed at map replayability, but its severely short in resources nonetheless. Some random battles are more difficult then boss battles.
Not fun. Thats what this game is a nutshell. There is a fine line between a good challenge and an unfair one and this game just passes that line and then some. Not enough available tools to overcome the challenges and ridiculous RNG dont help at all. Taking high risks to fight a boss and recruit him just to see him dead in the next small little random encounter is a wonderful morale boost.
