After playing some of Daedelic's other games, I decided to try this one. It never disappointed. Here's what's cool about it and what isn't! Pro: - Comic-style cut-scenes fit the story perfectly. - The game is fully voiced and the voice-actors are professionals, too. - The story is thoughtful, yet funny and at its core a mix of time-travel, climate-change and almost all issues related to those topics. - Riddles are part of the game and are tough enough to give you a headache, but the toughest are skipable. - All the characters in the game are memorable, while the heroes are both likable and funny. - The game features a reliable automatic save system. - Music and sounds are fitting, yet not overwhelming. - Most of the dialoque is hilarious and so are some pop-cultural references scattered throughout the game. Con: - As with most adventures of this kind, some screens are a bit of a pixel-hunt, since you'll be stuck until you find the one important interactable object. - The game does not support contemporary screen resolutions, which means it is only playable with thick black bars on both the left and the right side of the screen. - During my playthrough, I experienced two or three crashes to desktop without any error message. Coming to an end, it is a great adventure game very worth your time. Don't worry about the rather serious topic: It isn't a sermon in ecological thinking, but succeeds in shedding light unto the more problematic aspects of climate activism. Moreover, it tackles these aspects with a lot of humour.
In this game, you're main goal as a player is to track down the leaders of a terrorist organization and put them behind bars. The game is designed in the style of a visual novel for the most part. Here's what's good about it and what isn't: Good: - The art-style of the game is appealing, if you like black-and-white comics. - The music is well-done, laid-back and trippy. It compliments the dark and somewhat resigned atmosphere of the game. - Some interrogations of alledged terrorists and their supporters - which make up the core game-play loop - feature a countdown, creating a sense of urgency. Bad: - The game frequently confronts the player with all sorts of extremist views, from ultra-leftist to hardcore-right-wing. These are ultimately blended into one twisted, hateful terrorist ideology. It's disturbing content, to put it plain and simple. - Violence and torture are portrayed as common means of interrogation. Retry and click again through mindless, hateful conversations for the one, non-violent path through the game. - You can actually chose for your protagonist to sympathise and thus to just let the depicted terrorist cell get away in the end. It doesn't make any sense, since the protagonist you play leads the anti-terrorist task-force. Conclusion: If you like novels and games in which everybody is or seems bad and also are resilient to twisted semi-philosphical and pseudo-sociological hatespeech, you may give this a go. I am not sure I would have bought this, had I known what kind of game this is beforehand.
This game is anything but ordinary. I'll admit I had some doubts about buying it, since it seemed rather odd. But it did not disappoint at all. Here's what I liked about it and what I think could have been better: Pros: - Unique setting: You're role-playing a robot stranded on a defunct space-station. - Emphasis on survival: In this game, even robots need to eat, earn money and escape from fiends chasing them. - The game-play is intuitive and the game mechanics are therefore easy to learn. They also fit the emphasis on survival well. - The artwork is an interesting blend of rather technocratic depictions of the space-station and contrasting portraits of the characters you meet and interact with. - Characters are well developed and keep you engaged with rather mundane quests, that nonetheless are full of meaning. - No bugs worth mentioning: The game ran flawless on my laptop. Cons: - Depending on your choices, you can end the game prematurely and miss a lot of content. There are a handful of situations in which this can happen. And while you might have a hunch about them and the premature endings aren't bad, it still feels like walking into a trap. - The different character traits you can choose seem underdeveloped: Most of them are nice to have, but do not impact the game much. - The sound is decent, but nothing to write home about. - Some of the writing is tacky and kitschy and the whole setting - lore, background of corporations and factions and so on - is a bit underdeveloped. This makes some twists and turns of the story hard to grasp. In the end, I loved the game despite it's imperfections, but had to start over a couple of times because I felt like a missed too much content. In the end, I finished the game more times than I care to admit and am looking forward to playing the second part!
This is one of the few deck-building games I ever played. I expected it to be a bit more meaningful, but had fun playing it nonetheless. Here's what's good about the game and what isn't: Pros: - fun and casual gameplay in a cute fantasy world - cool artwork - challenging combat: easy to learn, tough to master - a myriad of possible tactical approaches - loosing is part of the deal: there is no way you will beat this game easily and you will have to start over and over Cons: - lacks any kind of engaging story - has balancing issues, because some battles are bordering impossible - needs a tutorial badly, because quite a few game mechanics are not self-explanatory - best played quite: sounds and music are fitting, but get annoying or unnerving over time - like in any other cardgame, winning or losing depends on chance - leaves you with a feeling of emptiness, probably because of the lack of story To sum it up, I would say that it is a decent addition to any collection and worth playing. Prepare for some more or less mindless card-combat with a surprisingly big amount of tactical depths.
It's hard to judge a game like this using bulletpoints. But I'll try. Here's what's good about Disco Elysium and what isn't. Pros: - very immersive story: a classic whodunit that has you guessing right up until the end and plenty of side-quests to keep you busy - believable, likable, interesting characters - very good music and cool voicing - small, almost claustrophobic setting in a dystopian world - mindboggling artwork - can be, depending on your player-character, funny, witty, idiotic, crazy, empathetic or erratic - excellent writing even by non-gaming standards Cons: - feels like a railroad on occaision - the story not only borders absurdity, but crosses that border more often than not - has recurring bugs: some overlapping texts, some skill-checks listed on the map that are no longer available, animations that are frequently lagging - amount of text and dialogue is near insane: the reading will wear you out - leaves you with a feeling of guilt: there is hardly any way to play the hero, because the game almost bullies you into taking sides and all of them are problematic - limited replayability: once you finish, all that's left for a second attempt are probably just some skill-checks you failed with your character of choice and some flavor-text that differs depending on your character's skills
I'll try to keep this review short: This game allows you to play a party of different characters, but lacks everything you would expect from a party-based rpg. There is no skill system that matters apart from fighting skills, no party interactions, no interesting npcs, no quests that need different skills or characters to solve, no varying path through the game. So basically, you are left with a party and not much of an rpg. All that's there to do are a series of mindless fights. Plus, "Dungeon Rats" is super-hard and even on medium difficulty it will depend on sheer luck and the amount of save-scumming you do whether you are able to finish it or not. Also, this is not the first, but the second time the developer made this sort of flawed design-decision. In the game that preceded "Dungeon Rats", it is the other way around: The game lacks a party and only allows you to go through it solo. But it is, apart from that, designed for an adventuring party. It has a skill system that matters, interesting npcs, lots of quests that need different skills or characters to solve them and even several different paths through the game. So basically, you are left with a party-rpg that was, for the most part, unsolvable, because the game didn't come with a party-option and you had to build your character into a fighter to even have a slight chance of finishing the game, making most of the content totally obsolete. To make such an obvious game-design mistake once is ludicrous. To make it again and by that even surpassing the original mistake is just beyond ludicrous. Both games are legendary in that they need to be noted and remembered for being in the top ten of the worst rpgs that were ever created.
Pros: - female hard-boiled cop as the protagonist - a story about a serial killer, told in chunks of four episode - captivating melange of family drama, brutal murders and an fbi investigation - lots of diffrent, believable characters with intriguing background storys that unfold step by step - fast-paced: you're in the thick of it right from the start and the story unfolds naturally and with only a few breathers until you reach episode three, which brings about a nice change of pace as it takes on a rather pensive mood - the artwork fits the dark and gloomy story - music and sounds emphasize and underline the adventure very well - lots of nuts to crack - every episode introduces a new game-mechanic Cons: - episode one is very memorable, episode two is over in a blur, episode three takes the whole game to another level, but episode four is a bit too short - the so-called psi-powers you can employ to solve the cases are fun, but leave an odd aftertaste to an otherwise very well crafted game whose concept would have worked without this somewhat occult touch - animations/movements of the characters are sometimes off or odd Unsure: - the story is so overwhelming - which might be a good thing - that in the end, some murder-cases you barely remember having read about in episode one have you guessing whether you really remember them or whether they just came up out of nowhere - some cut-scenes take a while to digest and fail at making clear what exactly the game tries to tell you, leaving you at odds with the story and unsure about what to do next - which, again, might be a good thing and rather fitting - while there are some funny lines, moments and even characters, the game lacks the humor you would expect from a point-and-click adventure. Summary: A very immersive game which is unrivalled in almost every respect and shows just how fast-paced point-and-clicks can be. If you're not afraid an occaisional action-sequence and some gory crime-scenes, it is a must-have!
Pros: - neat graphics - unusial blend of trade-simulator and mini-action-rpg - rather fast-paced - entertaining campaing - lots of random events - interesting companions - fun leveling-system - good music Cons: - tricky user interface: even after getting used to it, it remains annoying - save-games can get corrupted - occaissional chrashes - balancing issues: one bad click can ruin your campaing, so using quick-save is recommended. - historic setting is very underdeveloped - can get repetative/become a chore: earning money is a click fest with repeating screens. - trade routes/prices vary from campaign to campaign and seem to be arbitrary. Conclusion: A good and fun little game with an unusual setting reminiscent of games like Railroad Tycoon or North and South. If these games appealed to you, than give this a go as well as long as it is on sale.
Pros: - The new, so called "Chosen" boss-enemies make for a nice change. - The three new soldier classes fit rather nicely both into your squad as well as into the whole setting. - The new, unique weapons do provide an extra edge in combat. - The new mission types are a nice diversion from familiar settings. - Customiziation of soldiers in terms of skills is now a lot more believable and flexible. - The resistance finally fights back and occaissionally helps you on missions. - Some aspects of the game got revamped or tweaked. - Missions load fast: No more endless waiting for the combat to begin like in the unaltered game. Cons: - The new enemy-bosses, the so called "Chosen", have only very shallow dialog and bakground stories, they are also predictable in combat and fighting them can be a bit repetative. The bosses in the "Alien Hunters"-DLC, altough it has its flaws, are much better and more believable. They are also less tacky but somehow much more fitting. - Customization options of the three new soldier classes are a bit limited: Templars just don't seem to come without kitschy pink stripes on the arms. Accept it! - The gameplay is so bogged down by all sorts of cutscenes, alerts, intersticials, messages, reminders, pop-ups, urgent requests and the like that you will forget what you were actually planning to do. - Quite a frew bugs remain unfixed. To name the worst: Firstly, the mouse-pointer will still snap unpredictibly to an invisible grid during combat missions, which will cause you to miss-click when aiming grenades or ordering your sldiers to go somewhere. This will more often than not cause deaths among your soldiers or even result in a failed mission, making iron-man-mode a gamble. Secondly, it will still be very much possible for enemies to spot you although the game clearly tells you that they can not beforehand, again causing terrible mission-fails that can hardly be prevented.
Pros: - The new two missions are memorable, immersive and very fitting, As long as the DLC-bundle does cost only a few bucks, it is worth it just because of these new scenarios. - The new mech-class is fun to play and a good addition to any squad. It even has it's own personality and an edgy one at that. - New weapons and armor are not only powerfull, but also upgradable and thus make for a great incentive to play the related story-mission. - You get to play two main characters of the game as part of the extra-missions - how cool is that? - The new enemies will have you on your toes whereever they appear, because they are incredibly tough to beat unless you face them with a decked out squad of colonels. Cons: - The new missions show up too early in any given game. If you attempt to play these as soon as they are available, you will hardly stand a chance. If you read the signs correctly, you can conclude this from how they are integrated in the game. But if you don't, it will be frustrating. - The new outfits that come with the "Anarchy's Children"-DLC are simply odd. If you want X-Com to look like a motorcycle-gang, a rockband or a new-age-sect, than it's probably the right thing for you. But it sure isn't for me. - Both story-missions do not get continued. As a player, you will yearn to learn more about the characters and events described there. But you will not be able to. One mssion is actually left unresolved although it's conclusion screams continuation, sequel or aftermath. The other mission suffers from some plotholes that leave you guessing about the details. Again, an explanation is never really given. - The new weapons and armor are clearly there to make the boss-fights against the new enemies easier. But that's exaclty where they mostly fail at. They will, however, make other scenarios almost too easy.
