The art and initial tone of the game set you up for a stealth game where you dodge some guards, get some loot, do this well enough to not embarass yourself in front of the Thieve's Guild, etc. However, during the second act, both the story and gameplay start to take a turn, and this will essentially be the point where the game clicks for you or you get tired by it. Spirited Thief just starts asking a lot more of you. The story goes from odd jobs here and there with laid back banter to going up against fantasy Illuminati and coming to terms with somebody's death. The gameplay, that started with keeping track of a few guards while using your favourite tool for a mission, grows to having massive maps where you have to control 2-4 people and learn that you can't have a "favourite tool" anymore. As you're scouting with your spirits, you have to plot out a path in your head for everyone, which thieves to take with you, and which tools should they take and when should they use them. It kind of gets out of hand, but something about it clicked for me. Maybe it was the setting up of a status quo for a few long hours and upending it that made it stand out for me. Or just the good old feeling of beating a hard challenge.
For a game that was in development for over 10 years, I would not think it would actually release, let alone be this good. As the all-powerful deity of your people you are constantly helping them and nudging them in the right direction so one day, they can explore the stars. In the stone age you help bring sticks and stones to buildings, and heal people through prayer when they get hurt. Yet, eventually you'll have couriers and hospitals, and ministers to build them as needed. As you go through the ages, the things from the past get automated and you get to focus on the new thing like electricity and automobiles. Because of this, you always have something to do, and are rarely burdened with jobs and chores you don't want to do anymore after you've unlocked something that drastically changes how your city works Watching all this unfold is also great; The animations are nice, the narrator is fun, fighting exiles, keeping your population believing in you after the invention of the steam engine, and the joy of watching buildings upgrade from little stony hamlets to enormous skyscrapers is very cathartic. And this is just on your first planet. Once you go through some interesting story events and have the needed research, you'll be able to colonise the moon as well as other planets within your region. When I thought I was just about to get bored with the game, it threw terraforming at me and it was better than I had hoped. Turning a baren ball of rock into a green and blue home, seeing the first cloud in the sky, this game pulls it off pretty well. The interplanetary space ports and trading don't hurt either, and make the colonisation process a lot less boring. And I can't stress this enough, even without the spacefaring aspect, this game would be worth buying.
A game of this type lives and dies on the strength of its writing, and it really defied my initial expectation given the somewhat silly premise. Not only it is very good on a moment to moment basis, with entertaining banter between the characters, it also has a very compelling overarching story to make you truly question whether or not you should slay the princess. And to elevate it even further, it has a unique and well realised art style, with really good voice acting to boot. Even if you only play it once, only do one playthrough, it is worth the asking price.
It's amazing that this game is as fun as it looks in the trailer. Playing around with the movement can be addictive and the levels are all very good and play to the movement's strengths. However, for a speedrunning game, no leaderboards (or steam only leaderboards) do take something away from the experience.
The gameplay in Titan Souls turned out to be more fun than I expected. I only bought it to try it because of a 90% discount, and I was pleasantly surprised by it. The main loop of the game is killing the titular titans using only your one arrow that needs to be picked back up after every shot, with sprinting and dodge rolling mixed in. Each boss fight has a quirk or gimmick that is the key to beating it, which makes each fight less of a back and forth between attacking and defending (like you'd expect from a souls-like) and more like a puzzle requiring thinking and well-timed shots. Outside of the boss fights themselves, you have the overworld which you travel to find each boss; Sometimes hidden bosses too which are quite nice to find. All of that said, I might have had fewer positive feelings for this game if I hadn't bought it on sale because of how empty it feels. The gameplay is nice and rewarding, yes, but you have no context to what you're doing and why you're doing it. This makes the game feel void of a certain something that could make it a very memorable game. I feel like I'm killing these things because it's a game and that's what you do in it, and not because there's something bigger at play.
