It asks dedication on the medium difficulty, but it rewards you with a fun and hardy challenge coupled with excellent visuals, an okay story and a greatr soundtrack.
Wrath of the Righteous is a pretty good RPG. It pits you on a lengthy campaign against demons in a crusade, and does so with divergent storytelling, cool and interesting companions and nuance to keep you interested. The core gameplay is the dungeoncrawling which is fine and better than in kingmaker considering there are less trash mobs (though there still are many fights). As before, you usually can take these mobs in realtime and use turn-based for the fights that are slightly more complicated. This part works well. Customization is great. The enemies provide a real challenge. Graphically, it is looking pretty good with lovely artistry in the drawings and designs. Audio-wise, the voice acting is excellent, and so are the spell effects and music. For downsides: There is a lot of story branching going on, and the game is very long. I had forgotten about some characters that appeared later on. There is also a problem in that many encounters have the same solution. Then there is the crusade system which interrupts the pacing of the game moreso than the kingdom managament ever did; It also sucks that the crusade combat is not on par with the games it tries to emulate. Finally, a special mentions to how the rotating camera is used for a gimmick that is fun initially but then starts to wear on me. Overall, this is a solid game, but also a very lengthy, demanding and technical one. If you are into cRPGs then give it a try. The game does have its downsides, but overall these did not stop me from playing.
I have played many of these old-style shooters and this is one of the best ones. It is not just a clone or a callback; It does its own thing. Through its runtime you have a linear section followed by open hub levels where you will start questing in. There is a lot of attention to detail to make everything seem lived in. The game has you fight large battles with great weapons, uncover secrets (some puzzling required for some of those), accomplish quests and progress a story. It even gives you some agency on how to pogress quests too! The art is very well done. The setting is a bit out there, yet it kept me engaged throughout. The game also changes how you play it during its campaign. The soundtrack is a mix between unreal, metal and atmospheric pieces. All-in-all, I really enjoyed this game and would put it up with Amid Evil, Dusk and Ion Fury as one of the best ones in its genre and outside its genre still as a good game.
This game tells the story of King Arthur, specifically the story of the end of the legend with Sir Mordred. You take the role of one of the more famous characters in the myth like Sir Lancelot or Queen Guinevere and venture through England to the place of the final confrontation at Camlann to aid the king. Along the way, you venture through villages, holy sites, forests and swamps and make a story doing so. You might pick up followers, get harried by bandits or get sidetracked on an entirely different quest. Each place you arrive at is a variable board on which your character travel, trying to move to the top right square to capture the board. You may face adversity or just helpful characters, but either way it is here where the true game lies. You are playing this with chess-like rules on taking and moving. Characters are knocked out as soon as they are hit, and you need to play this with sacrifices or maneuvers to get your opponent in a bad spot. This game has many levels to it, and while initially it is fairly easy, it definitely grows more potent and clever as you play on higher difficulties. At every turn the game also tells a story that you navigate with your actions, really integrating the storytelling and narrative with the gameplay, even changing your character's abilities by story decisions that you make for them. This game is a gem. It is short to complete, but has amazing replayability as you explore all it has to offer. I definitely recommend it!
Druidstone was a very enjoyable experience, combining the best of board games like descent: journeys into the dark and similar objective-based dungeon crawlers together with solid tactical combat. The gameplay has quite a bit of depth to it and each scenario is unique and asks you to rethink how to approach the game. The game world itself is lush, colourful and breathes life without getting in the way of the actual game. The characters aren't remarkable outside of the warden, but even so they each have a well-defined character and work well with this game's light story. This game really caters to just having a good time. It doesn't take itself too seriously, but that is not to say it doesn't have its serious moments, either. The game as a whole is very balanced that way. The tactical gameplay itself is easy to learn, difficult to do well but not frustrating. It just offers a good challenge, which you can further customize as you see fit. If you are looking for a strategy game that offers depth, and provides its contents to you in bite-sized chunks, I recommend playing this lovely game.
