tl;dr if you haven't played the X series before and are thinking about X2, skip it, get X3 (make sure it's the Full 'Terran war pack" version) Having recently replayed X2 it's still a fun game and generally representative of the classic X experience. Slow to start, menu heavy, steep learning curve. and X2 does have a certain 'feel', certain character that X3 does not. That said there's almost nothing X2 does that X3 didn't improve on. Additionally X3 while old itself still has better and active modding resources. finding non-dead links to mod files for X2 is a challenge and I had to get a few resources from the wayback machine. Overall the only area I can praise 2 over 3 is they did try a lot harder to build a compelling story and do some worldbuilding. There's scenes on planets and some lengthy scenes with characters. does it succeed? not really , the story is ok but nothing to write home about. and while the voice acting is passable the NPC models are pretty cringy. but I can praise them for trying to build a more involved and compelling world. X3 really just goes for sandbox, the story missions feel more like an afterthought than anything.
Didn't finish the game, got through the first few areas and few abilities but was unimpressed. It's not much of a platformer: while there's lots of platforms and vertical tunnels and spiky bushes the platforming is pretty simple. You get a double jump early and can jump off walls. Nothing was particularly difficult in the platforming department, little skill is needed to move through the world. Combat Is button mashy and enemies are spammy. The game likes to throw lots and lots of enemies at you at once. Generally as you move around there will either be nothing, or suddenly a smattering of enemies will filter in from nowhere. then you'll just hit an area and it will just keep throwing a horde of enemies at you. At this point it's mostly just get away and spam attack until you can use a finisher move for more damage. Fighting is unsatisfying since it's just a mess of enemies onscreen all at once so strategy and finesse really go out the window and you end up just mashing attack. though even that in itself is annoying; your character moves forward as you attack so it's hard to stay back away from enemies since your attacks draw you into them. On top of that some enemy types are just plain annoying. Not long into it these cannon-bots will spawn and they can shoot you through walls from very far away. The game likes to spawn groups of 3-4 of them throughout areas, usually behind you as you travel either forcing you to backtrack to kill them or move forward for a long time while they shoot at you through the walls, more tiresome than exciting.
Fired it up but found that the game has no options for remapping controls. I like to play with a Wii U Pro controller so it's pretty much a requirement to swap the buttons (because everything is x-input now and AB XY are flipped on XBOX controllers) In this day and age there's really no excuse for leaving out basics like that.
Fun to see where Warcraft started but the gameplay is extremely dated. Units are slow to respond and have poor overall AI. Controls are primitive and group size is max at 4 Good for a walk down nostalgia lane but overall the game doesn't hold up anymore.
GyK is not a terrible game, it offers a pretty chill "Harvest-Moon-like" experience with a pretty unique setting and mechanics. A nice feature is that the Day/night cycle is less stringent than HM games, you can stay up late and there are no seasons, only a 1 week cycle so the pressure to get things done "this season" is not present. The problem with the game is it's just not finished, it's missing QoL features, there's unused stuff and there's lots of mechanics that are interesting but obviously not fully fleshed out. This is apparent in the frequently uneven tech progression and in the rather sprawling crafting mechanic which seems to dominate the game-play more than actually keeping up with your graveyard. Overall I can't say GyK is a good game but it's unusual enough that I don't regret the time put into it. It has a lot of potential to become a good game and I would give it 3 stars if it looked like the developer planned to continue to patch and flesh out the main game but it appears they have gone the route of DLC to fill in some of the holes.
Tried to get into it but I struggled to figure out how to make money trading. The economic model is finicky and seems opposite of all the other trading games in that trading in bulk seems to loose money not make it. The price of a good changes for every individual item sold or bought, if you by 10 of something at a time it give you a weird average of the cost if you had bought 10 single items. this continual shift causes weird trades: EX I was in a port that manufactured brick, wishing to sell to another port in need of brick. The port had 95 bricks, if i buy 10 bricks I get an average price of 98 a unit, if i buy all the bricks the average price *increases* to 145 a unit.. So buying low means i can only by a handful of bricks. On the other end it's the same, i can sell 1 brick for 167 but if i sell 10 bricks the average was 128 and gets worse for selling 100 units. SO in this case despite the manufacturer having lots and the recipients having zero stock if I buy all 95 bricks and try to sell all 95 bricks I actually loose money (buy at 148 sell at <100) the only profit to be made was only buying <10 bricks. This created an odd micromanagement where it wasn't even about finding low prices and selling high it was finding how much could be bought or sold at a low price. buy too much and you'll never make back your money, sell too much and you'll also loose. I prefer the usual model that when you find a low price you can buy the whole stock at that price and also sell at the high price rather than work with the average for some quantity SIDE NOTE: you might totally experience weird water glitchyness. there's a number of work arounds but you should be able to get it to work with one of them. took me a bit to get it running right.
Graphics are good, controls are tight and sound/music is on point. Iconoclasts is a solid metroidvania that focuses more on puzzles and a lot of bang for the buck when it comes to world size. I think it stands out the most with its dark and intricate lore. It'd be 5 stars but the game is a bit slow in giving abilities, you only get a few throughout the game and the tweak system is a bit lackluster.
This is indeed a "Myst-like" Adventure game. It has a similar style of wandering through unique landscapes, interacting with machinery and generally being confused about what's happening. With a little work it could have been pretty great but falls a bit flat as a whole package. Like Myst games there is no inventory and the primary hurdle is usually getting from A to B The latter part hurts this game some in that unlike it's predecessors Obduction is full roam 3D and often suffers from what I call "poor barriers" Many times you will do a load of puzzling or work simply because your character can't scramble over a small rock pile, scooch down a small cliff, climb up a small wall or reach through a gap to unlock a door from the other side. It can be a bit immersion breaking being blocked by such contrivances. Story wise it starts pretty strong but leaves a bit too much out to make the end feel satisfying, Overall what hurts the game the most is a handful of tedious puzzles and a few situations where the path forward seems arbitrarily blocked and unblocks for poor reasons. I will say there is indeed one puzzle near the end that is not terribly difficult to solve but is so abysmally designed that it might take you an hour to actually execute the damn solution. The mechanisms of the puzzle are far apart requiring walking, mechanical interaction, waiting for animations, and continuously sends you back and forth through loading zones making the whole thing a grindy slog.
Stacking is a neat and very unique puzzler. It's not super hard or super long but those aren't really cons. Its great for a refreshing change of pace. It's also suitable for younger players.
Ghost 1.0 isn't anything spectacular but comes across as a decent metroidvania. Some of the weapons are a bit lackluster and the rate at which you get "money" doesn't let you upgrade everything unless you grind. challenge is moderate Of one note is there's a "souls" mechanic in the game where in most rooms you can trigger these specks to appear. collecting them gives you rewards. collecting all of them in each area yields special rewards. some of the trigger mechanisms are so obscure i'm not sure how you would ever find them all without a guide.
