Graphics, gun play, voice acting, atmosphere, over the top characters -this could have been a top notch game. The thing that ruins it is the difficulty spike on some bosses. Bad Boy Bob, the third one, is the first I died on. Repeatedly. And that's no fun. If I wanted to spend my nights playing the same shitty scene 50 times, I'd buy Dark Souls. This is supposed to be Arcade fun. We failed at this boss in COOP, quit the game. Some years later I played solo, failed at the same boss again, and am probably quitting for good now. I don't know if this is the only incredibly hard and unfun boss, or if the difficulty goes further up with each one. But this is the end of the road for me. What a pity. What a waste.
PROS + A lot of classes, techs to research, items and weapons to find and unlock. The classes are not as different as in Diablo, Monster Train or Slay the Spire, but interesting enough. CONS - No way to save the game to pick up where you left off later. Gotta go somewhere? Bye, current run. - Shops that let you upgrade items for some credits dont tell you what you get for your money. You gotta hover over the item, press Y to buy the upgrade and try to figure out what numbers went up by how much (plus hope you dont get killed while doing all that, because the game doesnt pause and enemies sometimes spawn out of nowhere). - Item shops are even worse than upgrade shops: they not telling you what items do is a complete fail. Items cost a huge chunk or all of your credits and you only get to buy one, so knowing what the items do is CRUCIAL. Have fun looking them up on the internet one by one. - Dead out of nowhere: especially against bosses. The entire screen explodes with fire and bullets and within 5s, you're dead. No way to react, no way to hide. Just dead, and some 30-60mins wasted. - Enemies are pretty similar and a little boring. - It's sometimes hard to tell friend from foe. I think when you fire at a friendly summon, their health bar turns red so it looks like an enraged enemy. It won't attack you (I think), but you'll be confused anyway. - The UI (research, perks and especially game settings) are so not triple AAA, it's almost cute.
I stopped playing after reaching the first big city because there's so much to do. So many quests, so many characters, so many plot lines to follow... Other might enjoy sinking years into this, but I got a life. PROS + Huge world + Interesting characters + Good quests + Content for YEARS CONS - Even though I bought a graphics card for it, the game was very slow and choppy. After a day of reading support threads, I went for the settings that did the least harm and just accepted the bad performance. Disappointing. - For all the skills and stances and intricacies of combat, it most often comes down to button smashing. - It's impossible to tell where you can jump and where not. The world is not readable in that regard. See next bullet point. - In "A Towerful of Mice": where did the wraith go? Why cant I climb on top of the cages or pull me up? Am I able to get up there or is this just decoration...? Not readable. - When every woman is beautiful, none is.
A well made, colorful game. I quit after 15 hours and 35% achievements, because I had beaten the game and didnt find the "Epilogue level" interesting enough. The game is similar to Slay the Spire, Monster Train or Tainted Grail so I will not write about the cards and perks and items too much but instead focus on the differences. + Exploring the world is FUN! For the first time, you have to make interesting choices not only during combat, but on the world map. You can move freely in all directions and use items to get to places you couldn't reach before. + Gorgeous triple A graphics (unlike other similar games) + Racoons firing yaks at you! With catapults! - Sometimes, the game hides vital information from you. For example, I died because the game didn't tell me what Final Upgrade on the mecha centipede boss does. Losing all your progress to bad UI is even worse than losing to RNG. If you like Slay the Spire and Monster Train, give this a shot. It's a steal - especially when discounted.
+ Incredible pixel art neon world + Atmospheric audio soundscape (although repetitive) + Some NPCs really grow on you. Especially Camus. + Some minor progress in stuff you buy for your outfit, car and appartment. - Lack of real gameplay and real progress (stats, skills, reputation, ...) makes the world feel like a holo muffin: yummy, but unfulfilling. It's more like an awesome tech demo than a game. - All areas are small islands. You can only land on their single parking lot, run around and leave again. You never get the idea of being in one huge megacity that you can traverse and explore by foot. - Flying around in your hovercar is not really fun. The highways are full of cars and pillars you bump into, going up or down is slow and only works up to a certain (invisible) point. The first person perspective is awesome for immersion, but hitting a parking spot gets even more difficult. A racing game with this handling would never be released. - Exploring the world by foot is not fun either. You're slow, there is no interaction with the world, you can't find any secrets or quests or enter any buildings. The game places the same 3-5 generic items on each island to force you to explore them because you wouldn't have any reason to do so otherwise. Dead ends regularly force you to backtrack big chunks of your way for even more frustration. - Main quest and its resolution are weird and left me confused. No idea what happened and what it all meant. - Some cringy commentary on "cultural appropiation", "predatory men", and other woke tropes made it hard to identify with the protagonist Rania, because I would not say the things she says. A multichoice menu would have solved that. Also, this destroys any immersion and takes the game from some Blade Runner future into some leftist Twitter bubble from 2020. Thanks for that. Bottomline: even though the cons sound bad, it's a good game with great potential for future installments with better gameplay (e.g. Nivalis in 2024)!
Second fight and you got dozens of enemies rushing you and you got no ammo. They 2 hit you, too. Yeah, right. Refund.
PROS + Incredible gun play. Guns, throwing knives, taser... they all feel and sound good, and are very satisfying to use. + Just one more level, mom! The game has a nice flow and makes you wanna keep playing. + Stealth is actually fun. The ground, your loadout, light sources... it all factors into how loud or visible you are. And it's all clear just looking at your surroundings. + Nice, cartoony pixel graphics + Not all weapons are available at the start. Finding and collecting the rest adds cross mission progression and a little Pokémon feeling to the game. Gotta catch em all! + The story is nothing to write home about, but helps tie all missions together nicely. The few characters you meet along the way are shady Max Payne style neo noir guys. MINOR CONS - Not sure limiting the number of savegames to 3 on True difficulty is a good idea. I ended some longer missions without being able to save and that meant having to repeat long parts of the levels over and over. Which is rather frustrating than fun. - Windows were difficult to recognize sometimes so I'd get spotted by someone on the other side just because I didn't see there was a window. - Having more environments than just Slum would have been awesome. Maybe for a DLC or part 2...? BOTTOM LINE If you liked Splinter Cell or Thief, or just wanna try out 2D stealth / shooter games: get this game. It has no real weak points worth mentioning and especially on sale for under 4 Euros, it's a steal.
Second game in a row some enemy hero takes an A.I. only way to my home town and conquers it. Game over. Graphics, combat, units, spells all mean shit when you games end like this. No strategy, no tactics, just a waste of time. Pity.
Might be playable with mods, but without them? Unplayable. - People never do what they're told / what their job is. - When you mark resources to be gathered, everyone and their grandma will drop what they're doing (AND WHAT THEIR JOB IS) and go chop wood on the other side of the world. Everyone dies, end of game. It's basically impossible to gather resources without ruining your game. - Huge parts of the game logic are NOT explained in the tutorial or the UI. It's as if the dev wanted you to fall into his traps and fail, fail, fail. - Gathering resources farther away is basically impossible because people will walk there, stand around, then go back to get something to eat. Rince and repeat until you've wasted half your population for years without a single piece of wood or stone in return. - etcetera etcetera This game is almost 10 years old. The dev could have fixed this crap if he cared for his customers. But no.
+ Cute graphics + Simple, yet fun research tree + Story is bland but okay - TOO MANY SYSTEMS that only exist to screw you over. Sectors (like in Z or Dawn of War, but unfun), max buildings per sector, max workers per building, max soldiers, etc. Instead of exploring, fighting, researching, and enjoying the game, you're busy trying to navigate 100 pitfalls and rules and limitations that are so arbitrary and mechanical they completely destroy any kind of immersion or fun this world might have created. For example: only basic villagers can build or repair. So when a building is on fire or needs building fast you will have to find a villager to do the job even though the place is crawling with other followers. And if you dont have any villagers, you'll have to find other people and manually send them to a certain building to convert them back to villagers, then give them new orders. - CAMPAIGN is stressful. The game constantly throws disasters at you that have little to do with the story. - FOLLOWERS: Very hard to tell what job each follower has. Your minions are so tiny and the map is so cluttered it's impossible to tell a villager from a hunter or healer like in a Blizzard RTS. Game has a decent list of all followers in the bottom right corner, but you should be able to find followers just looking at the world. - MAP: Once you scout 5+ sectors, things get overwhelming. Things like stone, iron and treasures can be hard to see so the safest way is to click on a sector and read a summary in the UI. Again: this should be available looking at the world. - HEROES: Top review mentioned the heroes were "like in Warcraft 3". What!? They have NO voice lines, personality, recognizable visuals, level ups, items or skills! - A.I. is not terrible like in some games, but villagers will still idle sometimes even though they're supposed to collect food when idle. Healers will refuse to heal or cure deseases and you'll have no idea why. - STORY cutscenes do not pause the game. WTF?
