For a game of its age the visual style, art style and detail of the game world has aged very well. The colours are more matt and it lends to the believability of the world, compared to the more brightly coloured visuals we have in more recent years. Music is decent and there are voiced dialogues as well. The setting is high fantasy with different races, powerful magicians and the saving the world chosen one framework. While its fine, there is quite a fair bit of humour in this game that I would describe as .... immersion breaking. You cant treat a setting seriously if the writing treats it as a joke. The biggest offender in my view is the game design with its poor balancing. Unless youre using magic, the early game will be extremely vexing with you running or teleporting from where the action is to your bed to regenerate and back. A lot of the loot you get in the beginning you cannot use because you will lack the stats to equip it, making it almost useless. Leveling is pretty slow and there are many enemies you need to kill to clear dungeons and the like. I dont like the combat in Diablo or Titan Quest as it seems very monotonous, primitive and unrefined. Here its pretty much the same way, but even more simplistic as the game doesnt commit to a more action oriented experience. There can also be a significant strength gap between enemies in the same area. I only made it past the first area into the farm past the bridge and I already wasnt interested in what the game had to offer. People also mention bugs and more grinding in the latter part of the game. Also, the presence of feminist tendencies like the starting female character saying she "beaten the villages blacksmith when she was 15" and having a general of the kingdom be a woman is something I consider try hard feminist pandering and not good story telling. It just surprises me that it was that bad even back then. Its not a bad game, but your time is likely to be better spent elsewhere.
A neat concept, but a bad experience. On paper you need to manage a ship, its crew and upgrades in order to defeat other ship and over come the boss at the end. You have different crew species, different weaponry and different gear you can equip your ship with that will allow you to approach the game differently. You also need to manage resources, as different parts of this ship need power and some weaponry require resources. Sounds quite solid, but undermined primarily by three things. RNG. It really is random for the most part. If you are not lucky, then you are not lucky and thats it. The game doesnt offer you enough mechanisms to combat the deck being stacked against you. A bad event, wrong enemy appearing, not enough or too many shops, not enough resources, etc. Time wasting. Weapons take a while to charge up and fire, most of the time all you can do is wait for the guns to be combat ready and try to knock out the enemies shield and weapons systems. You micro manage attrition you suffer in the meantime, but its still a needlesly prolonged fight for no reason. Grinding. Im somewhat skeptical about this one as you dont really unlock upgrades, per se. You unlock new ship compositions. Different starting weapons, starting crews, starting layouts. Im not sure how much this will contribute to you success. The game does have different items you can emply, so Im sure you can develop some strategies for certain runs. But that will require you to go through tons of trial and error until you can see if there really is more to it. Within 10 hours you will probably see almost all the events and items this game has to offer. But then you will have to spend many more trying to "master" them for the most efficient run. Bottom line, unless you like being kicked in the balls repeatedly until you get lucky enough and are well versed enough in the game to be able to tackle it, there are more enjoyable ways of spending your time.
The art style is pretty nice for an indie and is quite inticing to try out. Unfortunately, the storytelling and gameplay are on the stale side. I didnt play that much of the game, around 3-4 hours, but after taking a pause I dont really want to get back into it. Its few mechanics dont allow for much complex gameplay. You swim around looking for fishing spots, use appropriate gear to get appropriate fish, sell the fish, upgrade boat, repeat. Your boat, even with the possibility of expansion, cant carry too much, so there isnt that much inventory management, especially if you catch larger fish. And usually you can get around 1,5 hauls worth in a day. Yes, there are building materials, upgrades, some loot, but its the same gameplay wise and it gets monotonous. The vague corruption/sanity mechanics are more of an irritation than a challenge. You are getting more paranoid at night in the dark and theres nothing you can do about it. Only thing it accomplishes is dragging out the game, really. There is storytelling, however I dont know how the main story arc played out, but people mention its dissapointing. There are side stories in the form of notes, some NPCs asking for help, some interesting areas that offered some mysterious assignments for a reward, etc., but nothing that was really captivating. And with the monotonous gameplay everything slowly turns into a drag. Maybe if you want simpler gameplay and to enjoy some neat visuals then you can get your moneys worth from this, but otherwise I think its a bit dull and very overrated.
Good art style, nice atmosphere, alright music. Stiff and clunky controls, lack of mobility (both traversing and combat), confusing combat (how to approach enemies) and annoying enemy placement, vague storytelling. I have little experience with Soulslikes or 2D platformers so I kept thinking "Maybe Im just bad at this and need to get used to it, be more strategic regarding enemies, patient in approach, etc.". No, this game has issues and people are most likely ignoring them because thats what people do with something they like, make excuses for its shortcomings. I know its a different game, but I never had an issue accepting death or damage in Hades. Every time I failed a run I could see that I wasnt good enough in something. There was almost always a way I could escape damage, I just had to be better. Here its the opposite. Almost every time I take damage I feel the game is cheating. I either cant move the way I want, the enemies are positioned in a way as to not let me handle them properly, trial and error gameplay and if you manage to put yourself in the wrong position you will get hurt a lot or even die. The times I did do well against the enemies I felt I was cheesing the game. Waiting near ledges to pick one off, waiting until other enemies go outside the screen. Ive played games on hard difficulties before and hard games in other genres, so I can tell when the game is hard because I need to do more/better or when its designed to be vexing through artificial means. This one feels like the latter. A purity test through grinding gameplay.
If youre having crashes, make sure to manually install DirectX 9. We tend to foget that games have software requirements or are too used to them being installed automatically with the game. Having installed it I didnt have a single crash afterwards. Now unto the game. The game came out between Rome and Medieval 2 Total War and is also a mix of turn based strategic map and real time tactical combat. On a conceptual level, there are things that I like and wish were used in TW. The more varied resource mechanics, the officer system for moving armies, trade routes, some diplomatic possibilities. However, the game is marred with issues that make it an inferior product to the TW games. The restrictive province development system, weird AI behaviour, strange balancing both in combat and on the campaign map (gun fire is much less efficient than melee), clunky and underdeveloped battle controls, no battle speed options (although there is a pause), slow gameplay start requiring quite a bit of development and preparation, smaller in scope than the TW games, there is no morale system during battles which makes it more arcady. They did have naval warfare before the TW series and it looks interesting, although I didnt get a chance to try it. Trying it out now I kind of understand why it was overshadowed. Despite some interesting ideas it underperforms in most categories compared to its direct competitor at that point. I guess they wanted to try a different era than the TW games of the time to make it more appealing and it makes sense. But now, if you want a game of this era, Empire and Napoleon TW are significantly superior and have much greater mod support. I wished they would have been able to make more games like this and try and refine them. There is potential, for sure. But its a tough market. Even their direct competitor in this regard, Creative Assembly, had issues making financial gains and eventually decided to sell to SEGA.
I havent played the RE series, but I played Dead Space and Evil Within and I love that stuff. Played it on the survival horror mode as its meant. First off - the presentation values. I dont want to say bad, but its kind of close to it. Everything looks fake or like a prop/doll. Animations are rather stuff. Face design looks sloppy and sound design isnt anything special. Im not really hung up on this particular part of games, but I can definitely say its level was no more than baseline. The story. You play various characters throughout the game. Government conspiracies, mutagen outbreak. RE stuff as far as I know. Perfectly fine, even if its a rip off. Depends how you present it. And they didnt present it well. Some character behaviours baffle me. Some story notes require you visit a website IRL. The story doesnt quite make sense and there was supposed to be an unravelling closer to the end, but I only made it somewhere halfway through. You also play as different characters, which doesnt allow you to connect to anyone properly. Now the gameplay. Very linear. Rather clunky UI. Amount of damage to kill a zombie can vary greatly, 2-5 headshots with a pistol from experience. You need to go through a tapping minigame if a zombie latches onto you. Many resources you pick up arent particularly useful. Some puzzles are confusing, one actually didnt make sense even after looking up the solution and convinced me to drop this game. I would give it 2.5 stars, since its not particularly bad, but more like painfully mediocre with some gaffs. There were plenty of 90s references, which was cool. I do believe the developers put in effort and wanted to make something interesting. But everything they did, and I mean everything, you can find somewhere else better. So unless you are really into the genre and tried everything else it has to offer, there is no point in trying this, sad to say.
Now the art design is probably what will get most peoples attention to try out this game. Its quite nice, but not enough to carry your attention thoughtout the game. For that you need a decent story and decent combat/game mechanics. The story concept is fine. You are supposedly entering an apocalyptic scenario and you are trying to survive. Its told from several characters perspectives. I didnt play long, so I cant say how well it all plays out and works together. Accounts from other people vary. I can, however, comment on the game mechanics. The combat and story presentation. The combat is awful. It has several cripling flaws. Damage is tied to health difference. You lose health you hit less. Experience is only obtained by the person making the kill. So you use the same characters always. Combat has mandatory turn changes, meaning if you have 5 party members and the enemy 3, it will still be one move each until the enemy has 1 unit, then all your party members move first. This leads to a situation where its actually not efficient to kill enemies quickly, but rather let them live with minimal HP. Conversely, you are better off using 2-3 strong units then bringing a full party into the fray. Its complete nonsense. but thats how it works .... The other cripling issue is that you have little foresight into your choices. At one point I had to make a decision. I thought it was more safe, but it lead to a different playable character being killed off almost as soon as he was introduced. Whats the point of making decisions if you are going to get outcomes you specifically do not want? I read some other reviews and as well as from my own impressions I cannot say that the writing has inspired me enough to delve deeper. Its not thought out well enough to be worth the effort.
The visuals and soundtrack are alright. The story isnt that interesting, since it isnt developed in a meaningful way, theres a lot of talking about nothing. Gameplay is fine. You play a solitaire type game where you generate points for attacks and defence, can use skills to either attack the enemy, improve yourself or aid you on the solitaire board. It was amusing, but nothing felt particularly impactful. You seem to have quite a few items, but you wont use a lot of them, since theyre not really cost effective. There is also a character development system, but I cant say it adds much either. Its one of those games you play on the side while listening to something, not much more.
A rather neat concept. You play as an Egyptian tribe along a predetermined path/scenario and you need to form the kingdom of Egypt. You do this by managing your resources (assigning workers and accumulating resources) and asserting dominance over neighbouring tribes. The mechanics are rather simple and their main focus for you is to fulfill objectives as efficiently as possible. You get a score showing how well you did. Apparently this was made as phone game, but it doesnt really hinder your enjoyment, the mechanics still work fine. Visuals are simple, yet pleasant. The use of some Greek names seems a bit strange, though. The base price seems a bit high for what it offers, but its a good deal during a sale.
Not even sure how quite to begin here. Well, first off, its a budget FPS from 20 years ago that was mainly designed for consoles. The PC port is fine, nothing wrong here, but there is a certain "clunkiness" that you notice when playing these types of games. So the best part of the game, from my perspective, was the soundtrack. Either super chill tunes and pretty pumped up tracks. Secondary of note would probably be the setting. I know Judge Dredd is pretty much forgotten by people nowadays, but its still a pretty interesting setting about a cop trying to keep order in a super over sized semi-dystopian city. But in the game you dont really get to feel the gritiness of the city as it is portrayed in other media. It feels like just some futuristic city. The game offers 3 main game modes - story, arcade, multiplayer. I only played through the campaign. Its rather short, beatable in about 4 hours, give or take. The main goal of missions is to achieve a higher score. You do that by fullfilling objectives in a mission and being a good cop. That means arresting perpetrators, saving citizens, avoiding extra casualties. And its less fun being a good cop than just shooting down enemies. You could just ignore the scoring and go around taking down enemies. It wont effect the story. I understand they wanted to incorporate being a cop into the gameplay, but I cant say it worked out. You have your main gun for fighting, which has several ammo types. Some of them I didnt bother using at all. And you can pick up a secondary, which is useful as you probably wont have enough ammo to deal with everyone with your main gun. Your health can also go down quickly if you receive too much melee or sustained fire. Levels can feel a bit too "coridor" if you know what I mean. The story is alright, but too compresed to be truly entertaining. While its alright as a budget game of its time, nowadays only people who are interested in Dredd or the atmosphere of early 2000s games should bother.
