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This user has reviewed 7 games. Awesome! You can edit your reviews directly on game pages.
Knights of the Chalice 2

Ugh.

Party-based D&D 3.5 sequel to Knights of the Chalice. Unlike the first game, there are a lot of character creation options. The party limit has been expanded from 4 to 6 (with a possible 8 if you include recruitable NPCs.) Multi-classing is not possible, which departs from the rules the game is based upon (one of MANY departures, including the lack of a proper skill system.) Most spells can't be cast outside of combat, and that includes the majority of buffs. This is a bit annoying because the enemies always show up fully prepared and pre-buffed on round 1. There's barely a story to speak of. The prologue has the vast majority of the game's non-combat content. There are a handful of NPCs to interact with and about 6 or 8 quests to complete. This is very similar to the first game, which had most of its interesting content in the very beginning. Just like that game, it seems the developer ran out of steam after the initial areas and the rest of the game is just combat. When I say the game is entirely combat, I really mean that. It's quite literally a 40 hour dungeon crawl in which you walk 5-10 steps between each battle. The battles themselves are ludicrous. Even in the prologue, they become quite insane. I have to wonder if the developer even played this game, because the encounter design is absolutely atrocious. You're constantly stumbling into ENORMOUS fights. More enemies spawn (from nowhere) during fights. This is very common. Early game has support for avoiding ambushes. Late game, nothing. You get surprised. Also, if you lose initiative in this game, you lose the fight. The enemy CANNOT be allowed to go first. Most encounters contain spellcasters or psionics that will immediately spam crowd-control AOE spells on you that will shut down the whole party before you can even act. Enemies all have strong magic gear, even orcs and goblins, and you can't loot any of it! Later on, enemies all have +5 gear and hundreds of HP. And you fight 20 at a time. Ugh.

90 gamers found this review helpful
Knights of the Chalice

D&D 3e Combat Simulator

Knights of the Chalice makes a pretty good first impression. Its simplistic but effective pixel graphics have a certain charm that lasts throughout the entirety of the game. Despite how complex some of the battles can get, they're always visually clear -- no small feat for a game like this. In the beginning of the game, there's an interesting setup with story, some NPCs to interact with, and a handful of really flavorful encounters. It draws you in right away. But.. there are some issues. For one thing, even though this game is a pretty decent simulator of third edition Dungeons & Dragons, it lacks much of the actual content that made that edition fun. For example, there are only 3 character classes to choose from: Fighter, Wizard, and Cleric. There are 4 character slots in the party, so you'll always have a duplicate class. Spells are limited to only a handful of the most iconic D&D spells. There aren't really a lot of utility or flavor options. In addition, characters have no skills at all. Perhaps the most disappointing thing is that all of those engaging and interesting encounters I mentioned earlier are only in the first part of the game. The roleplaying elements drop off very sharply after that, as if the developer just decided they didn't want to continue making story and characters, so the rest of the game is a pure hack & slash fest. It's hard not to get the impression that the guy who made this game got lazier and lazier as it went on. Battles get absolutely massive and it sort of highlights how silly 3e can get. At higher levels, your 4 characters can rather handily dispatch hordes of very powerful monsters with little tactical thought (and sometimes just cheesy spell usage.) It's not a bad game if you really enjoy old school D&D combat and don't mind limited options and virtually zero story beyond the first act. Oh, and fighting a LOT of the same monster type over and over for the entire second half of the game.

21 gamers found this review helpful
Timespinner

Decent, but not for everyone.

The art and animation is fantastic, the platforming and controls are super tight, and it's an overall very solid Metroidvania game. So, why did I rate it 3 stars? 1. The time stopping mechanic that the game is named after is barely used. You have access to it from the very beginning of the game, but about 90% of your uses for it occur in the first 2-3 areas. After that, you'll very rarely be presented with a puzzle that requires you to briefly use it to get access to an otherwise unreachable area (but even then, you get a double jump later that renders it almost entirely moot). You can't damage enemies when time is stopped, so it's not useful in combat other than to dodge a projectile or something, but enemies telegraph their moves pretty blatantly, so I never needed to do that. 2. You can switch between a lot of different types of weapons which level up as you use them, but realistically you're just going to pick the one you like the best and use it for the whole game. Each has its own damage type, and each of the 80 enemies in the game has their own resistances and vulnerabilities, but it doesn't make enough of a difference to bother swapping loadouts. 3. The game is very short. I achieved 100% completion in about 15 hours. You could finish the game in much less time than that and still get the best ending. 4. It's too easy unless you use the most extreme difficulty option, but you'll have to complete the game at least once to unlock it. Unless you're hardcore in love with the experience, you're probably not going to go through that again. It would be nice if that difficulty were available from the beginning, because I think it's a more appropriate challenge for experienced genre fans. Boss fights don't demand much strategy other than spamming your attacks or spells. You can access the inventory at any time (which pauses the game) and chug healing items to your heart's content. I almost never had to use a healing item in the entire game, though.

48 gamers found this review helpful
Cultist Simulator

Simplistic Grindfest

Like most people, I was very confused (but oddly intrigued) by the complete lack of -any- instructions on how to play or what the goal of the game is. I'll save you a little time by telling you that the goal of the game is to perform the required research to start a cult, recruit members, and achieve a victory condition (such as reaching the highest level of enlightenment for your cult's discipline). In order to achieve a victory, you need the right cards. The way you get the cards differs, but it always involves repetitive gameplay where you know what you're supposed to do, but the card(s) you need require you to essentially hit a timer on randomized "locations" to try and get the card you need from the location. You can and will get duplicates, so it becomes really frustrating to just be treading water waiting for the timer only to find out that the card you got after waiting was useless to you. While all the waiting is going on, you'll be required to keep up maintenance on other resources (health, currency, etc) which is really just repeating the exact same card plays over and over and over every single time the respective timer pops. It's not fun or challenging whatsoever. In fact, once you figure out how the game is meant to be played, it's extremely boring. Maybe that's why they don't give you any instructions. The mystery makes the game seem a lot deeper than it is.

18 gamers found this review helpful
Jack Keane

Mediocre

Jack Keane is a by-the-numbers classically inspired adventure game. It's clear that the designers were fans of old-school standards such as Monkey Island (it even borrows some of the tropical themes). So why isn't this game great? It's all in the execution. The voice acting ranges from stilted and stiff to downright laughable. The writing itself isn't terrible, but it's not going to win any prizes for originality. The puzzles go from blatantly obvious solutions to head scratching absurdity and then back again. Still, if you're itching for an adventure game and you've already played all of the top-tier offerings, you might find something to appreciate here. The game isn't a total disaster, but it does require a little patience to get into. 3 stars.

41 gamers found this review helpful