Cartel Tycoon is very smart; it does things I've never seen a management sim do, and it does them well, but a lack of development follow-through means the micro in the game is demanding and punishing. Laundered money moves between facilities and your budget automatically as needed, but dirty money has to be moved manually or by a small set of dedicated facilities with very particular rules. When the cops raid a facility, they pick one with maxed out storage, which means if you keep your storages from maxing out you can attract their attention and then redirect them to a rival's facility. These are very clever mechanics, but Cartel Tycoon lacks any kind of handle on redistribution of resources other than one-time manually initiated runs. The threat of a police raid requires the player to work against their automated distribution system, which only concerns itself with emptying producers and filling warehouses and consumers. Empty a storage and it is full again in seconds. Residences move dirty money within range from producers to consumers, but not amongst themselves. Manually refilling one requires clicking on facilities one by one to see where your dirty money is held up, because there's no at-a-glance ledger for cash location. I haven't given up on Cartel Tycoon yet, but it is such a shame to be so conflicted about it. It is so close to being an excellent title. It is great fun to succeed at, but not very much fun to play.
This is a clever approach to an interactive movie -- the content doesn't change at all based on your choices, until the very end, but by leaving it up to you what you choose to see and asking you leading questions between chapters, the game subtly twists your perception into seeing events in different lights. To be completely honest, I'm not actually sure what a good job the game does of this, but it's a good-faith effort, and a clever approach to interactivity I'd not seen before. When I say I'm not sure, I mean exactly that -- I am not criticizing. I would have to play the game through again to get a sense of how the questions and order of events change things, and at the end of the day I don't enjoy psychological thrillers enough to slog through another 5+ hours of grainy '90s video and prerendered CG. If someone were trying to make a game like this today (and I know some folks are; Tim Follin's Baggy Cat Entertainment has made some excellent additions to this genre since 2015), I think I would recommend introducing events on a conflicting timeline so that you had to make choices about what to watch that would lock you out of other choices. That would go a long way toward replayability. The most important criticism to make of this game is that the original game apparently included a dollar-store psych eval of the player at its conclusion, and that is missing in this version. This is a huge gap, as some kind of reward for the time you've spent answering dozens if not hundreds of questions is sorely missing. The multiple endings of the story are all pretty unsatisfying (as psychological thriller endings often are), and you can be left feeling like you've wasted five hours of your life watching a two-hour movie very, very slowly. The story is more mundane than 7th Guest's or 11th Hour's, and I'd say it falls between them in terms of quality (I did not like 11th Hour). It's worth noting that what nudity is present is not the feel-good kind.
Mekana has its flaws, but the store page promises a simple management sim with erotic elements, and that is what the game delivers. The simulation is perhaps a little too simple, and it has a few glaring misses like not always being clear about who is delivering dialogue (kind of a killer when the whole game is about currying favor with individuals), but after a few minutes this becomes manageable. The sprites are detailed, attractive, and distinct enough to be told apart, and you pick up on the repeated positioning of dialogue boxes quickly. As the screenshots suggest, it is more of a graphical menu game than a visual novel or a JRPG, but this suits the gameplay, which is straightforward and quick. A robust save function means failure is only as costly as you allow. There is some character and scenario customization available at the beginning, which adds variety and replayability. If you are here for the eroge, I get the impression that these choices enable at least two distinct arcs of CGs with simple animations. The CG is quite attractive and unique; it doesn't feel like the usual indie game factory-second anime stills. I do wish they'd invested in the artist doing character portraits for everyone; this would have paid dividends. The game also doesn't require success to get into the blue bits; the bedroom situation escalates quickly. This is kind of a good thing, because the game is not a pushover and at times seems somewhat less than fair. Choices are simple and consequences severe and unpredictable. On at least one occasion your decisions don't have the intended effect because "the lords do not comply," and you aren't given any recourse for dealing with blatant treason. Notably missing from the intrigue ("Scheme") menu is any kind of black ops approach. All you can do is curry favor and purchase support. In the end, Mekana may be slightly overpriced, but I look forward to more offerings from the developers.
It's a real joy to see the Forgotten Realms rendered in 2020s detail like this; the art is fantastic, the story is compelling, the characters are actually mostly likeable, the experience is immersive, the music is... well, there's music... all in all, this game really is a winner in many, many ways. But the gameplay kinda... sucks? Don't get me wrong, it's perfectly playable and enjoyable provided that you understand what you are in for, but I like some tactics with my tactical RPGs. There's more to it than turns, ranges, and movement speeds. You can't hold actions, which means you can't aim a bow at a doorway and wait for someone to come through it to fire. Ambushes and strategic holdouts are out of the question. This is core D&D mechanical content that was left out, and more importantly it's essentially all that's left of D&D's tactical combat legacy in 5th Edition. At least we still have attacks of opportunity, for what they are worth. You can drop into turn-based timing at any time, which is appreciated for precision control, but you still can't queue up simultaneous actions. No shooting two guards at once: shoot one, and the other immediately notices and initiates combat or confronts you about your crime, inserting their own initiative phases into your sequence or pulling you out of turn-based timing completely. This doesn't necessarily require that guards be in line of sight of each other -- enemies have sight cones, but they are only applicable to the use of the Stealth skill (in that you do not have to make Stealth checks unless you cross one). Otherwise enemies have 360-degree awareness to a substantial range. Nevermind that these sight cones are often subject to substantial processor lag and sometimes do not update for seconds at a time. There isn't enough room here to go on about this at length -- buy BG3 because you are interested in the story, not because you are looking for even a passable tactical experience. The latter is not here.
First things first, it loses a star for the ridiculous DLC strategy. But it is quite good. Gladius is a turn-based 4X you have to play like an RTS, and as someone who doesn't have the reflexes for real-time strategy, I find that very compelling. It is very challenging, though. And if you don't unlearn your Civilization habits in a hurry you will pay for them in blood. The lore is rich and really adds to the game. Easily one of the best Warhammer 40K video games I've played, on the same tier as, if still below, Dawn of War. Just don't buy the Lord of Skulls DLC. Or buy the game or any of the other DLC at full price.
On Steam, this is the only Gladius DLC that has had reviews disabled and from which the publisher, Slytherine, has removed their name. It is difficult not to see that as a public disowning. The Lord of Skulls is one of two things, depending on how random it actually is, which is a matter of some disagreement: It is either the blue shell on the final lap of a Super Mario Kart race, knocking the front runner out of a spot on the podium, or it is the bonus round of a game of Mario Party, ignoring the events of the game and awarding victory arbitrarily to a lucky player. Either way, it doesn't have a place in a strategy game, and certainly not as paid DLC, no matter how inexpensive. I don't know how I ended up with this thing. I can't imagine that I bought it by itself; maybe it was part of a discounted bundle at some point? Let's get some things straight about the Lord of Skulls. It's not a "powerful" neutral unit. It is a neutral unit with - heavy hero armor - ten times the hit points of any other unit in the game (that increase with level) - regeneration - increasing damage with HP loss - an AOE melee attack that one-shots leveled hero units - a passive aura that zeroes out the morale of nearby enemies in a few rounds And this is on the easiest possible difficulty. All of the details are here, although they read as very sterile on paper: https://gladiusrelicsofwar.fandom.com/wiki/Lord_of_Skulls . You really have to be on the receiving end of this thing to appreciate what a giant middle finger it is to players. The Lord of Skulls feels like nothing so much as a poorly executed joke. It's bad. It's real bad. I'm sure someone out there likes it, but if that's not damning with faint praise I don't know what is. Don't buy this. I think what annoys me the most is that it is classified as a walker, despite clearly having enormous tank treads, and despite having the Moves Through Cover trait that makes the Walker trait irrelevant.
Failed the very first puzzle because of a translation/localization inconsistency between the game's Codex and the dialogue options. It's not worth my time to find out if this was an isolated occurrence. The game is attractive and its mechanics seem well conceived, but I'm not wrestling with a lack of editing when my backlog is so deep. I was also a little nervous about the fact that there is a jukebox in the main character's apartment and all it could play was ominous ambience. Who wants that playing in their living room? Where is the rest of the soundtrack? IS there a rest of the soundtrack?
Dry Drowning is attractive and the music is beautiful, and the gameplay is reasonably compelling. However, the plot, while good intentioned, doesn't always click into place the way the writer expects. The tone is dreadfully grim, but then it is a noir game. The pacing of the mystery solving segments is such that you're not really figuring things out so much as following the main character's crystal clear instructions to use a particular item, whereupon he does a (pretty good) Hercule Poirot impression and cracks the case. Insofar as it is still a fun read, there is value here, although the English text is also a bleak example of why it is important to hire a native speaker of the language in which you are producing your game to handle final localization. It's fine, but it's not good. Still, the game is far from bad, and it deserves credit for having so many decision points and branching paths. There is a lot of replay value here, and it is entertaining enough to warrant a long look. However, in the end, Dry Drowning commits one of the cardinal sins of visual novels, in that it oversimplifies some very important choices in order to make them morally challenging and create drama. You can't arrest the suspect AND destroy the dangerous weapon; you must CHOOSE, and the reason these things are unavoidably linked is tenuous at best. In the end, it has a very 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' feel, and again, this is a noir game, so some of that is forgivable. But on the other hand, the designer could've just written a novel.
In August 2022, Cyberpunk 2077's greatest sin is that it is mediocre. Yeah, it's still a little buggy. Nothing game breaking, but it is enough to make you swear sometimes. Stuff like missed inputs or dodgy prompts. What little t-posing there still is is limited enough to just be funny. The weird thing is that most of the bugs I encountered were in main story missions, which is weird -- you would expect that part of the game to be the cleanest. No, CP2077's big crime is that it just isn't enough. If you roll in with a ranged combat-focused character with a sideline in hacking, you'll have a great time, because that's how the gameplay is wired. It's a third-person shooter with a pretty decent hacking mechanic. But if you want to experience this setting as anything else -- a face, a covert operative, a transporter -- you're going to be disappointed. Rewards for getting good at anything but combat are few and far between. Good stealth play requires spending a ton of perk points; you'll be finished with the game before you've hit the sweet spot. Driving is just an abomination -- motorcycles are passable, cars are just spinout machines. Where the game does shine is the setting. Night City is gorgeous, and feels disturbingly real, at times. It could still be more dynamic, but even as a set piece it is a joy to explore. The story is likewise solid. I have many complaints with certain aspects of it, but overall it is a fun experience. The side stories are so good that sometimes they eclipse the main story, which is important because although they are optional, some of them can affect the ending. This is one of the things I wish they'd done better -- in general, it's clear there was supposed to be a lot more nuance to your relationship to certain NPCs, but a lack of dev cleanup means that everyone is confused about the state of all of your relationships at all times. Fortunately any impact this may have had was never implemented. I've played far worse
