Coming off the cluter-F that is SimCity 4, the last city management game I played, this game was refreshing by comparison. Not nearly as busy, and that's a good thing! Initially, I was planning on giving it 5 stars. It's a cautionary tale to wait until you've finished a game to leave a review. As you get into later missions, it relies more on gimmickry - depriving you of a certain resource, for instance, and you have to use your own gimmickry to get around it. Higher difficulties are just an exercise in memorizing what/when scripted events will take place and therefore leaves less and less room for choice. Still, it's better than SimCity 4, and the wraparound story is decent enough, the sappy preaching twist reveal ending notwithstanding. Buy on sale and hope for a sequel!
I generally don't like platformers, and I was a little surprised that I didn't realize this would be one. So, you are going to die. Awkward controls, jetpackings, sometimes it glitches and you just fall right through the floor. But you immediately respawn at a relatively close place, any progress being permanent. There is a glitch where you can pass up a needed tool and then through respawning be unable to get back to it; in that case, you can choose to start a new game at any level you completed, and your progress (notes, findings) from your previous game will still be there. It's an amazing premise that burns out about a third way through the game when it turns out the planet isn;t so lifeless, and it turns to more generic sci-fi fare. Get it on sale, it's a good burn through 6-10 hours.
I played it a long time ago straight, and it was kinda archaic then. I did like the multiclassing options, although not advised on every character of course! But this game REALLY shines with the G3 Tweak Pack. So much QoL improvements that you feel you are playing an EE. Or just get the G3 Tweaks Anthoogy, which has tweaks for all your D&D Infinity Engine games.
I ran into the “workers won’t clean” bug in the tutorial. Where the main hall must get cleaned to continue on. After searching online, I found two things. First, that this is a common bug with several possible solutions, none of which work for everyone and none has worked for me. The other is that the developer promised to fix this particular bug back in 2022, right before they stopped posting responses on forums.
Seriously. $10 for a campaign mod for a 23 year old game. This is an absolute insult to the game’s extensive modding community, which has produced wondrous works as a labor of love over 2 decades.
Seriously. $10 for a campaign mod for a 23 year old game. This is an absolute insult to the game’s extensive modding community, who has done wondrous works as a labor of love for over 2 decades.
This had the promise of being an interesting clicker puzzle game, but once the indoctrination started, it went strong! It was just too on-the-nose. It was more a supplemental read on coming out in the LGTB community and explanation of associated terms, with a hint of click puzzler. Just not much "game" to the game. People simply don’t write like that on message boards. The sequel (“Another Lost Phone”) did a much better job of delivering info in a more natural way. Nice concept, though, wish there were more games like this!
Ah, the "Escape Room" trend. Solve a puzzle, unlock pieces to another puzzle, which allows you to try another puzzle! And so on. It's obviously created for mobile devices, but the simple controls easily translate to PC. The inventory system and overall gameplay is an evolution of old SCUMM adventure games. Solve a puzzle, gain an item, which is actually a piece to another puzzle, and so on. Unfortunately, like that predecessor genre, it also incorporates a whole bunch of backtracking. The story and setting is fun, and almost makes you forget that you're basically playing an "Escape Room" game. Puzzles are never super-difficult. Overall feel reminds me of "No One Lives Forever" while the sound effect when you gain an item sounds like the "Thief" series when you palm loot. Engaging and nostalgic! Only giving 3 stars because all the backtracking really does break the mood.
This collection is just awful. I remember playing these in the arcade as a kid (or on NES in the case of Crystalis) and this does not come close. This was a nostaglia buy. Better off with Emu's. Control response - terrible. Crashed once on menu while selecting games. A couple more times while playing different games. Sloppy porting, it's not like these are demanding games.. If you're a collector and just want to own games you'll never want to play, this is the collection for you!
(Purchased on Steam) Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark is a Tactical RPG with gameplay similar to Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Ogre. There are a lot of menu options right from the jump to shape your gameplay experience, which can be altered at any point in the game. There are also many classes, items, and recruitable monsters with their own sets of classes, all leading to a perhaps overwhelming amount of possible combinations! However, as you get into the midgame, it becomes tediously clear that many classes have skill overlap, which stifles the desire to learn them all. There are incentives to mastering a class (permanent stat bonuses) but they really aren't necessary. And the fact that you have menu options to make the game easier only makes the issue of the unnecessary, the arbitrary and the redundant classes stand out all the more. The plot is fun and, to my surprise, NOT filled to the brim with prepubescent attempts at humor! It's not nearly as busy as Final Fantasy Tactics or the Tactics Ogre games, but it does have interesting twists. Fans of the genre should enjoy it, if they can get over the barrage of options and classes that can, at times, seem unnecessary.
