Honestly, this game is way better than it has any right to be. Despite being fit for children, it's actually very well put together. The gameplay is not too complex, but very enjoyable, and challenging enough but never punishing. The story and the setting, honestly, despite it's comedic and unserious appearance, are actually pretty good, and full of things you'd expect from a fantasy RPGs, like plot twists, deep backstories, or unanswered mysteries. At the same time, the game isn't above poking jokes at genre tropes, like "Is this really a level 1 quest?". So do I have complaints? The leveling is very linear, so other than choosing the right spells and stats to focus on with equipment, there isn't much room to maneuver. Also, enemy levels are annoying. There's no way of knowing if the same looking pink bat is thirty levels below you or thirty levels above. All you get is guessing from the area but even that's not always reliable.
I'm gonna be honest, the main reason the game caught my interest is the pretty protagonist. Indeed, she's the prettiest PC of any game I've played. The game in general looks as good as a game would ever need to, and it only weighs 12 GB! I've seen games weigh five times that for a high poly landscape of gray and brown. I've never been good with soulslikes. I quit every Souls I attempted due to the difficulty. With this, on middle difficulty it was good enough... at first. I think I must've taken my time to level up, as I reached lv50 roughly half way through the plot and there was little challenge after that. Early on I managed all bosses after one failure, but starting with Marble most of them died on first attempt, save the Titan and the final one. Could be my glass cannon build, I put very little in health, but a lot into attack and AP. That said, I could never see myself playing with anything other than daggers+staff, but apparently most people did, so I guess it's balanced in this regard? I also played with mouse and keyboard and it went well. Took a moment to figure out, but alt attack on side mouse buttons made it work. The story was quite alright. I did find myself wanting to see what happens next, and I wasn't too disappointed. I liked that it was an original setting inspired by mythology rather than blatant fanfiction like so many others. I also liked that it wasn't another edgy grimdark "everyting sucks" kind of setting. The endings were fine, but not too groundbreaking. The writing was a bit lackluster sometimes, a bit too purple prosy. Also, lack of voice in sidequests is kinda lousy. So what's the bad? Lack of a map sucks, many caves are especially painful to navigate sometimes. I'm not asking for quest markers, just give me a plain map just to see the relative positions of some areas. Aside for that, I guess it just didn't have any "woah" factor for the fifth star. It's still very good for what it is.
In some sense, I want to like these games, and came back to them every few years only to figure out why I never really bothered to finish it before. The building progression is nice, and it doesn't escalate to the point I feel completely detached from my city as is often the case with many modern city builders. The game becomes repetetive fast and kind of tedious, however, logistics in this game are trash, and units constantly get stuck on anything not knowing what to do. Overall, a mixed bag. I also wish you could play as the other factions besides the Vikings, seeing that they're about halfway complete. Bit of a mixed oportunity, as city builders with different factions are oddly rare. Also, weird that women can't work, it feels really odd to manage a town of about fifty homeless men and fewer than twenty women whose only job is birthing new soldiers.
In some sense, I want to like these games, and came back to them every few years only to figure out why I never really bothered to finish it before. The building progression is nice, and it doesn't escalate to the point I feel completely detached from my city as is often the case with many modern city builders. The game becomes repetetive fast and kind of tedious, however, logistics in this game are trash, and units constantly get stuck on anything not knowing what to do. Overall, a mixed bag. I also wish you could play as the other factions besides the Vikings, seeing that they're about halfway complete. Bit of a mixed oportunity, as city builders with different factions are oddly rare. Also, weird that women can't work, it feels really odd to manage a town of about fifty homeless men and fewer than twenty women whose only job is birthing new soldiers.
In some sense, I want to like these games, and came back to them every few years only to figure out why I never really bothered to finish it before. The building progression is nice, and it doesn't escalate to the point I feel completely detached from my city as is often the case with many modern city builders. The game becomes repetetive fast and kind of tedious, however, logistics in this game are trash, and units constantly get stuck on anything not knowing what to do. Overall, a mixed bag. I also wish you could play as the other factions besides the Vikings, seeing that they're about halfway complete. Bit of a mixed oportunity, as city builders with different factions are oddly rare. Also, weird that women can't work, it feels really odd to manage a town of about fifty homeless men and fewer than twenty women whose only job is birthing new soldiers.
Honestly, one third's worth of the first game for one third of the price, I think that's perfectly fine. I wanted to say that they toned down the difficulty a little, but after a while I realized that they just renamed the modes, and the old Easy is the new Normal and the old Normal is the new Hard. In any case, the game is as enjoyable and fun as the original, and the music's great as well. It just doesn't have as many frustrating parts as the previous game, even the boss fight was manageable. Because the game is standalone and still gives you the full experience, if you only want to try the franchise, I honestly think it's fine to try this one first, as it's cheaper, quicker, and less frustrating.
The game caught my interest when I learned that it was apparently a successor to a Mario clone from the 80s - a clone to the point they got sued over it - that was salvaged and turned into an actual franchise. And, unlike Mario, it actually is on PC. Still, as far as I can tell, the only thing this game has in common with the 1987 one is the name and genre. It's not the usual genre for me, but in the end I still enjoyed my playthrough. The game took me 17 nhours to finish. At first the game felt "just right" - not too hard and not too easy - but starting from the third chapter there was a huge difficulty spike and I regularly finished each level with over a hundred deaths. A particularly degenerate example was 3-9 where the part before the first checkpoint was excruciating, while the rest was quite manageable. Boss fights were quite difficult as well, and I ended up having to downgrade the difficulty for the final level. At that point I really wished there was a way to quit the game mid-level without having to backtrack everything again later. The world swapping mechanic was really cool and implemented well. At first I had some criticism in this area, as I felt Cute Giana was just much less useful than Punk, but as the difficulty increased Cute's skill became that much more useful. Still, I think Cute could benefit from some more world interactions. The visuals and music are pretty good, but what especially made them unique was how well they blended together when world swapping. Still, one annoying thing about it was that the game is set really quiet. I maxed out the in-game sound setting and I still had to double the volume on PC side to hear anything, which was a little of a chore. The game has basically no plot, so don't expect anything in this regard. It's also quite safe for kids if you're into that. With so many games being all edge and no point, I don't mind playing something calmer every now and then.
First, I see many people had problems even running the game. I played it on Windows 11 without any tinkering or patching, and it worked fine. As for the game itself, it's fine for what it is. Don't expect anything gigantic, it's just cartoony golf with some Worms-style quirks added in. It's not especially long, and some levels were a pain, but the powers gave some freedom to mess around and cheese sometimes. I think you could do much worse for the same price.
