One of the most refreshing bonkers games I've played in a while - it features flying guinea pigs with unicorn horns and they are the cutest things and I want one. I love the art style and theme and it reflects the warped concept: you gain points in one of six magic discplines to spend on random cards that enable you to increase your university. You also gain gold as part of the general deck. Decks have plenty of cards that include rooms, goodies, animals etc Every choice comes from being able to draw cards and use them at the right time. The settings of the land offer good variety as do the rewards and punishments offered at the end of a level (in campaign mode)... quick play is more for testing out this and that with the time limit turned off. I loving the sorting hat component of the game where you create houses for your students and you select where they belong - a truly simple but profound mechanic that vastly affects how the level plays out (for example, having a dedicated Animal Magic house might be good for one of the level goals but if you're limited on class space, or your Herbalist teacher is crap then dumping lots of students in that house isn't a good idea). The ability to unlock dungeons for your students to go and adventure is a great idea that is mostly well executed. However the problem I found is that the best combination of skills tends to be a mixture of Light and Dark magic with a splattering of magics from the other houses. What this sadly means is that you can only dungeoneer towards the end of a level when all the loot from the dungeon is mostly wasted, regardless whether your students live or die. Also the Arcomage quest is damn near impossible to achieve without some sustained luck and perks - if offered this quest AVOID it. I have some niggles regarding the UI (such as Escape button not doing what I would expect it to do and mouse whizzing off now and then) but these are forgivable because of the Flying Guinea Pigs with Unicorn Horns.
I love the art style and story and overall the battles are engaging and mercifully well-timed. Story is ok and things keep moving along nicely. Boss battles are fun and provide the necessary break for regular groups. Characters are well defined and have corresponding skills to match. But... (a) it's too-short (b) there's not much need to use any of the other characters beyond the inital three (c) the extra cards are there I sense to cater for different playstyles and add variety but it really didn't need them and attention would have been better spent on adapting/upgrading fewer cards, perhaps (d) it's a deck building game with a limit of 8 cards (why?) and while the simplicity is much appreciated in a genre where game designers are complicating for complicating sakes, here it feels like untapped potential that towards the end felt underwhelming (e) I have no feeling to go back and play it again, which is a shame.
A very good RPG tactical game with plenty of story and excellent battles. I loved the art style and the fact that all dialogue is voiced. Battles are easy to understand and have plenty of options to explore. I would have liked more battles in the game overall. Skill system is good as well although the ability to reset points comes a little late in the game and there is a slight imbalance regards agility. A star deducted for (a) the sometimes really long dialogue that doesn't seem to know when the joke is over (b) not enough battles for me towards the middle and a lot of walking around talking to NPCs. (c) the skill point system means that always putting at least one point into agility is a sure way to both improve accuracy and get a large number of dodges.
Camera is wobbly and poorly angled. The main character suffers from a wide turning arc problem coupled with relatively slow walk speed. The speed in particular makes an already punishing game (in terms of time) worse. The quests are marked on a mini map not the main one (why?) and there is a really annoying issue when using a mouse and keyboard to play the game in terms of clicking a prompt (use a controller instead). I hated the fact that what are required timed quests are given to you without (a) any idea how long they will take and (b) and idea of what's invovled. Frequently something gets failed and your reputation suffers. Or worse you have too little and your reputation suffers. Oh and you have to rummage through bins to find stuff, each rummage takes an hour of time. Really? Yes really. Game devs can be idiots...QED. The main loop of this game is talking and walking. You have to talk and talk and talk and walk and walk and walk. It's really fucking dull (perhaps any voice acting would have saved it?). The only joy in the game comes from getting a megaphone and using it in a public address - if only the game has more of this and less of the diagloue, dice roll haggle over a sandwich crapola. I wanted to like this game and from the start promised so much. It delivered, literally, a horse's head within about an hour of playing it. Every time. Depressingly on queue. And my video card was going mental for reasons I can't work out.
Combat is terrible and has almost none of the elements that would class this game as a RPG. However the art, style, music, sound, narrative and voiced dialogue are what save this game from being all round terrible, with a few caveats. 1) A little of moon logic required to progress with the game 2) Character defaults to walk speed, no option to have perma run 3) Sharp eyes required unless you really love waving the cursor around spasmodically to see what items can be retreived 4) Be prepared to talk the same in-game character a lot. 5) Lots of other UI niggles and absence of quick-key options that really slow things down. 6) Not much magic going on outside of combat which is a shame.
For a game that's based around getting away from the stresses and weariness of modern living it only succeeds in adding a bucket load of aggrovation to my life. There is almost no inventory space, because of course there is. FFS Developers STOP DOING THIS. There are unlockables, because of course there are. FFS Developers STOP DOING THIS. There are collectibles, because of course there are. FFS Developers STOP DOING THIS. There is a main character who runs slowly and walks even slower, because of course he does. FFS Developers STOP DOING THIS. There is a very limited day/cycle where certain places are only/closed AND you cannot stay up past 2am, because of course you can't. There is an inane control/UI system that try's to appease keyboard and controller options and falls horribly between the two. There's very little gold/progress in the beginning, because of course there is. FFS Developers STOP DOING THIS. Leaving aside these frustrations the game is actually dull, boring, not in watching grass grow kind of way, more in a "is that all?" kind of way. You walk around alot with some mundane agrarian tasks. Modern life is much better than that, and it has computers, central heating and cars to get around in (very quickly).
System hopping isn't all it's cracked up to be, plus there's every depleting resource metres. And of course, you start with a really crap ship and the rest have to unlocked, sorry, found. Because of course they do. And the range on the ships is really bad to start with - why?
Text-heavy and very slow to feel as though you are even part of this world, never mind having an effect on it. Although I really liked the opening moments and sense of possibilities at the start these quickly faded into distant choices that never resonated in to the main game. Not for me.
I liked the Settler/Rimworld feel the game has to its moment to moment gameplay as well as the size of the world. But the endless Corruption to battle being the only goal gets tired after the second playthrough and there really isn't much to pull me back after that.
