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I played Early Access version 5.113. Hoping for much more soon!!!! I really enjoyed this game! Hits the bulls eye for me. Tactical battles + strategic resource management + light story + quests + permadeath for units. Feels like Battle Brothers and Panzer Corps (with fantasy spin) in those regards. The game has truly tactical battles where every move is vital. The setup and mechanics flow like a classic tabletop ancient battles game, even down to messengers to deliver orders, but plays out very quickly and smoothly. Nice variety of unit types already even in early access. Would love to see many many more. I love the iconography. I really love the clean graphics in this game. I can easily tell what different units are and what their statuses are. Sound and music are top notch. Although I prefer true turn based, the real time speed is definitely manageable here, and you can see the whole battlefield very clearly all at once, so I must say I am enjoying the real time aspect! It works for this game. I also enjoyed the strategic level of the game very much. Acquiring units and supplies was fun and challenging. The fact that multiple resources are grouped into "packs" was a neat idea, and helps to ensure you end up buying a good variety of supplies rather than just focusing on one type. The market is definitely a mini game in itself. The quests were fun, and I enjoyed the story line. It may have been intentional and associated with rising evil in the land, but it definitely got to be impossible to buy enough food at the end, so I had quite a few deserters. I think I might prefer to have to pay the units money for upkeep as well as the food, but much less food, or have more food available, or perhaps more towns from which food could be bought. It's a good mechanism for keeping army sizes down though.
Clash II is an enjoyable turn based tactical combat game with some nice strategic base building and resource management wrapped up in an absorbing and distinctive campaign with a strong Celtic feel. It does a good job of feeling familiar yet also striking off in its own original direction. The music is also excellent. If you like games like Heroes of Might and Magic Campaign Series, Wesnoth, or Braveland, I would recommend giving Clash II a try.
Review for Early Access version 101n. This is a GEM of a game that combines several great genres and makes them even better with a very unique formula as well as many new ideas! Raises the bar on all these genres at once. Classic "Just One More Turn All Nighter". Pleasantly reminiscent of classics like Darkest Dungeon, Iratus, Guild of Dungeoneering, Fire Emblem and various RPGs, it also has really great new concepts and mechanics. As if they took the best elements of the best games, mixed them together and said, "This is great, but we can make it even better". They did. DEVELOPERS - PLEASE JUST ONE REQUEST - Add an option for random damage,guard,status,etc magnitudes. I almost didn't buy this game because of the lack of random damage. Too predictable. Maybe a slider from 0% to 100% specifying the degree of randomness for skill values. So, 0% would be no randomness, as it is now. 100% would be random from 0 to double the calculated value. 30% would be random range 70% to 130%. The game already supports some game play options and has quite a bit of randomness in other facets such as skill tests, so please add these randomness options for damage,guard,burn,poison,etc. Games like Panzer Corps did this to satisfy both those who like a chess like experience and those who prefer more unpredictability. An option to randomize initiative order each round instead of just the first would also add some great tension and unpredictability. Would be fun to be able to customize my starting Hero by choosing their 3 skill domains, initial attribute scores, name and picture. Some of the awesome features : Great graphics, sound and music. Clean fast user interface and game play. Nice dialog interactions and skill tests. Awesome skill system. Fantastic tactical combats. Helpful tool tips and status icons Great replayability Nice item customization with gems Thanks for this classic! Really looking forward more and more content!!!
This is a fun and classic game and this implementation has a nice user interface and a pleasant feel to it. I like that some expansions are available too. I just plain enjoy this game on the tabletop and the computer so this was a very welcome title to be able to get. I really like that board games are getting some ports to the computer! I'm happy to support any board game port to the computer like this. I don't like the 3D perspectives though. It's a board game, so 2D top down is best, but this game does allow a good top down camera angle, so that is a fair compromise and the game is easy to see from the top down angle. The graphics are quite crisp for a 3D rendered game. I would love to see more board games like Catan, Memoir 44 and Small World. HOWEVER - this game does have a little DRM unfortunately. Shame on you! To get the Abbot expansion you have to connect to the internet and make an account. BOO!!! I don't mind the Abbot being given away free to people who want to do this, but PLEASE let me just buy the Abbot expansion so I can be sure to have it in my collection. I never connect my game machine to the internet, so this kind of DRM is a deal breaker if it grows.
This game is great fun. Very nice feel. Neat theme. Well executed. I particularly like the artifacts, inter-dimensional pub phase and the random effect pick ups. I'd love to see an expansion with more cards and other content, maybe a twist or two on the main theme. It would make the combats more exciting and less predictable if the damage was random. Maybe a game option slider that sets damage variability on a range of 0% to 100% in steps of 5%. That way, by default, the value would be 0%, allowing no randomness, same as now. But then I could set it as wide as 100%, allowing a range of 0 damage to double damage. Or for just a little randomness, I could set it to 20%, for a range of 80% to 120% damage. I'd love to see the game keep track of some game play statistics, such as how many times I get killed, what killed me, how many runs I've made, number of items found, etc. It would help when choosing cards to show the card costs on the thumbnails in the spell book. Some filters or sort options could also be helpful when I have a lot of cards and I'm trying to build a particular deck. Unfortunately, I don't like the arcade style real time chase with the boss. I wish there was an option for a different way of handling the bosses. Just a personal preference. Not a flaw in the game itself. Great game. Well worth it!
If you like Master of Orion 2, you will likely love this game! Finally a great Galactic 4x with Turn Based Tactical Combat & clean 2D looking graphics! Praxis Games - Thanks for this masterpiece! Please make more expansions! And please consider making a similar sequel to the other classic 4x - Master of Magic. My favorite features: * Great depth in Leaders. Many of them available * Remote Exploration. Slowly uncover galaxy remotely, or speed it up with Survey Ships * Option to randomize Tech Tree * Space Culture, Perks & Planetary Specializations * Asteroid Belt Exploitation * Immigration/Emigration. Colonists move on their own * Galactic events have nice depth & choices * Many game setup options available. Custom races possible * Excellent User Interface. Plenty of useful filters to find that perfect planet to colonize quickly * Great music & art This is a fantastic game! Just a couple of optional features I would love to see added. * Please add galactic invaders as an option. With preferences to set how frequently they invade, how long they stay, how powerful they are, how fast they get stronger, how they attack (randomly, strongest, largest fleet, most planets, highest tech, nearest, toward some objective, etc), and what kind of invaders they are (a few different kinds of invader races available). Randomize option too. * Please add recurring & lingering internal galactic problems as game option. Pirate Enclaves, neutral empires, civil wars, galaxy wide disasters (plagues, viruses, etc). Could be initiated by events & then persist for rest of game or until solved. Preferences for how frequent & how dangerous. Some good ones too maybe. * Please allow option to create custom races randomly. Make us learn about them via technology, espionage, conquest & diplomacy. Option to have each races' ruler & difficulty (production/research/AI) selected randomly. Also a button to just randomize all game options & then allow us to modify them if we want to.
BUYER BEWARE - The game does not allow you to save progress freely, not even on exit. It uses save points only. Would love to be able to save on exit. Please add this feature, Developers. I like the idea of the game. Very cool. The graphics are nice and clean and 2D the way I love it User Interfaces are great.. I'm trying to enjoy this game, but I've been playing just 2 hours and already lost over an hour of time invested because it won't save the game when you exit. WHY?!?!?!? Serves no purpose not to save on exit. So far I don't even see any indications of when it actually saves. I thought I reached a 'save point' having completed a mission, so I quit the game and had dinner. I came back and found I have to REDO the same mission again because it did not in fact save when I completed the mission. This is hugely annoying. I really don't think I can invest time in a game that won't save on exit. I have no time to waste redoing things for no good reason. I wish it had mentioned the lack of save capability in the game description. I would not have bought the game at all.
NOTE: feedback is for BETA version 0.5.8.7 of Stoneshard. Low rating is solely due to lack of ability to save game when exiting to main menu. Otherwise, it gets 5 stars for sure! I absolutely love this game in so many ways, and am looking forward to seeing the game continue to grow. HOWEVER - there is currently a MAJOR problem in that you cannot save the game when you exit the game, You have to save at only special "save point" locations. TO THE DEVELOPERS - Please just do an auto save when exiting the game so I can quit at any time and then resume later. You can make it optional to satisfy those who like the "save point" concept. But please do not ruin an otherwise CLASSIC game by not allowing players to simply exit the game and then resume where they left off. The current "save point" mechanism is fine for long term milestone saves, but I must be able to exit the game at any time and then continue later. Thanks for considering a different point of view and perhaps a small compromise in your design principles in order to satisfy a much wider audience.