A Halloween RPG? How many of those do we have?! Premise is that you are a kid trick-or-treating with your brother/sister who then get's kidnapped by monsters who mistake him/her as candy, and you along with other kids from the neighborhood are trying to get your brother/sister back and discover why these monsters are taking candy in the first place. Mechanics are fairly simple. Outside of battle you have a open world to explore, take side-quests, look for collectibles, shop for stickers to give your costume a boost, play mini-games for prizes, look for hidden candy, but mostly just going from door to door trick-or-treating. And half of the time you'll get candy, and the other half your getting a monster. Keep in mind monsters are also outside of the door area's too, but when you interact with them you go into battle mode. In battles, you use your imagination to make your costume into the thing it's representing and fight the monsters using the idea's associated with it, like missiles from a robot, etc. It's turn based and pretty much uses the mechanics from the Mario and Luigi RPG's, so you use a button command to make an attack, and you buttons to block from enemies. I like: 1: The story. It's funny, no real title associated to it like dark humor or whatever, it's just a realistic portrayal of real life, they really nailed that on the head. 2: The characters. You can see what their motives are, why they are the way they are, they are all just believable. Don't like: 1: It's short. It's a bit relegated by the RPG aspect but for the most part you'll only be spending around 5 hours on this game. I'm all for the idea of games that don't overstay their welcomes, but for this case I preferred a bit more. 2: It's pretty padded. What you'll be doing in this game is fighting and the activities I've listed above, and that's it. I mean the combat is fine, and the story breaks things up once in a while, but this is the game. All in all, I really like it.
Keep in mind this is the first city builder game I've ever played, so I haven't played any of the impression series (Caesar, Zeus, etc) so I can't compare it to any of them. When I picked this up, I was mostly just wanting to play a game that took place in Egypt. And it gave me a really interesting point of view in what the culture valued the most. Basically it's a city builder set in ancient times, you grow food next to the Nile, food is also used as currency for basic needs like baskets and mats, you can grow more food from nobles and the pharaoh but they require higher needs like jewelry and entertainers, and finally ya have priests who do everything from teaching, medicine, funerals, worship, and more, and you can even create an army to protect from bandits and invaders. The tutorials do a good job explain how the mechanics work for the most part. The game itself runs great, no hiccups for what I can see, and controls are what you expect, keyboard and mouse usage. Though the menu is a bit dated and hard to navigate through. A pretty fun game, in which I sometimes I still play once in a while as I haven't uninstalled it yet, and it's been a couple years. So have a go if you can put the time into it.
This is a city management, but the core design is survival. There is no money, there is no utilities, it's just your citizens and nature. You do this by your townfolk collecting resources (wood, iron, stone, etc), gathering food (fishing, hunting, gathering from forests, etc) and using the resources to build shops that cater to items needed for work and survival like tools, hospital, and coats. And you keep doing this until you feel you have a large enough population where work can be distributed but still have enough people to replace others if something should happen, ultimately getting to the point where your town can sustain itself. There are some random events such as tornado's or fires, but they don't happen enough to be of a concern, the main concerns you should have is food and having enough workers to perform jobs that you need done. It's also important to keep an eye on your citizens so they don't get sick or unhappy, these do have effects in the game. Controls are good, it uses both the keyboard and the mouse or you can use one or the other. No real port problems I believe. But yeah, pretty solid game. Give it a shot if your wanting a city management game that's pretty different from all the others.
Keep in mind that I haven't played any of the other games in the series (mostly due to them not being on GOG), so I'm not going to compare any of the other games to this one. The premise is that your an assassin from 1189–1192 during the Third Crusade, in which you are tasked to seek out info about targets on what they've done, and kill them. There is a bit more to the game than this, but this is what your mostly doing. So, here's what I like: 1. I like the setting. Seriously, how many games do you know of that take place in the Middle East in 1000 A.D. that aren't strategy games? We need more exploration in this timeline. 2. I like the movement. I'm not meaning about wall climbing or sword play, but I mean walking and talking, punching or grabbing, it all looks so natural. Though the horse could use a bit of work. 3. I like the cities. They look like places people would live in, not to forget that there are people there going about their day to day lives. 4: I like the exposition. Not really of the story or the writing, more of what everyone has to say, each one having their own ideologies that really give a feel for everyone there. 5: Sword-fights. Yeah I know he's not like a Rambo killing machine, but he's not trained to be one. He's an assassin, he's trained to hide in the crowd and escape, and I'm glad that's a main core part of the game. What I don't like: 1. They did the whole give-you-every-ability/weapon-from-the-start-then-take-it-from-you-in-the-start, I don't know why they do this. Why not just give weapons off as progression at the start? 2. I'll admit, Altiar (protagonist) is a bit annoying, but I tolerate it a bit for understanding that he's young and immature. You, however, may not. 3. Racing side-mission. Ok, dealing with guard picking on town fold, understandable. Moving to the top of a building to get a better view of your surroundings, makes sense. But what does racing have to do with anything in the middle east?
Here's my experience so far. I'm about 40 hours or so in, around mission 19 of the California campaign the win conditions wouldn't load the finish action, so even though I had the amount asked for finishing the mission it wouldn't finish. So I switched over to the Nevada expansion campaign, and are in around 10 hours in. This is a city management game with trade being very important, every mission is a instance where you have goals to complete to get to the next objective (there is a sandbox mode). You make money from citizens homes, which can be upgraded from items that you can make or be brought in. You spend money on buildings in which create a unlimited resource, a limited resource, or turning a resource into another type of resource. Trade is made up of resources as well, mostly comes down to resources you have vs resources you need; in the Cali campaign, you can trade at any time though if you don't pay attention to your settlement it won't take long before you loose your people and thus money, in the Nevada campaign the trade system is handled by trains that come on a certain day cycle which does mean you won't need to worry about you settlements need but you will have to be weary of the days in which it comes in and whether you'll have enough to get by. Things are a bit more interesting in the Nevada campaign, in the Cali one getting gold is as easy as making a building. In the Nevada one ya need at least 4 or 5 resources to get a mine going, and you'll also need another building and a couple more resources just to make it gold. Price may seem high, but my question to you is are you willing to spend ten's to hundreds of hours in a city builder management game with the theme of the Klondike days? If yes, then go ahead, if maybe with the city building idea is appealing then maybe price drop, if not then skip.
Downloaded it, installed it, tried to play it, it crashed. Tried to play it with recommended settings, crashed again. Uninstalled it, reinstalled it, tried to play it, crashed again. Deleted all content including downloader, redownloaded, installed, tried to play, crashed again. No updates have been filed for the game, so I have no idea what's wrong with it. Not stating that this will happen to you, just know it happened to me, so it may happen to you too.
