I've taken some time to play this game when I purchased it. The controls are actually great and it is an enjoyable experience to do space battles in Drox Operative. The game play got very repetitive however and I set it aside. I've yet again decided to give it another go a few months later and the grinding is about where the fun starts and stops at the same time. The progression and ultimate goal revolves too much around levelling your space ship to the maximum level. Don't get me wrong, there are some other goals, but these quickly become overshadowed by grinding the insane influx of vanilla flavoured quests available to the Drox Operative. Simply put, if this was reality it would be a madhouse. There simply too much to do that is quite the same actions over and over and that is up to a level where it is repulsive. In short, nice controls, simple gameplay, but it's just too much to keep hooked.
I've been playing Desktop Dungeons' daily dungeons for several months now and I'm just getting tired of the spiel. The problem is it doesn't feel difficult, it's like an illusion that seems to be designed to waste your time. (And get addicted I suppose) You get ultra easy dungeon settings sometimes that don't seem to have been designed at all. Other times, they just give you a class with extremely limited skills, with which you can't kill anything by level 3-4. Then they throw a bunch of perks in a dungeon and voilà, figuring the dungeon with this is supposed to be how the difficulty rating is set, but some of those don't seem made to be solved. Ultimately, this just creates a stench. The game is needlessly frustrating because that seems to be a recurring theme. Now, whenever I get a bad roll, I just suicide and re-roll on the next day. The game does not offer more depth in its complexity. You get a hero that sucks, figure out how to use him. Unfortunately, it's rather rare that I really feel challenged and that's why I wouldn't recommend this title as a good Puzzle game.
An example of an extremely linear RPG with passable humor, clumsy controls and really below average mechanics. The Bard's Tale could have been a great remake, but instead it fell flat into the land of manufactured gaming with the kind of bland taste you are left with after a fourth Big Mac in a row. The game mechanics are just too simplified: Stats management is just a few clicks away from being AI managed. The inventory and equipment facets are just a side dish and might as well be automated. What is left is basically hack & slash 101 and a rundown the mill story with overused jokes. If it was just that, it could still be a fine game, but there's absolutely no replay value whatsoever from the action stretches in the game. They are massively boring. There's just very little strategy involved here and it grows old very quickly. Save your money, This Bard's Tale isn't telling any new tales and whoever designed this doesn't deserve the pat on the back.
The game is well made, I have very little issues with it. The controls get some time to get used to but without any complex exaggerated hooks. I would say the same about the game rules and how the action evolves. It takes a little while to get in an efficient groove. The problem with this title is it gets very old very fast if you play alone and I venture it must get old quickly even playing versus other players. It's very repetitive either way. Take your boat to some city, do some quests, grow the city, move to another area, defeat whoever governs it (rinse/repeat). It's not that much more developed unfortunately.
