Recent reviews by [TE] Kuraudo

A great little game which showcases the depth of the Pathfinder 2E combat system. It's not a complete recreation (At least I believe ready action is missing), but it has enough in there to try different things out and really get a feel for the combat. I was charmed by the presentation and voice acting: in particular, I felt like the dialogue was wholesome and drew me in despite being so very simple and "traditional" for lack of a better word. I think that's a strength and the three hours or so I spent messing around in the game was a pleasant, heartwarming ride which speaks to a simpler time and adventures of old. Great stuff: I hope they make a full game.

Absolutely worth the 5 dollars if you like your heavy meta progression roguelites and you enjoyed the adventure aspects of the show Made in Abyss. The coup the developer pulls off in this game is that the tedious act of mining (and let's be clear, that is the central gameplay loop) somehow comes off as addictive. You start mining slowly and then upgrade your mining beam to mine faster. Then you find mines with tougher tiles, but ore that lets you upgrade further. You hoover up resources that drop from the blocks you mined with a vacuum and then take them back to your wall climbing robot once your bag is full. If you have enough resources, maybe you grab an upgrade that makes you mine better, makes your mining accessories better, or just have your space suited flying guy move faster. Rush back out into the mine and rinse and repeat. Every now and then, you are interrupted by waves of enemies or a boss on the outside of the titular wall that attack your craft: if your crap blows up you have to start a new run. I hate this kind of gameplay and I endedup not minding it at all: I played it for hours back to back since playing it until I completed it. The meta progression is part of this: after each run, based on how much you mined and what blueprints you uncovered in the mines, you can unlock upgrades to your suit or your wall-spider bot. What's interesting about these upgrades is that, after a while, they allow you to become stupidly efficient in a roguelite power creep that gets exponential on the power curve very quickly. While it changes the gameplay up significantly (eventually, small mines have all their blocks get mined the second you enter them in a satisfying explosion), the enjoyment of the power creep (and desire for even more ridiculous creep) makes it bearable. Eventually, the enemies on the outside of the wall stop being a threat and start becoming more of an annoyance which you will increasingly ignore as you grab all the meta upgrades. By the time I completed the game, I ignored the non boss waves completely due to the upgrades and focused on clearing out mines. I cannot stress the annoyance, however, of having to stop what you're doing exploring a new mine when you get interrupted by bosses or enemy waves during the mid game, however.

Speaking of exploration, that's the second thing which makes this tedious gameplay somehow very fun and addictive: you are constantly either coming across new bits of tech to add to your ship during the run, blueprints to upgrade at the meta level, weapons, beautiful and interesting areas of a cave, and bits of lore that make you feel like you're on an adventure. For those of you who have seen Made in Abyss: that feeling of discovery and wonder from that show pervades this title even though there is actually very little there. Do I praise the artwork for conveying that? You are only given slight tastes and slivers of lore, but it was enough to keep me engaged. In fact, that feeling of discovery and adventure lasted right up until I finished the collect-a-thon and activated the mcguffin which wins the game. Anticlimactic in all honesty since you assume Big Deals and Big Things and Cool Histories based on the bits of journals you uncover, but nah, it just ends.

But hey, it was a great ride while it lasted and absolutely worth your time if you seek abyss-raiding, secret uncovering, broken-meta, roguelites where the power levels end up trivializing a lot of what was once hard. For five dollars usd? Take the climb.

I'm not the best person to review this game since I despise the tabletop version. The collectible cards that encourage you to buy other sets apart from your warband of choice are a large part of that, but the limited activations, turns, and weird ways to 'score' in the tabletop game are what really make me hate the game. The problem is, everything feels "gamey" for no reason. There is no thematic reason, for example, that I would score a 'point' on turn 3 if I hold objective 4, especially since this is randomly dealt to me from my customized deck of objectives. This leads to terrible and annoying things like having to customize the perfect objective deck: I just want to get stuck in with my boyz: I don't care about these weird objectives that encourage you to both try and feel out what your opponent might have in his deck and what is in yours.

Ultimately, the tabletop game has great miniatures and sadly a terrible system: it isn't about watching my cool miniatures with their great paint jobs charge forward and wreck my opponent (or get wrecked), but instead about trying to divine what objectives my opponent might have, which ones I've added to my deck, and how the power cards I've chosen help me achieve those objectives. Now hey, if the objectives were "Hold Hamburger Hill for 4 turns" I could get behind it because it sounds plausible for my little 3d army men to want to hold, but instead it's "hold random objective (a tile) that gets randomly placed (perhaps even in your own deployment zone!) and have a guy on it after an opponent attacked you. Scores 1 point." or (i'm riffing now) "Have all your opponents in your deployment zone. Scores 4 points." It saps the fun right out of the experience.

People like the game; hell people have liked Games Workshop games that were objectively terrible since time immemorial (Lost Patrol comes to mind), but we're talking about a video game conversion now. If you own the tabletop game and like it, you'll largely like this game. There are no take backs from what I can tell; if you click somewhere you weren't meaning to you will own it, but it's otherwise a fair approximation of the board game (I sure wish they did this with actual 40k or AoS!). The downsides to the videogame conversion are that the graphics are too busy (much like modern GW models though) and things are automated that perhaps shouldn't be. Perhaps providing an option to let me fling my own dice would add more of a thrill to just seeing the results pop up automagically, but this is otherwise a great conversion of a terrible tabletop game. As far as the dlc model goes, it seems fine to me. Comsetics are always good as long as they're thematic and warband prices are far less than the tabletop equivalent. I can't recall how much I paid for the game at release, but as of now the base game is only 10 dollars which is a steal if you like the tabletop (again, I despise it). The only issue that I can see is that there don't seem to be any plans to release more warbands and few people actually play the game (likely because the game this converts extremely well to the vidya format is terrible) so you best only buy with friends and with the understanding that this is all you will ever get for the game.

TL:DR It looks good, but it isn't. Fundamental problems exist within the combat system and gameplay which force you to play a differently than you'd like.

I'm posting this from a J-tactics game perspective.
In short, what I dig:
1) Every member of my party is "my guy;" there is no named character nonsense that I was forced with in my ten hours of play. This is the cardinal sin of japanese games, even ones that let you create infinite soldiers for your army like Disgaea.
2) Animations look nice and graphics are serviceable. Sync kills are EXTREMELY satisfying even if they are actually just basic swings. For example, when a swordsman finishes an enemy off, the camera zooms in on them stabbing them in the gut. When a backstabber-type character comes up to finish a character off from behind, you see them slit their throat. Great stuff and A+
3) Speaking of animations, when you 'engage' an enemy, it shows the two characters trading blows throughout the combat. Great stuff and more games should copy that. The last time I saw something similar was Xenosaga 3 with the mech combat or Skies of Arcadia. Games which don't do this should be shamed.
4) The premise of going around growing a merc group in a crafted world is pretty cool.
5) You can apparently be a bandit: always great to have.
6) Combat is ok at first, but problems arise as soon as you level up.

Problems:
1) Deployment is weird. You can sneak up on a large group, but for some reason it will split your party up with the enemy so that the enemy surrounds you. Weirder still is that there are a limited number of deployment slots.
2) Initiative is asynchronous: the enemy has strict initiative rules (unit a will go then unit b) while you can choose any of your units when your turn comes up. Moreover, it isn't clear why some enemies go faster than others. This becomes extremely annoying during 'boss' fights.
3) Boss fights might as well be an entirely different game. I was playing in a fixed world (you can choose to have the world autolevel with you for some reason; do people enjoy such 'gamey' worlds?) and encountered a boss at level 4 with 10 of my men: the boss is by itself, has 4x hp and armor and can one shot every character I have, including the one armored in "plate." In and of itself, not a problem, but the boss can go multiple times. The conceit is that it "marks" an enemy, then walks up to it and readies an attack in one turn. The second time it goes, it carries through on the attack. The big issue with this is that, since the boss will do this three of four times a turn and you can only move your guys once, it will catch up and kill whatever it sights. More annoying, it often would often get two moves in the turn order right next to each other. This means that itw ould ready an attack and then immediately carry it out. The game needs some sort of time unit system like Final Fantasy Tactics had with magic, large abilities, .etc. Moreover, as bosses appear to be normal humans with lots of hp and do not obey the 'engagement' rules of the game whereupon you can 'engage' an enemy and lock them down in combat with someone. Thus, whenever bosses show up, you play a different game.
4) Non human enemies in general break the rules. Rats, ghosts, .etc all populate the starting area and have annoying fight mechanics. You are never fighting "Nightmare ghost" or "plauge rat" you are playing the "Nightmare ghost stage" or "plague rat event."
5) Combat is broken in general: you get valor or morale or whatever to power special abilities. That's great, but it's shared across the team and allows you to channel them all through one guy so that they can do multiple actions whereas everyone else has one. For example, I had a swordsman with a two hander powered up do his normal sweep attack, a special 'rage' attack for one morale, and a "destabilize" attack for another. This allows you to alpha strike enemies with one guy, and, it doesn't feel saitsfying. You find yourself not using the abilities for their unique usefulness "50% snare! 50% weaken! 50% rage on hit!" but instead because they're just more damage to alpha strike an enemy. Morale is cheap and plentiful even though it's a shared resource which can get regenerated from actions as simple as moving one of your party next to someone else.
6) the music: just because they're in some medieval type setting doesn't mean the music has to be bland and terrible. I'm sure the music is an amazing example of the period, but it's bad, not catchy, and depressing. What's more, you sometimes forget the game even has music since it randomly shuts off or sweeps up depending on conditions in the game. Battle music tends to be the most consistent, but you'll quickly just turn it off and replace with <insert japanese tactics game here>'s score.

I would hard pass on this. The concept is great and I hope they turn things around, but it will require a huge reworking of the combat system to make this fun.

There are three kinds of Super Robot Wars customers in this world as it relates to this DLC:
normies who see the lack of value here and think the asking price is too much. They are not wrong.
tasteful gentlemen who see the additional mechs and characters as well worth the asking price. They are being gouged.
anime boomers who see the word "scopedog," and buy without even looking at the price nor caring. "haha, scopedog lmg goes brrrrr."

So the real question is: What? Can't even afford one Scopedog? Are you poor? You'll never survive the next war with the Balarant, nerd.

This is my first super robot wars game. The TL:DR is that, if you are a fan of these shows, you will have an absolute blast despite how simple the gameplay is. You will also likely discover characters/mechs from shows or games you never saw that will make you want to watch them.

As far as gameplay goes, it's very basic. You move robots from your favorite shows on a grid and attack the enemy, usually taking the form of the enemy grunts/villains from said shows. You have a variety of attacks and most of the strategy revolves around activating abilities which guarantee attacks will hit and miss at the right times.

As basic as it is... it's extremely fun to watch characters (and their machines) from your favorite shows interact with eachother in a semi-official way. I'm given to understand that, for some of these shows, the original creators actually wrote up the scripts for how their characters interact with the game's other characters and I can kind of see that. There is a lot of "what if this character didn't die?" factor here as well; it makes me wish you could recruit "the bad guys" and face heel turn them from some of these shows. Victory Gundam is the obvious one that comes to mind for that treatment.

What's really great is that the writers mashed together several universes into an 'official, non-official' alternate universe. Victory Gundam happens simultaneously with Majestic Prince, but those damn neo zeon remnants from Char's Counterattack are still lurking around. For the shows that it doesn't outright pull together into the same timeline, it does the standard "character x crossed dimensions into a parrallel world now you can recruit him," which isn't quite as exciting, but at least it lets you mess around with series that absolutely do not work together, like Sakura Wars and VOTOMS. Going back to the mish mash, the game treats a number of shows as having "happened" like Code Geass, GaoGaiGar, and Gundam Unicorn. That is fun as hell and not something you see even in fan fiction.

All in all, I can't imagine a non-mecha fan would enjoy this, but if you are a mecha fan, this is a must buy. I can't even imagine not auto-buying this series as more titles become available; it's that fun a ride for mecha appreciators.

It's basically Star Trek: the game. It's the most Star Trek game ever created. It perfectly captures the feel of exploring strange new worlds .etc .etc. The game is all about the exploration and discovery, but it has a combat system similar to armada. The ship customization is nice, but too simplified to of any real fun. Again, the meat of the game here is constantly seeking out new worlds and new life and solving interstellar mysteries. Great fun.

It's Dark Souls 3 rollspam with "open world" mechanics that basically amount to following the same corridors we have been following since the original game, but writ larger and wider (and longer). Roll spam returns but with multiple ways to completely bypass it. The biggest example of this is how you have multiple ways to stagger bosses (as in bloodborne) and perform critical hits on them. Shields are now useful just like the old Dark Souls 1 days and even have an added counter attack mechanic. The sheer variety of builds means that the base Dark Souls 3 experience is vastly expanded and made much, much easier. Even the final sets of bosses can be completely trivialized by a variety of possible builds using everything from the simple: dual wielding gigantic collosal swords and bullying everything in the game to bleeding and frostbiting enemies at the same time.

That feeling when you can just completely ignore boss mechanics because your build was carefully tuned to bully everything in the game is priceless. Where Dark Souls 3 was annoying and required rolling or walking through all sorts of attack patterns that must be memorized, Elden Ring is the same but with all sorts of mechanics to completely bypass that part of the game.

In a perfect world where we had good games, 5.5/10, but since there are never good AAA games anymore, 9.8/10.

insert standard iWishSteamHadMoreThanJustRecommendNotRecommend.txt scrawl here.

First off, the store page and the videos are largely accurate. You see what you get. The problem here is that there are actually enjoyable (read: exploitable and unbalanced) collectible card games in the system that you will want to play and say "to hell with this pretentious diet coke adventure game nonsense!" that makes up the actual game.

Let's focus on the card game for a bit and why the game drags: you start out with an interesting "act 1" wherein you only have access to a certain type of deck, but as far you know, this is the game. The amazing thing is that this game all on its own is super compelling and exploitable. The ability to make your own cards (which are easy to make completely unbalanced) is fun and the card upgrade system has depth while retaining 'rogue-lite' roots so you rarely get everything you want in a card. Of special note, the atmosphere of the game makes even the extremely basic looking cards work, mainly because your opponent largely sells the entire experience (the one from the trailers).

Upon clearing 'act 1' the game then reverts into what is essentially a gameboy color experience and gives you access to more deck types and more cards: interestingly, despite being able to abuse mechanics to an even greater degree by mixing up deck types, the experience takes a nose dive in quality due to the downgrade in graphics (for plot reasons). Meanwhile, there is some arpg story going on in the vein of 'found footage' that makes itself known at this point. Honestly, it's basic, contrived, and follows the standard slasher flick logic of "let's go get murdered in a way that's easy for the killer!"

Upon clearing act 2, you get into the even more barebones and basic act 3; the game makes a big deal of showing off how rushed and barebones the game has become as if this was a feature we should be applauding: when plot gets in the way of gameplay... while you still have the capability to completely unbalance the game (which is already assymetric), you are stuck in the paradigms of one of the deck types instead of having the interesting resource allocation of all of them at your disposal as in act 2: essentially, not only did the graphics further degrade (in terms of the card game at least), but the actual mechanics did as well.

Again, this is incredibly frustrating because, during the ending sequence to the game, you get to mess around with the other systems in the same 'pure' manner the player does in act 1, but only briefly before the credits roll.

The card game is exceedingly easy (despite being immensely satisfying to break) , but that's because the game isn't actually a card game. It's essentially an adventure game in the vein of a Tell Tale Games title with a card game bolted on to provide pacing and as a conceit for the plot. The actual game is basically just you watching found footage. I guess there is also an ARPG out there, but had I known that was required to understand anything at all about what happened in this game, I would have hard passed. You have been warned (I'll just look for some spoiler material to explain what the hell the plot of the found footage was about).

Card game: brokenFun/10
AdventureGame: LazyPointAndClickUntilItWorks/10
FoundFootage: communityCollegeProject/10
ARPG: didn'tBother/10

Look, the game is really fun in act 1. Lots of people will recommend you just keep playing that until you break it to the point of extreme satisfaction and walk away. For the auteur among us, you will know if you're the type that likes these pretentious 'real world' ARPG type games, but otherwise:
waitForASaleAt5Bucks/10

There is a good game that can evolve from this base, but right now I would wait and see what the future brings to it.

Let's get the positives out of the way:
The graphics and user interface are very nice.
The tutorial quickly brings you up to speed in a non-invasive manner; I was free to build things that the tutorial didn't specify which felt nice.
The interactions between the various production chains felt alright.
Citizens seemed to more or less understand where to get what they needed without any death spirals.

Now, let's talk about why I don't recommend this game.
For one, you are constantly on a razor's edge in terms of supplies. For example, my citizens were constantly naked; you might ask why this would be the case. The answer is that there was no sustainable source of leather, wool, or cotton to be found. Moreover, to make usage of the latter requires teching. Now, you might think that this wouldn't be so bad if you could simply trade for clothing or the raw materials, but clothing degraded so fast that I quickly found myself bankrupt with nothing to trade to the passing merchants.
That's the thing: every citizen is constantly, feverishly, devoted to creating the items for every day survival. Wood for fuel so that they don't freeze to death, hunting for leather to try and make clothes, gathering for herbs so that they don't get sick, tool making to replace the quickly disintegrating tools, and of course farming for vegetables/animals for basic food.

I was constantly in a state where my burgeoning population brought more problems than solutions:
Another birth? Well, it's going to be a hard winter because this means we'll have to find someone to make more fuel.
Someone got shifted from gathering to making fuel? Well, we're going to run out of timber pretty fast.
Someone shifted from tool making to forestry? Well, our tools will break and everything will become much slower as a result.

It was at the point where none of my citizens had enough water to drink (apparently they are unable to use the well themselves or drink from a river five feet away) that I threw my hands in the air and uninstalled.

There are fun resource constraints and there are ridiculous ones and, unfortunately, I wrongly assumed that given enough tech and schooling I would be able to get a stable baseline. This was not the case.

Is there likely a pathway to efficiently grow your population without constantly running out of the most basic of resources? I'm sure there is, but it's not intuitive nor do I care to find out; the 'fun' of discovery is just not there when basic resources like water from a well are running out because I don't have enough people whose job it is to gather water. The constant lack of fuel despite all the trees bothered me, but the well water was the final straw.

If you're more into learning the puzzle, you might get a kick out of figuring out how to get past the resource and worker constraints, but my suspension of disbelief was shattered: out in the woods I can hunt, farm, gather water, have enough wood to survive a winter, and build solid cabins all by myself. Why can't my citizens?

Not fun.