Recent reviews by Real-Time Sushi [d20]

<3 <3 <3

I would absolutely love if you asked me to play this with you.

<3

NOTE: I acquired the physical board game first, then the Google Play digital version, then this one. I bought this on Steam because purchased DLC is shared across platforms—just buy the base game and log in to your account!


QUICK REVIEW
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I adore this board game, and the digital version scratches the itch between board game nights. It's both simple and complex. It's very engaging and strikes the right balance of challenge. This scratches the same itch that chess does for me. Every game I play, I realize a new strategy. Oh, another reason to get the digital game: it's easier to learn/remember the rules when the computer prevents mistakes. :)

First, let's talk about the digital version. Then, we'll talk about the game itself (which applies to both the physical and digital game):


DIGITAL
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* Solo, Multiplayer, and Pass-and-Play!
* Adds unique optional challenge modes for solo play! (For example: you can only win after destroying The Keep, or your enemy gets extra warriors to start.)
* Character-specific tutorials, even for factions you don't own. (Try before you buy!)
* If you're into asynchronous multiplayer, you should get this on mobile as well so that you are notified when it's your turn. :)

* Digital con: the single-player's "undo" button sometimes isn't available. Not a huge issue, but annoying when you make a mistake.
* Digital con: the rule book is in the game! But, it's not the full text of the rules. Not a huge issue, but it's nice to consult sometimes.


THE GAME ITSELF
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Each faction has asymmetrical game-play mechanics, but feel very well balanced. The balance of power can be measured in terms of limitations. How many actions can a person take each turn? What limits them? If one faction can take more actions, it will have stronger consequences for either not taking all of them or for taking too many. Every turn, you'll find yourself thinking "oh man, should I do this or that? I wish I could do both!". To me, that's the mark of a well-balanced game.

The expansions add more each time too. The first three add 2 new factions and some additional optional mechanic. You can try new factions out in the Tutorial screen before buying. That said, I've heard recommendations on purchase order for the average person:
* Base game
* Underground (expac #2)
* Riverworks (#1)
* Marauders (#3)
* Hirelings & Clockwork at your discretion. Hirelings add more layers to the base game, and Clockwork is basically a customizable, semi-playable AI opponent. (You might think this is silly to make for a digital game, but A) it was first made for the physical board game, and B) I've heard it actually adds some interesting challenge and mechanics to even the AI opponents. It also adds co-op mode.)

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Anyway, I love this game. So stoked to play more of it!

>>> Just to make sure you saw it:
DLC FOLLOWS YOUR ACCOUNT ACROSS PLATFORMS! Google Play, Steam, etc. Just log in to your in-game Dire Wolf account. :)

It's HL2. It's a masterpiece... a slice of time. Everyone should experience this at some point, especially if you're into dystopian worlds and the like.

Like others have said: Best. This game has a warm, comfy spot in my memory. It's such a lovely little trophy of life here... first non-Valve game, unique game-play, unique world, hilarious, the low-budget vibe of the cut-scenes is amazing... plus also, if you liked LittleBigPlanet, you might recognize the name "Mark Healey" from those credits too.

Like others have said: ignore the very small playtime here. I ripped this up back before Steam tracked that... (those were probably still the days of xFire for logging gameplay hours!)

Yeah... this game, Half-Life 2, and Guild Wars. Those were my three back in the day.

It's one of the biggest games in video game history for a reason.

(You should also check out Black Mesa - it's the same story but revamped for Source by a group of third party modders!)

GW2 is an excellent MMO overall, still. :)

It does all the things an MMO should do, and it does them well. The lore is deep, the content delivers, and the game is built really well. Also, it's F2P and you can get away with not spending a cent if you don't want to while still enjoying tons of the game.

#Lore

Not much to say other than it's deep and well-thought out. Parts aren't great, and parts are. It's pretty typical in that regard, but they do well with it, I think.

#Skill/Builds/Professions

Done well. 5 skills are tied to your type of weapon equipped (great sword attacks, pistol skills, staff attacks, etc), 5 are tied to your character (3x "utility" skills, 1x heal skill, and 1x elite skill), plus another 1-7 tied to your profession (such as Elementalist changing the element of their other skills, etc). You can change your "build" as well, enabling specializations which modify your skills and stats certain ways, which obviously grant many ways to play a character.

This game tries to keep away from "Warrior is always tank, Elementalist is always DPS, Mesmer is always crowd control, cleric is always healer" tropes. There is no specific healer, but every class seems capable of healing/support if you build them that way. There's also flexibility in building your classes. Do you want your Mesmer to be a DPS/glass cannon, or do you want them to be a tank/damage sponge/aggro-puller? You can choose.

Skills feel correctly intricate and complex while also simple and straightforward. I think anyone can pick up this game and jump in on a good build for their playstyle without too much effort, but tons of guides exist out there too to hone in on what works best for you.

Oh, you can save builds as templates, however, you do have a limited number of builds you can save at a time in both character and account storage. This should be fine, but if you get into the game you may find yourself wanting more, which just means you need to spend gems (real-world equivalent currency).

#Gameplay

--Questing!
Quests are made simple and feel great. You don't "pick up" or "turn in" quests... you just get them as you level up or pass through an area. Side quests are awarded and completed by just playing the game in a given area, and main quests are earned as you level up your character and complete the previous chapter. Progression is simple and feels intentional.

--Inventory
Like most games, it takes a minute to understand how to manage your inventory, but from what I can tell it feels good here. You will struggle with how small your space is at first, but just be patient. Eventually you'll work your way up to 18-24 slot bags in each bag slot and you might not even need half of it for a while.
+ Carry salvage kit and break down unwanted armor/weapons whenever to create materials, then drop all materials into your bank no matter where you are.
+ Sell any good armor/weapons on player market for gold, no matter where you are, by sending it to the trading post. (You'll need to find a TP NPC to collect any purchased items, coins earned, or cancelled sales, though, which makes sense.)
+ Carry the rest back to your bank or keep it on your character. :)
+ Some enemies drop junk trophies... you can sell them to a merchant ("sell junk" button).

--Economy
Most of the currencies are shared account-wide, including gold, and are stored in a "wallet" separate from your inventory. Nice!

There's a variety of currencies but most revolve around gold, karma (earned from questing), and then all the end-game stuff. There's also a gem store, which is your real-world currency, HOWEVER, it's possible to accrue enough gold from playing the game to buy gems with in-game gold rather than spend real money... but you'll have to play a while. Current exchange rate is high, and it will probably stay that way.

Note about gems: it's a flat rate. Each tier of gem purchase is exactly the same dollar-per-gem; you're not getting any discount. So, if you choose to buy gems, don't sweat about saving up for the "best deal"... just buy however much you want because it's all the same. In USD, 1 gem = $0.0125. So, something that costs 400 gems is $5 real money.


#Activities

I haven't done a lot yet beyond just leveling my characters (trying to get a few to max level which is 80, and get through the main story, before I branch off much), but there's tons to do and I'm excited to explore more soon. Here's what I know though:

--PVE
Roam world, dungeons, story quests... End-game boss runs and raids and "fractals" and strikes and stuff... racing...

--PVP
Just warp to PvP land and now you're temporarily max level (80)) = get to fight people in matches, whoo!
There's also WvW or "World vs World" which pits server populations against each other in larger-scale PvP matches with objectives such as "capture this base from the opposing team". I have yet to play it myself, but people gush over how well it's done here.


# Community

Generally people are very helpful. In many starter areas, there's often high-level players who purchased a badge that allows them to advertise themselves as mentors, and even beyond that, there's usually someone knowledgeable and helpful in chat somewhere. You should get yourself into one of the many guilds people are recruiting for too... people are a great resource.

That said, sometimes (like with every video game), chat can get toxic and weird... just ignore when it happens. No need to let political conversations get you down. And, for every weird conversation, there's also other people in chat thinking to themselves "ugh can we talk about something less provocative please"... so you're in good company even when weirdos set out. :)


# Cost

Free To Play (F2P) - If you like the game, you'll find yourself wanting the paid upgrade, but content-wise there are no pay walls on the entire original story. F2P cannot access the paid expansions (obviously) which include a new class, mounts, new elite specializations, etc... cannot access the "living world" seasons which are basically seasonal story DLC (which I think are free to paid accounts)... and F2P cannot access map chat (only "say" chat, which is more local). Other restrictions include not being able to go to Lions Arch (LA), the central player city, until like, level 40 or whatever... but a paid account can go as low as level 5. All in all, though, F2P gets quite a lot of freedom, but paid accounts feel worth it, too.

# Suggestions

The default controls are great but I prefer ESDF as opposed to WASD. Fortunately it's easy enough to re-map things, and exporting your controls are easy too, allowing you to experiment with different styles if necessary.

No native controller support, but there's templates available in the community-made section. I am planning on making my own that matches my ESDF keybind layout... with the eventual goal of being able to play Keyb/Mouse, Mouse-only, Gamepad, Gamepad/Mouse. It's great having options, and when I get that control scheme figured out I'll share it on the Steam Community.

I miss this game. I had a lot of fun playing it with friends when it came out.

There's something oddly meditative about playing this game.

* The controls and mechanics are fairly simple, but unique. As intuitive as they feel, you'll likely get frustrated until you begin to master them... however long that takes you.
* The challenges posed by the map traversal are simple in nature, but can be challenging to overcome depending on your experience.
* And, the consequences for mistakes are consistent and expectable... and, you'll potentially lose a lot of progress any given time.

What is this game? It's a QWOP-esque platformer where you play a man in a pot who can only move by swinging his hammer, and you climb an impossibly-floating mountain made of random junk. You take no damage from any source, including fall damage... but there are no checkpoints either, and the climb is fairly vertical.

* You can spend 20 minutes figuring out how to get past the rocks in the first section, twitch your mouse just right to accidentally shoot yourself through to the second area, over-swing while trying to catch a limb to control your landing, miss, bounce, slide past the rock, and plummet all the way back down to the middle of the first part.
* You could be getting good at this, make your way up to, let's call it the seventh area (it just depends on how you mentally define each area)... you can really blow through the first four sections easy-peasy, the fifth and sixth sections go fairly quickly now too, and while you're still nervous inside the sixth area, you at least know it now, so it takes you maybe 30 seconds to 10 minutes to get back to where you were, depending on how timely you chain your moves. Anyway, you are figuring out the seventh area, shoot through, miss your swing, overcorrect when catching the nearest object, and propel yourself twice as far as if you hadn't tried to catch yourself... yep, now you're falling all the way back to part 3, and you reach out to catch... nope, bouncing all the way to part 1 again. Ooof.
* You could be really good at this and speed-run the entire map in 2 minutes. No, seriously, check out the community speed runs.

You could say this game is a test of patience and tenacity. You could call it a meditative zen garden. You can even say it's an anger-management trainer.

It's why your friend just bought a new computer mouse... because he threw his across the room. It's the one game you won't let your kid play (on your computer, anyway). It's the reason you spent way more of your Saturday than you expected to on playing video games.

It's... zen, man. If you can accept your mistakes, and know when to walk away... this is a really cool game, and it's presented in a really fascinating way.

I mean, I like it, anyway.

THE DUNGEON MUST BE PURCHASED SEPARATELY IF BUYING THIS PACK. If you want the dungeon, go buy the Deluxe version. You'll get all the seasonal content and bonus trinkets with it, too, and it's the same price as buying this and the dungeon key separately (another 2000 silver, or $20 USD, for the dungeon key).