Recent reviews by Essyx

Every time I load up this game, there's at least one point where I just stop and look out into the forests and ponds and marvel at whatever voodoo witch magic Warhorse did to make such a rich and beautiful environment. Up close, some of the models look pretty geometric in design, but I absolutely forgive this when in the forests or towns.

The game is almost an improvement from the first title in every way. Though, I'm only 40 hours into it, the map might seem a bit smaller, but no less full of POIs and places to just roam and explore. The villagers and townspeople are well modeled and the dialogue options seem varied and responsive to your playstyle. The left alt button to respond or speak to people from afar is innovative, but a bit awkward. My only other complaint, is that all the NPCs (except for maybe the very significant main characters) all seem to have the exact same frame. No variance in height or weight, and that would make for a much more immersive world. Then there's the combat. Again, for the most part, this has been improved with strikes and blocks feeling a little more "real" and impactful. I will say however that I have a couple complaints, and the first of this is the target soft-locking has gotten me killed on several occasions. If I am not locked on a character (middle mouse button) then Henry should turn to look at a flanking character if they are attacking him, instead of focusing down on whomever is right in front of him while the person to the side tries to bury an axe in my head. Also, and I can't believe that I'm saying this, but combat becomes extremely easy once certain strikes are learned. Combos are almost never necessary, and combat can be watered down to just waiting for people to come at you before perfect blocking and riposte, or master striking them.

The story is fantastic, and is the main appeal of this game. They do a great job of justifying why Henry has to learn or re-learn some basic skills. I'm really glad I had the option of sending the dog to town as well, because I absolutely HATE animal companion mechanics in games. They are often way too OP or get in the way too much.

TLDR: Game is worth it. Support the devs. Spread the word. Bethesda needs to be paying Warhorse consulting hours for some lessons in how to make a fantastic RPG.

I'm pretty sure the developer of this game enjoys the suffering of others. Basically, we have what appears to be on the surface a unique and interesting take on settlement survival with some wave/tower defense thrown in. However after trying and failing to keep one village alive for even 2 seasons, I have the absolute opinion that what this game really is, is a thinly veiled gacha game in which, even if you do everything right, build everything in the perfect order, place all the buildings in the perfect spots, you still will likely lose because A: you haven't suffered enough to open enough "god experience" chests to boost enough stats, and B: the 'random' events seem to absolutely favor causing you the most suffering possible.

There's not nearly enough margin for the player to express any level of experimentation or creativity in building or defending. Basically, if you don't do everything just right - you doom yourself - often many days before you are even aware of it. Then you get to decide if you are going to spend the next hour slowly watching your village burn away because there's no possible recovery metric. The enemy just grows at a stupidly fast rate and you just die. That's it. That's the game. Personally, I'd rather go walk barefoot across a field of legos.

Honestly this game is a lot of fun and a great original take on the genre. It sucks that the dev didn't get the return they needed to keep working on the game. Games like this are a huge gamble because they are so dependent on a large player count. However mega-corporations that run other games (Marvel Heroes, Overwatch, Etc) take all the players with multi-million dollar marketing campaigns. Shame really.

I have to admit that I was quite peeved with the main story not being complete in their 1.0 release, but they fixed it in the very next release.

The rest of the game is mostly the standard farm sim slice-of-life game with a few added mechanics thrown in (not going into detail for those that don't like spoilers). There's a lot to enjoy and it was worth the price. I especially want to call out the artist that drew the townies in that almost-disney style - they look great!

A fun, relaxing, quirky game that scratches all the right itches of this type of genre, while at the same time being unrefined, not at all challenging, and laughably cheesy.

H O W E V E R - Seriously yall, some of the bugs, mistakes, glitches and quirks in this game are just so bad and look like really easy fixes.
- Tree art has meshes that don't line up where it would appear "chopped" at the trunk.
- The voice acting is either fantastic, or fantastically bad. If the actors have really thick native accents, don't tell them to sound country! It doesn't work! Just have them speak in their native accent, it sounds fine and doesn't break immersion in a post calamity fantasy world.
- Do one more quality pass over your writing and dialogue, possibly with a native English speaker. There's some easy mistakes in the text/speech that can cause a lot of confusion.
- Fix the pop-in of assets! Even if you have to force another second of load time for the player. I've gotten stuck in things that haven't appeared yet - especially on holidays.
- Don't automatically have the player start chopping a tree that they shouldn't be chopping! I don't want to be punished in game for doing something that I didn't mean to do in the first place.
- Allow calendar reminders for NPC Birthdays.
- MORE SANDSTORMS! They should damage shops and buildings, allowing for the builder to take on special commissions to repair them for temporary discounts.
- Warn players further in advance that quests are going to expire...
- Not everyone should get along. Perhaps consider in the future that becoming friends with some people, means making enemies of others. Make the relationship meters less linear. Put more hints into the game to help the player know what gifts NPC's love. I don't want to have to google this stuff!
- More quests for the animals!
-Whoever comes up with your monsters (honey pot ant, rocket rooster, etc) deserves a raise.

As many others before me have mentioned, I wanted to really enjoy this game. The hand-drawn art style and laid back game play were very appealing, and reading the various review websites, I really thought that this would be a terrific way to relax.

What I didn't know was that the game is basically a hidden object finding, repetitive, agonizingly simple thing that time-locks your game play for.... reasons? Why anyone decided it was a good idea to prevent playing a game in real time is absolutely beyond me. There are so many people out there with different schedules, concerns, lifestyles, etc. that it's simply arrogant to force paying customers to adhere to this design choice.

It's been a few weeks now since I started seriously playing through the story, and steam says that I'm at... 12 hours? The bears I have are maybe 2.5 hearts full... I'm sorry I can't log in every single day to make progress. Also, gaming for me isn't a second job.

As so many other reviewers have mentioned, The Forgotten City is a fantastic gem of a game, and I cannot recommend it enough. What I want to point out specifically however, is the moral dilemma's it brought to the surface, specifically when comparing the atrocities and barbarities of the past in relation to the modern world. Have we really become a more morally or ethically superior civilization in the past two thousand years? Strange, how a video game would be the thing to pose such questions.

So many awesome things to say about this game, I'm not sure where to begin.
Story = Fantastic
Art = Well done within the theme.
Music = Somber, melancholy, fitting
Gameplay = Engaging, intense, introspective
Fun = Very much so.

This game was developed by a gamer. Great work.

Before I begin I want to point out that I am an older cisgender straight male who loves action movies, explosions, and games like Doom and Company of Heroes.

And I absolutely adore this game.

One of the few early access titles I feel 100% satisfied in purchasing, I bought this game because I am into the type of exploration and systematic unlocking of certain gates within the game while it unravels a compelling story. Despite the bugs that are predictably in an unfinished game, nothing I have encountered has been severe enough for me to uninstall and wait for it to bake a bit longer. I'm eagerly awaiting updates as I push to become "best friends" with all of the available characters. Each of their stories and questlines feels so nostalgic to their characters. The way that the characters mesh with each other and bring to light their individual desires all the while remaining in a persistent state of positivity and encouragement is extremely refreshing and compelling. Characters encourage you to keep doing what you're doing and fill you with positive reinforcement as you go about your tasks and it genuinely makes me feel better. I'd recommend this game in it's current state to anyone that loves fetch quests, building and exploring, and Disney as a whole. The monetization is a minimal aspect to the game, and while I completely understand that it might cause some other reviewers to react negatively, I don't feel that it's intrusive or takes away anything from the game (Although that might change when multiplayer is incorporated).

See below for observations both positive and negative:

1. While it's great that the devs allow any and all clothing to be worn by any body style, I'd really like to see more specifically male-oriented options - especially as quest rewards. I understand that it's a bit difficult when a literal Disney princess offers an iconic dress, but this is your time as a dev to use your imagination and create a male equivalent! How about a Frozen Tuxedo, or a Minnie mouse polka dot Button Down Oxford Shirt? It would add a lot of value for you to be inspired by classical apparel in new and interesting creations.

2. Your sound designers are fantastic. All the ambient crystal hums and fauna sounds in the different zones make the game really pop. The inspired musical scores make me want to buy the soundtrack. Please keep doing that. Perhaps create some special remixes and allow the player to play them with the DJ booths? Dance parties/emotes? I also encourage you to add location specific easter eggs! (Chances for certain sounds like hyenas cackling in the elephant graveyard, or play the fantasia music when interacting with the magical broom).

3. Some of your bugs are a bit frustrating, but expected. Examples: Characters not allowing you to pass through or push them randomly (Add an unstuck feature!), Players sometimes don't transition when entering/exiting buildings (Fixed by alt+tabbing out/in the game).

4. Some of the props (furniture, etc) is really too expensive. It's taking almost a week to gather all the flowers to build a single balloon arch. Doesn't that seem a bit excessive? Here's a suggestion: Allow the character to build zone specific stalls (Like Kristoff's). Bring in the 7 dwarves and let them mine gems in a mine similar to Wall-e's garden and Moana's Fishing boat!

5. Donald falls down way too much.

6. Ariel and Ursula are quite challenging to level up as friends because you can't hang out with them. Perhaps provide an alternative way to interact such as fetching random doo-dads for Ariel's collection (like when digging with wall-e) or provide Ursula with magical potions and be a test subject for her! (drink this potion and briefly turn into a fish flopping on the ground).

7. Real time constraint can be really off-putting to those that can only play the game certain times of the day. Consider making the day/night cycle a 4, 6, or 12 hour rotation instead. Allow changes to props/furniture/lights to be based on time of day. Characters "sleeping" is an excessive gate that really doesn't need to be there. Consider removing or exchanging for an alternative (Ariel/Moana is exploring, or Buzz and Woody are playing etc).

8. Weather is great, but this is a magical world! Make some rare weather! twinkling lights in the swamp, fireworks around the castle, magical blue snow in the frost, etc.

Great job yall - keep it up!

Hot take: Even in its Early Access states Core Keeper has a terrific amount of content and fun, but falls way short of games like Terraria and Minecraft. The issue is one of repetition, and the extremely painful corpse running experience.

What's to like: These types of games are my absolute go-to titles as I am almost guaranteed to have a good time. When you combine the cave-exploring wonder with the Dopamine IV of the ever-scaling ore hierarchy, it's hard to turn off the game after a long night. The story is as good as it can get for this genre: To get to where you want to go, you must mine, gather, craft and build, then kill bosses. This is a formula that simply works, and doesn't really need to be reinvented in my opinion. The graphics, though very very pixelated, are well designed, and the biome music tracks are diverse and very well made. The boss fights are engaging, though at times easy to cheese if you are tempted. There's enough content in each tier that one should be entertained without having to endlessly grind for materials.

What's not to like: Corpse running (the act of running back to my dead body/tombstone) in this game should be listed as a warcrime. Not only do monsters destroy torches, but they respawn so quickly you are most likely going to encounter them on the way back to where you died. This isn't a very big deal early game, but if you are caught unaware in the slightest as you progress, it could mean getting one-shot or your armor busted time and again before you ever get to reclaim your items. Sadly, I can't figure out a way to make it better. I don't like easy games and retaining all of your things opens the door to intentionally dying. However, I've spent at times over 2 hours trying to run from my base all the way to my body dying countless times to things that cannot be seen.

The graphics are nice, but sometimes feel like pixelated vomit. Certain ranged enemies through projectiles that are almost imperceptible.

The difficulty ramp makes the times that you have to go to unexplored biomes to mine the next material extremely precarious. This curve steepens as the game progresses. Include more content or perhaps sub-tiers to make it flow a little better.