Recent reviews by Grue Bu

I saw the Overwhelmingly Positive reviews for the game initially and as someone who loves tactical RPGs I was pretty excited. I played through the entire thing on normal, and before I posted this I also watched part of a friends play through on hard.

The overall mechanics are pretty standard tactics fare, although its hard to say how much they really affect the overall game-play. From a personal perspective I felt the game was too easy in the beginning and the difficulty in hard mode came from being more irritating than tactical.

The real problem with the game is the story and writing. It feels like the plot was written by Asylum Films - a facade of a game story that's just aping other tactics games . They knew what story beats SHOULD be in the game, but not how to make them interesting or how to get from one to another naturally. Each time something would happen I kept hoping that this was going to be change or twist, but it takes the worst option at any turn. SPOILERS: The main character dies but then turns out to be fantasy Jesus, his childhood friend turns out to be the long lost king of a nation, You get betrayed by your friend but it is IMMEDIATELY resolved and has no relevance, etc.

The romances are even worse. There's almost no lead up to any of them, and most of the characters have at max 1 conversation before falling in love, and then they rarely if ever say anything afterward. A lot of the dialogue gives off weird incel vibes too:
SPOILERS: https://imgur.com/uPfhFIW
SPOILERS: https://imgur.com/8fkEyKZ
SPOILERS: https://imgur.com/rZHfYkz

A lot of the writing also felt like someone's fetish material. SPOILERS: Diana, one of the main characters, starts out wearing plate mail (although it has boobs), then gets a costume change where she grows super huge and starts wearing a leotard.
SPOILERS: https://imgur.com/tZneDcc

In summary, while the game is fine the story and writing actually drag it down. A day or so after finishing it I'm basically left feeling disappointed.

A game about how a journey, metaphorical or otherwise, changes everyone - mostly by giving them crow wings, crow legs, crow arms, etc. A lot of bird related transformations is what I'm saying.

Crawl is simple but brilliantly executed multiplayer concept. One person plays a hero traversing a dungeon, and the other players play as the dungeon and enemies. When a monster kills the hero they take his place. The monsters are generally "weaker" than the hero so they need to both work together and compete to get the last hit.

The matches are fairly short, usually lasting from 15 to 30 minutes which doesn’t feel like too long. The balancing mechanics are well designed, and players make comebacks regularly keeping the game close - the longer you play as a monster the better off you are if you become the hero, but wait too long and you might lose.

The hero and monsters feel good to play, and the players are given several customization options at the beginning of each game allowing them to choose a group of monsters to play as. There are also additional perks which offer variety in play styles.

There is a learning curve to the game, and understanding the different resources you have to manage and knowing each monster can be confusing to newer players. The mechanical simplicity helps a lot with this. Crawls biggest problem is that it currently has only local multiplayer and really needs online multiplayer.

Crawl is intensely fun and extremely well designed. It is easily one of if not the best local multiplayer games available on steam, and an amazing value for its price. If you can get a group of three or four people together to play I highly recommend it.