Recent reviews by [PMC] Portable Merc Collector

I would've loved to actually PLAY this game.

AMD Ryzen 5 7600 6-Core Processor
12 core PC

Game crashes and bluescreens my PC on the first mission every single time I try.

Don't buy this until they RELIABLY fix the problems with AMD hardware. It's not worth the money.

If you thought the base game was too easy, this is for you. If you didn't, and hoped it would be more like the base game, avoid it.

I'll be honest, I'm disappointed with this one, I went into it thinking that the new map would be a lot of fun to play in and there'd be plenty of new stuff that'd be a blast to use, and fight. Instead.. it felt more like a gauntlet with one of the most annoying types of missions possible.

The base game had plenty of defense oriented missions, and missions that allowed you to build up an army, and really have fun with watching your massive pile of troopers fight a massive pile of bugs. This game, most of the missions are basically just: "Here's a small group of units, fight thru the whole map with em and pretty much all of your reinforcements are one-time." It's not fun for an entire campaign, to me at least. If this was one mission or two, out of the DLC, I wouldn't complain as much.

Then.. there's the balance. The balance isn't pre-nerf scorpion levels of bad, but, they expect you to be a lot more active in this one, and it's too different from the base game imo. This one, most of the levels are gauntlets. You'll come across map hazards in small, close-quarters esq rooms that can quickly kill your troops, and on top of that the hordes of bugs they throw at you are double to triple the size of your group.

Then, there's the new bug types. Stingers are not fun, they're like the spitters from the base game, which isn't bad, but they're a LOT more spammy. Not only that, but the hives they have now not only SPAWNS them, but they act like sniper towers, able to CONSTANTLY damage your troops if they get anywhere near close. In maps where reinforcing is either very limited or nonexistent, well, you can already see how that would get frustrating. Then, to top it all off, the classic bugs like Tigers are still here! So, that's fun..

Not everything is bad, the mercenaries were an interesting idea, being able to switch up your weapon types was really neat. It also saved you a lot of time and allowed you to be able to adapt to situations on the fly without requiring new squads, or you to let old squads die for new ones. But most of the time this doesn't really come into play because of the mission design, most battles aren't big enough for you to really DO that. You stick with what works, and you don't switch off of that, because if you do, you end up taking too many losses and failing.

There's also quite a few time based objectives as well that require you to beat certain missions in a certain time or fail. Those weren't too bad, but coupled with the small groups, and gigantic number of bugs, it was a slog.

This DLC could've been really good if it had played more like the original Kwalasha campaign, but the mission design just doesn't really let you play around. The units given to the player is interesting, the new bugs are interesting with a fewww frustrating bits, but the level design kills it for me.

The first game was an RTS with large armies and well placed unit and group management. This played more like a RTT game with heavy focus on small groups.

I followed this game for a few years after hearing of it being "pokemon with gun lmao" and then it finally released!

It's unironically fun, it has an ark-esq building system, with the creature catching style of PLA and stamina/durability of BOTW. Like, the game is surprisingly good, really good if you're into survival games. Not only that, but you can just assign your little creatures to your base, and they craft, generate resources, farm, etc, so you don't have to! I've never seen another game mix all these things together and do it well.

That being said there's quite a bit of jank at the moment. It's common for a pal to bug and walk in a circle attempting to pick up the same item over and over. This is easily fixable though if you pick it up yourself, but it gets annoying after awile. Also the map has quite a few "broken" areas hidden here adn there. Places where the textures are glitched or you can clip into strange places. But usually you have to actively look for these spots on the map and actively mess with it over and over to clip.

Aside from that though, honestly the game's great fun if you're into survival games! The survival systems aren't too punishing, you can adjust the difficulty to your liking however you'd like during world generation. If you're on the fence and not sure about it, look into it, it's a pretty good game!

If you don't mind some jank, that is. Whether or not this will improve in the future, we will see, but so far the devs seem intent on updating!

I will say right off the bat, this is not a difficult game. This is not hard or meant to be too challenging. If you are looking for something with more difficulty, the older LEGO games will be for you.

However, that being said.. this is the largest LEGO Star Wars game to date! The sheer amount of characters, missions and content to interact with, do and collect is staggering. Compared to previous games which had individual selections with their own missions, condensing each trilogy down to a series of 6-8 missions for each movie. This game has every single Star Wars movie/trilogy so far, and even characters from things like TV series' or extra content if you go for the character DLC. (Yes, even the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ Disney sequels.)

There are over 200 characters to collect in the base game, many missions to do, and places to explore. Every planet in the game is a large free-roam map with multiple places to go, things to explore and people to talk to. They even have player and class upgrades and various boosts to buy with things you find! That being said, if you aren't too keen on doing side missions and the story content is what you're after, this game probably has the shortest story segments of any previous LEGO Star Wars game. Previously each trilogy had many individual missions based off of each movie, here, each "era"/movie of Star Wars has only 5 individual missions for each. All with varying lengths in what you are actually supposed to do. For example, The Phantom Menace, Attack Of The Clones and Revenge of the Sith all together are only 15 missions long.

If you are looking for a LEGO game with lengthy story content similar to the Complete Saga, and want to spend a good long while on lengthy missions enjoying the variety, this game may not be for you. The missions aren't exactly long compared to The Complete Saga, but they aren't so short they're breezed through in a few minutes either, there's just less of them.

However, if you want a LOT of stuff to do in a LEGO game, and the story bits don't concern you much, like Freeplay, then you will likely really love this. There are so many characters, new classes, different abilities, and new "perks" with different types of characters that.. it's honestly staggering. Not only that but the open world areas have so many hidden areas, collectibles and easter eggs that it's honestly great to roam around in! Hell, they even made characters never before seen playable as playable characters in this, such as pod racers like Sebulba, characters have multiple outfits like Jar Jar's senator outfit, and everyone has all updated appearances compared to the older models used in Classic LEGO! Not to mention the voice acting.

TLDR: If your here for the story and mission/level design, you may want to skip this one as it has less individual missions and less mission length then the past LEGO Star Wars games. But if you want a game with a massive sandbox to play as whomever you want from a massive cast of characters, you'll like this! The sheer amount of characters they've shoved into this game is.. staggering.

Surprisingly quite a fun game!

It's a city builder tower defense game with survival mechanics in the vein of RimWorld, They Are Billions and a slight bit of Stronghold mixed in.

You are thrown into a procedurally generated world and start a camp with which you build up your own city from there. At first you have a small amount of workers and balance their roles using the structures. However as more time progresses things become smoother and the challenge gradually ramps up as does your village's capabilities.

However one thing to note is that the tutorials, while sufficient, are sparse and few and far between. Ironically enough the worst thing about the game (for me at least) is how little things are explained at the start. Don't get me wrong, it's part of the challenge to learn! But there's not even a tutorial that tells you the buttons on the lower left corner of your screen are how you designate resource zones. Which, without those, your resource buildings just do not function.

I feel like that's a bit of an oversight with tutorials, as, it is a biiiit obvious, but those buttons just do not stand out, and I stumbled across them by complete accident.

However, that being said, the game is great if you are a fan of survival oriented city builder/management games with TD elements! I'd recommend picking it up if you're looking for something slow going with a nice challenge inbetween and don't mind learning as you go.

I bought these because I wanted to support the game. The game itself is fantastic and in my opinion does a free-to-play model well.

That said.. I'm also using this for reviewing purposes. Putting up skins on such a high price bundle like this does NOT set a good precedent for the future. If these skins were sold in a cheaper pack with ONLY the skins I'd happily tell anyone who liked them to pick them up.

As it stands, one of the absolute worst things they could've done with these is the FOMO. This SHOULD NOT have been a thing with these skins, and MUST NOT be in the future. I'll never buy another pack like this should the FOMO aspect stay. This could be encouraging them to release more, yes, but if we don't get our feedback in now, they could take little of it as the rest of the playerbase being fine with it anyway.

I like the skins and have purchased it in good faith, but please DE, please never have anymore FOMO items in the future. It's not necessarily the price, or the skins I have a problem with, it's the limited time aspect. This is not the way to do it, don't allow this to become the future.

Surprisingly really fun! Bee Island is a tower defense style colony construction game in which you expand from your queen and build up your own island over time. Your bees automatically collect resources and fight for you, it's all automated! But you are the one who builds tiles and structures and designs the island. Your main research building is used to upgrade your structures, bees and even abilities at times. By the end, you go from basic wooden siege weapons to modern military weaponry and blow stealth bomber moths out of the sky!

It's simple and not shy about what you get, if you like tower defense games and management games, this game'll be for you! Especially if you want something simple. However if you want something more advanced and deep, with very in-depth strategy, this is much more simple then that.

Honestly the aesthetic is cute and humorous with the cute lil plushie like bees next to massive modern military gun turrets. Plus, if you want a game where you don't have to think much and just build, this'll be fun!

Looking forward to where updates take this game! I got it at -35% off and don't regret my purchase at all.

I got it because I wanted to support the devs for making a great game!


ALSO THE BEE IS ADORABLE AND NOBODY CAN TELL ME OTHERWISE


monke

The Cult of the Lamb must be rallied once again.. many of the acolytes have been in hiding amongst the populace.. once you've rallied them, I will give you further instructions..



Cult of the Lamb is a surprisingly very fun city builder mixed with a roguelike where you spend half the game building a nice little town of cultists, and the other half going on crusades into different parts of the world and obtaining new loot to use in leveling up your followers, your cult and your own abilities.

The cultish aspect of it is quite cartoony and really flows well with the atmosphere and you are given a surprising amount of choice within the game of how you want to run your cult! You can be a fairly nice leader and treat your followers well, even to the point of bringing them back from the dead after dying. The opposite is also a possibility, where you can sacrifice your followers to increase your powers and abilities as well as cannibalism and several other side effects and dark rituals. Even allowing you to take them with you on your crusades!

Combat and controls are very smooth and surprisingly fluid in the crusades, the boss battles are very reminiscent of Devolver Digital's previous games like Enter the Gungeon and Hotline Miami, often seeming like Bullet Hells. However despite the bosses being bullet hells the life system is fairly forgiving and gives you a set amount of lives that allow you to take more damage before you die.

Speaking of dying, during a crusade has no negative effects outside of losing some of your resources you obtained during the crusade, which I like a lot! It allows you to keep playing even if you die without too much punishment.

However this game is not without it's faults, it blends both the city building aspect and the rougelike elements very well, but there are a few nitpicks I have.

1: Some QoL changes to allow blessings to be more easily done would be appreciated. Smaller cults are easily manageable however in bigger cults of 10+ people it becomes tedious hunting down everyone to bless them.

2: This one comes down to personal preference but after swinging your weapon you become immobile for a short time. You can still roll but you are locked in place for a tiny amount of time, leaving enemies to hit you. It's likely a balance thing and doesn't break the game for me, but it does feel a tad clunky after a bit.

3: More choices! I love the fact your not locked into being an evil or benevolent leader and I would love to see more variety in choices you have for running your cult. Your current rituals and choices of boosts for your cult give you a great bout of variety, but each option gives you around 4 choices total to pick from. It's understandable because the boosts together are already quite big, it just feels a bit small.

Overall I love the game! It combines roguelike and city building without leaning too hard in either direction. The adorable art style doesn't feel out of place and after playing it for a decent amount of time, it's actually a lot more tame than I expected so the art style makes it stand out even more! There's plenty of cultist imagery to go around but it's surprisingly a lot less gory than I was expecting. Not that that's a bad thing, I actually really like that!

If you are looking for a fun game that has city building and roguelike elements with a cute art style, pick this one up! I'm just starting out but so far it's easy to pick up and play without being too easy or too challenging on the Normal difficulty, I can easily see people trying many different routes on the higher difficulties. If you are looking for something with advanced multi-layered city building or long runs into a roguelike environment with permadeath, this game isn't quite like that and you may prefer other options.

It's very nice and simple while still having enough depth to keep you playing even after you get the mechanics down. The level of customization for the followers is great too! I liked it a lot more than I thought I would and if you are thinking of picking it up, give it a try! There's plenty of fun to be had starting your own satanic animal crossing village.

Minecraft Dungeons is basically if Minecraft played like Diablo, as many others have probably said. However it'll also teach you to hate Piglins even more.


Buy it for that reason.