Recent reviews by Knightwalker

It's a free 'Pay For "Plot"' Single Player Online game with straightforward JRPG style of quests, a photo studio thrown in, and an active Developer and Community on the Discord Channel.
Considering most 'free' games are 'Pay To Win", having a 'Pay for "Plot"' game is a refreshing take. There's not too many free Single Player Online games available that only charge for skins/visual customization AND manage to still pay the online server bills to keep the game running.
If you were someone who easily puts $1,000 down (i.e. Game Devs refer to you as "Mega Platinum VIP" or a "whale") you have the same risk here as every other online game - if the game servers have to be turned off for unforeseen reasons in 2-5 years time your large investment could be gone. Then again - $1,000 will get you a truckload of "Plot" right now and you'll always have the photos to remember them by.

Final Thoughts: A better reviewer would probably have talked about the game mechanics, central hub, enemy variation, depth of quests, the overarching story, and the size of the game world. 8/10

Excellent click/point game. It's not difficult (no combining of random objects in your inventory) and keeps the excitement level throughout the game. I hadn't read the book beforehand so I was experiencing the story for the first time and really enjoyed it in this format. Hopefully they will make some more games like this in future. Should mention though that the User Interface is in "Tablet/iPad" style, which made the tutorial initially confusing, but wasn't a problem once I got used to it.

9/10 - Would happily tell Hastings he's getting 'thin on top' and berate him for how he packs a suitcase again.

TLDR: It's a beautiful, Semi-Open World, 3rd Person Real Time (or Overhead Turn Based - your choice!), RPG that's lots of fun... just stick with the Main Quest.

Full Review:

As a first time player I made the same mistake as others and assumed, based on the starting area of the game, that it was like ES: Skyrim or The Witcher 3, and that the main quest could be ignored for better side quests and exploring. The game will certainly let you do that but the small number of side quests are fetch quests, and invisible walls will block your character from exploring too much. BUT if you stick with the Main Quest, at least until 'Skyhold', it becomes a vastly better game.

Pros:
-You can import your Dragon Age 1 + 2 choices via https://dragonagekeep.com/ (or just make it up) which makes small but noticeable changes in your playthrough.
-Beautiful environment, huge maps, lots of different materials to collect for crafting.
*Note: You'll need a Rogue with a Bow or a Mage to hunt creatures.
*Note 2: Crafted items are much more powerful.
-Lots of Lore and a giant Codex of information and stories to go through.
-Abilities are fun to use. Grapple-hooking enemies from 20 feet away never get old.
-3rd person real time OR Overhead Turn Based - do your battles your way! It sounds crazy but it really does work!
*Note: Turn Based obviously has an advantage so I'd suggest jacking up the difficulty.
*Note 2: For 3rd Person battling make sure to setup your companion's behavior and ability selection in the AI menu beforehand. Use the keyboard command keys to direct them if needed.
-The Main Quest is... ok but the DLC quests, especially the ones DLC Trespasser adds, are top notch!
-Choices matter and you can turn off the hints so you don't know who's going to get angry at you.
-Actually it'll mostly be Blackwall who gets angry: "...I would have <growls> LIKED to have been there...". So angry every time I talked to him.
-Sera (your fun crazy BFF from high school) and Dorian (Clark Gable meets Oscar Wilde) are the best story companions, Solas (Mr. Spock) the worst. Iron Bull and Vivienne have the strongest abilities in combat but your mileage may vary.
-You get your own huge customizable Castle and a Town! A big step up from the Normandy in Mass Effect.
-As you explore the maps you can unlock campsites for future fast travel and resting.
-The 'no bikini armor', 'everyone wears pants', and 'LGBT NPCs/Romance options' design choices are well implemented.
*Note: IMO There's still a place for games with men/women in tight skimpy armor alongside a talking furry creature fighting better armored foes to save the universe but it's nice that RPG games don't have to JUST be that.
-Outrageous French Accents! In a fantasy game series!?! This is by far the boldest design choice. Irish, Scottish, Yorkshire tykes, English, and Germanic accents have had the monopoly too long! Vive la France!
-You can have a horse! Which you will need for the super huge desert maps.

Cons:
-The game looks amazing, all the NPCs look incredible... except.. the NPCs you'll be spending most of your time with. I read somewhere this was a deliberate design choice, but what is going on with the hair and the faces there? What is that all about? Why do the non-core NPCs that have only a handful of dialogue look so much better?
-Torches: You haz none. There's heaps of deep dark caves - but you won't be seeing anything interesting in them. Oh, unless they want you to see writing on a wall - then you'll briefly get a special green torch. This was baffling. I thought maybe I was missing a keybinding or a broken mod install removed torches but nope - the good citizens of Thedas never figured out how to put fire onto a stick you could carry around to see in the dark.
-Invisible walls. This is a frustrating way to stop the player from going into an area that's for a a future quest. Much of my time was wasted trying to run/jump/open/slide down somewhere invisibly blocked when the game could have told me 10 mins earlier "hmm... I'll come back here later..." or "Maybe I should handle the <main quest objective> first...". Nope, they want you to be a mime stuck in an invisible box trying to push through until you give up and turn around.
-Huge maps but only 5-10 side quests, and they involve fetching or finding something.
-'Claiming' areas with your banner. On a huge map, claiming specific areas that are far apart makes sense. Kind of. Probably better ways to have done this. However it makes no sense on the small maps to claim things that are only 30 feet from each other.
-Quests can be on the 'war room' world map, or they can be on your backpack world map, which shows the exact same areas, but not both.... and you can't see the 'war room' world map unless you go back to your HQ... Thank The Maker there's Fast Travel.
-Waiting ages for your advisers to action something on the 'war room' map. You can't even spend real money to speed it up like on most Mobile Games.

8/10 - Had a great time once I saw through the illusion and stuck with the Main Story.
The Cons I mentioned above can mostly be resolved with mods from https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonageinquisition

TLDR: If you liked 'Monkey Island' or the 'Penny Arcade: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness' games you'll like this game.

Full Review:
WoL is a Wild West sequel? companion? standalone? game of sorts to Kingdom of Loathing [www.kingdomofloathing.com]), a free browser game full of (clearly) hand-drawn stick people in amazing HD mono-color. Wait! Come back! it's really good, I promise!!!

Pros:
-Humorous and well detailed world with fun characters and quests. I never got bored in the 33 hours I played.
-You don't die, you just wake up the next day in your bed only losing your temporary bonuses from consumables. (Note: Some items are super rare and it hurts when you've lost their bonus. You may cry).
-No saves/reloads, but the game is fair and gives you a number of warnings before you make a humongous mistake and then repeatedly smash your face into your keyboard once you realize what you've done to yourself.
-Has an ending but you can keep playing and leveling, hence my 33 hours.
-You can make Kellogg's Corn Flakes!
-The DLC is recommended. Wild West Ghostbustin' feels so good!

Cons:
-The simple game mechanics lure you into thinking it's a easy casual game that will hold your hand. It is not. You need to read and investigate all items and all areas, often more than once or twice.
-Game scales well to your character BUT if you attempt to be a 'Jack of all trades' at the start (i.e. try to be a level 1 spell-casting, gun-shooting, melee muscle man) you will find yourself struggling and will need to do some serious level grinding to increase your perks and abilities to compensate... or.... maybe... just stockpile ridiculous amounts of dynamite before each big fight. That works too!
-After making a humongous mistake no amount of begging or pleading will cause the game to reverse or undo it. You shot the Sheriff AND the Deputy, you have to live with it.
-Can create an unhealthy addiction to putting your hands into used spittoons and bedpans. I know it's wrong, why can't i stop? Someone help!
-You can wear Kellogg's chastity pants! D:

10/10 - It's a perfect amount of Loathing.

"Hey I thought my bedroom door was locked!
This? Oh, um... I don't know how this got on my computer. What is this even? I totally thought it was Mario Kart. The Steam Store UI is so confusing, I must have bought the wrong game... Yeah... that's it.
Oh, that play time is just cause I kept trying to find where Mario was in the menu.."

8/10 - Worth being caught in awkward situations

Back in 1988 a child played hours of this game on his Amiga 500, connected to a Sanyo CRT TV made sometime in the early 70's. He used to pretend that along with the ship's cargo he was also sending Tintin, Captain Haddock, and Snowy on many adventures around the world (Herge's Tintin books often involve traveling via cargo ships). Playing this game again in 2019 made me that child again.

Nostalgia aside, in 2019 it's still a fun simulation game of hauling cargo around the world and building up a shipping empire.
Aside from the 1980's graphics, the only negative is that trying to manually park your huge ship perfectly in a crowded port requires a lot of patience and getting the throttle, direction, and brakes perfect is difficult. Oh, and pirates. Hate those damn Pirates stealing all my profitable cargo.

8/10 Would happily send Tintin, Haddock, and Snowy on many more Cargo Ship adventures!

*Played with the 'Duke Nukem's Bulletstorm Tour' DLC*

Before playing I hadn't expected much, but once I started playing and realized the game mechanics revolved completely around how violently you can kill an enemy I really enjoyed it.
The story and game world has a late-80's Sci-Fi feeling and Duke Nukem's lines steal the show.

8/10 Play this instead of Duke Nukem Forever. Hail to the King baby!

***THIS IS NOT A SKIN FOR NERO***

If, like myself, you've missed a chunk of Fate Lore since Fate:Stay/Night, although Nero looks a bit like Artoria, they are different characters with different wardrobes/clothes.

If you would like to use this skin/clothes/model - you need to go through the fairly involved process (game guide @ https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1089950279 by Flea ) to unlock Artoria (Which is very much worth the hassle :D ).

There's not much different between this skin/clothes/model and the default one, so would recommend waiting for a sale or getting it in a pack with the other Fate: Stay/Night DLC.

TLDR: After 4 years, and now there's Ark 2, Ark 1 is finally in a fully playable, mostly bug free, and highly fun state. Highly recommended! :D

Full Review:

As a long time player I have so many memories of this game:

-The time Ark updated and broke every map (was fixed after a few days).

-The time Ark updated and wouldn't run on Windows 8.1 x64 (was fixed after a month)

-The time Ark updated and stopped working on AMD GPUs unless you ran it with "-norhithread" or turned off post processing (was fixed 8 months later).

-The time Ark updated and broke every building mod (mod authors had to make their own fix)

-The time Ark updated and you suddenly had giant green spheres around feeding troughs (fixed by mod authors).

-The time Ark updated and all Triceratops suddenly became immortal (fixed after a week).

-The time Ark updated and kept crashing in Windows 7 x64 DirectX 11, so you needed to run it in DirectX 10 mode (fixed after 3 months).

-The time Ark updated and the network connection code was broken (was fixed after a few weeks).

So many memories...

But now in the year 2021 AD I can safely say the game is 95% bug free and fully playable.

How is the actual game? Kick@ss! you run around gorgeous maps, taming dinosaurs, crafting buildings, riding dinosaurs, crafting buildings on top of dinosaurs...

10/10 - What's that... they are releasing Ark 2? Here we go again! :D

My 1990's sweet lightning fast Sega Mega Drive skills are not as sweet or as as lightning fast as I remember D:

10/10 Would happily fail every 3D bonus stage again