Recent reviews by Lienwrath

Boring AF spray the car simulator. Played for almost an hour and 80% of that time was spent spraying the car with foam, wax, polish, water, sandpaper, putty, paint... Then doing it all again. If you like walking around a car 40 times in a row you'll love this game and if this is in any way appealing to you just go play powerwash simulator instead.

Incredible game for the point it's at in development. Currently sitting at 44 hours played and I've unlocked everything, bought all the properties, businesses, cars, etc. so I'm out of content for now but I'm excited to see how the game fills out over time. The dev did an excellent job of making a fun game with goofy looking characters to make drug dealing a lighthearted endeavor instead of the dark gritty approach most media takes.

My only complaint is that the logistics and automation options available in the game are REALLY rough. Employees are ungabunga stupid and only follow simple orders as far as what product to move where and in what amount. I feel like I spend more time stocking my various operations up with ingredients, putting them on the right shelves, paying employees and moving products from place to place than I do actually dealing or mixing drugs so it can wind up feeling more like a UPS simulator than a dealer simulator, but I think this'll get hammered out down the line so I'm not worried about it.

If you like management type games this is an easy pick up for $20.

P.S. plz add romance options for Molly mister developer, ty.

A prime example of incompetent devs falling backwards into a gold mine, yet they still manage to fumble at every turn. Dark and darker is a great concept and unfortunately one of the better extraction looters on the market, however the game is directionless and the people in charge have no idea what they want out of the game. Patches are constant battles of flipflopping between two states and very rarely do the devs put in more work than "we're going to tweak some numbers" when it comes to balance.

Even if you play the game now and enjoy it, there's a REAL GOOD chance that in 3 months it's going to be an entirely different game than the one you got sucked into.

Just a short list of radical changes DaD has made in the past year or so:

-Added and removed multiclassing which allowed any class to have the perks of any other class with an RNG acquisition system. Led to the complete obliteration of class identity outside of which items could be equipped, scrapped and supposedly being reworked because they still bring it up from time to time as something they want to add back to the game.

-The game launched with a battle royale style circle that closes in as the game progresses, over the course of a ~15 minute match you're constantly plowing through rooms in the dungeon to escape the circle and try to find a portal out or stairs down to the next level. They removed it somewhere around a year ago and just recently readded it to the game for funsies or something. The swarm/circle was nearly universally hated by everyone that plays the game because it detracts from the dungeon crawling experience and is constantly pressuring you to move and disincentivizes taking your time to explore/loot/kill bosses.

-At the start of this wipe/season they made (nearly) all of the maps completely randomized and added fog of war which obscures the minimap. Prior to this season the map was entirely revealed and you could decisively make your way towards areas of interest like boss rooms, quest rooms, ore spawns, resurrection shrines, etc. Now it's all just a jumbled mess and ruined a lot of the identity the maps previously had. It also turns maps like Ruins or Goblin Caves which had very distinct and fitting aesthetics into a mangled mess of haphazardly placed modules for the sake of randomization. Some people like this change, some people hate it. I hate it because it invalidated a lot of map knowledge I built over a thousand hours of playing and also makes some quests absolutely MISERABLE to try to complete (explore a specific room, kill a specific mob, kill a specific boss, etc.)

-At the start of this wipe they also added "continuous dungeon" which is just a weird way of saying you can join an already-in-progress session. This isn't necessarily a bad thing and can help alleviate low player count issues and avoid dead lobbies, but the way it's implemented leads to a never-ending swarm of players flooding into the match until about the halfway mark. This makes killing bosses incredibly difficult and there are some instances of players dying, loading into the same match and killing the person that just killed them. It also feels really bad to join a match that's already 7 minutes in and all of the points of interests are looted and the boss(es) are dead. I don't hate this mechanic but I wish it was implemented better.

-One of the project leads has repeatedly over the course of years expressed his desire to remove random modifiers from gear and although it hasn't happened yet, they've made multiple attempts at "easing into it" over the past couple of years. The most egregious example is Patch #69 where they made equipment have almost the exact same damage/stats across rarities, which made looting rarer gear almost pointless. It was reverted pretty quickly, but the devs have a way of weathering the tide and trying to push their garbage "vision" again.

-Gear with +all attributes has plagued the game since its inception and is generally the best possible mod you can get on gear where it's available. Originally almost all gear pieces could have +3 all attributes as a roll and anything that didn't have +3 all was trash. It was eventually removed, only to be readded the following season at a +2 limit which continued to prove problematic. It was removed and readded once more but +all attributes could only roll on jewelry where it was STILL the best possible stat you could get. For a third time it was removed and this season they added it a FOURTH TIME but limited it to +1 all attributes and only on rings and amulets. To no one's surprise it is *still* the best mod you can get on rings and amulets and a "best in slot" ring or amulet will always have +1 all attributes on it. More than anything this is a testament to how these devs will continue pushing something they want in the game relentlessly regardless of how healthy it is for the game or how much the players dislike the feature. +all attributes wouldn't be that bad if there was a real choice to be made, but it's ALWAYS one of the best possible modifiers you can get on the gear that can roll it, there's no choice or upside/downside, you just always want +all attributes because it's such a powerful stat compared to other options.

I could go on and on, the list is gigantic, but hopefully if you've read this far you've gotten an idea of how the game operates. I have over a thousand hours in dark and darker and I've played since the third playtest over 2 years ago and their MO has NEVER changed. This is the cycle the game is doomed to repeat until it eventually dies because the people in charge are just flip flopping back and forth and shoehorning things into the game because they want it, not because it makes sense or improves the experience.

I'll probably keep playing dark and darker for the foreseeable future at least for a bit after each wipe but I really truly cannot recommend this game to anyone because it's constantly changing on a whim. Everyone I've gotten into the game has quit over different breaking points in the past 2 years and I can't blame them for bailing. I hope things turn around because I really do like dark and darker, but it's just incredibly unlikely as long as Ironmace is piloting the ship.

That being said, MOST people are probably going to want to wait before they purchase Legacy. The game runs pretty rough for what looks like a game out of 2008, visually and mechanically. You will CONSTANTLY be compiling shaders for some reason, most games will load everything on launch but in this game you'll wind up loading shaders before and after every map for some reason. TTK and class balance is a nightmare, I think every class has a stun but not all stuns are built equally so you see classes like warrior and rogue just shred you before your stun wears off. I wouldn't really knock points for this since they'll obviously tweak things as they go, but it makes the game pretty miserable to play at the moment if you don't like playing one of those classes.

I like the aesthetic and the gameplay, I like that they carried over a lot of good systems from existing extraction games like the lodge (hideout), vendors, reputation and crafting. Being helmed by experienced ex-blizzard devs that worked on WoW, I have a lot more faith that this game will eventually become great than I do some of the existing games in the genre that are run by inexperienced goons that stumbled onto a successful game they don't know how to manage by sheer dumb luck.

It's pretty bare bones at the moment but the game has a bright future ahead of it if it keeps up the momentum and the devs stick to their vision and roadmap. Maybe don't buy it right away but definitely wishlist it and keep an eye on it if you're a fan of extraction games.

If you're on the fence: download path of exile 1 and play on ruthless mode for half an hour or so. If you're having fun, try POE2. If you're not having fun, you're not gonna have fun in POE2 because it's the same general idea.

The entire experience is just POE Ruthless with a fresh coat of paint in its own standalone game. I finished the campaign in the first day and a half, hit level 72 while doing maps and just got bored and frustrated. Loot is incredibly rare and unsatisfying. I was still using a staff I had crafted at level 20 when I quit with no good upgrades in sight without getting incredibly lucky slamming crafting orbs. 70% of the maps are just a series of hallways or narrow walkways for enemies to pin you and surround you with no options to escape because there are no mobility skills like flame dash in POE2. The maps are huge, probably 3x the size of a POE1 map on average and you move so incredibly slow you're looking at probably 10 minutes to clear an area with the majority of that being due to travel time.

I'm slightly biased because I really enjoy the zoomy gameplay of POE1 but I went into POE2 with an open mind and wanted to like it, however, I just don't enjoy much about it. I forced myself to get to the end game and hit tier 5 maps before I made a decision and at the end of the day POE2 is just not an enjoyable game for me. Some people say it's the perfect ARPG, best game they've played in years, etc. and that's great for them, but I'm gonna count my blessings that they decided not to merge POE1 and 2 together so I can go back to the game I enjoy and leave this one behind. Maybe things will improve over the next year or two, the game's in early access after all, but going off of the foundation they have now I'm not going to hold my breath.


Edit: Played some more after the recent patch that addressed some player concerns. Loot seems to be considerably better, rare mobs now drop quite a bit more loot and of better quality too. A lot of the issues I have with POE2 still stand, but it sounds like they'll be addressing map generation and getting stuck/surrounded in upcoming patches. I'm leaving my review as is for now since only the loot complaint has been addressed but when they get around to implementing fixes for the other issues I'll revisit my review.

Such an incredibly bland shooter game. Literally the only thing it has going for it is cute anime waifus, the gameplay is boring. Half the game modes are team deathmatch, the other two might be fun but they're locked behind player levels and I'm not going to grind just so I can play not-TDM. Spawns are seemingly random, sometimes you spawn away from your teammates, sometimes you spawn with enemies immediately around the corner. The UI is horrible and the game seems confused on whether or not it's a gacha or a shooter so it just does both pretty poorly. I'm a sucker for coomer games but this one ain't it.

Instead of downloading this, go play deathmatch in any other shooter you can think of (Valorant, CS:GO, Fortnite, CoD, whatever.) You'll have a better time and I think they ALL have better waifus to oogle anyway.

Zzzzzzz

Game's boring and predictable, play rock-paper-scissors instead. At least sometimes people go paper.

Edit: Also the prediction system contributes nothing to the game, it's just fluff and it takes up room in the UI every single game when it's only ever used for tournaments or spectated games.

The game's great but after the most recent update the dev added a built-in ad for a real life board game company and labels it as a "collab". This would be fine if it was just using the art for board games based off of these real life games as product placement but it also includes a *CLICKABLE* link to Speedrobo's website within the game. I didn't know who the hell Speedrobo was before today and after a couple pages of googling I still can't find a single piece of their social media that has over 1k followers and they have like 5 total board games (none of which have reviews on BGG) under their belt. I don't trust these dudes to not pull a phishing scheme, rugpull or some other shady BS down the line and I feel bad for anyone that accidentally clicks the in-game link that takes them there because they were trying to stock their shelves. It feels a lot like Speedrobo was looking for some cheap advertising for their ♥♥♥♥♥♥ unknown board games and the dev took the bait. Which is odd because the dev just celebrated selling 400k+ copies, I don't understand why they felt the need to also take some shady company's advertising money on top of their success. If it was a collab with even a somewhat known company it'd be a different story but this one looks sus as hell.

If anyone from Speedrobo is reading this: please god spend some of your apparently expendable money on hiring a real web designer for your website. I haven't seen anything that bad since Geocities was a thing.

Edit: Looking through the discussion on the latest patch, the dev claims there was no money exchanged and that it's a "mutual collaboration" which seems like an even bigger red flag to me because this no name board game company is hitching their wagon to this game and the game gets... what out of it? A news post on their scuffed website? I dunno man, something's up lmao.

The actual game is great as far as a simulator-type game goes. There's plenty to keep you busy, a feeling of progression and the excitement of cracking packs and hunting for valuable cards you can sell in your shop. Checking out customers feels snappy and satisfying, stocking shelves isn't the worst thing ever and you can automate both of those once you can afford to hire employees. I'd argue nothing in the game feels very difficult or feels like there's a "bad decision" other than just not paying your bills. If you crack every pack in your store, you'll probably make out with more money than you would selling them as packs just because the average pack value is almost always AT LEAST the market value of that pack. It's hard to mess up, which isn't a bad thing but does ultimately make the game feel a little bit like an idle game at later levels. The dev seems to have a lot on their plate as far as features they want to include in the game in future updates, one of which is making the card game playable which seems like a daunting task to me but it'll be great if it works out. All in all, the game is fun and very ambitious. What's there gets a little stale after 10-12 hours because level progression slows to a halt and things get pretty samey, but for what it is it's a great game at a great price. If the dev figures out the above issue with the shady board game company I'll change my review to a positive one but I just don't feel comfortable with the situation as-is where I'd actively recommend it to people.

Dead game, 10+ minute queues and every time you go back to the main menu you get more popups telling you about the battle pass or the shop or some other BS. The only remaining players in queue have played this game since it came out in 2017 and never stopped. I'd rather get actual malware than boot this game up again.

If you like Ark, this is basically Ark with pokemon instead of buggy garbage dinosaurs. Super fun, lots of content, lots of stuff to keep you busy and solid waifus (pls step on me Zoe and/or Saya). Better than most AAA titles at half the price.