Recent reviews by Nerif

Have probably close to a thousand hours on mobile. Cannot recommend game in good conscience as developers have recently shifted their attitude toward monetization to make it possible for whales to directly purchase every card (where this was not possible before) and good cards are not lowering in rarity alongside bad cards, making them disproportionately difficult to obtain.

It's a great gameplay loop but don't let yourself get hooked until changes are made. Terrible precedent for the upcoming Rivals season.

Emberward is an early access gem from a solo developer. A dream project, if you will.

The gameplay loop itself is fantastic. Creating a maze is not a new or revolutionary concept in tower defense games, but Emberward puts a unique spin on it by essentially giving you puzzle pieces to assemble your maze with. This creates a very engaging strategy minigame- how do you create the best maze with what you're given, and is it better to put this not-quite-perfect piece down here now, or try and get a better one later? Additionally, certain tiles provide towers additional bonuses, like range or damage. You always have things to think about when planning your strategy. It's fundamentally very well done.

There is a hint of that early access dreaming present in the game, that "coming soon" customization. On the macro side of the game, things don't always feel cohesive. There are a ton of characters teased in the character selection, but only a handful are actually available right now. The tower selection is currently very lackluster- you'll see almost all of them within two runs- with no tower unlocks or customization. The tower upgrades are somewhat of a crapshoot as well, with one tower not even having any. But as the game is steadily receiving updates, I have faith that these issues will be remedied. I hope and pray that steam workshop support will come down the pipeline, because that could fix all of these issues.

Emberward is absolutely worth your $15 right now, as-is. It will be worth whatever price it is when its finished as well.

I have experienced no technical issues with this, and own it in my steam library so it is clear I do not need to re-purchase it. So my review is purely from a "is this product *good*" POV.

So far, this has added six new leaders. The new leaders seem to add new ways to play but many of them appear to
significantly overshadow their original counterparts. I like the new content. When it all comes out, it will probably be good value for $20. Right now, it is not unless you are extremely familiar with CIV 6.

This game is suffering from bloat.

There is too much stuff on your screen at any given time. There are too many things to worry about at every moment. It completely fails in holding my attention because I am given 50 buttons to press and in order to know what any of them do I must go through three pages of tutorial menu. No thanks. It may have been approachable if you began when the game came out. But I feel like I'm going through a textbook when I try to figure out what I'm doing. Nobody has ever described homework as fun.

Nimbatus is a decent singleplayer game. There's a good framework here. It's pretty neat. I have to say I enjoyed it, then I got bored and uninstalled.

The problem is that this game is not worth $20 unless it is specifically the game you are looking for. It wasn't particularly accessible, nor was it particularly interesting- which is a problem, because the gameplay loop isn't actually good enough to hold itself up on its own unless you find that type of problem solving content interesting. This doesn't scratch the part of my brain that I want my strategy games to scratch, so it did nothing for me. It's unfortunate because there's actually a pretty solid foundation here for a game that has its sights set much higher. That game, sadly, is not Nimbatus.

This is a game worth the price and worth not much more. If you see it on sale, pick it up. If you are on the fence about buying it full price... wait for a sale.

The game runs in a series of levels that restrict which gems you can use each level. As a result it feels less like a TD game and more like a strange puzzle game, which isn't necessarily bad, but it's not what I was expecting to get.

It does feel like there aren't enough features to justify restricting players like the game chooses to do. I would probably enjoy it more if I could use all of the gems in Journey or Endurance mode, and Trial mode was the mode reserved for the restrictions.

This game also has a skill system similar to what you would find in a rogue-like, which is strange. It feels bloated and bad to use. Why would I invest skill points into skills when I can instead have an extra 2000 mana at the start of each of my games that trivializes Journey mode? The skill system could use some refining, but I think the Talisman Fragments actively detract from the game. It's needless bloat and RNG. Players don't need a reward for playing Endurance mode in a singleplayer game. The challenge should be the appeal.

Pros:
- It's easy to start and play for a while.
- Lots of content.
- Power scaling.
- Very creative map design.

Cons:
- Game doesn't let you use all of its tools
- Feature bloat
- UI is very bad
- Tutorial is nonexistent

I would not recommend this game if it were $15. $13 is probably right at the limit. Probably shouldn't buy it unless it's at $10.

Huge fan of the character design here. Lots of fresh and unique takes on greek mythology. Except Ares, he's boring.

It's a fun game but only if you have a group of people to play it with.

Don't enter public servers expecting to actually play a good game. I got it on sale for $1. It's worth $5. It might be with $8.

Everyone shells out $5 for a few hours of fun. It's cheaper than a movie. That's a good investment.

It's pretty good. Aged fairly well.

Hard AI is stupid.

Got this from the corona humble bundle.

This reminds me of a puzzle game- but without the puzzle. And without the game.

I'm sure someone more interested in coding than me would really appreciate this game. I do not. It's the same set of tasks over and over again.