Recent reviews by Ozymandias

There is a LOT going on at all times in Phoenix Point. It feels like you never get a chance to catch your breath, as enemy attacks become more frequent and missions keep piling up. But that is part of the beauty of the game. Unlike XCOM (its obvious spiritual predecessor) you can't do every mission. You can't keep everyone happy. The world is spiraling towards doom and the best you can do is slow things down long enough to find a solution.

The combat missions are crisp, the shooting mechanics are fun, and the geoscape strategic layer is solid.

I've fully played through the campaign twice now. The Year One edition fixed a lot of the problems I had with the original release. Gameplay balance is MUCH better, I only experienced one bug bad enough that I had to roll back a save, and the interface is a bit more intuitive.

Rock and stone!

The co-op core of this game is very solid and very well done, but what really makes this stand out is how much flavor and life they managed to squeeze into a bug-shooting game. From the frequent cheers of 'rock and stone' to the fuzzy dice in the launch pod that I just have to slap for good luck to the pet names for the robots and machines... it's just a fun little world to be in.

That said, the game itself is well balanced. The four classes each play very differently, with unique advantages against the swarms you'll be facing. For the most part, difficulty of each mission is appropriate to what you select. Challenge 3s you have to pay attention, Challenge 4s can be downright hard, and Challenge 5s... well, I've played a few and haven't quite managed to succeed yet.

This is a cute toy until you realize that it DESTROYS your computer audio settings without asking or informing you. It somehow replaces and removes (not just disables) audio devices in your computer hardware settings (Win 10). It took an hour of troubleshooting and a system rollback to eventually get my mic and speakers working again.
Shame, because this would be fun to play with.

Defender's Quest has become one of my favorite tower defense style games. It adds a bit of its own twist by adding some RPG elements, as you can customize the talent trees of your group of characters (who essentially are your towers).

Progressing on the main path of the game isn't super hard, but there is plenty of challenge when you try to beat the more difficult modes of each map. It's got plenty of replayability, as when you win the game it unlocks a 'plus' mode, which is the same story/map, but with new quests and all the baddies have new challenging abilities.

Overall this is one of my favorite tower defense games. It's a ton of fun and probably worth it for $15, but it does go on sale and is an absolute steal when it's down around $5.

Battletech is a solid FUN game. It isn't as strategically difficult as games like XCOM, it's one I've come back two several times since its release already, playing through the campaign 3 full times and putting a ton of hours into the open 'career mode.' It's fun to slowly upgrade your lance of mechs, tweak their loadouts to match your playstyle and then blow up some giant robots!

I wouldn't bother paying for the DLCs, though. I bought Flashpoint on sale and other than a new biome and a couple of new text-events during the game, it added nothing of note to the gameplay.

You've probably heard this game compared to both XCOM and the old Heroes of Might and Magic series. Both of these are very true, and I think the developers understood those games well and it really shows in the slick interface of Fort Triumph.

I put in 25+ hours, finished the campaign, and played around with some of the factions. Overall I'd give this two thumbs up, as it was enjoyable the whole time.

That said, the game balance is a bit wonky. Characters start with a random trait and can pick from a somewhat randomized pool of abilities as they level up. Some of these abilities (and combinations of such) are godlike, while others are flat out horrible. And I don't just mean that they're not as good as the top ones, I mean that some traits you get are huge penalties. So if you have some luck with the RNG gods, much of the game will be a cakewalk. Hopefully they'll manage to balance this out in future patches. But even so, it was definitely worth full price.

[Edit a year later]
The devs have really done a great job supporting this game. They have made improvements to the interface, addressed the balance issues I had with the original release, and made a handful of other improvements and fun additions.

Fort Trumph is definitely an underrated gem!

This game suffers from an extremely unintuitive design and inadequate tutorial/documentation. I typically like this kind of game (Factorio, Prison Architect, etc), but I spent the majority of my first 2 hours trying (and failing) to figure out some of the elements of this game that are obviously critical to success.

Like there has to be a button or a tab or a panel to do XYZ, but there are soooo many buttons, tabs, and panels and none of the ones you'd think seem to have a way to do what you're looking for.

Unfortunate.

This is one of the best PC strategy games of all time. The interface is dated and the cursor can be fiddly since this version runs in a dosbox compatibility window... but it's still worth it. I come back and play a campaign every few years.

Heroes III is my favorite of the series and still holds up 20+ years later. This is still one of the handful of games that I go back and replay every few years.

Defense Grid 2 is a very solid, fairly traditional tower defense game. If you like tower defense, this is definitely worth picking up, even at normal price. It's balanced well enough such that many levels are easy to win (on normal difficulty), but challenging to win with a gold medal. And if you're up for a real challenge, the harder difficulty settings really force you to be on your top strategy!