Recent reviews by Puzzlemint

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Someone arrest Kan Gao for murder because Finding Paradise ♥♥♥♥ing killed me.

Posting an unhelpful, unfunny, positive review

Updating review for the Steam Awards badge.

The english translation is a little rough around the edges, but the story is very good.

One of the best entries in a classic genre that has only recently seen a revival thanks to titles like Legend of Grimrock, and a piece of PC gaming history as one of the first titles to offer support for Windows '95.

Stonekeep offers everything one expects from a classic first-person, grid-based action RPG and more. The setting is interesting and well-fleshed out. The cast is full of wonderful and diverse characters -- fully voice-acted, quite possibly a first for the genre. There's even a nice recipe for muffins hidden in the game's data files.

Some parts of the game have not aged as well as others. Most notably, inventory management leaves a lot to be desired. And the fact that the ending is only about four seconds long is somewhat disappointing.

But if you're looking to immerse yourself in a classic fantasy world, befriending dwarves and dragons, fighting grotesque tentacle monsters, and listening to faeries singing about how stupid dwarves are, Stonekeep is an absolute must-have.

At the time of writing this review, the game is on sale for half-price, which is why I'm comfortable recommending it. Because it feels like it's only half a game.

The story, while good, ends abruptly with very little closure, and even goes out of its way to remind you of all the unresolved plot threads. It feels exactly like "part 1" of a two-part movie, which would be fine if they had, at any point, advertised it as such.

The overwhelming majority of the game takes place on the same two maps, which left me feeling like I never actually left the "starter zone". As a massive fan of the original Deus Ex AND Human Revolution -- both of which sent you all over the world and never stayed too long in one place -- this was a huge disappointment.

The less said about the pointless, tacked-on microtransactions and pointless, tacked-on multiplayer, the better.

BUT, if you can get past all that garbage, there's a really decent game underneath, and it's certainly worth paying half-price for.

But at full-price, this is a definite pass.

https://xkcd.com/483/

I haven't even made it past the prologue yet, and this is already cringe-inducingly deep into the right side of that graph.

I had to stop when I got to the part where my WorningBird told me to destroy the Blots' mindhearts by blowing up their blacknamel tusks.

If you can look past that, the premise seems interesting enough, but I won't bother going any further.

Whoops, I'm over the age of 5, so I can't even register, let alone play.

Wrote this for someone who asked on the forums. Figured I may as well copy/paste it here.

The bad:

UI is slow, clunky, obnoxious to navigate, and all-around one of the worst UIs I've ever seen out of a professional developer.

Repeated in-game advertizements for other Magic products; these were in previous versions, but usually only appeared once at specific points in the campaign; in 2015 I get an ad screen 1 out of every 4 games.

Full game experience doesn't unlock until after finishing 20% of the single-player campaign; even people who paid extra for unlocks specifically to skip the single-player have to deal with that.

Usual technical issues and broken card interactions that we've come to expect from Stainless.

Small number of cards locked behind a paywall; none of them are required, but some of them are quite good. Your collection will never be complete unless you shell out an extra $28.

Two-headed giant game mode removed. The game was nowhere near as popular as its proponents would have you believe, but it was still fun, and the fact that it was removed does suck.

Crappy starter decks; once you finish the tutorial you're stuck with whichever deck you chose until you unlock enough cards to build a better deck.


The good:

Game is far better optimized than previous versions, especially 2014. I can actually watch videos on one monitor and play the game on the other without having the game lag horribly this year.

Full deckbuilding experience with a good variety of cards and possibly viable strategies despite the limited card pool and pay-only cards. Up to 30 slots for custom decks.

Players always get priority to cast spells and activate abilities between first strike combat damage and normal combat damage; in previous versions, this only happened if a triggered ability went off during the first strike damage step.

Much better single-player campaign overall; large variety of opponents, and no stacked decks for the AI this year.

Unlocking cards is light years faster than in previous versions.

Still the cheapest way to enjoy Magic without dipping into the legal grey area of unofficial products like Cockatrice and Magic Workstation.


Overall:

Solid. If they hadn't designed the UI exclusively for iPads with a focus on pretty effects at the expense of functionality, it would definitely be the best version of DotP to date.

As it stands, it's still a good deal for $10.

2013 was better, but it's still decent