Recent reviews by Solinarius

• Fantastic mod support
• Exhilarating, beautiful fighting arenas
• Always-active physics for actors and weapons
• Lite progression mode with a steady build up
• Tasteful, organic world-building and power escalation
• Cozey "home" island to explore, oogle, and practice in

• Weak, wooden vanilla NPCs
• Heavy-handed power fantasy
• Limited arena and dungeon content
• No half-swording with vanilla weapons (get the half-sword mod)
• Semi-embarassing, fantasy, asymmetric armor designs
• No two-handed support for NPCs - grumble grumble


This is actually kind of sad.

Blade & Sorcery's roots as a Dark Messiah-inspired power fantasy have served it well. However, it's Warpfrog's response to community feedback and pushing the standards of quality—time after time—that make the gameplay and presentation of this formerly very simple medieval arena fighter a cut above the rest. Another major advantage is the tailored physics provided by Unity's collision engine and Warpfrog's Thunder Road.

The amalgamation of the physics engine with Thunder Road allows for surprisingly accurate weapon binding when parry recoil is disabled. It is the game's most novel, subtle yet substantial luxury; something which every other similar title can only mock through all-too-typical animation chains.

As a connoisseur of wizards and such, I find the magic simply delightful! The elemental spells are diverse, specialized, and grounded with satisfying physics. There are plenty of spells which are easily overkill given the player's opposition, but they feel so good I can't help but not care. They provide a mage experience that, so far, could only be found in flat gaming. What's more, the telekinesis is easily the best VR implementation thus far. It is the most basic and intuitive sorcery; instantly accessable and can be used in utility, offense, or defense. There is also other mind magic which slows time, body magic that greatly magnifies player strength, and various special techniques in all branches.


Challenging NPCs are the one community request Warpfrog refrained from delivering despite all the animation upgrades and new abilities. Sure, Dark Messiah was a power fantasy and its NPCs were pathetic, but imagine being in that game with VR freedom of movement, instant telekinesis, gravity spells, staff magic, grappling, and demi-god strength!

If you can't already see the problem here: physics, the feature that drives the exquisite sword-on-sword highs (and insufferable performance lows), is given a back seat! Even if you disable parry recoil, you'll find NPCs inadequate and clumsy in melee. It is entirely up to the player (and mods) to make melee interesting. It's no exaggeration that well over 90% of players will not engage in realistic enactments, much less even consider it. This fantastic niche that B&S—and B&S alone—holds in all the wide world of gaming will forever be passed over.


Crystal Hunt is a modest example of the natural evolution of the RPG; a roleplaying experience stripped of most of its ingrained, gamey features. An RPG need not have quantified progression and quantified gear, because all that really does is gum up the works with artificial gameplay (and MATH for crying out loud)! Mind you, there is gamey progression, but it's tastefully incorporated in the virtual world. It's also entirely devoid of dull numeric/attribute upgrades. As Warpfrog advertises: every choice is a new feature!

You can begin as a nearly powerless fledgling. No matter your choice, you will have minor telekinesis and enhanced strength. The experience would be quite hardcore without them because climbing and platforming are a big part of exploring the world of Byeth. You'll scale rockfaces, castle walls, and plunge into caves, ruins, and grottos. The Dalgarian locations have huge, stunning natural scenes and scenery, and are filled with unique architecture. There is simply nothing else like it in VR!

As you explore, you can piece together a narrative and/or gather objects of value. It is unfortunate you can't keep equipment taken from raids. After all, you only have four slots to stash weapons. Nevertheless, it won't be long before you can buy everything in Crystal Hunt's shop. A save can be continued for as long as you like; until you are rich, power overwhelming, or simply bored. 1.0 added a lot, but it's still up to the player to make their own fun.


What are difficulty settings even for?

When I look at Blade & Sorcery, I see how VR has such a long way to go. It takes an indie developer with a longterm passion project to get something in VR comparable to the quality of the greats of flat gaming. Even then, these games are rough around the edges and/or niche, and Blade & Sorcery is no exception.

Warpfrog's realization of Byeth is absolutely beautiful and absolutely satisfying. The final update has left the game in a very pleasant state, but there is a challenge factor very ripe for exploration, which is sorely begging to make acquaintance in its gameplay, but even with mods, you will not acquire it. To find good sport, you must be willing to work with and learn the physics and engage with NPCs in good faith. Warpfrog is more than capable of making far better NPCs than they gave us. Players have already done so with mods.

It's clear that working with Thunder Road's spaghetti code is tiresome, and the standard of quality has made Warpfrog shy about cutting corners to make the game more challenging. This ultimately lead to two-handed weapon support for NPCs being a low priority, to being cut entirely. This decision was a huge mistake because one: polearms are the most intuitive, advantageous weapons you can give an inept, filthy peasant or—perhaps—brainlet AI. Two: it would have brought the most value and diversity to the "blade" side of the game than any other feature. Lastly, who can deny the sheer novelty of longsword vs. longsword!?

One can only hope that Thunder Road 2 will solve the dilemmas should Warpfrog decide to port B&S or make a sequel to it.

I'm convinced this is a social experiment with how the fundamentals of gameplay and content get scrambled. It's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ psychotic.

Arrowhead has such a great game beyond:
• The absolutely ♥♥♥♥, obsoleted engine
• The bipolar decisions and mantras that don't represent the reality
   of the actual game and its gameplay
   - (which makes the dev team look like a beheaded chicken)
• The not testing jack before releasing it
• The mixing up old revisions with new revisions which releases
   previously fixed bugs back into the wild
• The smooth FPS you get one time vs. the subpar FPS you get on
   a different seed of the same map another time
• The collateral damage from lazy fixes or balancing measures that
   ruin the most unique equipment players have received
• The Jerking around of the playerbase by adapting the game to
   ruin prior established player tactics because the devs don't like
   players doing things
• The modifiers, of which, negatively and arbitrarily meddle with
   stratagems, the most important and most fun feature in the
   game
   - Permanent debuffs to stratagems without a check and balance,
      such as objectives disabling these modifiers once completed,
      is just half-assed


That is the question.

I will cope by playing on difficulty 7 and by giving Helldivers 2, my beloved, a thumbs down until she also takes her pills.

• Huge maps
• Hilarious dialog/voice commands
• MASSIVE amount of level content
• Diverse armory of weapons, gear, and vehicles
• Great melee and ranged action with four bombastic, anime-esque
  soldier classes

• Wild balance
• Too much "hilarious" dialog
• Excessive monologues ON TOP of dialog
• Many of the weapons and vehicles are duds
• MASSIVE and disorganized weapon selection due to duplicates
• Extremely compounded grind with obsessive-compulsive
  progression features


The EDF series is a strangely delightful mashup of genres and generational gameplay. It's old-school, with massed swarms of enemies and gamey weapons, but there are modern adaptions such as limb and armor destruction. This in tandem with the awesome feel of the weapons provides massive satisfaction to slaughtering big, bad aliens! With dense, destructable cities, the gameplay loop adds up to a winning, brilliant palette! Those moments when you're frantically blasting a swarm of giant bugs, froggies, or stompy robots are just too good to miss out on, especially in co-op!


So I don't have to repeat myself in the following chapters: all classes have a large number of useless weapons. However, some are only useless until reaching higher grades. All weapons start at one star. Their upgrades end at ten stars. Some low level variants are useless, while high level variants are superior; vice versa.


Hot take: Armored Core's melee is mainstream, sweaty, boyhood, mall ninja fantasy.

Fencer is no frills. Grizzled. Pure badassitude. Also, unintuitive and entirely up to you to make it work! In the beginning, you'll be like Tom Cruise scrambling to find the safety on his exosuit. It's no accident the Fencer's power armor is an exosuit rather than a mech. Eventually, you'll be shooting across the battlefield 5x faster than a Wing Diver, unloading massive payloads and/or eviscerating, perforating, or pulverizing absolutely everything that stands, crawls, or flies.

Fencer's weapons typically have realistic ballistics (unlike Armored Core...). The cluster mortar makes no sense, but each weapon's payload has decent physics. The best part is they're affected by your momentum! I think the cream of the crop is the High Altitude Launcher; exactly replicating mechanics of a real handheld SSM launcher.

The oddest thing about Fencer is mobility options are slaved to specific weapon choices. To gain access to horizontal and vertical thrusters (Dash and Booster) simultaneously, you need to pair a melee weapon with a short(er) range gun. Your second weapon set can be whatever you want.

Two massive QoL changes needed in a new EDF to give us the Fencer we all deserve:
1.) Utilities need to be their own, always available features.
2.) There needs to be an option to use all four weapons as one set!


Boil 'em, mash 'em, stick 'em in a stew!

Ranger's got practical, boring small arms (he carries 2). What can you expect? Ranger's just a dime-a-dozen jarhead. That said, he does have some exciting, more exotic options for shotguns and launchers that can rival Fencer's in the right situation. As for mobility, Ranger gets the fastest vehicles in the form of an armed motorcycle. However, the meta is to choose support equipment over a vehicle to help you in actual combat.

I say do whatever you like! A vehicle can help you get you where you're needed in a reasonable time, and you can be the team's crate looter and/or mobile defibrillator. Just running everywhere is not a good option, but your only choices are that or a Kawasaki! Not to mention, sprinting zooms the camera on Ranger's ass. What game did they take inspiration from when deciding on this awkward viewpoint that blocks the view...


Do you need to be a little sophisticated to appreciate the Air Raider's complex flavor? Perhaps!

Polar opposite to the Ranger, you need some good thinking here as to what you want to do on a map. Air Raiders play kind of like a Helldiver; powerful, diverse air support, vehicle drops, and small but effective field equipment. You can even go entirely without a gun, and that's perfectly fine because Air Raider weapons are extremely specialized and cannot deal with swarms.

Until you get a vehicle, you're better off away from the action. Vehicles range from light tanks to choppers to gigantic, stompy, punch robots. In order to call a drop, you need to accrue points from (anyone's) kills. This exerts a metagame: keep track of your vehicle drop graphic and call the drop ASAP or you'll eat those points and limit your vehicles on a map.

Field equipment includes explosive piton rifles, turrets, support constructs, and supportive boosts. These allow Air Raiders to operate viably underground, but nothing stops you from bringing any of it to a surface map.


Taking flight is real eats and treats, but I dare say there is such a thing as too many sweets.

Flight is a Wing Diver's main feature, with pretty, dazzling laser weapons a close second. Contrary to what her arsenal may suggest, close-quarters is her specialty because the most powerful laser (Phalanx) has an effective range of around 40 meters, and it is devastating at <20m. Other competitive weapons boast full damage as far as 160m, but it's best to consider them as secondary. In fact, everything else should be considered as support to deal with special threats or situations.

I'm very disappointed with how locked in the competitive choices are. Just like a straight diet of candy, too much skirmishing leaves me a tad disgusted. I enjoyed sniping with lightning, area control through static weapons, and bombing with EDF 4's Wing Diver.


Most missions have excessive and insanely incoherent "radio chatter." It's like an extra-dimensional alien wrote it all. On the "radio" (or whatever it is), you have a direct line to mission command, a world government board with "scientific" advisors, extremely unprofessional soldier commentary from the battlefield, TV broadcasts from an anchor, and other odd things that don't belong on a soldier's communications channel. The amount of ex machina and exposition vomited onto the radio is mind blowing and worthy of a permanent Joker smile or—perhaps—a permanent deadpan facepalm.

Special mentions to how the radio partially mutes the game volume! In fact, the radio intrudes on the experience through half the gameplay on every level. Sigh...


If you like the action and you stick around long enough, its charm can rub off very positively! In general, EDF is a good example of how slaving gameplay to itemization can utterly ruin playability. It creates a grotesque metagame for you to work around instead of just letting you enjoy the action! In EDF's case, it leads to the absolutely mind-numbing collection of crates from enemies being a huge part of the game. It's also harder than it should be to line up an experience in which you don't annihilate your enemies instantly and nor do they annihilate you instantly.

The variety of equipment is outstanding, though the itemization of it all is massively overblown! It's an arcade game, not a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ MMO!! Not only is there obscene grinding to get all the weapons, there's often multiple variants ranging from level 1 to 120 and every weapon's stats may be randomly upgraded after mission completion. SHEESH!!!!

My advice is to give Sandlot/D3 Publisher the middle finger, then speed things up with a certain tool while farming certain missions to get all the armor you need in a relatively short time. Maybe farm a nice assortment of weapons too because the grind is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥! The early and even middle period can be awkward for all classes.

Regardless, EDF boasts a one-of-a-kind horde shooter experience.

The fact the devs used the word "battlemage" means their heads were probably up their own asses from the start.

Lichdom is but a mediocre, glorified FPS hyped by Xaviant as having the best and prettiest magic system to date. However, Lichdom is exactly everything that's wrong with the majority of magic and mages in games! It's lazy! There's no reality (physics) behind the spells and you are limited to a very small amount of active spells. Lastly, Dark Messiah already exists, so what is Lichdom trying to prove?


When setting out to make an awesome mage of high fantasy, they must first be grounded with nothing short of omniversatility! Whether it's an MMORPG or Arrowhead's good, old Magicka, this novel concept is prevalent in games that feature proper mages. However, to make magic awesome, spells need to be driven with equally awesome physics or subvert physics with something more intrigueing. Lichdom applies absolutely none of these essential elements, and so it's no wonder the magic is so pedestrian.

The only thing Lichdom got right was the flashy aesthetics. Spell crafting was interesting for the time, but today, Lichdom has stiff competition with dozens of roguelites with similar features; Noita being the finest example. In any case, who cares if you can craft spells when only three are usable at a time and they're utterly bland. Really, the whole experience suffers much of that same issue and is void of intrigue because of all the limitations. The only challenge enemies offer is through gear checks (tedium). The best the campaign can do is provide a minimum viable sequence while also wasting your time with minimum viable storytelling.

If Lichdom were made today for VR and Xaviant smartly borrowed a lot more from much better games, they could have earned the hype they craved so wantingly.


I played through the entire game on release.

Seemingly great action platformer roguelite. Highly recommended if you're really into the first two of that combo. Special mentions to the controls; they are simply pristine. Everything in the arsenal is also quite enjoyable, but my favorite thing is the slick, badass aerials and the guns! Not much else to say because I refunded; can't give this one the time it deserves.

After nearly four years, I finally found the urban missions the game was missing.

Thumbs down to make up for the thumbs up I gave MW5.

What if I told you MechWarrior's big, stompy robots are supposed to have human-like articulation and athleticism rather than just the clumsy tank controls featured in every game.

Could you imagine if one of those incredible, passionate indie developers out there had gotten their hands on the MechWarrior license? We could have an actual sim experience where master pilots can do cartwheels, tumbles, and legit martial arts with their mechs! Where—instead of glorified deathmatches—we mostly fight skirmishes. Where opposing pilots actually give a ♥♥♥♥ about their mechs and retreat or surrender when their lance takes too much damage. I know blowing things up is more fun, but thoughtful immersion is what makes a good sim. With 80% of scenarios being a skirmish, you could save the high stakes for when you encounter malefic/suicidal forces (like pirates), go on a raid, or join a military campaign, and it would be so much more epic!

If you scroll through MW5's nexusmods page, you can have a small taste of that fantasy of modern, big-stompy-robot action with better controls and just a little more passion in it. Honestly, this MechWarrior is about as bland as your typical Elder's Scrolls experience. It needs so much attention from modders, but the game has put numerous beautiful mods in an early grave because of major updates and because Unreal's SDK is a major pain in the ass!


I salute you if you—without doubling over or showing contempt—can get through the intro cinematic wherein shots of "expressive" robots synchronized with mediocre, overacted voice-overs are meant to convey drama and connect the audience to the characters.

It's not just the plot that's mediocre. It really feels like some kind of Epcot Center slow-coaster, and what you're seeing doesn't really match up with how things should be.

Here's big, stompy robots on a battlefield in the BattleTech universe! Well, OK. but did you see how I laid waste to a plethora of mechs, tanks, and turrets with my one lance? See, in-universe, even light mechs are a precious resource. Later on, you'll take on heavies and assaults like they're a dime-a-dozen. Also, where's the infantry? Why do I only have a grand total of four commands with which to control my lance?

Here's the wartorn Inner Sphere along with all the Great Houses and everything in between, and you can travel anywhere! OK, but why do any factions hate me for doing my job well as a mercenary?

Here's a load of randomly generated biomes and battling scenarios! OK, blowing mechs and structures up is fun, but everything basically feels the same because the AI is mediocre and missions are assembled with the bare minimum of content. For instance, why is this mountain valley called a beachhead? Why do we get briefed after going planetside? Why do I always have to destroy everything? Why can't I get more than one dropship lategame so I can do 12 vs. 12? WHERE THE HELL ARE THE GIANT CITIES FOR ME TO GET INTO AN EPIC URBAN BRAWL?!

I can go on like that for days! Instead, let me touch on the Mechlab. Most people will probably want full customization of their mechs as if everything was an OmniMech. The gameplay (and in-lore) balance is already busted and minimalist, so why not let people enjoy making whatever they want? Well, once the player starts rolling out custom 50-100 million C-Bill mech builds, the already broken balance will just be completely dead because there's no way PGI was going put in the time to add hundreds of custom variants that can challenge such a player.

/SIGH


I won't even cover how disgusting the laser beams and other effects are...

To preface this, there are some nice moments in those biomes with grassy fields, trees, and a warm sun. However, I played MW5 on release back when I had a weak GPU. Boy, I need thicker nostalgia glasses because I find the environments and the doodads kinda hideous now that my PC can render them flawlessly. I'm sure it's due to some compromise with MW5's procgen, but I feel Deep Rock Galactic's voxel biomes are considerably more immersive and even quite gorgeous.

Possibly the worst part of all this is the distance culling and the fog. In a game where very long-range engagements should be a major feature, there's basically minimal support for it. This—and the poor AI—is why there's no advanced zoom. I know this for a fact because I use the Advanced Zoom mod; you just don't wanna go there... (an added bonus is night vision often doesn't work at long ranges due to rendering quirks!)






<insert the usual stuff about action and juice>


Here's my impression of Piranha's approach to game development...
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I put everything I needed to in here... this is done.
$$$$$
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$

I'm only speaking of the player equipment in regards to what's "grimey!"

I was actually very surprised at Remnant's content quality. Even the disgusting swamp biome has its own natural beauty to admire rather than being yet another dreary, desaturated eyesore you find in games like Dark Souls or Vermintide. The artists clearly spent a good deal of time to make your peepers happy. Enemies also look first-rate and are fun to fight in the typical souls-like manner.

As for the player: YUCK! Just a yucky, icky, poor unfortunate soul in pain and in need of a bath! The amount of mismatch is beyond absurd. I can accept this because the setting is post-apocalyptic, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. You can acquire gear that is less grimey or even pristine. However, certain weapon mods can still take guns back into the realm of the fugly.

I didn't really have a big problem with the equips until I found abilities that seem ripped straight from D&D. Don't get me wrong, this stuff is cool. But here I am in Gun Souls slotting abilities into my guns, and my character casts these abilities like spells; and they look like spells! There's armor that sort of makes you look like a mage. But you can't be a mage. You have to be like every other frankensteined, Mad Maxian nightmare toting Waterworld props because your abilities are jerry-rigged to your guns. Despite encountering a good number of enemies which I would describe as a mage (occult wardrobe, carrying staves, trinkets, and magic spells), nope, you are Looter-Shooter McGee I̅X̅CMXCIX and must use guns!!


I still like Remnant and I think it's a great souls-like; one of the few with a hard focus on guns. There's decent variety there and in the special attacks guns can do. However, a lot of specialized builds are simply too tight. Many armors and rings are ultimately just damage boosters with silly rules you have to follow to get the boost. This doesn't leave much room for something like—say—a speedy melee fighter. You have to give up both ring slots for just movement bonuses because none of the armors or amulets have them.

Traits are a rather large missed opportunity because they could have enabled much more fun specializations by letting you double or triple boost traits you really needed. Eventually, you can max every single one, so they're ultimately nothing special.

Despite the above, there is enough variety, specializations, and outfits to make a good number of cool, creative builds. With that, dozens of fantastic bosses to encounter, and lite dungeon crawling, there's potentially great replay value if action is your juice!

No, I'm a hairy wizard.

"crourb" -a demented sheople