Recent reviews by TheCrimsonKing

The game is fun for the first few hours. but quickly burns out due to lack of content and weapon synergies. There clear takes and passes in terms of both weapons and artifacts. The meta progression is as you'd expect but a slog to get through and feels more like content padding rather than an exciting mechanic that makes you powerful the more you invest into it.

The weaponry feels very underwhelming and with a lack of banning, builds are left completely to RNG whether you get something that will help take you to the end or not. Classes take eons to level through and provide access to only new weapons, no other bonuses that would make dedicating time into them more engaging/exciting.

All in all this could be a great game if the devs take time to properly balance both progression and weapon stats.

It's disappointing to see such an underhanded tactic be enforced by a pillar of the game development industry. It's hard not to believe this wasn't a plan from the start as enforcing the linking or creating of a PSN account at this time would have ensure the majority of Hell Divers sales were secured by it's player base having poured well over the 2 hour minimum of Steams return policy. While I might not be able to get my money back I won't be a returning player.

Liberty has prevailed this time. Let this be a reminder that when a game's community let's their voices be heard loud enough AAA publishers even ones as large as Sony will sometimes listen.

I appreciate the concept but not the delivery. The game is fun for the most part, I was able to squeeze about 8 hours out of it myself before becoming both annoyed and bored with the gratingly slow pace of the game. And by the time of writing this the game only stands at 0.1.2 I can see a lot of glitter under the grime. My advice to the devs is to focus on your QoL features and your UI. as it currently stands everything is pretty disjointed, hard to navigate, and even harder to read.

First, placing identifiers next to each of the sprites would drastically improve the overall readability of the game. Second, I would possibly consider health bars for both warriors and creatures. Take the QoL elements from the games Phoenix Hope is clearly using as a reference and run with them. The works already been done so definitely use it to your advantage. Lastly, just polish. There were a number of bugs that I ran into that just began to pile up and grate on my nerves ultimately burning me out for now. small fringe cases like the AI not updating their priorities before needing to slowly wall all the way back to their campfire in the mines for instance to then turn around and walk all the way back down the mine to start hitting rock once more.

These are just a few things that stood out to me with a few hours in. I'll be keeping an eye out for it's progress and will be changing my recommendation in the future if some QoL is implemented.

The game has a very solid foundation. I can see where improvements can be made here and there but as a starting out EA title this comes out head and shoulders above many of the other EAs I have backed. The developers are very interactive with their followers on their discord server and are very receptive to feedback. I think in a few months with some well though out patches this game will really shine. As for now I believe there is enough content to get a good 5 to 6 hours of enjoyment out of it before hitting a bit of a plateau. The building systems already in place do lend for further hours of enjoyment if outside of the initial 5 to 6 hours of exploring new content.

Vectromirror 0 looks to be an ambitious project taking heavy elements of fast paced movement and traversal from games sch as Mirror's Edge and Dishonored. Although a little rough around the edges at the moment with some dedication and focus I can see this turning out to be a very enjoyable experience. For those of you out there that enjoy speed based games definitely give it a shot.

I am a long time player of Warband and have waited eagerly for this game to come out. Here is a breakdown of some of the major elements of the games for those looking to purchase it.

Visually: Bannerlord is leaps and bounds more advanced graphically compared to its predecessor. To begin with all characters have had a much needed face lift. Textures have been brought into this generation of graphics and models overall look much cleaners with less noticeable edges. Keep in mind Bannerlord and all Mount & Blade games for that matter are very mechanically driven games and as such the graphics won't compete with the cutting edges games out there to date.

Gameplay Mechanics: Although still in early access Bannerlord has improved on the base mechanics that players of Mount & Blade games expect. Sieges for one have been completely overhauled breathing much more life into a base level mechanic from Warband. Another mechanic that has seen a large improvement and will undoubtedly see more improvements in the future are the quests. Bannerlord has a moderate pool of quests that the player can run through to gain favor, honor and currency from a number of notable figures within the villages and cities. That brings me to my next mechanic. Recruitment has undergone a complete make over. Gone are the days of mass recruiting 10s of villagers just because you had a high CHR stat. Now a more reasonable and realistic mechanic has taken its place. In order to recruit from villages and cities and have access to their entire pool of recruits, you need to build their trust. As of now like previously mentioned this is done through completing quests for them.

Audio: The audio within Bannerlord is a noticeable improvement over Warband. The most prominent sound effects that players will most likely pick up on are the hooves of mounts. They now have weight to them on top of having a number of sounds depending on the terrain you are currently walking on. Battle audio has also had love placed into it as the shield, weapon and armor SFX also stand at higher fidelities.

Overall: Bannerlord is a very well put together game. and with daily hot fixes TaleWorlds is ensuring that it is brought to a stable place before proceeding with the implementation of new features which I can appreciate. The only thing lacking which will be implemented in the future I can only presume is diplomacy. In its current state Bannerlord does lack the diplomacy with other factions that Warband had. Going forward however I see a more in depth system taking its place based on the other facets of the came that are currently built. Looking forward to watching it progress and see how it grows.

I have to say this is one of the best game dev tycoon titles I've played to date. Unfortunately in it's current state I can't recommend it to others. The reasoning for this simply boils down to the overall balance of the game. in the 2 hours I've played (and the many more I will play in the future) I have not been able to get any semblance of a structure under my feet. At times it seemed as though genres I dedicated my studio to, genres that after nearly a decade of development in still caught them a net 50/60 for a score. Any time I snagged a low 70 or low 80 it almost felt like blind luck rather that my own base knowledge of how game genres work in their simplest form. With that said I am happily surprised at the stability of the program and how much potential this looks to have. It is currently in is infancy and with enough attention and care it should turn out to be a very well crafted dev tycoon experience. I'll be keeping my eye on development and will gladly change my recommendation if balancing or some form of progression structure is built that doesn't immediately sweep the players feet out from under them when they happen to have to average scored titles.

Edit: After investing more time within the game I would have to say that the dev clearly has a love for this game. It is made evident with the constant updates and public outreach to improve upon the game. I would still stand by my previous statement that there still is some balancing that needs to be done towards the early-mid to mid game as 2 or more off games can cost you the entire game. By with that aside the constant bug fixes and small quality of life updates have already improved the overall gameplay as it stands. I would recommend this to anyone looking to play a "game dev tycoon" game that has much more depth to it than it's predecessors. With the ability to open more than one studio, compete with other studios and even interact with them the game has a ton to offer already and only looks to get better from here onwards!

This is more or less a first impressions review so take what comes with a grain of salt. This is very much a souls/borne game with a much much higher difficulty curve in my opinion. The longer I've played it the more I have wanted to return to the souls series. currently some bosses feel a little unbalanced in terms of outright damage output as well as attack speeds and utility escapes that they have at their disposal. Don't get me wrong I like this genre of game but there'st just something that feels more polished about the souls series as well as the borne title. And this game comes from the creator of both of those. Currently a pros and cons view from my perspective breaks down as follows:

Pros:
- Fast paced combat with fluid attack animations
- Beautifully crafted environments and detailed character models
- A story that finally isn't hidden under 4,000 item descriptions
- Refreshingly new game play that allows the player a certain degree of verticality in and out of combat

Cons:
- A number of early and mid game bosses are heavily defended up to and even during their fight creating a sense of artificial difficulty due to you needing to not only worry about a hulking beast but his/her own mini army breathing down your neck
- Bosses are much more unforgiving dealing killing blows from 75 - 85% health values (this is without any health upgrades)
- Early skill tree perks did little to enhance the character as it already stands on the power fantasy side of being a Shinobi
- Healing gourd heals much less than expected coming from your main source of healing allowing for less player sustainability
- I-frames are hideously underused, resurrection (the players partial retry option) can see you killed more often then not if fighting 1 on 1 with a boss
- Certain kill animations that the player can perform leave them open to attack as well, which in turn punishes the player for doing them in the first place

I will personally continue to play the title all the way through due to having a long running history with this genre of game. That being said, those looking to get into these types of games I would suggest starting with the Dark Souls series as this just seems to be leaps and bounds more difficult than its predecessors

I wish there were an indifferent choice rather than just a yes or no when writing reviews. I am enjoying the game and will most likely continue on through the game. However a few of my major concerns deal with the overall polish of the game especially with it having been out for a full year. First off is my gripe with the lock on. When you get to close to an enemy you can actually get stuck and your strafing seems to become diabled, I have died plenty of times due to this. Another major issue that I have run into as well as seen in other reviews is the fact then when enemies rush you, you will shoot right through them dealing no damage. I have also run into a variety of UI issues that either force me to return to the main menu and then get back into the game, or out right exit the application, haveing to relaunch it to continue playing.
The UI issues that I have run deal with:
- ammo count becoming frozen
- Loadout slots overlapping one another when trying to equip weapons
- Scrapping becoming unavailable despite having the weapon unlocked for scrapping purposes
- No longer being able to select any but the current gun you have equipped in the load out screen

Other issues I have run into deal with the combat and these are:
- No longer being able to fire forcing the player to swap guns and then back to the original to be able to continue firing
- Character positon becoming locked when player is locked onto an enemy that either the player gets to close to or the enemy gets to close to the player
- Enemies attacks tracking player position after animation is playered or during animation (I.E. Enemy leap strikes and player dodges out of the way. Enemy then while mid air does a 180 turn and lands the strike on the player)

Other issues are minor and are more or less preferences that I would have liked to have seen such as item use cancelation with a dodge or other small quality of life improvements.

I will keep my eye on the future development of the game, I would really like to be able to recommend this game to fans of other souls games as it is clear this games had a lot of influence from others inthe genre. If any of the aformentioned issued end up being resolved I will change the recommendation.

Edit: Having kept my eye on the development of the game for a while now I would like to come back to this review and change my recommendation. I did thoroughly enjoy myself while playing through this. In fact I played through one save nearly 5 times.

I'm thoroughly satisfied with my purchase of this software. It's easy to use, requires little to no background knowledge and allows you to dive right into spriting. Great job guys!!