Recent reviews by Arx Akmarum

If the Talos Principle 2 was only about half as good as the Talos Principle 1, then Road to Elysium is only about half as good as Road to Gehenna. Still better than many other puzzle games, I guess.

I'm still gonna recommend it because puzzles are better than in the main game, and there are plenty of them. But the story is just awful. I *hate* when non-human characters act like humans for no bloody reason.

It's pretty good.

The game is a bit janky, but the story is okay, and the cases are interesting to solve.

It's not as good as the best Ace Attorney games, but it's better than the worst ones for sure.

I do not like Factorio. That is, I do not like *vanilla* Factorio. I did a few runs, quickly finish clearing achievemenets, and that's it. The rest 1900 hours of my playtime I spent doing full overhaul modded runs. These were great.

And of course, modded runs involve a lot of QoL mods. Some of these mods would radically change core game mechanics. For example, I do not like manually placing every single power pole for x amount of hours before I unlock bots. I do not like spending 30% of my time by just mindlessly running between point A and point B. This is not why I play automation games. Wube's greatest achievement in my opinion is adding a robust modding support to the game, so players could shape it to their liking, because the vanilla is committing some serious sins against player's time.

So. Space Age doubled up on every thing I disliked about Factorio and added a few more. I had to force myself to play long enough to get to the space, realized it's not getting better, quit, ate dinner, watched a movie, went back to the game, tried to do more, quit again (this cycle repeated a few times). Then I finally got to another planet and... oh my god. My "favorite" part of the game - the beginning when you have nothing and need to make everything. I'd have to do it again. On every planet. And I needed to launch dozens of rockets to just build my platform (hated that part too, especially because traveling to Gleba destroyed it). Supplying myself with a starter pack would require another few dozens.

This problem is solved by ramping up the production so hard you could easily launch stupid numbers of rockets with automatic requests. In vanilla Factorio this means copypasting the same boring designs again and again with barely any thought involved.

In any case, once I got to the second planet I just quit. I couldn't keep playing, I wasn't having fun, it felt like work.

I'm hoping the modders will once again rise to the challenge and change the game to the better, but sadly, my money went to Wube and not them.

Speaking of money, at $35 it's hilariously overpriced. There are multiple free overhaul mods that add more content. If Space Age was bundled with 2.0 update, I could maybe see it. But at it own it does not stand.

Also, about Wube's no sale policy. It's stupid and hurts both the company and the players. Just saying.

Unironically better than Endwalker.

If I were to rate all ARPGs, I'd genuinely give Last Epoch and Path of Exile the same rating, but for a bit different reasons. The said rating is 8/10. Both are good games, but both lack things that would make them *really* good.

Last Epoch gets minus points for not having a lot of endgame content. Monoliths are fun and all, but they feel too similar to someone like me, who used to face 2-3 different mini-events per map in PoE.
Combat feels great (about as good as PoE), loot and crafting are interesting (not being balanced around trading is a massive win over PoE's), and there are a lot of possibilities for different builds (similar level as PoE).
There are some minor issues that I personally don't really care about, like visual/sound design not being excellent and minors.

Still, the base game is already fantastic, and I'm very excited for the future. It's probably one of two ARPGs that could overtake PoE (the second one is naturally Path of Exile 2, which is going to fix the ungodly mess PoE turned into after a decade of evolving design philosophies).

It's an idle game about watching numbers going up.

I can't talk about it qualities in comparison with other idle games about watching numbers going up. But in comparison with other games it's kinda like drug engineered to make you hooked and afte some time you start realizing that what the ♥♥♥♥ are you doing with your life.

Buying it was a mistake but oh well, I didn't lost too much money or time (since it was mostly running in the background for me).

After 100% the game (excluding a bunch of achievements I don't care about) I can say that The Talos Principle 2 is certainly not as good as the first one. But the first one was a bloody masterpiece so I didn't expected a game on the same level in the first place. I just hoped it would be good enough. And it is good enough.

Puzzles are okay, I'd prefer them to be a bit harder, but that level of difficulty is okay as well.

Story is not okay. I'm not going into spoilers, but ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ the story is not good.

Areas are a way too big and you are moving a way too slow. I spent the entire game with held down run button. It gets really tiring to explore these huge areas to solve some puzzles (mostly stars).

The performance is not great, but playable. I had few crashes (and then a crash reporter popped up just to crash as well) but nothing too annoying. My PC isn't great, though.

Overall I do not think I'd wasted my money or smth, but if I knew what I know now I would've waited for a sale. The game is good, but not even close to how good the first one was.

Its mildly addictive and has amazing mod support. Even when I disagree with certain design decisions, I can find a mod that alleviates the issue.

Also, its the only game I know that gets better performance as the time goes on, instead of the other way around.

The Factory must grow.

This game is all about solving problem. Not problems like "what is beauty?", but practical problems.

What more is that you have to start solving problems long before they actually appear. Running low on algae for that precious oxygen generation? No more coal for energy generators? Suddenly a water reservoir you thought as unemptiable is... empty? Yeah, gotta not just start thinking about the solution when the problem appears, but build the base around the solution from the beginning.

Obviously, you cannot do that if you are just a beginner and know nothing. My first dozen of so colonies were a mess and I pity dupes who had to live in them, but learning in this game is surprisingly fun. Once I realized my "fatal" mistake, I would restart and apply acquired knowledge to the next attempt. And finally, 100 hours in, I managed to launch a rocket in the space. Which is just the beginning, I gather. Have to spend another few hundred hours to make sure.

Its above average. I wasn't bored, the difficulty is okay, locations are nice.

The game isn't a masterpiece, but its okay. Especially when compared to mediocrity of other modern fps.