Recent reviews by The Bunton Scrungler

An extremely charming and unique text-based kingdom builder with remarkable depth and charming ASCII art. A real diamond in the rough and I'm glad that the dev finally seems to be getting some recognition for it.

Distractingly bad netcode makes gunplay feel incredibly delayed, and the monetization is always in your face. A lot of the issues with the game can be made better by subscribing to a monthly service, which feels incredibly scummy. They broke the game and charge people who paid full price in order to fix the issues. Don't let the playtime fool you, I've tried it on gamepass and bethnet before with the same issues.

With over 1000 hours of new content including elevators, jumping, and counting to 30 trillion, the Stanley Parable is back and better than ever, but the Broom Closet ending was still my favorite!

Survivors of the Void is a DLC that adds a lot of excellent content, with a few questionable balance changes included in the patch that came alongside it. I highly recommend it for its content design and changes that liven up the base game, though the simulacrum mode is a monotonous horde mode that isn't worth the time spent on it.

The new void items are all extremely interesting and unique, and make for some interesting build variety and trade offs, though some are probably slightly overtuned at the moment. The regular items are also a welcome breath of fresh air for returning players, generally being more niche than their base game counterparts and making for a deeper experience overall, allowing for a lot more build variety over the course of a normal run. Roguelites like Risk of Rain 2 live or die off of their item pools, and the changes made here make the average run much more diverse, with more meaningful choices between items than in the base game, where item design was generally more straightforward and raw stat upgrades made up a larger portion of the pool.

The survivors added by the DLC are both fun and worth playing, though not equal in polish. The Railgunner is a very straightforward and strong survivor, providing a unique new playstyle that seems to have a surprisingly high skill ceiling and decent mobility. The Void Fiend is an interesting departure from Hopoo's general design philosophy, and is the most mechanically complex survivor added so far. It has an interesting skill set, but doesn't seem to be tuned properly as picking up any healing items breaks the character's main mechanic, preventing the corruption meter from ticking up even when at max health. This means that in most runs, you're stuck with half a survivor. Given that Hopoo didn't add alternate skills to this survivor due to the added complexity of the transformation, the Void Fiend is a disappointment that needs a desperate balance pass, though it's conceptually unique and definitely not a lost cause.

Stages in Risk of Rain 2 are complex and difficult to evaluate without extensive play, but the new stages are visually appealing and a lot of fun in my (limited) experience. Once again, they appear to be a significant departure from Hopoo's previous design philosophy, being more intricate than their counterparts at the same level. It's too early to evaluate whether this novelty will wear thin, but I've enjoyed them thus far. The new enemies added are also a nice change of pace and integrate well with the base game, though they clash visually as most have a subtly different art style than the original enemies.

Overall, the DLC adds an excellent amount of content for its 15 dollar asking price (though I bought it for 10 due to the release discount). If you're an experienced player, the new items and mechanics make for a refreshing experience and can give you dozens or hundreds of hours of fresh gameplay. While the amount of new content isn't as overwhelming as something like The Binding of Isaac's Repentance expansion last year, it's an excellent expansion for the price point despite its flaws. For new players, I'd still recommend the expansion as the content included is excellent, but I believe the DLC would be best appreciated by those already familiar with the base game, as the new content is generally less straightforward for beginners and it's easier to make a "bad" item choice than in the vanilla game.

I just like lampposts

The new mission trees in Africa are all really fun and add a lot of flavor. Songhai makes you really feel like a rising power dealing with the initial network of alliances and going on to consolidate West Africa, Mali is in a perpetual crisis but maintains the potential it once had as the richest nation in the world, and Ajuuran is a unique trade-oriented theocracy that starts relatively poor but can grow immensely wealthy. Each country has a good amount of events which add additional flavor, and for 10 dollars you get easily dozens or hundreds of hours of new content.

A lot of the negative reviews are focused on issues like the increased aggressive expansion for personal unions in Europe, but those aren't relevant to the DLC and are due to changes to the base game. If you're looking to try out an underappreciated region, EU4: Origins is an excellent immersion pack that does everything it set out to do.

The slap city sequel we deserved, best movement of any platform fighter hands down.

A phenomenal JRPG that synthesizes the formulas of the Persona series and traditional, epic JRPGs in a way that brings out the strengths of both. For a game this long, the pacing is fabulous and I don't feel like the game ever wasted my time.

The writing is good, though leans on a few cliches from time to time, and the characters all have satisfying arcs. The combat system initially felt fine, but grew on me considerably as the game went on. As an impatient gamer, the turbo mode went a really long way in making this game feel great. It lets you speed up the slower parts of the game, like standard combat encounters, cutscenes, and moving around the map, without sacrificing pacing or requiring you to skip dialogue. This went a long way towards minimizing the frustrations that can normally build up over a really long RPG, and kept it feeling fast-paced and fresh.

I've really enjoyed this DLC so far, and highly recommend it. Career mode is an excellent addition that fits the game much better than the original campaign, complementing the gameplay loop by focusing on the mercenary management aspect of the game.

The new missions are really enjoyable, and beachheads are intense and sometimes really difficult. I haven't gotten the chance to unlock many of the new mechs yet, but the ones I've unlocked so far have been a lot of fun. Airstrikes are also a nice tactical option, and can quickly turn the tide of an unfavorable engagement.

It's definitely not perfect, however. While I enjoy the permanent progression the Cantina perk system provides, the Cantina missions are pretty much Skyrim-style radiant quests, and could have benefited from a more interesting design. The inability to customize the commander's portrait and name in Career mode, despite his origin being irrelevant to the plot, is a minor issue, but one that gets in the way of role-playing in an otherwise freeform and sandbox-oriented mode. It'd be nice to be able to RP a character from one of the starting regions, with a background that fits that origin.

A solid AA mech sim. It's not perfect, and it's definitely shallow in some places, but the combat is fun and mercenary company management is a fun and replayable gameplay loop. Not worth it at the full 60 it launched at, but for 30 it's a great deal. Highly recommended along with the Heroes of the Inner Sphere DLC which adds a career mode that lets the gameplay loop shine much more than in the original campaign.