Recent reviews by Armani

9/10, the setting especially was fun as I’m a huge 40k fan. Spoilers ahead, you’ve been warned. In this game I’ve:

- Started as a noble who dabbles in arson.
- Was kidnapped by a polite man.
- Polite man turns out to be a traitor to humanity.
- Ship suddenly on fire.
- Meet random people who decide if they’re gonna die, it’ll be for an arsonist.
- Unwilling to let them down, I practice arsonry.
- Arson unsurprisingly good against heretics.
- Get made effectively a king of a space empire by default.
- First act as space king is to exterminatus a planet.
- Best bro tells me I need to fix some planets that I own, trusting in my flawless one planet track record.
- Fly to a whole bunch of different planets. Settle their problems with ye’olde fistecuffs instead of just orbital striking them.
- Turns out, when in doubt, arson is a winning strategy.
- Acquire every skill available to arsonists. Move on to the logical next step: getting a medical degree.
- While flying around I make friends.
- First friend obviously is space bro, the ultimate wing man.
- Second friend is yandere assassin, who I romance because I was not given a different choice.
- Seriously, the non-romance choices for the space assassin are genuinely awful.
- Third friend is hot sister, who loves kids and the emperor.
- Sadly, she does not love me.
- Fourth friend is Mr. Roboto, who is weirdly aggressive about people touching things.
- Fifth friend is racist elf, who joins because leaving her behind isn’t an option.
- Sixth friend is an eye lady, whose emotions can trigger a mobile orgy or mass murder.
- Other friends join, and unless required never leave the ship.
- Skip forward 30 hours.
- I, the great space king, have conquered like 5 planets.
- Despite having millions of subjects, I still do fetch quests for randos I meet on the street.
- Learn that God is really my thing.
- Become very religious.
- Rename my ship the 21 Jump Street. Settle every space encounter with violence.
- Clear every trap in the game by having space bro tank them head on, then saying loudly “you good bro?”.
- Somehow, this works for the entire game.
- Accuse literally everyone I disagree with of being a heretic. Immediately kill those people. Get more religion points.
- Was genuinely not expecting this degree of realism.
- In a rare act of non-religious sentiment, agree to help racist elf.
- Get sent to Space hell.
- Become psychotically religious.
- Meet racist elf in an alley.
- Return her body to the streets.
- Start introducing every alien, mutant, and heretic in the sector to my good friend, Mr. Flamenwerfer.
- Turns out, arson is still remarkably good against heretics.
- Meet up with the inquisitor.
- He asks me to declare a crusade.
- Start screaming “For the God Emperor” and proceed to level a planet.
- Find out while on that planet that the inquisitor may possibly be a heretic.
- The thought of a heretic existing on the same plane of existence as me physically sickens me.
- Spend hours acquiring the best guns and flamenwerfers that exists in the game.
- Tell my ship full of insane fanatics we’re going to kill everyone in a specific chunk of space.
- Mad lads are fully on board.
- Proceed to fly through alien gizmo into said region of space.
- Level everything to the ground.
- Start reading through the 10 pages of ending slides.
- Turns out, being an insane fanatic was the best case scenario for my dynasty.
- Give praise to the God-Emperor.

A truly excellent game.

How could I not support one of the best games I've ever played in my life?

Genuinely a masterpiece. The writing, characters, adventures I've had in this game have been a delight every time I've had the chance. My wife and I both recommend this, above anything else you can play on a computer.

One of the very best pieces of art and gaming that I've gotten to enjoy in my life.

If you can play poker and like gambling, meet your next month of gaming.

Genuinely one of the best JRPGs I've played, and in my opinion easily up there with my all time favorites Persona 5 and Final Fantasy 7. If your on the fence about picking it up, I would recommend Metaphor for the following 5 reasons.

1. The game play. Lets get the biggest positive out of the way right at the start - Metaphor benefits extremely heavily from a long and storied history of fantastic JRPGs. Its turn based system is fun and easy to play with - and if you've played any other JRPG from the last decade will be very familiar. Every turn every character generates a single pip to play with, and you spend those pips to allow characters to do actions. You earn/save pips by playing smart - hitting weaknesses, skipping turns, getting critical hits. You lose extra pips by mistakes - misses or hitting resistances mainly. This system applies to your enemies as well. Its better than the active action system in Final Fantasy 7 and a smart evolution of the turn system in Persona 5 - and it makes fights fun and tactical, but not overly complicated outside of boss fights.

2. The setting. Call me a sap, but I love fantasy novels and this game is set in one that's clearly been breathed to life with love. The world, its tribes and people, how they treat each other - it all just drew me in. There's even these beautiful cinematic segments while your traveling the overland map where they find sites of significance and they just stop and soak in those moments and places. Its gorgeous, all around there's a lot of love clearly put into the art.

3. The conflict. Going to warn people ahead of time, this game focuses on some pretty dark stuff. Intolerance, prejudice, senseless violence, discrimination, and a myriad of other issues take center stage pretty regularly. This world has problems, fundamental ones, and more than half the story I was solidly rooting for the villain. The thing is, while most JRPGs sometimes treat serious topics with kid gloves, I genuinely felt that stuff was treated fairly in Metaphor. Its honest in its acknowledgement that sometimes the best thing the heroes can do is just try to make things a little better than they are. The heroes don't show up and magically fix everything - sometimes the best they can do is manage to stop things from getting worse. It says a lot that in the epilogue, they take the time to explain how change is slow - and even when the big hurdles are conquered problems can still persist.

4. The story. I don't want to spoil anything, but the story is just great all around. It has several plot twist moments, some great mysteries with actual payoffs, some genuinely sad and heartfelt moments in spades. The characters are a special treat as well, the biggest disappointment with the game is that unlike Persona 5 Metaphor doesn't have romance as an option. The characters have some great writing and share some delightful back and forth dialogue throughout the entire game. I genuinely loved all the interaction scenes, and would actually look forward to their side quests because they were all fantastic. Setting that aside for a moment, Metaphor is basically a linear story - but personally I think the story and pacing benefited. The story is a good length too - with one exception each of the areas don't overstay their welcome. The Dragon Temple is like 3 times the length of the other dungeons, just as a warning ahead of time.

5. The class system and the characters. Alright time to loop back to the best part of the game - the characters. All the follower characters in this game are phenomenally written, but your actual party characters are just incredible. They are written beautifully, they contribute to the story from the moment where they are introduced to the very end - even into the epilogue. And the class system built into the game - the archetype system - leverages each of their quirks while also letting them do whatever you might need them to do. Party characters have natural tendencies - without spoiling too much, Strol will always lean towards strength and endurance for example, but you can teach him to be a mage and leveling through the mage tree will slowly let him be a passable mage. It certainly won't be optimal, but Metaphor is also relatively generous with time and general difficulty. As characters enter your team, and followers grow closer with you, they bring their skills and archetypes to your team. Any class can also inherit a set number of skills from other classes they've mastered, so late game if Strol runs into enemies that resist his sword, he can still light them on fire with his mage skills or heal his teammates with his training as a healer. Its fun, lets you be flexible with your parties, and encourages you to build your team the way that you want.

TL:DR - I recommend Metaphor, for the story and characters alone. I spent about 80 hours in the game over the course of my play through, and if you get the chance its a great experience right up there with Atlus's best.

Honestly, if you came to this looking for something like Stardew Valley but different enough to be exciting - well congratulations! Mission accomplished, Coral Island is a absolute delight.

Its a heaping helping of Stardew Valley - with a second extra scoop for good measure - that's been mixed with a sprinkle of animal crossing. Lots of the game is basically lifted directly from Stardew and just animated gorgeously. The trailers for this game absolutely represent what the game looks like the entire time.

And they stuffed more content everywhere. Stardew has 40 crops? Coral Island has 50. Stardew has 12 animals? Coral Island has 13. Stardew lets you have a single pet? Coral Island lets you have multiple pets from a roster of 16. Festivals? Same number, but every festival has 2 or 3 mini-games in addition to the big main event. People? Stardew has 42, and Coral Island has more than 70. Romance? Stardew's 12 marriage candidates honestly pale in comparison to Coral Islands 25, all of whom have heart events every 2 hearts just like their Stardew counterparts.

Then there's the brand new stuff. The big 3 are the labratory to upgrade your crops and technology using a mix of kelp/scrap byproducts, the entire underwater half of the game (don't want to spoil anything but think about it as somewhat similar to Pelican Island), and the blend of Animal Crossing Elements such as the Museum (well more elaborate museum) and Merit Point System. That's not even counting the fast travel system - which integrates into the main quest. You can teleport around the massive map, for free, to totems - with more totems unlocking as you progress the story or finish quests.

Honestly, I could go on an on. But if you played Stardew and loved it, this is also a fantastic game and I highly recommend it. Absolutely worth the money.

This game wasn't reviewed well at launch, with various sites giving it relatively low scores. PC Gamer gave it a 7/10. IGN in their infinite wisdom gave it a 5/10.

Sins of a Solar Empire was one of my favorite childhood games, and is deeply special to me personally, so if the above comment didn't give it away this isn't an unbiased review. It was one of the only PC games I was ever given by my mother as a birthday gift. I've played it religiously ever since - putting nearly a thousand hours, modding it to death, and even building my own custom factions and crafting scripted story scenarios for myself in the original game.

So yeah, I love the original. And I recommend the sequel.

Sins 2 is 80% the exact same game at the first, just polished up. Its infinitely more stable. It looks better. The music is phenomenal. The ships and capitals in the game already have some balance quirks and bugs from the first game addressed. I think the original Sins was a masterpiece and this has all of its bones - so automatically about 80% of the game is, by my own measure, basically a masterpiece.

Its the remaining 20% that I'm looking at and tilting my head at. Some of it is unquestionably an improvement, such as planets, bases, and ships being able to support modules that help tailor them to specific tasks or round them out. Other things like the planet sub-menus let you tinker with dozens of planets in moments, constructing buildings and upgrading planets everywhere in just a minute.

Some of it is just new. The tech tree has been shuffled around - basically the same tech research, just in different orders and a bit more control levers influencing how you can access it and how fast things research. Artifacts aren't intrinsically tied to planets, but are still found by leveling exploration. Influencing minor factions doesn't require you to fly a diplomatic ship over to them before your opponents can, but instead by putting points into diplomatic research and structures and leveraging the trickle of points into effects. Faction powers aren't expensive research capstones, but instead triggered strategic abilities or resources you that provide game changing benefits but require you to invest in them. Planets move, which will overtime change defensive lines allowing for opportunities to open but complicating long term defensive planning. There's a new exotic system which rewards you for salvaging after big battles and exploring your planets, but later on you can just ignore it if you build a few factories of your own.

Then there's the stuff that feels bad. The big one is the UI is oddly terrible. For a game where you'd expect to spend your time quickly organizing things in the menus, the menus themselves have everything buried in sub-menus in a way that isn't obvious. For example, fleets all have the same icons, and unless you memorize the specific color or give them a custom name for when you hover over them, you basically won't be able to tell them apart. What this means is that having 4 fleets is probably the ideal unless you want to make it more confusing for yourself. Likewise, moving ships between fleets requires you to find and select the specific ships in the top right, then move all the way to the top left to reassign them. Also, the ship icons are basically identical for all the factions, so at a glance it all just looks the same. Icons for ships are silhouettes, but a spaceship silhouette is literally some type of rectangle or oval so good luck identifying differences between ovals quickly.

Now the above might sound bad right? Its not. Its like 5% of the game. So if you can overlook a tiny amount of bad in a re-imagining of a 16 year old masterpiece, this is a gem of a game.

I highly recommend, and I hope everyone who joins the Sins community enjoys the same amazing people and experiences I have for almost the last 2 decades.

A phenomenal game, held back by some of the worst support I've ever witnessed. Like the game is fantastically fun, but its a surreal experience sitting in dread every-time you hear that Arrowhead is about to release a patch.

Will they introduce some new instability that crashes the game making it unplayable for a week? Will they nerf more weapons that people were enjoying? Did they alter the patrol system again to make the game a worse experience for smaller squads? Did they rework the fire in the game again to cause it to be worthless? Or has it been remade to instantly fry any helldiver within 3 meters of a candle? Are there new geometry issues, where you get trapped behind invisible specs of dust or clip into buildings? Did they break the physics engine again making the game 90% ragdoll simulator? Did they release some new gun that's just effectively a reskin of an existing gun?

I have no idea man. Its a PvE Co-Op game. Its good. I just can't believe a single studio made it literally to the touchdown, and then decided to let their Wish.com balance team and three interns in a coat slowly suck the fun right out of the game.

I love the game, but the confidence I have in the studio is gone.

Just a heads up, have a few positives and minus's I wanted to list out below but the overall summary is the game is good. Great even. I'm sneaking this review in after clearing 4 normal runs, and a challenge game so while I'm by no means an expert, I have some practice.

Pros:

1. The amazing amount of variety. Right out the gate, I want to call out some folks in reviews who are complaining about the game having too much "bloat". This game is an auto-battler, a game which the entire premise is making the best situation out of a lot of randomness (even the simplest auto-battlers have random hero rolls and random items). That's not to say that balance isn't important, but for the most part this game feels good in the same way I think Slay the Spire has good balance - there are lots of ways you can build your run, and everything kinda works but a few methods are notably quite strong without a lot of help.

But then again, who really cares if its not perfectly balanced? Its a single-player game, its purely for your own entertainment. I want to play a auto-battler where every run is wildly different from the last and this game delivers - if anything, I hope the developer. goes all in on the content. The more content in the game the more mileage you get.

2. The control you have over each run. This game is a little different from a popular autobattlers like TFT, Underlords, Tales & Tactics, etc. in the sense that it steps away from overall archetype matching. Your runs are mostly focusing closely on heroes who have synergistic abilities. Your not going to get a situation where you buy 3 demons to get the demon buff - instead you might get a tanky hero who turns her health into damage, back her up with a healer, and then have a ranged archer apply debuffs on the enemy. The items you equip these people will match their purpose, the tank obviously gets health and health stacking items, the healer might get items focused on mana regen or attack speed, etc. Pick a party origin that turns max health into damage and well look there you have a fighting team.

Except, that really only works against big targets. What happens in the next room when your surrounded by deadly spiders?

3. Some cool quality of life improvements. Keep thinking about that line above, what would you do? Well, for one, you can shuffle items around freely - which is helpful if you wanted to put health on your healer so they don't die in the first salvo. More than that, you can manipulate the fight to control who attacks who and where units are placed. You might have chosen origins to buffer against this situation, or relics that summon a lot of distractions to flood your enemies attention and buy you precious time. You might have heroes on the bench you can plop in to fight while surrounded, giving them gear and leveling them up instantly. You could spend those upgrades instead really pumping up one hero, hoping they can eliminate the enemy by sheer force as their teammates die around them.

I love how the game steps away from archetypes and symbol matching to become a game of making a functional fighting force out of a variety of random bits and bobs. You can re-roll perks, you can forge items that precisely do specific things, and then freely rearrange your gear to fit a changing scenario. Its great, its a lot of fun, and its always a nice treat unlocking more content to add to the experience. Hell even your health bar is a spendable resource for re-rolls and item tweaking.

Alrighty, that's a lot of good. Let's talk bad.

Cons:

4, Content. This one is wild, especially considering that I haven't unlocked everything myself yet and even more when you consider people actually complain (stupidly) about their already being too much content. But having played a friends copy with everything unlocked for two runs, and then buying (and playing) my own copy for 2 runs there was a lot of overlap - especially on the heroes. I would adore if there were more heroes. I would praise this game to the high heavens if there were significantly more heroes. You spend most of your time in the actual game fiddling with your heroes, the place where variety is felt most would be right there.

Even setting that aside, maybe play with some other systems. Explore the battle area by physically changing the map - split it into segments, allow place-able traps, add elevation or cover, etc. Lots of auto-battlers have synergy buffs, maybe consider a similar system in the form of allegiance tokens built into heroes so you could have multiple different versions of the wolf guy. Etc. I just want more variety. Explore random events during combat - I really, really like the 2 on 2 and 1 on 1 fights that pop up in events for example.

5.The art. This one is purely me, but I find some of the character models quite pretty and some rather ugly. The units overall lean in the ugly direction on average, I feel like maybe a second pass at some of the uglier heroes would be helpful. TBH, it just feels a little bad when the demons I'm fighting look better than some of my heroes.

6. Run variety. This one I'm sure is being worked on, but currently, if your playing the standard game your going to be seeing a lot of the same enemies and 3-level structure every run. The final boss is a dragon, etc. If you were excited to do run after run right out the gate, treat this more like 1.0 Slay the Spire than 2.3 Slay the Spire.

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TL;DR - Great game, I highly recommend. I hope the developer keeps adding more to this little gem they've got on their hands.

Pokemon but Ash Ketchum is unsupervised.