Recent reviews by Shadowbane

Not a bad game, but not nearly as good as the hype. Maps are a tad long in the tooth. Battles are more in an area than I like and feel grindy. main characters are kinda just there but the story is still pretty ok. Everyone is just a bit too positive and joyful. Chrono Trigger vibes but not really doing it for me. Price is on the high end for indy. All in all the game is on the good side of mediocre. Perhaps my biggest complaint is the character level up doesn't feel good to me. We have a guy who is supposed to be speedy but no actual speed stat just the usual one act per turn. Makes me miss BoF 3 tbh. Maybe I'm just getting old IDK.

One thing though the boomerang skill when you get it right and hit like 20 times feels fantastic lol

Pretty horrid launch but was settled within a couple weeks. Game is pretty good outside that which was why my review was negative to start. Endgame is a bit meh running ob over and over so not sure how long that will hold up. I'm a lot more interested in the building of the character than the endless murder spree that is endgame.

P.S it got boring after 2 weeks. Now I'm diving into hell.

Great Story but a little long in the tooth at points that might turn some folks off.
World building is top notch although some folks are evil for evils sake which could have been done a bit better.
Progression and choices seem to actually matter in this one so that is great.
Due to that choices replay-ability is high is you don't mind the amount of time the story takes.
Not massively grindy, in fact you can almost ignore it completely and just lose a fight a couple times. By the third go your level is usually high enough to overcome as you keep levels gained on a loss. You might need to grind mock battles for cash time to time though.

I have two big negatives and they sit heavy on me

1st. Equipment system absolutely sucks, as you only get two ring/amulet/whatever slots. I much prefer the old FF Tactics full armor/weapon/accessory system. It sucks never being able to get new gear. This is especially true when you have so much customization if you pull something legendary to try different builds.

2nd. Sprites don't change for your character portraits as folk rank up. This is the same for character models in cut scenes. Becoming Veteran and Elite make your models look much cooler in battle I really wish they had updated portraits and non battle sprites to go along with it. This is something I consider a big detail oversight.

This game isn't perfect but it's about the closest thing I've ever seen come to FF tactics. It also reminds me of Crono Trigger for some reason which is my all time favorite.

Great little Gem, would love to play more but after beating it once in impossible I think I'm done. Lots of hours for little cost this one.

My whole party of half ork They's were arguing if they were males or females while being attacked by a pack of wolves. Whole party was slaughtered, 10/10 would them/they again!

Sale Sale Sale Only

50% off and it's worth a go. I played realistic difficulty and it was pretty much put speed on x16 and just build stuff everywhere. Not a lot of thought or planning went into the game for me as resources are all over the place and you just keep building and removing the old as you spread out. Also you will spread out lol, since I wasn't particularly in a hurry and the game speed was so high I took my time. I think I mined half of mars out just when terraforming it lol. It's not gonna be very profitable for any corporation after I got done XD.


Biggest Issues

Story is crap and good at the same time. Things happen out of order, People sometimes react to said things out of order, very weird. At times they should show emotion and they don't, other times they should calm down and overblown situation. Voice acting is pretty good, until moment when it's not and people seem out of character. You constantly have the antagonist moaning and complaining about how things are, yet isn't smart enough to know they are causing them, or smart enough to realize they are doing the exact same thing they are bemoaning. Very odd experience this game. Lastly the controls are kinda crap. this game would benefit A LOT from quality of life improvements. Just a way to highlight certain build types would have went a long way. I never did find my co2 reg plant to shut it off, there was just so much sprawl. I learned to make hubs later in the game to stop that from happening but darn, can't even search to find certain buildings or highlight them.

Overall I got a good play out of it with a win at 125 years, but no replay-ability for me and thus the problem with the game at the price point. Solid game at sub $15. I leave games on overnight but probably have a good 15 hours in it, not the Steam registered 40+.

I don't see anything else by these devs on steam so if this is their first then not bad. Their next game will have potential for sure.

I got it on humble monthly

God awful story from the very beginning with every man being portrayed as a sexist pig which is sadly the norm these days. It's just as bad as WW84. I gave up playing after about 20 minutes as I never got to the game, just terrible dialog and sexist remarks to the female cop. I went to get a refund only to realize I got it on humble monthly.

TLDR:

Terrible Story editing and sense making, lacks choices and when it does let you chose something like swing your sword to kill someone still don't do it for no apparent reason.

The Good

Music and Ambiance is stellar, when I first turned it on and heard the winter wind and the crunch of the snow I felt nostalgia and immersion of which I haven't felt in a long while.

GFX looks great and are exactly what you would want for a new age RPG

The Bad

Story Story Story, it's just bad and makes no sense half the time. The dialog is broken and doesn't make sense 40% of the time. Characters are introduced and you all team up when you don't have any real reason to. Your person is some hard core merc who just decides to be a good guy without any development at all. It's like they got the story wrote and then never had a English writer and editor go over it to make sure it's translated well. Also they use the same tired tropes as every old school game you played except even more unrealistic. I mean how many RPG's have the ship go down these days and days past???? The difference is in this one it's the middle of crazy winter with ice and snow blowing everywhere. Even if you made it to shore somehow you would be frozen solid and the story never addressees anything like that. It's rather sad they paid no attention to the details. Choices are also vague and once chosen mean nothing. You can decide to kill the main character and you just put your sword away for no reason so what was the point of the choice at all.

UI, saving, Selling, equipment, inventory system

Pretty bad tbh, tried playing with a keyboard but it's super easy to close the game with two button presses. I would up doing it by accident twice before switching to a controller and with the manual save system I was more than a little irritated. Keyboard default layout is terrible as well. Game is much better with a controller.

The selling system to the magic consortium is absolute garbage. You have to go in and select each one item to sale/trade and it doesn't tell you how many you have of said item until you go to the third window. This is a pain in the azz since you need to trade this stuff in for better materia/elementz/what ever name they gave their stuff.

You only equip three things, your tech skills, your accessory, and your weapon. This is piss poor and bare bones. Characters have a lot of overlap in the tech equipment so they don't feel unique. The lack of equip-able armor is just sad for an RPG as well

Game starts off strong, but before to long 30 hours you quickly come to the same point as No Man's Sky. The world is just dull and lifeless. I can't be bothered to play anymore, mining or trading etc to buy a better ship? What's the point after that get a bigger ship? The game isn't bad, it's just that like a lot of games these day's you've already been there and done that in some shape or form. This one is better than a lot and the tactical combat is a nice touch, but ultimately there just isn't that much there to keep me interested.

I didn't run into many bugs so kudo's to the dev there.

One thing odd to me was that the starter ship is better than several other ships, what's the point of that exactly, you don't get blown up and have to buy a new ship or anything so why would I ever downgrade.

Wish there was a neutral review

Usually love games like this but this is boring and basic. There just isn't any meat on the bones here. Started with the tutorial and within 5 hours had everything built and was bored. I built one super large store and just sold everything with with about 30 self checkout counters. I even put the customer wants on random, but no challenge. I made millions and never wanted for money.

Towards the end I played around with restaurants, bowling allies, and movie theatres, but just more of the same. I crushed crime from over 1000 down to less than 50, and then started opening specialty stores for kicks. Finally I connected all the roads to see if more people would come but they did not.

If you are artsy and creative and like to build things way bigger than they need to be or in fancy designs then you will like this game, otherwise there isn't much here.

I received the game through humble monthly.