Recent reviews by Mason

The other reviews do a good job explaining the game. I will add *one* thing. If you haven't played a Rad Codex game yet, start on one of the others (they're all good). The dev tried some different things in this game. It still hits well, I still recommend it, but I do personally think the previous entries were more accessible and subjectively better.

If you play the other games and want more, then pick up Kingsvein.

TLDR: Pretty game that makes too many mistakes. I guess it might be worth it if it's less than $5 on sale.

This is one of those games that has made me wary of early access. They over promised and under delivered.
15 hours of my playtime was years ago during the EA. The remainder was me recently revisiting it now that it's 'finished'.

CONS:

For starters, the only builds are the ones that the devs thought of and built in. Of course every ARPG suffers from this to a degree. But at least with grim dawn, titan quest or diablo, you can have a fun time and feel relatively powerful making your own build as you go along, however due to their skill tree setup, what at first glance appears varied and interesting, is actually very flat and lacks depth.

Then there's the stats that you can put points into. These feel massively underpowered and far too broad. Of the 3 stats, which do you need as a caster? All of them. As a warrior, which do you need? All of them. It feels almost pointless as a decision. Of course there's a very slight slant on the distribution considering your build, but it overall falls flat.

Then there's gear, the game has a relatively complex gem and socket system... but you can't even combine gems, which feels fundamental to the genre. On top of that after about 25mins in the game, blue items are functionally just noise. Once again, this happens in other ARPGs, but not after 25 minutes. Even after that, getting new equipment really doesn't feel like it changes your powerlevel much.

Actually running around, once again, an ARPG standard is that there's lots of chaff enemies that are easy, but even the randomly spawning elite enemies are too easy. Even the bosses are too easy, except for when they suddenly chunk your health from almost 100% to 0 (despite having plenty of defensive stats).
Also the game often spawns enemies behind you, in what world is that a good design decision? Areas that were empty suddenly have enemies, it's not a problem because they're never a threat, but it just seems like a bad decision to constantly try to 'trick' the player.

The game has some events, including one which made me put the game down. It's just a timed event where inconsequential enemies continue to spawn for 5 minutes.

PROS:

Enemy designs are interesting. Animations are well done. Spell effects look nice. The ability system is interesting, every ability can have a lot of different permutations. It does feel like they tried to emulate Path of Exile's materia style system but failed. The story is interesting, but the gameplay gets in the way of it. I kinda wish they just made a movie.

It could be a nice standard ARPG, however the hub area between missions pointlessly wastes the player's time by making you run quite a long and pointless distance between mission entrances and quest givers. That feels rather disrespectful of the player's time.

This game is super hard to review. It's a good game, enjoyable, very high quality animations and models.

This is all brought down by the terrible management, community engagement and DLC approaches. Some of the DLC is worth the price, others clearly aren't. But for a new player, opening a menu and seeing more than half of the options greyed out because it's DLC just isn't very nice. It feels like half the game is behind a paywall.

Overall though, I can't say I haven't enjoyed the 65 hours I have put into this. The devs making mods possible also means that there is huge scope in how you play the game. Definitely worth a buy if it's on sale, just be aware that much of the content is locked behind paywalls/needing to own previous entries.

Also, I already owned Total War Warhammer 2, but I do feel that 3 is and upgrade. Quality of life features, updated balance and extra factions made it worth the purchase for me personally.

The publisher bans people from the steam forums for criticism, they say "The discussion of the game is a privilege. Not a right just because you bought the game" But I have the right to review it. The gameplay itself can be fun, but the DLC and general structure is prohibitive to new players. Starting up the game you are met with a slew of unavailable content, this is alleviated if you own the first game, but nevertheless, it is still egregious.

A good game, heavily tarnished by bad marketing decisions and even worse community interaction decisions.

Seedlings is a laid back, forgiving puzzle game with immersive audio and unique visuals (some of the photos are really beautiful).

I gave it a go on a Friday evening after a hard week of work and found it to be quite relaxing. The puzzles are engaging, but not infuriating. The controls and tight, but also forgiving. Small quality of life features that I really like include that it not only checkpoints frequently. But it seemingly checkpoints you close to a point where you're likely to 'die', so if you need to re-attempt something, you can immediately do so.

The setting is actually very unique. Seeing other seeds rolling about the world makes it feel alive and (and served as a nice passive tutorial). It's also fun playing as a seed because you really wanna know what you will eventually grow into.

I haven't finished it yet. But my general metric is to compare the price to what I'd pay for a movie ticket, by that metric I've already gotten equivalent entertainment and I'm definitely not finished yet.

Also It plays well on steam deck for anyone interested.

Great game that shows you how tactical american football is while spicing it up with tabletop abstractions and Warhammer Fantasy spice.

Also, great single player, I never touched multiplayer, but I had a good time with the single player campaign.

This game has high production values and has interesting concepts. However, the mechanics are rather complex and sometimes opaque feeling (what is going on with zones of control for example? Armor regen also feels confusing?). Concentration as a stat doesn't get explained well, either.

That wouldn't be too bad on its own, but as others have mentioned, the combat is a bit of a drag. The map generation means it's difficult to move your characters around the map and it feels like combat takes forever. I mentioned above the complexity, however the isn't complexity where you really want it, there's no AP system in battle, it has stamina, but running around or not running around has no effect on that. Also attacking will end your turn for no clear reason except maybe the dev likes the new xcom games? I really tried to like the combat, but it just wasn't enjoyable for me. Add to this that the combat is *very* frequent and the game quickly becomes a terrible slog.

I imagine if you can enjoy the combat and overcome the complexity of the systems, it could be an enjoyable game. I look forward to seeing what this developer produces in the future, hopefully it's a bit faster and less of a slog.

TLDR: Deep roguelike(like) gameplay, active abilities in combat. In depth leveling and build-crafting.

A unique roguelike (technically it isn't a roguelike because it doesn't have permadeath, but in this game that works out well) where you level up and improve by doing things in the world and using your skills. The system is Similar to oblivion, while also being different enough that it isn't just a copy of that system.

Combat is interesting, you won't just be bumping into enemies to kill them, every weapon category has skills, then specific weapon types with that category has even more active and passive skills.

Lots of things to put points into when levelling makes it very interesting. Replayability is encouraged with different starting classes and also a very robust map generation.

The dev is very active. After buying the game, within a month several major new systems were added to the game (reading, camping and travel weariness, also he overhauled the weapon ability/perk system).

I usually don't buy games in EA, but this is an exception I am very glad I made. This is a great game and has a big future.

Edit: After making this review, the pace of updates has slowed some. I still think it's a good game, but the comments about the dev being super active need to be taken with a grain of salt.

A very thorough indie game. Well balanced enough that you can most likely clear it without grinding, but the option is always there for those who want it.

In this game you have actual battles, which play out like Fire Emblem, but with squads, however I spent almost as much, if not more time, in the army organisation menu trying to balance out all of my squads to get the most bang for my buck. They've done a great job of making it hard to perfectly balance between adding units to a squad and kitting it out with gear.

Quality of Story and balance actually are slightly inverse. The story begins very lukewarm to the point of wanting to skip dialogue and the battle difficulty and balance is challenging but good. That gradually inverts as the story warms up and (if you've done arenas especially) your own army's power outstrips the opponent's which makes balance worse and is less fun (so best not to grind much).

Overall a very good indie game that doesn't cut corners.