Recent reviews by Purodiusa

Make numbers bigger. Throw panties. Eat girls.

I play it for Anbennar.

2 cat

I feel like this game has a ton of potential but it's held back by a poor translation. As of now, hold off to see if things improve.

Positive: Looks great. The art is fantastic. No issues cosmetically.
Negative: Mechanically it's nothing special. Just adjusts numbers.

I honestly don't recommend unless you're desperate to play aquatic races. Wait for a sale.

A great successor to CK2, but needs some polish.

Crusader Kings 3 is, at its core, the same medieval era simulator that Crusader Kings 2 is, but with a more modern coat of paint. It's a beautiful game with great depth of simulating a medieval dynasty through the ages. Surprisingly, for having advanced graphics, it operates much faster than its aged predecessor, indicating great attention to performance that Paradox usually slips on. On the whole, whether you're a veteran to the series or not, everything you'd expect to be in a medieval dynasty simulator strategy game is there, and more.

As is typical of a Paradox release though, it feels a little rushed and is missing some much needed quality of life features. Not that it's all bad, but if you're coming fresh from the refined feel of Crusader Kings 2, you'll notice some glaring features missing, such as the ledger, which is gone. Hiding notifications (there are so many notifications it'll clutter your screen) is gone, disease spread appears to be gone, title history is gone, restricting assignment of commanders and (similarly) the assignment of knights, requires constant micromanagement if you don't want important people suddenly killed (like counselors and your heirs). I'm probably forgetting more. It's in great need of some polish.

Much improved upon is the inter-character dynamics of diplomacy and intrigue. As appeared late in the development of CK2, the method of swaying and antagonizing characters is improved upon, with new and familiar schemes becoming available. The many and frequent vignettes of feasts, parties, and dialogues gives more life to characters. The lifestyle feature first introduced in the Way of Life mini-expansion of CK2 is also expanded upon, becoming a full-fledged menu designed to specialize your character's education and development. Also improved upon are militaries. The bulk of your army are unwashed peasants with little more than rags, clubs, pitchforks or whatever else they can find. In addition to this, you have squads of units which you personally choose and the makeup of which you decide, for a rock-paper-scissors approach to fighting.

A bit of a mixed bag is the changes to culture and technology. Spreading your culture is basically required for advanced play in the game, since your culture is tied to your technology level. But it seems odd and anachronistic to be able to manipulate the culture of a people to such a degree in the medieval ages. Press a button, click a province - and in a few years, London is now Irish. No unrest, no anger, it's as if you parachuted a few thousand freckled redheads into the middle of Trafalgar and had them replace the entire population. It's a bit silly. Culture conversion in CK2 happened very slowly and organically, which is as it should be in my opinion. The other issue here is that as I said earlier, culture and technology are intertwined. All technological advancements are shared on a per-culture basis. This is... okay I suppose, but it's unusual. In Crusader Kings 2, technology was tied to the province you were in, which had its own share of problems (why would you suddenly forget how laws work if you changed your capital?) but with culture, it's a bit unusual. Everyone of the same culture shares the same technology advancements, which range from military applications to civic and legal improvements.

All in all it's worth keeping an eye on, at the very least. After the initial honeymoon phase wore off for me, I was left with the same feeling I get with most Paradox fresh releases: It's good, but needs polish. Recommended, but beware that it may need some time before it's worthy of the hype.

Langrisser 1 and 2 is a PC port of a remake of the old Genesis/SNES cult strategy games released in the early to mid 1990s. Of the series, only Langrisser 1 saw a Western release, titled Warsong on the Genesis. The sequel, titled Der Langrisser on the SNES, featured a branching storyline which is faithfully adapted in this version of the game. While it never saw a Western release, after several years and a lot of difficulty it saw a fan translation completed.

The price for such an old series is a little bit high, but keep in mind for the cost you're getting an awful lot of game time out of it between two games with multiple playthroughs. In my opinion, it's worth it if you're hungry for a good strategy game or just really love Langrisser.

The graphics are a bit... mobile-ish, but not terrible. They grow on you a bit. The music and sound is decent, with the option of using the old midi tunes if you like the retro aspect. Voice overs are done in Japanese with no option for dubbing.

The lack of mouse control might be a drawback for some. I haven't tried using a gamepad. I personally used keyboard though, and it didn't take me terribly long to become comfortable with it. Still, if you're awfully attached to mouse support be aware that it's absent as of this writing.

For those already familiar with the Langrisser series, do note that while gameplay is very familiar and you'll quickly pick it up, many balancing choices have been made. Among those include a change to the way stats work (such as hp no longer being 1-10), the removal of commander rest/treat making HP and MP more difficult to manage, and class changing has been completely overhauled, separate from level with more freedom to change class as you wish between missions without the rare Runestones.

On the whole, while I was nervous and wary of a new developer picking up the reins, it's a good remake and a fair port. Not perfect by any stretch, but it does the job.

Like Dwarf Fortress, but with drugs.

I will preface this by saying that I would ignore comments saying the port is bad. There's no censorship, weird controls, low frame rates or anything of the sort typical of a poor port. There are a few references in tutorial images to PS Vita controls, but this is a minor oversight; the text accompanying these tutorials correctly references your PC controls. Some people say the resolution is bad. I suppose if you're very, very finicky about having insanely high resolution this may be a sore spot, but it does not itself make a bad port.

In a nutshell: Mary Skelter is a mish-mash of fairy tales, gothic themes, and anime tropes draped over the framework of a pretty solid JRPG dungeon crawler. The three seemingly unrelated themes work surprisingly well together.

The game itself is an improvement over the growing number of Wizardry/Dungeon Crawler-inspired JRPGs, having game design that actually makes sense and doesn't require a guide to wrap your head around (e.g. nothing at all like Stranger of Sword City). There's plenty of edgy fairy tale inspired waifus to play around with and a solid turn based combat system with beautiful art, great music thematic with the gothic fairy tale atmosphere and pretty good voice acting.

I recommend this to anyone looking for a decent dungeon crawler that can overlook or outright likes the atmosphere of the game. If you want something more straight-laced and devoid of anime tiddies like Wizardry or Grimrock this game might not be what you're looking for.

I hate this game.