Recent reviews by ekolis

It's literally a Neptune's Pride clone, so I feel confident writing a review after only a little while playing as I've played NP quite a bit. This game does add one important new feature: specialists. They're like the heroes in MOO2 that you can use to customize your fleets and colonies, giving them tweaked stats or special abilties. Instead of them randomly popping up, you just hire them using tokens that you earn based on your level of Specialists tech. Also, this game is more actively developed than Neptune's Pride, and is in fact open source, so expect more new features to be added and bugs to be fixed!

And sure enough, over the past few months, lots of new features have been added, to further distinguish Solaris from Neptune's Pride. In addition to specialists, we now have:

* Stars that optionally orbit around the center of mass of the galaxy
* A game mode where you win by capturing a certain number of capital stars, rather than just stars in general (suggested by yours truly!)
* Nebulas which obscure ships so you can't tell how many enemy ships there are
* Asteroid fields which massively boost the resource value and defensive strength of the star
* And more...

And the developer is always taking suggestions at the game's Discord server!

Imagine if Zelda were a roguelite, with randomly generated dungeons made out of assorted rooms that are cobbled together into the dungeons. Seriously, this game borrows a lot from Zelda, right down to the items you can find - the boomerang, bombs, wand, grappling hook, they're all there. There's even multiplayer, though I haven't tried that yet, and there's a metagame about building a town where you can go to various shops to upgrade your items and such.

The one bad thing about this game is that a lot of stuff is rather... unfinished. Some of the buildings, such as the tavern and the villager houses, don't seem to do anything at all. There's a bestiary you can fill out, and monsters can be "mastered" by killing enough of them and whacking them with the bestiary itself, but mastery doesn't do anything besides put a yellow star next to the name of the monster. Fortunately the game still seems to be in development so hopefully these issues will be resolved.

Still, even with the missing content, this is a quite fun game!

Imagine if you took Megaman X, filed the serial numbers off all the characters, and replaced the levels with procedurally generated maps. Sounds like a horrible idea, right? Well, it actually works and it's a lot of fun! It's not a pure roguelike as each time you play you collect "soul chips" which can be exchanged for upgrades that can be unlocked in future runs. The controls are tight, just like Megaman X, and the weapons are mapped to various controller buttons rather than having a weapon select screen, but you are limited to one primary weapon and four special weapons now; if you pick up one too many, you have to drop one. (Yes, there are alternate primary weapons!) So yeah. Good game. Play it.

What a clever game! It's a roguelike of sorts, where instead of bumping into enemies to attack them, you roll dice and slot those dice into cards that represent your equipment and abilities. Different cards have different requirements, for instance one might only work with dice that are 4 or less, while another might require a die showing an even number. There are six character classes, each with its own unique set of skills, equipment, and limit breaks - yes, this game has limit breaks. Each class has six quests (presented as episodes of a game show?!), and each quest has its own conditions, such as "enemies are stronger" or "you lose instead of gain health when leveling up". It's a lot of fun to find new equipment and combos that work against your enemies!

More classic Megaman games. They're hard, of course. But what did you expect? This is Megaman!

If you enjoyed Fire Emblem and Advance Wars, I think you'll get a kick out of Wargroove. It's a turn based tactics game with a fantasy setting, where you engage in battle with four different factions. There are a wide variety of units to recruit, and each has its own unique condition for scoring a critical hit, turning every battle into a puzzle. There are also commander units who are exceptionally strong and have a "groove" - this is the equivalent of the CO powers from Advance Wars, but unlike in most Advance Wars games, the commanders are actual units on the battlefield. The grooves are charged up by engaging in battle, so you're encouraged to put your commanders in harm's way. They vary wildly, from healing units, to summoning crystals that boost nearby units' defense, to growing vines that block enemies' movement. The non-commander units are generic mooks and can be recruited mid-battle, unlike in Fire Emblem. There's even a campaign creation tool so you can make and share your very own scenarios. All in all, Wargroove is a great tactics game!

This game is a love letter to Metroid. It really brings back memories, and even improves on the formula! Seriously, even some of the music sounds like it was inspired by Metroid, and one of the classic Metroid cheat codes works here (once you find the appropriate item)! And there are some really neat gimmicks like the weapon that "hacks" enemies and terrain into more advantageous configurations. I also like how when you die, you aren't taken back to your last save - rather, the game saves automatically and returns you to the location at which you had most recently saved, sort of like Dragon Quest. The difference being that you get to keep any found items, map exploration, and defeated bosses that you might have earned since you saved. That really cuts down on the frustration and encourages exploration! So yeah, this is a great game and I regret not picking it up sooner!

This game has a steep learning curve, but it's worth it. The amount of depth to it is amazing. There are hundreds if not thousands of units and spells and items that all interact in all sorts of clever ways. 25 or so different nations to play as, each with its own unique theme and set of units in each of three ages of time. More spells than you can shake a stick at, some to cast in combat and some to cast as rituals which will consume a turn for a mage. Items you can craft that power up your units - sometimes at a price. (Like, there are magic eyes you can use that replace one of a unit's actual eyes.) Creepy stuff like sacrificing virgins to power blood spells. EEEEEEEE! Global enchantments that affect the entire world, anything from powering up your item crafting to creating a second sun in the sky to cause global warming. This. Game. Is. Insane. And. It's. Good.

Oh, wow. I remember playing the free ASCII version of this game years ago, and finally picked up this version on Steam. It's just such a great game!

There are so many options to choose from when creating a character, and so many monsters and items to discover and learn how they interact. For instance, the fire bolt and frost bolt spells might seem pretty much identical, but fire bolts can burn items on the ground so you can't use them, while frost bolts can freeze water so you can cross over without swimming. Therefore the frost bolt spell costs more mana.

It can be a bit repetitive if you tend to die early on and you have to repeat the same quests over and over again, though. And the difficulty curve can be rather bizarre - you might plow through dozens of enemies with no trouble at all, then run into a boss that kills you in a few hits if you're not careful! It's probably best to be careful whenever you run into a new monster, especially one with a star by its health bar indicating it's unique!

Oh, I do need to mention the art in this game. The pixel art is very nice (though I do wish all of your character's equipment affected your avatar; hats in particular don't seem to, even though NPCs can be found wearing hats). Everything is easily recognizable and just looks good. And the music is very atmospheric; the levelup theme even changes depending on your alignment, it seems!

So yeah. Great game. A classic updated for the 21st century. Play it. 😁

Well, I didn't expect to see this on Steam! Classic "beer and pretzels" 4X game, rather simplistic compared to later Space Empires games but still fun to play. The UI is a bit clunky, particularly when it comes to issuing ship commands and building things, and pathfinding through warp points is nonexistent. I wish you could play online against other humans, rather than just locally or vs. the AI; the AI doesn't seem to be too good at the game. But it's a fun game to play if you just want to relax and conquer the universe.

Pro tip: space yards are OP, you can easily put one on every ship at higher tech levels and build "von Neumann fleets" that are capable of building even more ships in deep space! If only this game supported modding... if you want that feature, try SE3, SE4, or SE5!