Recent reviews by himboBlacksmith

have you ever gone to a European city and asked "what manner of madman would plan a settlement like this?" it's me, I'm the madman

I have been playing Dwarf Fortress for almost 20 years now, and while I must say that the steam version is slightly annoying because I have had to relearn the keybinds for a game that I have, again, been playing for almost half the time I have been alive, it's still the same amazing game underneath. Other people have Stardew Valley as their comfort game, this one is mine. May your floors be free of vomit, the air filled with song and may your pick strike precious gems and metal! Strike the earth!

The game is not abandonware anymore, so the reviews that mention that are outdated

it slaps prodigiously

yea 's alright innit

yeah it's alright

yeah 's alright innit

Ok, here's the thing. I've played a lot more on PS4, so I have more than 65 hours of gametime. Combat is slow and deliberate, but it's going for a more simulationist vibe than a space dogfighting arcadey type game. Space trucking is very meditative, but it gets old fast. Exploration is the same, but doesn't get old quite as quick and is probably the best part of the game. I've played a few hundred hours of just the exploration parts while listening to podcasts.

The reason I'm hitting "Would not recommend" on this is that I wanted to upgrade my jump stats so my journeys wouldn't take as long in real time, so I started interacting with the engineering system. You need materials, and yeah there's lots of ways to get them, but the part that is closest to exploration which is the activity I enjoyed most is transporting passengers.

1st passenger I get is illegal, so I'm aware that ship scans are not going to be good for me. I avoid patrols, all that jazz, and get to his destination which is a station. I'm not sure if this is a bug or not though, because all stations scan your ship before you dock, so immediately I think something must broken. I hang out, look it up online but I don't really see anything, so I figure it must be ok. I get within 7.5km, initiate auto docking and all seems good. Then the ship scan happens and the station immediately goes hostile and I get tagged by system authority vessels who swiftly disable my engines. I self destruct because I have an Anaconda with a lot of HP and it's 10 million credits for the rebuy cost, not a big deal, chalk it up to bad luck and continue

2nd attempt, I get routed to a white dwarf for a jet cone boost. I know they're kind of risky but I've used them plenty of times so I know what I'm getting into. However, as I get into the cone, the server drops my connection (not my internet) and when I load in again, it loads me in where I've been trapped in the white dwarf's kill-you-slowly-over-the-course-of-10-minutes zone because when you load your game when you're in deep space it drops you out of supercruise. I self destruct, 10 million credits, yadda yadda

3rd attempt. Taking someone to go see some ice geysers. I fly around, but they aren't visible because the geysers aren't loading for whatever reason despite my draw distance being set all the way up. Eventually I land near some mountains with holes in them that have been similar to what I've seen ice geysers look like before and I run over to them. While running, I run over what was clearly meant to be the ice geyser, but which was just a normal looking crater in the ground to me because I get flung almost into orbit on a 0.06G planet. It takes me, no joke, 12 minutes to fall back down, but I reason that I'll be able to use the jump assist to cancel the fall damage (that I shouldn't take in all honesty, I don't think it's possible to be hurt by a fall from basically any height on a 0.06G planet) but just before I hit the ground I press spacebar and realise that my jump assist is not making me jump at all, it doesn't even slow me down as I pancake into the ground and fail my contract.

So, the exploration is good. It's the best part of the game. But in order to improve your jump range and interact with that system in a more enjoyable manner, you have to interact with the rest of the content. This is just *not* polished. These are all issues that should just not happen in a game that has been continually maintained for 10 years.

It's a good game, though a bit easy even on the higher difficulties. Soundtrack is banging and the writing is excellent. There's a suprising amount of depth in the storytelling for the kind of game it is

It definitely wears its influences (Final Fantasy Tactics+FFT Advance) on its sleeve, but man, those are some good influences to have. However, don't be fooled into thinking this is just a clone, the original stuff is great as well! The only real drawback for me was how the characters were all a bit underdeveloped with little chance to shine. There were a few instances of character interactions in the side content, like in hunts and such, and I would love for there to be a DLC that is just more sidequests that have plots of their own for more of those moments.