Recent reviews by Jedy

There are two types of good games:
– games that are great movies in disguise
– games that are damn fun to play

Expedition 33 manages both, which is exceptionally rare.

Amazing writing across the board, deep characters, lots of "Holy Sh*t" moments. A pleasure.
And mixed with a creative combat system that makes turn-based combat actually fun.

11/10

You can customize your character's genitals and shoot things. Good game!

I'm disappointed with Risk of Rain 2.

Is the game fun? Yes, very much so.
Are the any game-breaking bugs? Nope.

So, why can't I recommend the game?
Zero respect to people who were there at the very beginning.

There's a ton of actual placeholders in the game. It will have more items, more levels, more characters, artifacts and who knows what. The key word here is "will". Nothing really happens.

Small developers are great when they communicate. They're not so great when they don't. They're ridiculous when they're giving you a AAA-style roadmap for the next *years*.

Since I'm a nice guy and all that, I'll tell you how to fix that. It's not difficult. Dear devs,
1. Don't sit on your hands for weeks at a time during your early access stage. This is the *best* time to communicate with the community and try things out.
2. Try things out. You're not a AAA company, don't act like one. Make changes, break the game, fix the game, make it wild! That's why you have this early access.
3. Communicate with your community. 1 article every 4 weeks doesn't cut it. Show that you care!
4. Patch *often*! I don't care what you *want* to do, I care of how much I can play the game. I can't play your promises or your roadmap. Add some stuff.
5. Be realistic. Implementing new mechanics in a project of this size shouldn't take that long. I implement more functionality in my hobby projects while working full-time and spending just a few hours a week.

Finally, prioritize. Sure, you want more sales and you want to localize in every language there is. Cool. But this shouldn't be more important than the first users, your kickstarter backers, and your player base. They're selling your game to their friends and families, but that only works if they have something to do in it. Not the day one things with an adjusted Magma Worm.

It's not bad. Buy it on your console though.

PS: Or wait till NRC realize the glorious PC master race is where it's at.

Path of Exile is the best job you can get on Steam. You won't get paid, it will cost time, and you'll think it's fun. Highly recommended.

As a big fan of tabletop RPGs and CRPGs in general, I was thrilled to get my hands on this game. Here's my review.

First, the game consists of two entirely different components - kingdom management and adventuring. The first destroys a game with immense potential and the latter is surprisingly good.

Kingdom Management:

Pros:
- Story driven quests
- Automatic mode for people who do not want to bother
- Deeply integrated with all game mechanics (unlike most games in which the kingdom management has a one-way relationship with how you play, here adventuring affects your kingdom and the other way around; quite cool)

Cons:
- Unclear ruleset - it's not clear why some stuff happens, why people riot, when do they stop rioting.
- Unbalanced prices - your people can riot based on a few bad rolls and some random events getting your money to a negative value. Then you need to spend 1000 kingdom cash (80 times more expensive than usual cash) to cheer them up. Your kingdom generates 30 or so per week and waiting for 1000 loses the game, basically.
- Half-assed balancing - roleplaying as certain moralities can leave you without key positions in your kingdom. A few bad rolls of the dice can leave your advisors underleveled and useless. A few bad event rolls can destroy your kingdom (loses the game).
- No variety in advisors - there 1 to 3 advisors for a given position but some are shared between positions, so you're left with 1, maybe 2 options. Tell someone the wrong thing, he/she leaves and you're left without an advisor and without a way to handle negative events that destroy your kingdom.
- Instant-death. Not managing your kingdom well enough results in a lost game. Saves are usually too close in time to matter. Luckily, this one can be turned off (there's another instant-death mechanic, yeah).
- Auto mode can lose you the game.
- Choosing between adventuring and ruling your kingdom is a false choice 80% of the time. Working on your kingdom instead of adventuring is a surefire way to lose.
- Skipping days in the kingdom is an optional feautre that can lose you the game easily.
- You're forced to skip days in your kingdom for arbitrary events.

Now, lets get to the better bit: Adventuring.

Pros:
- Interesting story
- Interesting characters with individual quests; complex characters - not just the good/bad guys.
- Fun adventuring mechanics
- Strong, tactical combat
- Lots of different items
Cons:
- Instant loss conditions - you can spend 25 hours ingame and lose because some arbitrary quest timer ran out. Realistic, sure, but disrespectful to people's time. Lots of those.
- The game forces you towards weapon specialization. This is fine when playing with a Dungeon Master that customizes the loot to your party, but with 40 different weapons you almost never get to upgrade your current one.
- Random encounter mechanic is ♥♥♥♥ - you make peace with the goblins, but get attacked by them every 2 minutes; you get so powerful that you destroy them in a second, but get attacked every 2 minutes; you have an insanely good steath guy in your party and 1st level goblins see you and attack you. No auto-combat option, you have to deal with it manually every time.
- No running mechanic, even though the game suggests it. Once you engage in combat - you have to fight it to the end or load the game.
- Difficulty spikes. Lots of them.
- Slow navigation through maps. Backtracking. A. Lot. Of. Backtracking.
- Slow nagivation through the world map. You need to rest every minute or so. Rest involves around minute that you essentially wait.
- Essential world map areas that you have to "discover" with a certain skill check. You can explore the whole area, but have a hidden bit that you characters didn't see (a freaking tomb) even after a kingdom quest. The check is done just once per party combination, per level, so you won't see it if you move past it a couple of times.
- Not instantly diving into the main quest can lose you the game. I took my time to explore and develop my kingdom and after 25 hours got a message that I lost because I didn't do the main quest (although that time limit wasn't indicated on the quest log).

Finally, the biggest issue I have with tha game and the sole reason I won't recommend it:

♥♥♥♥ programming. I've been a Unity developer for almost 7 years now and I haven't seen such a badly written game before. Here are some of the bugs (after the beta):
- RIDICULOUS loading times. 30+ seconds spent on loading screens on this year's i7 plus and brand-new SSD drive.
Turning on the map - loading screen; managing your kingdom - 3 loading screens; resting - loading screen; random encounter - 2 loading screens; resting - 1-3 loading screens; managing towns - 3 loading screens to open and 3 to close each individual town. All of those take 30+ seconds.
- The asset management is epicly bad; a hotfix can be several gigabytes large.
- Audio players continue playing after certain events; you need to restart the game to stop a certain sound looping long past when its' supposed to end.
- NPCs bug constantly - I have 3 quests in my quest log that are stuck due to a bug. I can't talk to the NPC or a cutscene didn't trigger or whatever.
- The main menu generally has lower FPS than the game itself.
- The initial loading freezes the whole game.
- The initial loading takes forever; loading the game for the first time can take up to a few minutes (again, on an SSD).
- Did I mention the loading times? They're insanely bad.

This is an excellent game destroyed by ♥♥♥♥ programming, bad tutorialization (and that comes from someone who played D&D for 10+ years), ridiculous loading times (yes, again), and half-assed city management. One example of many in which the game would be significantly better with fewer features.

The game has the potential to be epic and so on. It does, really, but I can't suggest purchasing it.

The problem is that the developers are doing a standard mistake that small teams often do - they're too focused on hitting that one big update that'll make the game 10x better. This undermines the dynamic community of alpha access, doesn't leverage feedback properly, and makes them look like they don't care (although it looks like they do).

The best way to go is to do baby steps towards the completed product (as the few successful indie alphas have already shown) and work alongside the community by showing instead of telling about development and gathering feedback often. If the opposite trend continues, even the early backers will quit supporting or, frankly, forget about Wolcen and the game will die. The community is hungry for *seeing* updates and, as developers, you're symbiotic with the community. Simple as that.

A nice little time-killer. Has zero of the flaws of Unity and a new and refreshing take on visuals. I can't see myself replaying it a ton, but the Nintendo-inspired game design made my game-time very enjoyable. Worth it!

Excellent game. Simple twist on the roguelike genre that's surprisingly deep. Lots of emergent gameplay. One of the few PC games that gets me to happily log into for the daily run and have 20 glorious minutes slaying spires and everything inside :D

Pros:
- D&D on your computer. 100% of the good stuff, none of the hassle.
- Better than meth.

Cons:
- I had less trouble stopping meth than stopping Divinity.
- I couldn't find meth ingame.
- I couldn't find meth.