Recent reviews by kd8lvt

This game asks you "please, destroy what little semblance of balance I have" and you have no choice but to comply.
There are near-infinite perk combinations, most of which completely destroy the game.
When playing multiplayer with a friend, they managed to break the DPS test-dummy in the shop by doing so much damage that it displayed 0.
Not 20 minutes ago, I ended a run that could have gone on forever, with the ability to fly, being nearly immune to all damage, and completely melting enemies with hundreds of thousands of health in seconds.
Don't take this as the game being easy, though. Getting a run to that point takes hours. That last run was 3 hours long, and like I said, could have gone forever. I also have 69 (nice) runs, and only 20 have succeeded.

If you've got time to kill and friends to play with, this is a fantastic "Hey I'm bored want to play the funny crab game?" and even if you don't have friends, (who does?) it's still super addicting.

Not abandoned, we swear! Just in feature-lock!

Even without mods, this game goes hard af. With mods, it becomes transcendent. Pick it up if you're even a little interested!

[A 5-run-down is a review done after playing 5 "runs" of a rouge-like/lite - I do not have extensive experience with the game; just enough to do a "first taste" review]

Here's my 5-run-down of this game:
When i first loaded the game, even on the main menu, the graphics are what hit me first. What I first thought was a bit *too* stylized quickly grew on me, and I quite enjoy looking at the various rooms after defeating their occupants.
With Hades being based heavily on Greek mythos - I mean, just look at the name - I'm not surprised to see it's been very well researched - I've come across several obscure "tortured souls" that my Greek Myth class didn't go over - and sure enough, after a bit of googling, they exist. Along that vein, the art done for the various gods are beautifully done, and break away from the generic "Percy Jackson"-style god visuals.
The story - or, what little of it I've seen - seems very interesting and I can't wait to see more of it (if I can get past the first boss...)
The main "lobby" - the House of Hades - can be upgraded and customized, as can your own personal bedchambers in the lobby, and in doing so unlocks various utilities. Being five runs in I obviously haven't done much of it, but I've got some nice cyan curtains that remind me more of Poseidon than Hades.
Permanent character upgrades are available and recommended, as this game is on the difficult side - not to say you can't possibly do a run without them. For me, the ability to die once and come back at half-health is quite useful.
On my second run I got to the first boss, and boy is she a toughie. I have yet to beat her, though I did get her to about 30% health on run 5... then died on a spike trap.
Combat is fun and snappy, controls are tight, and the various weapons to choose from are each useful in their own way.
Level design is fantastic - I didn't run into the same room twice (unlike other rougelikes I've 5rd'ed) and each one I've been in has presented it's own challenge.
Getting upgrades while in a run depends entirely on which room you choose to enter - do you go for a health boost or a god-upgrade? If you go for the upgrade, which of the three do you pick? Do you pick the rare and powerful one, or one that's more common but may be more useful to your play-style?
Dialogue is hilarious and well worth reading, though characters do sometimes repeat themselves. Your character has a witty tongue and is quite funny with the way he banters with the narrator and other characters.

Overall, I recommend Hades as a game with great visuals, fantastic combat, and intriguing story. If you're a Greek myth nerd like me, all the better - perhaps you'll find something you didn't know about!

This game is fantastic - but with mods, it becomes a whole other behemoth.
10/10

Edit: Game still good, better in fact. I'm still playing it after another 5 years, 3 DLC, and 4 major updates. I had roughly 300 hours in the game when I first reviewed it. I've on average put in the same 300 hours each year over the past 5 years. I don't have a problem, I can stop whenever I want.

Original, 5 year-old review (still accurate):

I decided to wait for RimWorld to hit 1.0 before I reviewed it, and I'm glad I did. I got RimWorld years ago, and at the time I would not have recommended it, as it had very little content. However, Tynan and the rest of Ludeon have been working tirelessly on RimWorld for just over five years, and it has become a truly magnificent game. Well, I say game, but, as the title screen says, it's more of a "story generator".
What I mean by that is it has three different "AI Storytellers" with various differing "personalities". Cassandra Classic will slowly ramp up the difficulty as you accumulate wealth in your colony, and raids will get harder and harder, similar to your usual fiction book. Pheobe Chillax is more laid-back, giving you long stretches of time between raids, giving you ample time to prepare for each attack, while also increasing their intensity slowly. Randy Random is as his name suggests - as the game says: "... what happens doesn't matter, it's all drama to him.". There is also a variety of difficulties, basically dictiating how cruel the storyteller is to your colony - from increasing frequency of attacks and other events, to reducing the frequency of new colonists joining you.

As for gameplay, it feels similar to other colony management games like Prison Arcitect (which the art style is heavily inspired by), Dwarf Fortress (which has obvious influence on gameplay), and Dungeon Keeper (to a lesser extent). every person ingame has simulated needs, traits, health, relationships, and moods. Got a person with a artery blockage? They have a higher chance to have heart attacks. have a jealous hard-working glutton? They'll want the best room in the colony, work faster, and get hungry quicker. in terms of game mechanics, there are more than I could ever explain in a simple review. (This one is already getting rediculously long!)

The game is by design very difficult, so if you can't take (lots of) losses while learning the game, you likely won't be playing for long. While the tutorial is well made, it leaves out several details new players would benifit from.

There is built-in modding and workshop support, and a huge modding community providing near infinite replayability to an already incredibly deep game.

Overall the game has come extremely far since I first got it, and I'd highly recommend it to anyone thinking of buying it. The community on the Ludeon forums and RimWorld Discord are both very friendly for anyone new to the game, and can answer pretty much any question you have, and most are willing to start a few new games to test game mechanics they haven't thought to test before.

I'd watch a few episodes of someone's Let's Play on YouTube (I'd recommend Yeti and Thet) before buying, to make sure it's a right fit for you, but I'd recommend it to anyone to at least check out!

Short Verison:
Starbound is a great game with beautiful terraria-esque graphics, a 2D world, and a great modding community. It recently added the long awaited "mechs-with-actual-use" and space-encounters, which to be honest, could use a bit more variation. It features a near-infinite proceduraly-generated universe that is per-filesystem, meaning all your characters play in that one universe. Nevertheless; Starbound is an amazing game, and if you like games that include space-travel, great humor, and loads of lore, Starbound is your game!

Long Version:
Ohh... where to start? Well, I guess I'll start with the world size. Unlike Minecraft or Terraria, you aren't limited to one world. In fact, Starbound has near-limitless worlds in a procedurally-generated universe that all your players play on. I've managed to start on one world, begin another character because I missed one of the easter-eggs in the story-intro-thingy, began looking for a place to live, then stumbled across my old dwelling. Now, that's not to say the world is small, in fact I think (don't quote me on this) you can go out to the 64-bit limit on each coordinate. So, in no way is the world small. I just got incredibly lucky. The humor in Starbound's story is bountiful, the lore behind the game's setting is about as deep as you can go in such a shot-lived (yet exciting) story, and the replayability is augmented tenfold by not only the world-size, randomly-generated weapons, and rarer "special" weapons, bosses, etc etc... but also the bounty of mods on the Steam Workshop (as well as the very few on the Chucklefish forums that have yet to move over.) The story, as I said is exciting, but could use less "find and scan things for me, human/plant/monkey/fish/robot/gas person!" The main bosses of the game are challenging enough to pose a threat ill-prepared, but easy enough once you figure out their pattern, and have enough supplies/armor. On modding the game; it's easy enough to get into modding, whether you are just modifying textures, adding whole new items, or even creating whole new maps, dungeons, features, etc etc. Chucklefish gives modders a lot of leeway. Al-la the Frakin' Universe mod.

TL;DR: Starbound is an awesome game, get it if you like sandbox 2D space games!