Recent reviews by nix

4X strategy game with probably the best atmosphere of any strategy game I've played. Playing the game feels like a future era version of Civ currently so I would wait on buying it if you aren't a big fan of 4X. But it is fun finally getting to play a strategy game where I'm shuttling units all over a map to control important resources and it doesn't feel like I entered a cheat code.

The combat and base building needs work, it all feels dull and slow, like I'm balancing a checkbook and trying to keep all of my numbers green so I can play the game. It's not clear until 1-2 playthroughs what buildings I should build based on what technologies I can rush, but once you get the hang of it, there's no real fun in the decisions you're making since you just build more of a thing until the numbers in the UI are green.

Fighting other factions is a tug of war where you're trying to keep your economy more afloat so you can afford better units to throw at the bad guy. Overall no real strategy there other than who you're attacking and where.

The magic of the game is how well they've nailed feeling like you're in the Dune world. Going from day to night features some super dramatic lighting changes that make you feel like you're in the movie Sunshine. The decisions you make are the type you'd expect to make in the Dune world - like ignoring a settlement getting raided by Fremen that you don't care about so you can pillage a Harkonnen's undefended city so you can trade for more spice to pay off the Interstellar Taxman.

Where it currently falls apart for me is that the victory conditions seem arbitrary and it all starts to drag on at the end like every 4X game, with even less answers for what you should do other than commit fully to just finishing the map even if it's 4+ hours of tedious work. I know the game's over when I see some notification that the AI is getting close to some victory condition and I think, "Oh shoot, I don't know what I was actually supposed to be doing here other than getting more spice and killing Harkonnen." Still a fun game to play (especially if you wait for them to get it balanced), but it'll probably be more of a 50-200 hour game than anything like the 1000s you can sink into other 4X games.

Age of Wonders decided to eat Humankind's lunch and make the better game. Lots of inspiration from Heroes of Might and Magic which makes exploration a joy rather than a chore.

New king of 4x, even makes Civ seem shallow in retrospect. I can count on one hand how many times I've finished a game of Civ due to the waves of monotony and lack of meaningful goals (has it ever been fun to finish a Civ game when you already know you've won?) while I've already finished more games in AoW4.

Seems like devs in general are realizing that instead of trying to fix the inevitable mid/late game crawl which is usually just tedious and micromanagement heavy, just keep the player in that early game exploration, end the scenario before it gets stale, and then push them to start new games and scenarios by introducing meaningful meta goal carrots. I'm glad we're getting away from pretending that painting the map with your team's colors is good game design.

I'm tempted to give this a negative review because the actual game loop breaks down like this:1. Go to camp (hub area) and get mission.2. Ride for about 5-10 minutes on a horse to your mission objective.3. Either kill about 20 guys or press a button within some story context (like placing dynamite or causing a distraction).But the game is so polished that it doesn't matter. Feels like it was probably a huge gamble on their part to make you ride your horse for so long to get to a mission and back, but the game is pretty enough and the dialogue and voice acting is probably the best you'll see in a video game, so it works.The reason why I'll probably never play it again after a full playthrough is that the missions themselves felt like a chore and I never wanted to redo them to get a perfect score because I knew it would mean having to skip through story moments or spend more travel time to get into the action. The objectives themselves were always annoying like "complete within some arbitrary timeline" or "get X number of headshots". If you even get out of position by trying to flank, the mission fails you and forces you to restart at some checkpoint, which usually auto-fails you from completing the "gold star" mission objectives. The gunfights were essentially point and click and there was no strategy to it other than keep your deadeye meter up by having lots of snake oil (unless it's part of the gold star objectives to not use any items, in which case use your consumables before starting the mission) and always try to get headshots.Not enjoying the actual gameplay is a pretty huge problem, but it's not an issue for a single playthrough.Finally, the story itself is essentially nonsense - you go from being in a Tarantino film where you kill hundreds on a daily basis (and apparently no one cares about these hundreds of deaths except the bad guys in the story), to being in Unforgiven and questioning it all. They finally address it near the end of the game when fighting the Skinner brothers when a character points out they're not that different from their old gang, but the point gets glossed over by the fact that the Skinner brothers are pure evil without any nuance or characterization. The reality is that you don't mind the choices the gang makes because there's never any real consequences for it. The towns of Valentine and Strawberry will still be populated with the same amount of NPCs no matter what you do there in a mission. But, you'll side with the charismatic psychopaths because the characters and worldbuilding are flawless and you don't really have a choice about what you do or don't do anyway.

Semi-open world FPS with crafting. Interesting concept, well made game overall, but missing the layers of polish to really make it great. My biggest criticism is that it's not a joy to explore. The enemy design is repetitive and boring. I'm never sure of exactly how many bullets I'm supposed to spend on killing the mutant dogs that are all over, but I know I'm going to have to explore for more bullets after fighting a few of them. I don't get anything useful from killing them so it's best to avoid them, but there's no clear stealth mechanics other than just crouching everywhere. The crafting is fun, and I like the idea of being able to customize my weapons, but it's too much of a chore to explore to figure out where all the weapon addons are which would undoubtedly make my life easier and I'd rather just run to the mission objective.I can see all the little dials on my arm that give me useful information, but I'm not going to look down at them since I know I always need more filters for my gas mask, more bullets, and that I'm probably going to die soon. It didn't feel more immersive to avoid putting that stuff in the UI since the gameplay itself isn't strategic enough to justify worrying about those details.As far as the story, I think if you're going to do a dystopian nuclear wasteland you have to figure out how to make it not so unrelentingly depressing, but Metro leans into it instead - which makes me avoid the little notes and tape recordings they leave around the world because I can't count on it being interesting or entertaining. The dialogue and voice acting is clunky, maybe too much lost in translation there, I'd be able to ignore it if there wasn't so much of it or I could skip through it to learn the important bits.

It's not a bad game but it gets very repetitive very quickly. By tying the overall campaign to a linear story, you'd really have to love the base gameplay to play it more than once.

I think the best part about FromSoftware games is they take the time to dial in on the moment to moment.

They don't have any filler so their games are always challenging, but it never feels overwhelming because they give you so many tools to solve the problems around you. Initially the really tough bosses feel like they're insurmountable, but the more you embrace learning and adapting, the easier it becomes as you recognize the patterns of what the boss is doing.

Winning gives you the best dopamine hit than any other game because you know you overcame a truly difficult obstacle. If you didn't trust the design of the game all the way up to that boss fight, it would feel like the fight wasn't worth your time. Everything FromSoftware does is earned, even if they're just throwing you off a cliff.

Often imitated, but nothing else quite scratches the same itch. Probably the best game ever made. The Steam GUI and texture pack updates are perfect. Definitely will want a Dwarf Therapist plugin at some point.

V Rising nails it when it comes to building a base, farming the area around you, and then breadcrumbing you to explore the world in order to progress and continue your base.

You have played this game before in some vein - Minecraft, Don't Starve, traditional MMOs, etc. Nothing will feel new but it has enough fresh ideas to make it feel unique, like a fresh take on an old formula.

It's basically like they took a look at Last Oasis and said, "what if we were just as unique but made it Iso top down instead with small, independently hosted servers?"

Instead of worrying about thirst, you worry about the sun. Instead of building ridiculous Mad Max wooden ships, you go further down the rabbit hole of the innovative blood mechanics.

But there is no answer for the old problem of what is actually fun about the game once the progression is finished?

They naturally arrived at the answer of PvP but apparently have zero design knowledge of the other games in the genre.

I'd suggest you pass on this game unless you're able to do the following:

1. Learn absolutely everything there is to know about the game - the best gear, the best base locations, chokepoints for the best mob farms, etc.

2. Get first mover advantage on a fresh server.

3. Bring some friends who are just as skilled and knowledgeable about the game as you.

4. Play 24/7.

5. Grief everyone off the server. Especially newbies. Make it so the game isn't fun for anyone else.

6. After a couple months, wonder why you're still logging in when the server is a ghost town and there's nothing left to do.

That is V Rising. If that sounds fun for you, buy it. If your reaction is, "Well I just won't play on a PvP server" then buy Don't Starve.

I'm gonna keep it real with you guys. This game is everything that XCOM wishes it could be. No base building which is a shame, but it nails open world turn based combat better than any other game.

Balance and progression is perfect since you're constantly trying to finish that next mission so you can get a minor upgrade which might save one of your bros from permanent death.

In particular the threat of permanent death keeps things constantly interesting and makes it feel like walking on a razor edge. But unlike a roguelike, you aren't expected to die, if you make the right moves and character choices, you can keep everyone alive. Is it bad luck or bad planning when things go south?

New gold standard when it comes to turn based games.

Addicting and fun to have on in the background.

But I never walk away thinking it's a great game. It's unbalanced with too many things out of control - in the first sector especially, you are relying on luck to avoid ships which have perfect counters to you. But unless you're playing on easy mode, you can't run away because you need the scrap if you're going to survive late game.

Perfect example - try playing as Zoltan ship "C". You get a chain ion (disable enemy systems) and a beam drone. So you can only damage enemy ships with that beam drone after disabling them with the chain ion. If any enemy in the first two sectors has an anti-drone, you have no ability to do damage (you won't be able to keep their shields down and disable their drone system with a single chain ion) - the best option here is to restart the game. You're basically relying on pure chance to get a second weapon (or saving up scrap on the off chance that a store has something you can use).

That's not really strategy, it's a slot machine. This game would be a lot more interesting if you had some game mechanics to scout ahead and learn what you're about to face so you can proceed accordingly and blame yourself if you run into a bad situation for your ship's loadout.

There's so many situations that you'll run into as a player where you will lose after playing 20-30 minutes and it won't be your fault because the truth is your only problem is you didn't get a good pull on the slot machine. Feels like lazy and poorly thought through game design. But the laziest part is really the last sector where you're fighting an overpowered boss - if you've managed to snowball the game by getting the perfect loadout for your ship, you will win, but that's the only way you'll win. All of the mods for the game seem to try and correct this by letting you continue playing after the last sector, but none of them feel particularly good because they try to change too much (although fixing the overall game design shouldn't really be on the shoulders of the mod community anyway, especially without a functioning Steam workshop so it all has to be done 3rd party).

Clearly the devs aren't interested in figuring any of this out or balancing their game further since it's been 10 years and Into the Breach has the same problems. So we'll agree to disagree I suppose.