Recent reviews by obliviondoll

There are many issues with this game. It has performance issues which are actively being dealt with better by the game's modding community than the developers, and even with those it has problems. Loading times are obscene at the best of times, with the best settings and mods to minimise the wait before getting into game. Gameplay itself is engaging for people who like what BattleTech has always been as a franchise, though. The core gameplay - when you can play - is good. I would, under normal circumstances, be willing to bear with a long loading time, but this game takes it far too far beyond the extremes.

On top of this issue, there is the fact that with a (required for medical reasons) 6 month out of date version of the Steam client running, the game is literally inaccessible. Many other users are unable to run the new library and have similarly been forced to revert, and are being denied access to this and other games. This game is one of a small (but growing) number of titles which don't run any more if you don't have one of the latest versions of Steam running. Even when there are legitimate medical problems or Valve-created bugs preventing you from doing otherwise.

So this gets a "not recommended" with the caveat that if you're unaffected by the issues with Steam, and EITHER have a ludicrously higher-end system than the game should require OR are willing to sit through 15+ minutes of loading times on a system well above the minimum requirements just to watch a cutscene, then another loading screen for the actual battle, only to have that take less time than either one of the loading screens by itself... then yeah, you might like it. It is a good game. And yes, those times are WITH mods. There are more extreme loading time shortening mods which cut the cutscenes out entirely, requiring you to learn the story of the game through YouTube, so you might want to go with that instead. But that adds even further steps when none should be necessary in a 1.0 release build, let alone a post-1.9 nearly 2.0 version of a game that's more than 2 years old.

TL;DR version first:

This game is pretty much FTL meets Red Faction Guerrilla, except it's set in a fantasy world more reminiscent of an Elder Scrolls game. It's completely insane, chaotically fun, and very satisfying with the destruction system and the Roguelike-like elements it mixes with that highly-destructive gameplay.

To go into more depth, you get a fairly limited character customisation screen (it's a premade character you just get to tweak some details on), then, like FTL, the game starts with a text box introducing the story. Instead of the Rebel Fleet, you're being chased by the Inquisition. And you're being chased because they executed you, and you got back up. Apparently, you're the last "Fictorum", a wizard of such immense power that literally resurrecting yourself was an option. The process has corrupted you, and you're a bit short of that stupid level of power after the experience (dying is bad for your health, apparently... who'd have thought?) so you're on the run. But you're also kind of offended by the whole "you killed me" thing. So instead of fleeing into the distance, you're fleeing the Inquisition army that originally captured and executed you, but heading TOWARD the man in charge - your mission is to kill the High Inquisitor (totally not the Rebel Flagship, I promise). Once you finish navigating the introduction text, which is nicely decorated with an animated scroll background, you come to another screen which looks very much like a fantasy take on something from FTL - this time the sector map. You are at a "nexus" - a location from which you can teleport to any other nexus point in range. When you move to a new area, you'll see your current "chapter" scroll pop up, and explain what's going on. Sometimes, you have a choice to make, which might affect what happens next. Sometimes, you get a bonus item or other benefit. Sometimes, you're told "there are enemies here" and have to fight. And other times, you find a shop which you can visit to buy new gear or sell what you already have, as well as to spend money on healing (not hull repairs, even though health persists just like FTL hull damage). You can "disenchant" items when you're not at a shop, but selling to shops will pay better. Once you jump into combat, things take a sharp turn away from FTL and into new territory...

The combat gameplay puts you into a very ordinary looking third-person perspective, looking over your resurrected superwizard's shoulder. You have a set of bars on the HUD, one for health, one for stamina, and one for mana. Health is used to not die, stamina is used to run around faster, and mana is used to cast your spells. You have a very standard RPG-style inventory system, in which the combat gameplay isn't paused, so you have to be careful when you decide to play fash-torum. You can wear various boots, outfits, shoulders and gloves, as well as a ring on each hand. In place of traditional weapons, there are spells. These may be contained in tomes (more powerful and capable of being "shaped") or scrolls (usually weaker but can be used to enchant rings). If a ring has a spell attached (either because it came like that, or you spent some of your "essence dust" - the game's money - to enchant it), you can equip the ring to have that power on demand at any time. This lets you eventually have up to 3 spells available at a time, with 3 more on relatively quick access through your primary spell slots.

Only your primary spells can be "shaped", which lets you empower the spells using "runes" - another item you can collect. You can use this system to alter how your spells behave, increasing their impact force, damage, blast radius, and various other interesting effects. Each spell can hold up to 3 runes, which are placed in a triangle pattern which you can bring up on the HUD when the spell is equipped, allowing you to adjust those elements to your liking. This is really cool, but it's not the biggest feature that makes the game stand out, even though it's really fun and adds a lot to your spellcasting options. And what was that in the TL;DR about Red Faction?

Yeah, this game has destruction physics. Much like RFG, the terrain is mostly unbreakable, but houses, castle walls, guard towers and other buildings can be blasted into pieces and scattered across the map. Powerful impact spells will punch holes in walls, collapse ceilings on the unfortunate people inside, and cause various other structural integrity problems. In order to help the player navigate, and manage performance, destroyed pieces of building disappear after a while, and blocked doors can be "forced" with a simple press of a button (and a "shockwave" animation that blasts the door off its hinges). While they persist, chunks of building do still have physics, however, so you can collapse a section of floor and climb up the rubble in place of finding the stairs, or kill yourself by collapsing the tower you're standing inside.

I've only played through a single run so far, which took a good couple of hours and only got me to the end of chapter 2 (I'm told there are 10 chapters for a "complete" run). it will definitely be faster if you're less of an explorer than me (I'm VERY patient and spent a lot of time reading up on gear stats and the like), but there's a lot to do just in a single run, and more when you consider the replay value. Each "chapter" is one totally-not-FTL-sector-map, and the exit at the end is a "grand nexus" which throws you into the next chapter with a fresh map to explore while staying ahead of the Inquisitors. These exit points are guarded by a major event, like a boss fight. And my second chapter was an all out free-for-all war between "arch-archmages or whatever they call themselves". This turned out to be around 20 really powerful spellcasters, and I did only leave one of them alive. But one of them survived, and I, unfortunately didn't, bringing my trail of destruction to an end. After I blew up over 3 and a half thousand people's homes...

And in one final silly, but cool touch, the death screen has a "copy to clipboard" option that lets you save the final chapter of your story into a text document, or share it with your friends! It's a bit ridiculous, but it's a really fun little bonus on top of a great experience. I posted mine here: https://steamproxy.net/app/503620/discussions/0/1631916887490740685/

Release day: Game was unplayable for me. There was a bug which made the game crash to desktop before I could do anything - even change settings. The official response was awful, and there was no proper method available to contact support. That last point is a big problem, and one they haven't fixed. But the bug that caused the problem has been fixed (literally a few days after release), and the game is solid and fun. It's pretty straightforward - a well-made AAA shooter which has gone free-to-play. The monetisation doesn't feel like it's pay-to-win, but there is a lot of story content locked behind DLC, and which is very much recommended by many players. Also, while it isn't a huge deal, a DLC purchase is required for full access to all the perk loadouts. There are 3 classes, and within each, 3 subclasses, and within each of those, 3 perk sets. The base game you get as a free player gives you 2 of those perk options for each subclass, locking the third behind a DLC payment... but it doesn't matter which DLC you buy, you get access to that content. I'd prefer them not to lock this kind of gameplay element behind a paywall, but it could easily have been handled worse.

I played Destiny on PS3 back when the PS4 didn't exist yet. It was great fun, and Destiny 2 carries on the same basic feel - with some improvements and some changes that aren't purely positive. One thing I miss is being able to "mix and match" skills to find your own synergies - most of them are built into essentially pre-made builds now instead of being dynamic and flexible. You can pick your mobility power (double/triple jumps, glides, etc.) and grenade independently of the primary selection, but there's a set of 4 perks, usually at least one which modifies your super and at least one that modifies your melee power slightly from the basic effect. The separate trees are unique enough for this not to feel too restrictive, so it's more just one of those "it was cool in the old game" feelings than a real criticism. There are still plenty of synergies and combinations you can put together that will work better than others... or worse. For a fairly casual player, playing the game for free is great fun, and if you really get into it, buying the expansion content does give you a decent amount of extras.

And yes, there are microtransactions, but all the ones I've seen are purely cosmetic so far - I haven't looked too in depth at the monetisation yet, though, so I might end up adding a cautionary note here when I do...

Before release: ONE mention buried in an easily-missed announcement in a very active announcements section, and nothing else to clarify when the game is actually going to be released. Store page says that it releases in May. Doesn't matter where in the world you were, the store page said the game released in May. Then just...

On release: The store page didn't give a "play" button to the majority of people waiting. Or gave them a play button, let them download the game, but refused to let them play because they weren't meant to have gotten access. Or sometimes even gave them access but they got banned for "cheating" and "circumventing the region lock" they had no reason to have been expecting to be in place because they just saw they had a "play" option and used it. because May was ACTUALLY only the US release, NOT a worldwide release. EU server was meant to go live in June (but they didn't include that on the store page, and didn't have the correct date shown on the pre-release notice about the game), and Asia (which includes Oceania in spite of that being objectively terrible for all involved most of the time) had another month to wait, getting access in July.

Also, for the US players who did get to play the game on the date almost everyone else had been promised and denied, there were only 4 "karmas" to choose from - which is fine, it's early access. EXCEPT that there were actually only TWO karmas to choose from and the others were locked behind either an obscene grindwall or an even more obscene paywall.

3 days later, "we're sorry" happened. It was a very sincere-sounding apology, with the justifiable and understandable explanation that the game had originally been intended as a paid game, and they had rushed into the monetisation model thinking it would be ok. They corrected things, provided some unique cosmetics - not exactly what people who paid for power had actually paid for, but it's something - to those players who had bought the karmas, and made them much easier to earn through in-game grind. Then they released the game worldwide in June, instead of only the previously-promised EU release, so the Asia/Oceania server went live at the same time. It was a while later before they apologised for the bans they had been issuing over people expecting to be able to play a game that had been explicitly advertised with a clear release date on the store page that had been incorrect. But they did apoogise and reverse those bans - and after some more pressure from the community, added the ability for players to select their server instead of forcing a poorly-considered region lock on people whose "local" server isn't actually quite so local.

This was all sounding great, until they decided to add a 5th karma. "Hey, you know that stupid mistake we had to fix on release? Lets try and get away with doing it again!" - they're charging a less obscene price for the new karma, but they're locking it behind just as steep a grindwall as the previous ones had been buried under to force purchases. It's the exact same mistake they claimed to have learned from the first time, just being done in a way that makes them less profit this time. And this time, there's been no apology incoming for doing it again. Which tells me they're planning to KEEP doing it again and again every time they add something new.

I'd love to talk about how cool the game's combat mechanics are. I'd love to compliment the devs on the well-implemented divide between PvE and PvP gameplay that allows players to fight bosses effectively using the same tools they use for PvP in different ways (but they do have horrendous timegating on the PvE content for no good reason). I'd also really like to praise them for how actively they're communicating OTHER than failing to address the horrific stupidity of this decision. But building your game around pay-to-win by mistake, explaining clearly why it was a mistake, THEN DOING IT AGAIN ANYWAY...? Yeah, no thanks. Kind of spoils the package when you do that. Also, even with the highly-active communication, the devs are failing to say a lot of what needs to be said.

UPDATE 12/10/2019:
So, since there was an update to the game a couple of days ago, I gave it a final look to see if anything is improving. It isn't. The update is "we're doing the same thing we promised not to do because it was dumb then did anyway AGAIN and it's clearly going to continue this way". Which is the exact opposite of how you prove that you're actually fixing your problems.

Shame about this game having undisclosed use of Denuvo. Would have loved to not have to refund. Also doesn't help that Bandai Namco's support team have promised to investigate but failed to actually fix the problem (either way would solve it - actually admitting it's there OR removing it).

The core mechanics have the potential to be good if the entire rest of the environment the game puts them into can fall short of being complete incompetence at the best of times. The monetisation is almost hilarious with how poorly it's been handled, as is the grind loop, and the level mechanics and matchmaking are offensively bad. I have not just uninstalled, but explicitly removed the game from my library and ignored. I might give the game another look in 6 months or so to see if literally anything meaningful about the game has gone beyond the epic failure it is right now.

The game starts new players off with access to 4 characters. And you're on a team of 4 players, so if you're last to pick you'll probably be choosing between "that one character nobody else picked" and "NOPE" because there are no other characters available. You CAN technically grind out to unlock a new character, but doing so costs a ludicrous amount of currency. And you ALSO need similarly insane amounts of in-game currency to buy upgraded weapons for the starting characters, and both use the same type of currency, forcing you to choose whether you want to improve a character you already have or get someone new who doesn't have any improvements while also not improving any existing characters you have access to. On top of that, buying new characters as DLC is priced in the exact opposite of a reasonable manner, pushing 99% of players to not even consider thinking about maybe wanting to give one a shot sometime.

So there's a huge grind wall before you can get a new character, and an even more stupidly huge paywall if you want to skip the grind. But that's just the start. You're also forced into PvP, not all the time, but every match ever is open for an "antagonist" (or "antag" for short) player to spawn in and take control of the enemy faction. This means you're fighting against a buffed player character on the enemy side even if you're not looking for it. "But can't you just set up a co-op only match?" - NOPE. "Why not play a private match?" - devs have refused to rule out the option ever coming to the game, but seemingly only because they want to keep players hoping it happens, not because they have any intention of ever doing so.

Anything else wrong? Yup. Account level affects base stats. A LOT. Higher level account? Your melee attacks hit harder. You also take less damage from all attacks. These stack, so higher level accounts both deal more base damage than you AND take further reduced damage FROM you. They don't get direct buffs to their guns though... except that they kind of do because your account level alters the stats of weapons at the time of crafting. So if you crafted your best weapon at level 10 then go up against a player who's level 100, they probably crafted their weapon at level 90-something so it still hits way harder than yours (and gets less damage reduction than yours gets when you shoot them). And if you're in a co-op match with a higher-level player, they apply their stat modifiers to NPCs, so they get a fair fight and you get hopelessly dominated by trash mobs because you're underleveled because of the higher-level player in your party.

Some minor stat imbalances WOULD be fine if the game let you have private matches to avoid PvP, or even just a co-op queue. But even then, the stat changes need to be MASSIVELY reduced in effect because of how extreme they become with wider level gaps. This too could be mitigated if the game had enough of a playerbase, but even with cross-platform play, there's not a big enough community for matchmaking to separate you. Another point where private matches would help a lot.

The devs seem to miss the concept of economies of scale and how their game mechanics are actively chasing players away from their game. If they added private match options, "less players would use matchmaking" - but so many more players would come to the game that the community would look more active and alive, and more solo queue players and public players who hold off because of the lack of playerbase would jump in, and the matchmaking would be MORE alive instead of LESS. If they lower the barrier to entry on new characters, "less people will want to buy them" - but so many more will actually be willing to play that you'll have more chances at sales and more profit instead of less. If they lower the price of characters to a realistic point (like literally divide by 6 AT LEAST, seriously, wtf is with those prices?), they're making "less money" - off each individual sale, sure. But as a whole? WAAAAAAAY more money from making 100 sales at $5 than 5 sales if you're lucky at $30. There's GOOD reasons why successful free-to-play games never charge crazy stupid "I could buy an expensive indie game for that" price points for an individual character in a free-to-play game. Make $30 your "every character we ever add to the game forever" bundle price, not the "buy one single character only" price, and you'll quickly realise why nobody's playing - and paying for - your game. There are free to play games with "ultimate super deluxe everything in the game" bundles priced in line with this game's "cheapest" DLC - the basic "starter pack" that doesn't give as much value as some $2 equivalent packs in other games.

This game is an intricate, but streamlined, programming game. You have a team of 4 - 8 robots (depending on game mode), which you can select from 4 different types. Big tanky machinegunners are slow to move, slow to start firing, but can pour a lot of firepower onto the enemy, and are capable of taking a beating as well. Snipers are relatively fragile and slow, but can hit full force at long range. Shotgunners are even more vulnerable, but move faster than any other machines on the field. Assaults are your "jack of all trades" with no real advantages but few tradeoffs. Each robot type has its uses, but there's no customising the machines, only programming how they behave. You have a wide variety of properties you can assign to them, drag-and-drop style, with a simple, but comprehensive, tutorial to show you around.

There are a few weird UI decisions (like the top of each AI set having a "delete" button that ISN'T for individual AIs in the set, even though it's directly above and in line with where you click to select individual AIs. I've had a strange glitch where a particular normal behaviour, early enough for me not to realise it was a glitch, was triggering in an incorrect manner. This actually caused me to lose a few ranks before having several people in the game's forum point out that my explanation of what happens wasn't how the game is meant to be working. Verifying file integrity fixed the problem, but it was a strange bug to experience.

The graphics are nothing special, but the simple designs of the machines fit the game, and the varied paint scheme options are surprisingly varied, adding a lot of visual customisability to your team. I've gone for some pretty simple designs myself, which means I don't need a vast amount of grind to unlock all the patterns and colours I wanted to play with. You can spend a LOOONG time grinding for the cosmetics - or just buy the "optimized edition" or the "optimization pack" to get a stack of extra currency. The game doesn't use cheap lootbox mechanics, and the progression of earning currency is done at a fairly reasonable rate (I've heard the free mobile version is much slower, because Steam gives you premium account status since it's a paid release). Even without using any of the in-game currency, you have a set of greyscale options open to you, as well as the default two-tone colour schemes on each robot type. It's limited but there's still some room for creativity, and the more you play, and the more points you earn, the more colourful or detailed your designs can become.

Once you've built your AI and sent them into a mach, you don't have any control over events. You can rotate, pan and zoom the camera, speed up, slow down, and rewind time, and once you see where the match leads, you get to revise your strategy if you saw flaws - or cool things the enemy did that you want your bots to do in future. It feels really good when you manage to bring everything together, and your swarm of robots captures location after location and overruns the entire map in domination, or when you manage to lock the enemy team down in collection with a handful of combat-focused robots while your collectors stay behind them and claim all the resources. Each game mode has very different requirements for victory, and you'll find your programs will progressively become more complex as you learn new tricks by seeing how other players' teams behave.

Game-breaking crash to desktop anytime I go anywhere near the ground in a city. Like, for example, when any of about 2/3 of the enemy types are near the ground and I need to get into position to be able to actually attack them. So... literally every mission after the "you don't have any offensive powers yet, just fly" part of the tutorial. It *WAS* a really cool game prior to the introduction of this game-breaking problem, but multiple attempts at reaching the dev through multiple channels have produced no response of any kind. It took months for them to fix a bug they had introduced prior to this one, which wasn't game-breaking, and there was no acknowledgement of any of the feedback or questioning about that either. Since I've owned the game, there have been more than half a dozen updates. Only one has anything that even vaguely resembles patch notes.

I'd love to come back to this game one day, and see that it's fixed and great fun again, but for now, I'm requesting a refund and hoping it goes through (yes, "the game is absolutely broken and the dev isn't responding" is valid legal ground for an out-of-policy refund request where I live). I can't in good conscience leave this game without a warning that for some people, it's going to simply be a broken waste of download time and disk space.

EDIT: Just updating to note that I did - eventually - get my refund. And in spite of multiple contacts to the developer through various channels, I only ever received one reply regarding my attempts to get the issue resolved. That reply was on Twitter, telling me to email them. I had already done that, but I tried again anyway, and still to this day have not received any response at all.

First time playing I broke physics and ran into a wall so hard I phased through it. Oops.

Soulblight does a lot of things that have been done many times before. It's a top-down dungeon crawling action RPG with a stealth system. In many ways, it's a lot like so many games before it. It has those familiar roguelike elements (or "roguelite" since it's not actually like Rogue as a game), with the permadeath and procedural generation that form the pillars of the style. There's some crafting and survival mechanics thrown in as well, which are pretty basic, but well-implemented (I'd prefer it if hunger was either slower to build or easier to satisfy, but that may get easier with practise). In general, all the game's systems are well done. It's got a sense of completeness that a lot of games seem to lack - even the aspects the game isn't doing anything unique or special with feel solidly implemented.

There are two things that really make Soulblight special: the combat and roleplaying mechanics. In these aspects of the game, the usual gamer expectations are thrown out the window, but much like the rest of the game, these unique and innovative mechanics are well implemented.

The combat system in Soulblight is based around a two-layer system of "distance" and "grip" combat. Each layer works a little differently, and most enemies are stronger in one area or the other, while your own weapons and equipment can give you advantages in either style as well. Balancing these mechanics is a great challenge and keeps enemies feeling unique and dangerous, even when you're powered up and only fighting 1 or 2 basic enemies. A few reviews have expressed a dislike for this system - and given how unfamiliar it is at first (and how poorly-explained it is in-game), I can't blame them. But if you put the effort in to figure it out, it's a very deep and rewarding experience.

And that leads to the roleplaying element - as you progress through the world, you have opportunities to gain "taints". These are, effectively, personality traits which reward you for staying in character, or punish you for acting contrary to the role you've chosen for yourself. If you want to push your luck, taking the "reckless" taint will give you a buff for every wound, and fighting multiple enemies at once can stack up additional temporary buffs. Combining this with Black Steel armour, which applies a "curse" that counts as a wound, you can have a permanent bonus to your character's powers at the cost of dying much faster when you get outplayed. You can choose taints which complement one another, and gain progressively stronger benefits from being consistent about sticking to a playstyle throughout a run. You can also pick a taint then actively go against it as a way to handicap yourself, reducing your character's power to make the already-challenging game even more difficult.

On top of the game being excellent fun, the developers are being active about communicating - at least so far - with the fans. I've seen bug reports getting promptly addressed and investigated. They're not only open to discussing player requests, but when they decide not to do something, they take the extra step of explaining a little about why not.