Recent reviews by Mista Cow

It's really solid, I appreciate the ARPG style weapon affixes a lot. The difficulty scaling is also perfect and the game is consistently challenging.

I see people comparing it to Risk of Rain 2, but I honestly enjoy this game more.

TL;DR: If you love the part of RTS games about where you're trying to constantly counter the opponents units you'll love this too. It's highly addictive and you get into games very quickly.

I don't care much for autobattlers. They are usually very RNG heavy, and rotating between different opponents means you have to focus on building a well rounded comp rather than playing specific counters. This is a completely different experience.

Ironically, even though Autochess was a originally a Warcraft arcade mode, this spin on autobattlers has much more appeal to a RTS lover like me. That's because this game focuses on units rather than heroes. It sort of remind me of Nexus wars from SC arcade if anyone remembers that as fondly as I do.

Being a game about units rather then heroes with crazy abilities, it's very visually clear and easy to tell where your comps are failing. There is a constant back and forth of trying to pick the hard counters to the opponents unit comp, but also trying to preemptively guess how they'll build to counter your eventual counter and so on and so on. It's really fun in the same way that trying to have build an army composition that counters your opponents' in an RTS is, but without the hell of having to maintain your APM. The dopamine levels when you pre-guess what your opponent is going to place and you already have the counter down is insane.

It's quite polished for an EA game. I have yet to run into bugs and I get into matches within seconds. Probably my only complaint is that there's only one repetitive song for each gameplay phase, so I muted music almost immediately.

I think anyone can have a great time with this game if they love strategising and having that feeling of hard reading your opponent. It's fun and addicting in a extremely basic level and I can't recommend it enough.

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✔ Terrible graphics
✔ Spreadsheet simulator
✔ 400 page manual
✔ Higher priced then you would expect
✔ Looks like the target demographic is civil engineers in their 50s

Yep it's a great game.

It's good, just needs more polish and variety of end game content.

Character build depth and itemization, the core of the game, feels really good. There are tons of different possible meta builds for every character class without the systems being overwhelming.

The MTX is unfortunate, but I can understand why they would need the extra cash.

My favorite Rougelike. A true classic. I still play in ASCII mode sometimes but they did a really good job with the payed release.

The temporary item system is still stupid but at least you don't have to spend real money on it now.

Game is a lot of fun, there's some jankyness with the abilities but honestly it makes it better. Basically PUBG with better gun play, class abilities, and a bit more polish IMO.

Rogue legacy but the movement is cracked

Probably the deepest strategy game I've ever played, and that's saying a lot. I love games that look a little grimy but have an overwhelming amount of information, and that's dominions to a tea 1000%.
There's so much faction, spell, and magic item variety that people have be constantly experimenting with things for years and the meta still eludes the community. In fact, there's 3 entirely different metas to figure out depending on what age you play in.

Shockingly, despite sheer breadth of factions and options, everything feels well balanced. Every faction is viable (well. underwater nations may be a little iffy depending on the game setup). Even if a faction is considered a little weak by the community there's a feeling that if someone just dedicated their time to really figuring it out, they could be really strong.

While there is just so much to the game, it is actually quite intuitive once you get the feel for it. There are plenty of deep calculations going on under the hood, but the end results are about what you would expect.
E.g. long spears are good against cavalry and big units, maces are good against armors, axes are good against shields, units take penalties for being surrounded, if you have lots of spammable weak units you should research magic that gives AoE buffs, and etc. The difficulty comes from optimizing and learning specific spells, magic items, and pretender builds that are really good for your faction.

No other 4x games are very focused on competitive mp gameplay. Most focus on the single player experience because of the existence of in-game diplomacy options. It's very unique in being truly meant to be played with other people.

Anyways, in summary there's nothing quite like it, and I can't recommend it enough.

This is a pretty damn fun rogue-like. It's very challenging and extrememly promising.