Recent reviews by Nayhomie

I wish I could give the game a mixed review, but for players like me, I would not recommend it.

First, let me start with the positive: the art style and animation is great, the music is excellent, and you can feel the love the devs put into this game. Really nice polish overall.

My biggest issue with the game is the monsters. When I heard about Rift of the Necrodancer, I considered myself squarely in the target demographic: loved Crypt of the Necrodancer and played a lot of DDR in my past. However, I feel like the core gameplay conceit - monsters that have variable "note behaviors" based on monster type - turns out to be a big turn off and makes it really hard to play, at least if your brain has been steeped in DDR/Stepmania like mine has.

The natural mastery cycle for DDR and similar games is getting into a flow of identifying notes quickly and moving your body where it needs to be to stay ahead of the big stream of notes. This is pretty hard to do in Rift of the Necrodancer since you need to do that, plus you need to remember the individual monster behaviors and what the "real note patterns" are behind those specific monsters (e.g. the blue bat is actually two notes in one with a specific pattern based on the bats facing). In this way, the monsters almost feel like those old gimmicky DDR modes the playstation-era DDR games would throw at you (hidden notes, swaying notes, variable size notes, etc) -- it feels very exhausting to try to learn. There's a reason no one plays those old gimmick DDR modes. I almost feel like if you go into this game having never played DDR or the like, you'll have a better time, since you aren't naturally fighting against your instincts constantly.

I would probably enjoy this game a lot more if there was a "simple mode" that 'unpacked' each complex monster into a series of basic skeletons and colored them differently based on half-note/quarter-note/etc, so I could play it like you play DDR or stepmania.

Additionally, unlike Crypt of the Necrodancer where there is breathing room in the gameplay to actually learn, adapt to, and play around different monster patterns, Rift of the Necrodancer seems to be trying to apply a similar thing to this game, but very fast paced on rails game loop doesn't really allow for any sort of meaningful gameplay around the monster patterns. The task is simply to identify the monster, recall the pattern, and execute very quickly. Feels like adding a lot of complexity for not a lot of value, and if you enjoyed how the gameplay works in Crypt of the Necrodancer, this is a far cry from it - window dressing only.

Last note: why aren't there more original CotD tracks in this game? Feels like a big missed opportunity given how excellent those songs are and how it would be an easy win.

I appreciate that this game exists, but unfortunately, its not for me.

I've been playing Civ games since Civ 2, and I'm really enjoying Civ 7 on release.

Love the new age system making gameplay more sessionable, love the meta-progression and leader-civ mix-and-match letting me brew new strategies, and all of the improvements to the core gameplay are really solid.

Yes, the release UX/UI has some issues, but it hasn't gotten in the way of me enjoying the core experience and is something more easily fixed in patches. I would prefer an unpolished satisfying game experience to a polished game with core gameplay issues that would need to get iterated on in a later expansion (see Older Civs on launch or other 4x titles).

Overall, I recommend. Great work Civ 7 team!

Simple premise - poker meets deckbuilder roguelike. I haven't often gotten hooked on a demo. I had to actually put down the demo and tell myself to wait for the full game, so this was an instant buy for me.

Played this game a bit against the devs early in alpha and recently in early access - quite fun. Really cool take on a way to blend RTS and MOBA gameplay. Highly recommend!

Any game dev that stands up to complaining misogynist fans gets my dollar.

Super Monday Night Combat is one of those not very well known gems IMO. Its a cross between a shooter and a MOBA, so if you're familiar with DotA or LoL, you'll pick up the mechanics fairly well. The game has a very strong "spectator sport"-based theme which is communicated very well (and hilariously) through play. There are different classes (some harder to pick up than others) and a surprising amount of strategic and tactical value for something shooter-y.

Currently there's 16 pros, four PvP maps, two PvP modes and just released one PvE map/mode. It's definitely worth checking out since its free to play. For me, it provided a different enough feel from LoL that I got hooked to it without feeling like I could be playing LoL instead (which happened to me with DotA 2 and SMITE).

Civilization IV is probably one of the best games I've ever played. And during the Steam summer/holiday sales, it runs for $5 for the base game, $10 for the Complete edition. And its for Mac as well, so you have no excuse.