Recent reviews by The Least

An excellent Action RPG with a fascinating world and really enjoyable combat.

Really fun and engaging so far. Solid combat with lots of options, interesting characters, good dialogue, and lovely scenery.

I've tried so hard to enjoy this game. The setting and art direction are superb, but the gameplay is tedious and repetitive, and the world feels dull and lifeless despite the excellent premise.

Pros:
- Lovely art direction
- Some interesting lore snippets and well-realised historical/fictional figures
- Core combat is solid, if unremarkable
- Umbrella gliding and rock climbing can be fun

Cons:
- Weight *and* space limits on your backpack, plus countless minor variations on resources that don' stack, means you'll spend more time managing your inventory than filling it. The fun to chore ratio is abysmal.
- Crafting and base building involves moving from bench to bench to craft, refine, craft, refine ad nauseum. Some might find this relaxing, but i found it frustrating.
- NPCs are static and lifeless
- all the different ores, charms, infusions etc. that go into crafting are little more than minor stat boosts, but you need to use them as the game demands that you work towards a higher gear score. It feels like a lot of unrewarding busywork to distract us from how little there is to actually do in the game.

I doubt I'll come back to this game unless they make some significant improvements to the core gameplay loop.

A really fun tactical puzzle game with great writing, art direction, polish, and QoL features. My one gripe is the length of the campaign. I want more. MORE! But that's only because it was so good.

Not just a remake, but a re-imagining.

As someone who read the prequel books before diving into the original Riven on release (back in my Uni days... damn I'm old), this 2024 version hits all the right notes. It's faithful to the original without slavishly holding on to its more frustrating qualities, and it even elevates the game in some aspects.

My only complaint is that I miss the original FMV performances, but I can see how there'd have been no way to integrate them into the 3D format.

Word of warning: Some of the puzzle solutions are randomised on a per-player basis, so you can't just look up the solutions in a newsgroup like some of us did in the 90s...

A janky mess with solid combat and some nice environment art, but not much else.

PROs:
- What little combat I experienced was fun and satisfying, if a little easy
- Well-rendered environments and lighting

CONs:
- Laggy and frequently unresponsive, possibly due to the lack of Australian servers (I was playing on US West)
- Gender-locked classes with no body customisation at all.
- Laughably bad model-on-a-catwalk animation for all the female player characters
- Bland story with uninspired writing and dreadful voice-acting
- It's pretty clear that the original version must have had level 1-10 class-specific tutorial missions that have been cut from this release, replaced by a single generic Prologue that just dumps your first 8 skills on. There's no sense of growing into your power.

So far it's Warband, but with better visuals and a vastly improved UI. Frankly, that's all I really wanted.

I waited for a Steam release before buying this game, so the Juggernaut Edition is my only experience of it. First impressions are that it runs smoothly and is basically the same experience as the original State of Decay with a few more features and improvements/tweaks to gameplay.

All I really wanted was more State of Decay, so I'm happy so far.

This is a hell of a ride. Dark, funny, poignant, and full of surprises (one of which was so beautiful I started to cry).

Not for everyone, it dives deep into some harrowing material, has little to no combat, and involves a lot of reading, but it is a masterpiece that reminds me why I love computer RPGs.

An excellent and unique RPG with solid writing and gameplay, somehwat hampered by an abrupt ending that leads many promising threads unresolved. Well worth experiencing in it's own right, but I really hope there'll be an expansion to realise the game's full potential.