Recent reviews by titanbass1

Absolutely incredible game. The writing, the characters, the art design, the combat create such an amazing experience that feels like something out of the early 2000s. What makes this game shine is how much you get to use the environment - barrels, crates, jugs, vases, chandelier, a chicken - literally almost anything around you can be used to your advantage. It doesn't matter when you pick it up, you'll have a fun time. The banter between characters, the combinations you can pull, it's honestly such a blast. Pick it up.
My only concern is the lack of content. While I personally find the game so amusing and engaging with combat it doesn't get old, there aren't a lot of end game challenges or modes. The arena mode they have is fun, but isn't endless and you can't really customize the experience. I sincerely hope they come out with a sequel to build upon this fabulous game with a late patch.

This is a really neat game here. It has such a neat combination of army recruitment, upgrade, and combat that makes for a really pleasant experience. The general way this game works is you play the game in a series of rounds, where each round is a time to prep and upgrade, followed by a fight. In the prep phase, you recruit units, put them in fights, recruit and imprison more units, then start to melt down the units you don't want. The melting of units gives you talents you can then put into the units you keep. On top of that, every unit comes with its own rarity, where more rare units can slot more talents. They also drop better talents when melted. This pattern essentially repeats with interesting new rewards at the end of each fight. You're goal is to match up units of the same race and class as having more units of the same race and class give buffs to all your units.

The gameplay feels satisfying - upgrading units really makes a difference, and the abilities units can do are pretty awesome to watch. You can start to get a group of units you enhance into essentially demigods and watch them utterly annihilate the battlefield. My favorite moment was getting an absolutely bonkers Terrifying Pumpkinman. Usually, units are going to deal anywhere between 500 - 1000 damage per round in the mid to late game. When I buffed him up, this walking jackolantern was dealing about 40,000 damage! So yeah, elite units feel pretty special.

The art and music design is great, scratching that great retro dungeon crawling mix. I personally love how the audio for returning to your "hub" of sorts changes every time because they keep remixing the pitch it playbacks at.

Currently though, there's a fair amount of bugs and balance inconsistencies. One faction, the Undead, is centered on having units regenerate quickly with low HP. The idea behind regeneration is that when not in combat or hit with a healing spell, units get health. The problem is that units are never out of combat to regenerate and abilities that give health to yourself and allies are very hard to come by. It ends up making the healing stat almost obsolete because there just aren't as many talent drops to heal as deal damage. Additionally, when you upgrade units, many times the upgrading mechanic bugs out and prevents you from upgrading or choosing a skill to go with your upgrade.

There are two glaring concerns that I think need attention. The first is the translation. There are a number of functions that are inconsistently named, mechanics not telling you what they do, or incorrect damage multipliers. While overall the game makes enough sense with the current translation, it is still an issue, particularly when you don't know if something counts as a buff or debuff. The UI also is a bit inconsistently sized, making this even more challenging. Additionally, and this is a huge issue, when you choose a game mode that goes beyond 15 rounds, you are unable to save your game. This means, if you want to do an endless game mode (60 rounds), you have to do it in one sitting. This is hugely concerning because some games can go for a few hours, and many folks don't have the time to invest several hours to finish one game. I hope they remove this feature, or at least change it to another option - you really should be able to continue at any point. As a side comment, I would like their endless mode to actually be endless and not 60 - have two options!

On a personal tweaks level, I hope they give more customization options to the types of games you can pick - right now when you choose more rounds, they actually make your starts harder - more customization on rewards, units, and events would be great. Additionally, there are several items in the game that need some balancing. For example, there are items called keys that increase the chances of getting better loot from chests. The thing is, a chest is a reward only if you choose a combat encounter that has a chest as a reward. So if the chest just doesn't show up as an option, the key is worthless. I hope they change some of the encounter reward rates to make some things more viable. Also, I really like the idea of melting units and giving abilities to your units. What I do wish is there were more ways to flatly upgrade your unit stats. There are a few starts in the game where you can get an initial unit, and because it is your first unit, it gets a stat buff. However, by the end game, that unit might be obsolete by other units, and there isn't a way to really make it do as well as more elite units. That is clearly a design idea, but while I love stacking abilities on units, it would be nice to have other ways to just improve base level stats of a unit, particularly if you are given an unit that has a stat buff. One of the ways they do this is through a class called reaper. If you collect enough reapers, all your units have a percentage chance when damaging units to permanently increase a random stat. Sounds awesome, but you need reapers to drop, and some units are super slow to attack it may not get to them. It's just another way I'd like to see personal choice in the game. Finally, more unit and ability types will be great. They have a good start, though most of them are reskins of the same unit or ability.

All in all though, I'm having a lot of fun with this and I think it's a steal for the price.

EDIT: They have for the most part fixed the menu bugging out as well as implemented a proper save system.

I'm done with Total War.

Between continued bugs from the first game, rude public relations, lacking essential optimization, price gouging, way too many DLC, and withholding content from day one, I question the need to support this company.

I would like to point out an oddity that these tactics of inconsistent bug fixes, overabundance of DLC, and withholding content is something all three games have had (not to mention their other titles, most notably Three Kingdoms). It has been a staple from the beginning, and while WH3 is the most egregious example of such behavior, to be frustrated with them now and ignore the history is an incomplete truth and denial of their tactics. I've bought into it, wishing to deny it, but I can't any longer. It's partly my own fault for encouraging such behavior by purchasing all their previous DLC from each Warhammer iteration as each purchase of DLC, whether on sale or not, still encourages the practice and provides more data to find where the new price hike can happen (as in, at the time of this review, the Shadows of Change).

Between so many other game companies that listen to their consumers, don't charge criminally high amounts for little content, it seems wiser to spend your time and money elsewhere than to continue playing CA's games. Which makes me sad as I absolutely loved Warhammer 2 with over 900 hours into it.

As for the game itself, it's fun, but incredibly overpriced, laggy, unresponsive, and filled with bugs. The visuals are nice, a great attention to lore artworks, and neat mechanics for each faction. But as much as it can be fun, I have to weigh my happiness between the reality of supporting an incredibly selfish and manipulative company. And for that, I'll take my time elsewhere, because everytime I play, pay, and recommend their games, I endorse their practices.

We don't need to play games from unethical companies, even if those games give you, in my case, the most hours of playtime above any other game.

Absolutely incredible deckbuilding game. For my first game of this genre, I was blown away. The voice acting, storytelling, music, and atmosphere are just top notch. Build variety is spectacular. The only issue I'd see is super insane higher difficulty spikes, particularly at later stages per run. Other than that, it is a must play to me. Highly recommend.

This game...confuses me.

The game is supposed to be a spiritual successor to Kings and Heroes, a game cancelled by this company earlier. The thing is, instead of fixing all the issues with the first game, they decided to scrap it, work on this project instead, and give everyone who owned Kings and Heroes for free. What I don't understand is why they abandoned the first game and released this instead because it is literally the same exact style of gameplay, yet removing so much from the first game.

There was a really nice town center where you entered a tavern, met merchants, and crafted at a blacksmith, but now your town is just a clickable set of buildings you enter without much atmosphere and is quite jarring. There were more races in Kings and Heroes that are now missing in this version. The dungeons in Kings and Heroes were randomized, yet I don't believe the dungeons in this game are (if they are randomized, they feel exactly the same).

As for gameplay in this game, it just feels...weird. There is such an ungodly amount of loot dropped that it doesn't take long to feel that the thrill of dungeon crawling for special items goes away. I understand that games like Diablo III and many others are now setting standards for crafting systems involving lots of items to be obtained and salvaged for parts, but there just is too much to make it feel special. Which is weird because I know the thrill of dungeon crawling and loot is the spirit of this game and I love that. Also, every single enemy drops exactly one item/amount of money, which the consistency of this feels weird and again loses the thrill of getting loot.

The enemies you fight are strange too because there are no "normal" enemies. What I mean is every single enemy has a variety of special moves, abilities, and techniques that make it seem like you are fighting an entire dungeon of elites when their stats are bare bones. In the first dungeon, you will fight wizards who are essentially ninja flipping whilst casting spells, sword and shield throwing warriors, and rogues jumping in and out of combat like frogs. It is a strange environment to be in because you would imagine these are the people you "work up to," not see at every single corner. The animations used for every humanoid are so over the top it makes the high fantasy vibe feel a bit cartoonish.

Combat has so much potential, but it struggles in several ways. Roll mechanics don't actually work as enemies have attack tracing and will just pivot their animation while you are rolling to hit you anyways. This is especially frustrating in the final boss of the crypt level who has a jumping stun attack that can literally do a 90 degree turn while flying mid air. Hits don't feel like they hit, and there isn't a poise mechanic to do enough damage to stop you or enemies from spamming attacks. Knock back attacks don't knock people down and they will continue to spam attack you while they fly through the air. Enemy hit boxes are incredibly suspect and you will get hit at completely bad angles.

Crafting is kinda cool in how they did it as use essences of various rarities extracted from items. If you want to craft an item of higher rarity, you can essentially add more essences of the same rarity of the item you are trying to craft to increase the chances of getting the item of that same rarity. I understand that if they do reduce the amount of loot dropped, it will cause some balancing issues here. It definitely feels like something else is needed to make it special as currently you just salvage and craft with essentially only one resource at different tiers.

What I will say they knocked out of the park is armor customization. The colors you can add to your armor through dyes in several places for each armor is really nice. Love the options and they really look good too! I hope they give an option to change embroideries, emblems, and stitching designs too!

The thing is, I totally love this concept, the art design will be amazing when finished, and four player same screen coop is one of the most fantastic things they have implemented. What an awesome feature to bring back to gaming Industry Games! Thank you for making couch coop a reality again! I'll definitely keep tabs on updates as I really want to see this game thrive and I can change the review to a recommendation.

I started playing Age of Darkness: Final Stand on the 0.4 release. I never (and still haven't) played They are Billions, and so my entry into this genre was based upon other RTS games such as Age of Mythology/Empires, Warcraft III, and Stronghold. Totally not the same games granted, but they were my opinion of good strategy games.

In the 0.4 release, I believe there were seven units, two heroes, a tech tree, a handful of buildings, and only one game mode - survival. There was no multiplayer, which is totally fine, and it performed ok. The game was tedious with the amount of pausing needed for a not super intense RTS player and the inability to really protect yourself if the enemy broke through one line of defense made the game extremely aggravating. The only strategy was to expand super quickly, get fire bellow towers, fill lookout towers with arbalests, and then station catapults to hit the mobs. Two of the seven units become completely obsolete after you unlock the next tier units, and then arguably the sentinel becomes obsolete with archer and siege spamming. Your archers target the gigantic crushers with their ungodly health and defense, and given they come out of the blue on one wave, they were extremely annoying to deal with due to their almost invulnerability save for tower spamming. Ballistas did help too.

It is currently 0.8, essentially twice the patchwork, and what has been accomplished? There is exactly one new unit (technically 2, but one is a replacement of another), three factions that don't really play differently because the game requires rapid expansion, a couple neat but also not so neat buildings, and an armor mechanic that honestly doesn't feel like much of a change. The meta is still exactly the same, the gameplay is exactly the same, the same units become obsolete later, and to be honest, it feels like I am still playing 0.4 with a few new touches. Sure there are some new enemies, a way to see the nightmare path, and, admittedly, a really cool third hero who casts void spells, but aside from that, the game still feels exactly the same.

If 1.0 is this close away, I find it really unnerving at the nuance that would need to be filled to, in my opinion, qualify for a 1.0 release. There isn't any build variety, tech trees don't feel rewarding to mix up, unit variety slim, maps feel exactly the same despite randomization, and the one little mistake that ends your whole game is really a bit dull after a while.

I want to like this game, but to feel like all the other RTS games out there, there needs to be something more. More unit variety and gamplay, more upgrades that make you want to not go down the same pathway each game, different gameplay mechanics that make you feel like you are playing a faction if that is going to be the intention moving forward.

EDIT: Since it seems this review was disliked off the review section, I at least should acknowledge some of the good parts I neglected. The art design, ambiance, and voice acting are quite nice. The music is pretty good. Also, the option to add unique challenges/hardships to your game (such as no hero, no rebuild, permanent hardships) is super fun to experiment with. Great for the super skilled player base.

Ok, I get it: on average, people hate this DLC. There are without a doubt so many things wrong with this pack (the lack of developer support not withstanding). You can just read through them in the other reviews: bugs, bugs and more bugs; terrible voice acting; overpriced; recycled models and textures; arguably bad models and textures. The list goes on and on; however, I would one hundred percent recommend this. If you are an Age of Mythology fan, you have to get this.

I understand that this may seem ludicrous, but here is my rationale. Age of Mythology came out originally in 2002 and got the first and only expansion in 2003. Microsoft Studios created a dwarven campaign later, but that was the end of it. When 2014 hit, the remaster of this game went live, and new affects and cards and workshop were all added in the package.

My point in saying this is even after eleven years, Age of Mythology got revamped and expanded upon when most games die off after such a long period. Some games stop getting patches after the second year, particularly consoles.

So where does Tale of the Dragon come into play? TotD is the filled gap that Microsoft Studios did not think about in their initial release in 2002. It adds the mythology, history, and culture of one of history's oldest and most prolific countries. It is refreshing to see such a new idea in terms of gameplay and visuals becuase some might argue that even though Atlantis plays very differently than Greece, that culture can be seen as essentially "Greece 2.0." This isn't an idea that was hidden from initial development, only to be sold for more money by hiding it from inital release (thanks EA and WB). This is an entirely new and fresh afterthought that can be, sort of, commended.

The DLC does indeed have some great things going for it. The new maps in Random Scenario are refreshing and some unique, such as Yellow River which has every player start on an initial stretch of land before crossing the river to expand. The Chinese civilizations have a neat resource feature called gardens, which allow you to build structures that generate one of the four resources very slowly. All gardens must gather the same resource, so managing your gardens to flip between resources is key in addition to worker management. The campaign I agree is dull storywise, but there are some nice moments thrown into the mix. And, quite simply, having more civilizations, units, gods, and myth units to choose from is always a great edition, particularly in Age of Mythology where each civilization is similar, but all play very differently.

I again do not deny that the DLC has rough patches in it, and becuase of that I am on the fence of thinking that it is worth ten dollars. However, to any player who has played Age of Mythology since it was on disc, I still believe that this is a must have because of the value of trying out another civilization. Not to mention, some mods require this DLC to be used.

I don't usually do reviews, but I feel after playing this game for over fifty hours that I needed to say that this game is without a doubt one of the best surprises I have ever found. I believe I was looking at the "what other people purchased" section of Path of Exile when I saw this title.

As a Diablo 2 fan, my expectations for Action RPGs are set quite high, especially since Diablo 3, to me, was such a disappoinment. So when I jumped in, I was blown away: there are few games that when I started playing I was immediately sucked in. Some of my favorite games of all time: Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, Stronghold, maybe even Uncharted, and many more, all of which I understand are totally different games, did not fully take me in as quickly as this game. To summarize the glory of this game, I'll list the pros and cons of a game that took me totally by surprise.

Pros:
-Great visual design with nice optimization
-Great atmosphere and plot with nice lore books in the world
-Vast world with cool caves and dungeons
-An amazing class system that lets you pick skills in a tree (I hated that Diablo 3 got rid of that) and lets you mix and match between two classes (or masteries as they are called)
-An expansive perk point system (devotion shrines) that let you boost stats and let you add spells on top of spells (for instance, I cast fireball and a flaming torrent circles around my body).
-Quick paced combat with many fun and diverse enemies to get ganked from
-Challenging and memorable bosses
-Well made hud
-Easily mastered controlls (casting spells is such an improvement from Diablo 2)
-Bounty tables to rank up in factions and get cool augments and items.
-Mod support for custom games and gameplay prefs (Check out Nexus Mods)
-I really hate DLC, but the Crucible Mode is super fun. Just wish it was a free addon...
-However, the developers are active in the community on their website and are adding new masteries and a new act with tons of new content, so supporting them ain't bad. I do wish this expansion was free too, but not everyone can do what Path of Exile does.

Unfortunatly, there are some cons, some personable, that need to be addressed...

Cons:
-The music is cool, they just need more tracks
-Most characters don't have voice dialogue, and what they do have is either cool or lack luster
-WAY too much loot for my taste. Personally, I enjoyed where regular grey items in Diablo 2 had some value and there was less loot that needed to be picked up. Sometimes, the room gets totally flooded and makes for annoying pickups.
-Your character tends to level up very quickly. Some may find this a cool plus, but I am not a fan
-All ranged weapons have unlimited ammo. This annoys me because I find picking up ammo to be a more, I don't know, "immersive feeling" for lack of a better phrase. They could have made ammo pouches and quivers that are also enchanted that add more potency to ranged attacks, but render the character to be cautious about using ranged attacks too much. You have two weapon loadouts for a reason. Why not have limited ammo to give an incentive to have a deadly ranged weapon and switch to melee when up close?
-Too many epic items get seen again and again in one playthrough. Kinda takes away the feeling that they are epic, much like Diablo 3 legendaries showing up every time (If I had a dollar for the amount of Monster Hunters I've picked up...)
-I understad in Action RPGs that this isn't what people look for, but personally character customization is always nice to have. Just some hair and facial complextion options would be nice. Have a no helmet option to see your face.
-To me, some enemies are just way too fast. Yes this is part of the difficulty of the game, but a giant ogre with hand saws towering above you should not be moving 50 miles per hour.
-The blacksmith can seriously troll you, giving you items that are worse than what you are wearing a lot. I had to craft about 15 different footwear before I got the right one. Sometimes, I just have to say the heck with it and use a not so good chestpiece instead because the blacksmith keeps crafting items worse than what I got as a mediocre drop.

Despite these flaws, I have really respected the effort put into the game so far and am excited for the future. If you have ever played action RPGs, or are craving a Diablo like game, really check this gem out.