Recent reviews by Zaltys

An enjoyable take on the monster collector genre. I particularly liked the NPCs, some of them are memorable — which is more than can usually be said about this genre.
The game is mostly complete, but I wish I had played this maybe a couple of months later. At the launch, there were still quite a few species that weren't fully animated etc. — and I ended up using some of those.

If I had to name some flaws, it's that as far as the matches go, the various besties don't feel distinct enough. The move pool is largely the same for most of them, and only some have traits that notably impact the strategy. And an other thing is that it's easy to cheese this, since losing against strong opponents gives so much experience and you can still play even if all your beasties are exhausted...

Enjoyable enough if you like small squad strategy games with a bit of story mixed in. The supporting characters were a strong point for me.

There were noticeable flaws, though. Difficulty felt off, with the hardest battles in the beginning and then everything becoming easier as the game progressed (which, admittedly, might've been because of my completionist playstyle.) Similarly, the loot became less and less interesting, and by the last third I was just automatically scrapping everything I found. And as for the story? No spoilers, but some tropes got overused.

At times this veers more into historical fantasy than historical fiction, and even beyond that, don't expect historical accuracy. As one example, a Roman man uses 'You despicable snake!' as an insult when historically snakes were perhaps the most common Roman pet and were closest to sacred animal that they had — and invaluable for keeping the rodent population down.

7.8/10. I don't regret playing this, but it could've been better.

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For a newbie, this game is 98% sitting in the lobby, then getting killed within seconds of landing. Bored out of my skull already.

A decent match 3 at its core, but I can't put into words how bad the writing of this game is. The protagonist speaks in single word sentences, and the NPCs aren't much better. It's like someone's 5-year old nephew running a tabletop game.

And don't get me wrong: I understand that the story isn't focus for this type of game, but the writings this terrible... why bother having story vignettes at all?

Beyond that, since the last I played it, Gems of War has added one of those annoying monthly reward track things where you must play daily and sink even more time into it. Urgh, no thanks. Who has time to devote their whole life around a single game?

This game won Edge magazine's PC Game of the Year award for 2021, along with the runner-up award for Best Story. That's really all you need to know about this game, just buy it.

Used to be good, but is completely unplayable now. Constant crashes, can't even get to 1500 in ironman without getting my save corrupted to the point that I can't continue.
(I don't have all the DLC, so perhaps that's why it's so unstable... But if so, that's not a good way to convince me to buy more of them.)

If you like out-of-box thinking in puzzle games, this no game's a good buy.
Some parts dragged on the joke too long, but the final chapters were good enough to overshadow the f2p elements. Recommended.

I have a love-hate relationship with this game.
The technical performance is terrible, with frequent freezes and stuttering even at lowest settings. The base-building is a constant struggle of trying to get the pieces where you want them. Planets are devoid of buildings, and what little there is all looks identical. Space stations have the exact same layout too, and most of the planets themselves start to look the same after a while. The chances of randomly meeting an another player are minimal, due to the size of the galaxy; most of the systems I visited hadn't ever been charted by anyone else. The combat is tedious, both in space and on planets. Inventory juggling is a pain. And — a regional problem — everyone in the multiplayer hub seems to speak Russian. Except for me.

On the other hand, it does have that sense of exploration that I haven't seen in other games. I had fun hunting for a 'perfect' ship from among all the endless variations. Cataloging the alien fauna was fun for a long while. Some of the planets look absolutely gorgeous. And there's plenty of other things to do, though most don't give any worthwhile rewards.

Can't really recommend this due to the technical issues, except to those who really love sandbox exploration. If the game is still in this state, I can't even imagine how bad it was at launch...

Dinosaur-themed point-and-click adventure. Well-animated and longer than I expected it to, at least if you count the side content. Relatively easy. Some pixel-hunting issues with the puzzles (got stumped a couple of times simply because I overlooked something), but that's nothing new with the genre.

Completed it twice, second run for the collectibles and other things I missed.