Recent reviews by Evilnapkin

Got to 2nd area in coop, stopped taking input from controller and keyboard, had to alt+f4. Don't waste your time.

Also it's one of these games that doesn't recognize controllers if they're turned on after the game launches, so remote play together doesn't work, if you decide to waste your time on this and want to do so in online coop, you'll have to use Parsec.

The game would be fine if it was just controlling your heroes, but the RTS sections are mandatory and the AI for your units is absolutely ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ abysmal. Catapults will decide to spin in circles on a spot rather than get into an open position to fire, you will right click to move, half your army will take a sane path the other half will decide to path through enemy territory (or worse - the mission we quit the game on has poison on the map, your army will also randomly decide to path through this and off itself). Setting an army to defend (so not supposed to pursue enemies) and sometimes they will pursue enemies.

The enemy AI also cheats - it takes you maybe 15 seconds to create an infantry unit, you will attack the AI, wipe out their whole army in a sector, then within 3 seconds they have 5+ guys come out of the same building. Not something that is possible for you.

Needed more work than it got, last update was Oct. 2022, so they're done with this game. Don't waste your time.

Played a couple hours of exhibition mode coop with a friend on Switch, got access to this on Steam through Family Sharing, played a few games over here now. It's fun for a brief distraction every now and then. Has a franchise mode I haven't touched yet, since I don't want to bore my friend while I do the single player stuff (I'm assuming you can still multiplayer the actual games in franchise mode).

Had black squares showing up on the screen on first game of first launch, but went away after several seconds and haven't come back.

Overall I would give this a 7.5/10. It would be an 8 or even an 8.5/10 if the gem stage (I believe 6) wasn't such a sudden spike in difficulty, and it's really just this level that seems cruel and unusual (though my experience so far is only in coop and screen sharing woes are really bad on this level).

First of all, keep in mind that one playthrough of Story mode (so including cutscenes) on Normal difficulty takes about 1h30m. The end game results screen shows how much time you spent in gameplay, and for me on first clear that was 1h6m. So this is a short game. I believe Hard Corps Uprising on PS3/360 was about the same length and maybe $20CAD. So take this for what you will. It was $37CAD on GMG for a short while and I split the price 50/50, then let the person I split with activate it on their Steam account and I have access to it through Family Sharing.

Coop the game gets a bit funky at times, due to the shared screen. There is one level where if you drop down off the screen before other players have also dropped down, you will fall off the screen and lose a life, instead of landing on a platform with an offscreen indicator. There is also a level where poison is rising, if you fall behind in coop you are basically screwed and will lose lives not only due to falling behind as the poison rises to where the further ahead player is, but also because the spawn logic is a bit screwy on this level (you can spawn under a ceiling you don't have time to get around and on top of before poison reaches you and kills you again). So if playing in coop, expect some frustration from shared screen woes.

The game is overall easy (though I haven't gone beyond Normal difficulty), largely due to how much mobility you have - you have a dash and a double jump right from the getgo. Also dying in one hit like classic Contra is an option, otherwise you start with 3 hit points and can get as many as 5 - even though you can buy +1 HP and +2 HP, if you use both of these perks at the same time (you are limited to 2 at once) you only go from 3 to 5 HP, not to 6, so 5 is the max. Most of the stages you can get through pretty easily, however the level with the gems (I believe stage 6) is a *huge* difficulty spike, after that the game gets a lot easier again until the last five minutes of the last level with the mentioned poison section (that is probably far less of a pain in single player - I've only played this coop so far).

If you enter the Konami code (UUDDLRLRBA on Xbox controller) on the flaming C screen before you get to the main menu, you unlock a 30 lives perk that you can purchase for 7500 credits. You do not just get 30 lives instantly like you did in classic Contra, you have to buy the perk and equip it as one of your 2 to have access to the 30 lives. Also remember that in coop, if one player runs out of lives and another has some stock, the player with no lives can hit start to steal a life. There is also an achievement for doing this.

Perks can be used in both story and arcade mode. Arcade mode bosses have extra moves, I don't know if there are any other changes, but basically this means Arcade mode is the "real" game and story is something you run through once for unlocks (you get characters from Story to use/purchase for use in Arcade after clearing Story) or maybe twice if you don't do Story on Hard the first time and want the achievement for clearing it on Hard.

There are no graphic options aside from resolution, no DLSS/FSR so you can run it or you can't. The game is 30fps cap (not lock) 1080p when docked on Switch so that should give you something to compare your system to, if it is low end you might still be able to do 30fps but games like this need to be 60fps imo. My system is a 12600k 3070 32gb RAM everything on SSD so it smoked this game.

No online coop, and I've only played it local coop, so not sure how it works in remote play together. However last few times I've used RPT, there has been virtually no input lag playing coop as client with host being 300km away, so RPTing this game for coop should be quite doable.

Story mode is max 2 players, Arcade is max of 4. I don't know if you can start Arcade as 4 player on first launch however, as I believe only Bill and Lance are unlocked until you make some progress in Story mode.

Received as a gift.

Took 7.4 hours to beat the campaign once in 3 player coop, that includes 2 game overs from bad runs due to bad RNG with perks+enchantments.

I'd say it's a 7/10 right now, definitely better than it was when they first released the demo but definitely could still use some work. Not a lot of variety in rooms and you see the same ones repeated in all dungeon types (there are 3 episodes per dungeon type and 9 episodes total, so 3 dungeon types total).

Would be nice if you could choose not to have an off weapon, getting perks for the weapon you don't use, even on reroll (you get 4 rerolls per level) is a real bummer. My 2 coop partners were both the sorceress, both were doing pure spellcasting and they would routinely get 3 perks for melee only, then spend one of their rerolls and get 3 melee perks again. Seriously needs to be fixed.

Has a FoV slider, I maxed it out, at the start of each level you have to attack once for it to apply your FoV if it isn't default. If there is headbob I didn't notice, I am really sensitive to both headbob and FoV so if there was headbob it wasn't enough to make me feel nauseous.

There were sync issues at times (like one player would hit an enemy and the enemy wouldn't take damage).

Allies can block projectiles, ie. a sorc casts a spell it hits their ally it doesn't go through them to the enemy.

There are higher difficulties to play on and achievements for grinding through them. Will see what we do from here.

It does shader compilation in the background, so when you first launch it just leave it to get this done (it's why CPU usage will be at 100% for a while and everything will be choppy). On my 12600k it only took about a minute to get this done.

On my system (12600k 3070 32gb RAM installed to SSD) I have max settings @ 1080p with vsync on and DLSS set to quality (I always do this since I can't tell the difference between quality and native), in the starting area it is using 66% GPU, 7.2gb VRAM, and about 40% across the board CPU usage.

Has a FoV slider that goes to 100. Google says there is an edit to get this higher, but 100 will be good enough for me.

Has camera shake when you walk, but you can (seemingly) eliminate this in the game options. You can also reduce the sound of your footsteps.

There is no hard saving, not even at a computer or something like you could in Terminator Resistance, so only autosaves. Autosaves quite frequently though, seems to happen every time I do a checkpoint of an objective or finish an objective.

Took 37 hours to complete, including doing all sidequests. I'd give this a 6/10. Too many issues that can't be ignored, and they don't seem compelled to fix their game.

This is based on DnD 5e, but it is not RAW (rules as written) - ie. clerics have counterspell.

Nice balance between dialogue and gameplay - you won't spend too much time in cutscenes before getting into the action at the start.

Fully voiced, except so far there was one voice line that was subtitles, character animations, and no voice. Speaking of subtitles, there is almost a constant mismatch between them and what is actually said.

Modest inventory management minigame.

Good music.

Moving with elevation was a bit clunky at first - the "shift" key makes it easy to get into "mousewheel scroll to change elevation" and made it more manageable.

Been playing in online coop, had one hiccup that caused a DC. Even if you host, it isn't LAN, the game uses their servers, so if that is a dealbreaker...

You can customize the difficulty - lots of options here. Karmic dice (bad luck protection) is enabled by default, we turned this off (initially at least - see further down).

So far, the game is harder than Baldur's Gate 3.

There is an occasional desync issue in multiplayer, where when one player puts something in another player's bags, it won't show up in the bags for that other player. We are circumventing this by quicksaving before doing any inventory swapping amongst us, and reloading if it doesn't transfer properly.

There's also a bug in combat in multiplayer, where all players can get turns at the same time, which really ♥♥♥♥♥ things up... requires a reload.

We ended up turning Karmic Dice back on because we kept getting screwed hard by the dice, and are higher levels, so it seems... off. *BUT*, Karmic Dice is sometimes randomly reverting back to True Random. So another bug to keep an eye on.

No other bugs so far, so if buying this for single player only, you're likely to have a pretty smooth (bugwise) experience. If buying for MP, definitely get it on sale.

Some things that may annoy you whether in SP or MP:

1. The game gives you "critical" characters - story characters that, if they die, it's game over. So far they've always had less health than our main members, and enemies will focus fire them sometimes, because they are *programmed* to go after critical characters. Pretty ♥♥♥♥♥♥.

2. If you expect a story beat to lead to an encounter, and place characters strategically beforehand in prep of it, it doesn't matter - after a dialogue that leads to battle, everyone gets grouped up right in front of the enemy, which sets you up for glorious things like the enemies rolling high initiative, and then blasting your grouped up party with flamestrike, starting the battle off with people half dead or worse. It gets even better when you have critical characters that get hit by this, and then the enemy starts to focus fire them -_-

3. You can't just choose to rest on the world map - you have to travel somewhere, and wait for a combat long rest at the end. Then, you can't stop travel until you reach a landmark. Dumb.

4. There was one combat (a boss fight), where one character couldn't use magic at all, for no good reason.

5. Sometimes things that *should* count as cover or blocking line of sight (like a wall of rocks), don't.

6. Flying enemies don't provoke attacks of opportunity. However if you're flying, you provoke attacks of opportunity.

7. Quite often, enemies will have a 10 - 15 second delay either at the start of their turn, or after dice rolls. This *may* be a MP-only issue.

8. The game can do a poor job of indicating who will be targeted by AoE spells sometimes. ie. it will say a friendly won't be hit, then it hits that friendly.

We haven't had a gameover yet, but this game has some seriously annoying jank to it. The devs can still fix these issues - it's never too late these days!

Shift seems to be working now, so flicking this to positive.

There is potential for Shift to sometimes not work I guess (it wasn't really working during the winter sale), if that happens use LAN through Hamachi. If this is a dealbreaker for you don't buy this game until you look on the forums and don't see complaints about online being broken. Get your group in the same Hamachi network. Set game to LAN mode on the main menu, cog in upper-right. Everyone but the one who wants to host goes to Social - LAN and joins the host. After doing that, I've never had to wait more than 15 seconds on the "Signing in..." screen, and we've never been disconnected from each other.

You do need to connect to Shift to redeem codes, and redeeming codes sucks too. Can't copy paste, have to type it in, then get this, you can't just hit enter to redeem, you don't just click redeem, no you have to click redeem and *then* hit enter.

Only other Borderlands I've beaten so far is 3 (though I've played a few hours of 2 a long time ago), I'm finding this one to be a lot of fun.

Took about 35 hours to complete the main game, all sidequests, and find all collectibles (we started using Map Genie about 30% into the game, having to backtrack to areas to finish completion for stuff we missed without it for about 4 areas). There is still an endgame farm to do if we want, will see how much time we spend there.

I thought I recognized the voice but didn't look it up to confirm until the end - Will Arnett is the voice of Dragon Lord.

On my 3070, maxing everything @ 1080p had drops to low 50s only in a couple zones, so I just set FSR (no official DLSS) to quality and it was locked 60 everywhere.

You might want to turn off minimap rotation (which also makes the big map always face north when opening), it makes it a lot easier for communicating with people.

When doing the rune "puzzles", the only person that can interact with the runes is the person that started the "puzzle".

Took 13 hours to get 100% achievements, all in one playthrough. Mainly used this guide: https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2565099318

Like their other Pixel Remaster guides, they will often say to go west when they mean east and vice versa. Check your map and compare to the pictures when available (most of the time) to figure it out before committing.

Also used this guide, for determining what floors enemies were on when completing bestiary: https://guides.gamercorner.net/ffiii/monsters/

Never had to grind, got the level 50 achievement just from rarely ever running (maybe 3 times) and extra encounters looking for specific bestiary entries.

Had to take the final dungeon "gauntlet" in 3 bites since you can't have multiple stacks of the same item (a flaw I first noticed in FFIVPR, you could definitely have multiple stacks of potions in the SNES version) so I would run out of healing, have to leave and restock, get back to where I left off, 3 times, for the final haul.

Liked it a lot more than the 3D version on Steam, since that was excessively grindy. Even when I had to change to level 1 jobs at points for specific things, I didn't have to grind to power them up to make them viable. Could just keep going without issue.

Took 16 hours to beat the story... and I got the achievement for clearing 4% of the game after doing so. So lots of powering up to do if you want.

If on PC and wanting fullscreen, hit alt-enter.

Has problems unlocking achievements when under Windows on Deck for some reason, so I don't recommend playing that way (putting your save in the cloud and then launching it on a Windows PC unlocks achievements you've earned, except for the % based ones, so still a miss). When under SteamOS on Deck this is a fantastic Deck game, as getting a floor done only takes 15 - 20 minutes (depending on your party power) and then you can save and get on with your life until the next bit-sized session. Sometimes you will have to save and reload to get achievements to pop.

Isn't forthcoming with all information and the Codex is better navigated with K&M, so I use these resources:

https://siralim-ultimate.rovermicrover.com/

https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2197484456

No random battles, you see the enemies, and there are only so many encounters per floor (you can see how many are left by looking at the bottom of the map).

It does feel like you are punished a bit for trying new creatures + fusions early on, since you don't have the ability to levelup creatures with currency instead of grinding until later, and the grind to catch up new creatures in levels is really slow. This is the only thing I don't like about the game so far, but I enjoy the rest of it enough, and am looking forward to all that's promised, so I'm dealing with it.

EDIT: And as it turns out, you don't have to do much grinding. I did about 2 hours of grinding to get a couple creatures good fusions, then just wrecked things all the way from floor 20 to where I am now just finishing floor 42, after which you unlock the ability to level up creatures at your fusion station, so experiment away after that point (and at least this early it's cheap).

EDIT2: Now that I've cleared the story, I can safely say that 2 hours of grinding was all I did. After that I smashed everything on the way to the final boss (so about 43 floors since grinding), only got stopped once where the game basically softlocked (enemy had so much defense it wasn't taking damage and it would never attack me - had to forfeit, which saves everything and sends you back to castle with 0% Favor). Last boss took a couple tries, but once I got set up for it it was easy. And creature level doesn't really seem to matter as much anymore, my mid-90s party is blowing up level 160+ creatures.

All creatures heal/revive/clear status effects once combat is over, which is a nice time saver.

It's a bit of a roguelite, in the sense that depths layouts are different every time, and when you go into an encounter with a boss, he will be accompanied by enemies. Some combinations are way harder than others, so you die, warp back to your castle (all you lose is Favor which lets you find more stuff, caps at 100% and can be easily regained), go to the boss again, and he has an easier enemy layout, so you smash him.

When you save it saves all you progress *except* where you are on a map - it always puts you back at the castle on a reload. This is probably to stop people from doing things like saving before a boss, having a bad encounter, force closing the game to avoid the loss penalty, and reloading back in front of the boss like nothing happened. This way you are semi-committed to whatever the depth gives you, though if you are suddenly short on time or whatever you can save and exit and it will remember everything you picked up, xp gained, etc., just back at the spawn point in the castle, no penalty.

The OST is good as well, it's done by the same guy that did the OST for "This Way Madness Lies" which I also really liked.