Recent reviews by cswiger

Short, but enough here to like.

There's probably a good game hidden behind absolutely brutal KB+M controls.

Update: there is a good game hidden behind the controls. You really do have to power through it and just develop your reflexes, muscle memory, and get used to monster tells. And the MH:W discussion forum proved to be remarably helpful when I was looking for advice about a specific monster.

+ Banished meets old-timer Lords of the Realm
+ beautiful ambient songs and background soundtrack
- market stalls and some shops can be buggy and just stop working
+ but hey, the town looks pretty nice even if your dudes are just standing around rather than working
+ it has sheep! (LotR players remember)
+ your one starting ox is your best worker; get more ASAP
± no oxen left means you are toast, because you cannot build anything using timber
- too few upgrade points, too many techs
(true even with half of the techs being unavailable / WIP)

Most librarians never have to deal with cursed books, but Book of Hours gives you the opportunity to get lucky-- or lose your soul. You can become a beachcomber and gather random bits of flotsam which drift in with the tide. You can explore the moors and find a snake for a pet. Or you can explore the Hush House and find your dog.

Share tea with a visitor before giving them access to the book they wanted. Or send them off empty-handed.

The intro has more bad cutscenes than I was willing to skip before giving up.

I want to like this game, but the QTEs and lack of player agency through the scripted events really gets in the way.

The music is outstanding, the tactical battles are interesting but you don't have to micro-manage them to win, the graphics are serviceable (but you tend to watch a sea of icons clashing). What sets AI War 2 apart is that the player faces an uphill battle where every success is also a tradeoff in that you provoke stronger and stronger responses from the AI faction(s).

It's absolutely worth trying standard RTS approaches like "a big ball of units" or trying to paint the map in your faction color by taking every system. In order to win, you do have to claim sufficient resources and ships...only without making the AI angry enough that you cannot survive the responses.

Fair warning: do not be fooled by the initial ease at which you can take the first few planets. Do not taunt the AI. The AI goes from being a passive pushover to becoming that steamroller from A Fish Called Wanda as the AI Progress (AIP) increases, and their homeworlds are paved with wet concrete.

I played Tropico 5 first. This is significantly harder and makes for a more interesting challenge.

I was going to suggest that some of the disasters are unfair: a volcanic eruption will send fireballs across the entire island and set 50% of your structures on fire, for example. But you get disaster aid which covers the loss; what you are really losing is time to rebuild everything.

Heaven's Vault is a diamond. Yes, it could use more polishing, but Anno 1800 is sitting idle in favor of learning the Ancient language and exploring the Nebula for more sites and artifacts.

The RPG elements and branching storyline are incredibly flexible. If you want to study an artifact and then return home to Iox with it, you can...or you can trade it for another artifact instead, if you like. You can do anything from treating Six-- your main robot companion-- as your sidekick and BFF/helper; or responding to the robot as an intrusive, patronizing, spying nanny; selling him to a junkbot servo dealer for info, or even finding another personality instead.

The process of doing translations and figuring out the role of artifacts and sites is amazing. You start by blindly guessing, and through a mixture of luck and paying attention to details, you are nudged into a flicker of understanding that grows into a fire.

For a specific example, notice that most places have both ramps for robots and steps for people. Finding lush green places with water that people like and grow crops, or horrible hard-to-breathe desert spots intended exclusively for robots tells you something.

Then you go to a site where it becomes clear that the laborers were people and the overseers were robots. Did the robots rebel and take over for themselves, or was someone controlling them and using them as proxies in a war? Oh, and can you really trust dear old Six?

Sure, you learn early on that your robot has an ethical core which requires it to help you and save you even when you take increasingly dangerous risks. Sometimes you can put Six at risk instead of yourself, and it it complies even as it asks about the previous robots you've lost (or sold). But what would happen if someone were to re-write that ethical core? Would you reprogram Six to enslave it or free it, if you had the chance?

I haven't said anything about nits or gripes. I very much like the artwork and rotoscoped characters, but the whole feet fading when people move remains a little weird. I've also run into one bug where I got stuck about 15 hours in and I had to ask Inkle tech support, but they promptly got back to me with a fixed savegame.

Sailing around becomes tedious. It's nifty to view the world going past, but there just isn't enough to do except steer left or right when a split comes up. Hit Q and R and talk to your robot or any passengers whenever you can...that seems to move stories along and will help you translate better or recognize more about a site.

This is very unique and well worth playing. You've got only a short time to explore a planet wasted from all-out war using a remote rover. The longer you stay, the more you find but also the more radiation damage you acquire, so being efficient with time is vital.

The stuff you find can be added to your rover-- it is usually wise, but not required, to research it first. But you can acquire better equipment, or even weapons and armor if you want to fight it out in hostile areas. Of course, you're using up slots and can't carry as much back, so every choice is a tradeoff.