Recent reviews by Wolfbane

This is exactly the game I needed in my life. At first blush it feels very much like it could be set in the Mechwarrior universe just more in the vein of controlling one of the Inner Sphere Houses rather than a wing of big stompy mechs. And I love it!

Take control of the workings of your planets, your family, and their place in humanity's struggle amongst the stars! Give orders to your family members to protect and expand your holdings. Make frienamies from the other neighboring ruling houses! Watch as it all crumbles to ash as your halfwit firstborn son takes over after your death! A true noble highborn simulator set in space!

This game is simply brilliant. It's been a very long time since I've played a game that hooks me with it's characters and story, and here we've got one that weaves an incredible tale of the Greek Gods of olde.

There's so much to love and admire about this gem of a game, if it had simply nailed the combat and keepsake upgrades or a few key components it'd still be a great title. But because the developers so obviously put huge attention and care into all of it's systems both big and small, art style, story, music, voice acting, combat, exploration, the progression keepsakes, even the fishing you gain access to later, it's all woven together seamlessly to create something that draws you in and keeps you coming back for more. Even when a run goes bad, and you die horribly (and you will, due to the nature of the game), you still get the sense that you've progressed, either with the story, or with an unlockable or somesuch. Plus, there's even a God Mode, so if a boss or even a whole level just feels too hard to progress with, and you want to keep going with the story, you can.

Edit: Oh! I forgot to mention one thing. Don't be afraid to slow down, take some time to wait and listen while you're in the main hub area between escape attempts. As with everything in this game, it's the little bonus moments they've thrown in (that I'm trying not to spoil) that really sets this game apart in terms of what's simply a job and product to sell to some studios, and what's a passion project that has love and care put into it. Hades is so very obviously the latter of the two.

I cannot stress enough just how -good- this title is. Kudos to Supergiant Games with everything to do with this game! The story is engrossing and compelling, the voice acting is new, fresh and adds a beautiful touch, the art style is amazing, colourful and vibrant, the setting and worldbuilding is inspired. This is the type of entertainment that's possible when a studio puts the effort in and has the talent to bring it to life.
(Also, 1000x times again, great choice with the voice actors, it's so refreshing to not hear the same big names -yet again-. They're great, talented assuredly, but so tiredly noticable and predictable to hear in my opinion. Thank you for going with something and someone newer)

There's only a couple of very small things I'd either change or add, such as carrying more keepsakes, or having them able to be even more powerful, or having more permanent boosts. That and more story, more adventures, more Cerberus, naturally. None of that is needed of course, but for my own sake I'd feel they'd be nice to have.

Summary? Fantastic game. Fantastic Developers. Well worth checking out and supporting if you're a fan of roguelikes or great storytelling. Or both! Huzzah!

I want to like this game, I really do. I loved the first Dungeon Defenders, and this seemingly updates everything to be better. The maps seem decent, the traps and cannons are just as varied between characters, the combat seems fine for the admittedly limited time I've played, the loot is just as looty as before. You can even switch characters on the fly! So what is it that bugs me about this title?

The only gripes I seem to have are focused on the free to play aspects. I mean I get it, it's a fantastic way to get oodles and mountains of cash from folks who're predisposed on dropping sometimes massive sums on these sorts of games. I can't fault Trendy too much for seeing how the mobile market worked and wanting to get a piece of that. Heck, usually I buy into similar games myself if given enough incentive.

But in those cases the other games offer can't miss packages and the occasional drip of free gems/premium currency to get you started. So after I got dropped into the common hub, I took a look at what was on offer. No packages even selling gems, no free gems for going thru the story missions from what I could see? What? How's one supposed to even buy all the premium costumes and heroes? Thru steam? Maybe I'm just being fussy but it all just bothers me. Again, I can occasionally con myself into buying a few goodies here and there for free to pay games, but with DD2? It just feels... wrong. Off. Weird. Where's the hook, where's the love? It feels like the game just dumps you at the storefront with the expectation that what's on offer is too good to pass up. Blarg, no thanks.

The gameplay feels solid enough that I might give this a few more plays. Maybe I just haven't played far or long enough, but then again there's that store with a good chunk of the game locked away in it that's just sitting at the back of my mind, nagging me before I even launch the game. Maybe that's the difference, in the first Dungeon Defenders everything felt like it was earned or could be earned thru play and skill. Here you can just buy your way into power it feels like.

This is how Trendy wants it, and they're probably happy as clams and making fistfuls of cash from their whales, but this just doesn't feel like it's the Dungeon Defenders sequel I want, all the improvements aside.

A pretty good mashup on the whole flying around in space/conquor the universe genres.

There's a lot to like here, with the story being servicable, if not fantastic, to the perks available to customize your character, to the fact you can ever so slowly start to take over the galaxy and rule it with an iron paw of doom! Dooooom!

The ships on offer are similar enough each tier that you can usually find a couple of styles you'll enjoy flying around in without sacrificing much (if anything )in the way of performance. Combat is decent, this isn't Tie Fighter where having a flightstick is going to be mandatory, but being able to pew pew the pirates and other pesky people who cross your path is still fun hours into the game. There's a number of options with the weapons as to how you want to turn your enemies into ionized gas, and the ability to research tech to improve not only your ship but your empire's capabilities is a nice touch.
The fact they allow and encourage folks to mod the game is a huge plus.

I'd really love to see this title fleshed out more in future games (Assuming there are more) as having different factions on offer, with various poliitcal aspirations and even differing perks on who you start or side with having more of an impact would be pretty cool. This is defintely a game where you can see the framework of a good building here, and hope they build bigger and better for future iterations.

There's also some stuff that really wears thin after a while. Your followers/allies careening around like drunken pinball imitators would be my personal biggest pet peeve. You set a course, jump to crusing speed and a rogue ally comes flying off from a weird angle and decides that a ship to ship headbutt was definitely in order. Thank the gods there's no collision damage or this'd be upgraded to a huge dealbreaker.
Level progression feels far too fast in the early stages with your character earning ranks in just a mission or two while rewards do little to help keep pace with the upgrades available. You can now fly a larger ship class? Great, good luck having the creds to afford it. I found myself having to skip every other ship tier just so I could afford the occasional new kit.

Overall a fair and fun title if you're into the whole trucking around in space, with some light empire management thrown in for good measure that's provided some solid entertainment and leaves me wanting much more down the line in future releases. The fact there's modding available is also a very nice positive. Kudos!

Pillars of Eternity II (Edited)

The game picks up not long after the first game's ending (presumably, I don't think it's actually specified exactly), with everything you had accomplished in your own castle being torn asunder and your character being left amongst the rubble. There's some mumbling about a piece of your soul being stolen and you're set on a task to stop the one responsible. Fairly standard in terms of storytelling thus far. This also sets the stage for you being returned to level one, as your power is diminished/stolen. Fair enough! But then you're immediately reunited with Eder, a companion from the previous title who also inexplicably is also newly unpowered. No explination is given as to why he'd also lose all of his skills and talents, which I felt is very jarring and immediately left me wondering what happened. Did he die and return as well? No? Did his time being a mayor of a small village make him forget how to swing a sword? No? Slip down the town's well and suffer severe head trauma? It's a small thing and present in pretty much any RPG sequel released in forever, but it's still irksome for being glossed over and ignored.

I complained mightly in my initial review about the hats making everyone bald like they were each giving off radiation sickness, this is apparently being fixed for the player character in the upcoming patch, with hopefully the companions to follow in future patches. Huzzah for hair!

Otherwise the early game so far seems like a straight continuation/improvement from the first, quests are still given by the various NPCs you meet, combat still feels solid with a mess of new tactical choices to make and critical hits still feel like they pack a serious punch when they land. There's often more to encounters then the standard 'Here's a group of folks you have to kill just standing around' There's quite a few patrols, ambushes and reinforcement waves that have made a number of fights seem quite challenging and engaging, with enemies and the party all vying for an advantage in positioning.

The game still dumps a metric tonne of info and lore on the player initially, which is fine if like me you just finished a playthru of the first game, but isn't going to be much help to people who haven't remembered every detail from their last run. There's a number of pop up tooltips during discussions though that help with common phrases and ideas that should help ground you in what folks are saying.

There've been some pretty big changes to the game as well, gone is the endurance/health dynamic from the first game, replaced by a simple pool of hitpoints that auto replenishes after combat. Be aware that important characters can die pretty easily, Eder somehow managed to get himself killed in the game's opening skirmish on my second attempted playthru. (The first ended abruptly after I refused to agree to follow the main story in the first place, minor kudos for allowing us that choice). Thankfully once they're added as full on companions or sidekicks, there's a wound system in place that stops your travelling troupe from getting killed in a simple skirmish. They can get completely thrashed three times before their world goes dark and you need to find a replacement on the next KO.

New to the series, Multiclassing! This offers a huge variety when creating your own character and hired help. Some very interesting and a multitude of skills and spells on offer for these combo class weilders, though they won't be as powerful in either single class as anyone with just the straight pick. Another big positive is that pets affect the entire group now, and have very different bonuses on offer. Need a perception boost, or protection from poison? There's a cat for that! You can also stack bonuses from items, so if you need or want to load up on gear that boosts might or intelligence, you can now without any suppression of skills.

On the negative side they've reduced the party size down to five, down from six in the previous game. I'd much prefer to run with a larger party, so this is a pretty big blow to me. The overall balance is still tipped a fair ways towards this being a good game, but again, decisions like this do not help matters. Boo! This is perhaps due to the fact your companions can now help in skill checks, providing a small boost to your own picks. I can see where having six companions all providing help might give too much of a boost to these skill checks, but I'd still rather have more folks to run around with and have interactions with then fewer.

Also redone, is how mage grimoires work as well as how all spells are learned for casting classes. Spells are cast now much like the cipher spells from the first PoE, where they're per encounter rather than a set number between rests. You also can't learn any and all the spells from enemy grimoires you loot, each grimoire is locked to two preset spells per level (varying from tome to tome), plus whatever mystical mumbojumbo you've picked from your leveling up perks. No longer do druids and priests learn all the spells available to them either, they're forced to pick and chose what they can hurl upon yonder foe and friend.

All in all thus far it seems like another decent offering from Obsidian. If you liked the first Pillars, or were a fan of Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale back in the day, this title might be well worth a look.

This is an absolute gem of a game. Ever wanted to go to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry? This is it, or as close as we muggles will ever achieve. The game is pretty text heavy, but it does a fantastic job of helping to set the stage for your first scholastic year at the Academagia. Want to play as a herbology student who loves animals and adventures? You can do that. Want to study and practice the forbidden arts, and hopefully not get caught? Go for it! Want to build the meanest clique of students who ever roamed the halls of your school? It's possible! There's an absolute wealth of choices you can make in this game, and while it's daunting at first to try to figure out if putting points into your intelligence will pay off, or if some obscure heraldry skill will ever prove useful, it's neat to see just how some odd picks can influence your entire playthru. If you love choose your own adventure style gameplay, this is a game not to be missed.

One of, if not the most, deep and engrossing 4x space strategy titles that I've ever played. There's a whole shipload of options here from the getgo, from the galaxy size and shape, to if you want start out as a prewarp civ just starting to explore your own solar system, or just how nasty the pirate factions can be from the getgo.

Speaking of, did you want to play as a pirate faction? Cause you can! Raid, pillage, loot! Kick those boring little space civilizations in the teeth and take their resources!

If you're daunted by the complexity, don't be too afraid to give it a chance. There's a lot to learn here, but it pays off in spades by how it keeps you hooked once you learn it's tricks and secrets.

There's much more that can be said to promote this game, but I haven't the time or the words to do it justice. Pick it up now or during a sale, and I wager you'll sink more hours into this game than almost any other.

A fun, friendly little god game where you control four elemental giants as they rebuild the world and shape it to help it's inhabitants prosper. The old adage, simple to learn, yet tough to master definitely applies here, as there's a lot of interplay between what abilities the giants use to shape the environment. Forests and swamps won't appear without some oceans nearby, but desert biomes need to be separated from the sea, As well, some animals, plants and minerals have a form of symbiosis with one another, and making chains of terrain that stack bonuses with one another is very satisfying. Throw in small independent human towns that spring up and depend upon you to help them thrive without becoming greedy by growing too fast, completing challenges that unlock new creatures, plants and minerals, and you've got a fantastic game with great replayability. Well worth the look!