Recent reviews by 𝔽aɳɱaℝ

Fun turn-based roguelike with the prime gimmick being that you can see exactly what the enemy is going to do the coming turn; it's your job to prevent these ginormous Kaiju insects from doing their shenanigans. How you ask? With some giant mechs and time-traveling pilots, of course!

GOODS
+ Solid gameplay. Clear instructions and easy to get into. (though not easy to excel)
+ Graphic-and Sound design are on-point. The vibe is great, works well as a "relaxing snack" game.
+ Your choices for mechs, weapons and pilots expands as you complete achievements which are specific for each different squad. This makes completing them way more fun, as they're tailored to those specific squads so you don't get stuff like "Grind 100 kiils" which I dislike.
+ A real challenge for you smartypants strategy gamers, especially on higher difficulties.
+ You can see what missions and rewards are available to you beforehand so it's up to you to make tactical decisions. Go for easier missions for a guaranteed reward? Or go high risk so you can be stronger for the endgame? Decisions, decisions.
+ With what little dialogue and plot there is, they still manage to breathe quite a bit of intrigue and character into the experience. Something I found very effective is the unseen citizens you're saving actually having emotional reactions to humanise them, very smart.
+Mixing and matching your own Mech squads and pilots after you've unlocked them is good fun, and gives plenty replay value.
+ The roguelike-part comes into play with the varying missions, objectives, pilots and other rewards you find along the way. The longer you play; the more rewards... but the game also cranks of the difficulty for each section completed!

NOT-SO-GOODS
- A relative common complaint is that the game is "impossible". Clearly it isn't; but it does attest to the rather jarring difficulty spike it has between early in a run and nearing the end. AND between Easy and the higher difficulties. You have three units, all capable of moving and attacking once per turn but your enemies are far higher in number, easily overwhelming you. After a while you learn it's not about killing all the bugs but instead just preventing them from you going game over before the turns are up. Using pushes and pulls creatively is critical, and learning this is paramount to further enjoying the game. Don't get angry! Get smart!
- Similarly: Fully completing a Normal difficulty run with some of the squads is a rarity instead of a guarantee. So not for the sore losers among us. Part of this is intentional. A cynical view of time travel where you can infinitely "retry" with a lot of lost worlds in your wake is part of the bigger scope plot. Cool? Sure. Fun? Maybe not.
- I find the lack of overarching rewards aside form pilots and squads a bit meagre. It seems if there was more opportunity for "passive" upgrades the higher difficulties wouldn't seem near as daunting. Maybe an idea for the sequel?
- There's quite a bit of Mech and Pilot imbalance with clear top tiers and the bottom-feeders. I guess this is partially to give more variety between runs but I do feel some pilots are especially useless.
- There are also some missions you basically always want to avoid (protect the old train) and missions which are nearly always a win (Destroy mountains with an OP acid sprayer) so a bit more nuance in those might be in order.
- OST is meager. The music is good, but it get droning and repetitive pretty quickly. I recommend playing your own tunes after a while.

So that's about it. It's pretty clear-cut: difficult but fun. This is one of those games that can make you feel either really smart or really stupid at different times. Basically a solid-strategy game and a great challenge for people who are looking for one.
I'd say it's worth it full price but it never hurts to wait a bit as it goes on sale often.

Thank you very much for reading and if you have any questions be sure to leave a comment.

Ok, so. Warhammer and all that? Not really my thing.
This game though? Oh by the Omnissiah I love it. Here we go:

[COOLS]
+ Great strategy RPG. Build your team of cybernetic tech Priests, leveling and enhancing them with a plethora of skills, weapons, gear and even supporting troops.
+ Atmosphere. And by that I mean basically everything. Sights, sounds, writing, characters. Everything is designed to pull you in. The art is detailed and properly horrific to portray the titular Mechanicus perfectly.
+ Music gets special mention, extremely unique. Haunting and perfect for the setting. Bought the soundtrack IRL. It's that good.
+ The exploration parts in-between the battles are good breaks from the main gameplay. I had a great time reading about all the different scenario's.... and the consequences my bad decisions had on them.
+ The characters really engrossed me. The portrayal of these nearly ancient cybernetic "people" with their motivations and the way they talk is just on-point for me. They're very weird, but not completely inhuman. It's hard to explain. In short: I loved the writing.
+ Just a plain cool story. Both in missions and in the straightforward overarching plot.
+ Plenty of challenges and achievements to keep you coming back for more. And they're built-in from the start of a new campaign so there is no confusion as to what the parameters are. You can even crank up the difficulty yourself to pretty insane levels which is really cool to add to a game like this.
+ Polished. I've ran into very few bugs, and none of them game-breaking.
+ DLC is a proper upgrade. The story is good, they added another skill tree, two new units and there's a few more toys to play with. There are a few gripes though, so let's get on with the next section:

[NOT-SO-COOLS]
- The gameplay is rather slow-paced. Which is great when starting out but if you're on your 3rd+ playthrough it can feel a bit sluggish.
- Some people complain about the difficulty early-game whilst you can be bonkers OP near the end. I kinda like this though.
- The random nature of mission rewards can be a bit rough. If your melee unit really needs a new axe but the game's not giving you one it can be annoying. Alleviated a bit with the fact you can see which rewards you get before you set out on a mission.
- The new DLC missions aboard the ship are off-putting at first because of how different they are. Huge area's with lots of pre-spawned enemies that have abilities similar to yours. They're REALLY hard early-game because of the lack of ways to gain Cognition (basically your AP). On the other side of the spectrum: the new skill tree can make it real easy to get critical hits, which can turn into OP builds which can make the game less challenging. The final boss fight is awesome though.
- Despite my high praise for the soundtrack: there's not enough of it. Since it's slow paced it encourages longer gaming sessions and so the music will turn into this background droning that makes you want to go into a cybernetically-induced sleep.
- The UI fails to mention how many attacks it takes for a weapon's "Machine Spirit" to charge despite it being a pretty crucial game element. Maybe the devs wanted us to experiment?
- MINOR ENDING SPOILER The penultimate final boss is laughably easy. Understandably they designed it this way so you can still beat him even if you have to rush to the ending early without getting many upgrades; it does make for a poor climax. Maybe they could've scaled him better. Tbh most of the bosses are a bit underwhelming despite their cool appearance.

And that's about it. My criticism is pretty nitcpicky because the rest is just fantastic. I can't recommend it enough if you're interested in playing a tactical RPG with an amazing atmosphere. As it installs be sure to properly praise your machinen perform the sacred rituals as dictated by the Omnissiah and you will be ready for a truly unique experience.

Thanks for reading!

Vermintide 2 is an amazing solo or co-up game with lots of replay value. It gets compared a lot to the Left 4 Dead franchise with it's well-written characters, A-to-B navigation survival gameplay and thrilling action.

COOLS:
+ Perfect for beginners to jump into, it's what I did!
+ Game artstyle, theme and overall execution is absolutely fantastic and represents the Warhammer world and all it's nastiness perfectly. As a newcomer to the franchise it really engrossed me.
+ The 5 playable characters (each with 4 different classes!) are all fleshed-out, dialogue and gameplay-wise. Hearing the group banter on is half the fun. Voice acting is superb.
+ Combat is simple but has a lot of nuance, especially on higher difficulties. Enemy variety and design is great, Mowing down scores of swarming rats out for your blood is thrilling and satisfying.
+ Playing together is encouraged and more fun but people often fail to mention it works just fine as a solo-player experience as well!
+ Plenty of challenge to be had with lots of maps and difficulty options with an interesting rewards system: Find tomes during a mission that take up one of your equipment slots, the more tomes the riskier it gets but the rewards increase just the same!
+ Graphics are great. Sound design is great. Controls are straightforward and easily customizable.
+ Matchmaking is quick and the playerbase still seems plenty active! The many memes and funny fan-content is just icing on top.
+ Is still being updated at the time of writing this review. Active devs who communicate with their fanbase! Great to see!
+ HOLY SIGMAR APPROVES

NOT-SO-COOLS:
-YMMV, joining other players through matchmaking might find you alone and confused as the party is used to rushing for loot and don't take new players into consideration.
-If you've played a while you will notice that characters repeat some lines a lot, which can get grating and breaks immersion.
-Failing a mission at any point means NO REWARDS aside from a bit of measly XP, which can feel real rough when you go down right before the end. This harsh punishment is also part of the draw though, making failure weigh heavily means victory through hardship is all the sweeter.
-Weapon descriptions and traits are vague at best, It's really up to the player to try everything out to see how they all function in action.
-Blightstormers are camping wallhackers plz ban Fatshark :(

And that's it really. I don't have much critique aside from minor gripes about gameplay. I hear at release the game was SUPER buggy but that's all been fixed through time. The DLC's and in-game content are a bit pricey but never a must, so you can wait on sales. A bit tough to find your ground but if you spend some time with each character I can guarantee you'll find one that suits you like a glove!

So if you've got some time to spare and feel like you could increase your heartrate with some massive plague rodent slaughter, this is definitely a recommendation!

Thanks for reading and if you have any questions please leave a comment~

Old, simple and fun.

A tower defense game in first-person perspective where you shoot the enemy invaders alongside your towers. Easy to learn and play and builds up to REALLY hard for the final levels and difficulties. Graphics have aged but aside from that it's well-rounded, solid game. Fun solo, but obviously more fun with friends!

Want to try something new? Sanctum is cheap and it might give you hours of entertainment!

First Yakuza game I've ever played and I'm glad I did. Here's the rundown:

COOLS:
+ Dialogue and overall writing are amazing. Main story is super serious while the side stuff is usually really silly, and they SOMEHOW make it work instead of feeling dissonant.
Funny, engaging and they know how to twist expectations.
+ Looks great. You spend a lot of time conversing, so they made sure to make good-looking faces, poses and expressions.
+ The location of Kamurocho feels alive and booming. The whole thing feels thematically on point for the 80's, the time this game takes place in.
+ Combat is good. It's a standard 3D beat-em-up with some flair. Plays best on a gamepad. Controls are easy, you can switch between 3 fighting styles and it's mostly about using your Heat (power meter) in the most advantageous ways. This includes AMAZING animations for the dozens of finishing moves the protagonists have.
+ Music is SO FRIGGIN GOOD OMG. Fantastic OST.
+ Games with multiple protagonists are usually a miss for me, but here they managed to juggle them well. They fight similarly and their stories manage to intertwine quite smoothly.
+ Side stories and minigames are fleshed out. Not all of them are fun (I dislike gambling and baseball, but bowling and dancing are super fun) but they definitely managed to pack this game to the brim with content to kill time with.
+ Doing said sidequests and earning money actually comes with great rewards, something a lot of games forego. Also has a lot of content for the completionist among us, like me!
+ Voice acting is great too. Japanese voices with properly done English subtitles. It's a treat seeing it done this well.
+ As far as I could tell, nearly bugless. I never ran into any problems with the game itself.

NOT-SO-COOLS
- The story is compelling and feels important. However, this means I had no idea I even had time to do most of the side-stuff since the main story is so pressing and it feels like you shouldn't be doing anything else.
- Combat is rather stale early on. You'll need to invest a lot in the combat skill trees to get some cool moves that increase your options to deal with enemies. It takes some time for it to become really fun
- On that same note, cheesing is also part of how you get through tough fights. Beast mode Kiryu and Breaker mode Majima are how you get through big crowds, expect to rely on them a lot. Also chugging health drinks during any boss fight is a bit of a must..
- The "Power/Heat Move" button is the same as the regular power attack button. Making it so you often can't attack enemies on the floor when you want to preserve heat, or you get punished when you try to counter or somesuch. Unreliable. Could've just made it a different button.
- It's hard to properly target specific enemies, sometimes the protag seems to have a will on his own during fights. Gun enemies are extremely annoying and hard to deal with, grinding most fights to a halt until they're defeated. "Fast" enemies can stunlock you into frustrating scenario's.
- Some minigames are trash imo. Cafights are dumb rng. Baseball is way too hard. Pool's opponent AI is way too good. I have no idea how to play Shogi or Mahjong and their in-game explanations don't help one bit. So that's about 40% of the side content I don't care for. Can't expect to love it all, but checking the web I've found most people agree with me on this, so it's still a point against it.
- The fanservice is basic and sometimes kinda cringe. But that's just my taste.

So all-in-all, fantastic game. Play it for the story, comedy and the heavy gang violence, but don't expect everything about the game to have the same amount of quality and fun.
Go in without too much expectations and I'll think you'll get a lot of surprises that will make you laugh and feel a whole range of other emotions like confusion, arousal(?) and HOT BLOODY RAGE!
Never played a Yakuza game? Give this one a go!

Thank you for reading and if you have any questions please leave them in the comments! Cheers!

Meme's aside, fantastic game.

Looks great, lots of polish. controls feel smooth and the gimmick of reflecting projectiles is simple but engaging. Don't let anyone fool you, you made a great game Worblir. Can't wait to 100% this so I can check out the 2nd instalment.

Fantastic game. Never played the original back in the day so I wasn't sure if this would hold up for me but it totally does. Let's get to listing:

COOLS:
+ Funny, engaging and energetic. Theme-wise the game aged just fine. The over-the-top plot and FANTASTIC voice-acting really sells the whole experience. It's cheesy satire, but oh so very good.
+ The story missions are fun but at it's heart it's a bit of a "destroy everything sandbox game", which works great. You start out as an already powerful alien and it only gets better as the game goes on with upgrades to your abilities, weapons and your flying saucer.
+ Gameplay in general is solid. Some optional stealth, lots of weapons and ways to traverse the environment. Optional objectives and extra challenges for the achievement hunters among us.
+ Apparently nearly the whole game is a complete copy of the old one with just updated graphics. Well it plays great and it looks great. I'm not sure how they managed in this age of horrible remakes, but they nailed it completely
+ Not too long. Not too short. No grinding. No multiplayer. Just a solid single-player experience. Lovely.

NOT-SO-COOLS:
-If the humour does not appeal to you, you might want to give it a pass. It's not for everyone in that regard. I loved it personally.
-Sound design could've used some more polishing. Sounds and voices can cut out randomly. Background sounds like birds can be unusually loud. Explosions next to you are jumpscare-loud but 5 meters away they become nearly mute.
-Music score is great at first, love the old-timey horror movie feel to it. There is however not much of it, so it does get boring/droning after a while.
-The odd glitch here and there. Enemies stuck in places where they shouldn't be. Missions instantly failing on save load. And I've had two hardcrash-to-desktops of which I'm not sure why they occured. These are however minor nuisances that shouldn't ruin your gaming experience as a whole.

And that's it. All I can say is: fantastic job devs. This remake has great timing for it's release: it's humour is still relevant while the nostalgia-feel is there for the old fans. In a time where good single-player experiences are nearly impossible to be found it's nice to see studio's that got their own priorities and don't go wit h the latest money-grubbing trends.

If there's anything else you want to know be sure to leave a comment. Thanks for reading!

ONLY Recommended if you could spend a decent chunk of time "gettin' gud"

COOLS:
+ Voice acting and sound design are phenomenal. Sets it apart from any other similar game, absolutely fantastic.
+ True-to-history depictions of all kinds of weapons and armor. With lots of customisation! Mordhau = Fashionhau.
+ Looks great. Far from the most realistic graphics you can have but it's just stylised enough to make things look more clear whilst still looking convincingly gritty and gruesome.
+ Level design is lovely and the whole game runs smoothly most of the time.
+ With great voice acting come a bunch of taunts/emotes. People using these to their fullest give this game so much character. Hilarity ensues.
+ Still getting semi-regular updates at the time of posting this review.
+ I've not been on modded servers (yet) but I've heard/seen that they can be a LOT of fun. A thriving community is always a plus for games like this.

NOT-SO-COOLS
- NOT EASY to get into at the start. The whole melee-combat-system is based on specific movements, timing and anticipation of your enemy. With lots of veterans around, you don't stand a chance dueling against them.
- With this come a bunch of builds that are a bane to noobs: Bloodlust Mauls performing constant drags, spamming faints with small arms, stacking ranged attackers... the list goes on. You'll bite the dust a lot in the beginning, learning how to deal with these players is how you crawl out of the noob pool.
-"Drags"look stupid and make no sense, it's a huge part of learning combat but it's unintuitive how a weapon moving slower then your nan at the buffet does any damage at all, let alone full.
- Baffling design choice: Enemies on Blue team covered in blood are hard to make out. If they wanted blood to be this prominent, they should've picked different team colours. Some people purposely abuse this.
-Hitreg is unreliable. Not sure how or why, I'm not an expert but shortswords/mauls going further then spears is just weird. War Axes are my bane: they reach much further then their model shows and I just can't get used to it.
- Some maps seem unbalanced for either team. Ironically it seems defenders usually have a harder time. Maps with lots of Ballista/Catapult placements and the like tend to be less fun. If Red caps Feitoria mid, it's simply over, gotta wait 15 minutes for the game to end.
- Matchmaking is meh. Finding a match can take ages and due to the relatively small playerbase you won't really find players equal to your skill level. Some veteran players show mercy to newbies, most don't.
- If you're looking for realism: nah. Some people would like to argue that it is, but it really isn't. Swords should have zero effect on heavy armor but they slice right through. Same goes for many small arms and ranged weapons. Imagine trying to BLOCK a downward swing from a Polehammer, not gonna happen without breaking half the bones in your arms.
- I started out getting my ass kicked. Then started using Spear with light armor and got some kills, getting into it. Suddenly got bunch of heat in chat about how I'm "a noob r-tard playing the game wrong" and whatnot. Half of the veteran players out there are very entitled and don't want you to "ruin their game". Ignore these fools.
-On the same topic, kinda toxic playerbase. Half of it is in it just for the fun but the other half is in it to be salty and induce salt. Vets bullying noobs, even in the forums, and then wondering why the playerbase is dwindling. This is a big detriment to the longevity of the game.

And that's it mostly. If you're willing to dig through the saltmines to find comedy gold this can be a game for you. But it's not something you learn in 1 day. I've been playing for 150+ hours and most vets still kick my ass no problem. It's still fun sometimes, mostly because of the funny voices, but it's hard to recommend to new players.

It's pretty good blood sucky game.

Could use more content tho.

Great concept but absolutely not recommended for new players.
What's good about the game? Great Atmosphere. Character and weapon design. Lore. Interesting location. No HUD having to rely on ears and eyes to find opponents. Cool artwork. Too bad there's no way to properly enjoy it when you're buried in salt.

WELCOME TO THE SALTMINE:
-People using "meta skins" so you can't see them is super common. Pay to win scenario.
-Only 2 tactics solo: Rush like an idiot and mostly die, or camp for 30 minutes to see who has more patience for sitting still. Doesn't feel fun to win if that's the only way to do it. The entire game is based around this: camping and never being seen is the way to go.
-Latency is ridiculously bad. Shots from hitscan weapons can miss their targets point-blank. This is annoying in any game. In a game where you shoot old, western guns with slow reloads and high recoil and EVERY SHOT literally means life or death this is completely unacceptable. The amount of headshots that "didn't count" is infuriatingly high.
-On a similar note. Shooting the back of a head does not count as a headshot 90% of the time. Be it creatures or other players. Thefuq is up with that?
-PVE is incredibly easy. Bosses are laughable pushovers once you get over the initial scare. Making your only real enemies the aforementioned camping humans. Who WILL be waiting for you to kill the boss and then take everything from you after you've done all the hard work.
-Hard to improve your skills because "fights" usually end in 1 or 2 shots without the other player knowing where they're being shot from. Best tactics are to never be seen or heard and carry a super-expensive weapon that 1-shots so you'll never have to fight in any actual engagements.
-Matchmaking doesn't seem to work properly.
-Any time you die, you lose your hunter and all progress. Really easy to get salty when you've spend hours playing only to be killed by a shadow 200 meters away camping a clue.
-Since your enemies also have permadeath, it encourages low-risk camping strats even more. They don't want to lose their expensive equipment so all they do is play cowardly.
-You can finish the boss, kill two duo's and go all the way to the extraction only to be shot by 1 wuss and LOSE EVERYTHING. The match. Your Hunter. Everything is for nothing in a fraction of a second with no way to prevent it or get revenge. This is so unfair it's hard not to get miffed.
-Team-based play can be more fun because you can be a little less carefull, but the cheese of other teams becomes far worse. Playing solo is basically a death-sentence against veteran duo-teams dominating nearly every game. I once ran into two guys carrying bomb lances, nothing I could do as a solo player.
-You use dual pistols, sit still, shoot head 5ft away: nothing happens. Someone shoots you with the exact same guns 50 meters away while moving, perfect headshot. Inconsistent is the keyword of this game.
-Loading. I've been put into games where it starts and neither my gun nor the floor have been loaded in yet. It can take minutes before all the trees and buildings are properly loaded.
-Game makes you hate birds and horses despite being an animal lover. This hurts me.

Long story short: Tons of cons, very little pro's. What effort you put in does not equal the "reward" you get for playing it. Which is simply nothing. People who have 1000+ hours in this game must be mad in some way.