Recent reviews by Effigy

To me, this is the ultimate roguelike. My first roguelike was Castle of the Winds back in the mid-90s. I've since played other traditional RLs such as NetHack, as well as "roguelike-inspired" games such as the Diablo series and Path of Exile. ToME4 combines the best of both worlds in a package that is user-friendly, engaging, and extremely entertaining.

The problem with traditional roguelikes, by modern standards, is the poor user interface and sometimes opaque game mechanics. Their replay potential is very high, but the barrier to entry is equally high. ToME4 keeps the high replay factor while providing excellent GUI. It has full support for both mouse and keyboard controls. Information that would be relegated to wikis for other roguelikes is instead readily available to the player, which gives a very streamlined playing experience. You can jump right into ToME4 and start playing without having to spend hours reading. That's not to say the game is easy, however; I've put well over 100 hours into the game and I'm still nowhere close to finishing the primary campaign.

On the other side, this game takes some of the best features of action RPGs (e.g., Diablo) while avoiding the pitfalls of that genre. There's a strong element of character progression and customization, through complex gear as well as skills, and many race/class options. However, ToME4 avoids the grinding/farming gameplay that plagues most ARPGs because enemies in ToME4 don't respawn. You progress through the world and clear the various areas, but you can't stay in an easy section and kill endless monsters for loot and experience.

I originally downloaded this game for free from the ToME4 website, but after playing for a few days I bought it on Steam to support the developer (and get some extra unlocks in game!). This game is a phenomenal value and a must-try for any gamer. If you're not sure if you want to spend the money on the Steam verison, try it for free by downloading from te4.org .

This is action RPG and free-to-play done right. If you liked any of the Diablo games, you owe it to yourself to try Path of Exile. A quick synopsis of this game's strengths:
- Challenging content. Don't expect to faceroll this game. Even the top players in the world die on a regular basis. It's also "good difficulty" in that you can overcome obstacles by understanding game mechanics, adapting your playstyle, and building your character to counter threats.
- Nearly unlimited character builds. PoE has a massive passive-skill tree with over a thousand nodes, and a deep active-skill system where you can combine abilities with support gems to significantly change their effects. The itemization is also complex and ties in directly with the skill system. You can theorycraft for ages in this game.
- Competition. In addition to the typical permanent leagues, this game has 4-month ladder leagues as well as short-term race events that last anywhere from 15 minutes to a month. If addition to leveling the playing field and providing a fresh economy, these ladders/races have varying gameplay mods that keep it fresh and challenging. By completing achievements during these events, you can earn in-game prizes or even a free T-shirt to the top players.
- NO PAY-TO-WIN! Despite being free, this game does not push you to pay money for an in-game advantage. Microtransactions are primarily cosmetic, adding cool visuals to your gear. The only in-game advantage you can buy is extra storage space, and you can play the game just fine without this. The default storage is about 10 times as big as what you get in Diablo 2: LoD.
- Continual improvement. The developers push out frequent updates to improve game balance, add new content, and improve user experience. These devs really listen to and interact with their playerbase. You can even see devs playing in-game sometimes and chat with them!
- Teamwork. Although many players enjoy forging their own path and interacting with others mainly through global chat and trading, PoE encourages group play for increased progression speed and item drops. Enemy difficulty scales up based on the number of players in your party, but it's still beneficial to play with a group. There's also a guild system with shared storage, and there are numerous options for building a group-oriented character.

This is easily one of the top 5 games I've played in years, and you've got nothing to lose by trying it. I started playing during Open Beta and I'm still playing it now, more than a year later. I recommend trying the game in Standard or another non-hardore league to learn the basics, then try the current four-month hardcore league to get the full experience. Dying in hardcore mode doesn't cause you to lose your character completely; instead, that character is moved from the hardcore league to Standard league, where you can still play it if you choose. Having only a single life to live (in the current league, anyway) really makes the game exciting and keeps the game interesting.

After you've tried and liked the game, I encourage you to buy a few microtransactions to help support this indie developer. They created a top-notch game worthy of AAA status and provided it to the community free of charge, and continue to support the game in a way that puts most AAA studios to shame. Let's give them our own support so they can continue making quality products like this in the future.

If you like hardcore RPGs and value gameplay over graphics, you should definitely give this a try. Very fun and extremely addictive. It reminds me quite a bit of the original Fallout games, although it plays quite differently. There are some bugs and balance issues, but for an under-dev game that's apparently being created by one man, it's fairly polished.

NOTE: Try to demo to get a feeling for the gameplay, but note that the demo lacks a lot of features and has a number of bugs that are already fixed in the paid early release version.

I bought this based on all the professional reviews saying it was a "good PC port," which were misleading at best. The terrible keyboard/mouse controls in this game make it basically unplayable. I feel completely cheated out of my money and have written this off as a loss until they (hopefully) release a patch that makes the KB/M controls not absolutely terrible. And to all the fools claiming you're supposed to buy a gamepad to play this game "the right way," NO PC GAME SHOULD EVER REQUIRE A GAMEPAD! Gamepads exist purely to make consoles viable. PC games should support KB/M 100%. The developer should be ashamed to release a game in this state.