Recent reviews by Ufnal

As is to be expected from Max Gladstone, this is a wonderful game, clever, well-written, complex. And, above all, set in one of the most fascinating and original fantasy settings I've had the pleasure to explore. The replayability value is also enormous - it's not just ending up with a different romantic interest or choosing the other side of the conflict, it's big damn choices that really matter. Big enough that my first character actually decided to run away from it all because of the sheer weight of the choice he was confronted with.

Also, do check out Choice of the Deathless, which was just as great!

WMMA3 is a wonderfully complex (and yet quite simple in its basic principles) simulation of managing an MMA federation. Although the basic premise is, well, basic - you have to book events that feature fights between your company's fighters - the gameplay is very engaging as you try to decide how to draw in fans, who to promote, who has the potential of becoming a superstar, how many fighters can you have before you are unable to make them popular enough to carry you financially, who to hire and who to let go etc.

However, the thing that makes it even better are emergent storylines and emergent world. Just as in, for example, Paradox Interactive grand strategies or football managers, half of the fun is not in the strategy and planning but in seeing how various decisions and random factors converge into narratives - the fighters, with their gradually scouted skills, fight histories and pre-MMA backgrounds, become almost real people whose careers you watch, who you cheer for (or against), whose successes you celebrate and failures mourn (or shout at the monitor about). You begin to notice personal quirks in the fighting (which is described to you purely by text - but in a dynamic and entertaining way), you start to like or dislike certain fighters, you plot a favourite youngster's rise to fame by a series of easy matches and weep as he gets beaten down by weaker but more experienced employees, you carefully consider whether your nostalgia for a former champion is strong enough to extend his contract even when he's way past his prime, you plot an ideal title match by giving enough exposure to the contender (or, as I once did, seek for a fighter who would be able to fight the belt away from that jerk I stupidly gave a shot at the title only to discover that he's good, but he's a sucker who wins fights by masterfuly smothering the enemy against the cage wall for 5 rounds straight which puts the crowd to sleep) and rejoice as your plan comes to fruition, you contemplate the fall of another federation - and then race against the competition to grab their best stars...

This game is by no means perfect. Its interface takes a lot of time to get used to, and even then it's basically just not good. (WMMA4 seems to be much better in that department - but it's not on Steam. :() The fight descriptions can become a bit repetitive and boring if you play for many dozens of hours (although even then you can be surprised and entertained when a match goes in a direction you'd have never thought about). The character pool could be bigger (although there's a healthy amount of mods on the developer's page that can help with that). But once you get sucked in, those flaws don't seem big enough to discourage you from planning just one more event, staying just until the TV station sends its reply about your new show idea, fast-forwarding to the beginning of just one more month to see the new recruits in the MMA industry, seeing your champion defend his title just one more time...