Recent reviews by Paranoia

Game in Open Beta: this review is only accurate, as far as I consider, for the time being, and should only be considered valid until more changes happen. For example, the last biome and Final Boss of that route is yet to be introduced. Reader discretion is advised.

I have complicated feelings about Hades 2. Mainly because it has a lot more content than Hades. Which would be a good thing, in general, but comes with some consequences.
The story and character writing is consistently top notch. The only issue being that it feels much more linear than in the previous game: the Player has, FOR THE TIME BEING, minimal ability to influence the relative progression of storylines. As evidenced by my not feeling that anything meaningfully differs between multiple saves despite trying to do things in a different order. Work in progress on that part, and only noteworthy because of the first game handling multiple storylines better thus far.

The combat of Hades 2 is mostly better. But, for the time being, the Underworld route status quo is basically stuck at "tutorial zone". Meaning that it is much easier than the first Hades is. Mind, the Surface route (alternative route with different biomes and Bosses) is much closer to Hades 1 experience on difficulty front. So, an improvement, with a note attached for the time being. But the note is, well, noteworthy because the Player is stuck maybe a bit longer in the tutorial than strictly warranted. Personal mileage may vary.
The only minus I would give to combat is that there is much less focus on pushing as a mechanic, including no damage on enemies when pushed into each other or obstacles. Meaning that there is, overall, much less focus on positioning and environmental hazards. A hefty minus on that one, but that is the one thing that is explicitly worse in this sequel, in my opinion, everything else is improved.

The resource management is just a mess in this sequel, to be frank. As in: it is suffocating under a bloat of resources that are poorly balanced, and paying any attention to the system allows one to break it in half on one's knee with trivial effort. I do hope they scale back a bit. Hades 1 was lean with 7 resources. Hades 2 seems to be on a trajectory to have 60. The thing is: I think it would work if they scaled back a bit and made it around 30ish resources, if MUCH more attention was given on how the ones they have are utilized.
Mind, this is only an issue if one cares about the resource management between Runs. If you play a roguelike only for the main course gameplay within those Runs, you probably will neither notice nor really care that the resource-management is not exactly stellar.

So, summary:
Overall a bit of a downgrade, FOR THE TIME BEING, compared to the first Hades, but with much more content. So quantity over quality. With an emphasis that the quality is not BAD, it is just not quite as high as the first Hades for the time being. But that would be a part of why it is in Open Beta now: to be able to improve on these things.

If Hades 1 was a 10- where the faults it had are marginal, Hades 2 is about 9- : Still way above average, it is just COMPARATIVELY worse than the previous installment. And that is an unfair comparison, since this is still explicitly work in progress.

Semi-realtime strategy in an immense galaxy.

Positives:
It is not possible, with few appropriate exceptions, to just grow one's empire in a giant blob like cancer, one has to consider the benefits of each system carefully before committing.
Interesting event system, though it is a bit muted towards the latter third of a run.
Much better late game than the usual strategy games of the genre.

The few minor complaints:
1: There is no alerts for running down of the cooldown of one of the features, which means I only remember to check when the relevant resource overflows.
2: There is no alert for when a squadron has finished moving or a colony/science/construction ship has been built, meaning one has to keep track of that manually.
3: This game has a system upon system upon system that have nothing much in common. And most of the tooltips are non-linking and less than useful*. So you will definitely need the help of a video tutorial and a search engine to get started.
*example of a bad tooltip: alert that one of my leaders have gained a trait. It does not link to the leader nor does it tell what the trait does, so one has to manually go to the leaders and check who got what.
4: There is no automatic option for starting a project with current Science Ship even if the Project requires one, so one has to cancel that Ship's current queue in order to construct a new action queue where the Ship is going to do that project. Mildly annoying since about half the projects concern, and are created by, Science Ships.
And, finally:
5: Spy Networks are incredibly underwhelming. One of the better options should allow one to poach a border system or something for a proper pay-off, it is supposed to be a cold war option anyway. As is, it is a lot of investment for gain that is mostly only a bit annoying for the target.

9/10. You do need a good gaming PC to run this one on bigger map sizes. You have been warned.
Recommend the second largest map size, the largest is a bit excessive.

Return of the Obra Dinn has a clear concept in both game-play and story, and executes both exceptionally.

The downsides I have for this game are minor. The very beginning the control scheme is not exactly intuitive, and it took me 5-10 minutes to figure out whether I am supposed to be doing something or not (I was not, the scene was just longer than strictly necessary).

9/10. Very little replay value until one has forgotten the answers. Perfect, and unique, execution of the mystery concept.

Hades is an exceptionally well realized case of multi-queue storytelling, which also has the good sense to not overstay its welcome. One can get AN ending in twenty hours or less, assuming average competency. This allows people to get a sort of a satisfying conclusion in a reasonable time without grind. This ending "track" has no gates to pass besides being able to beat a run reliably, or at least eventually with trial and error.

However, this ending is only one of the half a dozen story tracks that one can progress. Meaning that, even while one fails at the main story track, the others will receive incremental progress meanwhile every now and then, meaning that, on average, at least one of the tracks is moving their respective story along, giving some sort of relief to possible causes of frustration.

On non-story aspects, the game is rather stellar case of a rogue-like grind. A single run takes somewhere between 20 and 40 minutes to finish, assuming no failure cutting the run short, and there is enough content to keep things fresh even fifty runs in. As a story track may progress even mid-run, the slaughter seldom gets too monotonous.
The game is as well-balanced as can be expected considering the amount of variables it juggles. Of course, with those amount of content there is going to be aspects that are better or weaker than average, but, thankfully, they are as rare as one can reasonably expect.
The controls are responsive, though, with certain play-styles, tracking where one is beyond general idea of "somewhere in that ball of death, but I am not losing health so it must be going fine" gets rather complicated. The challenge evloves naturally according to one's progression and wants, besides the very start.

If I am to find issues with the game, I have two that somewhat annoy me.
Firstly, while the keepsake system is generally excellent, making one consider what to take at each point of run progression, there are two keepsakes that scale according to demonstrated excellence during the run. Strong ones. Which means that one may take one of the two and never take it off, since removing it removes the bonus, defeating the point of being able to switch the keepsake during run. The only reason I took them off at all was because I maxed the progress of the two and wanted to get the others going.
Secondly, some of the costs of stuff that one can buy with the rewards of runs is a bit excessive, though this is not relevant for the "first ending" type of play-throughs. Funny enough, the issue is not the advanced rewards that one gets by defeating runs with increasing self-chosen handicaps in place, but the very basic material, one for home renovations and another for relationship-building. Thankfully the former is mostly voluntary beyond the cheap stuff, but getting one item to renovate with after five runs is a bit excessive, even if that is the worst offender.
I personally recommend focusing the relationship materials on one or three favorites, besides one token for everyone, at the start. And always take the deal for exchanging a Boss reward for a whole lot of basic renovation material when the option appears. You'll be swimming in excess Boss loot and trying to find the basic income from between metaphorical coach cushions. To afford to buy more coach cushions.

9.5 / 10. Would recommend, if one has any tolerance for rogue-likes. Start when one has a week mostly free, this one will stealthily steal your day (or night) away. Play until you think you had your fill, don't try to force a 100% completion, the game is purposefully made grindy in that regard because, well, that is the point of rogue-likes.

Aside from a single desync and one drop of all other Players in multiplayer (losing everyone the perk task even after reconnecting), and a time one of the Characters ran off the map after stepping on a trap during a move, game has been very stable.

Gameplay is varied, original, and most importantly, fun.
Difficulty is, at least early on, quite high. Indeed, I have finally found a turn-based strategy game that knows what the word "hard" means, besides arbitrarily durable or cheating enemies. Though I do think that the difficulty may regardless be a tad excessive the first few Missions.

Personal mileage may vary, but I do think this game is better played with a group of 2-4 Players. Playing alone there is a bit much to consider all at once controlling 4 Characters, having one Character to oneself allows one to enjoy more without getting mired on having to consider an absurd amount of possible move-combinations each round.

Tldr: Pretty original gameplay concept, highly enjoyable, multiplayer personally what I recommend. Prepare to get your face caved in if you start on difficulty higher than Normal.

A worthy continuation for the original Psychonauts. Maybe a bit less focused and a tad more serious in tone at the expense of humor, but that's about the worst of it.

Gameplay-wise, only real complaint is that the pin upgrades feel superfluous. The combat is much improved from the original, which is to say that the system can actually be called "combat" now. Platforming is tight as ever, if the detailed surroundings occasionally make it unclear what counts as a walkable surface. Bosses had a bit of a repetitive theme, but not distractingly so.

Can recommend to anyone who liked the original. If one did not, well, then I am not sure why you'd be reading a product review.

Tldr: Good platformer: buy.

Inferior product compared to the previous instalment. Apart from hexagonal movement Civilization IV did just about everything better. This one is, for the lack of a better word, designed too "accessible", at the expense of strategic depth.
It does seem too much like the Civilization I am given plays me, not the other way around. And the tech tree is way less interesting as far as choices are concerned.
The game is simply overtly designed to punish warmongering ("Oh, you destroyed a remote Player? Have fun having their useless Capital you are not allowed to Raze. Also you can not Raze holy Cities. Nor City States") and large empires. It just does not seem like an Empire when I have all of five cities barely in contact with each other and ROADS cost upkeep to maintain.
And the policies of this one are inferior to the previous instalment that you just kinda have them all on at once instead of having to actually choose which benefits to have.


Tldr: Keep It Simple, Stupid version of Civilization IV with arbitrary restrictions and overtly simplified everything with somehow worse UI. Not a fan, going to play Civilization IV with K-mod AI improvement Mod on instead of this.

While I prefer Mordheim: City of the Damned, the previous product from these developers, Necromunda is a decent enough piece of entertainment to give one the money's worth.

Upsides:
It is basically Mordheim: CotD plus in many respects.
Maps are gorgeous.
There are game-ending Objectives that are not of "kill enemies" variety.
Salvage Operations give the game more of a feel like missions happen in an actual area.

Downsides:
1: The separation of Story and progression game-play into their own separate things has allowed to make the Story into a neat little tutorial. However, it removed the grand goal of making a Warband/Gang capable of defeating the Story, removing a large part of the motivation to do so. In other words: Salvage Operations feel much more like open-ended sandbox due lack of a definite ending.
2: Reserves do much less this time around, since there is very little reason to make anyone sit out a Salvage Operation Mission. Which, in turn, makes one wonder why to bother with Reserves in the first place, since that is just a waste of XP by spreading it evenly.
And finally, 3 (minor): The removal of most progression restrictions and simplification of the stats compared to Mordheim: CotD means that there is much less to plan about Characters, since the question of "Can they do this?" is, some Class or Gang Skills aside, "Eventually". Which makes finding unlikely comboes less harder due to more of them being possible by default.

If one can forgive the game for those faults, this is, as said, very decent an experience that is not easy to replicate. Uniqueness is its own draw.

The game is pretty enough, sound design, visual design, mission design, all fine.

But the issue remains that there is precious little play in this game: first try, hardest difficulty, Ironman, permadeath, and no one dies. When the most difficult part of the game is the first three missions, there is something amiss.

The central question of 90% of the fights was: "does this take one turn, or two?". And that is all I think needs saying about that.
The progression is all over the place, four out of six pillars of progression are various levels of mediocre, two of them even somewhat detrimental, and the remaining two way overtuned. So everyone had those two trees and nothing else.
I never hired anything but the most basic of grunts. I lie, I took something better once. Too bad they never got a shot off before all enemies were dead.

I want to recommend this game, but I seriously can not, for the lack of challenge of any kind. Four out of six bosses died in one turn, and the other two only lasted longer due to one teleporting away from being hit, the other having several timed gates between them and me. Once I got to those two, they, too, died in one round.

One of the few puzzle games that have left me quite, well, puzzled. And lengthy too.