Recent reviews by Brawph

Edit: I think this is a huge step up from the previous title in basically every way, mechanical depth, story, visuals. It's an excellent RPG experience that I liked enough to fully complete all the achievements in. Worth your consideration!

While it has a lot of cool mechanical ideas in the cards and class builds... the difficulty (for single-player at least) seems wildly out of step with the pace that you gain or unlock cards and power during a run.

Things go from being a fun combat puzzle (where you can shield more damage than you take, and adequately deal with all the enemies over multiple turns) to later levels being a nightmare of dozens of enemies, gigantic attacks, constant enemy thorns damage, mass-shielding / mass-damage-buffing enemies, big burst damage turns, and few area of effect cards to go around (assuming you can even draw them in time)!

I really enjoyed Book of Demons, so it's upsetting that this new Papercraft Throwback game doesn't seem to have the same level of accessibility as its predecessor. You have ascension modes, why does the base experience have to feel so punishing?

It took weeks for Bethesda to fix the game for Intel graphics cards, so the game was totally unplayable for me until then, I likely should've stopped trying to play then and there and cut my losses. Instead I waited for things to be fixed and eventually put a few dozen hours into the game in search of SOMETHING new or exciting... but it's honestly a game from the 2010's. The loading screens to enter any structure or ship, the fact that SPACE TRAVEL the coolest f-ing thing in Sci Fi is boiled down to just menu navigation (including landing on randomly-generated, disconnected chunks of planets). And the (spoiler alert) chosen one Skyrim-shout-style "powers" you get (which was spoiled by the Key-mapping having a "Powers menu" options) feeling bolted on as all hell.

Your cool chosen one space powers are mostly underwhelming and irrelevant to gameplay and few really change how you approach the game in a meaningful way. But that's not my problem with them. What's upsetting is they feel like a last minute addition given the quest flow. You get them from finding space artifacts -- which you find one of literally in the tutorial -- but they're not integrated into the missions structure at all. You are given 0 powers for the first 10 hours then given EVERY power back to back to back in a giant chain of Fetch quests (with no story) all coming from 1 quest NPC that's so disconnected from your Story and the other NPCs that they put him on a space station alone (instead of in your Headquarters with the other important NPCs). He repeats the same dialogue each time you see him, and you go out to another planet and get another power. It has 0 pagentry or story connection.

This would be like if, in Skyrim, you got 0 shouts until you get to Whiterun, and then they say "Oh and Jeff, a random Human who lives in a cave, knows the location of every other shout in the world, and he'll send you to them one by one if you keep asking him. There's no other way to find them, by the way." And then they NEVER speak of Jeff again, and no one even acknowledges you now have all the shouts after that.

It just feels like they got to the end of production and thought "Oh ♥♥♥♥, our space game feels like every other space game, how do we add something unique?" so they added (underwhelming) powers... but instead of weaving in these unlocks 1 by 1 between story missions, and having cool story moments for each, or having you discover them organically (like in Skyrim), they just had you play Fetch quest 10 missions in a row to an NPC cut off from the others to avoid having to record reaction voice overs between him and the others at HeadQuarters (or reactions to your other missions before/after) (because all of this was so rushed in at the end they couldn't afford to redo all those quests and re-record all those voiceovers).

Before the Bethesda PR team blanket replies to this review like all the others (which looks extremely insincere when you all copy-paste a lot of the same things), I just want to say, I don't think Starfield is a BAD game in general, I think would be a decent indie game from a smaller studio with a number of flaws, most of which I didn't even get into here, (like the worst city map in gaming, the weird and inconsistent "persuasion" system, the clunky crafting, the poor vendor money/stock, the facial animations seeming really dated, the super low value of Scanning things vs. selling loot, or the lack of time (and likely funding) put into the writing...).

It's like a low budget No Man's Sky. But the problem is... this was not low budget and not an indie studio. And releasing a game like this in 2023, with over 450 employees and a 6 year development cycle isn't really up to Bethesda's pedigree. I can only hope for better from the next Elder Scrolls game, but at this point, I'll be a lot more wary of it delivering a game that feels almost a decade old, like Starfield.

P.S.: No Man's Sky was made by a 26 person studio, has quintillions of planets which you can fly onto and off of *without loading screens*. It was made in 2016 but has been adding updates and changes up to and including this year. It has a more robust outpost and base-building system, the ability to own a capital ship as your home base which you can *land* inside, walk around in, and customize with farming, storage, NPCs, and hangars, along with a fleet of other ships you can dispatch on missions.

In No Man's Sky you can explore dangerous derelict freighters in space, or go on the game-spanning story-based journey to uncover lost tech of an ancient civilisation. Hello Games deserves a lot of credit when you compare it to a 450 person juggernaut like Bethesda struggling to put out a game that's similarly well received despite being in development as long as No Man's Sky's been out (and able to take some lessons from its success).

(The Playtime Bugged out, I have around an hour, which was 2 runs, got past some "Wave timers" and found "The Return" foundation but just got a little bored of the core gameplay loop)
It's a neat concept that gets a little too tedious to make me want to push through to the more interesting content that's promised in screenshots and store gifs.

Having to manually craft each zombie part-by-part is neat once in a while, but I'd much rather just have an "Auto-craft best" button to just throw together a combination of the highest level parts available. And similarly a "Auto recycle worst" button when I don't have mana for things. Instead of trying to identify "Is that an Orc leg or a zombie leg?" while trying to put something together or find things to blow up for mana.
(I get that there's a "Save" option to save a preset creation and sometimes you stumble onto a preset pattern created by the devs but these require you to have exact parts or fill in the missing ones (in addition to it being another menu to go through) it feels like these patterns should just be available at all times so I have something to work towards instead of guessing "Is THIS what they wanted me to make?!")

The best part of an autonomous zombie apocalypse type game like Infectionator or Incremancer is being able to WATCH what your horde of zombies is doing (and interact / amplify the chaos). But in Necrosmith you spend so much time looking through parts, micromanaging single units, watching for intruders, defending your keep etc. all while your Undead wander off to the far corners of the world exploring, so you never get to SEE any of it happen, you just randomly get loot and go "Oh I guess we killed a harpy? Cool. Wish I was there for that." or "Oh, we captured a new building in the far off deserts? Great, I'm busy 'at work' here but I'll check it later."

It just all makes you feel less like a powerful necromancer and more like a necromancer's apprentice, or administrator, because you're just building cool things and then sending them off to never see them again, or letting the cat out to go collect things, occasionally casting a spell or two around the tower to protect it.

It's just too tedious and defence-focused to ever really live up to the "Necromantic horde" fantasy we see in the cover art.

It's Kingdom Rush universe but as a tactics game! Reminds me a bit of Gloomhaven in how much you think through enemy actions, or like Slay The Spire in your ability to see exactly what enemies can do (by checking on the initiative tracker). It's a short experience if you 1-shot each adventure and don't redo any... but the enemies and character combinations you can run into give you lots of cool things to try out.
I really hope the somewhat "mixed" response from Steam reviews doesn't deter Ironhide from making DLC or more in this series since it's a fun experience that I'm happy to support for its cool ideas and humour along the way! Indie studios like this, creating wholesome, fun content -- regardless of "$ per Hour" metrics -- deserve our support!

A delightful game that asks "What if Peggle was a roguey dungeon crawl too?"

It has some cool ideas and a cheerful aesthetic and still manages a lot of gameplay depth (like with gear and character abilities) to differentiate itself from and improve upon its source material!

I wanted to keep playing this game, because I was really enjoying the mechanics, but the level design just frustrated and exhausted me to the point of giving up. I've finished all the Dark Souls games, Nioh games, Code Vein, multiple times, this type of game is my absolute niche, but this one just doesn't stick the landing on the level design.

This game has some wonderful tweaks and updates to the "Soulslike" formula, but is unfortunately let down by confusing level design (especially in the A.I.D. command section), and insistence on not having a map (because tradition, I guess?).

I really liked the combat, the system of gear and part acquisition, the ability to "Bank" your currency at rest spots, the ability to "charge your batteries" by getting hits in combat and then use those batteries to fuel (or store) healing charges, giving you unlimited long term exploration potential if you played well. These are all tremendous innovations for the genre... but they don't mean anything if you just get lost trying to find a quest NPC until the point of exhaustion and boredom.

Side note: I'm fine with Dark Souls not having a map because it:
-Doesn't use force-lifts to warp you up and down with lots of verticality (easier to mental map),
-Quickly cuts off most of its secondary paths to ensure you don't get overwhelmed
-Uses lots of big landmarks and varied terrain to keep your barings
-Is usually pretty well lit

The surge 2 manages this in some areas, like the main city area, downtown Jericho, but in areas like the A.I.D. command it opts to go for a super dark area with gnarled buildings and winding corridors everywhere, lots of lift spots and no landmarks to help you find your way.

P.S. - Oh also ♥♥♥♥ having your currency/souls/tech scrap EXPIRE if you don't get back to your corpse in 2 minutes. In some areas if you can't get back quick enough so you suddenly have to speed kill enemies (since you only get an extra few seconds per kill along the way) and if you get LOST (like with a lack of landmarks) you're just ♥♥♥♥♥♥.

I hope to god this NEVER catches on in this genre. It's already stressful enough fighting through full respawns of all the enemies along the way, we don't need to also be speedrunning it to try to get back, meaning you make more mistakes. If they had a consumable like Nioh that let you use it to recover your souls/scrap/amrita, that would be amazing here.

Really enjoying this so far!
Works offline unlike Diablo 3 or Path of Exile
Has some decent lore and story and a lot of cool combat abilities with meaningful customizations for each.
Specialization is deeper than a Diablo game, but with way fewer filler points than Path of Exile's tree (and sections of the tree can be rotated to allow for more build variety!)
Respecs reset the FULL TREE not just one item at a time, and are easily affordable after a handful of hours in.
All primary stats contribute meaningfully to player power, not just your baseline class stat like Diablo 3's system, and different weapons give access to different abilities (rather than classes or stat thresholds)
(Looks like it's gotten review-bombed over some server stability issues (because they went from 2000 players during early access to 200,000 at launch) but Diablo 3 wasn't even playable offline during its server failures at launch and this is, so this is already doing better on that front!)
Overall a worthwhile experience that deserves a shot from anyone that's into ARPGs!

A delightful little RPG that deserves more attention! It has enjoyable gameplay with RPG systems, fun cat puns, and challenging but optional NG+ modifiers to encourage new ways of playing the game and advancing replayability! It doesn't wear out its welcome in one playthrough, and for me at least, after 3 or 4 I've still come away feeling good about it, leading to it being one of the few games on steam I've 100%'d the achievements for!

Reviewing just to counter review bomb that's going on now. People need to realize this is childish and not the purpose of a review system for games unrelated to your ire with the Epic Games Store. Steam reviews should be about the game being reviewed not the sales platform of its sequels!