Recent reviews by Rominvictus

It's like Stranded Deep had a baby. But I'm hoping the proverbial apple falls a little further from the tree than it has so far.

I'm Interested to see how this one diverges and differs from SD. So far they are very similar, except for the premise that Under a New Sun is set on an alien world, not Earth. However, there are really no indicators that this is an alien world except for the celestial bodies, which are very pretty btw. Going forward I'd love to see more evidence of alien life. Right now there are only sharks for predators, but that expanse of deep water should be filled with more than that to trigger thalassophobia. The space for possibilities is there, I just hope they don't keep making it so Earth-like.

With the comparison to SD, I feel like I should mention that the biggest difference between SD and UaNS is that SD is procedurally generated. This means that each playthrough or new save has a new map. Also, SD has a map editor where you can make your own islands. That's a big bonus for me.

Is it worth pitching in to this project that is still very young in its development? At the asking price, and current quality, I have to say yes it is. The potential here is huge (I hate it when I read that in a review, but there it is). But based on current ease of use and quality overall, I feel very optimistic about the future of this game. As far as I can recall, I've only written 2 other Early Access reviews; Stranded Deep and The Forest, both when they were fresh products. My instincts say this game will grow in interesting ways that I'm excited to see.

Amicia off the chain

Really impressed with Wartales, and I'm a pretty picky old grump.

Medieval mercenary sim par excellence. Lead your mostly amoral troop through the hazards of a beautifully crafted world that really evokes the era. Immersion is a subjective, personal experience but here you will find rich soil for your own head lore. The characters have no background stories, but you can name them, and they distinguish themselves on the battlefield to earn traits that add to their own individual personalities. You can commission officers for tactical bonuses. A seemingly endless trove of gear with unique qualities of their own further add to the potential for individuation in the troop. This is important because you may soon be leading a dozen or more mercs that need to be discerned from one another on the field. Also, it helps with player investment in the characters, something that grows as you play.

Combat is a somewhat fresh take on turn-based tactics. At the outset of battle the characters are seemingly placed at random and you are able to maneuver them into position before attacking. This is the stage when I survey the enemy position and develop a strategy of attack that will ensure victory. Depending on the placement of troops, there is no end of strategies that you can employ to out-maneuver the enemy. This results in some very satisfying victories. And when a perfectly planned and placed strategy goes sideways, battles can be restarted without penalty. Also, there's a critical kill cam that makes it all the more rewarding.

The game assumes that, because you bought the game, you must be an intelligent person. It is correct. You don't need to be guided with hovering tags and glowing icons because you pay attention when a potential employer explains the job. You explore, you find your own work. Just like in medieval times, the economy is harsh. The game does not hand you anything for free, and mercs are expensive to keep paid up and fed. But when they're happy, well rested and plump, they perform better. Bear in mind that they make decisions based on pay and not on any conception of right or wrong. They may even take a job and then flip sides when the counter offer turns out to be better.

Okay, can't be a grumpy old man without a coupl'a gripes. One: early on, movement on the world map is agonizingly slow. This sucks because many times you will simply need to explore around and look for an objective. But, it's not long in the game before you can invest in points to increase speed and even run for short bursts. The game hopes you are a patient person. Two: there really needs to be a party management screen or hovering panel. When i get some new gear, disseminating it to the mercs that will benefit the most from it is a process of opening each character panel individually and reviewing their gear one at a time. It would be really nice to be able to do this from a party management screen instead.

All in all, this is a must play for any turn based tactics fan, absolutely worth the price. For now, I am deliberating on whether I should keep playing, or wait for full release. There is a full game here already that you can expect to sink 80-100 hours in if you want. And more is coming. Thanks for reading. Peace!

Some nights I dream about the mists of Sovngarde.

I have one hour of playtime, the rest is waiting on the Enemy Turn..

Seriously, at times there are so many enemies on the field that it's visually confusing and headache inducing. My cpu* has never been hotter. Screen is so busy it looks like bright vomit. Performance dips down to 5 fps.. This game seems to be playing itself.

I played about 10 missions on both Standard and Merciful, and did not see any difference between the two difficulties. I have played a ton of turn-based tactical games and this one is the most imbalanced, by far.

I don't think it's possible to play this purely tactically, it only seems to favor a blitz style combat. Core gameplay is loss mitigation and triage. You can expect to find yourself simultaneously pinned down, suppressed, marked, overwatched (from multiple angles), standing in poison or fire or both, plagued, hobbled, blinded and stunned, with no AP. You will be outnumbered, outgunned, outmaneuvered, outclassed, out-armored (that one is the most annoying and inexplicable to me), and surrounded on all sides. This is a disaster management sim. It may have translated better as an RTS.

Devs are listening and updating, but so far the fixes have been insufficient to make the game playable or fun. They said they reduced the number of enemy spawns in update 5, but honestly there are even more. 6 spawns per incursion, said they lowered it to 4, but there are now 10, as if they stacked instead of subtracted? I don't know. It sucks.

The Grey Knights and the 40k style are really good, I love it. But it seems this was made for 40k fans alone and not tactical gamers.

One last note: The tutorial is a 3/4 party wipe. Not even kidding.

*My Specs

edit: Support Ticket and dxdiag sent per dev suggestion.

"Rest. Kill. Repeat." - Mordred

King Arthur: Knight's Tale is a top tier party-based tactical RPG with turn-based combat. You get more than two dozen characters to choose from for your party, pulled from a variety of source material on the Arthurian mythos, but largely inspired by the 1981 movie "Excalibur", a timeless masterpiece. The lore and writing may seem a bit convoluted to the hardcore history and mythology buffs like me, but it remains an interesting and entertaining take on the subject.

You play as Mordred, Arthur's son and nemesis. His alignment is determined by you. There are morality checks in the game that steer you towards tyranny or righteousness, christianity or paganism. For my first play through I had a lot of fun playing the pagan tyrant and recruiting The Black Knight, The Red Knight, Morgana et. al. ("The Black Knight always wins!" At one point he actually says "it's just a flesh wound.") But I honestly think that the righteous path has better battle perks so I'm looking forward to a second playthrough to unlock The White Knight, Lancelot and the others.

With very high production values, the game is beautiful and interesting to look at once you remove the screen film typical of this game engine.* The character and NPC models are highly detailed, like meticulously painted miniatures. I love the attention they put into each one, it really brings them to life and makes them easy to discern in the field. Voice acting is also top tier, very high quality and complete, no half-read lines here. Enemies are fairly diverse and just as detailed as your party. Animations are smooth and realistic. Soundtrack is epic.

Combat is closer to Gears Tactics or D:OS2 than XCOM2 or Phoenix Point, but they pull the best of them together here so it has more predictable ballistics than its predecessors. Overwatch is more precise and more effective. The focus here is on melee and magic, archery to a lesser degree. There are a lot of skills to unlock. The skill trees are individuated for each character, so it stays fresh and interesting. My only complaint is with skill progression and dps; for the majority of the game, all your skills do about the same damage as your default basic attack, so there isn't any incentive to use them other than mixing it up. Later in the game, you will start to unlock some really cool AOE magic attacks though. Poison and DOT affects are relatively weak, with the exception of bleeding. But none of the DOT stacks afaik.

All in all, this is the best turn-based rpg to come out this year so far. There are others, but this one tops the list. I abandoned them to play this one a second time, and I rarely play a game more than once. It's that good. This is a must play for any turn based tactics fan.

*I made a ReShade preset that removes the screen film and clarifies the image, deepens colors, darkens shadows and illuminates globally. Made for 4k UHD OLED, 2k mmv. Vivid KA:KT RTX [sfx.thelazy.net]

"slowly.. gently.. this is how a life is taken" - The Ancestor

..as the spark gained purchase, the faint torchlight cast flickering shadows on every surface of glistening bone and slimy stone. We pushed forward, unaware of the horrors yet to come. We knew not such things even existed.. here in the depths, the very bowels of the earth. What eldritch sickness lurks.. Nightmares made real, the twisted imaginings of madness.. inhuman howls echo through these halls and winding passages, the nauseating dank of rot and pestilence nearly suffocates.

Just ahead, an ancient door of molding timbers. Reynauld, the tin can fool I met on the road some days before, reached for the door. From the crack below the door I could see a throbbing red glow, pulsing as if to mimic a heartbeat.. and the drums, always the distant drums.. I can no longer tell if they are real or simply my heart pounding in my ears.. Just as he turned the latch and cracked open the door, the last ember from the torch burned out in a gust of noxious, fetid air, and we knew darkness once again.

We shambled into the room and found it.. empty.. save for that eerie light. Emboldened but wary we found a door on the other side of the room. The surly doctor, suddenly gripped by lust for treasure, heedlessly rushed towards it. Before we had time to collect ourselves, the door swung open and meaty, pustulant tentacles sprung from the abyss ahead. First they grabbed the doctor, he was crushed I think before being.. consumed. In an instant he was gone into the blackness of the void with only a sickening slurping sound.

The scenes that followed, there in the throbbing red light, was a mad gnashing of teeth and claws, inchoate flesh rendered malevolent by hideous tortures.. I can only recall brief images, my mind fighting back against the horror. Mouths.. so many mouths.. I recall the screams, the sounds of hacking and slashing and butchery, the smell of spilled entrails, the metallic taste of a bloody haze all around.. Panic grips the mind, and I know with a stark realization.. covered in gore and muck and blood.. I will never be the same again.

We lost 3 that day and I scarcely retreated intact. Imbalanced with sleeplessness and incoherent images, haunted by the ignoble deaths of my panic stricken comrades.. their broken bodies bent beyond nature.. and Reynauld.. just gone.. What is there for me but to return? With fresh new faces arriving each week on the stagecoach.. blissfully unaware of what abominations lurk just beneath.. I look at them, an ashen ghost, and they fall silent.

I am Dismas, and this is my story..

Not gonna draw this one out, just wanted to add my green check mark to the mix.

Also wanted to mention a workaround for Alienfx lighting integration, in case anyone else experienced the same. It seemed to be causing some dips in framerate during cutscenes, or whenever a new lighting config was attempted to be used by the game (flashlight on/off, dark places, taking damage, etc.). The actual lights stayed off until exiting the game.

Workaround: launch with this parameter: /nolightfx. Worked great for me, frames smooth as buttah now. Without light fx, but I believe Techland is working on it currently.

GeForce is not correctly linking to the game as well so I imagine Nvidia has a patch incoming. Also make sure the game .exe is using the correct gpu if you're having issues.

My specs: https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2648031785

History
This game has come a long way since its Early Access days. As reflected in the Steam user review ratings, it has been a rocky road for Wolcen Studio and their flagship title. I've played it off and on since very early in its development. I've seen it go through some major changes and overhauls. The game we have today resembles the original very little. At one point you could even build your own house to display your trophies. It seemed that Wolcen didn't know which direction to go.

They wanted a dark and grim fantasy world ARPG. Hardcore gamers themselves, they wanted to make what they thought Diablo 3 should have been, a lofty and admirable goal. It took them some time to figure out what the fans wanted, but they did, and now it finally shows. This is one of those titles that would have been better off waiting for full release rather than making it available in early access, since current ratings reflect earlier stages of the game. It's a win for players, but the devs take it by way of long-standing negative reviews that remain long after they become irrelevant.

What we ended up with here seems like a compromise between the dev's vision and what the fans wanted. The game is much more like D3 than the devs would probably like to admit, right down to the voice actors and their lines. Carla Tassara [www.imdb.com] ,who apparently does all the female lines in every video game now, is still "unstoppable!"

Current
A little history out of the way, the game is currently a solid ARPG experience that fans of the genre are sure to love. If you were disappointed by the early state of the game, now is a great time to dive in and start working a build. A big endgame update is on the way this month, offering 4 new game modes, and I'm excited for that.

What makes Wolcen different from D3, Grim Dawn and PoE? The classless build system. You choose a starting weapon and from there you can adapt your build however you like. Stats are determined by items, equipment and gear. You get your 10 attribute points per level, and passive skill points, to allocate however you like. Certain gear set-ups allow you to hybridize and optimize across different skill sets. You can use both magic and melee if you want. And you can switch it up at any time. This allows for an unprecedented level of freedom in your build. So far I've made a Void Witch, a Toxic Assassin, a Blood Baron, a Holy Crusader, a Pyromancer, and more, some of them from the same character.

Skills and abilities have real impact, they feel nice and weighty, very satisfying to play. Certainly there is a difficulty curve between mobs and bosses. Clearing mobs is no indicator of your ability to take on a big boss. While I haven't had to grind over already tread paths, the option is there if you need it. If you falter at the bosses, it is 100% your build, which is easily remedied by grinding and/or trying something different. The latter is not easily achievable, if at all, in other games in this genre. In Wolcen, you can switch up gear and tweak stats a bit, and voila! a whole new class to try without starting a new character.

The game looks amazing, built on CryEngine, it is more detailed than any top-down isometric I've ever played. It is truly stunning to explore the different environments. The gameworld is a work of art, and the 3D models for everything from gear to actors are no less aesthetic. This is a labor of love and it truly shows.

If you tried it before and walked away with a bad taste, try it again, you will be pleasantly surprised. Wolcen is a must-play for any ARPG fan.

*My ReShade preset Wolcen Grit RTX [sfx.thelazy.net]

The release version is v. 1.0.0.420
Coincidence?
I think not!
Tells me this is a cool dev squad right off the bat.

Good zombie survival rougelite stealth-em-up with some lowkey base management. State of Decay 2 it's not, but I can feel some influence there, and it's still very fun to play if you're just waiting for SOD3. Well worth it for the price.

I see most of the negative reviews have less than 1 hour in. Probably because they died after the first half hour. This is the script though, you're supposed to die. Dying is not punished, but part of the progression system. It is not an RPG, so yeah.. don't get attached to your toons in this one.

Maybe best of all, it's procedural! Each time you go through the map, with each new character, it's a reroll. Naturally, this keeps it refreshing and interesting to explore. I've been to the same 'suburbs' map 3 times and it's been different each time, with different buildings, like it's further down the street or something. Very cool. To me, this feature makes the game a sandbox.

Graphics and performance are fantastic at 2160p. Moody and atmospheric, cool weather effects. Lighting and shading is well above average.

You'll want to play with a controller, unless you're pretty nimble with the keys. It plays like a twin stick; shooting, chopping, rolling, vaulting. I manage with keys pretty well. Easier than other twin stick shooters to play with kb+m.

Only a couple superficial complaints at release, hoping it will get ironed out: ballistics trajectory is whack because fixed cam and isometric at an angle. You can't just target to highlight the enemy and fire, it will likely miss. You have to account for the angle of the cam it seems, often shooting just to the side or front of the enemy. Melee works better than guns anyway, so.. not a huge deal and something I assume they will fix. The other small issue is cosmetic; the hud doesn't rest at the borders but somewhat inward, like a third in, as if it were 2k and not 4k supported. Setting the slider to zero helps, but it just distracts me a little being where it is instead of at the borders.

Other than that, just wanted to throw my green check mark in the mix. May update this review after more time playing.