Recent reviews by Akyt 🌙

I'll review my first five hours playing Valheim by describing my tragicomic experience.

>I Started playing this game with two of my friends
>We decide to play without using any guide or watching any video online
>We three have been knowing each other since ages, so we trust each others.

The first days are harsh, the game seems vast and gives us some Minecraft-like vibes, we soon end up appreciating the whole atmosphere with its sounds and nature.
We begin by chopping some wood until, eventually, we end up dividing our roles inside our small party:
Me and one friend, become the hunters/explorers, while the third friend becomes the builder who, for some reason, decided to start building a giant and grotesque house for all of us.
The construction of the "house" will take several hours, and by the end of it, the structure will resemble a Tavern more than an actual house.
Meanwhile, us hunters go around chasing deers and exploring the map, fighting fierce opponents and constantly complaining about the uselessness of our builder, who prefers to build that dumb structure instead of actually helping us.
Some time passes, and our instruments slowly start to upgrade to something more functional and civilised, we even devise a plan to lead a Giant troll until it reaches the "house" to force our dumb builder to actually join us and fight.
The plan ends up being a success, although our builder almost died in the process, a trauma that will only make him further close himself in that dumb tavern of ours.
After the "Troll incident", our builder provided my fellow hunter with a feathered bow, an unusual gift, that turns out to be very helpful in the battlefield.
At this point, we have our house, our weapons and some clothing, but we still rely on hunting to get some meat, which barely fixes our constant scarcity of food.
We hunters finally understand how to spawn the first boss, so we head to the altar to spawn it and...
A giant deer appears, and starts chasing us down.
We understand we will need reinforcements, so we call our builders to help us.
He comes, and gets instakilled because his only weapon was a club that he barely ever used.
We devise a strategy and end up killing the giant deer with the feathered bow and some distraction-based strategies.
We take the much craved loot, and at this point...
We open our builders tomb, only to find out...
Over 60 units of Deer Meat, Over 60 Deer Heads
Our Builder had been cheating all along, and the feathered bow was nothing more than a strong, probably late game weapon, cheated by him and given to us.



Very cool game, but I need better friends.

The hours you see stated on my profile, have been played in the same play-through, the game is very slow and a single simulation can last even a month in real life.
For a free indie game, it is really well done, and I can perceive the passion put into it by the Developer; However, I feel like it lacks a key feature, which is replayability.
My Simulation is not yet over, however I already feel like I've seen all the game has to offer right now:
You get a great number of choices, however, at the end of the day, those choices seem to influence very little on the way your country grows, hence the large amount of choices ends up being just a simple illusion.
It must be said, also, that playing a peaceful gameplay is almost every-time inferior, in terms of gain, to being a warmonger, as those who expand by conquest will have more decisive advantages over those who decided to invest in their own provinces. There also seems to be no attrition or very low of it, as I've experienced a player attacking another player as far as 5000km, by crossing an entire wasteland without apparently being damaged by such a thing; This specific thing is very problematic because it makes it almost impossible to play it peaceful without the constant fear of a raid coming from nations that should be able to reach you only by naval means, but who end up steamrolling the whole continent on foot like nothing.
There seems to be, currently, no real system to avoid people from making more than one account on the same continent, the only way to stop this is by reporting them to the developer, but this system doesn't work very well, because it only works if you spot the alt accounts, which could be made harder by using less obvious names.
I feel obliged to add, though, that the developer of this game is REALLY, and I say REALLY committed to the project, as he constantly checks the forums and he actively takes action on every report and he cares for the well-being of the game.
That, plus the hours of gameplay that I've experienced for free through my first gameplay, should make the game deserve a positive review, and I'm tempted to give it one, really, but the constant infraction of the 1 account per continent rule by players, plus the fact that the game currently favours an aggressive gameplay, creates an obvious dissonance between what the game was supposed to be, and what It ends up being.

Imperivm III is one of my childhood games and, in all seriousness, my favourite game ever.
The amount of hours I've spent on the game, playing online with friends and fighting in clan wars with one of the most active and dedicated communities I've ever seen, can only barely be summarized by my current playtime stated on steam.
Hence, you may ask, "Why are you negatively reviewing your favourite game?" in order to understand that, one must understand that this game, in the current state, presents a dissonance between the developer's will and ideas, and the dedicated playerbase's own ideas.
The developer has, under many, if not all, situations, expressed an unconditioned and autocratic rule over all the matters related to the development of the current patch, rarely listening to the actual community.
To that, one must not condone nor forget the large amounts of bans from their discord server, often dictated by personal motivations that have nothing to do with moderating a discord server: Being banned from the main discord community of such a small game means, practically speaking, being isolated from the game itself, which is an offence for someone who has been a fan and active in the game for over ten years.
I'm also concerned by the way the developer, has, under almost every circumstance, relied exclusively on the usage of the spanish language, almost entirely forgetting that a huge part of the community speaks italian, and effectively precluding access to the game to an overwhelming number of potential players from outside Italy and Spain.
They (the developer and its associates) decided to start using English as a language only in the prospect of gaining some money, and you can clearly see that when you notice that their kickstarter (that raised over 60k Euros) was entirely written in English, while their main website (and so was their discord server, until very recently) is still exclusively in Spanish. https://www.imperivmworld.com/
So, to make a long story short, this has, exactly like 10 years ago, an extreme potential and originality if compared to other strategy games, however the amateurish and outdated marketing of the developing team, mixed with some absurdly pro-spanish attitude are hindering effectively the progress of the game.
For instance: 60.000 Euros have been raised for this project over one month ago; since then, we've received ridiculous updates worth not even 1 hour of work, there still are no decent dedicated servers and the same bugs present at the very beginning of the beta are still present if not, in some cases, worse.
There are few balances, but barely anything new to the core game, only one new unit added, 0 new structures and no prospect of anything new to be added anytime soon.
They made lots of promises but yet less than zero facts, and will, I surely believe that, pay the price for their own incompetence unless they repent as soon as possible and start actually working on their damn game.
This review comes from a person that has been invested in the private beta of the HD version since Day one, my thoughts on the matter are based from personal experience and come from someone who contributed by distributing over 300+ Beta keys during the first beta stages of the game.
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27/11/2021 Edit: Still no updates, but hey! black friday! From 10 euros to 7! woah! -.-

This game is very chill and extremely funny if played with friends, overall, I feel like it's a nice addition for my Steam Library, and I feel kind of embarrassed for owning it for free given how much fun i'm having by playing it.
The controls are easy to learn whether on keyboard or controller, and as a result, everyone can compete in the game without spending too much time into it.
I hope new clans will arise in the future, because this game has potential for a somewhat competitive scene.

The game is a classic, so there is not much to say that you probably won't already know.
I suggest you to buy this game only if you can not run the Definitive edition on your pc.
Nominated for "The Labor of Love" Award during the steam autumn sales (2019).

This review is part of a series of reviews regarding the games that
I've really enjoyed playing, you can find more reviews here.

When I first bought the Call Of Juarez Collection, this summer, I thought I would have simply killed time by playing it.
I was bored, lazy, and feeling up for a challenge.
At first glance, I've hated Call Of Juarez:

~ I've hated the aiming system; a real hell, as you can not aim at all with your weapons.
~ I've hated the repetitive levels, their structure and the number of enemies I had to kill to pass them.
~ I've hated the fact that every weapon is rusty and for that prone to exploding in your hands during a fight.

All in all, after three hours or so of play, I've started to think that the Developers had decided to design the game to be completely against the player for some reason.

It was after those three hours, though, that I started realizing how much addicted I was to the whole plot, which is indeed not complex at all, but its execution, while being direct to the point, made me feel somewhat interested in knowing its end.

As Wikipedia says:

"The game begins with Billy "Candle" returning to his hometown of Hope in Texas after two years searching for the treasure of Juarez. Although excited to see his mother Marisa, he doesn't want to see his stepfather Thomas, who used to beat him daily. Billy has no idea who his real father is, and got his nickname from a medallion with a candle engraved on it, given to him by his mother. Upon arriving at his farm, Billy finds Thomas and Marisa dead, lying underneath the words "Call of Juarez" written on the wall in their blood. In town, a woman alerts Reverend Ray McCall (the local preacher and Thomas's brother) of gunshots at Thomas's farm. Ray races to the farm to see Billy standing over the bodies. Billy panics and flees, causing Ray to assume Billy is the killer. Believing himself ordained by God to avenge their deaths, he sets out to track Billy down."

But in truth, after a while, I realized that the plot had an inside, deepest plot on its own, it's not about the legend of Juarez or anything like that, it's about two lost men on a voyage to understand who they really are.
Like in a divine plan, the characters are exactly where they should be, and every event in the story, while apparently insignificant, appears to be related, once you connect the dots.
I've played the game at its hardest difficulty, during probably the hottest days of the year, for this reason I've felt somewhat immersed in the sufferance of the whole plot, and the difficulty of the voyage, which indeed scarred me, and made me realize things that I will surely not forget in the future.
After ten hours, I still hated that game with my entire heart, but still wanted to keep going on, exactly like the main characters of this, after all, beautiful game.

To make a long story short:

~ The game is old, nevertheless, it has been enhanched with a DirectX10 Version.
~ The story is cold served, but somewhat deep.
~ The gameplay appears somewhat clunky, but addictive once you get used to it.
~ The game leaves many interrogatives that are probably further analyzed in its sequel, that I will review right after I will have finished it.

In the end, I will not go on and give you any spoilers, instead, I exhort you to try the game on your own, it really deserves it.


If this review seems controversial to you, well, it is. 🖤

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This game is extremely good, made by developers that still update it after years, by adding new flavour to the game and dlcs.
About that last point, many people complain about the fact that the dlcs are too many\expansive.
I'm not gonna tell you that these are not necessary to enjoy the game because I would lie, but the thing is:
This game has such a replayability, that even after 300 hours of game, you still have seen not even 10% of the game's playable nations, for that reason, what's the point of complaining for dlcs that, even at the price they have, contribute to enhance a game that, differently to many other titles available on market, has tons of contents to offer?
After more than eight years, developers keep uploading new dlcs and updates, should they do that free? Don't be silly.
Without even saying that those dlcs can be bought during sales, making great deals!
So, after this parenthesis on Dlcs, I want to spend some more words on the game itself: It is a huge, mastodontic work of art, with large vastity of choices on how and where to play, and I am sure it is able to entertain all the kinds of strategy players.
For the people who have not ever tried a Grand Strategy Game (which CK2 is), I suggest you to start with this one, it is a great admixture of roleplay, intrigue, diplomacy and conquest on large scale.