Py
Starting off the year
First of, two games I played for play a game you won on steamgift, one in January, the other one in February:
- Lore / Story : The story is pretty run of the mill medfan story, with a cult intent on destroying the world and a bunch of people (you) brought together at random that will stop them.
Notable point: one of the characters you play is a dog with magic powers (she can't speak tho).
There are almost no side quests to speak of (just some basic kill/fetch). - Game mechanics :
- Overword So you can either be in the world at large or in an instance. But it's basically the same thing, you run around with one of your characters on the screen.
Each character has a different ability, some of them being more or less useful.
Monsters are roaming the world, and you can encounter them or try to run from them. If you start the combat, you have an advantage.
The game pretends to be an open world, but in reality you're quite railroaded. For example at the start there are two instances. One for the story. And the other for the story, but later. If you go in it early, you'll get trounced. - Combat Out of your 6 characters, 4 are in combat. They are split into two pairs, each pair having specific perks/a common special bar.
It's turn based (à la JRPG), and each character has a speed to get its turns faster. But it's not that relevant, given that most fight last for 3 or 4 round max (except boss battles).
Most of your abilities have a cost in energy and you get one energy per turn. And also there are specials. Damage type and weakness to them. All in all pretty standard stuff.
Notable point is that for some reasons AoE skills seem to have an overall damage and it's split among targets. Making it that they're also OP against solo target.
And some status are close to impossible to counter (only counter is an item that you can craft in the last part of the game, when you don't face said status).
Because of that, some fight take ages (looking at you phantoms) to finish for no other reason than that one status you can't counter. - Crafting This one is a bit of a bore. You can get ingredients by gardening. Each plant has 3 levels, but for some reason the next level of a plant unlocks at random and only if you have a recipe that uses the next tier of ingredient. So it gets kinda tedious when you want to get the achievement and that one plant doesn't mutate.
And what you craft from them ain't that important. Ammo that are usable by only 2 characters. Potions that you rarely use.
- Overword So you can either be in the world at large or in an instance. But it's basically the same thing, you run around with one of your characters on the screen.
- Character progression : There are 2 main ways of progressing
- Bonds : Each pair of character has a bond that can go up to 5 star. Each star unlocks a new perks. It's good to vary the pairs in order to unlock interesting perks
- Talents : Whenever you gain a level (or at some bond progress) you gain a talent point. You can then use them in a talent board to either gain more stats, unlock new capacity or unlock new passives. They're never set in stone, so you can try to change what each character does at your own liking.
- Difficulty / Length : Took me a bit less than 30 hours to complete so it wasn't that long. The difficulty is alright. Some passage are a bit harder but nothing impossible (if you stay on the path).
The last two big bosses (story/optional) are kind of hard if you go unprepared. Because they just launch a bunch of AoE at you non stop. Not really interesting skill wise, just "can you handle that amount of damage". And because the level is capped, you can't just grind to get stronger. - UX : For a game released in 2018, god the UX is quite lacking.
Abilities are never put into numbers. You have no clue if that one new ability does more damage than the other except by trial and error.
Monsters stats are never put into numbers either. You can just see in the bestiary (not available in combat) if they have a weakness / resistance to some element, but that's about it.
Also no way to check what a given status does. Like a monster will inflict you with something, you have to figure out exactly what it does on your own (what abilities it forbids to use, what damage it does...)
For some reason when you're in an instance, the camera is locked. Good luck guessing where you have to go if its somewhere way out of your field of view (and it happens at least once). - Conclusion : It's an average game. Nothing really good, nothing really bad (outside of the UX). I'd find it hard to recommend if not on sale.
- Lore / Story : It's a tribal settings. With magic.
- Game mechanics : So it's virtual CYOA meet tribes management. And it brings out the worse of the two.
From the CYOA, you have the text adventure with choice where you don't know the exact outcome before picking choices. But without the feeling you can have in a classic CYOA where your character grows and you get attached to him.
From the management part, you have sliders and check-boxes that do stuff where you don't really know what's the impact of what you're doing.
You do have some advisors that offers you some advice regarding choices/sliders. But they're often not that great. And sometimes really boring to check (e.g. for your farming sliders, you consult them, you make change, go to another page, come back to see what they think of the new sliders) - Difficulty / Length : It isn't hard as much as it's boring. The game-play is very very repetitive. Finishing the game took me around 10 hours.
- Conclusion : Well I'm glad "Play a game you won on steamgift" is a thing. It gave me enough motivation to carry on. But I almost gave up 2 or 3 times during the game.
Outside of that, I played one of my BLAEO Xmas present!
- Lore / Story : Pretty basic med fan setting with ogres, skellies, barbarians, goblins and the like. Overall story is not that important (empire bad, go kill emperor). But each scenario has decent story telling.
- Game mechanics
- Scenario preparation: A very interesting aspect of the game is that you have 3 deck to prepare before each scenario. One for potential events that you'll encounter, one for equipment you can get, and the last one for your starting supplies.
Once you've met a card once, you can easily filter to get the needed info about a card (type of encounter, potential rewards) and create a deck that'll help you have an easier time in the scenario. - Scenario action: The cards you've prepared are shuffled with cards specific to the scenario. And all of them are laid face down in a specific pattern among one or multiple floors.
You have to accomplish the scenario goal (each scenario of the campaign is quite different) while moving through the cards and resolving each card encounter (and not dying).
There are 4 main resources in the scenario. Life (if you reach 0, you die), Food (1 food is needed to explore a new card, otherwise you lose 5 life), Gold (needed to buy stuff and food and some card effects), Fame (that allows you to equip the more powerful stuff) - Card resolution: Each card has a lot of fluff text and often starts with some dialogue where you have to make some choice. It'll be interspersed with either:
- Gambits: One of 4 mini game. Some luck based, other skill based. You can have stuff that help for each kind of gambit
- Combats: Combat in 3d in a little arena, with Arkham style combo/parry system.
- Dungeon: A 3d dungeon with traps to avoid and chests to loot
- Scenario preparation: A very interesting aspect of the game is that you have 3 deck to prepare before each scenario. One for potential events that you'll encounter, one for equipment you can get, and the last one for your starting supplies.
- Rogue-like progression : The main way you'll be progressing in between scenario is by unlocking new cards. Either because you finished a scenario. Or you met the criteria of one of the encounter during a scenario. More cards means more option for each scenario. So you could go back to a previous scenario to get the "best" result (scenario often have two possible endings). Or come back to a scenario that you skipped because you found it a bit to hard at the time.
- Difficulty / Length : Took me about 30 hours to finish the game. It's sometimes a bit tedious.
The difficulty is a bit all over the place. Some scenario you'll need a specific kind of deck to get the best outcome. For others you'll just bring a random deck with whatever cards you need to discover/unlock and manage it in gold on the first try.
Bonus point, you can lower the combat difficulty (if, like me, you don't find that style of combat interesting). - UX: A small gripe for me was that the camera is locked. For combats/dungeon, it can be a bit of a bore.
A good point is the card filtering system + scenario presentation. You don't need to go to a wiki to know what you'll want/need for a scenario (looking at you darkest dungeon). - Conclusion : All in all a real upgrade over the 1 and a really good game. Thanks for the gift!
And games from the february choice (for once there was game that I liked!)
- Lore / Story : Basically world war 2, but the bad guys are a mix of Nazis/USSR. Also the propulsion mechanism is not oil, but some sort of crystal and there are fantasy elements linked to said crystal. If you've played VC 1, it's the same war, but on another front.
You follow a squad of people. The story is a bit cliché at times, but overall pretty decent. There is a lot of narration, so you have the time to attach yourself to the main characters - Game mechanics : The game is a mix between turn based tactics and TPS. Basically you have a set number of actions to do on your turn. Each action consist in taking control in TPS mode of one soldier, moving it and firing its weapon.
You do all your actions, then the enemy does the same. There are some slight difference between the opponent and you.
The opponent will only use each unit once per turn (save for boss units). Whereas you can use a single unit as much as you want. Each successive use of a unit will lower it's possible movement though. And some units have limited ammo.
On each map there is often a certain number of camps. They all belong to either you or the opponent at the start, but you can capture them. They allow to call for reinforcement or heal/resupply units tat will end their phase on it.
There are 6 classes of characters and 3 different vehicles. Each class of soldier is really different. And so is each vehicle.
If you've played VC 1, the three big additions are one class (the grenadier, that will more often than not replace lancers), one vehicle (an APC that's not very potent but can move some other soldiers a long way) and "direct command"
Direct command is a pretty nice improvement, it allows one of your leaders to move and team up with up to two units that will follow him for one move. Making scouts a great way to move around your slower units. - Character progression : All along the campaign, there are 3 principal way of making your characters progress.
- Experience that can be used to level up all the soldier of one class. Unlocking new perks along the way.
- Credits that can be used to buy new weapons for your soldiers (a weapon is unlocked for every soldier that can equip it). Each weapon has 3 different branch of progress that enhance one characteristic over the others. There are also weapon that you can get as reward on maps.
- Army ranks that are specific to a character and will unlock a mini story and a map. Completing it unlocks a new perk for up to 3 characters.
- Difficulty / Length : Completing the base game takes about 30 hours. And I think it's about 30 more hours to get all achievements.
The game is really easy if you take your time. Getting the max rank in every mission is a bit trickier. (but you can just come back later with stuff that will trivialize the earlier maps) - UX : Minor UX gripe, the stories/dialogs in campaign mode aren't automatically launched, so you have to click a bunch of time on miniatures in between battles to get a lot of the story.
- Conclusion : Like the first one, I really liked this game. I'd definitely recommend it if you're into turn based games. Warning for Achievement grinders, it's like a jrpg, with about 10 to 20 more hours of game if you have all dlc and want all achievements1.
- Lore / Story : You play inside the mind of iris. A little girl that seems really fearful of a lot of things. You learn a bit more about her during the story.
- Game mechanics : It's a turn based rogue-like. You have a hand of cards, each turn you play one and then the enemies act. Rinse and repeat until the end of each level appears.
What's pretty neat is that most of your cards have only one use. So you have to manage your life and new cards you add in your deck.
During the levels you kill opponents (that give you XP to get some skills), you find crystals (giving you new cards every now and then) as well as chests (giving you new card when you open them).
There are also some bosses that give you a permanent effect for the run. - Rogue-like progression : There are 3 main ways of progressing:
- Whenever you finish a run, you gain some stuff that's just for the next run.
- During a run, you'll find "memories". Each of them gives you one point you can spend on perks that are useful for every run
- Imaginary friends are unlocked at the end of a run. You then need to meet a certain criteria in a run to unlock them for future runs. You can only bring a limited number of imaginary friends with you.
- UII haven't seen a way to highlight which path you've already followed, so it's a bit frustrating to keep track of that
- Difficulty / Length : That game is really really short (even by rogue-like standards). I neat the game in about 5 or 6 runs. And that took me around 3.5 hours. You can play more than that if you like it, because there are plenty of "hidden" paths.
- Conclusion : It's a really neat game. The mechanism of having cards that are one off is a great variation compared to other game of the genre. Also the visuals are nice. The game is definitely a bit to short for me.
- Lore / Story : Classic sci fi setting. This takes place in the endless universe (like every other endless game) so you find the usual suspects (food, industry, dust, science). Not much of a story in this one (there are some bits here and there, but it's meaningless).
- Game mechanics : It's a classic turn based 4X game. So nothing special for the most part.
The mechanism that stand out from other 4X is the politics system. With your tech research/actions in game/choice during events, you influence the political parties within your realm. If you have a system that allow for multi party system, every round of election can change the composition of your senate and that can change the different law you can have in effect. - Difficulty / Length : The game ain't that hard in solo. The AI is quite dumb in regards to victory conditions. The early middle game can be a bit challenging, but once you muster an alliance, it's smooth sailing. From the two games I've done, you have to expect something like 10 to 15 hours a game.
- Conclusion : It's a really good 4X game. Basics are solid, the extra stuff brings some variations. The different species play-style seems different enough
Congratulations on your assassinations!
Thanks! I discovered this month that assassinations are really easier when the target is enjoyable to kill :D .