Recent reviews by Mimeikyu

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Streets of Rogue is Grand Theft Auto The Roguelike, Minus Cars, Plus More Ridiculous Things, EX Plus Alpha. You go from the slums at the bottom of a largely vertical city to the very top, where the Mayor lives, to viciously depose him for a revolution that runs entirely on chicken nuggets. Whether you're a poor slum dweller or a cop or a gorilla or a werewolf there is something you can offer the resistance, and each stage has you performing simple missions to advance while also working on a class-specific quest.
I honestly can't get enough of this. There's a huge variety of things to do and potential ways of solving the various problems that pop up in each stage. You can shoot your way through, using items that replenish your ammo with kills and medkits. You can stealth through buildings, pickpocket keys off goons and make away with the goods. You can hire a gang or start a zombie uprising. You can shackle someone with an explosive collar and use them to blow apart whole buildings, sky's the limit.
As far as roguelikes go, this one has a ton of replayability. Most of the people you see across the city can be played as, every class has its own unique quest, and on top of that there are customizable bonus traits, equipment rewards, and mutators to the entire game. Then on top of that there are mods. Plus multiplayer. Plus Alpha.

If you're ever in need of a glimpse of the Japan of the late Eighties, Yakuza 0 has you covered. The two protagonists get twisted up in a real estate plot in the middle of the real estate bubble, finding time to fish, play Sega arcade games, hit a few zingers at the batting cage, race RC cars, manage multibillion-yen businesses, solve the problems of every last person in the country, and if you're lucky, find love.
If you've played any of the dozen-odd games in the series it should seem familiar. Kiryu and Majima each have their own sets of fighting styles, which they use to dispatch an untold number of goons with a level of violence typically uncommon outside of an American AAA title. The look and feel of the games may seem like what Japan would do if asked to make Grand Theft Auto but if you look at the mechanics, it's just an action RPG with a very small Japanese neighborhood vibe. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that!

This one feels like the ultimate end-point of all Minecraft-y, Harvest Moon-y games. It's a world made for you to collect obscene amounts of resources, level up, do some dungeons, collect some orbs, increase some skills, make a ton of money, and then try it again but faster. There are some minor issues with things like aiming the bow and arrow and trying to hit monsters right in front of you but not being able to because the cursor isn't on them but they don't take away from the laser-focused grind-em-up. Plus it's cute, and sometimes you get to see some ridiculous fan art on the title screen. Hop to it!

The problem with games that follow the lead of unfinished freeware games with incredibly good ideas is that when the original lacks a definitive purpose, the derivatives tend to as well. As the name suggests, Spacebase DF-9 is derivative of Dwarf Fortress, a city-building ASCII title that has absolutely no purpose outside of building your base and keeping it afloat until that sudden, inevitable downward spiral that brings your civilization to ruins.

It's a decent idea, for sure. I picked this game up as soon as it was available because I'd tried the Amnesia Fortnight prototype and desperately wished that it would be expanded into something great. The premise has a lot of potential, after all, with space being as vast as it is. Unfortunately, DF-9 left Early Access far less than what I'm sure a lot of people hoped it would be.

Spacebase DF-9 is a fairly simplistic base-builder sim. You pick a spot on a big galactic map and then build your fortune on it. Starting with only three people and some meager resources, it's your job to thrive in your little sector, mine up asteroids for more building material, and balance out the health and well-being of all the space grifters you pick up along the way. Sometimes you're attacked by bandits, or a bit of wrecked ship will float by for the taking. Sometimes you'll come across a particularly pushy visitor who insists on joining your roster. Sometimes you'll be stricken by a space disease and need to research the cure before it kills off your crew. That's about it.

The problem I've noticed is that there is really nothing in the way of depth. It's fine to be tossed into the wilds and learn the ways of the land by yourself, but once you've built one of everything you're pretty much done. The happiness graphs and space social networking tabs might promise more to the individual psychological needs of your people, but there seems to be little to no chance of even the most dour, reclusive person on your base succumbing to space madness and striking out in a hilariously deadly rage. So that's one of my secret space fantasies rendered undoable.

If you want to build a space-base with a little more depth, I'd recommend Startopia. If you want to Dwarf Fortress, just play Dwarf Fortress. Unfortunately, Spacebase DF-9 is relegated to the Horrors of Early Access bin, which is a shame considering all that potential.

This game never really got out of its early alpha days, which is a shame. I remember seeing footage of it many, many, many years ago and thinking it looked like a neat little survival game, but unfortunately it wasn't worth more than a few odd pennies. The game's fallen through so many hands that it's likely not worth touching any more.