Recent reviews by Qari

A solid meh from me. I'm gonna finish it cause the story is pretty good. It's kind of repetitive and there isn't much in terms of variety of enemies. The gameplay is insanely repetitive for this reason. The combat is pretty ok. This isn't my typical sort of game, but I have finished Shadow of Mordor twice because I enjoyed that. I'd rate this somewhere below that. But the story is good and the comments all say it's a short game which is probably better.

Is it fair to judge this game against a game released by a big studio? Probably not, but in terms of buying options I'd go with Shadow of Mordor. They were released in the same year. 10 dollars for this game isn't bad though and that's the current asking price I see. Definitely better with a controller. The cinematics are next level though and for my poopy pc it's runs really well which is crazy considering how beautiful it is.

In short, there are better options, but this isn't a bad one,. It is a short game according to the comments and the fact i'm more than half way done with 4.6 hours, but that isn't a bad thing if the gameplay isn't amazing but the story is. It lacks the insanely cool factor, and it's a game on rails where you go where the game tells you to down pathways with some chance to pick at times from two preordained paths. So you better be in it for the story (and it's good so far) because there ain't much else here to keep you here.

Update: I finished the game. There are boobs everywhere. Does every movie/first person game that involves Rome have to include a lot of sexy women dancing around the emperor?

More thoughts: The collectibles in this game are stupid to collect. This game did not need collectibles and they break the immersion. "Get to the X fast" but also make sure to pick up some scroll and a shield that are out of the way and you better check every nook and cranny. The titties everywhere are kind of the same. Like imagine you made a game in 2014 and someone asked what's in right now, and someone said titties and collectibles and you added them in because of that. This game, if it weren't so beautiful, and the story so okay, would not be a recommend. I can hardly recommend it now. This is officially the worst game I've ever recommended only because you should see the beauty live and the story is a passable excuse to look at pretty things. I highly don't recommend it if you don't want CGI boobies all over your screen or the most unnecessary violence that isn't even feasible. Also the gameplay is kinda boring and the choices don't really matter. It's so bad but beautiful, but the fact that it's short makes it better. You never want to say that about a game.

The premise of this game is amazing. The company you work for go to dying people and "fix" their memories to match up with the person's wishes in a previously made contract. That alone is reason enough to buy it for it's originality. The result is to be expected; a view of many important moments in a person's life. That is why it is so powerfully moving for other's in the comment. Inevitably, you will have to look at yourself along that journey.

The graphics are pretty good for pixel art. The music is fitting and beautiful at times. The story and mood of the game is it's main selling point.

Where it flounders are minor annoyances. Let me run. I guess it does break immersion for some, but the game's story drags a bit, and at times it was very much like reading a book. You are almost done, but you want to stop reading for the day but you feel compelled to continue and can't stop. I ended up finishing it in one sitting. With that said, running, or maybe a shortening of the story to make it more succinct would have been good. But the story is still great.

The other is that I wish there was a log of what was said somewhere. This game allows skipping dialogue (one click writes out the whole two lines of text if you are a fast reader.) When you click twice it skips it. With a game of this much text it's bound to happen once or twice. It would be nice to see what I missed.

I highly recommend you get the Eador, Masters of the Broken World instead of this, but if you have an old pc this one is great.

They are the same exact game with the only difference being graphics. I hate old game's graphics so I'm loving the other version, but if you aren't an absolute idiot like me and can see past the surface, this is the better option (because it's cheaper.) Otherwise, there are no differences except in Masters of the Broken World there is an expansion with a few more units (as well as the base game having a few more, but we are talking 6 early game units.)

Anyways, as far as the gameplay, this is the best thing I've ever played. It's basically a much better king's bounty.

It's crack

Free game so recommend,

It's a cool plot scenario (farming on mars) and it's handled pretty well, although I imagine private companies, rather than governments (which have never farmed anything well) will be the future. So it's a missed opportunity on any realism, but mostly because this isn't a farming game at all, it's a puzzle game. Whoever put "farming sim" as a tag is a dolt. The challenges you face do get the imagination going though, and I really liked that. The flavor text was pretty good too.

As a puzzle game this one was kind of boring. It's hard to lose once you know the strategy to win is making oodles of cash and barely sustain the population. I kind of finished it to finish it. A lot of the recommends have less than the hours needed to finish it because there is some trial and error, so I wasn't the only one who didn't enjoy it all the way through. I did spend some time finishing the additional challenges which was more of the same. There is definitely a "right" way to win the first few rounds, but the options vary as you go on. And it's not very hard to win.

There are QoL things that could have been in there, like skipping the wait as you watch plants grow and an options menu for volume, but these are all forgiven because it was a game built around a grant and is free.

How do the expansions get mixed reviews? This is a great little side story if you played the original and wanted to do more hunting. If you are like me and you didn't even want that, it was still super fun. It was nice seeing the different kinds of graugs, and leading armies of ghuls. The boss fight was actually nearly impossible until you see the stupid bait and shoot it. With that in mind, at least it was one.

I don't know, if you enjoyed the game and liked the dwarf or just wanted more world building story with interesting game play, this expansion is great.

But why am I even reviewing this, who doesn't just buy the season pass at this point? Anyways, highly recommend.

People who don't like this probably don't like apricots and cherries and other nice things.

This is the HARD mode you were looking for. Except you get a cheat code in the ring of power. Still pretty easy but I just played this one after owning the base game for years and finishing it that long ago. It was stupendous.

And the final battle is what the base game should have had. Whoever was responsible for making it made me feel like I was in an epic struggle, not a movie cutscene with 5 inputs like the stupid main game ending.

One of the most fun puzzle games out there. The core concept is smart and it can be as relaxing or as difficult as you want (with pauses and speed controls.) You'll find yourself working on train timings and loop design. There are about 25 levels in all which are all pretty good. At the end of it you may find yourself wanting a tougher challenge and the DLC is there for that.

The only con is there is some RNG in that the next station to open up (or bridge, tunnel, etc.) is not clear. While it adds level variety which is very nice, this isn't a game that you'll be replaying 20 times, but maybe twice. What made it frustrating was that the variation and unpredictability made some challenges very hard to solve because your super smart solution that you figured out after the last try no longer works. Is it a deal breaker? No not at all. Is it frustrating to not have to do more than 10k damage and the trees this time around spawned so you can't build your loop without losing the challenge? Yes. But we are talking about 2 levels of the 25 where this was an issue.

I don't know what makes this game so good. It's tedious with the moving and camping sometimes, and boy I wish there was a way to make some of the stuff easier to do by shortcut, and map scrolling was different, and the camera could go higher, etc.

But you know what? This game is WONDERFUL. Literally, full of wonder. It takes you to that time period and while you can sense modern people made it, there is still enough of the spirit of the age to immerse yourself in. Someone did their homework and this is a 100% labor of love for some nerdy kid who loves history and this was his chance to be an artist and paint a picture using the paintbrush of knowledge. It's like a teacher who really loves their subject matter, but he gets an art department and story writers department. The closest I can link this to is if you played Amazon Trail as a kid (a much more immersive game than Oregon Trail, although that too to a lesser extent.) You felt "there" rather than playing a game with mechanics and a back drop of some other time period as an afterthought.

Game mechanics: The camping every so often (really very often) and what happens there is tedious, but so was exploring the New World. The camping offers interesting choices, and while a lot of it is just management stuff which could have been automated better, it's still pretty automated. I hated the mechanic but loved it because it was a bit tedious. But that is what exploring is like, tediousness, then interesting stuff, then more tediousness. With that said, it's a silly complaint because the events that happen and all the stuff to do keep the game very interesting.

COMBAT is great. I don't know how it feels so balanced, it's not very in depth, but that's good because it's understandable. Definitely the rock paper scissors thing going on. The unit types are varied and the ability to have units from Spain and the natives makes it super interesting. The units themselves have personalities and you may end up having a racist Alegria who is your favorite. If there was one complaint, the social issues of today are definitely superimposed on the game, but that's pretty much just a reality of modern gaming.

Get it! There are 2 parts to this game, and the first part is much shorter. I'm on my third playthrough of that part (haven't even reached Mexico yet.) Because it is so interesting.

What can be said about this game? The basic idea of the board game is great, although I've never played the table-top version. It captures the feeling of a Civ game but with the time constraints of a 45-min per game board game. I kinda wish it was longer honestly, or had that version. In fact, the game has a series of challenges, one of which has an increased number of cards (and so a longer game.) I replayed the heck out of that one. With that said, the challenges turn what would just be a board game on PC into a PC game. The way it is is perfect for online play, but the completionist in me wants to do everything, and you simply can't, you have to specialize, unlike a civ game on prince (guilty as charged.)

I've played a few board games made into PC games and this one has what I would say is a great implementation. What could be shortened or automated has been. Some games go above and beyond, like Armello, which are an improvement on the game and really feel like a PC game hiding a basic board game (in fact, you might not be able to tell if you weren't told.) This isn't that, and that is OK because the core gameplay of Through the Ages is very good (unlike Armello, at least to me.) So I highly recommend it. I'm no board game fanatic (I'll whoop you at Monopoly though) and I can't say I've played many outside of the classics we all know, so I wasn't excited about the prospect of another board game on PC, but this one is great. That is my recommendation and you can stop here unless you are interested in what makes the game good.

Games differ in type from completely single-player(solitaire), to single-player games that tally points at the end but no interaction (Life (the board game)), to truly interactive/multiplayer (like Chess.) Great games for me are between the middle and last. What Through the Ages does perfectly is strike that balance. You are building a civ, and while events can come from other players, it feels random. The interaction ramps up from none at the beginning to medium at the end. Which is the part that makes me wish it was longer with a more robust final part as you clash. There is no end like in chess, but rather a point tally. Think of it as the final stretch of monopoly that is missing. For some, that's the worst part as you wait for a person to lose, and hope as your statistically unlikely dreams get crushed. Instead it would be like at turn 60 everyone counts their dollars and property and calls it a day. What this game has done really well is include bonuses which are drawn from a pool that you get to invest in but all players benefit. So you make choices that benefit you the most while the top guy benefits the least. It's a different type of ending that works even if I personally wish it was long and drawn out (and boring for most people.) Anyways, that isn't a flaw, it's more me wishing for a different game. The game as is comes highly recommended by me.