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Recent reviews by DaetherX

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2 people found this review helpful
1 person found this review funny
2.0 hrs on record
No. To hell with this game.
It's SO micromanage-y and convoluted in mechanics and UI that in the tutorial I literally have hundreds of planks sitting in a resource pile, but it didn't show up in my list of owned materials, and no one will move the planks from the storage chest in the forest zone to the stockpile zone. I needed to build 2 storage barrels for my fisherman family that simply went unbuilt until it went from spring to winter and snow started showing up. You have to manually give each family/group materials otherwise they can't build whatever. However, I couldn't give the fishermen any planks that the game says I didn't own.

There's a "royal family" that sits around and does nothing, and you can't assign a home zone to them or build them a house. If anything I say is limited by the tutorial, then this is still a bad game, and even worse than I'm portraying.

This game just has its head up its own ass so far it's coming back out of its mouth somehow, which is up its own ass.
Posted February 26. Last edited February 26.
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1 person found this review helpful
59.5 hrs on record (58.6 hrs at review time)
It's picross.
There's a nice variety of puzzle sizes / difficulties.

There's a con that there's no placeholder mark & button. You have fill and X. I generally use the third type to help count out, but it's not absolutely necessary. It's a definite negative for me though.

A feature that depends on your view is it will auto-grey numbers you've fill from the edge. So if there's X's and fills up to that point it will grey the number. For the numbers in the middle you need to have X's after and up to the fills to have that number auto-grey, and if you have the right number of filled spaces they will all auto grey whether you have them in the right place or not, but you don't need to have all X's in the row/column to have this happen.
I made a cluster-bleep explaining this, but it's probably standard in how it works for picross games with this feature.

If you like picross this is a game for you.
Posted February 1.
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1 person found this review helpful
3.4 hrs on record (1.8 hrs at review time)
This games mechanics are great.
I hadn't played in a long time and couldn't remember the controls or anything about it other than the genre it is. After the mild annoyance of having to relearn controls for a boss fight and going "WTF?" I realized how fun the mechanics are felt like writing a positive review.

What makes it so fun is the controls where you get not just a double jump, but like a rocket jump for the second one. Also you can do the rocket jump a second time which makes aerial dodges even better, and sometimes necessary for boss fights. It's as if someone in the studio saw the secondary rocket jump and went "Yea it's cool, but can you make it like... 20% cooler?" and they did by adding another rocket jump.

There's 2 color bullets pink and yellow, as seen in the store page screenshots. You can deflect the pink ones back at the enemies with a slash but not the yellow ones which must be dodged. Often bosses will shoot a mix such as one that fires 3 pink, 3 yellow, 3 pink, 3 yellow, adding a little extra to the 'bullet hell' parts. The fact that the 2 different types are SO easily recognizable is fantastic visual language that makes the mechanic fun rather than infuriating like some other games.

There's also a focus/slow time button (the orange bar underneath your Health) where everything around you goes slower, but you move at the same speed. The bar refills surprisingly quick. It's required to dodge at least one boss' attack, but mostly it makes you feel powerful.

Every time I died I felt like I could improve my skill and do better, which is a hallmark of whether I judge a game good.
While it's a fairly short game in story mode where you have infinite lives, there's also an Arcade mode, an Endless mode, and a boss-attack type Challenge mode.

What I described in mechanics is for the main pink hair character; When you beat Story mode you unlock a few new characters that play a bit different adding a reason to play through again and/or in different difficulties or modes.
Posted January 22. Last edited January 22.
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3 people found this review helpful
33.8 hrs on record
It's a solid TD game. While I'd recommend a few others first, supposing you have those this one works as you'd expect for the genre and provides a fun challenge.

The towers are soldiers with different types of weapons such as shotgun, machinegun, sniper, flame/frost-thrower, etc.. Interestingly you can pick up a handful of different weapons for each, with different tiers for each of those, which make your unit cost a different amount to place. However each can be equipped with 2 weapons, so the starter weapon will determine how much to initially place, and the other you can buy/switch to later in the level if you want.

Generally you'd want to have lower price as the initial weapon and upgrade/switch later so you place more units earlier. However that costs more in the end and you might want to just have your preferred weapon as the placement cost. Your towers/soldiers will also need to pay for reloads which is the placement/gun price all over again, so you need to save for that.

There's a wide variety of enemies that justify placing different units such as swarms of tiny ones, flyers, armored big boys, and so on. You're probably familiar if you've played a few good games in the TD genre.
The maps are interesting and require strategic placement of towers to stop the tide of alien insects.

Overall it was good enough for me to play until I got 100% achievements.
Posted January 18. Last edited January 18.
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No one has rated this review as helpful yet
3.7 hrs on record (2.2 hrs at review time)
Casual recommend. I got this as part of a Humble sub, so price is not part of this value-judgement.
I'm not usually into Hotline Miami -esque games but give me a healthbar and it makes everything a bit better to me, though other reviews say the opposite. Personal taste.
Responsive controls. Gamepad takes a minute to get used to because of how 1:1 responsive right stick is for aiming in a certain direction.
Variety of guns including some silenced. You can control which guns will appear in the run to some degree.
Pumping soundtrack to slaughter the armed people between you and your goal.
Posted January 16. Last edited January 16.
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3 people found this review helpful
7.8 hrs on record (6.8 hrs at review time)
Very casual recommend. I wouldn't recommend to pay full price of almost $30, but a deep sale maybe. I bought it through humble subscription so that price I'm fine with.

If you know what to expect from this genre of game then you'll know what to expect both good & bad. I'm not really into this genre of games that much anymore, but this game has a theme I like - pumpkin head dude who's kinda evil... in a bright colorful cute most-ages way. If you can control it well enough to keep going then you're old enough for the story.

I generally hate platforming, especially in 3D, and this game has many sections of platforming, however it does it competently. In most of the the exploration sections of the game you have control over the camera and all the time you need to rotate it if needed for a better view.

The combat you CAN basically button mash your way through which will do a repeating 3 attack combo, but each weapon has a variety of attacks. like after a roll, or during a double jump. Through regular play you unlock a fair variety of weapons you can choose from at a button that feel different.

There are frustrations. DIAS Gameplay. (Do It Again, Stupid)
Jack is another adventurer who sinks like a rock and insta-dies. Sometimes you want to explore to the side of the main path and can't tell how deep the water is.
There's a maze section that the clue leads you believe the opposite of what you need to do. If you go the wrong way you insta-die and start the maze over. You can go the wrong way before you even enter that maze and insta-die essentially upon entering a level instead of putting yet another invisible wall these games love so much everywhere else.

During some of the other sections the camera can be an issue. There are magic horse riding sections that are sort of corridors navigating, jumping over, and shooting barriers. The final boss has an attack That is damaging wall with a hole in it. The camera angle can make it difficult to judge where you need to be to not get damaged.

Overall the level design is fun for the mostly linear with small side areas hiding raven skulls. There's different outfits to purchase for the collectible raven skulls. If you're the type you can do a level select and replay a specific level to try to collect the rest.
Posted December 27, 2023. Last edited December 27, 2023.
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6 people found this review helpful
21.9 hrs on record (18.9 hrs at review time)
The devs should be ashamed of themselves, quite frankly.
I really want to like this game, but...
No, don't waste your money nor a second of your more important time on this.
If you have this from this months Humble subscription please tell me I'm wrong and how to avoid these concerns without using a robot-like always do A then B then C etc guide which is extremely unfun. I doubt the game is even balanced well enough for a munchkin to have fun and win.

I'll get to the biggest mechanical concern: The 'balance' is completely off.
Literally as soon as the insurgents show up they take over a ton of territory, you simply CAN'T stop them many times, and the most important bar you need to keep track of "Reputation" goes down like a toilet flush. Tick tick tick tick tick tick tick. A point a second or more if you speed up time.

Why can't you stop it? Because you have no access to the military tree until after insurgents show up, and then you don't have access to your own National military units until buy at least one Coalition (essentially UN) troop. Coalition troops are extremely fast to become available to deploy (place on a map zone tile) once you purchase the individual unit in the upgrade tree. These types of troops can make the local zone they're in angry so you don't want to keep them in one spot too long. They're also on a time limit once placed, and when their time is up you can spend a chunk of your Reputation to extend their tour, or you can bolster insurgents by letting them go home. So you're forced to go through that at least once. National troops are very slow to train, and weak compared to Coalition units at the beginning, but their strength can be upgraded in the military tree, they stick around forever, plus don't anger your people.

So the insurgents are 'rumored' pops up and you quickly train a Coaltion unit, maybe even two, but the most you can hope for is to position them in places you don't want the insurgents to take over. But they will take over some zones which causes a hit to your Rep, then causes it to tick tick tick down. If you move a unit to try and dislodge them you will either get into a forever war for the zone, or the enemy will go to another zone and take over that, which as you read above cause a hit to your reputation.

What can you do to increase your Rep? Nothing.
Okay, not literally nothing... but nothing you can do that you can have the mental process of "if I do this I can reliably gain a few points, or stop hemorrhaging some." You take rep loss after rep loss and never gain any until you're about to win the game anyway. You either do the perfect thing/s from the start or you lose. If you do everything right then you might be able to hold them off. You'll need to find their bases and take those out because that's one thing that might cause Rep loss.

You Don't Get Even *A* Point of Reputation For Destroying Enemies/Bases
After losing 10, 20, 30 or w/e points of ticking down REp nonsense the devs don't even deign to give us a single tiny crumb of one ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ point of Reputation for destroying an enemy stronghold. Nor any for liberating a city zone, nor any thing other than completely stabilizing a zone.

The millisecond you start taking the ticking rep loss you lose. Game over. There's only 2 things other than realityquit (like ragequitting but pure logic) you can do which are 'jack' and/or '♥♥♥♥'. No troop movement, no upgrade, nothing is going to save you.

...Government... Without A Cause
Why aren't we playing as the rebels?!?
In Plague Inc. we played as various 'plagues' trying to wipe out humanity. I lost many many games of that but it always felt fun and like I could do other things to have won. The game should have been about playing as rebels, upgrade trees should've been various tactics like how violent you are, what your central goal/belief is, social ties like to journalists or government, Public Relations, evading government notice, weapons procurement. Some of the same things in this game reskinned, but many other rebel themed upgrades.

Then there's the main campaign which just consists of a handful of individual maps with specific modifiers and/or goals. You have to switch every single thing every map because all the ones you used previously are now 'exhausted' and will take penalties or just not be usable. The thing is you literally don't have enough leaders/advisors to switch because they're part of some ill-conceived meta-progression, so campaign mode is even more unwinnable than the single map mode.

It feels like they quit 90% of the way through, getting the stylized art finished, and the decent music, but saying to hell with mechanics. The game lacks the most basic QoL features, and the whole UI is a clunky mess. I could go on much much longer, but as much as I really want to like this game... it's not worth it to write more.
Posted October 8, 2023. Last edited October 8, 2023.
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2 people found this review helpful
2.0 hrs on record
I received this updated version free since I own the original.

It's what it says on the tin: Defender with kitties.
There's multiple modes in this new version. They added "dreadnought mode" where you have to destroy a bunch of structures making up the inside of dreadnoughts while dodging infinite waves of enemies. The controls are responsive as one would hope for a streamlined game. One negative is that I don't think you can rebind the gamepad buttons, unless I'm missing seeing an option.

There's a fixed issue from when this was first released where the game speed would be sped up based on framerate or something. They fixed it within 2 days and 2 hotpatches. Just mentioning in case any negative reviews still mention that.
Posted September 3, 2023.
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5 people found this review helpful
6.5 hrs on record (1.6 hrs at review time)
An amusing premise executed well.

You're the black king of chess and all your people leave you because you're an ass, but fear not for you remember that shotgun you inherited and you're going to blast the white king, any of his people who stand in your way, and take back your people who defected. Or... something like that.

As stated you're the black king and can only move 1 space. However unlike chess you can stay in place reloading if you're not fully loaded, and you don't attack by moving. Usually. You have a shotgun. There's 4 but only 1 unlocked at the start, each has unlock conditions that seem reasonable through regular play to meet like get 6+ range on your shotgun. The shotgun has several several stats including Firepower - how much damage you'll do ideally, Range - I'm maybe observing a damage drop off at further targets, and Arc - the spread of pellets. There's also Loaded Shells - how many can go into your shotgun, and Carried Shells - your max ammo. You also regen ammo at a certain rate which goes into your carried pool. You want to get close to your enemies before shooting, but not too close.

Your opponent are white chess pieces. They have HP that you can see when you mouse-over them. They start with only several pieces including a white king (of course), a knight, 4 pawns, maybe a bishop. But not the full set. They attack-move like chess pieces as you'd expect. The game will warn you once if you try to move into a space that is threatened, but can continue to click that space to die if you want and/or there's no unthreatened spaces.

That setup of white pieces is just the first level though!
In between stages (all chess boards), of which there's 12 (unless you're playing endless mode heh) you have a mandatory choice from 2 selections and each comes with 1 boon card to you and 1 helping/altering the opponent. Your card/boon/skill or whatever you want to call it often alter your shotgun in some ways, usually several small tweaks, but there's others that might change your movement a bit, or give other abilities. There's ones that increase a stat which called Blade which allows you to deal damage without shooting so you can save ammo. I've picked a skill that gave me a free turn if I killed a foe in melee once per turn. I also had one that increased Firepower for the next shot in I kill a pawn. A good combo, especially later.

The ones that affect the white side usually alter how many pieces and of what type there are, and also often increase/alter their movements and/or attacks. Like one card just gives +3 pawns, but there's others that might swap a couple pawns out for one bishop or vice-versa, or a knight for a bishop, or add 2 units of a specific type but at 15 turn mark not from the beginning.

The boon/bane is where the variety of runs comes in and an extra layer of strategy.
The game is fun, has strategy without being overly complicated, and the UI gives all the info I've wanted so far.
GFX are simple but work as they evoke a certain feel. At 90 or so minutes I believe I've seen what the game has to offer and think it should get a positive review for what it does.
Posted July 5, 2023. Last edited July 5, 2023.
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1 person found this review helpful
30.0 hrs on record (23.8 hrs at review time)
Kingdom Eighties is, unsurprisingly, more Kingdom with a different theme.
It's okay. I finished it in about 3.5-4 hours on normal difficulty with little to no real problem. Each map is a different location starting with a summer camp and eventually a mall, but there's only a total of 4 levels. Lots of references.

It was worth it to me for just over $8 since I went through a 2nd time on hard difficulty and am doing some achievement hunting.

The main tweaks are;
~You're a teen on a bicycle, trike, or several other rides in the nineteen-eighties instead of adult on a horse or etc creatures but you still get the crown. I love the faint swish-swish swish-swish sound of riding the bikes.
~They did away with spearmen/ninja/whatever job. It wasn't that great, and archers do great.
~Farms are also good riddance, but replaced with other interesting places your people can make you money such as a pool with lifeguard, popcorn stand, a handful of others, so even when without a job (archer/engineer) they can be useful.
~No banker. You find a money pouch upgrade.
~You get 3 pals on bikes that each do their own thing which helps fulfill a suggestion or two.
~Watchtowers are now laser turrets. No waiting for an archer to run to it; nerd friend builds laser towers. Mechanic friend can upgrade them to act as walls. When your HQ is upgraded all the way you can switch the type of laser from regular medium damage lasers into either slow firing heavy laser that stuns heavier/bigger enemies or an artillery that fires far in an arc instead of direct.
~No gems, just coins.

Your mileage may vary. Though there was only 4 the levels were interesting, however Kingdom Two Crowns seemed more in-depth even though the levels are more generic to each other.
Posted July 5, 2023. Last edited July 5, 2023.
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Showing 1-10 of 129 entries