Recent reviews by Gerex

Pretty damn good card drafter, with one key mechanical twist - lanes. While I'd say the game is a bit on the easy side for veteran deckbuilder aficionados, it makes up up for with the really solid mechanics, variety of combos, balance, a VERY cute art style, and, surprisingly of all things, fun writting. The little unlockable story and banter between characters is very enjoyable.

My only criticism is that the meta seems to push you torwards slim decks, which essentially forces you to refuse a lot of card rewards. But, on the bright side, constructing infinite combos is much easier than in most other drafters!

Time to be a contrarian and dunk on an Overwhelmingly Positive game.

Simply put, the mechanics/material physics and the gameplay design does not gel at all, it is as if they were pulled from two different games. You have all these various materials, liquids, spells and creatures that interact with one another in spectacularly chaotic and deadly ways, yet this is a brutal roguelite where you're extremely squishy and can die in a fraction of a second with no fault of your own in a run that's already 4 hours in. The game forces to play extremely conservatively, despite having all these fun mechanics that you're heavily discouraged from participating if you want to progress.

It would be slightly more tolerable if every run felt truly different, but you always start out with the lamest (if not outright useless) possible spells, and the game is so miserly at giving you passives (most of which are detrimental trash), it's frankly baffling.

This game is so damn good, I had to buy it THRICE. Every aspect of this game is perfect. It's incredibly mechanically entertaining (Jester is probably the most fun I've ever had in a deckbuilder), the artwork and writting is charming, and the music is ridiculously catchy.

Now this one is difficult game to review/give a straight-forward recommendation. This would be a prime candidate for a neutral review, if Steam had the option.

Visually, the game is peerless. The aesthetic and art direction is gorgeous, and the highly-destructible environments are a blast to fight in. I think I spent like 30 minutes just destroyed the office section when I got the telekenisis power. Watching everything flawlessly chip, shatter and splinter into thousands particles is truly cathartic.

I like that the game doesn't give you mission markers and you need to use the environmental hints to navigate. A double edged sword, since sometimes navigating in the backrooms-esque environments can be difficult, but it's still a rare and welcome decision.

The gameplay... is passable. While the chucking stuff at enemies is extremelly fun, it can't carry the whole game on by itself; Half life 2 knew that well. It doesn't exactly evolve past the initial presentation. You walk into a room, it gets locked and a few enemies spawn (out of a selection of like major 5 types), you kill them by throwing stuff, rinse and repeat. Most of them aren't very threatening, and the variety is sorely lacking. The gunplay is also mediocre, with a relatively small selection and a quite-unfun regenerating ammo mechanic, where you can only fire in tiny bursts before you have to resort to your equally small energy reserves to toss stuff at enemies. The worst offender is the fact that the game seems to be chock-full of filler. Between the crafting/upgrade system, the frequent fetch-quests and the bizarre 'kill x enemies' repeatable missions, all of it starts reeking like they wanted to make this a live service game, but decided against midway through.

Special mention to the voice acting. Most of it is overperformed to a, frankly, grating degree. which especially noticeable when your main character has fallen victim to it too. Our protagonist ping-pongs between over-the-top dramatic, where she sounds like she is on the verge of tears after every single word, to overly flowery, long-winded monologues. A damn shame, because I was genuinelly excited to see an action game with a female lead for once.

Anyway, yeah, I don't know. it's _okay_. It genuinelly could have been amazing if it had more meat gameplay wise.

Fanscinating minimalist experience, the gamiest game I've played, pattern recognition and eye-to-hand coordination distilled to its essence. I really think this game is a must-play for anyone with any interest in any visual arts, the way this game toys with your perception with so little is exquisite.

Unfortunately, this game is a prime 'are you a boomer or have ADHD' test. Bring Ritalin if you want to beat this. Still, even if you can't get past the first level, the experience is well worth the price.

Perhaps I waited too long before finally getting to this game, and this was considered exceptional 5 years ago, but there's nothing really to wow you if you've played any recent roguelikes past 2020. The combat doesn't even feel that fluid or good, especially if you're unlucky enough to run into a confined space with a bunch of enemies that have jank animations, where you just spam left click and dodge and hope to god you get out alive.

A very unique blend tower defense, squad-based RPG and a roguelite, with a sprinkling of town building and resource management. Very hard and (mostly) excellently balanced, too (If you don't wuss out and play the easy mode, which I would heavily discourage, since you'll deprive yourself of the fun this game has in store for you). Witnessing an endless sea of monsters that are beginning break through your desperately-scrounged up defenses while your heroes are barely managing to hold off the horde, yet persevering and coming out top is quite an amazing feeling this game manages to evoke frequently. Especially when you build an amazing roster of absolute beasts that tear through everything, but even then, it's barely enough.

Fantastic music and sound design in general, too. Special mention for the UI being fairly clean and having almost every concievable quality-of-life thing you might require.

My only major complaint is that the bosses are mostly unfair, RNG-heavy bullcrap. On higher difficulties, the margin for error is extremelly small, When the 12k HP boss, that you are realistically supposed to kill on that same turn lest you get overwhelmed, spawns on the other side of the map from your main damage dealers, all you can really do is begrugingly save scum (ALT F4 working is the only saving grace) and hope you get luckier.

Still, the game is nearly perfect for what it is.

First things first, I don't know why people compare this to Battle Brothers. The only similarity between the two is that they're turn-based games revolving around a band of mercs, but but that's where the similarties end. Don't come looking for your BB fix here, this is more of an RPG.

Anyway, Wartales has a lot going for it -- fun exploration, actually useful crafting, camp managamenet, bunch of minigames, and some otherinteresting features, like the ability to capture almost anything and recruit them into your party. Yes, you can have a bear with x10 the health of your regular mercs as a party member.

However, the thing you'll be spending most time doing -- fighting -- is a monotonous grind, and the progression is lackluster. It has the 'numbers go up but nothing really changes' problem most RPGs have. The fact that your progression is ridiculously slow doesn't help either. Getting a character from level 6 to 7, for example, takes about 30 battles. Your reward? You get to boost your stats (so like +2 damage and 2% crit). Yay. Your mercs are functionally irreplaceable (profession xp, have fun restarting battles if your blacksmith gets wrecked by a crit), so having the same dude that has TWO active abilities for 50 hours is boring as hell. Likewise, higher level enemies don't change much from the ones you'll be fighting at the start. Perhaps you'd expect sort of more mechanical or tactical difficulty as the game progresses, i.e being vastly outnumbered or facing oponents with new dangerous abilities, but no, essentially, instead of 10 damage, now they'll deal 30 damage and have 4 times the healthpool. Same deal with gear, it's just a minor stat bump with maaaaaybe an rare weapon that might have an interesting effect. And this directly leads in to the difficulty -- all combat against equal-level oponents is just going through the motions due to how little danger it poses, but if you run into something two levels higher, you're screwed, just because they have the afforementioned 'bigger number' factor, and no amount of clever play is going to save you from getting one shot, so you can't even articially increase the challenge for yourself most of the time.

I'm not tone-deaf by any means and I've played other rhythm games, but after struggling for +60 minutes, I find it difficult to discern what the game considers the beat of any given track. Even for the first track thatdoesn't alter the tempo, 'resuming' following the beat is a nightmare. As long as you're firing, it's fine, it's almost mechanical, but if you have pause e.g. to enter a different room or activate some object, it's just night impossible to hit it. The fact that your dash is beat-dependent just makes it worse.

Perhaps that first part is just a skill issue on my part. However, the worst offender in this game is the 'Everything is orange-red'. Not only is it difficult on the eyes, it's just a complete mess visually. Good luck seeing that shrine on the other end of the room, or dodging AOE attacks in a huge fight.

What is this, a card drafting game where you actually can and must plan your build, with cards and effects that offer many working synergies together, and is NOT just a soup of random, disparate abilities and effects haphazardly thrown into one giant pile? Truly, a revolutionary concept!

Snark aside, after almost losing hope in this genre mediocre game after mediocre game, this one is like finding an oasis in a desert. It is an EXTREMELY good card game, one that can stand by the likes of Slay the Spire of Monster Train. It looks good, it has a (mostly) good UI, it's snappy and plays well, and, most importantly, it's actually a FUN card game, with a good bit of characters and different builds to play around with.

The only criticism I can offer is that the default font is borderline unreadable, and there is a slight lack of variety in encounters.