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Recent reviews by Waffe677

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No one has rated this review as helpful yet
121.0 hrs on record (6.3 hrs at review time)
Early Access Review
It has it.

Don't know what it is, but It has it.
Posted March 8, 2021. Last edited March 12, 2021.
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2.9 hrs on record
This game's all cool and dandy until you realise that virgin Han Solo can best the Chad Maul.

In all seriousness, the game looks and plays great, but the heroes combat logic has demolished my capacity to suspend disbelief. A smuggler with a blaster defeating the Emperor of the Galaxy shouldn't be a thing, or at least not one that the players have to suffer without choice.

Is it really that hard to implement a "no heroes mode/only sabers" option? To think that they wonder why people are still playing Republic Commando...
Posted January 18, 2021. Last edited January 18, 2021.
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12.7 hrs on record (10.4 hrs at review time)
Can't recommend a game which won't allow you to change your
controller's settings.

Can't recommend a game lacking
local split-screen,
aka the only reason why half of the buyers bothered opening their wallets.

The first is a well known issue (I've looked for a solution on the various open threads on Steam, Reddit and Halowaypoint: not one provided me with a solution), one which I fear is being overlooked by whoever is supposed to solve this sort of things.

The latter is the result of either slazyness or sheer idiocy. Moreover, if you thought triple A studios are still supposed to deliver polished products you are sadly mistaken: I don't want to bore you with the specifics, but let's just say that this bundle reeks of poor optimization

So far no amount of tinkering has done any good, and I have to say that for a game I want to play just to enjoy what's left of my childhood's muscle memory, in local co-op, where no one can see how old, slow and useless I've become, this is making me pretty sad.

So no, thumbs down until they'll allow me to make a proper use of my own thumbs.
Posted January 3, 2021. Last edited January 5, 2021.
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2 people found this review helpful
1 person found this review funny
1.8 hrs on record
Letting Go is Hard

When it comes to dysfunctional relationships one tends to create a narrative that runs parallel to reality. In this kind of relationships expectations often obscures the actuality of a given situation - what appears hardly corresponds to what is.

We come up with excuses, we have eyes to see only the glittering, charming things, and despite the coiling notion that nothing is fine we keep repeating “next time” in an attempt to postpone the day in which we will have to admit that the game we tried so much to like is in reality pretty bad, and so is our tendency to pretend otherwise.

For one year I tried to create a bond with this game. I wanted to experience something that I fiercely believed Below could provide. I tried to coax people into it – it just looks so good! – but I was wrong. Three times I had it in my library: I had to bash my head against it to let go, but I finally understood that I and you, faithful reader, can and should save our dwindling reserves of mortal time for better enterprises.

Now, the Bottom line here is that Below is a gorgeous husk of a video-game echoing the ghosts of a hundred broken promises, a product so aesthetically enticing that - in spite of everything I have written and I am about to write - keeps luring me back to elicit the memories of a joy that never was. They keep saying it changed (Exploration Mode), but that is simply not true. Below was and still is broken in its premises, which comes as a great shame.

But allow me to digress.


The Short Story

Despite showing a lot of promise, this game ends up being disappointing under every meaningful aspect.

Beautiful yet wasted graphics and music. Inspired yet dull level design. Outdated combat system and enemy concepts. Looting, crafting and storing mechanics that are both simplistic and overwhelming.

Buy only if highly discounted. Buy only if you are in dire need of a Zelda-ish dose, lack a Switch and are ok with a petty clone. Buy only if you do well with pointless repetition.

The Long Story

All this game has is its atmosphere and its presentation. Once you get past the first twenty promising minutes, all you are left with are many hours of aesthetically pleasing wasted potential.
What I mean is that the Graphics is extremely neat and minimal, a real pleasure to behold, yet it is bound by the underlying concepts of the game not to show much.

Picture this: imagine Minecraft but it is only the underground levels and you cannot dig and every ninety blocks there is a short loading screen and after that another slightly different yet quite similar cave and you keep going cave after cave after cave until you reach the Netherworld and every time you kill and loot something there is a two second flaying animation.

If you - like me – do not find this scenario all that enticing, you might be able to understand why I felt quite bewildered at the prospect of delving deeper - below, if you will - only to be met with increasingly bleaker holes and tentacles.
I daresay that the best this game has to offer in terms of scenery and atmosphere are the beach you land on and the bluff you hike upon and descend into. Of course, I might be wrong. Of course, lush and intricate and interesting levels may lay in wait for the player to uncover, but nothing I saw kept me interested enough to press on and find out for myself. I instead opted to check on YouTube, and what I saw only convinced me to ask for a refund.

The Gameplay's core mechanics seem nice at first, streamlined and approachable.
You cook and craft and combine and it is all smooth and cute but it does not take long before a grindy vibe starts to set in.
The loot 'n craft system manages to be both overwhelming and underwhelming in that there is too much of everything and it all serves relatively bland purposes and the inventory is ludicrously small (and no amount of teleporting stashes can change that) and you are always leaving some loot behind and there is an absolute lack of any sense of urgency about it and I really did not care about whether to combine turnips and salmon or potatoes and rat-meat or crafting arrows or bandages because there is no real difference between the combinations and everything seems to be only marginally useful. Oh, and did I already mention that every time you loot something there is a two-seconds animation?

Combat is at best serviceable, at worst bland and uninspired. It is of the kind that is boringly easy when it is easy and bafflingly hard when it is hard. Throw in repetitive enemy design and you want to tap out after ten encounters. Suffice it to say that The Phantom Hourglass feels ground-breaking in comparison.

Navigation is nicely presented yet slightly confusing. I cannot brand the superimposed mini-map as useless because it is not, yet I cannot help myself not to be bothered with its perfunctory, seemingly cosmetic nature.
Squares with lines and hyphens that sort of, kind of tell you were you are. I get it: suggesting, not telling. I know that this is not an entirely rational critique, but to better express my gripe I could try and say that I have a strong hunch they merely lacked the balls to go full Dark Souls because they knew that without a mean to orientate oneself (as confusing as it may be) the game would have gotten pretty stale, pretty soon.

All of the above combined and the only good thing - The Atmosphere - gets annihilated. Everything the game goes for in its overbearingly long intro (no, I have not skipped it) and its evocative first twenty minutes is lost in the transition from the charming, eerie and essential rogue-lite it wants to be to the faultily oriented, dull hack-and-slash it really is.

There are games that do everything this game does better, cheaper and with clearer intent. A lot of these games are twenty years old or more and this alone should tell you something.
Posted December 2, 2020. Last edited January 19, 2021.
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233.0 hrs on record (231.3 hrs at review time)
You get to alter history. What more to ask?

19 out 41.
Posted April 5, 2020. Last edited April 27, 2020.
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1 person found this review funny
62.4 hrs on record (61.9 hrs at review time)
Early Access Review
That which the Single Player hallows the Multi Player defiles

Despite the lack of long promised features and the everlasting state of "early access", I would heartily recommend this game to anyone who has ever fantasized about surviving the Zombie Apocalypse. Had I been prone to dramatic outbursts, I would go as far as to state that no matter what they say – when it come to Zombies and Surviving Apocalypses you must accept no substitutes. Project Zomboid is the only game out there which gets it right.

Why? Because if you, unlike me, have not followed this game since its early release, there is not much of a chance that you will notice any of its apparent faults.

For a brand new player, this is simply the Zombie Survival game. Atmosphere, graphics, gameplay: everything this game has to offer piles up sadistically to conjure the ultimate, tough-as-nails zombie RPG experience.
And guess what: the devs actually care about their game. Despite occasional surges of criticism (not always undeserved), there is no doubt that Project Zomboid has been refined throughout the years to work a tiny bit better for every update it received and still receives.

The only gripe I have with Project Zomboid is the everlasting lack of NPCs, but after having spent almost a decade on the game I can definitely see why that is not an easy implementation to be made.

Allow me to digress on the whys.

There is something about this game, deep down to its core, that calls for solitude and contemplation. This something, whatever it may be, springs from the actuality of being absolutely alone. At the same time, having the chance to share this loneliness with a friend always sounded like a great idea to me, bringing back memories of Board Games, Movies, and so forth and so on. Apocalypse Roleplaying at its finest, am I right?
Wrong.

As the story goes, dear reader, when I finally had the chance to put this belief to test I ended up embracing quite the opposite point of view. Multiplayer is nothing but a dreary perversion of the original gameplay experience, but there is a plethora of (sadly) valid reasons why the developers headed straight in that direction.

The problem is that they really listen. They listen to gents like me, pushing for the noble Singleplayer, and they listen to filthy peasants like them, braying for the depraved Multiplayer. That sums it up. They are many, we are few. And that is how the jungle works.

Throughout Project Zomboid’s long development Multiplayer has been often and loudly invoked by a vocal majority. As a consequence of this, the Devs focused to achieve its implementation as fast as possible, thus putting aside and/or further delaying other rather big updates such as vehicles, NPCs, more weapons, etc. More people, more money, more PZ. I get it. The commoners have relinquished torches and pitchforks and opened their wallets.

But...

As a result we got an online experience which feels as a half-baked attempt to enlarge the fan-base, capitalizing on the whims and desires of players who mistook Project Zomboid for State of Decay.

I say "half-baked" because the online experience strays leagues from the original. It feels like nothing but a cheap thrill, a feature so full of promises and yet so devoid of what Project Zomboid really is. It is not an MMO and it has nothing of what the permanent world in such a game might probably try to achieve. As it stands, PZ Multi-Player is a pointless chore running on arguably cheap servers.

The cooperative/competitive aspects detracts from the "Sim" experience, having you worrying more about the "lol moments" with your friends than dreading the harsh realities of a survivor. On top of that, the omnipresent fear that some server issue might delete what one has to work so hard to achieve really hinders the willingness to invest time and patience in this trade, and the game demands a huge amounts of both to be properly played either in SP or in MP.

Not having the "sleep" counter or the need to sleep - which is to me THE most disturbing and anxiety-imbued thing that Project Zomboid requires the player to do - ruins everything else in a passive-aggressive chain effect: why would I bother building a safe shelter if I don't have to sleep? Do I even need to hoard supplies anymore? Why should I plan my looting sessions carefully If I will never even feel drowsy? Has God abandoned me? The list goes on, and it makes for nearly a game breaking one. And If sleep does not sound like a big deal, wait until you jump into the game: I promise, in no time you will understand how almost everything you will strive to achieve in the barren lands shall be aimed at not getting gang-bitten in your sleep by a band of moaning zombies.

Getting back at the NPCs: if the Multiplayer experience can teach us anything at all, it is that to create a community system of non-playable characters without breaking the "Lone Survivor" vibe upon which the game is built is a hard, if not almost impossible task. Unfortunately, between the two, I would've rather have had the chance to see the latter growing, failing and eventually improving.

The good news is that as of today (2020), so many years have passed that the Devs have finally implemented almost everything they promised for the Single player (short only of the NPCs, I think). Everyone wins, I guess, but I still hate the Mutiplayer too much to delete my outdated ravings. People Need to Know.

Long story short: if you have a Zombie apocalypse-related ADHD disorder, buy just for Singleplayer which is a brilliant, unique, polished and crafty experience; If you don't care much about 100% realistic immersion in an (not-so-much-anymore) unrealistic scenario, buy also for the Online experience.

All in all, it is one of the great games of my life. A true work of art, well deserving your time and money.
Posted April 5, 2020. Last edited July 27, 2021.
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54.6 hrs on record (49.2 hrs at review time)
Best wallpaper generator of all times. And it also tries to kill you.

-10/-10 celsius
Posted March 26, 2020. Last edited April 5, 2020.
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4 people found this review helpful
1 person found this review funny
3.5 hrs on record
If you like WWII, Historical Accuracy, table top games and being frustrated most of the time, this is the game for you.

I still haven't quite grasped how to properly play this game (YouTube tutorials, especially those from Agrippa Maxentius are helping alot, though), but I still feel like this is one of the best War Games I've ever played.

I've always wanted to play such a game like this and, up to this moment, I had always failed miserably.

All the games I tried (Wargame, Men of War, CoH and so on) felt either too hard or too easy.

Why too hard? Because I personally find games like WarGame, while being fairly hard in-game, simply too clunky and annoying to persevere and grasp the game mechanics in order to be properly enjoyed.

Why too easy? Well, we are talking about Men of War and Company of Heroes: it's like comparing Red Orchestra to CoD2.

Is Graviteam: Operation Star the answer? I'd say yes.

The game itself is actually hard. Harder than many games I’ve played.
I still don't know how to play it, but the way I failed it, the way it looked while I was failing at it, it was simply worth it. The graphics is glorious.

The UI is TERRIBLE and to me, without any external help, it would not have made the slightest degree of sense. Again, with the help of tons of YouTube tutorials, step by step, you should be able to get the hang of it. And once you'll manage to decipher what the developers meant to be an UI, I promise: you will be happy about having wasted a huge portion of your mortal existence to learn how to adequately simulate the horrors of World War II.
Posted March 24, 2020. Last edited December 6, 2020.
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1 person found this review helpful
1 person found this review funny
39.1 hrs on record (26.9 hrs at review time)
Early Access Review
Trollslayer Update Below

On the graphic and atmospheric side Stoneshard truly shines. If everything portrayed on screen is aimed straight at our 2D nostalgia, the game has enough graphical innovations not to suffer from it, nor aesthetically or gameplay-wise. The lightning and shadow effects are extremely good: to hunt in the woods, to return safely in a village feels almost like it felt in Gothic 2. All the tricks the developers have thought of to implement things like stealth and not being able to see (or be seen) from behind columns or trees are very effective, if not ground-breaking. Looks-wise it might not be the best isometric 2D game out there, but it knows what it's doing and it does it wonderfully.

The combat is Hard, Tactical and skill/equip based. The current version of the game is missing many a skill trees and consequent abilities, therefore I am not entitled to comment on the experience as a whole. So far, I feel comfortable enough to say that the nature of the encounters is pretty random, meaning that you'll be (rarely) able to maw through a dungeon full of fairly hard enemies and hoard a (not so) magnificent amount of gold and loot, only to die (thinking that it was not your fault and that the game is evil) and return into the very same place to find yourself surrounded by traps, iron-clad juggernauts and not the faintest trace of loot. And of course - of course! - you'll die again.

Despite all of the above, after 20+ hours of gameplay I eventually understood that the combat really is fair, it just hides its merits marvellously. It not so simply requires a huge amount of trial-by-error and a fair share of practice and grinding to be enjoyed without being scared of dying every two paces. You've got to learn how to approach enemies, how to move, how and when and where to strike your first blow. The slightest mistake in one of these fields might and probably will lead to your character's fast and gruesome death and to the consequent ten-minutes jog back from the village. Multiply that x 20, and you'll have an accurate overview of my first attempts.

The micromanagement, the prices of shops and vendors, the hunger/thirst/pain/intoxication system: to me, everything works fine and perfectly suits the mood. I've read many negative comments about these things but again, they are just as fair as such a game would allow. Hopefully, with the final release they will be even better.

The world is not randomly generated, but the enemy NPCs are. And just like the combat, it will probably take you some time to understand how and where - and most importantly why - the NPCs will spawn along the way. In the end, you will come to understand how to easily predict and avoid every encounter you want to avoid and how to exploit to your advantage the rather bland spawn mechanics.

Navigating might initially look difficult if intuitive, but again: once you'll get how the world is "tiled", you'll have no difficulties in creating your own creative shortcuts.
The inventory is perfect: it’s pockets and sashes, not a closet. And if you'll search hard enough, you'll even find a real backpack!

Having said all of this, the bottom line is that Stoneshard needs to be understood. The combat is hard, unforgiving and borderline random, but if you persevere just enough you'll understand why and how it verily is not.
It is good, it has the charm of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and the gameplay of the likes of Underrail and The Age of Decadence, minus the quick-save option.
And this is my only true gripe.

Unlike the aforementioned games, in Stoneshard you have no regular save option. The one way you have not to waste your progress is by sleeping in a tavern or in deserted bandit camps. Taverns are nice, homely places where honest folks meet by the evening light to enjoy mead and share tales of commerce and plunder... unfortunately, there are only two in the whole map, and if the (current) map is not that big, the dungeons and towers and forts where you'll have to venture and DIE will be far enough on the twelfth return trip, I assure you.

Having an option to save, say, just before delving into a dungeon would be more than enough for me. After having "mastered" the game I ended up seeing what the developers were aiming at when they decided to take the "save only in the taverns" turn, but as a beginner I really had a hard time understanding it.

To become good, to master ANY game you have to die. And whereas in “purer” Roguelites you usually know what you are in for, the hybrid nature of the saving system in Stoneshard only makes you wish that the Devs had gone just a little step further in that direction. It wouldn't really change much in terms of the challenge the game provides, but it would dampen down the frustration, the repetition and prevent the boredom to set in.
I deem having to rinse and repeat the same dungeon over and over is punishment enough. To add the walk from the last village and through the forest and the struggle against everything lurking within before you even have the chance to set sight on the dungeon where you last died is nothing but a depraved waste of time.

As already mentioned, in its current state the game is missing a lot key features, along with the biggest chunk of its core plot (which as of now is rather non-existent); after having completed the same dungeon-crawl/mission formula for the 20th time the game got pretty stale. This, per se, is not a bad thing: the final version with an actual plot, actual boss fights and a full character progression has all the potential to become a true time stealer.
Having spent about twenty-five rather happy hours with Stoneshard I’d say that the 20-euro price is fair. I have, on the other hand, bought early access games that offered way more content in terms of everything for a better bargain.

The overall vibe is that of a really simple and enjoyable game, rather generic at its core, hidden by and embellished with a lot of apparently complex and unforgiving mechanics, which once disclosed leave the player with a sensation that lies in between an accomplishment and a “meh”. Without them it would be generic beyond reason to play; with them it is what it is, and I really liked it.
All in all, I do recommend it. It is far from being a finished product, but if you like one-man-army kind of games, micromanaging, isometric turn-based RPGs and don’t care much about waiting and playing for the sake of playing, then Stoneshard will be worthy of your money.

Trollslayer

The very short way to sum the update up would be that If you’ve liked it, you should keep playing it; if you haven’t, keep your coins where they belong.

On the other hand, if you were one of those who kind of liked the game but feared about the developers not caring about their product, this update might make you change your mind, because they did deliver with some meaty entries.

Trollslayer confirms that the Devs are both doing their homeworks and listening to the players. To me, the biggest surprise has been that the main quest is now somewhat working, meaning that when you are done cleaning dungeons in Osbrok you and Varren can now move to Mannshire. From there, another quest line seems to be open for development, but I have yet to verify that.

Aside from the more obvious and discussed update entries (the ones listed in the developers list), there is now a certain vibe of novelty about Stoneshard. Things like NPC’s new move sets, new items and landscapes are enough to convince the players that game really is moving forward and will eventually exit the early access limbo. Prices are now way more fair, and there are a lot of many new things to see and to do, many new skills to unlock and paths to explore. The game feels like it is expanding and I genuinely want to know what it is going to look like when it will reach its final form. So far, so good.
Posted March 24, 2020. Last edited January 9, 2021.
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81.3 hrs on record (9.8 hrs at review time)
It feels really good, it plays really bad.

I would describe the state of the game as really early Beta: the content is all here, but is thoroughly broken in more than a few aspects, many of which rather game breaking.

I am, like many others, experiencing a lot of ill-timed stuttering, texture pop-ups and missing animations that are not only subtracting from the overall experience, but are as of now making the game really hard to play.

My rig is way above the minimum requirments, but it took me quite some tinkering with the settings to remove the aformentioned stuttering and render what goes on on the screen less daunting. With "very High" settings the FPS is generally above 59, but for some reason feels like 30 unless I set everything to Medium/High.

I had no problem in giving the money to devs whom I trust and respect, but the game is far from finished.

Buy it, but be assured that you'll have to be reasonably patient to enjoy a properly finished product.
Posted December 17, 2018. Last edited December 17, 2018.
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Showing 1-10 of 12 entries