Recent reviews by Softy

Sometimes you just want to disassemble a larger structure and sort the pieces into one of three bins. And then you practice to find faster and safer ways to break larger and more complicated ships.
It also helps if you're a fan of three dimensional movement in zero gravity conditions.

okay fine the game is good actually

there is a lot of clutter and cruft that seriously does not need to be there, and the pacing is way too slow and protracted considering how much High Rank repeats of Low Rank, but the gameplay itself is good. It's just that there's a lot of World-structure getting in the way of just Hunting The Monster.

At about the 40 hour mark on this game, and I can definitely recommend it.

I have found the skill & item systems to be flexible and interesting without being tedious. For stability, I have only played online and had two (2) crashes, which each lost me about 10 minutes of progress at most. This is a markedly better success rate for my computer than Path of Exile.

The writing is hit and miss for me. I enjoy all of the micro-fiction on key passive abilities, skill modifiers, and unique items. The narrative of the main campaign is pretty standard fare, but serves well enough. It does a solid job of navigating a common pitfall of this genre, which is contrived situations where characters feel comedically inept. However, it does tend to name drop a lot of otherworldly beings and it's not always clear if the name is flavour text or actually a key antagonist, meaning important figures can get lost in the shuffle.

Overall, had a great time thus far and will probably keep grinding into it for quite a while yet!

Very zen and relaxing, but with enough complexity that careful consideration and forethought will be rewarded with high scores. Thankfully, this complexity of which buildings want what neighbours runs along fairly intuitive rules that are easy to learn. For people who enjoy city builders for their general logistics problems, but not having to worry about traffic jams and taxes.

Absolutely snappy, rewarding combat gameplay that ramps up the difficulty as much or as little as you want. Wide variety in possibilities with the various starting weapons & variations, along with coherent modifiers gained through each run.

Draped of course in the finest stygian silks and pixels, accompanied with well done & extensive voice acting.

Thematic little city-builder with a good concept. Very satisfying to lay out streets and districts, with the right balance of pressure and difficulties to keep the gameplay headed in a clear direction with intuitive goals..

We Must Survive.

Aviary Attorney is a short, but tight little game styled after the Ace Attorney franchise. Namely, a crime occurs, you attempt to find testimony and evidence to defend your client, and prove their innocence in the courts. Of course, you need to get through the trial without annoying the judge & jury so much they kick you out on your tailfeathers.

As mentioned before, the game is quite short: perhaps only 6 hours or so if you can intuit correctly. The game is not particularly difficult: you will always be asked to confirm if a particular line of questioning is really what you wanted to pursue, so you won't find yourself Bioware'd into accusing the witness of inaninities. The jury tends to be patient as well, so one or two blunders won't sink you.

The writing is modern and entertaining: the humour occasionally clashes with the art style (being much more modern than the sketches imply) but remains light and witty. The overarching storyline is quite engaging, with a strong start right out the gate of chapter one and concluding with three satisfying alternate endings.

I highly recommend replaying for all three endings. You can begin immediately before the decision point or replay the chapter if necessary, so the design is rather concientious of your time.

One last point: red herring is a delicious meal.

The quality, variety, and size of the explorable game world is absolutely phenomenal. Everything is executed to perfection from art style to sound design to twists in gameplay. I'm almost 20 hours in and just floored at how much more there is for me to explore, in whatever direction I choose.

The strongest theme of Darkest Dungeon is responsibility, and whether you accept or reject it.

Do you try and take care of your heroes, keeping them constantly in good health and humour? Do you plan out strategies and tactics? Do you treat the recruits as disposable, dismissing them if they run up too much of a bill after a mission? Do you blame every miss or crit on bad RNG?

Ultimately, if you want to finish the job, you have to carry on one way or another. There is no reloading from a saved game, and restarting won't gain you anything.

From a gameplay perspective: the game is solid with a lot of interesting decisions and high tension due to the potential disasters constantly lurking beneath the surface. While each individual mission isn't too long, the campaign as a whole is very long-form, and strategizing between missions takes time as well. The game starts quickly, but don't expect to complete it in under 40 hours.

I have been emotionally destroyed by this game multiple times and am almost afraid of how much I want to keep playing it.