Recent reviews by Flatmouse

The best of the Metro series and my favorite game in the apocalypse genre. Combat feels smooth, crafting and equipment maintenance is ever present without being overly demanding. The writing and voice acting is excellent -- it has some of the most human interactions you'll find in a video game. Philosophically the depth of story is found in the individual characters, cults, and warlords you encounter rather than Artyom's internal dialogue, which at face value is rather cliche. The karma system feels more natural than previous metro games and you can pick up a lot of subtle hints and warnings from the other characters to guide you toward the "right" choices simply by paying attention to their dialogue. Playing a moral route also requires more diverse tactics such as use of stealth and understanding some of the faction politics in each level. However if mad listening skills and story are not your thing, the game is perfectly playable as a standard shooter blasting your way through everything. The environments are top tier -- harsh hostile open world levels juxtaposed with the cozy sanctuary of your train as it rumbles through abandoned wasteland. This is a comfort game I come back to every couple years and it has yet to feel aged out. If you are new to Metro I suggest starting here and then playing the others if you enjoy this one.

And quietly water-lilies sigh
Like the last breath of a weary soul
And the weeds sway in the dreary waters
Like a girl's dark hair they weave about
All the black stones under my bare feet
Cold and smooth like her pure white palm
And the silence which falls upon this shore
Resounds now louder than oncoming storm

Pretty much plays just like the trailers show.

In this game you start the match by choosing your class and spawning in. You then run around in a loose clump with a bunch of other confused fools, some trying to historically role play real hard, some shouting patriotic praise for their king and country, others blaring smash mouth over their mic. You find a cannon and struggle to aim it while a guy loads the wrong ammo into it. A clump of bagpipers slowly walks past, playing an unbearable overlapping dirge of noise. You feel motivated and full of patriotism. Out of nowhere a guy with a tall feathery hat charges at you, waving his bayonet in the air. You fire point blank, and miss. Somewhere 200 yards behind him you get a double kill. As you struggle to figure out how to melee, the feathery man's bayonet finally connects. You respawn. Running back into the battle, you note several officers sitting on top of a table in spawn silently emoting at each other. After some time has passed, suddenly the end game screen. VICTORY! You have done your country proud. You spent 90% of the match reloading your musket and the other 10% walking. They couldn't have done it without you.

So basically the game hits everything you expect from a historically accurate colonial era wargame. 10/10.

My favorite game at PAX last year, stoked it is finally out! Super cute, fast action, lots of fun, easy to learn, hard to master. GO BANANA!!!

SUPER FUN! If you liked watching MXC back in the day you'll love re-living the struggle firsthand as a costumed jellybean. Game is bright and cute, and really intense. Short queue times, arenas load fast. Flaws are minimal. Could have improvements to spectating so it's easier to find your party members. This is going to become the #1 eSport in the world so start training now! Until next time, what do we always say?...DON'T! GET! ELIMINATED!!!

I've always wanted to have a classy promiscuous dame help me blow away my predatory crippling debt with bunch of fire and guns. Now I can live the dream.

Way better than 1, almost as good as 2.

Gameplay is great, they kept most of the same UI and controls as in 2 with a few new additions so the transition into it is super easy. Gun handling and movement feels improved. There are now vehicle customizations to collect, and weapon skins and trinkets, in addition to the heads and player skins.

End game is much better, difficulty can be ramped up well beyond solo playable so I don't see it getting stale. Multiplayer is also improved: you can play cross platform, and there's an option to have difficulty scale to each individual player in the party, not just to the host, so never again do you have to start your character over for the millionth time when another friend gets the game. Just kidding, I have no friends, but you get what I mean.

I don't understand the poor steam reviews on story at all. I'm glad I ignored them and got it anyway. It is the standard Borderlands fare: Gather crew, get vault key, defeat villains, save universe, AND TONS OF EXPLOSIONS!!!. What more did you expect? Without giving away too much spoilers, you also get to put faces to some of the other corporations in the franchise which was a neat tie-in.

There is a huge abundance of sidequest, full of puns and colorful characters and tongue in cheek violence, and the game seems crazy long compared to the other two, which is awesome. You get to jump to different worlds too and the transition effect for it looks super cool. Also, Tommy Wisseau is in this game, make sure you find him.

The npc main characters are not quite as endearing as in 2, and the villains are no Handsome Jack. That's really the big difference I missed from 2. But 2 was something special and it also lives with one foot in nostalgia, I don't expect them to carry that feeling through all the games. 3 finds a nice balance in tone between the first two games.

I hit two bugs that required exiting to main menu and then continuing, but they only set me back a few minutes. This game actually runs on my aging hardware which I was a bit nervous about so I appreciate the optimization they did on it.

I played the Moxxi's Heist DLC and loved it. I am glad there is still a lot of Moxxi in the game and I am hoping to see more of my other favorite, Mr. Torgue, in the DLC to come.

Get this game it's good.

I grew up playing MTG, this is the first CCG I've really enjoyed since then. It's a very tightly made and well balanced system; simple rules but lots of depth to learn. The art and voicing is really good. It's a funky combo of traditional fantasy, sci-fi, and anime -- somehow it all fits together nicely. The story mode provides you with free use of all the prebuilt decks available in the shop, so it's a great way to get into the game, get a feel for what archetype you like, and to learn a few card interactions to imitate in your own deck builds.

The game gives you a ton of loot up front to get you going, which is awesome, but this can also be a pitfall if you plan on playing ranked. I advise not spending any gold or vials (but DO use all your card pack tickets) until you play story mode and practice rounds for a couple weeks and do a lot of research, and maybe dip your toes in ranked a few times to get stomped on and see what the competitive decks look like.

The other thing I advise against is picking a deck from an online "budget" guide (the ones that use 0 legendary and only 0-1 gold card) and directly building it with vials. I did this and it was a huge mistake. These decks are alright for story or vs friends but they will get you nowhere on ranked play. You can make something just as (in)effective with the cards you get from your boon of pack tickets, so use these guides as a reference to learn some card interactions but do not invest in building them. Most guides are very outdated as to what is effective, since the meta shifts every few months with set releases.

The smarter noob strat is to check out the tournament decks section in game. It shows some of the top tier decks from the most recent competitive events. There are lists for two or so decks in each archetype in each of the two formats: rotation and unlimited, which means there are on average 20 or so deck builds to view. Find ONE that uses only a few legendaries (like 3-5 total) and build that first. This is totally doable with your starting resources and will give you something to build out in a week or two and then actually be able to use competitively to farm more rewards. It might not be in your favorite archetype but the point is to make something you can at least progress with. As you gain experience and collection you'll learn to build to your preference, but for starting it's best to just copy one of the champ decks.

A lot of the negative reviews appear to complain about getting crushed in online play. Yes. Competitive play even at beginner level is brutal. It's not going to scale difficulty for you against real people. A huge part of any CCG is understanding the meta, understanding your deck's interactions, recognizing opponent's builds, predicting plays, etc, strategies you just don't have without experience. So just make sure you don't screw up spending your starting resources, and practice (and lose) a lot and you'll be able to progress.

One thing I really like about this game over MTG is you don't have to dump big money on it to compete. You can get by spending NO money and still build a viable deck for ranked. They also give you free packs every time a set is released, daily login rewards, and event rewards. If you do like to spend money on games, you can buy the prebuilt decks to expand your collection faster, and there are also fun cosmetics like leader waifus and card sleeves and stuff. I got a cat girl in a tea dress who shouts taunts in Japanese at my opponent, and now I can never go back to MTG because I won't have that experience anymore.

In summary: It's a very well made game, very generous with starting loot, multiple game modes and frequent tournaments, fun, challenging competitive play, cheaper than a physical CCG; but it's also very unforgiving in how easy it is to brick yourself early, requires long term patience to build multiple competitive decks, and suffers at times from that late game grind feeling.

It has account linking on steam and phone, so you can play the same account from both devices.

It's a lot of fun and I highly recommend for fans of competitive card games.

Pros:
-Great music and artwork. Take a moment while you cruising around to check out the scenery, the maps are pretty cool.
-Good balance. 9 ships and each ship can be customized with loadout, crew, and captain, to suit variation in playstyle. One thing that stood out to me is that the balance patches are done in small increments so you the meta isn't constantly shifting with the weight of the nerfs and buffs. So far I have seen such a variety of victory ships that most of the time it comes down to skill and familiarity with the game, not just the ship choice.
-F2P pricing model. Skins give a small XP boost post-match and have no stat effect in battle. The rest of the cosmetics are just cosmetic. Gold (the currency for upgrades) is only attainable by playing. The grind pace is about right for moderate to long term play -- not frustratingly slow but not instant. I'd say I make enough to upgrade one thing every few days and my upgrades are pretty expensive where I'm at in the game now. The quests that give gold are constant so if you do want to farm hard you can.
-Queue times. I usually wait 30 seconds - 1 min for solo games, 1-2 mins for teams. The wait time for games is about the same as any other I've played. Matches are usually full on weekends. On slow days you'll get a few players and then empty slots are filled by bots.
-Developer support. Developer attention is constant, and patches/updates are frequent. The game developers interact directly with the players in discord and in-game chat.
-FUN. At first I thought I wouldn't last long, the game is pretty simple and I get bored with battle royales quickly. However many hours this is later and I'm still having fun.

Cons:
-Bugs. It's still in beta, there are some game-losing bugs and desyncs that happen once in a while.
-Chat. Overall the community is great and most of the time people are having fun, but it just takes the one troll with an overactive N key to junk up the chat. Chat moderators can't be on 24/7. Smarter language and spam filters in the main chat are needed, and/or have it be opt-in rather than on by default.

Overall it's a super fun game, very good fantasy seafaring feel to it, and I hope to see it grow in player base and content. It is very polished for a beta and has tons of attention and support from the developers. And it's free, so give it a shot.

This game is awesome. Already one of my favorite strategy games.

Super easy controls and game mechanics. So easy at first, you get all confident and think you're the best and laugh at the enemy's futile rushes up the cliffsides into the pokey maw of your godlike wall of pikemen. Then a dozen or so islands in, you're coasting along looking down on the viking hordes from your mountain of smugness, and then a single tiny miscalculation and suddenly you're scrambling to try to evac the island while your precious max-level commanders are getting ping-ponged back and forth between shield bashes until all that's left of your 4 best armies is a smoldering pile of mush and blood. So then you start all over again, but this time you breeze through the easy levels knowing you're actually bad and it's just a matter of time...

There is great attention to detail in the animation. You can see soldiers size each other up, hesitate, dodge, brace for impact, look for openings, etc. The vikings move like a horde while your troops try to maintain formation and discipline in their attacks. The subtle movements really add depth and character to the combat. Skills and leveling for commanders is straightforward. Good music and sound effects. One of my favorite things is tooting the warhorn for reinforcements and seeing the little guys come running out to help. Islands and attack waves are random which makes replaying enjoyable. And unlike some random generation games it does actually have an ending if you make it far enough, which is a plus in my book.

So yeah, it's a game with rapid decision making, crushing defeats, and permadeath, but it doesn't feel overly stressful to play. It's a lot of fun. Also it passes the chips and beer test (game you can play one handed). Definitely worth.