Recent reviews by Mallow, The Bunny 💗

I always loved this game.
Having played a few tabletop RPGs gave me a bit of insight into why I liek and do not like games.

And I noticed: This game isn't good. The difficulty comes from randomness. I never noticed that before. But actually, agro seems to mean nothing at all. I made a tank who gets like 200 aggro every fight. And my ninja has like 4 aggro. In the whole group, that's like 78% of the aggro and 2% of the aggro. That means: Only 2 out of 100 attacks should be directed at her. In the end, my own calculation gives her 75% of the aggro (she basically has to get back into hiding every round, making the whole group setup pointless).

If this game was an actual RPG, then maybe she was a clumsy assassin. Why not? But this game loves its numbers and statistics. And it obviously lies to you (Or it doesn't. Maybe it doesn't even have such a statistic, actually?).

Plus the developers went to implement microtransactions in a later game - and then cut them out again, without rebalancing the game to cut players some slack who literally can't buy stuff that seems to be really needed (P2Win).

As for me, it's quite important whom you are supporting with your money, I honestly think such a warning, albeit not directly tied to the game at hand, is a good thing to do!

Game's great.

It gets review bombed, because... people have to create an account with Sony.

That's where we are in 2024. That's the reason for a review bomb. While the game AND the anti-cheat system collect your data (which today, most things do!), which was never a problem (because today, most things do!), it's the account that sits in the background and does nothing, that makes people bat their eyes.

We have a problem with these kinds of reviews: people have no clue.

Game's great. Get it!

(Review just done because I saw the average went down due to no reason at all.)

Very boring game.
I was a bit late for a refund, though, I noticed!

Game's free.
What did I expect?

Cheaters on all games I played till now.

I usually push through all content I start in games, jsut because I think: I paied for it, I'll see what happens.
I wanna see if something happens.

Here, I can't. It's so utterly boring!

Not only is Solasta not a D&D game (linear in story and quest design, missunderstood classes [Bard and Magic Secrets] and clearly cut content that still exists in the game [some social skills]), but this DLC adds everything Solasta does wrong: It is even more linear, even more focused on fights and even less of a roleplay and strategising.

It is so utterly boring, railroady and bad, I had to stop midst of the playthrough as I noticed that "Switching off the Game" is a thought that makes me happy. Yes: The thought that I could switch off this game, this.. experience, anytime I wanted, gave me the most fun about it.

I am a gamer and I hardly ever feel like that, but in this case, "Quit The Game" were so nice words to read, I actually felt better after I clicked it.

It's an ordeal. And that they ask for aroudn 15€ is absolute insolence. I had more fun with games that costed around 1,49€.

Give this a try if it's on sale for 0,79€. That would be a reasonable price for players who like Solasta. For people who never heard about Solasta: Do. Not. Buy.

You build up your Empire, have three (!) provinces to finally be able to have 20 poor units in one (!) army.
You try to attack your neighbour, you know, that one with only one region in his Empire. His five armies full of elite units will make it difficult, but nothing you don't know as Total War player.

The three AIs directly declaring war on you? We veterans know anti-player bias.

CAs new idea though? Invasions of the Sea People! Now, 20 stacks can just pop up anywhere!

You don't need to wait for bad public order anymore, in this game, there is no player agency. At all. 20 stacks just randomly pop up and attack your settlements. But CA is intelligent and balanced it: They can also spawn clsoe to enemy cities. Then, those nomad armies attack the armies you send to invade your neighbour. And then disband or run straight at your cities.

Everything in this game wants you to stop playing the game. CA doesn't even try to solve anti-player bias anymore: They doubled down on it.

If you buy this game, you buy a product that literally doesn't want to be played. You buy a car with two engines that work in two directions. You buy a ticket for a plane, but the plane drives the highway. You buy a passage on a ship, but it's flung with a giant catapult - against the next biggest rock.

To cut a logn story short: You buy a product that seems to work, but it doesn't. At least not in the way to developer says it would.

P.S.: You can't even bulk-delete savegames anymore. What kind of passive-aggressive "progress" is this? Someone actually had the task to cut a function EVERY GAME in that engine had out of this one game. Why?? Why was it problematic enough that people could bulk-delete their own savegames, that they spend money on cutting that feature out of the game engine when Total War: Warhammer III got a feature to only show 25 savegames cause it was getting too much? Does CA have a plan for their games at all anymore?

This game has a giant problem: Player agency. This game doesn't want to be played by you and it makes that perfectly clear. You buy it - and then you rarely get the chance to play it. Not because of bugs. Not because of difficulty. But because, and I am pretty sure about this, the AI is programmed to not let you play this game. The AI will do everything to get you as player out of the game as soon as possible, no matter if it makes sense.

The anti-player bias of Warhammer III is bad. But it's nothing compared to this game.

You can play this game like any other Total War game. Until the "Antagonist" feature kicks in. After the game reveals your antagonist, all factions that are against you get stronger and they don't care for anything else but you anymore. 50 to 60 armies when you cna field two is not rare in my games.

And to make matters worse: All factions of the cultures you chose, seem to be purposefully programmed to lose all kind of AI programming. Not sure about that, but it seems so.

Example: I played as Ajax and had a good few provinces built up as the greeks decided to go to war with Troy. I accepted aaaand - the Greeks suddenly stop all their armies. No matter what they did, they come back and sit in their cities while not three roudns later, a giant invasion force of everything that had the smallest connection to Troy came and wiped the floor with me. They left everyone else (who were, as said, blissfully unaware of their own existnce) alone. It didn't take long till that game was over.

I tried Agamemnon. Same thing happened.

I tried Odysseus. Sad that you can't built buildings. Nice units, though. And after same time, the same thing happened.

I tried Achilles. The same.

Only good thing where Memnon and Rhesos. And they were a DLC.

This game's an okay economy simulator/life simulator.

It has a magnitude of problems, though: The menus are extremely finicky, I needed much more time to finally build an automatic route than it would have needed. The way to say how many goods need to be (un)loaded is even hidden and nowhere explained. I found it on accident as I clicked on the number itself instead of the window on which you chose the good.

Why not combine both in just one window instead of having to click a pixel-big button for the amount of said good that's not even shown as button?

The automatic production, which was top notch in the very first Guild game is absolutely nuts and doesn't work. No more can you tell each worker to produce a certain good. You can just tell the whole building to produce good X and then be lucky that one person goes for each needed resource while others produce the end product.

If you buy horses and carts for your employees to bring goods to markets or other buildings, better either strip them off that means of transport before they die and then sack them to get a young logistics employee. Cause otherwise our extremely expensive cart just gets burried right with the employee.

Same for all armours, weapons, bombs, canes, clothing: If you don't put it in storage, they are just going to be buried with the character that wore it.

If you don't want money going down the drain, strip old characters of everything they owned in their lives.

Or even better: Do not use any items.

Yes. I tried it. You can play this game by not buying items. Not buying improvements to houses. It's slower, but it still works. And it's much safer for the money you nettet.

In the end, this game has an intricate system of producing goods and ACTIVELY incentivises you to not use anything of it. Stay on your first ever building, you'll get where you wanna be with time anyway. Every coin you actually invest is a coin you might lose in the long run. You can just keep with your first building and repair it.

"Where's the fun in that?", you ask. "I mean, it's a game anyway. After all, we play it to build up a trade Empire."

And yes: I thought the same and sank my hours into this game, but in the end, this game takes every step to de-incentivise growth and engagement and makes it MUCH, MUCH more safe and logical in its game mechanics to keep small: Less risk by your competitors. Less risk for things to burn. Less risk to lose items and such inactive value. Less fixed costs.

Less turnover margin, too, yes: But it's a game, you have infinite time, you can just wait. There's nothing much happening to prices. And this game does NOTHING to hide that fact - and inf act, as I told you, it does quite the opposite of making you feel safer, when you play less game.

And as John Strife Hayes always say: "A game that makes you play less game, is definitely a badly designed product."

Attention: Do not buy this!
Most of the contents are now in game for free.

This developer has no shame to break your trust. Buying a DLC can mean very well it'll be given for free to you later anyway.

Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire is a really good game, but all the DLCs suffer from the inability of Obsidian to balance this game well.

Obsidian is normally very good in developing deep role play games, but in this game - I don't know what happened. It seems to not have been their A team and not their B team.

"Seeker, Slayer, Survivor" is, as are all the DLCs for this game, brutally difficult even on the lowest difficulty. Even on super-duper easy, you need to plan for every (!) fight. Not just boss fights - every one. You need to plan your potions, your scrolls, your weapons. You should also respec your characters every fight and perfect your skill routines. Every fight against mobs.

If you love taking hours to first test a fight to see what you oppose, then respec for those enemies, train your routines for that fight, yaddayadda, this DLC is for you. If you like to take some difficulty out to play like a normal person: Forget it, you won't get the chance.

Hard pass, I'll advice.