Recent reviews by deplorable gollompus

tl;dr: If you liked the first game, you will like this one. If you didn't like the first game, you will not like this one. If you weren't a diehard fan, maybe wait for a sale or for a DLC to add endgame content. If you're curious but never played the first game, go play the first game-- the first game is basically the same game, for better and for worse but with more content since it has a huge endgame DLC. And it's cheaper. Complaints about microtransactions are valid but overblown.

Many people are mad about the DLC. While in principle it's indefensible to put microtransactions in a single player game and so it's fine to be upset about it, it's important to understand that you will never suffer or be put behind for not having the items purchasable via microtransactions. All purchasable items are extremely easy to acquire in-game.

Pros:
+ Excellent combat
+ Good soundtrack but not as iconic as the previous games (some songs make a re-appearance)
+ All classes are fun and viable, except maybe Trickster which is a lot of fun but mostly troll
+ Dialogue is good and thematic, same with voice acting
+ The Sphinx

Cons:
- Performance is laggy sometimes unless your PC is extremely top of the line, but nothing that ruins the experience. Performance issues are usually NPCs loading in slowly, or the occasional texture pop-in
- Story is still nonexistent. Despite the dialogue being well-written, somehow the story itself is awful and may as well not even exist. One of the biggest plot threads is dropped completely.
- Tons of assets are either flipped straight from the first game with better resolution, or the art team copied them as closely as possible.
- Not enough enemy variety.
- While all classes are viable, Thief and Magick Archer are head and shoulders above the rest and can trivialize the game.
- Related to the above point, while the game starts out difficult you'll eventually become unstoppable and there is no more challenge. Magick Archer can delete bosses, so can Thief.
- Lack of endgame content to challenge endgame builds
- Battahl can feel like a grind due to frequency of enemy encounters

tl;dr: Solid 9/10, most of my complaints are minor.

Pros:
+ Fascinating setting
+ Excellent writing in most places
+ Solid soundtrack
+ Graphics are (mostly) good
+ Combat is simple, but satisfying
+ Art direction on the Salutors is super cool

Cons:
- Awful voice acting most of the time, only characters with decent VAs are the main cast.
- Lots of reused assets and contrived ways to reuse previous areas. It is a AA game after all, but it is one of the primary ways the budget of the game rears its ugly head in the end product.
- Detective segments are for flavor more than anything else. Whether it's a contrivance or a solid mechanical inclusion depends on your personal opinion.
- Dialogue writing specifically sucks. The dialogue writing is worse than the writing you'll find in all of the pieces of writing and item descriptions you'll find. Don't know why.

Really interesting setting, you can tell the devs have a certain affection for Poland and an interest in the time period. It tackles some social issues of the time, but often in ways that you may not notice unless you're already familiar with the history of the setting. If you are familiar, though, it will be pretty hamfisted. The flavor text is always very good. The dark and seedy tone of the game resonates throughout. Only a few cons I can think of, and none of them are serious. If you're not interested in the history of the geographic area and/or time period you may not like this game as much as I do, but even if you're disinterested in the historical aspect of the setting, I think there's plenty to enjoy. My biggest complaint so far is the dialogue writing, but it's relatively minor.

Less of a video game, more of a narrative/point-and-click game. Just be aware of what you are getting into. Way too short for $20 imo, but it goes on sale for $5 often and that is totally worth it if you believe you would like this game.

First impressions are that it's like if you gave Age of Empires some more modern functionalities, some tower defense aspects and also gave each faction a leader with MOBA-style combat abilities.

It's fun and I think as it develops more it'll be great, biggest problem it has right now is that there's not a whole lot distinguishing the factions from one another. Each faction has one unique unit, one (or two) unique heroes, and a unique factionwide passive, and that's about it. Everything else is shared between factions: aesthetics, units, tech, etc.

I think $22 is a fair price but maybe a bit steep if you're not sure. Once it's fully developed I think it'll be an easy 8/10 for sure, but right now I feel it's a bit lacking in the content department. Giving it a positive review anyways because I think the people that are into this sort of thing will have some fun with it as it stands now.

If you like oldschool RPGs and/or are interested in learning about older D&D systems (3rd edition in this instance), it is an excellent game. Neverwinter Nights is like Bethesda games, in that it is just as much of a sandbox tool for modders as it is a standalone game. Thousands upon thousands of hours in worlds created from scratch are readily available. Additionally, the expansion pack Hordes of the Underdark is definitely one of the all-time best D&D video game campaigns.

Only thing is that nothing about this edition is particularly enhanced; the promised graphical improvements still do not exist, 4 years after release. There is an early test for graphical overhauls available but it's frankly somehow even uglier than the original game, which was made in 2002. It's honestly almost impressive. Only thing they did was bring back online support and help it run in modern resolutions on modern machines, for the most part. Even then, game can still crash often.

Oh, also this soundtrack was an early work of Jeremy Soule's, and I personally think Neverwinter Nights' soundtrack is just as good if not better than any of the soundtracks he made for Bethesda.

tl;dr if you think you'd like this game, you will like this game. if you don't think you'd like this game, you will not like this game. glorified visual novel medieval murder-mystery fanfiction (but in a good way).

saying this game has gameplay would be generous, it's a glorified visual novel but with ugly medieval people instead of cute anime people. that being said, art style is great, characters are interesting, music is excellent, story is interesting. also, if you're into history, that's another reason to get this game. variations on themes written by hildegard von bingen make an appearance, and seeing socrates debate the morality of your actions in your mind is always interesting.

also, if your character knows italian or latin, you may get to participate in academic debates on pliny the elder's natural history which is kind of funny/cool.

Holy Sigmar, bless this ravaged body

If you enjoyed the other Orcs Must Die! games, you'll like this one. Pretty straightforward. It takes Orcs Must Die! 2 and combines it with some of the stuff from Orcs Must Die! Unchained, and that's this game. Not a completely new game, but if you're like most people and never played Unchained it may be new to you.

paunch

Pros:
+Fairly pretty game.
+Solid combat, and reasonably fun.
+Excellent and compelling setting, colonialism definitely is an untapped fountain of potential for fantasy.
+Very good soundtrack.

Cons: -Enemy variety is pretty slim, probably due to budget constraints. This is not an AAA title.
-Assets being reused a ton in the cities, San Matheus and New Serene are almost interchangeable. Probably due to budget constraints.
-A few quests that promised to be cinematic sometimes just had a screen transition instead of a visual, again, probably due to budget constraints
-I think the factions could've been played up more and should've been emphasized a bit more, a promising part of the game that went underutilized.

Conclusion: Solid 8.5/10, most of the cons of this game are due to the fact that Spiders isn't a AAA developer. This game was on a budget, but delivering a game this strong on a budget is extremely impressive. I really hope to see more from this setting in the future! If this was done on a AAA budget, this game would be a 9 or a 9.5 easily.