Recent reviews by marsk

Want to hear a joke?

This game requires PSN to play. By May 30th it is mandatory to play the game with a PSN account.

The punch line is; PSN isn't available in 121 countries (out of 190), and if you are in the lucky 69; SONY wants your privacy and data.

Don't find this joke funny? SONY Humour™ is not available in your country.

You can weaponize tiny devils, goblins, or gnomes by using them as improvised weapons or throwing them at others.

Would ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ do it again.

Preface: I nominated this for Labour of Love category in the 2021 Steam awards

Read the preface again and let it sink in. Because that alone can help you figure out where I am going with this review. Labour of Love is a category dedicated to games that are old, but still has constant attention from its developers and still is unconditionally loved by the community.

This game is about dwarves in a relatively fantastic but also quite hard sci-fi. It has the many staples of science fiction/fantasy and is a very enjoyable game gameplay wise. While the first difficulties are not too challenging, they are good enough to get newbies their footing on this game. The difficulty is scaled with help of so called "Hazard rating" and goes from 1 to 5. With 3 being a middle-ground and is quite challenging even for a seasoned player, with 4 harder and 5 almost impossible without the proper coordination and tactics.

This game has a pick-up-and-play start, and the progression is laid out to take some while to finish because it is meant to put some effort in. Think of it as Destiny 2, but much better and fun (and no sight-downs, sadly for you more specific FPS players), and has lot of replayability.

There are no microtransactions, apart from rather cheap DLC (that unlock cosmetics for all characters) where you throw more money at the developers as token of appreciation for their work.

Also more importantly. If you are getting this game, remember this; press V on a regular basis to "Rock and Stone". This is of vital importance because that is how you get initiated into the community, which is great.

One disclaimer; I'd rather had put a "maybe" recommendation on this. I picked 'yes' only because the game is decent and playable. Save-scumming is a HIGHLY recommended practice in this game due to the eurojank nature of this game, and die rolls being pivotal for almost every kind of interaction.

This game is a visualisation of the tabletop roleplaying game called Pathfinder (regarded as 2.5e D&D by the community) and the Adventure Path module. The issues the game has originates from this Pathfinder system.

Initially, you start as a single character and is introduced to your potential companions and plot hooks for you to bite. The barony or the kingdom management starts when you finish the first chapter. Truth to be told, many of the players and the community regard this aspect of the game as a mostly irrelevant minigame. Although it offers advantages for the world travel and combat under specific circumstances. The story is addictive and is interesting, the 12 (including 1 from the Wildcards DLC) companions feature interactions and lot of personal sidequests. If you care about your companions, then do them, as they do matter a lot for the finale. To the surprise of no one who is experienced with character roleplaying games.

However. I familiarize this game as a proper textbook example of a "eurojank" game. The interface is good and managable, but as the more I played the game, the more I experienced that the interface could have been lot better. Being a Pathfinder video game, it features needlessly cultivated mechanics such as resting, exhaustation, alignments, and terrains that negatively impact the world travel. Making the whole experience feeling like watching paint dry.

To summarize:

The good:
- The story is consistent and interesting enough to keep you addicted
- The class system is enjoyable
- Story difficulty is available for those who prefer a more casual experience and follow the Owlbear's narration of Adventure Path.
- The kingdom management minigame offers a change of pace and extra advantages pivotal for the future adventures

The bad:
- Pathfinder. Pathfinder, and a period. There are a reason why a good share of the players (same for DnD) choose to play with homebrewed (rpg-speak for "non-standard" or custom) rules that remove or trivialize mechanics and management.
- Limited choice of homebrew rules for difficulty. One example I'd wish to see would be disabling or making random encounters less likely. Removal of terrain modifiers on world travel speed. And perhaps making resting a less menial task that you've to repeat every half a minute.
- Some roleplaying choices are inconsequential on your relation to your companions and other allies. There are very specific choices and triggers that cause a companion to leave your company, or change their personality for good.
- The kingdom management minigame has a very ugly side. The interaction with it is rather shallow and there are no way to move your buildings around outside selling them (half their building cost returned) then rebuild them at a more desired place. It's a rather needless distraction. The only reason you might want to use it is the mage tower building, which offers you the niche but very useful mean of teleport to your settlements in other regions.
- The balance is rather odd. I personally found the Normal difficulty too hard on me and I had given up wanting a challenging experience. So I changed down to Story, enjoying the narrative and character interactions instead.
- One complaint that I share with other players, the alignment system. Some options require a specific position in the alignment to be unlocked and used in dialogues. When they could done as options that shift your alignment easily. Rather than barring them behind a very abstract system that is subjective.

The verdict is, if you enjoy a story and playing characters, looking to sink one week into a game from start to finish. Then this game might be for you as long you pick the Story difficulty and savescum relentlessy. Otherwise, outside of wanting a challenging roleplaying game and a potentially quite miserable experience, taking at least one week to complete the whole game, I can't recommend this game.

Update from me in May 2023: The developers made extremely unpopular changes to the gameplay and the player economy. Doubled down on those changes when players retaliated to their changes with criticism and review bombing. So this rest of this review has not aged a single day since I wrote it in December 2020. lol, lmao even

Original review
This game is honestly more of a quite niche game, for a starter.

War Thunder is a game that features hundreds of airplanes, helicopters, ground vehicles, and navies of following nations; United States, Soviet Union, Germany, Britain, Japan, China, France, Italy, and Sweden. At time of writing this review.

The good:
* Specatular and immersive graphics overall, it has had its kinks and wrinkles, but the developers have impressively worked them out.
* Wide selection of vehicles
* There are three different modes appealing to different kinds of players; Arcade for the casual, Realistic for the who wish a more anal experience, Simulator which is a niche for the niche kind of players.
* The damage model has no visible health bars, there are many ways to kill one; knocking out the crew, destroying the hull (light vehicles only), munition explosion, fuel explosion, uncontrolled fire, chipping wings off planes, forcing a ship to sink faster than it bilge itself out. Creativity gets you far ways.

The bad:
* A free to play trap. The grind gets horrendous starting just as you finish the second rank of every tree in every nation. Premium can only get you far to ranks 3 and 4, or 5 if you stick to just air planes, as they are faster to grind thanks to lower requirements and higher rewards.
* The developers skirt between obvious money grabbers and costumer-friendly. Not to mention the whole debacle of censoring Taiwan from the entire game.
* Absence of PvE content. ---- Well. There are a PvE mode. But can you say "WT's PvE is playable and rewarding" with a straight face? If PvE is your thing, Then, I recommend other games like Armoured Warfare (free to play with premium, starting with cold war tanks up to present day), Ace Combat, IL-2 series, and World of Warships (the PvE is decent, even for a WarGame game). There are lot more games like WT but have better PvE.
* The community. It's a basket of fresh apples with some rotten apples. The problem is, the rule of "the loud minority" applies here. The majority who wishes the better of the game often go unheard or ridiculed.
* The "MUH REALISM" part of the former community. It's a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game for ♥♥♥♥♥ sake.
* The game is designed to make you frustrated as possible, then sell you a "better experience" to incentive you into putting money on this game. The game also features lot of grind content and stress-inducing features are built to incentive you to use their premium features. If getting pointlessly furious is not your thing, or wanting to have a relaxing game is your thing, avoid this game.

I enjoyed War Thunder, but I have difficulty to enjoy the game time to time. And at several times it had made me question myself why did I even bother playing this game.

As a short-term game where you just play on and off just to kill time without minding the other content and the community. Or just a game to play with your friends. I reckon it is a good game.

But if you plan to play this for the long-term, like Destiny 2, World of Tanks, or Team Fortress 2. Or plan to play this by all yourself. Then I say with a heavy heart. No, this game is not a good game for this intent and purpose. The grind is honestly not worth it. The developers only care about filling their pockets with cash fast as possible.

Hopefully. The developers change their business practices and how they plan up their economy, it'll help making the grind less unbearable and the gameplay more rewarding no matter how you play it. But right now, it feels more like a far-fetched dream.

Starting with a short verdict that I think describes Render Cube's debut title on Steam.

Monster League is without doubt a good introduction of Render Cube; it is fun, it has potential, the dedication and work shows well in a positive light. Though it has its own issues, which I'll describe later.

Monster League is a racing game with a gothic halloween theme, except there are no disguses or candy, think of it as "Hotel Translyvania but it got its own racing game." The analogue probably isn't a bullseye one, but there is a point in it. At the time of this review it was in its earliest stage of Alpha. There are five unique characters, each their own characteristics that define their own playstyles in racing and perhaps in other gamemodes.

There 6 gamemodes, each up to maximum 8 players:

• Lap Race, individual players race around a track of turns, hills, jumps, and dangers to score the fastest track time total from maximum 5 laps, canisters of boosters can be picked up to gain yourself extra speed
  
• Soccer, 2 teams of 4 use their karts to push a large ball around the court, the goal is to push the ball into the opposite team's cage, the team who scores the most goals wins. If you are familiar with Rocket League, then you'll definitely feel yourself a bit home here.
  
• Hockey, same as Soccer, except you push around a large puck on an icy court (not slippery)
  
• Battleground, individual players race around an arena to call dibs on pick-ups, necessary to gain weapons to score hits on the other players, the player with the most hits scored wins
  
• Golden Egg, similar to Battleground, but the goal is to capture and hold a Ballisk who will lay golden(!) eggs over time, the more you hold it, the more score you total. The player who manages to hold the Ballisk the longest wins.
  
• Capture the Frog, I wager this is a familiarity to your eyes, eh? That's right, this is Capture the Flag, except the flag is a frog. The arena is very large and has lot of obstacles, you've to bring the frog back to your base while your comrades protect you from the other team trying to stopping you.

When I first opened the game, I was confused by that the mouse had no use so the controls was limited to the keyboard, I picked up my Xbox 360 gamepad instead and found myself familiar with the controls. I begun my first impressions by exploring the menu then started my very first game of one lap racing...

I found myself struggling with the control to drift, which is Jump + Steer at once, but the problem was that I always jumped first when I tried to steer into a drift, to my own chargain. To boost, one has to hold down both reverse and acceleration, coming from my favourite game of all time; Jak X, I fumbled at this at start, but got a hang of it. Except I kept thinking "perhaps I could had changed the controls just to feel more comfortable with it."

Of course, as a newcomer, I lagged behind and got in 4th place out of 8. Super Mario Kart was familiar to me, but the physics was different and I loved me a thrill of ruse, so I exhausted my booster too soon and found myself overtaken by the bots who knew about every quirk and nook of the track - it was in their nature. So I was wrestling against the last three bots tossing skulls, snowballs, and dynamite-bats at each other. I never managed to get in the first place at end of racing; I sure do have got some way to go.

Giving up on lap racing to explore the other gamemodes. I enjoyed both Hockey and Battlegrounds throughly.
Managed to score our teams goals in both Soccer and Hockey, but some minutes were tug-o-war that dragged on as every player rammed into the ball and into each other. Oh they scored a self-goal, whoops!

I carried on to Battlegrounds, found myself comfortable and familiar with the gamemode and I quickly mastered it, enjoying it. Golden Egg felt familiar, but both new and challenging, not quite the same when you are 7 and chase the same guy, then the next guy who caught the reward, and ultimately yourself hunted and pursuited by a hail of weaponry in a bid to stop you - just like it when I was holding the first place and had competetors on my tail.

Capture the Frog was familiar, but also odd in one way; the space you had to your own bid was quite large, once the game started, you'd barely get to see your teammates again as they desire into the depths of the arena. One minute in, with two minutes remaining on the match timer; no one still had taken the Frog, as if they were too busy sparring with each other. So I took the frog - I found myself unhindered all the way to the base. Felt like that Capture the Frog had potential and had a grain of fun in it, but it didn't work well with the bots in their current state, and the maps you could pick felt like desolate deserts.

In the end, I bit my lip and reflected over my experience. Was it fun? - Yes.
Was it thrilling? - Not much.
Are there room for improvements? - Certainly.
Would I play it again? - Yes. More so when Render Cube gets further with the development.
Does it have potental? - Yes. I hope more are on its way.

That's where we get to pin down some issues I hope we could take a look into.

This section is mostly aimed for developers to read, but I leave it in my review for clarity's sake and bring some attention to some issues I've had with the game that impacted the review, in my opinion.

The two colours used for the buttons in the menu and the interface feel a bit difficult to identify. Specially when there are only two buttons, which is when it is no longer obvious. I became concerned for the colour-blind, I think it would be super if indictators were added; such as small arrows inside the box or corners on the box.

Currently, the only way for you to tell where on the lap of a racing track is a straight bar at top of the screen, when players reach end of the lap, their indictators loop back to the start of the bar. I had also a bit trouble telling where I was due to the colours and they would often overlap each other. Once again, it would be helpful if the indictator was unique to the player so they can tell where they are and distinguish from others competeting the same position. ,It would be great if there was a minimap of the track instead. How about that?

Thirdly, I would like to be able to change the controls by myself, making my own presets. Since I've found some of the binds a bit uncomfortable, the current presets work, but I've got my own wishes for them.

Fourth. I don't feel the racing to be quite thrilling and I feel it is a bit difficult to catch and push down leading players or bots, specially when they got the upper hand and already is more than ten seconds ahead. If we had something similar to a nuke, a blue shell, or an energy ball (Jak X's own equivalent of blue shell), then it would perhaps be easier to win back the lost time.

Fifth, without the drifting, it feels like it doesn't have the thrill. Maybe give each racer little more speed, and consider adding "speed lines" effect to give us a sense that we are actually racing for the best track time, in high speed. The dirft as-is, both mechanic-wise and from my point of view on the controls, is difficult to accomplish and control. Perhaps it could be blamed on my own lack of familarity with the mechanic.

The game has its own issues and thorns that might prick some. But that's expected from a debut game early in the development. This has potential and provides a great opportunity for the developers to learn and shape Monster League to a racing game with a snuggly Hotel Translyvania-like theme in their own style. I can't say if I would recommend it for everyone, but I would say it is worth a try!

Someday in the future as the game develops and reaches a new stage, I may go back to renew the review. I am looking forward to it.

The more you play it.

The more you realise it's Dark Souls on wheels.