Recent reviews by Unusual

The game is actually not fun.
I love the idea of a open world pokemon that doesn't suck, I love the idea of having your pokemons (pals) do things in a base you build.
BUT all of it is actually kind of implemented very poorly and isn't fun.
The game is a MASSIVE GRIND, and that's coming from someone who sinked thousands of hours into Runescape, the grindiest game of all...
Honestly its just a very over hyped bad game.

This is basically For the King 1.

There is realistically no differences between the games. The two changes there are, are is very unconsequential.
1- Can play with 4 characters. Its honestly too many characters, 3 characters is better and more fun than 4. The balance kinda follows the number of characters, although 3 characters is still a fair bit harder than with 4. Since you can choose the number of characters, its not so bad.
2- In combat there is now a very small 'grid' to move your characters on. But I do mean very small, its always 2x4, and with 4 characters + pets/mercenaries that can join in the fight (though they are bad), there is hardly ever any reason to move, so the entire grid system is basically useless.

Pros:
For the king 1 was a good game

Cons:
For the king 1 had major flaws, and they are still present, if not more than before.

"Difficulty":
The difficulty scaling is probably the worst I have seen in a game. You start level 0 and games usually end by level around level 7. Level 0 and 1, are very hard. You struggle in every fight, more than you realistically should. Levels 3 to 6 are trivial, you will steam roll everything in your path. Level 7 you will use every single supply you manage to accumulate and save, and it will likely not be enough. You are easily lose to a random battle, since enemies hit so hard, they can realistically 1-2 hit anyone in your party.

A major issue that is beyond unfair, beyond rage inducing and beyond acceptable, is the 'confused' status effect. The affected character will do a random action, but its always either terrible or game losing. The character can :
- use a random attack on a random enemy (rare, usually similar to skipping a turn realistically)
- use a random item (common, nearly always wasting something good)
- flee the battle (common, means he will not get any exp, and your other characters are likely to die and end your run)
Of course, getting a status effect applied on a character shouldn't be positive, but confusion is very common and can easily ruin hours of play because of bad RNG once.

--Overall--
5/10
Play For the king 1 if this game interest you, and install a mod that nerfs confusion.

--Bonus--
If you insist on playing For the King 2 anyways, know that Alt+F4 to close the game forcefully can allow you to redo fights where confusion was a complete garbage. With the extremely long unskippable animation at the start of the game, it will be very rage inducing though.

A hidden gem.


---Pros---
-The game borrows a lot from Terraria, while having its own identity.
-It could explain the villager system better, and make it more important early on, but overall very good.
It has its own unique flavor of RimWorld with the village management, a really nice mix with the Terraria elements.
-The bosses are all interesting and unique in their own ways.
-Doing 100% of the game is about 20h, but you will enjoy the entire ride. A steal for the low price of the game.
-As of the moment this review is created, the game is still receiving updates and love, even after being released for 4 years.

---Negative elements---
-The gear and equipements could use a bit more of variety, some section of the game have, for example, a summoning build being impossible due to lack of any summon or related gear.
-Armor upgrade are generally not impactful, the stats are pretty much always indentical, except for the armor. The set effects are not every interesting in the early to mid game.
-There is a major lack of variety in the biomes. The game has a lot of elements that indicate you should travel far and wide, but I never saw any reasons to not just stay close to home.

--Rating--
3/10 Very disappointing...

--General--
The graphics are good, the idea is good, but the game not so much.

--Gameplay--
The whole concept basically IS a roguelike game, but there is absolutely no roguelike element. This is the biggest disappointment. It feels like the only reason this isn't a roguelike is because the creators wanted to tell a story (that is pretty shallow).

--Animations and related issues--
The animations looks smooth, but they don't feel smooth. I've tried to end my turn, after playing my cards, and it didn't end to many times. Its because cards have this long animation where they show you the card you just played (which is unnecessary) and then there is another long animation to put it away, both animations lock the end turn button for no reason. They just need to boot up Slay the spire and copy how its done, its smooth and elegant.
There is an option to speed up animations, great! It speeds up none of the long animations that you want sped up. Its kinda useless as it stands.

--Missions--
Most missions (which there are few of) have a turn count before you lose, that's extremely boring and unfun. You have to rush through all the missions... At least make it interesting, after 30 turns instead of just losing, you start to take increasing damage each turn, ANYTHING ELSE then just losing. Ideally, just remove the turn limitation, its just bad.

--Deck building--
The deck building aspect isn't really important, somehow. The missions are pretty short and your deck doesn't care through to the next one (that would be too fun). All you need to do to win most missions is to just head to a shrine that allows you to delete ANY number of cards, its not free, but close to it, delete two cards, then find a single common damage card and voilà. Most cards are utter trash and shouldn't be picked up in the first place. Normally, I'd say the deckbuilding needs improving, but really the core issue isn't it, its that there is no point to it. If it was a roguelike, then I could see it being decent as it stands, but right now, again, missions are too short to build anything.


--Audio--
The music isn't bad, but there is 1 music. There are others in the game, yes (very few), but it doesn't matter because you will always be hearing the combat music, which gets repetitive and annoying very fast.

--Miscellanious--
The game spoils itself, yes really. The intro spoils the last boss, very fun. The map where you select the missions spoils the number of main missions. The "challenge" tab spoils the number of side missions. The "skill tree" spoils the mechanics you were not introduced to yet. Everything is spoiled.

--Final thoughts--
Not sure who is supposed to enjoy this game. Players that like deckbuilding will find there is much deckbuilding to be done. Players that enjoy story rich games, will find a generic short story. Players that enjoy turn-based and strategy games will find its pretty shallow because of how short the missions are, there is no strategy to be had, only what you have to do or lose.
Its sad, but this game is a roguelike that the developpers didn't want to be a roguelike. Everything is there, except the will of the creators.

The idea of the game is fun, but the execution... not really.

--Overall issues--
There is way too much story (that is not too interesting), the text is a rough translation from Korean and affects the gameplay, the text auto-scrolls so you have to read super fast and can miss important details.

--Gameplay issues--
Customers are all knowing, you aren't allowed to make a mistake or they will know and insult you to your face. That being said, if you forget to check something, nothing will tell you EVER, you will just know about it an hour later when a client rips you off.
There are 6 trash can that you are never told about and are out of the way, you have to check them daily, or you will likely never have enough money.
Appraising items is timed, but you have no idea what so ever how long you have. If you take too long, the customer leaves and your reputation takes a big hit, if you go too fast and miss a detail, your reputation takes a bit hit.
There are a lot of side quests (all of them are required for the good ending I believe) and no way to track some of them, you have to remember them exactly or write them down yourself, unlike other side quests that are tracked for you.
At some point you have to report people who are greedy, but there is absolutely nothing that tells you if they are or not. Its the same generic NPC talk all of the time. I ended up reporting random people, not a good or interesting feature at all.

5/10
costy for what it is, and is a massive time drain for little time having fun.

Okay hate me please.
BUT, I do like this game.
However, the price tag for new pets packs is INSANE.
And I must say, they know what they are doing, because the new pets are just leagues above the other free pets.
Sure you can play only between free pets, but if you try to do custom decks at all, you will get trashed by paid pets so much.
The pack is 15 CAD which is an insane price tag.
If you can get the pets pack at 50% off, it might be worth it.
---
Dumb comment I guess.. But I'll change my review to positive the day where pets pack are affordable. Still didn't happen eh?

The crossbow is a bow with a sight... But with (somehow) less power, faster drop, insane reload time (even compared to bows) and is, overall, a downgrade to bows.
It does have 5 "ammo" compared to the bow, however the time between ammo reload for the next shot is HIGHER than the actual reload time, so it is completely useless.
Stick to the good old bows, they are better.

Honestly, the map is great.
That being said! The number of bugs and glitches just ruins everything.

List of known bugs :
Phone stops working (black screen, stops tracking the player, no longer updates)
Menus glitch out and can't be clicked
Random crashes (not very often, but still annoying)
No hands, where you cannot have a guns or your hands out. Simply cannot do anything any longer and need to rejoin.

Seriously, the puzzles are simple, but some don't work or are a nightmare to input the answer to.
Its just unplayable.

-NO SPOILERS-
Not a terrible game, but it needs major changes to be mildly fun... Can't believe they released a game in this poor state.
Let's talk about the game play, then bug and finally my overall rating.

---Cult management---
Its good, a bit shallow and overly slow, but good. Main issue here is the late game building require resources that are acquired in stupid places, makes no sense and was extremely annoying to me. But overall, reminded me of Rimworld, so I'd give this gameplay 7.5/10, with an 8.5/10 if they change how to acquire the two "late game" resources that are beyond terrible for regular resources.

---Combat---
This may be contreversial, but the combat is actually amongst the worst I have seen in any roguelikes ever. It is slow and tedious. It wasn't be to kind of like dark souls, but it just comes across as very bad and unpolished. You get a random weapon that you can rarely change, and 4/5 of them are trash. The only two usable weapons are the axes and hammers. There is a massive bug or design flaw when attacking where the attack might not go in the direction you are facing or the direction you are moving to, instead it will, it seems, be completely random. This doesn't seem to append often with a controller, but its insane that it exists at all. Sometimes dodges just randomly stop either at the start or the middle of it, I have never been able to reliably replicate it, but it happens both in combat and in town, and causes most of the damage you will take. The game designer also tried to be fancy by combining a map like binding of isaac inside a node of a map like slay the spire, whether you know what I mean or not, heres the important part.. It doesn't work at all. Oh and spells (curses) are mostly useless. Overall I give the combat a 3/10.

---Issues and bugs---
Putting aside game design flaws listed above, let's talk about Cyberpunk or rather, let's talk bugs.
I've lots a LOT of progress due to bugs. You see, it can happen that a boss dies in a location where the animation that occurs after a boss is impossible to happen. It will hardlock the game and your only option is to return to main menu or alt+f4. You will lose all progress up to your previous save.
Another major issue is that I got also hardlock in a shop after buying something. I got a prompt to press E, like for everything I bought just before it, but it simply wouldn't work. Lots a lot of progress again.
Another --MAJOR-- issue is after killing a boss, again, I got a bug where during its death animation (while I can't control my character) I got hit and died. This resulted in the game thinking I killed the boss and died, at the same time. I am locked out of content (including the unique boss reward) and many things. I am unsure if my save I poored countless hours in can be salved or not. I think I will never have access to the last boss because of it.

---Overall review---
A great idea with poor design and terrible implementation. Cult management is kinda fun, combat is never fun and overall the fun is pretty blend.
But MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL, this game is not a roguelike or roguelite in ANY way at all. This is a "buy bet" flag on the game. It as no roguelike or roguelite elements.

4/10 cannot recommend