Recent reviews by Friggin_Ponies

What a cute lil' game. Worth every penny!

It's short, but you got more content here for a dollar than you would with most cosmetic DLC. It's easy to play, and a just enough of a challenge to master that it's stimulating, but not so drawling on as to overstay its welcome. Every level has a cute gimmick to it and makes it surprisingly varried.

For the price of a burger on a dollar menu, you can't go wrong. Give this developer a buck for the trouble, it's a delight!

Owlboy does not deserve to be mixed, but it does deserve to be openly and fairly discussed. That means talking about the bits people might not like.

To get this part out of the way'; the people tagging this as a metroidvania are dirty liars. There's no map or heroic progression, in the strictest sense, and the usual foibles don't apply. There's a few similar trappings, but this does not have the spirit that poorly named genre tries to invoke.

Owlboy is a frustrating game to love, though I love it. By the standards of the time period I'm writing in, where tastes flux and change regularly, where patience is becoming a more and more precious, rare thing, Owlboy demands a fair bit from you. Not in terms of twitchy movements or difficult patterns. Hell, I'd say this is one of the easier games I've played. Despite the fact that you'll run into "that one room" more than once and you'll die a lot in it, the game is quite generous with checkpoints (most of the time). Honestly, I wonder if the game might have been better served with a different health system. But I digress.

You might get frustrated because this game does not play like any other, despite playing like so many of them. You have to wrap your head around the fact that you attack with buddies instead of our main character, a disconnect that will confuse a lot of people. I find if you think of your buddies as guns then it makes more sense, but when we're told it's two people, we believe it's two people.

The story is also taxing. Not because it's wordy, but because it explains so very, very little. Things happen in a linear progression, no event doesn't make sense, per se. But unless you're really paying attention, you'll miss the fact that some people are actually pretty bad at their job. Unless you go looking, you might struggle to realize there are dead parents. And without truly focusing, the existential dread of the plot will sail over one's head through no fault of their own. To buy into this world requires taking so much at face value, and that is asking a fair bit when the game starts, despite being so colorful, quite sad and bitter, then jumps into the action and rarely stops.

There is plenty to admire from its tight design and pixel graphics that, to this day, are breathtaking. But then there's so much that's frustrating, such as the curiously complex plot and having to accept that spiders can be foolish and also friends. If one buys this game, I ask you not to un-recommend the game simply because it doesn't jive with you. This game was a labor of love and deserves to exist peacefully.

I really want to like this game, and I definitely do. But with so, so many games there are to play these days, Okami is a little hard to keep one's patience on if you're not nostalgic for it. There's a lot of design speed bumps that are minor inconveniences, but add up to being sort of frustrating. This sucks because the game is ultimately marvelous.

Such minor issues include;

-Certain cutscenes have veeeery slow dialogue, likely due to the original release having a default speed for all the the dialogue that was quite slow.

-Combat is good, but our main character is a little floaty when it comes to swinging certain weapons.

- Some quests don't continue until you complete other seemingly unrelated quests. While that's just games sometimes, the pacing of what you have to do in what order sometimes deflates the story's or action's momentum. If you don't get in the habit of reading signs, you'll become minorly lost.

- The plot is sometimes a little hard to follow. Not through poor writing, but it tells a story that might be hard to wrap your head around depending on your sensibilities related to gods, mystic powers and dogs. In western culture, myths and lore are something you tend not to get directly involved in, insofar as you don't alter the endings of these myths. But here you regularly will, and that tripped me up several times while trying to follow along.

It's frustrating because I love this game's aesthetics, humor, general sense of whimsy and exploration/sense of adventure. The there's some parts you might be annoyed by evben outside of what I've mentioned (our talking companion maybe snarks too much, depending on who you are), but I would recommend it. Just be sure to be mentally prepared for some mental hiccups.

This is my favorite games of all time. Ever. The game isn't polished as well as that which inspired it, but it's got such heart. Such love. Such care in its story and character progression. This is a world I could get lost in forever. If you love RPGs and good, cozy adventure stories with a little bit of bite, I highly recommend.

A heartwarming story, I cried. Twice. It'll feel good.

Keep in mind two things if you come to play this game. First is that this is more of a visual novel than an RPG. I wouldn't call the combat system shallow, in that it's not a button masher and you will have to think. but don't expect deep combat. Approach each fight like a puzzle.

The second thing is the story gets... I wouldn't say convoluted. But it does get a little dense, the same way a peanut butter is packed with calories; you might not realize how filling it is if you're not paying attention. The last 3rd of the story gets pretty bizarre to follow, and may require to suspend some disbelief. You'll have to take the game's word that sometimes there's a little magic that just goes unexplained in the world.

Normally I prefer to reserve my reviews for games that give me more conflicted feelings. But ya know, fug it, I'm nostalgic and I get to be nostalgic for a game that isn't from my childhood, so I'm just gonna be happy and give this a recommend.

The game is just wonderful. This, this right here. THIS is the kind of game I want to use for nostalgia baiting. This game makes the platforming slow, chunky, weighty, *heavy*. I don't feel like a frail feather, and I feel like my jumps need timing and rhythm in this platforming game. But that doesn't mean it's bereft of leniency; far from it. The game makes your character stick to walls and thin railings so you don't have to be super precise, just precise enough you feel like you made a choice and showed off some skill at understanding and using the mechanics.

And this generous clingyness is pushed to its limit in the optional final level. But I'm getting ahead of myself. The real draw, and the most fun part, is the middle portion of the game. A wacky palindrome-inspire level involving a goofy owl being a jerk and some oppressed piggies. The game reaches back to that era of silly NPCs popularized in the original Banjo-Kazooie series. This level, combiuned with our main characters spin-based moveset, made me feel like I was playing a new platformer from the 90s I'd somehow missed.

If you're into that, this game is great. If you're not into that nostalgia, it's a great platformer, though I can see how it being slightly less lenient than modern contemporaries might be off-putting. Even for veterans, the game asks you to so some jumps that go outside the geometric boxes of old, and you'll need to get used to the idea of jumping off of places without a safety net of a wall opposite you is a little jarring for someone using to Mario, but you'll need to get used to the idea of jumping while hanging from a ledge to reach far locations if you wanna do the harder sections.

My only real complaint is the health bar, although charming, isn't as easily red as a health bard made out of individual bits and objects like older games. I wish it was color coded at the very least. But if that's my one complaint in a game with infinite lives and platforming goodness and silly, cute animation, it's got a lot going for it. And for less than 10 bucks, you can do a lot worse, and not much better. Cannot recommend enough.

If you do play, though; DO NOT FORGET THE LEDGE JUMP. That final level would have eaten less of my time if I'd remembered it sooner.

Short Version; Eastward is a modern attempt at a *very* linear Legend of Zelda style game that's a bit heavy on dialogue, perhaps excessively so to those that prefer to always be in control. If you look at it like a Young Adult Novel with Gameplay and go in expecting that and the number of times you'll have to sit through plot, it's a really good time.
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I haven't finished Eastward, but I can tell I'm going to. I absolutely love the game to bits. Despite this, this is a game I wish I could give a "hmmm" to, as far as recommendations go. Loving a game and recommending it to others are two very different things. Yet, I had to get my thoughts out now because it's both a blessing and a head-scratcher to be playing something like this.

I didn't get the game when it first came out because it had a "mostly positive" review rating. I waited until it was on sale and when it had "very positive" for it's reviews of all time. I think the people that don't like the game have their right to not like it, but I also think it's harsh to not recommend it the way they do, like the design is flummoxed or lacks intention. This game is made with a lot of intention, love and care... for mostly better, sometimes worse.

I'm reminded of the frustration people have been having with the latest Legend of Zelda, Tears of the Kingdom. A common complaint I see is the story is vapid, utterly nothing, that it sometimes doesn't even feel like a sequel to the last game because of how so much of the last game's events are just ignored entirely. Meanwhile, you're given no time to actually interact with characters. This is intentional, to give the player as much freedom as possible. A butchered quote I see applied to Miyamoto, master of Nintendo and a man known to stick his fingers in all the games, is he hates games that try to tell him what to feel and instead wants to leave the feeling to the player. To that end, it can sometimes seem the Zelda games don't feel much of anything if you aren't prepared to do a fair bit of legwork to get emotionally invested.

Playing Eastward is like playing a bizzarro reality where the word "Freedom" was forgotten almost entirely when a legend of Zelda game was made, and making you feel a certain way was always the goal. Just as the freedom at the cost of plot isn't a bad thing, neither is plot at the cost freedom. The only issue, I think, is not being told one way or another that this is what you're getting into. It's a mistake a lot of games make, in their attempts to maintain the mystique of being a new world, reality or experience.

In this game, you take on the role of John, at first, and I do believe you'll be playing him through most of the game. Later, you also play as his adoptive daughter as the two try to survive in this crazy world while said daughter, Sam, has magic powers she doesn't understand and there's people that believe the world above ground is a wasteland. It isn't... until you arrive and perhaps cause the second apocalypse.

Although the writing is simple and quirky on the surface, it uses the minimum amount of words and visuals possible to express it's dense story. More than that, it works hard to make you feel like our two main characters. This is impressive, considering John is a silent protagonist who doesn't look anything like a legendary chosen here. In another game, his sprite could be any NPC's. Here, though, his silent demeanor is a real character trait; he's a man of few words and doesn't like small talk. But something you'll find out quick, if you pay attention, is he's a kind man who cares deeply for Sam. In this way, the game has its cake and eats it too with how its main character feels; you can project onto John a bit, but John will always be John.

Sam is, on the other end, vibrant and loud. She's a kid, a real one. The writing here is spectacular, but if you're the kind of person who doesn't like to be told how you feel, Sam might be annoying. The game attempts to endear you to her through John, as John clearly loves her and wants to do what's best for her. Doesn't matter what you want, though, cause John's gonna take care of her. But hey, at least she takes care of John, too. In a way, it's another Dad simulator, but I'd call it a family simulator.

The writing in the game is superb, and I don't just mean the spoken words. If you're attentive, there's a lot of details you can notice, such as how John's house at the start of the game only has one bed, and how he sleeps sitting up. Sam's a new addition to his life, and John had no question in what was best for her, giving his bed to her. Likewise, several seeds and questions are expertly planted that are answered later, when you might have forgotten you'd even asked.

The artstyle is also phenomenal. It's as if Legend of Zelda and Earthbound had a baby, then uncle Fallout came to visit, said the baby was cute, and offered old clothes. The game is charming and quirky, with pixel art made with oodles of love and care. The fact John, who wield's a frying pan like a sword, isn't an ambidextrous sprite and turns like a person and doesn't just flip between two sprites says a lot too. They want John and Sam to feel like real people down to how they move, and I'd say they succeeded. The pixel work is like the days of the SNES, but we never stopped advancing it. In a word, gorgeous. In another word, schizophrenic, but never unintentionally so. Some bits of the UI and character design feels odd (like how the character portraits for John and Sam are anime as heck, with John having an epic smile and a seemingly out of character determination in his eyes), but it feels intentional. It doesn't clash, but sticks out, like it wants to tell you something.

The second biggest flaw with the game is the pacing can sometimes be a bit... absurd. I was struck by a feeling of whiplash as John and Sam made it to the second town and after only being there a day, the town's prettiest lady falls for John. At the same time, we've gone from the slight octane of a boss fight and getting to a beautiful new world via what we first thought was a death hole to hazing a grand, slow, peaceful time at this new village. The romance plot feels like a way to get us more attached to this place so leaving will be all the more bitter. It can feel a bit like they were throwing out as many hooks to make sure you bit and became caught up in loving this place. Some things were slow, others fast, all at the same time. Give the game patience, take it with a bag of 50 salt (it'll make sense when you play) and it'll pass, but I can see this as a deal breaker for some and I wouldn't blame them.

Perhaps the biggest flaw with this game was to even be a game in the first place. Maybe it would be better received as a book or a comic. But this wanted to be a game and it had good reasons to be, but not everyone is going to agree with that or buy into it. Control is regularly taken from the player for long cutscenes and characters talking to each other for minutes at a time. It's good dialogue, and if you come in expecting it, it's like playing a visual novel with Legend of Zelda (classic) gameplay. But the dialogue is programmed in a way where skipping it isn't fast. It expects you to be here. If you're here to "play", you may be here for the wrong reasons.

If you come to Eastward, come to feel it and experience it. Don't come to play it like a free roaming game, come to play it like a story that has something to tell you. If you don't want that, play something else. Eastward isn't for everyone, and it's beautiful for being willing to do that.

As is often the case for me, I'm making a review based on the fact that I have mixed feelings, rather than overwhelmingly loving or hating a game.

I'm a huge Sonic fan, though I haven't really been in love with the series for a long time. The games and stories have felt aimless for far too long and like they didn't care, in terms of story and gameplay. Chalk it up to sega constantly getting cold feet or being afraid of their own fans whenever they want to try something new, or just being terrified to stand firm with an idea. They struggle to reach Sonic's full potential, whatever that potential is.

This is the best Sonic game in a long time, and invokes feelings I haven't' had since Sonic Adventure 2 Battle. That does not make this a great or perfect game. all things taken into account, such as time period and circumstances, I think SA2 is a better constructed game. Frontiers is several steps above mediocre, and that's actually pretty great. I think there's a mistake in thinking every game needs to be the best one ever. The console wars are long over, and now I think games should defend, and cater, to the slices of land they own and the genre territories they can step into. Sonic doesn't have to be the best, though perhaps the games can strive to be the best they can be; high speed actions that you don't need to be a speedrunner to appreciate.

Sonic Frontiers is good, and it stays good through most of its 30 hour runtime. Much like Breath of the Wild or Mario Odyssey, there's a lot of small tasks to do that are meant to be easy to digest. While this can be unwelcoming to older players, newer ones will have no trouble getting used to it. Players will feel fast and finding a rhythm and flow to make things even faster is the real joy, becoming fast with your fingers as much as with Sonic's innate speed.

I think that's the rub a lot of older Sonic fans might struggle with. This game lacks little in the way of bite, as far as gameplay goes. With some exceptions I think are born more from jank than true challenge, this game is easy. Competent players will be rewarded with relatively mindless final encounters, feeling punished for exploring as much as they might want to. In the effort to give freedom, there's so much freedom that it's easy to outpace the game's challenge, both with running challenges and combat, by the second island's conclusion. Is it a bad design choice to make it so players who level up their stats have an easier experience? I don't think so entirely. I wish there were more toggles to allow a player to fiddle with their attack and defense after going through the work of upgrading, in case they don't like how strong they become. For a game that posits freedom, it really only gives the freedom to find ways to complete the game, and not the freedom to be challenged by it.

And yet, it's just fun to run around, to find that flow, to accept the hundreds of micro challenges that dot the island, to engage in the fast, fast battles. None of it is perfect, of course. In particular, the micro-challenges that cover the lands are somewhat automated. That's not atrocious, I think, as precision platforming at the ridiculous speeds sonic reaches is a pain in the butt and one reason I'm glad Sonic's speed and boost powers have been somewhat nerfed compared to old games. But the longer Frontiers goes, the more in relies on super restricted 2D sections that are hard to leave once you're in them. I wish there was a bit more care given to being able to exit these micro challenges that become so restricted.

On the note of restrictions, my biggest complaint is the somewhat poorly tuned way Sonic's ground momentum interacts with objects in the world. A real open world game with Sonic's speed and skillset would be a nightmare, so instead Frontiers only allows launching Sonic into the sky from set boost pads and springs. If you see a ledge on a mountain, odds are it's not actually all that good for flying off. Sonic's feet stick to the ground like glue in such situations, and he will instead run down the walls. Fair enough; this is likely to prevent you from flying off when you don't mean to. My issue is they weren't as careful with this as they should have been. This is most problematic in certain group-enemy encounters. You'll naturally want to use the cyloop, Sonic's new "draw a circle to make a cyclone" attack, to knock these enemies out. One of the more fun, skilled things you can do in the game is boost while doing it, making the attack happen quickly. Unfortunately, some fights where it's useful take place in ruins with little stone bumps that will send you flying if you run along them. The fact you can't launch off a mountain too easily, but you'll go flying in places you wanna stay on the ground is irritating. It's not a constant issue, but it really highlights the lack of ability to customize the experience better.

Ultimately, though, this games gives me hope. So did Generations a long time ago. I'm cautious, but I'm gonna look forward to the next Sonic game. The spectacle for the easy bosses is high, the rush of moving fast is exciting. This has at least earned me being hopeful from me. This game is fun, but you have to go in ready to meet the game on its own level.

I tend not to write reviews for games I absolutely love, nor ones that make me hate them. Instead it's the ones that leave me conflicted or frustrated that make me most want to write a review about them. To preface. I loved this game and thoroughly enjoyed it. But I think there's a certain kind of person you need to be, and the right mindset you need to have to properly enjoy this game.

To get to the main point of my thoughts, this game is what might best be described as a 'fast food' sort of game. This comparison isn't perfect, so bear with me. There's a lot of different fast food restaurants, some worse for you than others. If Call of Duty could be considered the McDonald's of video games (quick, easy, doesn't take too much thinking to digest or enjoy), then this game could perhaps be compared to a Wendy's meal (or some other fast food you find agreeable). Not really spectacular, but pretty good when you have that craving.

Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars, a game with a terrible-but-fun name, is a generic fantasy JRPG with not much in the way of gameplay twists for the genre, and a story that's not amazing with some twists that are interesting to think about for a few minutes. This game is not a huge 60 hour completionist JRPG. It's not even 30 hours. My first playthrough ended at about 14 hours.

One thing that might have helped my expectations is that I played a JRPG recently called Radiant Historia. That is a DS (or 3DS Remake) game that is also a generic fantasy RPG, with an interesting twist on combat mechanics and a story about time travel, self-sacrifice and there's also a thing about royalty being bad maybe? Clocking in at 30 hours, it was as long as it needed to be and I was satisfied when it was done. For clarity, I *am* a completionist sort of person.

I'd use similar wording to describe Voice of Cards. It's as long as it wants to be and doesn't overstay its welcome. I try not to claim I know developer intentions, but as a writer I experience burnout after working on long projects and want smaller things to work on while being creative. This game comes across as someone who gets tired of working on huge games and wanted something that would be easy to make and play, so one can still be creative without pushing themselves to the limit. That isn't an excuse for any flaws that might exist, and they do exist, but it is a good reason to explain why the game is the way it is.

Let's get the cardboard elephant out of the way. The advertising and theming is very confusing because the game does not involve card play in any capacity. There's no drawing cards, no deckbuilding, no true card games save for an optional minigame. There's no functional reason for the game to have this card theming. And I love it. I love the card theming and the dice hitting the battle board, the sounds of what seem to be plastic crystals falling into a box, the sound of my game piece clattering along the map. I like the transition to the battleboard and the sounds of swishing cards. The game sticks to the theme of a tabletop game in aesthetics and doesn't let up, even for the final boss which has a cute visual of being made of 20 or so cards to for their full picture, to express how huge and imposing they are. All of this comes with a mature sounding man narrating, acting as the 'game master'.

This entire thing works for me probably because I host regular Dungeons and Dragons games. I must do so online, but there's something fun about making a small world for players to play in. One that isn't massive or has deep lore, one that just has some dungeons to explore and a story with some not-very-deep twists, but are just fun to play with. Aesthetically, this game captures that feeling perfectly. There's no denying, though, the way the game presents itself in promotional material doesn't make this clear. I don't blame anyone who goes into this disappointed.

I think the biggest thing that works against the game is the narrator. A game like this lives or dies on charm. Unfortunately, the English narrator they got isn't bringing their best to this mock tabletop. There are moments where he expresses himself and gets good and deep into character. These moments are far between, though not few. Most of the time he's droning and not exactly into it. One of his intro dialogues for fights is "Aaaaaaand... Fight!" You'd expect something like that to be full of energy to get you pumped, at least a little bit. But nope. His read of the line is so bad and it's a crying shame. When he does his best, his best is really good. But he either wasn't trying too hard or, more importantly, the director of the English translation didn't care enough.

Past the aesthetics of a tabletop game, voice of cards relies on a humorous story, charm and quick, easy combat to entertain. There's a sort of mindless zen one can get into with random monster encounters. Hit the monsters, get the XP, get the gold, level up, do it some more until you've hit the final boss to 0 HP. If the combat could be compared to anything, it would be Earthbound with slightly more production value. The cards move in flashy, occasionally amusing ways to representing hitting each other. The most interesting thing about the system is that instead of traditional mana, you instead gain a plastic crystal on each of your character's turns. Basic attacks cost no crystals, stronger attacks do, ranging from 1-5 crystals (the max you can be holding at once is 10, a tricky thing to do). Meanwhile, character's attack and defense values are located on their cards, so there's no question why you took X damage and why enemies are taking Y.

The mechanics are so simple that they're easy to pick up and even easier to master. This would make an excellent introduction to RPGs, I feel, with easy to understand mechanics that are fairly self-explanatory. With that said, there's no challenge to be found in this game unless one goes hunting for an optional boss that's not available until after you've beaten the game and made your way back to the final island (a thing made easier with an item that allows you to ignore monster encounters). There's not much to sink your teeth into aside from the final boss, which feels almost built around your party being max level, and the secret boss, which requires a good amount of preparation and planning after understanding it's mechanics (likely after dying).

If Voice of cards suffers from something, it's nitpicks that become big issues in the void of not having overly fancy graphics to distract. For example, if you're a completionist it's painfully easy to outlevel the two party members you get later, making it hard to want to use them. While there's an elemental weakness system in the game, it's sometimes hard to make use of it, and by the end of the game it's not worthwhile to engage with it. There's a decent amount of depth to the combat system that goes underutilized because of how you equip attacks and how it's easier to just do a lot of damage with big swinging attacks. It's easy to out level the bosses you're heading for, with only a misunderstanding of how to prepare yourself being a threat.

Despite all those flaws, I love this game and would give a recommendation. I think it's worth 30 dollars (the cosmetic DLC is not worth factoring in), but you have to accept you're paying for the experience of a tabletop game more than you're paying for a truly engaging JRPG. There's enough here to be fun, and as someone whose favorite genre is RPGs (JRPG or otherwise), it was nice to play one that didn't consume so much of my time and was just relaxing. I do wish the game was better, better balanced and paced, but ultimately I regret neither my time nor my money.

Times like these I wish there was a thumbs-up-point-five sort of button. At the time of writing I've beaten the base game on hard mode and am about to head to the dlc, Seed of Evil, and plan on playing on a harder difficulty to play around because I did have a good time. I adore tactical turn based games and this one is, I think, fascinating. Survival turn based tactics sounds like an awesome time. And this *sort of* manages it.

I think the game's trailer paints a poor picture of what the game will be like, especially if you've played games like Fallout or wasteland. This is even worse, I think, if you've even glanced at the tabletop RPG. I'd say this game follows the basic idea of the TTRPG, but only the basic idea. You don't really scrounge for resources. You certainly collect metal, which you use to shop with, and you find weapon parts to upgrade your guns. But you don't really do much with it yourself. You have to fast travel back to the home base to spend the scrap for weapon attachments, grenades of various sorts, medkits and the occasional weapon if that's your thing. You take the weapon parts to the mechanic to make your guns better. Or you might not want to do that because then you can't upgrade the obviously better guns you can get later, kicking yourself for having wasted parts for 1 extra damage when that extra damage could have been put on a gun that will always outclass a fully upgraded version of the level 1 gun.

Not that the game promised it, but the trailer had me assume one could find and use food in some way, but your health is restored from medkits (which heal you to full between fights but only a small amount in battles). The main source of increasing your HP, as opposed to leveling up, is finding better armor. You don't make armor, get armor from your home (often), you find it and guns laying around in chest. You cannot collect perfectly good guns or armor from enemies, for some reason, with no explanation.

That last part sort of hones in on the problem overall, I think. This game is tagged as an RPG, but this is not one. You level up, certainly, but there's more to a Role Playing Game than that. You don't need to have a talking skill box thing and choose dialogue options to roleplay. Nay, you don't need a great deal of story-based choices to to role play. Sometimes it's nice to simply play the role handed to you. But you do not play the role of a Stalker in this game except in the barest sense of sneaking up on opponents to thin out the herd, a task that grows more and more difficult as the silent weapons in the game are drastically outpaced by newer weapons, the actual reach of 'loud' weapons' noise not made clear, the amount of enemies in groups increase and their health values get so huge that even a full team of 3 characters shooting at 1 enemy can take 1 and a third turns to get through. You can't really be a stalker as much as you can participate in a really good set of game mechanics.

You don't really get to be part of the Ark's, your home's, community. You talk to only a few people, and that's only to shop. There's no conversations that really makes it feel like your characters are part of the community. There's no hustle and bustle, no sense of people living here and your characters living with them. The most egregious is, towards the end of the main campaign, you're manage to complete your main objective and, somehow, the elder (leader) of the Ark thanks you and berates you for wanting to go to the titular Eden to learn the characters past in the same breath. Then you leave his cabin and he thanks you for letting an old man ramble. BUT THEN, you inevitably while traveling the road to Eden will collect materials and a trinket (if you're a completionist) that will take you back to the Ark and the Elder will berate you more for going farther along to Eden. But he won't, like. Stop you. Or have other Stalkers stop you. He just kinda yells. And then again thanks you for letting an old man ramble.

The game mechanics themselves are good and they are polished. As a tactical psudo-survival tactics game, they are fabulous, as far as the direct combat goes, even if the moments between combat aren't quite so good like newer XCOM games are. But while it feels like the developers knew their limits on the game portion of this experience, their writing and story telling ambitions were much higher. This creates a very uncanny valley sort of feeling where the challenging, chunky gameplay doesn't match the end of the world aesthetics and the story feels like lots of style and no substance.

Calling this game a fusion between Fallout and XCOM is incorrect. Go play Wasteland 2 or 3 for that feeling. But if you have a lot of hours to kill and some patience (and don't mind some save scumming to learn the mechanics and experiment), this can spark the imagination and be a good time.