Recent reviews by Ragnarok

My metric for city builders is pretty simple: did it make me realize it's well past midnight and have several hours pass without me noticing the passage of time? Then its a good game.

Manor Lords has passed that test.

It is currently an early access title and looks it in a lot of ways - unlocalized descriptions, missing tutorials, bugs, the usual. But the core is there and this is (beyond freelancers hired on) essentially a one-man project. I think it was more than worth the price already.

If you like medieval 'city' (town/village level really) building with a side of combat you can zoom in on, you'll like this.

Terrible RPG, but a great experience with mods. Grab Start Me Up Redux, XDI, and Place Everywhere.

It's the 'Enhanced' version of the base game. Fancier graphics but nothing else. Don't sweat it.

It's a perfect storm of dumb fun, actually decent 'live service', and solid mechanics. Go have fun with it.

This review was briefly negative in order to protest Sony attempting to screw us all over with their idiotic 'gotta make an account to play the game' nonsense. The review score is tanked because of this - the game itself is fun and Sony reversed their decision.

This is a fairly straightforward Dead Space-style horror game where you fight the hellspawn and body horror monstrosities that have hit a certain place. It suffers from a lack of developmental resources and clear creative vision, but on sale, or in the context of the first Dead Space (which was no wonder writing-wise), it's a fairly solid game. No award-winner, but it's crunchy, it's entertaining, and I genuinely had a good time.

It's a Paradox game. What you don't like can be modded away, what you do like can be expanded on. It's a solid little title. Grab it on sale, though.

This takes everything about the original and improves upon it. Side quests, better environments, improved writing, improved weapons, better characters...everything is improved upon. That's leaving aside the excellent graphics and terrifying atmosphere.

I heartily recommend it. And hope this same studio jettisons 3's canon and remakes it as well.

This is merely the soundtrack. It is the best part of the game. As such my review will be recommending it because 1) I got it for free and assume you can too, and 2) it's just the soundtrack, and shares none of the BS that is happening with the actual game.

I cannot recommend this game for purchase, despite enjoying the core gameplay loop. As it currently stands, the core gameplay is a gem, but it's covered in awful monetization practices, bugs, outright missing features, and general mismanagement. Fatshark has clearly pushed this out for a Christmas/holiday release and reality of the game be damned.

Other reviews will cover things in more detail - but to sum up, the devs have outright lied, edited statements, on several occasions directly insulted the intelligence of the player base, and generally acted like a pack of baboons. This game is missing things it promised, from weapon variety, to the very cosmetics on the store page, to crafting, to story.

I've enjoyed the closed and public betas. I've enjoyed playing this game, as have my friends.

But I don't recommend it, not until the predatory cash shop and the broken promises are fixed.

UPDATED: This is remaining non-recommended. Weapon variety has improved slightly, and there have been numerous patches. That being said, the core of the game's 'progression' is entirely reliant on RNG, ditto most of the actually interesting cosmetics. The story still is non-existent.

Communication from the devs has improved, in that a single Community Manager, Catfish, is doing her job well. Hedge has not made any asinine statements for a while.

I'm still waiting for a better progression system that isn't gacha ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, and the story that they hired Dan Abnett to make.

UPDATE 11-8-23: The class overhaul was a welcome change. Again, though, none of my particular pain points are changing here. In addition to that, they've started increasing the prices of 'premium' cosmetics, which were already overly high.

Steam doesn't give me options beyond a binary yes-no, until things become more player friendly, it's staying none-recommended. There are practices I can't condone.

Well.
This is going to be as comprehensive as I can manage.

I played through the entire game and the DLC Awakening. I will be reviewing that in its own little thing at the end of this. I also played entirely in co-op with a friend of mine.

Dead Space 3 is a game that *screams* 'executive meddling'. From the writing, to the pay-to-win mechanics (now partially broken due to EA closing the unprofitable storefront), to the co-op inclusion, it is very clear that people who didn't know what they were doing insisted on inserting things into the gameplay and plot.

Underneath that is some fun to be had - especially with weapon crafting and being able to inflict unique forms of pain upon necromorphs and Unitologists - but it isn't 'Dead Space' fun, it's 'generic shooter game' fun. Said shooter game elements are really not properly integrated into the gameplay, either. It's...generally just a mess of things.

The game has some of its most effective moments during the co-op missions, where you and your partner, due to being affected differently by the Markers, see different things, increasing the tension and creepiness. However, these are, obviously, locked behind co-op. Without them...well. The plot and the characterization doesn't gel too well.

The writing, especially the characters, goes sharply downhill in this game. There's a love triangle added in for no discernible reason, a main villain who lacks the hammy fun or dogged determination or eldritch freakishness of previous antagonists, and a semi-nonsensical plot that actively confuses a lot of the lore for no real reason. It doesn't work, is what I'm getting at.

The environments, though, are pretty good. Hampered by the gameplay changes, but definitely keeping the enclosed and 'functional sci fi tech' vibe. The natural environments are interesting to see as well.

The new enemies are a mixed bag between 'added for shooter gameplay fodder' and 'genuinely weird and interesting', with the latter forming a lot of the late game.

Overall, I can't recommend it if you're a Dead Space fan, unless you're a die-hard completionist, in which case, this is 5 bucks on Steam when sales happen usually and so you can grab a friend, buy a copy each, and have some dumb fun mocking the writing and killing necromorphs for a few hours until it's wrapped up.

Now, Awakening.

Awakening takes the writing back to its roots. It's still hampered quite a bit by the co-op inclusion but given it's essentially 'mind screw, the levels'...it's fun, is what I'm getting at. Dead Space style mind♥♥♥♥ery.