Recent reviews by Mephasto

Homeworld is my favourite game of all time.

It seems whoever wrote the cinematics for Homeworld 3 has never played the original games or did not understand what makes them good.

In the earlier games the focus is on your people as a whole and you feel part of this group, in Homeworld 3 it just focuses on some personal drama of the fleet command and two characters.

This would been fine for few cutscenes, but it's the same from start to finish. The 3D cinematics are huge downgrade from the original ones and completely lack the Homeworld feel.

The story had so much potential to be very interesting and mysterious, but writer made it very generic and uninspired, villain is like some character from disney movie with their dialogue.

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- Visually amazing looking game
- Tiny details like searchlights on certain ships that lighten up the ground
- Sound and music design is very good


- Story is abysmal
- 6 hour campaign is not worth the price tag
- No subsystem targeting or tactical elements from earlier games
- Only one type of corvette
- New terrain elements are very janky, ships get stuck on them constantly
- A.I pathfinding is not working well
- Your units often just do nothing and stand still when issuing commands for bigger fleets
- Game is not balanced at all, you are given so many resources that you dont even have to care if your ships get wiped out
- Many ships have abilities, but there is hardly any reason to bother pressing them
- You are not given time to just rebuild and chill between missions as the game keep auto teleporting you to forward missions after completing objectives.
- Cutscenes keep interrupting gameplay constantly
- Camera gets stuck inside large terrain elements
- Lack of mystery and intrique
- Only two factions, one of them only has 3 different ships and only shows up in earlier missions

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Many of these issues could been fixed later, but I dont think they will ever change the story.

Weakest game from Homeworld series, they just removed a bunch of features from the earlier games and ruined the lore/story.

After playing the Underdark section of Act 1, I was thinking to myself. How can the game still become more interesting and amazing after this?

Well the sad answer is it cant, after finishing the act 1 the quality takes a nose dive. Act 2 and act 3 are very boring, buggy, laggy. While traveling in the city, the game would be so damn slow, my characters might fall trough the streets and get stuck.

Loading scenes can easily take 5minutes. It's very badly optimized. Also the plot becomes very silly and boring. The game likes to throw some legendary old characters to you, say 1-3 lines and then kill them off. It's just lazy how little attention was given to them.

Inventory is also absolutely horrible.

I think the game is at best when you are killing goblins and not fighting some silly cosmic end of the world treath. Maybe the game should have just ended with the act 1 and underdark? After that it just goes downhill till the sorry end.

Great game, I have never played anything like it. The music and soundtrack combined with visuals is at some parts completely amazing. I liked the environmental story telling a lot, I think its better if you make your own vision of the story and dont read what artbook says.

First impression from trailer was that its like doom, it's nothing like it and thats a good thing. The best stuff was exploration and the environments, I'm not sure if the game even needed guns or combat.

It would be easy to not recommend the game because of dreadful and clunky combat. But its the visuals and music is so good that the game deserves a good chance.

I hope they make a sequel or DLC that expands the universe.

The game is good at start. In the last 2/3 part it forgets why its good. Instead of your own choices it begins to try jam down a certain route. At first you had some freedom to choose, now you have only one bad choice open that will ruin your run.

You can always play it again from chapter start but it's extremely annoying.

So while you might have had 5 options to choose from, it forces you to only select one of the them that has bad consequences and the game might end only because of that.

They should just change how the end part works.

Roadwarden is amazing game. It's very slow, but in a good way. Deeply atmospheric and well written.

After completing it today in 19 hours. I got few suggestions for the Developer and (heavy spoilers) Why I didnt like it.

So first suggestion: Since there is many places and characters, it's sometimes a bit hard to follow who everyone is. Pillars of eternity 2 had a system where highlighted names could be hovered over and had a little information box to remind you. I wish you could add something similar.

Second suggestion: The "find a correct word" puzzles were fun, but sometimes extremely hard if you don't find certain right word. I would often understand what the Developer was trying to hint at, but just could not find the right command. You could maybe give a bit more hints, or make the right command a bit broader. It's not fun if you have to google what your supposed to write, after it takes too long to figure it out.

Alright spoilers time:

Alright so, finding Asterion, children of the forest and those were cool things. But it's extremely hard to figure out how to unlock the last phases of these. I simply ran out of time at end. It feels very unsatisfying if you have to search for a guide on how to complete these (like cutting a piece from the beholder tree)

It would been nice to have more hints or NPC interraction, other ways to complete these tasks easier. I like that there is mystery, but some things were simply too hard to figure out on your own.

Other thing that bothered me a lot. At start of journey you want to convert the tribes to your cause and the merchants, but as you progress, get to know them and help them, you get a clear message that they should resist instead. But somehow you are never given an option to change their mind about joining? Even when it seems wrong. I think at the merchant gathering you should have had many more options on the discussion to change their fate. Instead of just accepting the whole corporate takeover doom. It felt to me that this part was maybe a bit rushed and not finished.

I would really hope to see a sequel in the future. There is couple of rough things that could be still polished with the story and couple of mechanics, but that should be fairly easy to fix. I could swap my review to recommended when the endgame is a bit better addressed.

TLDR; Great game, but story and mechanics could still use a bit polish.

Chambers of Devious Design is a tactical base building game. You are tasked to build lair or base for evil masterminds. (Watch out Felonius Gru!)

Easiest way I can describe it is like tetris, where you try to destroy your opponent in various clever ways.


* Smooth and clean UI design. Easy to read.

* Actually has a lot of strategy and depth

* Music is good and relaxing

* You can use different abilities to wreack havoc

* The game looks pretty difficult at first, but its very fast to learn

* It feels satisfying to combine rooms and get bonuses

* It's fun to destroy enemy base

* Fun to play and place rooms

* Colorful design


* It's not always 100% clear why you win

* I would enjoy a bit more of the smaller blocks in selection

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I'll try to update the review when I have more hours on the game!

;TLDR awesome fun little game. Time flies fast when you are playing.

Damn what a incredible game.. I have to say I feel sorry for the people who try Final Fantasy 14, but wont continue to end since the start is a bit slow. However I understand 100% why you should not skip any of it, because unlike other games. Events and characters from the very first base game are very relevant and important even in the last Endwalker expansion.

If I had to describe my enjoyment of the game simply.. it would be like this:

Realm Reborn base game ~30-50% end part: 100%
Heavensward ~30-70% end part: 110%
Stormblood ~30-60% end part: 100%
Shadowbringers ~50-90% end part: 2000%
Endbringers ~60-110% end part: 5000% !

This is one of those games where you wish you could just wipe your memory and play it again, even if it takes almost 300 hours to get to the end.. because damn is it worth every moment.

I was completely blown away how amazing the end of Endwalker was, especially the last area and music. Never before have I experianced such emotions in any video game. They were asking all the same questions I have been wondering myself for a long time.

Story and music are absolute 10/10, One of the best ever made. And they saved all the best stuff for the end, with years of build up.

Please, do yourself a big favor and play the whole game, even if its slow at start and boring at times. In the end the game is something you have never experienced before.

For those that wonder what my favorite music was:

https://youtu.be/FSNJg645uwU

After all these years and restarting the game 4 times, I had to force myself to complete it. Can you criticize a game because it is way too long? Or is that just a side effect of it being boring?

I did not like the story at all, but that's not the worst thing.

I tried to play this game so long, without looking at any guides.. for the most part I got the solution to puzzles at some point. However there was several times serious roadblocks with the quests, where you for example find invulnerable monsters. What the game does not tell you, is that you cant even find a solution to kill them (at some enemies you do and that just makes it more confusing)

So you have to sneak past them, using certain route and do X thing to progress story. Alright.

Then there is some seriously ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up puzzles, like where you have to find hidden buttons in very large room and push them in right order. Or have different weights on pedestals. The game gives you absolutely zero ideas what the hell to do in these scenarios.

I have not seen worse puzzles in any game before, the game is not fun if you need to smack your head to wall for 3 hours or have to result in looking at google all the time because you get stuck.

In the end, I could have gone to last boss.. but the game tells you that you have to go back and look for additional blood stones. However, no matter how many stones you find, if you have not completed certain quest, those blood stones wont trigger next step in the quest and you get stuck.

This might be the most frustrating game I have every played. Not recommended at all.

Just get the DOS 2 and avoid this garbage.

This was my favorite game as a child, one of the best city builder games out there. This game is also getting HD version soon.

This game is amazing, I was surprised how lively all the characters felt in the dialog, top notch lipsync aswell.
Night City looks and feels great, I don't want to fast travel where there is so much to see.

I have only encountered one bug so far, with the need to load a autosave. But this happened pretty early in the game and was no bother.

I'm sure all bugs that pop up will be fixed pretty quickly, as was the case with Witcher 3.