Recent reviews by Vanguard

Fun little autobattler, not an idle game. Well worth ten squid. Lots of little details which I appreciate and decent polish.

The bad:

- Probably a bit overpriced for what it offers, no replayability. The modifiers are more of a difficulty increase than a change of playstyle.
- Balance somewhat broken, some guns not worth using
- Endless mode unplayable, after around day 22 the coal quota becomes unmatchable
- I assume this is because around that time the game drops even on somewhat powerful computers to a few FPS (you'll end up hiring hundreds of employees in the endgame and it kills your simspeed)
- Some sounds in the game feel rather annoying, because you will hear them all the time (assault rifle)


Yet...

Still worth playing and wasting a few hours in. Hunting upgrades, creating strategies to tackle the classes and levels feels good, getting the bling-bling is fun.

Recommend grabbing on 50% sale or fullprice if you want to support smaller studios/indies.

Don't get it for this single reason:

Too many fights force you into the open (via objectives) and then hit you with a combo of melee and snipers.

If the game flows it is otherwise fantastic, but being forced into melee combat and being hit by snipers constanly midswing is really getting onto my nerves. ALT+F4 rage moment

Otherwise a solid recommendation, even if I am clearly lacking in skill for this game.

Just not my cup o tea. It might be a good game, but I have a hard time with the amount of constraints and mechanics being thrown around and many of the puzzles feel clunky.

Robocop - Good vs Evil, the corrupt vs. the incorruptible, man vs. machine.

Robocop since its inception always was a simple story about strong motifs - Greed and betrayal, duty and morality, identity and morals, violence in service of nefarious motivations or in defense of innocence, and maybe even some sense of redemption in all the utter madness of gang and cooperate warfare.

This game capitalizes on the franchises' strong points in terms of narrative and in some ways the shortcomings of the game in many of its aspects makes you appreciate it more.

Do not play this game if you expect complicated shooting mechanics or well designed or balanced upgrades, a plethora of gunplay or complicated dialogues with meaningful choices.

This game is about cheesy one-liners delivered by Robocop, about smashing evil in the face and raining destruction on OCP's property and the bad guys.

Many passages in the game will feel like a throwback into the 80ies - for the good and the bad that entails.

Anyway - thanks for your cooperation.

If you like Action RPGs this one should be on your shopping list.

Expect to pay for at least some money for this F2P title (once it is released) for convenience features, such as the currency stash tabs, etc, but it is fair enough since the title is worth some money. Cosmetics in game are rather pricey, so make sure you really want to buy those.

- Nice graphics, good telegraphing of enemy attacks.
- As expected from the first title, lot of build depth and options to play around with.
- Choices in skills, gear and passives feel meaningful and impactful.
- Bosses feel awesome to fight against and mostly fair - sometimes you will beat your head against a wall in learning them but mostly it is ok.
- The world feels dark and gritty, some levels are extremely nicely designed, looking forward to experience more of this game.

Cons:
- Some visual clutters especially with multiplayer games
- The honor system during an exaltation run (? your prestige class on top of your passives) feels unbalanced for some specs, melee definitely having a harder time.
- Expect to spend a lot of time on sorting your items, disenchanting, discombobulating, selling, etc. in order to grind the million microcurrencies and lesser items in game ( orbs, relics, charms, skill gems, support gems, etc. ) - while it is part of the build complexity, it can sometimes feel annoyingly complicated.
- Finding really good items in game feels extremely hard, so you HAVE to play the microgame of getting the various currencies for enchanting. If you hate inventory management, you will suffer a bit, but it's mostly manageable. Just wish I felt less "forced" to run all my loot into town all the time.

While I cannot say anything about the endgame, this game feels right. Bring your friends and have a good time. :)

I find the UI infuriatingly bad and its functions are badly, if at all, explained. Functions like automatically moving shadow clones to new fighting trainings didn't seem to work properly for me and felt not properly implemented.

Also "idling" is a strong misnomer, as you have to assign everything (pet training, shadow clone training, monster fighting, god fighting, adventurer fighting, adventurer crafting... lazy bastard doesn't even go fight on his own after crafting has finished.)

So if you think of it as a cookie clicker kind of management sim, it's probably not bad, but you probably also want to immediately pay a lot of money to get some "god power" and unlock all the comfort features. There might be a lot of automation in there which makes managing the dozens of activities in this game achievable.

Not my kind of game.

Pretty fun game to spend an hour on.

Songs of Syx is a city-builder with a few rogue-lite elements as rewards for additional playthroughs. The titles can be achieved and make successive playthroughs easier/allow for alternative strategies but are not the focus of the game.

The main aspect of the game is to figure out how to satisfy the need of your population, which consists of any amount of races you choose from. To do so you need to research, create buildings and production chains, wage war, and develop the map in various industrious ways. Playing to the strength of the individual races, while avoiding their obvious pitfalls is key here. All the while there are dozens of sub menus and mechanics to help or hinder you along the way. It will take several hours and a few failed attempts at your first colonies to get the hang of the game.

- Music: Fitting for the mood. Stellar soundtrack.
- Atmosphere: Captures a fantasy town with it's variety of technologies and building chains very well. The way you are allowed to put together the form and shape of your city is intriguing and fulfilling.
- Logistics are challenging: If you do like logistic / city builder games, then you should definitely get it. The production chains are interconnected in some of the best and worst ways, forcing you to be on your toes permanently. I feel the tools the game gives you in order to succeed are good enough already, but I am sure the game will evolve even further from here.

- You dislike the feel of a slightly unfinished game. Wait for it to exit early access.
- You dislike city builder games, but even then you should take a look at the demo for this game to see if there's something for you here.

The game puts various "milestone" blockers into your path, to limit the available immigrants. At first I disliked it strongly, but I can see why they exist. It serves to prevent you from making your village unmanageable by creating too many resource shortages. Learning them and how to progress slowly is a huge part of the game in my mind. In general unlocking the new technologies in order of cheapness / in a way they make sense makes you usually progress smoother. Do not be afraid to sometimes just let a year pass to stabilize your food production.

For your first few games, try to get the easily achievable titles, by spamming farms and pastures, etc. - it will make sequential playthroughs much more smooth.

Do not be afraid to just place a building down if you need it, when you need it. Nothing will ever be perfect and deconstructing in this game is pretty fast and almost cost-free.

8/10 - needs some love, especially the military needs a lot of work, I think. Many mechanics are not explained and need experimentation, which for me is actually a bonus. Letting me figure things out in this game feels great.

Not recommending this game is treachery and undemocratic.

Is what I said before Sony pulled through on their mandatory PSN registration.

This is how liberty dies...

is what I would have said, if Sony went through with the requirements, but apparently they asked their laywers again and they like to not get fined AGAIN Millions of dollars.

So, HD2? Good game. Sony? Your usual publisher nonsense.