Recent reviews by Amaranthium

Jank. Jank never changes.

Had to setstage a few bugged quests and tcl my way out of lethal, insurmountable obstacles (trapped by furniture). Average Bethesda experience, really. My character keeps turning her back in conversations. I had to turn off V-sync because some genius had the idea of tying loading times to the frame rate. Melee gameplay is unsatisfying as usual, with a timed block and no way to dodge roll. (I'm half-hoping they add firearms to Elder Scrolls VI just to keep combat interesting.)

Even without the bugs, Fallout 4 lacks the polish of older Bethesda games. Too many NPCs with generic names like "Resident" and "Settler", breaking immersion. Maybe I just don't vibe with FO4's particular take on the post-apocalyptic genre, but the settlements I've encountered look haphazard and cramped, nothing like the expansive urban centres of Skyrim. I don't mind vibrant colours, but Diamond City feels more like a neighbourhood than, well, a city. It's been 200 years, how is it that no one has cleared out all the trash and built settlements that don't look cobbled-together? The natural landscape is much better in comparison.

But the core gameplay is solid. It nails the whole "running around and stumbling upon loot, locations, and random encounters" loop that keeps an open-world game from becoming stale or repetitive. Trying out new guns and armour is plenty of fun. Equipment modding is great for further customising your build. Companions and characters are entertaining, and side quests are good so far (at least relative to the main quest; not a fan of the set backstory).

If the things I mentioned won't discourage you from playing and you love the open-world Bethesda game formula, I recommend picking this up on sale. If you're set on doing every side quest and exploring every location, you're probably set for a good 100 hours or more.

Actually my least favourite of Supergiant Games' work, but overall I had a good time playing it. A gorgeous and unique fantasy world of colourful cacophony awaits. No skeletons, rats, or [insert generic overdone enemy] to fight here. Like in Hades, you customise different weapons and skills and have fun experimenting with builds for maximum mayhem. Though, don't expect Bastion to have Hades' (or Pyre's) large, vibrant cast of characters and hours of dialogue. It's more like Transistor in its rather barebones storytelling. The music is simply mind-blowing. It amazes me how Logan Cunningham can be the narrator of three separate games and sound unique and memorable every time.

Unfortunately, the game looks rather blurry on PC monitors, even a smaller one. It looks better on a laptop or handheld screen. I know it's because 1080p was considered a high resolution back then. Still, I'd love to see a high-resolution update.

I love games that make me look up words in the dictionary

A great place to start if you're looking to get into the Stronghold series. A lot of bang for your buck even at full price. (Though I bought this on sale.)

After posting this the thumbnail was changed to Stronghold 2 for some reason. But this review is for the Stronghold collection, not SH2 itself.

Tl;dr a sequel that arguably outshines the original. If what you want is gameplay, pick this one up instead of SH1. If you're looking to get into the Stronghold series, you can find a demo online to try it out.

This game has kept everything that made the original great and added more. "Well, duh," you might say. "Isn't that the point of a sequel?" Boy, have I got news about Crusader 2...

Compared to its predecessor, Crusader has AI skirmish and more unit variety. Sadly, there are no siege scenarios. The four campaigns amount to 20 missions in total. They don't exactly offer a full-fledged narrative or historical experience, but have engaging gameplay nevertheless. And then there's the trail campaign, which is basically a long series of skirmishes against AI. I personally find the trails to be repetitive, but I know other Stronghold players love them. You can rush an enemy in five minutes with mercs, it's fun. Horse archer OP.

The CGI is a bit dated, but it doesn't appear very often, and there are places where it genuinely looks awesome. The sprite variations and minor additions are nice. You can choose your emblem and lord model, and you can now build the lookout tower and fire ballistae (a mainstay in later Strongholds). Some issues from the first game remain, like limited storage for goods. Hunters still need deer to produce food, even though camels are literally right there. And it would be nice to pick your faction colour for skirmishes.

Voice acting for AI lords is great overall, unlike that of Crusader 2. They sound distinct from each other. It's also cool that the new units have Arabic lines, though they don't sound as unique as the Western troops. The new tracks are great, too. I do miss the old Stronghold soundtrack; I wish we had the option to have both OST.

Tl;dr it seems that Stronghold's design philosophy after SH2 has been "take an existing feature and either remove it or make it worse." Remember when mills didn't cost 200 wood? Me too!

Likes:
The campaign was nice.
Units have abilities now.
Healers.

Dislikes:
Overall worse than the OG Crusader.
Castle building feels unrewarding.
Weird changes to the economy.
Poor production value for a 2014 game. Graphics are meh at best, no new tracks, bad voice acting.

There's too much I dislike that it has soured me on what I do like about this game. Unit abilities are a nice addition to your arsenal of strategies. I like that trebuchets can be packed and unpacked. The campaigns are like the first Crusader: short and barebones, but still challenging. I like the small touch of having sheep farms instead of pigs when playing as Muslim. And this is the first Stronghold game that has healers. Unfortunately, they can't heal the damage done by the game's design.

Building castles in Crusader 2 feel almost childish, like you're making them in a sandbox. I can't believe I'm saying that about a Stronghold game! Stairs are too large and don't look good. Instead of being on towers, siege engines are now mounted on wooden platforms that can somehow stay stable at that height. And don't get me started on the walls. In SH2, they cost more, but are immune to regular troop attacks. Crusader 2 took that away and said f*** you. Here, walls don't come cheap, yet the enemy can demolish them at the drop of a turban. What's the point of building a castle, then? It's not like we get a large variety of towers or traps to choose from.

Other aspects have been changed for seemingly no reason. No more siege towers and laddermen, so there goes one of your options for sieges. No more tanners. Iron used to be valuable. Weapon workshops only produce one thing because... streamlining? But this is bad design because being able to switch production is useful. Late-game, when you have less of a need for archers and spearmen, you can switch to crossbows and pikes instead of replacing your workshops. What, did they think players are too stupid to click an extra button?

And why change the popularity system? It worked fine in earlier Strongholds. If it goes down, your popularity decreases gradually, so you have time to adjust. Now whenever you see red, you have to take care of it immediately or your peasants start leaving. It gets distracting when you're supposed to be defending or laying siege.

The graphics don't seem to have gotten much of an upgrade compared to Stronghold 2. Things look a bit bright and gaudy, a far cry from the tastefully drawn landscapes of the original. In-game models are basic. I would give this a pass if it meant better performance, but sadly that isn't the case. The UI and 2D art is not bad, but could be better. Using Papyrus as your main font is just... no. The CGI rarely looks good. Richard (the guy on the cover of the store page) actually looked better on the cover of the OG Crusader.

Worse, they replaced the original voices for the Rat and men-at-arms from Legends, and the difference is night and day. The new lines sound like they're reading from a script, lacking character or distinctiveness. Overacting has been a signature of Stronghold since the first game. While characters tended to one-note and underdeveloped, they were still memorable for having unique voices and punchy delivery. They even removed the peasant lines. That's how un-Stronghold this game has gotten.

And instead of improving the AI, they cheat and spawn troops out of nowhere. At least Crusader Extreme lets you destroy the outposts to stop the relentless enemy hordes. Assassins have bugged movement. The occasional lag and crash bring this game down further.

It's such a shame because I wanted to like Crusader 2. I thought it would be a faithful recreation of the original Crusader in 3D, or even Stronghold 2 in the desert. Instead, I got a slightly better Stronghold 3.

Tl;dr while not terrible in its own right, Legends was the canary in the coal mine of its developers.

I'm actually a bit sad that I can't recommend this, because the new units and defences were super fun. IMHO, Stronghold had two great sequels (SC1 and SH2), then everything afterwards started to go downhill. It's still better than SC2, but it's got all the problems of the latter: inflated building costs, bad performance, oversimplified castle building, dated CGI. This review is from the perspective of someone who only does single-player.

Likes:
New, varied units to diversify tactics.
Simplistic but challenging campaigns.
Some QoL additions/streamlining and strategy improvements.

Dislikes:
Poorly optimised and unstable, with crashes and frustrating lags.
Removing or worsening features for seemingly no good reason.
It looks worse than its predecessor.

Factions still play the same way, but we now have more units with unique roles. And spearmen are no longer useless, they can throw their spears! My favourite faction ended up being Ice. It's incredibly satisfying to set up a wall of ice mirrors and watch enemy troops helplessly struggle against them. Giants and bears make siege engines feel like toys. And we now have not one, but three female units. I love the idea of flying archer witches and shield maidens (who have no shields?). The bad guys get cool troops too, like demons and kamikaze bats. You know, things like werewolf launchers and stake throwers? They add fun and ridiculous fantasy twists to regular warfare. THAT'S peak Stronghold! I wish it had leaned into this angle instead of the weird, unwarranted changes to the building aspect.

The campaign story is decent overall, it's basically an excuse to connect together a series of simple objectives (either attacking or defending). The Ice story feels random, but the missions themselves were enjoyable. The evil campaign basically forces you to use Vlad as some kind of super commando unit with werewolf summons, which was grueling but somehow fun. You really earn that trophy! It reminds me of that mission in Red Alert 2 where you start out with one unit and sabotage nuclear silos.

You can now bulk recruit units. You can scale up the UI size and click on it to directly access taxes/food levels. Feasts are automatic, and the kitchen no longer needs 5 people and is half its original size. Autobuy/autosell is handy for skirmishes. You can also tell your units which direction to face, which helps in conjunction with formations.

Lags are frequent even with medium armies, which becomes a problem in four-player skirmishes. This was rare in SH2. I wonder if this is why the game feels slower in comparison. One time in the campaign, the game crashed on me twice because... I placed the granary too close to the map border? Very annoying.

The building aspect also feels slower and dumbed down. Estates only produce one good, and you can no longer build on them. Building costs are inflated now, though not as outrageously as in Crusader 2. You can no longer build while pausing in single-player. No free view like in SH2 (I assume there's a mod that fixes this). Stockpiles now only have one entrance. It was an open space in SH1, in SH2 it had two entrances. This slows down workers and makes no sense as a design choice. There's only one gatehouse. And the damn towers... They're either big, small, or for harpoons. Even SH1 had more variety. They don't come with free stairs anymore. No tower mangonels or ballistae either. Towers and keeps no longer have interiors, which means you can't hide troops to catch attackers or protect them from missiles.

I would expect a sequel to look better but here we are. The early 2000s CGI is meh. The graphics in SH2 were mediocre even for its time, but you can tell the maps were lovingly put together, with diverse terrain types and landscapes, and small touches like birds and deer herds. Now? Playing as anything other than Arthur's faction makes your territory an eyesore. A neutral estate instantly changes colour when you capture it, with no transition. At the border, the terrains of different factions don't blend in any way whatsoever, making the landscape look like a board game. The ice guys could use more colours for their terrain, like the vivid blues of this[polar-latitudes.com] iceberg. At least they have dark walls that contrast nicely with all that blinding white.

The real evil of Vlad's faction is that it's just unpleasant to look at. I don't mean the unit designs: while generic, they do their job and you can tell them apart from a distance. No, what I mean is that their stone buildings and the land are all dark, and you can barely see the peasants and some troops. If your skirmish colour is purple, good luck with locating your own units when you get attacked! "Evil" tree models look like low poly distant renders even up close. And the spiky towers look really out of place alongside the stone walls, like you copy-pasted a cartoon villain's lair on top of a real castle.

Only two of the factions are fun to play. Arthur's only gets the barracks and no unique troops, making it boring and inflexible. You have gimmicky, expensive heroes whose abilities have to recharge and have to be used manually. It's tedious. Imagine if they re-released Crusader Extreme with the cool god powers, but removed all the mercenary units! (Also, "good" faction? Lol, Arthur tried to burn Guinevere at the stake.)

I think Legends should have been based on the SH1/Crusader engine. It (probably) would have looked much better and saved it from the poor performance that plagued SH2 on release.

Edit: just learned that Stronghold Definitive Edition will come out later this year. Maybe it will fix some of the problems I mentioned below.

Old and not quite gold, but it's Stronghold!

Gave this a try because while I only played the demo for the OG, Stronghold 2 was one of my childhood favourites. The 2D graphics are still charming to this day, having aged better than the low poly-ness of its sequel. I think its greatest strength is its relatively in-depth economic system. It's just nice to watch workers go about their business, picking up materials and delivering goods. There's a satisfying, ASMR-esque rhythm to it. As a city sim, it's not as deep as Stronghold 2 (no crime, only one Rat), but some players might actually prefer that.

The military aspect is easy to learn while still challenging, especially as an attacker during sieges. Though, I wouldn't say it's a particularly complex system. It lacks features like different factions, formations, and unit type advantages/disadvantages. One thing I found annoying is that the AI will send troops to chip away at stone walls, which kind of detracts from the appeal of a realistic medieval setting. Like, can't you just use siege weapons?

As for other negatives, if you liked Stronghold 2, you will probably miss its quality of life additions. Having to build extra granaries or sell extra stuff is rather tedious--it's micromanaging at its worst. (To be fair, micromanaging is the essence of most strategy games.) As for the campaign, while the objectives themselves were well-designed and engaging, its story is barebones and characters basically have one personality trait. The animated talking heads have not aged so well; don't expect something like, say, Red Alert.

Still, none of these things were dealbreakers for me, and the game offers plenty of fun. If nothing else, you can find the demo online to see if it's up your alley. Jump to it!

Tl;dr has entertaining moments, but I prefer stories that give me compelling reasons to care about their cast before romancing them. It relies too much on telling, not showing, and doesn't meaningfully develop its characters (including the player's) beyond their tropes.

Warning for unmarked spoilers!

Probably the best part: relatively smooth gameplay and clear, straightforward descriptions for choices. Stat checks are fair. The way stat increases are handled is odd, though I would not consider this a flaw. The logic is basically "the stat associated with the topic increases". If you mention fighting or weapons, your Blades skill increases. Or a funnier example: merely thinking about a character increases your relationship with them.

The plot itself wasn't confusing or overcomplicated. Most plot threads have a clear resolution. The prose is mostly good, neither lacking nor convoluted. However, the opening essentially railroads you into someone else's pleasure trip, and player agency for the rest of the game isn't great either. It's also strange that one character who drives the plot and causes the inciting incident (a faerie attack on human miners) never actually shows up on-screen.

Also, for a story with civil unrest, threats of war against faeries, and a player character who is a soldier, there isn't much action or adventuring. I had to find out by digging through the code that you can get into fights if you fail the game's main goal to prevent war. Also, despite going out without disguises or guards, the royals only get threatened and are somehow never attacked/kidnapped by bandits or hostile faeries. The story rarely lives up to the promise of danger, leading to the impression that the stakes it set up are fake.

The story has a tendency of bringing up themes and issues to make its love interests sound cool, not to say something actually meaningful. For instance, one character (the princess) is concerned for the faeries/wildlings because humans have killed many of them. In Chapter Five, the player character can kill a wildling threatening them and the royals. The princess makes no comment about this, nor does she try to stop them. The prince (also someone who's meant to care about the oppressed) even praises their knife-throwing instead of being horrified. It's treated with no gravitas whatsoever.* (More examples in the comment below.)

The player character's background only comes up here and there. This would be fine if they have strong characterisation, or at least a wide variety of personality traits in the form of choices/responses. This is a role-playing game, right? But they don't.

Despite being in a setting with class and wealth disparity, the PC is never given the chance to resent, envy, or distrust the prince/princess, or to be uncomfortable with open displays of wealth. This is most noticeable in Chapter Two, where we see people at makeshift camps outside the city, forced to make a home there. Afterwards, we go to an upper-class theatre/bar/brothel, and there's no opportunity to comment on the disparity, or to be unable to enjoy things because the PC would rather do their job or help those people find a home. Once again, a real-world problem is treated as a prop.

The PC is also not given enough backstory or development to justify the love interests liking them. What makes them unique from the other guards? What if their personality and beliefs aren't compatible with those of the love interest? They're a war veteran, but it rarely comes up. For instance, if the PC decides to do their damn job and be vigilant to protect the royals, this choice is never connected to their past, even though it's a possible symptom of combat PTSD.

No one recognises the PC for their reputation. They feel like an accessory to the love interests and their goals. We're left with the impression that the only reason people respect them is not because of their own accomplishments (if any), but because they happen to be acquainted with the royals. This puts them in this absurd situation where they're not even a knight, but everyone—from a master assassin, a demigoddess, a general who has fought in seven wars, and the king—asks for their opinion and listens to them.

A lot of fanfiction differs from original work by skipping the part where it develops its characters. The reader has already seen their journey, so their investment in these characters is taken for granted. It's for this reason that the story reads like fanfic.

Yes, the LIs have personalities and treat you nicely, but none of them really have flaws or vulnerabilities; they don't go through situations that truly make them grow or learn. They don't do anything surprising either, never moving beyond their respective tropes/archetypes. I would be fine with this if the characters themselves are complex and memorable, but I'm not sure if I would describe them as such. It especially doesn't help that they are all leaders/royalty with similar values and goals, resulting in a simple dynamic with each other and the player. They end up blending together instead of being distinct.

The story only occasionally shows the characters' actions. It presumes that some descriptions and dialogue are enough for you to want to romance them (as another review mentioned). The writing even keeps reusing descriptors for traits that have already been established. "This person is determined, so we'll hammer in how she has willpower, makes demands, etc." At one point, the prince is described as looking "battle ready"... in a meeting about a peace treaty. In my view, this repetitiveness only reveals an insecurity and lack of trust in the reader's perceptions of something as basic as character attributes.

Still, I think these things can be excused if the player character can at least dislike or disagree with the love interests. But it seems the PC is not allowed to defy—or even just to be annoyed by—the royals who keep pulling rank on them and insisting on keeping their escapes a secret. Even though these escapes put their lives—and the PC's—at risk. These characters are put on a pedestal, with the underlying assumption that everyone must want to get along with them.

You might enjoy it if this is your first foray into interactive fiction (or romance for that matter), but I've read better stories that put more effort into characterisation and interactivity.

Tl;dr not a good game, good kitbash simulator. Since GBM is ending next month, I wanted something close but this is not it. Too many differences that don't improve gameplay.

I started playing GBM (Gundam Breaker Mobile) when it was still called GBGW. Honestly, it was okay for a glorified gacha, good for kitbashing and custom paints if you have the parts. In comparison, NGB is not a money-grubbing machine with exclusive parts, but that's the nicest thing I can say about it.

+ EX skills are fun to use and watch. Building seems to be about choosing EX skills that suit your style of play
+ Thankfully, no gacha mechanics like doing dailies for rewards or energy bar. Painless resource management (just capital/GP and parts)
+ Customisation is great. Part traits are limited to builders' parts. Each part has its own stats and is tied to an EX skill

- Janky controls, lacking a mouse option for navigating menus. Takes some time to get used to.
- As part of the core gameplay, acquiring new parts is a chore. I'm fine with having to destroy multiple enemies to unlock all their parts, but it's tedious when you're limited to holding 5 at a time and have to deposit or discard them.
- No longer updated with new gunpla, with 2018's Build Divers being the most recent series. Not as many kits as GBM.
- Quest markers in missions can be hard to find.
- Gameplay seems geared towards melee as ranged weapons take ages to reload, making it difficult to build for range.
- No custom skins like in GBM.

But at least I didn't feel ripped off when I bought it on sale. Something to tide us over until the next GB game—hopefully a good one. To be fair, if GBM had a Steam entry, I wouldn't recommend it either.