Recent reviews by Flawii

Hm, it is an RTS game, sure enough. But why does everything take so long?

I like the Conan Universe, which I sadly do not know nearly enough about. Sadly this game, as special as it is with its economy system, it does not tell enough it.

This is, of course, moved to a nicely made comic in the main menu, but is it enough?

No cutscenes, no dialogs, every mission is the same formula: Build a base, raise some walls, and defend against waves of attackers. The attackers thereby only consisting of... maybe 12 different kinds of units. Not much and since you have a lot of walls, towers and choke points, each unit does not need anything as big strategy. Just tank it with your walls. And shoot it with arrows.

I tried different kinds of units, but only archers, of any kind really made a difference. The melee fighters are basically dead meat and cavalry only matters in larger numbers and on large rhinos. The main reason why you are not encouraged to is the amount of gold you are getting. You really need a big city to sustain it all and that takes time. And the time is not given, since you are only getting ressources every 24 seconds or so.

Well I could go on. But I did get to enjoy some of it since I love RTS and hero based combat. It was fun to explore the build up and find out how things worked.
But since a single mission takes over an hour and you rarely do anything it can be quite boring after a while.

The graphics and music are fine and exciting. I did not encounter any bugs or glitches and the models are nicely designed, fitting for the universe.

Finished the main game and the Belit's Fury DLC in a little over 20 hours on easy mode, since hard is really that. Hard.

Well, for a long time I'm really torn.

This game has issues, but do they outweigh the inventions and the things that make this game unique?

Well I would like to compel you find out for yourself.

This game is short, but not fast. You plan a city, as promised, this city can fly. You have to manage personell and ressources, income and storage. But this city still can fly. So you also need to account the balance, all the living space on the right and storage on the left will make your city unbalanced, and therefore your people unhappy. (I would be too if everything would turn halfway sideways).
The again you could just lift the space up with a propeller. Buuut... of course that is a steam-powered engine. It stinks! And so you have to put it somewhere in the back, away from the living spaces... But wait, now it is forward tilted.

That concept is great! You need to plan a city that is weighed out, not too heavy overall and fed with absurd amounts of coal to stay aloft. And suddenly those people want to eat and drink too.

Overall you do the usual stuff, but moving around.

That is the part where this game becomes an exploration game, rather than a city-builder. You need to find ruins, settlements and already existing kingdoms. It is a great refreshing new experience... if only... everything would not be so incredibly slow.

I played it on the highest speed setting continously and still went away to grab a bite, came back and not really anything did change. The 8 hours it took me to finish this game could have easily been 6.. if the city would fly faster. You can improve it with engines, of course, but I had a hard time adjusting the ressources in order to get there. So slow it was... and boring too.

Finished in around 8 hours on normal difficulty. I don't see a really worth in replaying it, but I may go to make an achievement run someday.

I was conflicted, but after multiple frustrating attempts on a boss fight I made my call for a neative review.

I do not know much of indian mythology or histroy to tell anything about how accurate the story is in this case, but it feels like an actual tale. Good job in that case.

The main issue I have is with the controls. Since my last controller broke, keyboard and mouse were my only option. Sometimes Raji would dodge as expected, sometimes with a little delay and sometimes in a totally opposite direction. Following the mouse cursor or the moving direction. Not sure when which happens.

It got really frustrating. Next fixed camera angles are giving me a headache, but that might be a personal thing.

The soundtrack is fine and as expected, feels very indian. Since I don't speak any hindi I had to put in the english version. The voice lines on those are terrible, I'm not even sure if it was the voice actors, or the actual lines that had to be spoken. But Raji did at no point ever as someone who would fight demons. Of course looks may be deceiving. I just did not get the feeling...

Stoppen playing after 2,5h first on normal, then switching to easy, with little to no effect on actual gameplay-difficulty.

AN Action-RPG in the Warhammer universe? Well I was skeptical... Then the first tutorial missions went down and were actually quite entertaining.

I really did not have high hopes for this game, since there are so many ARPGs out there, and, of course, W40k games still have this feeling of not hitting right, even so we had Space Marine, Dawn of War and Apocalypse.
And this one is not quite up there, but it tries.

The main issue I have is the "meat grinder" objective of everything. Of course, it is war, peopple die... in the hundreds or thousands. But a single hand, not even astartes, is wiping out thousands of special forces, mutants, demons, astartes and even greater demons. It just does not feel right.
Right in the beginning of the game you find a slain "Angel of Death" and the voice lines say something like "What even could kill one of the best warriors?". Yet you proceed to massaker them in the dozens. Often more than one at a time. I know this is fantasy-land, but this feels unrealistic.

The conversations are completely voiced and the voice actors did a decent job. Sometimes there are some Names mispronounced, but I see, that they were trying to seed in different accents. All in all well done.

The thing that kept me at this game was a quite intriqueing story about the "Martyr" a forgotting ship in the nowhere of space. You leave this ship in order to find it again, you will visit planets and do some smaller side missions, but everything leads back to this ship.

I did not bother to much with the generic missions, even so there are sometimes some paradoxes. As in an NPC congratulates you on a job well done. And you haven't met him yet. Then, a couple of missions later, you free him from captivity. Nothing to big of a deal, but it is recognizable.

I also did not bother much with the equipment system. I found a weapon that fit me and never used anything else, aside from other weapons of the same type. That was a little different with the rest of the equipment, where I just looked at the bottom where it says "This one is <number> better than what you have". Made it pretty easy.

At last the difficulty is something to look out for.
There is "Normal" which is so underscaled I did not even bother contemplating any tactics or tricks in order to kill that giant monster. And there is even a much easier one called "Story". I can't really see whats that for. Otherwise we can crank it up to "Eye of terror" with "Extereme" being somewhere in the middle.
I did not try those modes, since I was interested in the story, but if you love to grind that one should be more for you.

On the good side it has an amazing soundtrack, well designed characters with this specific "sass" you would not expect from a Rogue Trader Captain or even an adeptus mechanicus. I love those interactions! The space marine on your ship was actually quite boring in comparison, and the locations, especially on the star map, are beautiful. You really get the Warhammer 40k feeling from those, even so the textures are a little washed down.

All in all, recommendable for fans of the 40k universe who like ARPG, Story, with all sidequsts finished in 23 hours on "Normal" as an assassin.

Another one of the Dark Anthology-games. And I am all here for it!

Played through in one sitting I as usual could just not keep everyone alive. Sadly it has always to be one who dies.
The horror aspect of the game did not bother me as much as I thought it would. One or two jumpscares hit me slightly, but most were maybe not foreseeable but did come with a good portion of "it has to come soon". That part especially made me feel interested, since it was the reason I was actively trying to understand what was going on.
So many times a horror game just wants to scare you, but seldom tries to explain everything on the go. This is different this time, where in the end it all makes sense and you know what to expect next, but without getting actually spoiled.

Obviously this game lives and dies with its actors who did a great job of recording their faces and their voices in different accents and behaviour.

All in all I already enjoyed the "Man of Medan" but I really dug into this one. Will play again to save and to kill everyone. Finished the story in about 5,5 hours.

So... just to get this... You are the Steam Bots.. who use heat and water to run... because you are the old inhabitants of earth... Then come the other old inhabitants... The Diesel Bots.... who are actually just jerks with pretty fancy looking ships and bots and a big secret... and then there are electronics bots...

So... basically... Humans are forgotten, earth is dead and there are way too many bots.

First I had some trouble adjusting to the up and down. Instead of the left and right. But later it gave some interesting possibilities for cover and flanking.

The overall difficulty is adjustable. I played it on "experienced" which is the middle option. Sometimes I cranked it up to earn more experience, since I had to replay one mission 20+ times to level up my Bots appropiately, seems like a bit of a balancing issue. Once you are level 10 all is good and you just move through.

From the tech perspective the graphics are fine and timeless. The jokes are fine, maybe not for everyone and the overall universe is something new.

Recommendable for people who like a small turn-based strategy gem, with not too much learning or maintenance behind it.

Finished in 17 hours on experienced. (No DLC).

I really tried to like this game, but there are too many things wrong for me to be even able to finish it.

Styx is apparently a master of stealth and assassination, you slip around the guards, you run around a corner and you hide in everything, sometimes even in a flowerpot (or whatever that thing is).
The levels are made enormous, a lot of room to scout around, to look what is hidden.

And here start the problems with it. First of all I usually finish the main mission in a normal amount of time. But then the backtracking, the looking around for my way to the level-exit and overall the slow movement through the map is biting at my patience the entire time.
Of course you have to wait for an opportunity, or for a way to open, but that should be made interesting and not... Let me put it that way. I'm sitting under a table right in front of the door I want to go through. In front of this door is a fully armored knight, which is an undefeatable enemy. He only turns around for 2 seconds in order to look at some food (not eat it, because you could kill him with poison!), once he turns I plan to sneak ahead, but nooo... once I move every single chair in the entire room feels like creating a life of its own and falls over, with all eyes on me. So wait some more you say? Turns out... even a fallen chair makes a lot of noise if breathed at...

You have the rare ability to use "amber". Which is a fancy word for mana, in order to use spells like invisibility, vision and creating a clone. That's fine, but you really have to be holding back on you amber, since there is only so much you can have, and potions are rare.
That leaves you with the everlasting question "Is this the right moment?".

The real reason why I am now abandoning this game is because I got so frustrated for dying over and over again from everything. A guard found me -> One Shot. I climb down some hooks in the wall and then grap a brazier -> One Shot from burning. An undefeatable knight found me -> One Shot. I fell down an infinite hole -> ... you know it!
The levels are so big and beautiul, that the quest markers are utterly useless. You know where to go. But getting there is always in a completely different direction, which led me to the point, that the quest marker was actually misleading me and I had to ignore it.
The NPCs are just normal "I walk in a circle"-Stupid NPCs, which is fine for this game. It just feels really unbalanced once you have to win 3 QTEs to kill one of them, while being oneshotted by throwing knifes and being unable to run away.
The story is... well it IS. That is all I can really say... You infiltrate a human settlement. The humans capture you and you explain the story... well fine... but what is this city? What about that tree? And why? Nothing really ever gets answered (maybe that is still coming, but I left it after around 8 hours with no answers at all.)

The graphics are a little outdated, which is fine. It is an older game and the animations are actually really enjoyable. It is really impressive to see your goblin kill a human with his foot in the humans mouth to silence him. Clever!

At last... abandoned after 8 hours of dying repeatedly and running around clueless on "Easy". And not a single female in sight over all this time.

Well it tries to be, but it's not quite a DOOM.

You jump, dash, wallwalk and hook your way around the enemies shooting almost blindly around you.

To be fair it does many things right. There is actually a lot of speed in the combat, your guns are versatile and need to be constantly maintained, your body itself has to be modified. A lot to do. There is a variety of sidequests to help with your income. Those are all generic missions on the maps of the main missions.

Overall the story is very ... flat?! ... There is a guy you don't like. He has an offer. It gives money... then some small turns... tada, that's it. But I did not expect much of storytelling with this. My expectations were exactly what I got. I wanted to shoot and kill things. I did... maybe a little bit too much... A little bit too ... often the same?

There are about ... maybe 15?! enemy types? The "normal" ones are fine. One shot, one kill. Feels nice.
The other ones are much more annoying... with their energyshields and their jumping around. But well... atleast it challenges you a bit. The bosses is where it's at! Those are super tanky, but the music rocks in, the arenas are well made.

All in all, graphics not too bad, the music is sometimes good, sometimes you don't recognize it and the gameplay is fast. Finished on normal in 9 hours, by doing only the main missions.

Short but intense. Only written text, yet listening is important for the atomsphere. Choices matter, as it is so often the case.

I started playing this because I had a couple of hours to kill and wanted to "get through" yet another game but in the end I stuck with it. This game throughs you a bait with the choices you can pick, and I totally got into it.

The story being around 3 hours long, if you read anything has mainly 4 different angles to go through. Peaceful, Not-so-peaceful and two more hybrid ones I have not yet achieved.

Later I learned that this is actually part of the "World of Darkness" franchise which I wanted to check out for some time know.

All in all this was a great way to start it.

One story (peaceful) finished in 3 hours. Second one not finished yet, but much faster, since many things repeat.

It has been some time... some time since I just could not get enough, just did not feel the reason behind the infamous: Why should I collect all of this? Why would I do this activity if the world is at danger, or a bigger threat is creeping closer?

This game made me feel that again. I needed to do all the quests, all the tasks and all the activities, just to prove to myself, and, more important, learn about my enemies. Talking about the enemies: I've have almost never seen enemies who where this balanced and diverse, so familiar like animals, yet again behaving like a machine would before. I think never before did I actually check the journal about weaknesses and behavior of enemies like this time.
Image a bear charging at you. Not great. Your best bet is to scare it before it mauls you. In this case the bear is a 3,5m tall machine that spits ice and makes a 12m leap-bodyslam on top of you. Good thing you learned from observing it. Aiming for the shoulder or the lower back disables some abilities and damages it. Almost never does sheer "I will shoot you until any one of us is dead" work.

The story itself is just beautiful I did not expect much in that regard. My expectations were more like, it's great you are this savage woman seeking her place in society. That alone would have made me quite curious since there are different tribes having different culture, different kind of weaponry and lifestyles.
But the deeper advanced story is so much more!

Everything is masterfully voiced, by professional voice actors, who sometimes also lend their faces for some characters.

At some point it sadly got to the good old open world "fast travel" simulator for about 10 hours. I still had great fun with this since even on your higher levels an unprepared assault can just kill you. Great balancing!

I encountered only one bug in my whole 60 hour playthrough on normal difficulty, with every major colelctible found (not all texts and voice recordings).

Will play again! Can't wait for Forbidden West, the sequel.