Recent reviews by Gonzo

If you buy this game thinking it will be Pillars of Eternity in first person, you're gonna be disappointed.

This game has a good story and is linked to the Pillars lore in loads of ways - to the degree that I'm not sure how much entertainment value this game would bring to someone not previously introduced to the Pillars games.

In all honesty it feels like a Skyrimification of Pillars that's diluted and simplified to fit a broader audience. Not necessarily bad per se, but it has evolved from a RPG to action adventure with RPG sprinkled on top of it. The biggest compression that I'm genuinely saddened about is how little dialogue matters compared to Pillars 1. There's always dialogue branches to inquire further, attack, or choose Good/Evil/Neutral paths. Attribute and Background checks are still present, but they don't add much depth beyond superficial hidden dialogue lines. Companions quest lines can be progressed and their personalities can be dug deeper into, but - you guessed it - not as deep as in Pillars. For reference I played as a Fighter, Arcane Scholar background with high Might, Resolve and Dexterity.

Crafting consumables and upgrading gear is still present alongside unique weapon enchantments. However, as a martial class I found it absolutely necessary to go scavenge for upgrade materials early to upgrade my weapon and armor to stand on par with enemy scaling to certain zones. It's a simple system: The higher their level, the more damage they do, and the less they take, effectively making them HP sponges while you have to stuff your face with consumables or use kiting tactics.

The character creator is very railroad'y because of story reasons. You're an Aedyrean and there's nothing you can do about it.

It's a beautiful game that runs pretty smoothly. Filled with exploration secrets, interesting filler quests, good characters, intriguing main story and lots of lore. Combat is simple but satisfying.
If you like Pillars, buy this game when it's on 50% sale. If you haven't played Pillars of Eternity, I don't think you'll enjoy this game as much as what you would pay for other titles.

♥♥♥♥ bricks simulator

A spiritual successor to Heroes of Might and Magic 3 but with unique features such as troop stack caps. unit upgrades through research, stack expansion, a whole new spell system and mana generation and building system. All heroes can cast three 66% of all spells by default, as long as you generate enough mana.

After playing through Story Mode with all races I'm itching for more, and more is promised from the studio with a set plan.

The pixel art is crisp, fantastic. Spell effects are also great!

Although I'd love to recommend this, it comes with a few (but very minor) flaws.

Interactable objects on the map doesn't show which bonuses they give until you interact with it. In other words you can't inspect them, and thus have to memorize what they give. This got pretty frustrating at the start, but as I played and started memorizing I get better at prioritizing what could be left behind.

You also can't interrupt a hero's movement mid-walk, so you have to commit to each step.

The story started out great, very front-loaded - but fell off a bit towards the end, and some dialogue felt tired.

All in all a fantastic game, and with some polish and expanded race alternatives (maybe even some spells) this could be a new classic worth of pulling HoMaM 3 off the throne!

I thought this would be GOTY in Act 1 alone, but oh boy does it get better. So much better. Possibly the best RPG I've ever played.

I hope you all are ready for some hardcore FACTS because I’m here to drop them:

I just beat Margit, am 92 hours into this behemoth of a game, level 14, and I can say with 100% confidence that I have not had one single second of fun playing Elden Ring since I reached the First Steps. There was not one moment in the past dozen or so hours my first Elden Ring play-through that I thought this game was well-designed or even moderately enjoyable. In fact, Elden Ring really has me missing the outside, even touching grass.

Elden Ring from the Tree Sentinel onward is complete ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, I would literally rather play a Dark Souls mod where every enemy is a baby crab than I would repeat getting slam dunked by rats, and no I am not exaggerating. How on earth FROMsoft messed the game up here this badly is beyond me. So let’s talk specifics:

The ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ knife-feet birds has been railed on enough for their enormous attack combos that one shot players at 10+ vigor, and their explosive barrel shenanigans where literally the most optimal strategy is to start as the samurai class for those 20 fire arrows (that you end up using up immediately since there is no aim assist in this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game). But here’s the thing: Gate Keeper Gostock and White Mask Varre are no better. In fact Varre just may be worse.

Varre is such a massive devolution from the Pursuer and Patches (why is Elden Ring the only FROMsoft game where he isn't present?!) that it shocks me. I found that the safest way to beat him was to try to run past both him AND Tree Sentinel to the church, kill enough goats to buy the crafting kit, search the entire ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ overworld for flowers, just so that I could search 3 hours for a coop partner that didn't roleplay getting his ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ by Kalés donkey or getting Point Down emoted on when he left me to fend for myself. Because attacking him head-on usually resulted in me getting my rectum stretched by a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ bouquet of flowers. I had no fun fighting this big stupid doodoohead, I only found myself wishing the game would just end already. This fight was not fun or immersive, it felt like the Majula Pigs all over again, just a poorly designed mess of a bossfight.

Gate Keeper Gostock was just atrocious. Jesus ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Christ. Having now beat him, I feel no pride or accomplishment, I’m still just in shock of how terrible this boss was. He is just non-stop rage-induced aggression, leaving absolutely no openings or attack windows and having no skill or thought required to beat. The optimal strategy here is to use bait him in front of the gate ballistas, wait until he stops to snicker while stealing my runes, and then hope that he's teabagging my corpse for long enough so that the squint eyed gate ballistas hit him with enough bolts while aiming at my perforated corpse, rinse and repeat when they undoubtedly hit only 1 or 2 bolts.

Tree Sentinel is pretty much the same accept he’s pretty much going to one shot you with every single attack, so the optimal strategy here is to pray that he gets tired of one-shotting you and actually kills himself out of annoyance. I still don’t even know how to beat this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

The Rune Bears are just as bad but I won’t go into them here.

These bosses are pathetic and I have no idea how the community hasn’t universally condemned these atrocities yet. Remember when FROMsoft designed difficulty for the sake of immersion, and not difficulty for the sake of…whatever these bosses are supposed to be? I remember Soldier of Godrick killing me probably over 60 times, but I love that boss and even had fun when he was killing me over and over again, because he is a superb boss designed to measure the skills you’ve accumulated from the helpful (clearly ripped off from UbiSoft) messages in the first dungeon.

The same goes for bosses like Grafted Scion that lets you skip it and The Emerald Herald. The knife feet birds probably killed me over 100 times, and I would probably say 30 of those deaths were my own errors, and the other 70 are due to them being completely broken and unfair to fight.

I don’t even want to fight Godrick/Tree Sentinel now, I no longer care about the Bok storyline, I no longer have any interest in exploration or lore, I just want to charge straight to the end game because I just want this ♥♥♥♥ to end. God, I can’t even imagine how stupid the Caelid is going to be.

All-that said, I will now say with confidence: Elden Ring is really big, really pretty, and really abysmally designed, at least Eastern Limgrave has been. I haven’t even played Bloodborne or Demon Souls yet, and yet I’ll say with confidence that Elden Ring is the worst From game.

I’ll beat this game out of obligation, but after that I’ll probably never touch a maiden again.

Does not include expansions. Just buy the Complete Edition from GoG.

Jets 'n' Guns Gold - but on cocaine

+ Ridiculous amounts of added weapons, mods and equipment
+ Trackable statistics of secrets and collectibles
+ Global Leaderboard
+ Coop Mode
+ Controller compatibility
+ Awesome boss fights
+ Great music
+ Humour
+ NG+ 10 will utterly cream you

- No Tsunami Generator
- No washing machine

Git Gud Simulator, or: How to cure nihilism

Mod it and it's 9/10

Highly addictive Harvest Moon on steroids with Co-op. What's not to love?