Recent reviews by InaneDragon

As the game has added more content, the fundamental design flaws have begun to completely swamp the game.

This is most obvious with the fact that each city can literally only build one thing at a time. Not even parallel unit & building construction. I know this is classic Civ design, but it does not work for ♥♥♥♥ anymore. Not when you can't stack units, when it takes 5+ turns for a simple builder. And builders are a key example of how bad the game has gotten.

They get arbitrarily wiped out by random environmental effects - setting you back 5 turns, are still only good for three things when they're expensive & fragile, and those three buildings can also get arbitrarily wiped out by random environmental effects.

There's so much to love about the game, but they need to completely overhaul the basics unless you want to spend all evening re-rolling your starts and save-scumming to get around pure bad luck.

This is one of the rare cases of a remake surpassing the original product. If you loved Dead Space (2008), you'll marry Dead Space (2023).

The zero gravity is massively improved, giving Isaac a voice made awkward scenes actually flow smoothly, and combat is 100% revamped for better gameplay.

This game should be great, but the absolutely terrible dependence on everything being completely random starts to make it break down. Especially with how little you can do in a turn UNLESS the game gives you the right random array of relics, cards, draw order, and potions.

This game desperately needs separate saves. A lot of good design, but being locked into a single save until I beat it - and across computers via the cloud no less - is a complete deal breaker.

Good premise, nice to see old school shadowrun, but there isn't even a hint of balance & the game is riddled with fatal bugs that will cause you to re-play hours of content just to correct a corrupted save file or other nuisance issue.

Could have been fixed by having a team with basic competence working on the project.

Basic features of the game no longer work after recent patches (free aim, for example). Better yet, enemies with pistols on normal difficulty now appear to be so accurate that they can hit you from the far side of the battlefield with about three out of every four shots, when you're behind tall cover.

I enjoyed this game before, even if I felt their advancement system was poorly developed & arbitrary, so I'd like to leave a positive review. I can't do that until they un-♥♥♥♥ whatever they've been doing

There are fun game mechanics, but the plot is not only tired & predictable, it's so riddled with tropes as to be a joke of itself.

The boss fights often break down into stupid "forget how to play the game, learn the boss fight pattern!" The same thing that ruined the Deus Ex reboot. Almost like a different team created them.

Do yourself a favor - watch a stream of the game or play it to experiment with some fairly neat mechanics & amusing side quests - but don't for a minute think the main quest is worth your time.

It's not a bad shooter, if you can get it cheap, you'll get your money's worth.

The bad:
-Antiquated "checkpoint" system that exists purely to force replay after death. No justifiable basis in modern programming.
-"Realistic" ammo availability, you'll be down to one weapon, that's only good in edge cases, with no ammo for general-purpose weapons. Only logical reason? "Because aliens wouldn't stock that ammo." Maybe realistic, definitely bad game design.

The good:
-It's a straight-forward shooter with a less-than-miserable plot. These days, that's about as much as you can ask for in shooters.

Sorry, but whatever value there is to this game is lost in dealing with "Uplay".

Never another Ubisoft game.

If you don't own this yet, RUN AWAY. Go play a fun game.

This one suffers from false complexity in the mechanics, lazy writing that rapidly just becomes bad, and absolutely no depth in any facet.

It's a gorgeous demonstration of modern graphical arts, but that even falls apart when the designers substitute enough flashing lights to kill a photo-sensitive epileptic for suspense, tension, and eery setting. No, seriously, I'm photo-sensitive, I have to take a break every few minutes after the mid-way point of the game.

Save your money, play something fun.