Recent reviews by Erkenfresh

It's a nice blend of tower defense and shoot 'em up. The battlefield constantly evolves with new paths of approach and unit types, which keeps things interesting. There's a lack of utility towers, like slow towers, but each tower is specialized for certain units. All in all, well worth it on sale.

I enjoyed this game despite being a much simpler Just Cause 2 (obviously). First, you'll need to fix the resolution with a command line switch, which takes a minute to setup. Otherwise you're playing in 4:3 and everything is stretched out. A xbox controller doesn't work with the game, so dust off your (discontinued) steam controller and download my awesome config, which sadly requires you to remap all the buttons since the defaults are horrible. But, whatever.

The graphics are on par with 2006. The sound was just OK. I felt like the gunshots needed a lot more bass or something. When police yell at you, they say "Halt citizen!" and always sound like they are right next to you, even if your flying in a helicopter.

The gameplay is much closer to GTA than Just Cause 2-4. Later versions use the grapple and parachute much more. Here, the grapple is very limited. Luckily, you can always "extract" to the next mission briefing, so you can keep travel time down if you don't feel like exploring the island.

I beat the game in 10 hours, but you could beat it faster if you avoid liberations or side missions. Those unlock new weapons and fast travel points, but the game wasn't difficult enough to require any of that.

I don't think I've ever thought so hard. This is a good combination of spatial puzzle with programming and multi-threading. The story in intriguing as well. The graphics are very basic, but that doesn't take away from the complexity of the puzzles.

I first played Just Cause 2, and it was good.

Then came Just Cause 3, and it was awesome (2 still has the best map).

Now we have Just Cause 4. You've got balloons for your tether, which is cool to float bad guys off into space. Otherwise, I don't see that much was added here.

They took away a lot though. The infinite C4 is gone. Ammo always seems to be low, which runs against the whole idea of these games. Liberations are gone, replaced with boring operations to unlock territory. The guns are pretty boring, with the exception of the wind gun.

Many of the territory operations are repeats. You gotta flip four breakers, then use a balloon to pull a panel off a generator so you can blow it up. Then raise some cannons and drive a hacker around a base. A lot of the missions center around protecting equipment or people, limiting your otherwise great mobility.

The story missions are very good, but there doesn't seem to be enough of them. The weather themes play out very well and have some cool visual effects during these missions. The final boss was... disappointing.

Nevertheless, it's still Just Cause, and it's still a lot of fun. If you haven't played 2 or 3 yet, play those first.

I feel like this game put quantity over quality. The combat is fun, but not spectacular. You've got two weapon slots, a shield, a dodge, and four "magic" abilities you can use while you fight. Even though I was playing on hard, I got to a point where I was pretty much invincible and I just mashed the X button in combat to win.

I didn't follow the story very much at all. It was full of much betrayal, I think. It was so overdone with betrayal that you just start to expect it every time. Eventually, I didn't care much and just mashed the X button a bunch during dialogue and followed the yellow circle on the map. About that, there's a whole lot of just running. You can stop to fight all the trash mobs along the way, but there's no reason to. It's better to run through the game than try to kill everything.

The world map is needlessly huge. There are hundreds of side quests you can do, and absolutely no compelling reason to do any of them. The quest rewards you get are quickly obsolete a few hours later. You find the best gear on vendors with no special work, so why do much other than the main quests? I don't think doing a pile of fetch and assassinate quests is enough to hold my attention.

I did accidentally complete one of the DLC. I somehow lost focus on the main quest. The captain that keeps crashing boats from that DLC was the only funny character I met. The rest are just kind of bland. So, just mash your way through the dialogue and follow that yellow circle.

The character building was pretty cool. You've got three trees of passive and active skills to acquire. You're free to mix and match from all three. You can unlock unique destinies for each possible combination, which give you some extra bonuses. Unfortunately, the bonuses aren't that distinguishable. +10% magic damage for sorcery or +10% weapon damage for a warrior. Well, yeah, practically, those are identical for your class.

It's certainly worth buying on sale and rushing through.

When I first saw this game at a friend's house, I was immediately reminded of Wizardry. This is an RPG that has a classic feel to it, similar to old D&D games. You form a team of six characters from many different classes and go save the world. The game is a bit unrelenting. There's a difficult monster blocking the road in the early game that you simply will not be able to beat the first time you meet it. But, it's so satisfying when you get more powerful and come back and annihilate it.

It looks like much of the graphics are hand drawn, and they do have a certain charm to them. The sound effects aren't all that great. The music is actually quite good. I get the music from the towns stuck in my head. Unfortunately, there isn't a lot of different songs in the game, so you hear a lot of repeats.

I thought the character progression was very good. In many games like this, it takes a long time to earn more levels in the late game, essentially slowing down your relative power gains. The opposite is true here, where in the late game you'll become immensely powerful, which is quite enjoyable.

I'll probably play through this again in a few years with a whole new party and see how some of the other classes play out. I highly recommend this game!

Witcher 3 may be the best game of the action RPG genre. It is certainly the best I've ever played, beating games such as Skyrim.

The main plot of the game is to find your missing friend. While in itself, that search gets a bit tiring, the subplots along the way keep the story interesting. The characters are more than just flat one-dimensional characters like you tend to see in other games. They seem very much alive, with their own motives. It can often be unclear if they are trying to deceive you or if they are being completely honest.

The game will often force you into making difficult decisions. These aren't the usual decisions you find in many games that are clearly good or evil. There are morally grey areas and sometimes it's just a matter of picking the lesser of two evils. Those choices can have big consequences later in the game as well.

The combat is fluid and challenging. I used an Xbox-like controller and the controls just felt so natural. You can specialize in swordplay, potions, bombs, or magic, so there are plenty of different playstyles to explore. I played the game at the second highest difficulty and most of the combats had me sweating. The bosses proved to be very difficult to take down, especially near the end of the game.

The graphics in the game are simply beautiful. I've never seen anything quite like it. I thought Skyrim looked good, but Witcher 3 takes it to a new level (granted, it's a much newer game). Some of the sunsets struck me with awe, and the weather looked realistic. Trees bend in the wind. The only nitpicky thing is that the leaves look a little odd when you get close to them. The faces of the characters in the game looked realistic, with the mouth moving quite naturally with speech. Each main character had a unique look to them. Generic NPCs did tend to reuse a few models, but for the most part this wasn't too distracting.

The music in the game is pretty amazing. Sadly, there wasn't a large selection of music so it can get repetitive. But the music that's there is well done. The sound is also good, especially the voice acting. Every last conversation in the game has voice to it. It's baffling to think how much audio they had to record. The actors did a great job, with convincing performances.

The only other nitpick would be that this is an adult game. There is nudity and cursing in many cutscenes, with no way to disable them. This didn't bother me, but it might be a problem if you have lots of kids around.

In all, the base game took me 60 hours to beat. With fewer sidequests it could have been faster, but there's certainly enough content here to keep going for quite a while longer.

Get this game. It's worth full price for sure!

Kinda makes me wish I was playing Dungeon Defender instead...

It's a rather realistic space sim. The flight controls feel exactly like how I would imagine future spacecraft would do it. The universe is huge. You will never visit every sector in the game with millions of possible places to visit. A great deal of that is empty, but there are supposed to be many hidden systems out there in the black.

The graphics are not the best out there, but it can still be awe inspiring. The nebulae look fantasic, and the bright globes of the planets are quite amazing. The fact that you can fly down to the surface of the planet is nice too, but there's not a high amount of detail once you land.

As for money, mining is a great way to make money in the early game, but that is far outshone when you can scan down cargo containers. It seems to make any other form of making money obsolete. So, the focus of the game isn't really about your own economics, like it is for other sims.

I never much got into the combat part of the game because every time I tried, I got destroyed within seconds. I souped up my defensive capabilities and lasted about twice as long. So, I just kind of gave up on that. Evochron Legacy is all about making the game realistic, so going up against a pack of fighters alone is always going to get you killed. You can hire other ships to join you as a fleet however, which should help even the odds.

You can also build stations, but there is no personal benefit to doing so. You get a place to refill your fuel and sell your goods, but in no way do you manage the station, or profit from the other mercs using it. It would be nice to see at least a little profit from building one.

I'll also touch on one last point. The sound in the game is a bit bland. The merc and station chatter is pretty good, but otherwise there isn't much going on in that department.

Overall, I think the game is quite impressive, but it just wasn't that fun to me. It is surprising that in such a huge universe, I felt like I didn't have much to do. The flight controls are really interesting and can be quite fun, but its novelty can wear off. If you have the patience to explore and you get a sense of fulfillment for discovering secrets, then this game is right up your alley. However, if you're looking for a space sim to build an empire, exploit marketing trends for money, or have a more arcade style combat experience, then this game is not for you.

I have to compare this to Guardian Heroes since it's similar in so many ways. If you liked that game, you'll like Code of Princess too. The action never gets quite as crazy as Guardian Heroes sometimes did. There aren't quite as many enemies on the screen at one time. However, if you liked the goofiness of the magic system in GH, it works almost identically here. For example, hitting someone with the giant laser beam spell is somehow contagious and spreads to people around them, even yourself.

Take away the branching story line, but add silly humor and equipment, and you've got Code of Princess. It's not a whole lot of dough, so just buy it and have some fun.