Recent reviews by Anchor Pulling World Champion

I purchased a strategy game about Warsaw Uprising. Now they made it free AND removed strategic content, it's just Warsaw Uprising. While I understand the direction the devs want to go with their game, by doing this ♥♥♥♥ move they've completely disregard those who supported them from before.

The good:
- Stealth and tactical combat mechanic. You're almost always outnumbered and outgunned, so the option to go in guns blazing is basically suicide. Picking lone enemies one-by-one and alpha striking the last group gives a sense of satisfaction when executed perfectly.
- Unlike X-COM you're given characters with personalities, and this gives flavor when you're out exploring or murdering cultists.

The bad:
- Story script is sub-par. While it is initially interesting to see how the mutants see the dying world and the civilization left behind, you can guess how the story will develop from the beginning of the game. Your whole campaign is just a game of fetch with no real development.
- There's not enough unique abilities/perk for the heroes. Sure each of them have their own 1-2 unique skill but the rest are just copy-pasted generic skills, which makes characters backstory feels inconsistent. The mutant with the ability to control vines and the anthropomorphic fox have the the same frog-leg mutation that allows them to jump around the battlefield. Someone make this makes sense.

Terrible:
- The UI. You're given 5 heroes (6 with DLC) but you can only bring 3 into the battle. If you want to swap equipment/skill from the ones you put in reserves, guess what you need to switch them with another guy in your main team, take off their gun, switch to the other guy to equip said gun. Then switch the other guy back to the reserves.

Overall a solid tactical combat game which suffers from poor writing and lack of character development. You'll want to play this game for the combat/stealth mechanic and turn off your brain when it comes to story-telling. There just isn't any.

ASTLIBRA is a great example how to reward grinding in Metroidvania games. You have additional things you can unlock via grinding, not just level/money/attributes, but also skills and rare drops. Some of the game designs and story writing screams "INDIE" really loud, like the out of place card suit puzzle in ancient cave, or clues on how to progress the story written in the background, but if you're willing to look past those quirks this game has enough content to keep your inner completionist entertained for hours.

Picked a fight with the guards on 600 suspicions for ♥♥♥♥♥ and giggles.
Party of 14 mercs, averaged 7-8.
Opposing side have 26 level 9 guards, with 2 waves of reinforcements coming.
Noticed the terrain has three bottlenecks.
Put the chonky bois to guard each entry, with one archer and one spearman behind them.
Poisoners making the other bottleneck a Chernobyl look-alike
Berserkers and executioners ready to engage those who survived the crossing
Held the line for six turns before the battleground is even
Switched to offense and killed the rest in one fell swoop

11/10 would do it again

Base game is a solid 8 out of 10. The other DLC is probably 6/10 but at least has interesting story and hooks. This right here is just garbage. Everything this DLC adds are tedious and just plain annoying.

Also in order to make the level more difficult than it has to be they add mechanics that has zero purpose and is there just to mess with you.

Did you touch that toaster? Here a stack of debuff. Step on a particular spot on the ground? Here have another. Also infinite enemies because f you.

Avoid like nuclear radioactive waste.

Whoever play-tested this DLC should be fired for not doing their job properly.

Everything wrong with this expansion started in 2006 when some guy thought it'd be cool to sell overpriced horse armor.

Another great game ruined by garbage monetization practice.

This game has, to-date, 177 stand-alone, paid DLCs. It has so many individual cosmetics DLCs they can make SEVEN separate DLC packs, each costing almost half the price of the base game.

The salt in the wound is when they release layered weapons in TU2, which the community has been asking for so long. Instead of making it event rewards (as with many other cosmetics) they decided to put it in the store, one for each weapon, sold piecemeal. Uncool.

Community made it clear that no one wants 2K launcher. Their mandatory launcher breaks mods and has a lot of reported compatibility issues. Devs refused to listen.

You CAN use AML but honestly this is 2022, any dev force-feeding their garbage launcher and making the consumer having to resort to the community for a solution does not deserve to be supported.

F your launcher.

There's no worse feeling in C-RPG than knowing that there are illusory walls gating your progress. You cannot explore outside the story paths or taking beaten off paths because its designed to be impossible.

The lore is pretty interesting, character writing and personal background are great, but go far enough into the campaign and you'd notice where they finally decided to rush it.

Still the game has a lot to offer for its price, and after finishing the game I can say that it's definitely worth 100+ hours I sunk into the game.