Recent reviews by Stilljester

In Brief: It's Rust meets Swords & Sorcery, and it's great fun. (although, being in alpha, sorcery has yet to be implemented.) I woke up and started running naked through the desert. Just an average thursday, other than the giant anthropomorphic bat creature stooped over the still-bleeding corpse of a roman centurion, who is missing his left leg from just above the knee. It's going to be one of THOSE days. Picked up a few rocks, tied them to a stick. In no time I'm stripping bark from trees, when sweet lord, some mutant flesh goblin is gnawing on my gonads. A few good whacks later, he's dead on the ground and I'm harvesting his flesh and skin for my own use. 10 hours later I've finally finished my sandstone fortress, have 2 slaves who cook for me, I've been eaten by crocodiles twice, fell to my death from a cliff, gotten stabbed by a voodoo shaman whose mojo stick hurt more than it looks like it should, and I'm having a blast.

High points and low points:

--Survival mechanics: 5/10 - Passable. Basic hunger/thirst only. Really wish they'd add more of an exposure element, especially considering how terribly hot the whole landscape LOOKS. Could use a more in-depth clothing system, Heat/Cold, etc. RIght now it seems that exposure simply makes you thirsty quicker. But I was playing a fair-skinned nordic character in the desert. Considering how good the graphics are (see below) it felt wrong not to be horribly sunburned, or at least sweating. Most fans of the genre know that exposure is one of your main problems in an actual survival situation, moreso than hunger or thirst. I feel it deserves more than just lip-service from a survival game. Harvesting and crafting happens at a good pace. Construction of tools and other objects feels realistically difficult and in a "just right" zone.

--Combat mechanics: 4/10 - Think Skyrim. For you Bethesda lovers, the reason I call this a 4 is that this game truly suffers from a lack of Mount & Blade-esque melee combat: directional attacks & blocks, momentum, etc. For a game that uses Conan the friggin Barbarian as its namesake, I would expect more options as to HOW I dismember my opponents, rather than simply running up to them and clicking alot. At the moment, it doesn't seem like hit location is even a thing - a blow to the shin is as good as a blow to the head. Ever since "Barbarian" was released for the Commodore 64 in 1988, a blow to the neck meant decapitation in this genre, regardless of HP. Combat should not be getting dull in a Conan game.

--Base Mechanics: 9/10 - Very much fun, and purposeful. Construction is tight and fairly bug-free. For a game that is not voxel-based, ala minecraft or 7 Days to Die, there are a surprising number of options. This is one of the best and most engaging aspects of the game, in my opinion. I'm also glad they implemented a "ruins" system which gradually destroys buildings that receive no upkeep, otherwise a server with lots of players would very quickly fill up with player-made bases that never decay. They've also just implemented siege warfare in the latest patch, which is an interesting development...

--Character Progression: 10/10 - the game unlocks new content to you at an excellent pace. All the skills you learn as you level are interesting and useful and there are skills for every playstyle. There's also too much to learn on your own, which really encourages cooperation: having a town blacksmith, carpenter, leatherworker, dedicated warriors, etc. I have nothing bad to say about it.

--Game World & Gameplay 9/10: This place is HUGE and there are lots of interesting things to see, explore, and kill. A plethora of different environments, creatures, dungeons, huge and dangerous boss monsters, etc. The sandstorms are truly terrifying. You can enslave NPC humans and turn them into "thralls," essentially stocking your base with "citizens" who work for you as archers, warriors, blacksmiths, cooks, etc. Again, this is all doled out at an excellent pace.

--Graphics & Sound 8/10: The SHADOWS and lighting are striking, and utterly realistic. Seeing a shadow cast on me at sunset from a tree on a cliff 300+ meters above is truly impressive. I don't have a high-end machine, and the graphics are still gorgeous. Still some glitchy animations, particularly on NPC's & monsters. The blood spatter says a hyena is biting me, but the animation shows him lounging in the sun and facing the other direction. I imagine this will improve as the development progresses. The orchestrations are lovely, the ambient music is appropriate. Although, the stirring combat music which clicks in the moment a monster notices you also ensures that its only possible to be surpised by an attack from another player.

--OVERALL: 7.5/10: I'm having a lot of fun with this game, but it has its flaws. I could forgive the dumbed-down survival mechanics a bit more if they overhauled the combat system. And to be fair, I could probably forgive the lackluster combat system a bit more if they improved the survival mechanics. The elements they are planning to implement all sound great: social emotes, sorcery, human sacrifice, and other great Barbarian-y things. Highly recommended to fans of the genre, but for it to become truly great, I do hope we get a bit of a deeper system for either fighting or staying alive. Or preferably, both. Right now, it feels like a game about building castles and enslaving the masses. Which is fine, but the game is called "Conan Exiles." To me, that title indicates the focus should be on dismemberment and wasteland survival.

THE GOOD:
This is a game that is visually beautiful, with great graphics and sound. For instance, the details on damage your hull takes is, for lack of a better word, gorgeous. High production values all around.

THE BAD:
Wow, I just can't get into the gameplay at ALL. Take all the parts that aren't fun about World of Warcraft, and combine them with all the parts that aren't fun about X3: Reunion.

-Shallow RPG elements. Shallow dialogue choices. Shallow, linear plotline buried in a sandbox game.
-An "open world sandbox" that is mostly empty, and is in TWO dimensions. (This is a space game.)
-Grinding the same bounty quests over and over for money for upgrades.
-Combat is similar to space battles in Star Trek Online, but shallower, with less strategy and fewer options. I kept wishing for the officer abilities of STO to give it some variance.
-3/4th of the enemy you face are starfighters, which you have to bat away with your turrets. Fighters move in three dimensions; you do not. To help you hit them, your reticule locks onto them and follows them around. So you're pretty much just flying in a circle and holding down the fire button. Against 3/4 of the enemies you face.
-Oh, and by the way, you know that cool "Evil Ways" song in the preview movie on the store page? Well, you'll think it's alot less cool when you start playing because that song (in rotation with perhaps two others) is your constant companion as you amble around the universe looking for mobs to grind.

THE VERDICT:
Dull. There isn't much more to this game than the combat, and I can tell the combat is supposed to feel a lot more exciting than it does. When you streamline something to a certain degree, it moves past "stream-lined" and ventures into the dangerous realm of "dumbed-down." The combat feels dumbed-down, the trading feels dumbed-down, and the RPG elements feel dumbed-down. After playing for about an hour and a half, all I want to do is reinstall X3 so I can play a game that does all of these elements correctly. Glad I got this at a discount, but I still wish I could take this purchase back.

Highly Recommended! A must-play for fans of X-Com, Fire Emblem, Mount and Blade, or Dungeons and Dragons. Surprisingly deep strategic and tactical decision-making with permanent consequences. Multiple paths to victory (or defeat) in each scenario, and NO paths to victory in some. It makes you really consider each decision. Retreat is always on the table for consideration. You really grow attached to your mercs, and running away is preferable to poor Ludolf the Merciless losing an eye, or losing his life. Scavenging fallen enemy parties has a giddy quality to it. No two play-throughs are the same. No battle feels like a repeat of the previous battle. Terrain conditions and make-up of enemy squads keep you on your toes at all times.

There are improvements that could be made. I would like to see a deeper loot-spawn system. At the moment, all falchions or hatchets are created equal. Minor randomization of the stats would make looting and passing equipment out to your mercs that much more enjoyable. It's still in development as of writing, and I'm excited to see what features are added. End game crises sound exciting. The creators say they are fans of Mount & Blade, and I would love to see more open-world options similar to that game. Become ruler of a town? Turn Bandit yourself?

This is already great game with deep replayability that has the potential to become a veritable masterpiece.

Nobody does stealth like Klei!

If you enjoyed playing Tenchu: Stealth Assassin on PS1, you need this game.
If you enjoy XCOM (the original or the reboot), you need this game.
If you've ever seen an episode of Mission:Impossible, you need this game.
If you enjoy "Rogue-likes", you need this game.

Invisible, Inc. puts you in a dangerous, near-future, 1984-esque big brother world of mega-corporations gone bad, with nothing to survive on but your wits and the specialized abilities of your hand-picked team of professional spies.

The game plays like a "run and hide" XCOM. The goal here is not to storm the battlements, mow down the guards, and plant a flag over their corpses. You're outnumbered, outgunned, and certain death waits around every blind corner. In true espionage fashion, if your team has to pull their guns, it means you've screwed the pooch, your team is compromised, and now you're in a desperate firefight to sprint to the exit before the corporate army seals off the building.

At the beginning, you pick two team members, whose special abilities will dictate your play style through an increasingly punishing randomly-generated corporate maze. You can bring a sniper, sure! But maybe a computer expert would be less noticeable than gunshots ringing through the halls. Or you can bring a stealthy lockpicker, but then who's going to judo chop the guards when they show up wearing body armor? Along the way, you may have the opportunity to rescue captured agents and increase your team's size. The agents available to be rescued are randomized, creating a different play experience each time.

The graphics and sound create an inviting, futuristic pulp-fiction atmosphere. The music is appropriately dangerous, and fitting to the Mission: Impossible play style. There are a ton of options to make the game easier or harder in whatever way you choose, so you can pick your own challenge level, from a casual romp through a save-scumming corp beatdown to hardcore, ironman, no going back, the-T-1000-is-after-you mode.

Get it. You'll be happy you did.

Easily in the top 10 of all time