Recent reviews by texdade

Server problems are getting ridiculous. Tried to play yesterday, I got:
- too many player in queue, wait for login (waited 15 minutes then closed)
- tried again 2h later, got in but quickplay is broken and shows 0 online players (this problem is still present 24h later)
- opened the game again, game loads with a black screen
- still 0 players online

Fix you networking

Overview
Legion TD 2 is a tower defense/MOBA game, coming from a Warcraft 3 mod called Legion TD that was made in 2009. Unlike many tower defense games, you won’t be recruiting turrets around a specific path that the enemies will follow. Instead, you’ll be recruiting fighters in your lane that will charge the enemy to protect your king. Oh, and you can also recruit mercenaries to attack the opponents’ lanes. And have I mentioned the fact that doing that also makes you earn more gold? Legion TD 2 is a pretty complex game, so let’s unveil it in this review.

Defend. Attack. Earn. Defend…
Legion TD 2 is one of those games where a tutorial is fundamental to start playing properly without having to do hours upon hours of trial and error: luckily the game has one that covers all aspects of the game in a bearable amount of time which, considering the amount of stuff it has to explain, is not the easiest of feats. This is a title with an extremely simple concept, that is instead very complex under the hood, thanks to its many different mechanics. The grand goal of a Legion TD 2 match is easy: protect your king and kill the enemies’ one. In order to do this, you have to hire fighters to protect your lane against increasingly harder hordes of enemies. In order to recruit them, you will use gold that is earned by killing the attacking enemies and by completing waves. Pretty easy right? This is where things get messy.

Besides defending, you can also attack your opponents. This is done by hiring mercenaries using mythium, another resource that, unlike gold, is earned in time by training miners. Mercenaries will attack one specific opponent (decided at the start of the game) and, once trained, will boost the gold you earn by completing waves for the rest of the game. This opens up a myriad of possibilities, since the game offers a lot of different mercenaries that can be used in very different scenarios: the snail is the very first mercenary you’ll hire in every game, offering basically no power but boosting your initial earnings. There are tank mercenaries, and some that give you reduced income but that are more powerful in terms of attack, hp pool or even special abilities. Basically, every match follows a loop: spend gold to train fighters, which defeat enemies and earn gold. Plus, spend gold to train miners, which earn mythium, which you can use to hire mercenaries that attack your opponent AND give you a permanent gold boost on each wave.

A common strategy is to keep spending mythium on weak mercenaries to build the economy in the early game. Then, when waves get tougher, you can start saving it to send multiple stronger mercenaries in the same wave as bosses or particularly strong enemies. This also creates a very interesting carry/support strategy, since training miners costs gold, one player can focus more on attacking, while the ally can spend more gold on fighters and protect the king.

The Teammate Leaked So I Became a Plumber
Another important concept in Legion TD 2 is leaking. This game heavily relies on coordination with your teammate(s), so much so that a slightly under-performing ally can doom your game: this is particularly true in the mastermind mode (the 2v2 ranked playlist), which at times can be very frustrating. Thus, before buying Legion TD 2, I would really think about convincing a friend to get it too. But let’s get back to leaking: we say that a lane leaks when the invaders destroy all defending forces. Your lane could leak, or your friend’s or your enemies’. The important aspect of leaking is that, if properly managed, it’s not a tragedy: the different lanes do in fact converge into a single one before getting to your team’s king. Here, all the fighters that cleared their lanes are gathered, so that they can make one last defense against the leaked waves. This opens up the strategy that I was talking about in the last chapter: one player can focus on attacking the opponent and making him leak. While he does this, he focuses less on defenses because the other teammate can catch leaks for him.

Speaking of defending and fighters, while the mercenaries roster stays the same every game, the roster of defending creatures will change every game, depending on the selected game mode: in 4v4 you get to decide which roster to pick out of 8 different legions, each one having a specific and balanced set of fighters that follow the legion’s theme. In Mastermind, Legion’s ranked mode, you will instead play 2v2 and get a randomized set of fighters, with the possibility of control that randomization at the start of the game. Again, the game opens up to very different strategies, allowing you to pick the path you think will be the best: you can either go for a full random approach and get more gold right from the start, or you could try to control the randomness and lock in a fighter and gets unit rerolls. This title offers a truly incredible amount of options, which is also why I liked it so much.

Technical Side
There’s not too much to say about Legion’s technical side: this is a competition-first title that thus doesn’t rely on incredible graphics or jaw-breaking RTX effects. The graphical models are instead made to be as light on the hardware as possible, making it a title with very simple graphics. Fighters’ models follow the same rule and have very few polygons, but most of the time you will be watching them from far away, so you won’t notice it so much.

Verdict
Legion TD 2 is an incredibly technical game: you might hate it or you might love it. All I can say is that mechanics are fresh, well-implemented and the game hardly gets boring even after hours of gameplay, due to its very competitive nature and the different line-ups at the start of each match. Just be sure to buy it with a friend: every game is funnier with a friend, but this title really shines when building strategies together.

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Overview
For some reason, adventure games in the style of Zelda never clicked with me: I have been trying to finish a Zelda game for years, but I simply abandon them after the first one or two hours: I simply stop playing and don’t pick them up anymore. Like a lot of other players, I noticed Garden Story because of some apparent similarities with Stardew Valley, even if it is a completely different game. Don’t get me wrong, the two games have some aspects in common, but the core of the game is completely different: for starters, you’re a grape. Then we can also say that, instead of managing a farm, you are instead the guardian of a village in the Grove, where some animals and different fruits coexist peacefully. But a sneaky evil is damaging the Grove: you will have to protect your friends against the emerging menace of the Rot and, in the meanwhile, fish and grow a library while you’re at it!

What Is Garden Story about?

Garden Story can be a pretty confusing game at first: watching the screenshots and reading the description in the Steam Store page could mistake someone into thinking that this title is something on the lines of Stardew Valley. While the two games surely have some mechanics in common, Garden Story is instead way more similar to an adventure game to the likes of the older Zelda titles than it is to a management one. While you will travel in the same areas a lot, throughout the story you’ll be able to move to other villages and you will fight a lot, whereas the completion of objectives like the library and farming will be fun activities that will always be in the background.

The Duties of a Guardian
As guardian of Spring Hamlet, you’ll have to listen to the request of the villagers and work towards fulfilling them: each day you will find new requests on a notice board. These are made by the villagers and divided into three different sections: Maintenance, Forage and Conflict. Completing these tasks each day gives experience to the respective category of the village where we complete it, while a failure to fulfil them before the end of the day means that the village won’t level up and a short sentence will describe the consequences.

While this is a fine distraction from the not very active villages (especially at the start of the game), the requests become repetitive in the matter of a couple of days. At the third or fourth day, the probability of finding a request you already completed the days before is really high and, after something like 8-9 days you will remember them all by heart. Why? Because they not only are really simple activities, on the lines of “Kill 7 enemies” or “Repair the bridge in this portion of the map”, but they usually take very little time to complete and there are simply not enough of them. The ones where you fight are simply not challenging at all, while the ones that have some sort of puzzle linked to them never change.

Even worse, there are no real consequences for not completing a request: if I don’t destroy the rot invasion in Treepath and the game tells me that it grew stronger, why doesn’t it? I could find stronger enemies the following day, making it harder for me to use that path, but instead it’s like it has always been. The consequences of not completing a request are simply not there, besides the fact that the village is not levelling up.

Protecting the Grove
Protecting the Grove is not an easy feat: not only you have to help the villagers repair buildings and gathering resources, but you also have to protect them against the Rot! The Rot can manifest under different forms: being giant Glomps or pesky Acorns, you will have to know your way around a sword. Garden Story’s combat can be a little clunky and requires a little bit of practice at the beginning. This is due to its stamina mechanic, which is required to use the shield, attack with your sword and roll. While this is pretty standard, the initial amount of stamina is 2, which means you can only attack two times in quick succession before having to recover. Luckily, you can get stronger by using memories, which grant different bonuses and can be changed at the start of the day, or breaking some special orbs that you can find around the world.

Usually, after a few days of completed requests the story advances, opening up a dungeon that has a boss fight in the end. Each village has its own dungeon with its own big, Rot monster in the end: boss fights are more on the easier side, but some situations can prove challenging and personally I died to each boss at least once. Once you remember their (rather simple) attack patterns, though, these big monsters can be easily beaten without getting you stuck. Beating these fights means that you will be ready to move to the next village, for a total of four: Spring Hamlet, Summer Bar, Autumn Town and Winter Glade!

Verdict
In the end, I finished up enjoying Garden Story despite its faults. The colourful graphics, the cute characters and the vibrant world have bested the repetition of the daily tasks and the initial clunkiness of the combat. If you’re interested but not completely sold, I would suggest to get this title on a discount.

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Overview
I’m not a photo person. For instance, I’m one of those individuals that come back from a vacation with two new photos on his phone. The same is for videogames and screenshots: I very rarely take them thinking “Oh! This needs to be screenshotted!”. It’s more like an “Oh! This could be a useful screenshot for the review”. With Sable instead, I’m finding myself drowning in screenshots. That should help you understand how beautiful Sable is, if not as an experience, at least visually. But let’s go in order…

From the Bottom of the Desert to the Highest Peak
Sable starts small. You have to complete a bunch of starting missions to gather three important things: the components that will make your hoverbike, your gliding stone and your mask. While the first and the latter don’t really need much introduction, the gliding stone is an artefact that gives you the power of a glider. This power manifests in people of a certain age and is lost as the wearer gets older, but our protagonist isn’t really in any danger of losing it and, instead, will find it incredibly useful to roam around the map. Since the protagonist is able to glide and is in possession of a very good agility, which allows her to climb most of the surfaces in the game (in a Zelda: Breath of the Wild-style), most of the map is explorable, except for the highest peaks.

Besides gliding, climbing and the hoverbike, there’s little more to Sable in terms of mechanics: you can interact with NPCs, which at times will offer you different quests. These will range from normal fetch quests to more complex stories, but they are usually on the simpler side. One aspect that I really appreciated in this regard is the oftentimes absence of markers: NPCs will usually tell you what you have to look out for, like a trail of symbols to reach a new mask or a particular vista in the desert. This makes exploration and quest completion so much more satisfying, opposed to most of the new titles where it is a mere reach marker-pick up mission item-return to NPC.

Simoon
During the exploration of Sable’s world, Midden, we will be accompanied by a very silent entity: our own hoverbike. Its name is Simoon and it has one because it is believed that machines have a soul and can speak. While you won’t have access to Simoon right away, you will recover its parts and build it during the initial tutorial phase of the game. After that, you can use it to travel across the desert as you like, making it a fundamental companion in our travels.

Eventually, we will also find cuts (Sable’s world currency), which we will be able to spend to acquire new parts for our hoverbike. These upgrades will not only change its look, but also some stats, which are acceleration, top speed and stability. This aspect of the game changes only the ease of exploration, as you will only use Simoon to move around and there are no races or fights in this game, but are a great way to make Simoon feel unique to each player. When we reach a location with our hoverbike, we also unlock its position on the map, which marks it and unlocks fast travel to it: the latter is not something I used much at all during my time with Sable. Travelling around is soothing and a great experience overall, thus fast travelling feels like breaking the game a little bit, at least to me.

Exploration
Sable always has something new to see: a new biome, an ancient temple or a dark and forgotten starship. All these locations, besides being interesting to just visit, usually hide additional elements of the game: you could find an ancient AI to speak to, which will unveil new pieces of information about the untold story of Midden, or you could find NPCs to buy clothing or hoverbike pieces from. Pots filled with cuts can be found everywhere (even on starships, which is not very realistic) but, most importantly, you will find yourself in awe at most of Sable’s locations.

Some Dust up My Hoverbike’s Wings
Sable is an amazing experience, but not an incredibly polished one: starting from the free climbing feature, it is great to be able to climb (almost) any surface, but the system is often unprecise, which can lead to falls (which, even without gliding, are never fatal). While climbing, getting stuck in geometry is also a thing and the character can take a few seconds to find a stable position. Regarding the game as a whole instead, many zones of the game suffer from sudden frame drops with no apparent reason, while stuttering is almost always present, even in very open, empty, areas: this can easily hinder an instead wonderful travelling experience when we are riding our hoverbike.

Verdict
Sable is an incredible exploration experience, a game that has almost no other titles similar to it and that can be played by basically everyone. An incredible world awaits you, a world that, unfortunately, could have been even better with better-implemented mechanics and a more solid technical part.

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Overview
While the demons are slowly coming at our gates in late 2021 with Total War: Warhammer 3, Creative Assembly released the last DLC for Total War: Warhammer 2. This lords pack marks the final step for this game's journey (and what a journey it has been), introducing new lord and units for the races of lizardmen and beastmen, also introducing the latter in the Vortex campaign. Is this addition good enough for a proper closure of the incredible title that Total War: Warhammer 2 has been?

Horns and Fury
Let's start with my favourite addition: the beastmen in the Vortex campaign, under the control of Taurox the Brass Bull. Taurox is, simply said, an absolute beast (emh, yes, that was meant as a joke). He is a melee expert that simply excels at everything: he has incredibly good damage (and armor-piercing one), good speed, plenty of hp and can basically charge the enemy general head-on, even if enemy units are in the way. The amount of damage that this lord can do is simply too high, resulting in an incredibly easy early game for its Vortex campaign, considering that he also gets very good starting units. The beastmen got the longer end of the stick in this lords pack, also thanks to the long-awaited race rework: the lords of the race now have the ability to raise herdstones in the settlements they destroy. These are special outposts that transform the adjacent lands into bloodgrounds: while fighting and razing settlements into these areas, beastmen gather Marks of Destruction, the resource needed for victory. These important changes finally made one of the most boring and weak races fun to play and, also thanks to the new unit additions, stronger. This new strength can also be noticed in the campaign, which is in my opinion too easy to play: the early game is a charm thanks to the very strong starting creatures, while into the late game Taurox becomes an absolute powerhouse capable of not only destroying entire units (he's a melee expert), but also to duel with the strongest lords of rival factions (thanks to his incredible stats). You will probably reach a point where you'll be auto resolving all but the toughest battles, because you can just steamroll through every opponent.

Besides Taurox itself, the DLC adds new heroes and units that I found to be incredibly useful to the beastmen roster: the new heroes are great additions both in the offensive and defensive sides of battles. Gorgons are incredible four-armed anti-large beasts, capable of health regeneration, that can start bringing down enemy creatures from the start of Taurox' campaign, since you get one from the start. Jabberslythes, opposed to gorgons, are instead powerful anti-infantry monstruosities: even if they cannot fly (yes, they are like penguins), their poisonous vortex and size make them able to stomp through the strongest units. Again, great additions to the roster.

The silence before the ambush
As opposed to beastmen, the new lizardmen lord is instead very hard to play: his starting position is terrifying, as he literally starts (and plays for most of the campaign) encircled by enemies: Norscans to the north and east, Dark Elves to the south and west. Really not a great point to start, especially considering that you will get declared war on very easily even if you don't provoke anyone. The region does not aid in your multiple-fronts war, since it is particularly income-poor and lizardmen are not the strongest race economically speaking. Speaking of the new additions to the roster instead, personally I never like ranged lords, thus I can't really find myself at ease with Oxyotl: he's not bad, but he seems very (too) little when compared to the devastating figure that is Taurox. Chameleon Skinks really shine under his command though, also thanks to special banners that Oxyotl can unlock and that give effects to the missiles fired by the assigned unit (magical, fire, poison damage or special effects).

Oxyotl's campaign mechanics are instead really interesting, but now very cleverly implemented: you are a bulwark against dark forces and are assigned missions to fight enemy armies around the continent. This allows you to teleport your armies around the world to fight these armies and complete missions which, upon completion, will give you various buffs. Watch out though, as failing mission can empower the enemy armies or even start chaos revolts in your own territories. Everything seems fine but gets ultimately ruined by the start position of the faction: you are already defending against multiple enemies and, since you don't have a great economy, you can only afford one army: you really don't have the multiple turns required to send your soldiers around the world and complete the missions! And, when you do have the time, attacking the enemy army requires you to be at war with that faction, so here you go, even more enemies for you. Personally, I found the early game of this faction quite frustrating, with it only getting better after a slow and long expansion of the territory.

The lizardmen new units are... ok. The oracle hero has a nice selection of spells on the first tier, but none on the second one, which is weird. It is however nice to have spells from different lores. Chameleon Stalkers are a nice unit of shock infantry, but I didn't find a really good use for them inside the lizardmen roster. The Coatl is a very powerful creature, capable of casting spells from skies and tear apart entire units of enemies, especially if they are stacked upon each other. The Feral Troglodon is a very effecting monster-deleter with his poisonous anti-large ranged attacks and speed. Overall, these are not bad additions for the lizardmen, but the campaign should be fixed.

Verdict
In the end, The Silence and the Fury is a ok Lord Pack: the biggest change with this update is made by the free rework for the beastmen, which is not tied to the DLC itself. The new factions have nice ideas, but are either not very balanced (Taurox) or not well-thought (Oxyotl's placement, given its mechanics). If you are buying this solely for the lizardmen, wait for a lower price, otherwise have fun steamrolling through everything (both in single and multiplayer) with the new beast-beastman!

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Overview
After the success of games like Slay the Spire, which were able to create a new approach to card games where you control your character(s) directly using the cards you draw. Normally this kind of games have one thing in common: they start out very slowly and get progressively more exciting the more cards you gather, both inside runs and in between them, simply due to the fact that more powerful cards give you access to often crazy combos. In this regard, Tainted Grail: Conquest follows the games that came before it, adding a dark atmosphere and tons of content to the mix. Will it be able to succeed?

A Wyrd Setting
Tainted Grail follows the legends of Arthur, although re-imagined in a dark way: an incredibly powerful force called the Wyrdness has overcome the lands, killing and corrupting everything it touches. Weird and dangerous creatures started roaming these lands, while lost souls seek shelter from the darkness. Powerful ancient way stones could be able to keep this corruption at bay, but they are few, scattered and dying, as the druids that could have helped in restoring them were killed. The future is not looking good and the present is getting grimmer: heroes must rise against this dark force.

Luckily, Tainted Grail: Conquest provides a great diversity of classes: whereas in this kind of games you get three of four classes, this title provides you with 9, each one with completely different playstyles and cards. These classes are divided into three different factions: the Children Of Morrigan focuses on melee fighters with direct approaches, the Moonring faction can instead use magic and bend the Wyrdness to their favour by summoning a number of different creatures. Last but not least, the Watchers of Tuathan focus on ranged fighting, shooting arrows at their enemies and making thoughtful preparations to empower them. The best aspect of these classes is, again, how much they play differently even inside a faction: taking the Moonring classes (they are my favourites, hands down), they are all able to summon the same creatures, but while the Summoner uses its energy to improve them and make them as big as possible, the Blood Mage uses instead its HP and the Necromancer doesn’t really improve them, sacrificing them instead to gain energy for its lich form.

This doesn’t mean that all classes are made equal though, as balancing isn’t always perfect. Balancing 9 different classes in a card game can quickly become a very daunting task as more cards are added to the game and personally I found the game to be way easier with some classes: starting with the Wyrdhunter, the only available class in the beginning, I found the game to be very hard and was barely able to defeat the first boss, whereas in my first run with the Summoner I was able to steamroll through packs of enemies, losing my fight against the third boss only because of a misplay.

A Safe Place
Outside combat you will get a chance to explore the tainted land and to speak with the lost souls that inhabit it. At the start of each run, you will find yourself in the village, a place spared from the Wyrdness thanks to the presence of a grim statue overlooking the center of the place: here you will find a lot of empty buildings, that will eventually return to life when you will find and save different characters that you will find in the Wyrdness. These characters will help you during your runs and represent, along with the earning of new cards, the rogue-lite aspect of the game. Besides providing new items and cards, you will also be able to have interesting conversations with them from time to time.

When not in the village, you will venture into the Wyrdness to find and slay four different guardians: the Wyrdness is not a safe place and you will be provided with Wyrd candles to help you in your journey: these make for an interesting gameplay mechanic where you can light a candle (that will burn over time) and cast away the Wyrdness from around you. The utility in doing this is that the Wyrdness makes encounters more dangerous, so these effectively act as difficulty-lowering candles, lowering the dangerousness of the enemies the brighter the candle is burning. Speaking of exploration, into the Wyrdness you will not only find monsters to fight, but also different NPCs to interact with: they will sometimes sell interesting items, stats boost or cards… while sometimes they will just have an interesting story to tell.

Darkest Lands
Tainted Grail’s setting is truly fascinating, similarly to Darkest Dungeon’s: wandering a land filled with corrupting energy and horrible creatures ready to devour you certainly has its… charm we could say. Most of the creatures during combats resemble very well the corrupting power of the Wyrdness by showing monster of horror resembling tortured souls, tentacle-like creatures and totems to dark gods. Venturing in the Wyrdness feels dangerous, especially when you don’t have a Wyrdcandle lit, but the world outside combat does also feel a little bit dead, with you exploring what effectively are maps made out of corridors where enemies are sitting still waiting for you. Exploration is still enjoyable, don’t get me wrong, but overall it would have been a better experience if the whole thing felt more alive.

Verdict
Tainted Grail is a really well built deckbuilding roguelite game with a few unpolished edges. Overall, it offers a really great experience for players that appreciated games like Slay the Spire or Monster Train, featuring a lot of different classes and in general a lot of content. The dark setting is either love or hate, so follow your taste in this regard and, if you suits you, give Tainted Grail a go, you won’t be disappointed!

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Overview
Hokko Life is an Animal Crossing clone arriving on Steam Early Access the June 2nd. This is a title that clearly tries to exploit the absence of Animal Crossing on the PC gaming landscape, similarly to how Temtem used the absence of a Pokémon game. But Hokko Life doesn’t only try to copy the mechanics of the brand, adding instead interesting feature that will please a lot of Animal Crossing’s fans!
Sleeping on a Train

Hokko Life makes a very short introduction on how we got the little dusty city in the middle of nowhere that we will call home: we overslept on the train and ended up there! And, how! How unfortunate! The next train will take days to come! Luckily, the little bar that we find ourselves in is filled with two very kind gentlemen (can an elephant be a gentleman?) that offer us a place to stay for a few nights. Obviously, in order to repay them, we will offer our help to make this little forgotten town a little bit more welcoming to new visitors!

This quick introduction, while not particularly original, allows us to put our hands on the game immediately, without the need to wait for long dialogues that could’ve been boring. After that, we start off immediately with a place to sleep and our trusty axe: the latter will be particularly useful in the first two hours of the game, since most of the quests will involve gathering wood to build a bunch of items. In these first two hours we are also introduced to new characters, all different animals following Animal Crossing’s tradition, and complete a bunch of quests for them, culminating in the building of the first home for a new citizen.

As for its current state, the very first hours of the game leave little freedom to the player in terms of activities: we will in fact work for the various NPCs that inhabit the village, gathering resource, crafting items and placing them, all according to their requests. In terms of gameplay, this quickly becomes a checklist of things to do: – go to Oma to get the quest – gather x resources – go to Moss to deliver them – Moss crafts something and asks us to place it wherever we want. I certainly would’ve appreciated to have more choices during this first part, in order to break the otherwise serrated rhythm of the initial quests.

A Few Planks Make a Chair
After the first bunch of quests, you’ll get access to the more advanced features that Hokko Life offers to its players: besides having items to craft, like in Animal Crossing, you will also have the possibility to design completely new items. This is done by starting from smaller, craftable parts, like a wooden leg of a chair or a plank of wood: by using for leg and one plank, for example, we could create a small table to decorate our home or, if we are willing to share, also the entire village by putting it outside. This system gives an incredible degree of freedom to the players, allowing them to create incredible items to display in their villages, with some limitations: the first one is that complex objects will obviously use more items to craft, plus the designed object must fit inside a bounding box that limits the size of the final result. In this case, bigger objects can designed by talking to Sallie, the carpenter, who sells both bigger bounding boxes and new item pieces to merge together.

Obviously all this freedom in the hand of the internet could be a little dangerous, and I honestly expect to see tons of peni… tentiaries filling a lot of players’ villages. Luckily though, since this a game that will also be played by little kids, Hokko Life will only be singleplayer, with no plans for multiplayer or cooperative sessions: the only way to visit other player’s villages will be via the screenshots on Steam I fear.

Nice House You Have Here!
Similarly to Animal Crossing, we won’t have an entire house at our disposal from the very beginning, which means that we will have to work hard to earn one. After that, we will have complete liberty and customize it however we want. The customization of our home allows players to create really nice interiors, given that they have the right items to decorate them, and this can also be seen from the start by looking at the cozy little houses where the first few NPCs live in.

Speaking of NPCs, we will start with just a couple of them, randomized at the start. On my second savegame (the first got corrupted after an update, something that the developer said won’t happen during the EA period) I started playing with a really rude dog called Oleander and a cute pink elephant called Mei. While the villagers are initially random, once you expand your town you will get new ones, eventually gathering them all to your friendly neighbourhood: in total there are 24 of them, with the possibility that more will be added during the Early Access period.

Verdict
Hokko Life is an interesting Animal Crossing clone: while it doesn’t add new groundbreaking features, it also puts the foundations for a title that could potentially be the one filling the void in the PC gaming landscape, similarly to what Temtem did for Pokémon games. Unfortunately, seasoned Animal Crossing players won’t find a whole lot of new stuff in the game, but PC players that never experienced this kind of title could be in for a surprise!

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Overview
Solasta: Crown of the Magister is a turn-based RPG following the “new” ruleset of the fifth edition of Dungeons and Dragons. During the EA period, I described Solastas as a title with “great potential to become a really good turn-based RPG”, despite some quirks of the title. Now, Solasta is moving fast into its 1.0 release, with its full campaign and a dungeon builder available: has the title made the quality leap I was hoping for?

Starting of Great…
Similarly to its tabletop counterpart, the first thing you will have to do in Solasta is creating your party: this is done by picking some pre-generated characters or, even better, by creating your own. Similarly to what I wrote in the preview, I can’t but praise the character creation in Solasta: the 5e ruleset od D&D gives a lot of flexibility to characters, allowing the player not only to pick race and class of the adventurer, but also its beliefs and class modifiers, all in a pretty clean and easy to navigate interface. Speaking of classes, I was hoping to have the complete set available in the pen and paper version of the game, but Solasta will only feature six of them: Fighter, Paladin, Cleric, Rogue, Ranger and Wizard. This leaves out classes that, in my opinion, are extremely interesting, but that in some cases would’ve clashed with the title’s setting.

While missing some of D&D’s original classes, Solasta introduces additional “subclasses”, like the wizard’s arcane traditions or the cleric’s domains, that better reflect the world where the game is set: one example is the paladin’s Oath of the Motherland, for which the paladin dedicate his/her entire life to the restoration of the pre-cataclysm world.

The World after the Cataclysm
Solasta is set in an interesting fantasy world where humans thrived after a magical disaster. This event, called the Cataclysm, destroyed the former empire that once ruled the continent, twisting the land in weird and terrifying ways. We start playing one thousand years after that event, a point in time where the outer provinces of the empire, which were further away from the magical epicentre, have been able to develop and thrive into small nations. The party will start in the Principality of Masgarth, which is situated at a safe distance from the badlands – the territories that got hit the heaviest by the cataclysm – but also has a safe passage to access them. Why would you choose to explore dangerous and twisted lands where dangerous magic and dark creatures sprout from the abyss of the earth? For lost imperial artifacts, of course!

Players can get a taste of the badlands very early in the game and I can easily say that they are pretty fascinating: exploring lands twisted so much by magic that whole towers can be found developing horizontally from rocky walls clearly has its charm. Another aspect that I loved about Solasta is the diversity of its environments and events, both when it comes to combat and challenges: one minute you are fighting against goblins, then suddenly you are in an ancient dungeon filled with arcane magic, then you end up exploring an abandoned fort attacked by mysterious creatures. And everything is organically linked, moving naturally from one encounter to the other, unlike many games that throw random enemies at your face in an unorganized way for the sake of diversity.

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Overview
Galactic Mining Corp is a collectathon game where you explore multiple sectors of a galaxy in search for minable objects. Once you discover them, you can land on them (usually they are big asteroids or moons) and start digging to reach their cores and collect them. Digging is done through a drillship that also takes damage while piercing through the harder layers of ground, so you’ll have to find the safest path to the core. Oh, and in the meanwhile you also have to manage a Galactic Mining Corporation!

Managing a GMC Takes a Lot of Work
The main goal of GMC is, putting it simply, to upgrade every single aspect of your corporation. Being a collectathon game at its core, basically everything in GMC is upgradable, given that you have a certain amount of the required resource. Upgrading your HQ allows you to have more rooms, but it requires corporation experience. More rooms let you acquire more workforce, which must also get unlocked by completing special contracts in the exploration panel. Then, the single workers can be upgraded when they gather enough experience, making everything an endless levelling. This levelling brings, above all, increased stats for your drill, which allows it to drill faster and for longer in the harsh environments of the different big space rocks.

While the game features many different resources (including every tile that you dig, but more on this later), the most important is hands down the cores you will find at the center of the different space rocks you will dig. The core will allow you to unlock increased stats and, most importantly, new galactic sectors and increased size for your HQ. Along with cores, we can unlock new rooms using the research function of our corporation, which allows us to transform an accumulated resource type into progress to the next new room.

Dig, Die, Repeat
We reach now the main loop of the game on which everything is built around. Every upgrade you build on your HQ, every character you upgrade and (almost) every research you make is aimed at improving your performances in the digging sessions of the game. Digging start when you discover a minable space object in the exploration panel. This panel is divided into many tiles which can be destroyed, for a gold fee, allowing you to see if something is under them. I strongly believe exploration is something the developers could have improved the game mechanics a little, maybe introducing a ship movement range that could’ve been improved with upgrades, instead of a gold threshold to reach to “explore” a tile that could have nothing behind it.

After exploring the sector a little bit, you’ll surely find a space object you can land on and start digging. Once you do, you will quickly see of the core aspect of the game is, simply put, too shallow and repetitive, especially for the main loop of the game. Digging involves a planet map divided into many different little tiles you can dig with your drillship. Every tile has a gold value, which is the gold you’ll earn when destroying it, and a resistance value which represents how long will it take to destroy that tile. The more resistant the tile, the more hp your drillship will lose when digging that tile. It is thus important to find the safest path to the core without digging through particularly resistant materials. Every planet will also have some special boon tiles which will allow you to trigger different effects, like healing your ship, extending your vision range for a few seconds or increasing the gold earned at the end of the mission.

The problem is that digging through tons of different tiles just isn't fun enough. It would be ok for a side minigame inside a bigger and more complex gameplay, but this is literally the main activity of GMC. Click, watch your ship destroy the tile, repeat until your ship loses all hp. The special boon tiles and monsters that inhabit the depths of the different space objects try to create some differentiation, but quickly become boring after seeing them a bunch of time in different planets.
Even enemies quickly become repetitive and boring after a while. This is due to their simple implementation in the game, which usually only allows them to move around in very predictable ways and destroy blocks.

Verdict
Initially I feared that I wasn’t understanding the game properly, but after a good amount of hours I can definitely say that I made my mind about Galactic Mining Corp: I would definitely enjoy the tons of different upgrades and long game replayability IF the game’s main gameplay loop was an enjoyable experience. But it just isn’t. It feels to me that more effort was put into making the game longer through the many upgrade mechanics, than into the core gameplay and what it has to offer. A real shame, especially considering that the title offers good art and, again, great longevity.

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Overview
Distant Kingdoms is a new fantasy sim in Early Access state where you will have to manage a colony in which four different fantasy races will have to coexist: humans, dwarves, elves and orcs. Your task will not only be to manage the expansion and need of a fantasy colony, but also to control the exploration of the territories around it and the social interactions between the four different races that inhabit it.

I’ll Take the Elves Please
Before starting to build the actual colony, you will have to choose its starting race: yes, you will not be able to start a new village with all the four different races already available, mainly because it would be too complex to manage them all initially. The races are four and are all defined by different characteristics and boons: elves are scholars and are very good at extracting mana while dwarves, on the other hand, tend to be better engineers and have bonuses while working in mines.

Steady and Slowly
After the very first few hours it’s very easy to make an idea of the state of Distant Kingdoms: this is an ok title when it comes to city building, but with some flaws and, ultimately, nothing really special about it. Starting with the flaws of the game, there are way too many dead moments in which the only thing you can do is watching the screen and wait for resources to accumulate: this is due to the research system of the game, which tasks you with creating many, MANY, buildings which, especially early on, is quite demanding in terms of wood and coins.

The other flaw is the balance of the game that as of now is a bit off: prices of buildings and researches should be overhauled while some aspects of the game are almost useless while requiring resources that are hard to gather. In the latter section we can find totems, for example, some can boost productivity which, under certain circumstances, can be really beneficial for the colony, while others have different effects. One totem in particular boosts the happiness of the colonists around it, but an upkeep of 6 mana in order to boost the happiness of a bunch of houses from 66% to 67% is an incredibly high cost for an effect that has basically no impact.

Differentiation, Anyone?
Past the already cited flaws, the second big problem of Distant Kingdoms is that it has nothing too particular about it: the fantasy setting, besides some smaller mechanics and graphical aspects, can’t really be felt, along with the fact that you should be managing four different races. While I’m sure that the game will evolve (it’s what Early Access is for in the end!), right now Distant Kingdoms makes very little of the gameplay twists that should make it stand out. The fantasy setting is hard to notice and, especially early on, is limited to mana gathering, which is then used to power totems and portals. Even these two mechanics aren’t really game-breaking, with totems providing a boon to the area around them and portals acting as instant travel vectors between two points. Luckily once the city has been developed a little things change, with magical towers and dwarven drills coming out from the ground, but the city really needs to more “magical” early on.

Another shallow mechanic is the one that requires you to manage the four different races: as I already said, when starting a new colony you pick one single race, acquiring the other three later on in the game with the help of exploration parties. The only differentiation between different races is their needs in terms of resources and the production bonus they may provide to a building when working in it. While the production bonus can be really useful, there are little downsides when not meeting the needs of a specific race: they will not revolt or change the gameplay in any way but decrease the overall happiness value of your city: not really what I was hoping for.

Exploration
Another one of Distant Kingdoms’ highlighted features is exploration. Described as exploring a world filled with secrets, in which you will have to send out adventuring parties into the unexplored mists and help decide their fate through a choose-your-own-adventure style quest and event system, this is another poorly implemented mechanic. Exploration involves the creation of a party of heroes, which can be recruited once you build a tavern in the town. Recruiting heroes is very straightforward and I usually just pick the ones that have the most positive perks, while also balancing between a resilient frontline and a strong backline, assuming this actually matters in the game.

Exploration per se will only require the player to select a party and click on an unexplored hex of the map: this will send the party on an adventure, often triggering very short text-based events in which the player will have to choose between a few options. This system is not new to the videogame landscape and there are games that implement it really well (the first example coming to my mind being Stellaris) but, unfortunately, Distant Kingdoms tells uninteresting tales, leaving the player picking the option with the best bonus without even reading the story behind it after a few events. Once explored, a tile becomes available to build on and could grant access to the population of a different races that was previously undiscovered.
Most of the time exploration is limited to clicking on a hex and then choosing the best option of an uninteresting story.

Verdict
Not really a final verdict, as the title is still in Early Access, but I really cannot recommend Distant Kingdoms in its current state: the game is a rabble of poorly implemented and shallow mechanics that go along with very poor optimization. Unfortunately this time I can’t even recommend buying it at a discount: just wait some time and then decide for yourself if the new content is worth the asking price.

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