Recent reviews by sacklunch

I backed this game years ago and had minimal hopes like with a lot of indie RPGs, except the more saw of the game and it's demos over the years it made me realise this game was really going to be special. Now that release is here my expectations have been blown out of the water. This game is a fantastic blend of retro and modern CRPG design.

The writing is also shockingly good for a mostly one man project, it does so much to set the tone. The pixel art can be messy but it's undeniably pretty, definitely a huge step up from original demo. Combat is quick, tactical, and quite deadly (in a good way).

Honestly It's a great game for CRPG fans especially those who love some old school Charm.

I backed this game on indiegogo since it looked interesting and I loved the old school style of it. This demo was my first chance to play it before release (I'm a low level backer so no beta or such for me). I have to say I'm actually really happy with what I'm seeing so far. The grid movement is seamless and fast which makes getting around breeze, combat is turn based and take place on the map, the atmosphere is thick and foreboding, and the writing is a whole lot better than I expected it to be. Usually retro style rpgs have serviceable writing, but here I was actually really enjoyed reading dialoge and not just scanning it for important parts. I have a feeling I'm really going to enjoy this game when it comes out.

I want to start by saying I really did want to like this game. I have been looking for an open world game using D&D like rules for a while now and I really wanted this to be the one to starch the itch. Alas while this game has potential it is held back by a lot of flaws.

Pro:
- Lots of Character creation options, and more coming with updates

- Game is still being actively worked on

- Great variety of items, mundane and magical

- The crafting system is very robust and for the most part gives intensive to break down magic items rather than just selling. I liked that dynamic. (sadly the system is hindered by two massive flaws that make this robust system way too hard to use, see the cons)

- You can trade to make money without combat.

- The core of the combat system is well done with lots of player options in terms of actions and spells you can do.

- Really intuitive controls in combat for character actions. Right click to get really useful menu. The ability bar at the bottom has amazingly customisation, but even more professional games bars to shame in terms of the options provided


Cons:
- While core combat system is solid, sadly combat itself is really really bland, repetitive, and way too grindy. The maps are really small, enemies generally have poor tactics, and early game you will be fighting the same stuff over and over again.

- Dungeons are all the same and really boring. No puzzles, no interesting designs, themes, just move around looking for monsters to fight, while being spammed with boring trap and lock picking checks. Made worse be the fact that dungeons tend to be made of many rooms and most are empty.

- The crafting system would be great but two massive flaws. First you lose the resources you collected if you fail the crafting check, and you lose the magic item you were enchanting if you fail. This often results in you losing really hard to get or expensive stuff that is really frustrating. Now this would not be so terrible if you only had to craft when your chances were good, but no you need to grind the freaking crafting system because of the skill proficiency system. (see below)

-The skill proficiency system: Some skills (not all) require your character to use them to get the skill points raises. The skill points to get when levelling up only raise the cap on those skills, it not actually increase the skill roll. To get that you need to use the skill and I mean you need to use the skill a lot to just increase one level. For skills like disable device that naturally get used all the time, it's just annoying. It's the crafting skills that really make this system garbage, since crafting take resources and money that you lose when you fail your check. So you have to craft a lot to raise your proficiency, and since your skill take for ever to raise up you end up wasting so much of your hard earned loot. Crafting could have been really rewarding but instead it turned into a grindy pain in the ass.

conclusion: This game does have potential, but the dev really needs to make the experience less repetitive, grindy, and most of all scrap the skill proficiency system.

A fun, fast, and challenging platformer. I love the duel art style mechanic, and the games sense of humour. The main downside I can mention are that some areas require way to much back tracking (often through areas that are not easy to traverse) and some times save spots were a little bit too far from very challenging areas. Overall it's a very fun game and I greatly enjoyed it.

This game does what all good retro style games should do, it captures the spirit of those old classics while bringing in modern design to improve where those old classics failed. CrossCode hearkens back to many SNES classics like the Secret of Mana, Terranigma, and many others, except the game plays much better than those older games did. The puzzles in the game brought me back to playing Golden sun of the GameBoy Advanced. I really enjoyed my time with this one.

Pros:
- Game looks great, but I'm biased since I love pixel art.
- fast paced combat that avoids becoming nothing more than button spams (looking at you tales series).
- Challenging but smart puzzles that feel really rewarding when you finally solve them.
- Charming story and characters. Don't go in expecting great shakes, but it still is very enjoyable.
- There is lots of exploration and hidden rewards to find on in each area. The area design in general is really good.
- Lots of content for the price. I took me around 55 hours to beat them game.
- The Dev are still supporting the game with some post launch content.

Cons:
- Some of the Dungeons are just too long. Not major issue but they could get over whelming puzzle wise.
- A few of the puzzles felt unfair (though the new difficultly adjuster added in recently helps negate this)

If you liked the old Commandos games, Desperatos games, or Robin Hood: Legend of Sherwood, then your going to love this game. I will call this style of game realtime stealth stratagy, since that seems to roughly fit. These games are generally quite hard, and require quite bit of saving/loading, but their is nothing quite like finally finding the weak point in guards an exploiting it. These very much are slow methodical games, but if your willing to take your time they are a lot of fun.

This game has a lot of potential but also too many problems. First of all the match making is terrible, I'm being match with players who have access to much more powerful parts than me. I'm talking I barely scratch them and they destroy me in a only a few hits. Note I have only played a few matches, but there is always a few powerful players in a match. They tend not even to be evenly distriputed either. One match had littlerally all noobs on one side and prefectly constructed powerful bots on one side. Honestly this kind of match making is going to drive away new players in droves.

Bot Vice gives me just the funnest feeling of early nineties arcade nostalgia, This just has the look and feel of an arcade game from that era while at the same time being a unique concept. So It is nostalgic without being just a copy of more traditional arcade games. I did find the game to be very diffcult and the controls very jarring initially, but after 20 minutes or so I got into the swing of it. It really is a fun little game and it deserves more attention than it's getting. It is fantastic playing in quick bursts when you don't have much time.