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Recent reviews by MaxBedlam

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No one has rated this review as helpful yet
19.9 hrs on record (0.3 hrs at review time)
Early Access Review
EDIT: After about a week since it released I was finally able to get into the game and play some matches.

I've been having fun with the game lately, for the most part. I like the maps, there's a lot of weapon customization and changing parts on guns in this game really does make a noticeable difference.

I was able to attach 3 different scopes on a marksman rifle. Did I need 3? Nope, but I could so I did. I realized very quickly though that in the heat of the battle it's way more convenient to juggle between only two though, haha.

The game also has "strikes" you can call in after you get enough points. You get those points from kills, capturing objectives and what not. Strikes include things like jammers, UAV, airstrikes, helicopter and various tanks.

The game currently only has two modes, TDM and Tactical Ops. First is self-explanatory enough, the second is capture area mode. There are 6 areas to capture split into 3 groups. In order to start getting points you need to own both areas within the same group.

There are 5 different maps. Now the thing is that apparently the game has had only two modes and five maps for like 4-5 years now so veterans of the game are unhappy about that. Personally for someone who started playing it now, I don't mind. But I do hope they plan on adding more maps and modes in not so distant future now that the game has launched, albeit in open beta.

Overall there's not a lot I can complain about with the current state of the game. I would like for them to remove that useless launcher.

Servers should prioritize putting people with the same ping in a match more because some people do teleport around or take longer to kill than they should, albeit it's not too common.

I'm unhappy with the vehicle balance, tanks just seem extremely overpowered and RPG does barely any damage to them, so the only way to destroy a tank is to use another tank or one of the airstrikes that can handle them.

I changed my review from negative to positive, I think the game is worth giving a try at the least. Not sure whether it has future, nor how long will I keep playing it, but for now I'm having fun with it every now and then.

BEFORE EDIT:
This open beta release is so sloppy it's unbeliavable. They released a 65 GB game without pre-download period and in such a way that you have to download their launcher through steam, and then download the game through their launcher that has abysmal download speed. It would take me about hour and half to download a game of this size through steam, it took around 16 hours through their launcher.

Then once I downloaded the game I couldn't even get into it without waiting in the queue, which is not a huge deal I guess. However once the game launched I got a "Failed to fetch interface data" error, whatever that means, which kept trying to "fetch" over and over again until eventually I got "Client authentication failure" error which closed the game.
Posted October 1, 2022. Last edited October 17, 2022.
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No one has rated this review as helpful yet
88.2 hrs on record
This is one of the best if not the best roguelike shooter I’ve ever played. It’s very fun in both single and multiplayer (2 people).

There are 4 different class archtypes in the game each having two classes for a total of 8 different classes, each class has its own active skill and passives. Before you start a run you can customize your starting loadout. You pick your starting handgun, two starting items and two modules (passives). There are starting handguns and items that all classes can pick and there are handguns and items specific to each of the 4 class archtypes. Also each class archtype has its own modules to pick from.

This game takes combat system to a whole another level. If you move while shooting your accuracy is worse. To reload weapon you have to eject magazine first, then reload it (you can customize controls in a way to do both with the same button) and you lose any ammo you had left in your previous magazine (unless you have certain upgrade on weapon that prevents that).

You can upgrade your character by finding upgrade chests, you find weapons in chests too and can upgrade them with upgrade kits and terminals. Every time you use a kit on a weapon its damage goes up and you get a choice of attachments to add to it up to 4 times. There are lots of different weapons and ammo types.

The game is pretty hard and often requires you to fight tactically rather than just mindlessly rushing into a group of enemies. Shoot from distance, hide behind cover, peak and shoot and repeat. You can rush into enemies too mind you, if you know what you’re doing. For example with guardian classes that have access to stun grenade as starting item I like to wait for enemies to group up closely together, then I throw the stun grenade and rush in with shotgun annihilating the group before they even get the chance to fire. There are lots of ways to go about combat in this game.

A must play for anyone that is interested in top-down tactical shooters!
Posted September 15, 2021.
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1 person found this review helpful
25.2 hrs on record
Yooka-Laylee is a 3D adventure platformer with 5 open-worlds to explore and a lot of stuff to do. As you collect pagies you can use them to expand each of the 5 worlds to make them even bigger opening up new areas. Collecting quills on the other hand lets you use them as a currency in shop to buy new abilities that will allow you to reach and do things you couldn't before.

With each world having different abilities you can buy, you won't be able to fully explore and do everything in each world the first time you enter. You will have to go to the other worlds, collect quills, buy abilities and then backtrack to previous ones to do things you couldn't before.

Overall I found the game quite enjoyable. The exploration was fun, the levels are for the most part well designed and varied, the story isn't anything worth writing about though and they break the fourth wall relatively often which might be a turn off for some.
Posted September 15, 2021.
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No one has rated this review as helpful yet
15.8 hrs on record
This game is fantastic! A proper retro shooter. It has a good selection of weapons with each of them having two different upgrades you can choose between. Weapons themselves are for the most part well done so I've actually found myself switching between several of them and enjoying the feel of each. There are also spells but I haven't really used any, aside from one that converts your mana into ammo.

There are supposedly 60 levels (didn't count myself) spread across 5 different chapters. Each chapter will have different theme(s), enemies and even picks-up have their sprites changed for each chapter so they fit the theme.

Gameplay and gunplay are both very fun. Environment is pretty well varied, you'll go through caves, castles, cellars, graveyards, sci-fi labs, towns and what not and in the end you'll go through hell itself.

There's a decent amount of secrets to find, throughout the game which will reward you with lots of goodies such as ammo, life-up, upgrade points and sometimes even a new weapon.

Difficulty wise the game felt just right on the highest one. I'd recommend either Hard or Hardcore for the veteran players of this type of shooters. Both are same in difficulty, but you get 3 lives and can find more throughout the game on hard while on hardcore you only get one life and can't get more. I personally beat it on hardcore right away on my first playthrough. Achievements are reasonable and it's easy to 100% as long as you're able to beat the game on hardcore.
Posted September 15, 2021.
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19 people found this review helpful
10.3 hrs on record (9.7 hrs at review time)
Crown Trick is an interesting turn-based roguelike with great artstyle and some interesting changes to the formula that sets it apart from other games in the genre.

You play as Elle, a human girl that forges an alliance with a talking crown, the guardian and observer of the nightmare realm.

Nightmares are dungeons and your goal like in any other game of this sort is to dungeon crawl and defeat the bosses to win the run. However this is where this game is different than others, for now you can't pick the difficulty, instead the game progresses through Days system.

On Day 1 for example the dungeon is relatively easy and you have a specific end boss to defeat. Once you do that the game changes to Day 2, you get a choice of three dungeons each with a different end boss and the game gets a lot more difficult as you'll fight more monsters who are also tougher and deal more damage and the game will also put a random dungeon trait on you (which is basically permanent handicap for the run).

Game also has progression between runs where you can use shards you collect during your adventure on various passive buffs and unlocks. They can improve your survivability and tilt the RNG slightly towards your favor. Personally not something I like in this types of games because I'd prefer the game to be balanced enough from the get go instead of you having to upgrade yourself to boost your odds, but whatever. It's not that bad in this game I guess.

As far as building your character goes there are three important things that come into play and you find them as you go through the run. Weapons which attack in different ways and get passive effects, familiars which you equip to give you skills (each familiar has 2 distinct skills it gives, you can equip 2 of them for 4 skills in total) and relics which give you all sorts of passive boosts.

With all that being said, for now I can't recommend the game for several reasons but I do think it has potential and you should keep an eye on it. Or you could just buy it if the reasons I'll mention now don't seem that bad for you.

Something I dislike the most about the game are forced handicaps starting from day 2. They are pretty bad and I hate playing with them, something like this should be optional and not forced upon the player. They involve things like making you take stackable extra damage for every turn you stand still and giving you negative elemental status if you don't move around often or a trait that makes you start with 5 elixirs (HP potions) but you cannot refill them anymore which puts a lot of pressure on you to not get hit by enemies.

Then there's gearing, basically aside from relics which are passive and you don't have limit on how many you can have the only equips that you'll be able to change are weapons and familiars. Familiars are mixed bag, some are good some are meh, I wish they were more balanced. When it comes to weapons you can only carry one at a time and often times the weapon you get at the start of the run or from the first shop is the weapon you'll use for most if not all of your run because weapon drops from monsters are always so bad you'll never want them.

Not a fan of the game getting harder and harder the more runs you beat either, especially not with the current game balance and handicaps being non-optional.
Posted October 20, 2020. Last edited October 20, 2020.
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A developer has responded on Oct 21, 2020 @ 8:41am (view response)
3 people found this review helpful
22.9 hrs on record (20.9 hrs at review time)
This is a great bullet hell shooter roguelike and I can't believe it's not more popular. Definitely an overlooked gem!

First things first, when you start a run you can pick between 9 different mechas, 12 if you have DLC (which is totally worth buying). Each has different stats and starting loadouts. There are 4 different difficulties and normal difficulty is actually fair and is completely skill reliant unlike with some games in the genre.

When you just start there are only 5 floors to go through, each floor having a boss. Once you beat 5th floor boss three times you unlock 7-floor runs. The boss of each floor is randomly picked from a pool of bosses, except for 5th and 7th floor where bosses always seem to be the same (I did see a gold variant of the 5th floor boss but aside from appereance it felt same and I saw a different fight scenario with the 7th boss on youtube). Each floor feels right in size, they're not too small nor too large in my opinion.

Gameplay is great, this game is a proper bullet hell game, especially when it comes to bosses because most of them will just fill the screen with all sorts of projectiles and you'll have to slowly maneuver around them while attacking the boss at the same time, you won't get any breaks until the boss is dead. Sometimes they'll fire fast projectiles as well so you'll have to speed up with run button. The combination of having to move slow and sometimes fast feels right and makes the game challenging but fun.

Each floor has several teleporters across rooms to speed up backtracking. You can also run like I mentioned before which lets you go through rooms pretty quick.

Much like similar games you can find item rooms, sacrifice rooms (trade HP for items), different kinds of shops and what not. You have primary weapon which has infinite ammo, secondary weapon which uses energy (refills once you change room), missile launcher (high dmg, can destroy enemy bullets, opens secrets but you have to pick up missiles for it), consumable item and special attachment.

Also every time you level up you can pick one out of three different perks the game picks at random to offer. There are all kinds of perks, some will buff various stats, some will give you extra keys, one will let you see entire map and all secrets for the entire run and bunch more.
There are also mech-specific perks for each of the mechs, aside from one which doesn't have its own perks (nor can it get perks from other mechs of course) but requires less experience to level up.

Overall a game I would highly recommend to anyone who's into this kind of games. Way worth the price, both when it comes to the base game and the DLC. While the variety in this game is alright I wish this game sold better so we'd get even more stuff, whether for free or through another paid DLC which I wouldn't even hesitate to buy.
Posted September 13, 2020. Last edited September 13, 2020.
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12 people found this review helpful
39.4 hrs on record (33.6 hrs at review time)
After ~5 years of early access this game is finally out and it was definitely worth the wait. I started playing it on the same day it launched as full release and it was the only game I played until I've beaten it and since I usually jump between several games that says a lot.

I have to say when I saw the game has only 4 classes I was worried it will have weak variety in builds, but boy was I wrong. Each class has 4 skill trees each focusing on a different element. Each active skill node in the tree will usually have between 2-3 skills you can choose between for that slot. You can change the skill in that slot whenever you want and since you level the slot all skills available in that slot will be same level. Furthermore there are decent amount of gear sets and individual items that impact (often drastically) some of your skills. So the game has fair amount of variety in how you build your character but at the same time manages to be relatively simple and easy to get into unlike some games with high complexity like Path of Exile and Grim Dawn in which new players are just going to scratch their head wondering how to approach building their character.

You can also reset your skill and mastery trees with an NPC for free whenever you want and the game is pretty generous with loot drops on higher difficulties (you can switch between difficulties when loading your character) so you won't have to stress over messing your build up and you won't have to grind in order to get viable gear. Grinding comes after campaign when you start going post-game anomalies.

Aside from all that the game has some nice quality of life features like customizable loot filter, scalable UI and much more to mess around with in the settings. Very impressive for an indie game primarily done by a single person.

Anyway, gameplay wise the game was enjoyable. When it comes to the story there isn't all that much. It's not dialogue heavy and what is there isn't going to amaze you, however every now and then it might amuse you with something silly.
That's alright though because this game is clearly focused on the gameplay and that part was done well.

Overall I would definitely recommend this game and at a full price at that. The full release is cheaper than I expected and it's definitely worth the price.
Posted August 26, 2020. Last edited November 25, 2020.
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2 people found this review helpful
4.8 hrs on record (4.4 hrs at review time)
This could have been such an amazing game but they screwed it up.

The artstyle is amazing, the story is alright and the cutscenes and narrator are great.

So what's the problem? Almost everything else. Combat isn't really that good, at least not in the beginning. The biggest issue is that the game is designed in a way that you have to grind and grind and grind same area(s) over and over again to level up to the point where you're able to actually beat that whole area and move on.

So most of your gameplay will be going into a dungeon, killing as many enemies as possible to level up, die (most likely without being able to even get to the boss of the dungeon) then spend your gold on global upgrades for characters in your base and repeat, repeat, repeat until you're leveled and buffed up enough to be able to beat that whole area and the boss.

Then you hit fatigue with the character you've leveled and have to play someone else starting from zero (aside from global upgrades from the base) which will result in a lot more grinding with that character before you get him/her to be viable enough to move through the content.

And when you do level that character up enough to be viable in the area you're in (s)he will probably hit fatigue by then and you'll have to switch to someone else.

That's such a horrible game design in my opinion that it ruins the game for me completely and it's just not fun to play when you know you have no chance of advancing through the game until you grind up enough.

Having to grind in order to advance is an alright system in JRPG's and similar, but not in an action hack & slash roguelike where in my opinion your skill should be the most important part and the side upgrades should just be a nice little bonus to make things a bit easier on you, rather than being absolutely mandatory to even get out of the first areas.
Posted August 10, 2020. Last edited August 10, 2020.
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1 person found this review helpful
433.3 hrs on record (229.1 hrs at review time)
After playing this for about a month now I can confidently say that this is the best match 3 RPG I have ever played. And even though its been out for several years this game still gets updates, both new content and quality of life improvements.

There are over 700 troops, almost 300 weapons you can equip on your main character and 27 classes with more stuff being added. The best thing is that this is not one of those gacha games where you have a ton of characters but only few of them are actually viable. While the balance in this game isn't perfect and there's definitely a lot they need to improve, you do have huge amount of variety when it comes to building strong and viable teams.

The game is also not P2W, but you could say it is G2W (guild to win). Joining a guild will get you bonus stats and as guild members contribute gold towards tasks you'll get hundreds of keys for troop boxes every week along with some other resources. There are also some guild-only events like Boss Rush, Tower of Doom, Guild Wars where you can earn all sorts of rewards for participating.

There's a lot to do in this game. Even after you do all the kingdom quests (most of which are amusing to read through) there are always some events to do. Some alternate on a weekly basis, some are thrown in on certain days. There is no stamina system unlike in most gachas so you can play whole day if you want to.
Posted September 12, 2019.
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3 people found this review helpful
12.8 hrs on record (12.8 hrs at review time)
This game is awesoooome! It's an action-adventure platformer with cute artstyle, good animations and silly quests and dialogues.

You will explore 5 different worlds on your quest to save your dad from antagonist who is kidnapping old folks to turn them into hot dogs for his evil plan. Along your way you'll meet all kinds of weirdos that will give you quests, which just happen to be in areas you need to go to for progression of main objectives anyway.

I liked the level design. It's simple but interesting and fun to go through. Each area in the world has five stages and your goal in each stage is to reach the well you'll use to travel to the next stage and so on until you reach the final stage which will have an item you need for main quest. Each area has one collectable sticker to find in one of the stages and each stage has one cupcake to find which you will use to feed fat cat that poops eggs containing hats for your main character and his companion rock.

One thing I liked about the level design is that you will never get lost. Even if you need to backtrack the game will always give you clues on where to go. Sometimes it'll spawn coins, sometimes platforms or other things.

Combat is simple, you just mash the attack button and sometimes dodge or jump over enemies. You can also throw several types of bombs at enemies. Your rock friend will sometimes attack enemies as well. Even though it's very simple the cool attack animations make up for it so it doesn't get boring, at least it didn't for me.

The only thing I have mixed feelings about is how easy the game is. Most stages aren't very dangerous when it comes to hazards and traps unless you're not paying attention, same goes for most enemies, especially since you have bombs. On top of all that potions in your inventory are automatically used if anything would deal lethal damage to you, preventing you from dying as long as you have potions.

I can't say I hate the game for it though. It was kinda refreshing, relaxing and fun experience making it a perfect game to play if you're burned out by difficult ones. Overall I can't recommend it enough, as long as you like silliness and don't dislike games that aren't challenging.
Posted August 8, 2019.
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Showing 1-10 of 30 entries