Recent reviews by Owyne

Got this and End Times - Vermintide from a Humble Bundle and i have to say i was skeptical at first, mainly being offset by the amount of disk space both games require (85GB this one and about 51GB Vermintide 1, already including most DLCs that tend to give additional files like Collector's Edition, respectively of 2.6GB and 1.5GB for both titles) and having similarities with the famous series Left 4 Dead, but keeping in mind about what I liked and what I disliked about that game and getting a quick first look around, plus motivated by the fantasy-esque look that personally always charms me, I decided to give this other series a go starting by the 1st game, and yeah the charm worked;

Just like Left 4 Dead, you're part of a group of "forced friends" that are tasked with different missions in order to deal best with the cataclysmic situation, fending off hordes of enemies accompanied by less numerous but far more dangerous stronger versions of them, each specialized in a specific way to hinder the players further and that needs to be dealt with in a particular priority, helped by an arsenal of weapons (with the difference that you can't change/replace them during the mission), and other supporting goodies that you can pick up on the way like healing items, buffing potions and explosives.
Unlike Left 4 Dead, even End Times - Vermintide generally favors melee combat rather than ranged, with mechanics that help you deal with enemies on specific ways: normal faster swings with the classic hack and slash method that varies on the weapon type you're using, charged slower attacks that may help deal with multiple targets or for single stronger enemies (also depending on the weapon you're using), and a defensive system that consists in a block that helps negate damage from frontal attacks and a push that creates room between you and your enemies, and last but not least a tiny dash that moves your character on the direction you're moving except forward, helping you dodge specific attacks.

All of this flavoured by a loot system that may be sort of lootbox-esque, but it doesn't seem as invasive, isn't locked behind any kind of paywall, it's kind of generous most of the times and, most importantly, it depends on the collection of specific items called Tomes and Grimoires, items hidden through the mission that occupy specific inventory slots that have no use (with the latter even adding a team-wide health reduction debuff and not being replaceable unless destroyed, and thus lost), until the end screen where it improves the chest you earn, increasing the general chance of higher quality items when you'll open it.

All in all without further spoiler-risk descriptions, I can safely say that I fell in love with this game, giving me an alternative to a genre I didn't completely dislike, but that I didn't felt very engaged with because of some tiny details, that this series have fixed for me.
If you are interested in this game, consider grabbing or even dragging a friend or two (up to three) to play with as it's a bunch of fun; if you're short of them, public games can be an option, but consider progressing to some higher difficulties first where you'll have higher chances to find people willing to play cooperatively, and not rushing through the map even ignoring the collectibles previously mentioned;
If you have still doubts if you'll like this game or not, consider playing the previous game first Warhammer: End Times - Vermintide as it tends to be a lot more cheaper on discounts, and is generally a simpler version if you want to learn this game at a steadier pace.

People may hate the amount of increasingly paid DLCs available, the poor optimization, some game mechanics that are often tied to RNG (random numeric generated variables that make some favorable luck-based events more desiderable to the point of constantly restarting the same map over and over just to find that one event)
But one thing's for sure, this game is so unique and has so much content, many possibilities, alot of customization (except for the "endgame" difficulties) and many, many drills from the second-hand shop, that makes sure you can always have a good time even for just a few hours per day (nothing is more soothing than the sound of 3 drills playing the error sound at the same time); if you're looking for something that can have an interesting story mixed with an action genre, you should consider starting with the first game of the series PAYDAY: The Heist that started it all, even though the same maps of that game have been repurposed and recreated here.

A pretty short review and maybe lazy or overshadowing description, but that's how i want to keep it for this game as it holds alot more of sentimental value rather than a technical/detailed concept of game, and the occasional technical bugs that you may encounter will not impact your experience too much;

For a short summary:
PAYDAY 2 is an horde cops/SWAT/other armed organizations themed game, with a focus on objectives themed-maps (many unlockable by buying certain DLCs, but still playable if you join somebody's lobby who owns them already), where your goal in each map is to pretty much steal or "appropriate" of the riches stored in that place and make sure you get out with as much loot as possible/required, then buy customizations for your equipments such as weapons, skills, cosmetics and colors for both weapons(different than the weapon skins) and masks; you can complete certain missions using different approaches, mainly a Loud version where you will be forced to fight the endless forces of order or of a bigger organized crime , and a Stealth version where you'll have to use a more careful approach to the map and avoiding confrontations as much as possible while doing things silently, sometimes available/required only for a couple of minutes or for the whole duration of the heist.

Lastly but not least, the best soundtrack ever produced for a videogame.
Even with vocals. Even for Christmas.

It may be fun at first, but when you'll play your first games and will be matched in ever the lower rank tiers you'll notice how frustating is the balance of the game, and how unbalanced is the matchmaking itself: the newest released cards are always the most broken, so the most used and abused decks are built around these cards, and if you don't have a way to counter them, you better have them or you're just screwed. Basically a Pay 2 Win once the devs decide to balance those cards, and then repeat their mistake once again, like putting those new cards in the game without even testing them first.
Then we have the matchmaking, where basically the function is: the more you wait, the higher rank differences between you and the other players you're matched with (in case you're playing the duo mode)
About other "events" that weekly change, there isn't really much difference between the normal gameplay, other than FORCED (because this is the name of their first, and overall better game than this mess) mini-missions to do to gather more in-game currency, and battle passes of course.

Avoid.

Great game for both some sandbox building, where everything is a block, some of these are material for advanced furniture you can have in a house, and NPCs that give you even more building possibilities, but it's also a semi-RPG with a goal, many monsters to fight, weapons to craft, different and more difficult monsters you can find in diverse areas the game's world created (called biomes), and many difficult bosses with unique loot, and some of them capable of changing your world once defeated, for even more difficult monsters, bosses, and even more loot. All of this amplified even more by playing the world in expert mode (suggested to be played after you feel at ease with a normal world), with more loot, events, and a significantly difficulty spike.

This game has it all, in short terms you may call it "a Minecraft with content"

An exploration game at first confusing, where it tells you the story of some russian guys that apparently get lost on some mountain, then after all the details of such event you start the game right away in some village located near a forest where this event happened, but it isn't revealed at first why you are adventuring in that place just where the guys got lost, and getting lost is not so hard.

Also the game is extremely unoptimized, even at menu it rushes at 100% GPU on everything low, thing that not even triple A games can achieve on ultra... so just expect the stutters/FPS drops/pc overheating on just turning on the flashlight in this game.

Has been given freely, otherwise i would have asked for a refund right away.
Cannot recommend to buy as it is, at least not without a proper optimization.

Sacred Citadel is the result of Deep Silver claiming the trademark of the Sacred series that Ascaron Entertainment brought to us, and this turned the good old RPG open world from Ascaron into an Hack and Slash, Beat em up RPG of the Deep Silver.
This of course didn't really amuse most fans of the old Sacred playstile, which in my opinion seemed also an easier way to try and sell this trademark, as a free roam RPG game is alot harder to make it work correctly than a mere brawl game with limited sections to fight on, all of this added with a not so rich skills variety and equipment that only are different only from their value of attack/defense, depending on the according equipment piece, while in an open world RPG well made you may also have elemental attacks, different modifiers like difference from certain melee attacks and ranged attacks, etc.

With this little introduction we can finally get into the gameplay of this game.
Sacred Citadel is not so bad in it's genre, but also brings nothing new: you fight certain enemies in a certain area using a combo system where you produce two main attack moves that you can combine to do some preset moves that you unlock as you level up; after you defeat the enemies in your area you will move on another area, and so goes on until the game says you have completed the whole zone or defeated the end act boss.

It could have been better with a bit more work on the bugs, and maybe on more contents and DLCs, but this has been left as it is shortly after its release with just one expansion DLC that isn't even that great, especially for the glitchy fight of this stage's boss.

All said, i can say this is still better than Sacred Citadel 2 in some aspects (the next game Sacred 3 for me is supposed to be Sacred Citadel 2 by the way), but it's still not worth your money, as it will become boring very quickly.

Calling this game Sacred Citadel 2 would have been better, since it has an obvious similarity on gameplay with Sacred Citadel, so i will consider it as such and not to the fact that this is NOT the successor to Sacred 1 & Sacred 2 (which is true)
Sacred Citadel 2 is an Hack and Slash top-down view game which plays very similarly to the previous title Sacred Citadel, the main features are the following:

• upgraded graphics from 2D into 3D, the graphics are really great and astonishing, but too much work on this side made the game very poorly optimized,
  
• keeps the kind of "arcade" score system after completing each level which was on the previous title too, with a points system based on combos streak and kills, where in the other game was also based on how fast you completed the level and how much damage you managed to avoid,
  
• unlike it's predecessor, the emphasis on equipment and character statistics customization have been mostly removed and replaced with an easier and faster system where, when you reach a certain level, you unlock a certain weapon or skill that you can choose to equip for a mission, and so goes on for some kind of upgrades, which are all bought with "gold" that is too generously given from the levels you complete, resulting in a overflow of gold from the very early levels, even if you buy things that you don't actually use,
  
• last but not least, your set of attack moves in Sacred Citadel was vast and depending on combining certain keys that produced a certain more complex attack, and the same was to activate certain skills, while in this game you only have a 3 attack standard combo, a charged attack used to interrupt certain enemies, a defensive move (either a roll or a block) and two skills that you can equip on a single mission at a time, all of these bound to their personal button and with no emphasis on combining them in a certain order anymore.

Also, it may be just me, but it looks like that certain weapons and/or skills are overpowered compared to others, with effects such as letting you heal a big amount from every attack, making other choices poor compared to these strong ones, or even unviable to complete the level properly.

All said, i think this game is not bad, but the game has been made to look like it was that great (moreover this game has been placed on steam with a price of 60€), while also taking the name of a game that has nothing to do with this, therefore i considered this as Sacred Citadel 2

In my opinion, the first Sacred Citadel is better than this in almost every aspect, but depending on your tastes you might like this more. If you want to buy this wait for a sale to make it go at least around 4€, maybe even grab it with a friend, and be warned that all these changes made this a very tedious choice over its previous title.

It's like an ebook with choices.

The good thing is the writing, which is actually the only way you have to "play" this ""game"".
The narration will instantly immerse you in the story and what's happening in it, but it's also the only thing that you will ever appear to see. Or hear. You won't even have any sound playing in the background in any situation, so you should take care about that for yourself.

And what should characterize the gameplay by itself, which is a kind of dungeon crawler game where you're looking for the exit of it, it's what ruins part of this atmosphere, even if the game itself is very short (i've actually made all the possible choices/mistakes in around 4 hours of gameplay): there are a total of two actual turn-based battles with some monsters, where your only choice is to "Attack" the enemy in order to beat it, survive and continue the dungeon, and you will never lose any of these two fights because, between you and me, who want to lose in a game where, if you should lose, you'd have to restart the game and re-read parts of the story you've already experienced, thus causing a forced ripetitive boring gameplay? Nobody.

Not to mention the pretty easy ways to die while solving certain puzzles and riddles, at least for who isn't paying much attention in the reading itself or for who forgot a little but vital detail in the dungeon, or else you're likely to start over all the challenges from the beginning again.

In the end i don't feel like to pay 6€ for such game, not because it's bad or unpolished or else, just because it feels like i'm only reading or "hearing" a great game's narrative, but without playing that game itself, and this is how empty this one makes me feel.

A unique game that combines both fighting and puzzle-solving skills, with the icing on the cake of the co-op mode in which you can play with up to 3 friends to complete the levels, using both your wits and teamwork.
At first i thought it could be another boring "kill and solve this thing to proceed to the next level" game, but damn i'm happy that i were so wrong.

The puzzles are infact part that has been very well integrated into the battleground of your levels, it means that you will have to both fight and use a spirit with the shape of a sphere (your main tool to solve these puzzles) in order to beat certain kind of bosses, or just to open a door while running from a swarm of monsters or either avoid lethal environment present in the level, or even activate some for your aid.

Even the fighting part itself is pretty nice, 4 different gladiators to choose from, each with their own weapons and unique skills that you will earn as long as you progress into the game by completing the levels themselves and their respective timer to beat, or some "challenges" which will test your skills furthermore.

The requirements of this game are also kinda flexible, at the minimum of 2 GB ram i could've run this pretty smoothly, of course decreasing video quality, but with even more recent computers it can run decently at higher settings.

One of the best university projects that made into Steam, made with the Unity engine. Definitely a worthy game.

A little gem for some mindless killing fun or either a challenging horde fighting game to do with some friends or strangers, or simply by yourself, with the goal to survive many waves of monsters, until you and your teammates are the only living thing left in the map, with each wave getting tougher as more of these monsters will appear, together with stronger and nastier kind of them appearing as you progress in the game.

The player will be given a character provided with the basic pistol and basic melee weapon in the game, and as soon the game starts you will be able to use these weak weapons to kill the first handful of monsters. As soon as you've done with this first wave, you will be given the way to go to the Trader, which will sell you many more and way stronger weapons that you can use, instead of your standard cookies and milk.
Based on what "Perk" are you going to use, which is the skill level with a certain category of weapons that you can decide to specialize into, such as being better at using shotguns, assault rifles, or being better at healing or at using melee weapons, you will be given a wide variety of weapons that you should be supposed to use, but you can anytime change the kind of weapons you want to use, or completely change the Perk you're playing with. Each of these Perks will also give you a particular role in the game that you will easily find out just by playing it, which is also the way to improve said skills.

There are a total of 9 kind of monsters you can encounter during a full game, each with many skills and characteristics meant to pose the players a certain kind of threat based on how dangerous these enemies are, with one last final one that is meant to be the "boss" of the game, the stronger of them all and your final goal to beat the game.

In a summary this is the game, which can sound pretty simple and easy, but by playing in harder difficulties you will find out that it requires much strategy depending on the perks you and any of your teammates are playing, by the kind of enemies you have around and the situation you're in.

It may be a pretty old game and may have lots of DLCs, which are almost all cosmetic characters or weapons while just 2-3 are actually different weapons, but these aren't that great and is usually better to stick with the ones present for everyone in the game.
It's as of today a pretty fun game where many people are still playing on the servers, even with the new KF2 out.

If you like a decent good old game that has also a workshop for some game modding that adds some variety to the game, and also runs smoothly even on the oldest computers, you've come to the right page.