Recent reviews by Big Mike

Very good game with some flaws. If you're willing to invest the time, play the game until you hit Yorn, and you'll know whether or not this is the game for you. The gameplay you experience from North Vern until Yorn is pretty much the same gameplay you'll experience in the current endgame, albeit with larger numbers and greater difficulty. In my opinion, that core gameplay is what sets Lost Ark apart from from other Korean MMOs. The combat has a similar level of polish to BDO, meaning it's really ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ good. Unlike BDO, you actually get to use it really often, sometimes even against legitimately challenging enemies. Who would have thought making consistent use of your best mechanics made for a fun game?

Now, for the negatives. The base leveling and Tier 1 + 2 content can be no-lifed as a main game, but things slow down pretty dramatically in Tier 3. Getting a few alts to Tier 3 and using them to funnel resources to your main helps, but the only things to do in Tier 3 after your dailies/weeklies don't add very much to your character's progression. Throwing money at the game doesn't really help, since the gear upgrade system is the least fun part of the game; in fact, it can even hurt since increasing your gear score via P2W can cause you to skip perfectly fun content. The recent addition of a PvP vendor and a couple events has helped the game significantly, but the horizontal content pretty desperately needs better rewards or some kind of rework to make them feel more impactful.

TL;DR game's worth trying.

"Played" this for the memes. Almost every single menu has some way of bringing you back to coins (the microtransaction currency). Ran out of crystals for the 20000000th time today? Let me remind about how you can spend coins to buy crystals. Just opened a gift box? Here's another gift box, in the gift box, that costs coins to open and gives you even more resources. Just trying to open a menu? Here's an extra 10 more menu buttons that are literally just ads for things you can buy with coins.

Don't get me wrong. Seeing flashy animations, pretty colors, and watching numbers go up makes my brain give me the good chemicals. I can enjoy a good idle game or two. Just please, keep the constant calls to actions down. If I want to buy coins, I'll buy your ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ coins on my own time. Just stop making this ♥♥♥♥ get in the way of what little gameplay you actually have.

Amazing artwork, great music (especially whenever Orpheus decides to start singing), great storytelling, tight combat and overall great gameplay. I'd personally give very few games an actual 10/10, but this is definitely one that deserves that rating due to that fact that everything is so well polished.

I very highly recommend unlocking every weapon ASAP, since doing so unlocks different "aspects" for each weapon that can completely change how you use them. The aspects add a huge amount of variety and powering them up generally makes you less reliant on specific boons, opening up more possibilities for potential builds.

TL;DR: 6/10, 9/10 with mods, 10/10 with mods on sale

Base game is really unbalanced (ex: tradition is the only valid starting culture) and the higher difficulty AI cheats rather than acting more intelligently. Mods like NQMod/LEKMOD VASTLY improve the quality of the game due to buffing the less powerful options, making them actually viable at higher difficulties.

Although I said the higher difficulty AI cheats, it is actually fairly enjoyable to play against. It's sort of like being the nerdy kid in that got bullied in middle school and eventually became a billionaire. The early game is extremely cruel and you'll need to learn how to optimize your play just to survive it. Surviving the early game and playing the same way you did in the early game means you'll most likely come to outpace the AI in tech and army score, eventually stomping them in the late game. Very satisfying, but it gets predictable over time.

Multiplayer is very interesting, since world wonders actually become possible to get and wars become less of a tower defense game and more of an actual strategy game. Sadly, the netcode kind of sucks, crashes are frequent, and each game takes around 8 hours, meaning you'll realistically only be able to play a full online match a couple times per month.

TL;DR, this is the best solo d&d experience you can get.

After having finally finished a run, I can say without a doubt that this is one of the best games I've ever played. That being said, I'm pretty sure this type of game isn't for everyone.

If you dislike turn based combat, long-winded stories, or open-ended builds, you probably won't like this.

At the same time, even if you do like the above things, you may come to love/hate certain aspects of the combat. For example, the fact that regardless of where you are in the game, you're probably going to encounter a fight that you'll need to cheese. The particular fight that this happens in will depend on you, but at the time you'll think it's absolutely ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ until you see a video from some guy obliterating the fight solo/no lone wolf and realize that you actually could have just pulled some mobs away from the fight to make things easier.

But, if you can work past all of that, you'll find an incredible game with a playtime similar to Skyrim, but where every quest is actually well written instead of randomly generated.

On a side note, could Larian PLEASE make a separate version of the gift bag that doesn't disable achievements? I really hate the fact that I need to disable achievements just to run a bit faster out of combat.

Early access but updates are coming quickly. Mod support is great and the base engine seems good. Pretty sure this will be the new Warband as time goes on and more mods come.

Best Visual Novel ever made. The improvements to the english voice acting (aka hiring americans to voice the american soldiers) make it even better. Best part about it is that it turns Muv-Luv Extra from a mediocre slog into a genuinely heartwarming experience.

Long story short, throw your money at your montior now and buckle up for Mr. Bones' Wild Ride.

Really fun game when it actually works, but even after the 1.3 update, the framerate is still ♥♥♥♥♥♥ enough to say it doesn't work. My rig runs games like The Witcher 3 perfectly fine at High Settings, but the only way to even try playing this game is to set everything to "Very Low." Even then, the choppiness is unacceptable.

TD;DR: I hate saying this about a dishonored game, but don't bother buying this until you can get it for $15.

Probably one of the most interesting single player games that I've played so far.

But seriously, if d20 Call of Cthulhu (with a non-sadistic DM, of course) was an MMO, this would be it. Considering that it's only $30 when not on sale and that you can easily get over a hundred *fun* hours off of it (which, sadly, my steam profile doesn't reflect since I originally played before I realized that TSW was on steam) and that on sale it could even go down to $5, I can't recommend it more.

Long story short:
-Kinda bad combat system that takes some getting used to
-Cutscenes before a lot of quests (when the quest giver is human, of course)
-Long story quest that gives you an actual reason to go to the different zones (unlike a certain game made by blizzard)
-Non level-based experience system (you still gain experience, but you get a certain number of ability points or skill points after a set amount of experience that never increases; you get to choose where the points go, rather than being what the game wants you to be. Sandbox elements too good.)
-HOLY ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ♥♥♥♥ THE INVESTIGATION MISSION. THE ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ IMMERSION IS STUPIDLY GOOD.
-Press b to bring up a functional internet brower in-game (which is used for a lot of quests)
-The amount of effort put in by the devs is too damn high (http://www.kingsmouth.com/ = the website for the first town you go to. There are twitter accounts for important characters, and other websites for important companies)
-Immersion immersion immersion
-Stuff
-Things
-If its on sale, buy it
-etc

Yes, I recommend this. It might not have taken 5000+ hours out of my life like Maplestory or WoW, but I'll be damned if TSW isn't a good $30 game. Also, no subscription needed.