Recent reviews by Dairuka

Minecraft may be your daddy, but Wurm Online is your Grandpa.

Ymir is the next evolution in the classic Sierra, Impressions and Tilted Mill style of city building game. Starting from a lowly stone age group of "Porcos", a race of Orcs and Pigmen, you are tasked with the efforts to guide the newly founded civilization from it's hunter-gatherer roots, to a grandiose medieval city in the Iron Age and beyond.

Ymir is complex on the same level as Rimworld, and Dwarf Fortress. There is no hand-holding in Ymir, and you are expected to research your way through the first steps of a game made difficult by design. There are many pitfalls and quirks in the researching system that could leave newer players stuck in the Stone Age and restarting. An example would be Agriculture, perhaps the most important early game Technology. Agriculture is hidden behind a trigger of food production deficits and over-taxing the limited food resources afforded to you. Such an odd requirement could leave a reckless person restarting over and over without ever triggering the lofty research once the starvation ramps up and the loyalty goes down. This requires the player to always be vigilant, and to be prepared to wade through the game's Discord or Wikipedia for vital information that isn't provided or hinted at in game.

To the single player enthusiast, you can expect a barbarian rich experience reminiscent of the Caeser series, without any of the added diplomacy or trading that is encouraged in the Multiplayer experience. This is due to the fact that Ymir currently does not have any functional AI. The gameplay still shines as you struggle to make your way up the technological ladder, and it can be every bit as difficult alone as it is next to a warmonger in multiplayer, thanks to the increased number of Barbarian attacks for solo players.

To the multplayer enthusiast, you can feed your warmongering ways on the overpopulated main servers, where the battle royale continues to this day. If you prefer a more peaceful or co-op approach, there are a multitude of privately run servers by many fans that can be found on the game's Discord where griefers are weeded out by moderators, and server-rules prevent stone age wipes.

As of now the game has a lofty price of $34.99, but I can wholeheartedly say to the hard-core Dominions or Europa Universalis fans, this game is worth every penny. To everybody else who isn't enthralled by countless hours of micromanaging, and tweaking - Watch a few videos first, and then decide if this game is for you.

More than a thousand hours of gameplay for $30.

I'm glad I only paid for the demo... The auto-aim and latency allows enemies to lock onto you around a corner, long before you even see them. I can't in good faith endorse a game that handicaps Mouse and Keyboard gameplay to the point where the only way to play this game is with a controller.

Do not buy under any circumstances.

Conquest of Elysium 3 is a fun and addicting game that focuses on empire building, randomly generated events and row-based stacks of doom. Each class plays the game entirely differently, and there are plenty of resources to collect for each specialized class or champion unit, meaning you're always on the hunt for more, and you will never be happy with just your initial borders. The learning curve really isn't that high, predominantly because the hardest parts involve figuring out how to garrison troops effectively as well as the different strengths and weaknesses of the randomly generated monsters guarding resources on the map. Everything after that is simple common sense. (Attacking a Hydra with only 10 generic soldiers? You deserve to lose. Duh.) At the time of purchase, this game was only $9. So there is no excuse, as Conquest of Elysium 3 is well worth any strategy gamer's collection, especially after they get bored of the guaranteed classics like XCOM:EU.

Sequence takes the traditional crafting and leveling elements of RPG's and mixes them together with Rhythm on three different screens to be shuffled through to maximize your mana-growth, damage and defense. What really makes this game shine is the mass amount of geek humor that covers the entire storyline. One could easily say this is an homage to those early 90's PSX gamers who spent countless hours infront of the TV playing Parappa the Rapper and Bust a Groove. This game is a definite buy for anybody who remembers and enjoyed playing those two games. The only real flaw to Sequence is the general elevator-esque feel to the very little music in the game, and the poorly thought out randomly generated number system that governs the drop rates and crafting rates. It was obvious the fairly annoying RNG was made to prolong the span of what is otherwise a relatively short game.

Interesting how a game that was designed for the consoles actually turned out a thousand times better on the PC. Seeing as The Last Remnant came out on the PC almost a year after it's 360 debacle, it's impossible to find a viable and credible review that does it justice. The Last Remnant is a JRPG Grinder's wet dream. It has all of the fixings to make a spectacular main course. A cheesy japanese stylized plot. A bunch of hot warrior babes. Plenty of shiny attack sequences that bedazzle the eyes. However, what makes this game really shine is the battle system that is unlike anything you've ever experienced before. You get to control multiple parties, with up to 18 members. Each party's actions is controlled by you, with a predicament and random number generated twist and the battles are challenging, and, epic.

It's almost unimaginable how fast this game's cult following has grown over the years. It began much like Minecraft, being sold literally in it's stages of it's infancy, alpha and beta - with early adopters receiving extremely early access to the development of what has become a masterpiece. Now with Mount & Blade's first expansion, Warband, we get to see first hand just how far this iconic title is willing to grow with improvements to the User Interface, a new world to explore, and the ability to conquer all that we oversee - as lords, as kings. Yes, finally we get to strike out on our own and cut a swath through the nobility to rise as the King of Kings. Doing so has never been more fun, thanks to the multitude of quests, and very refined siege maps to fight upon. Lastly, the multiplayer is very polished, competitive and addicting. This is one title that is simply hard to put down.

Dead Island is a sleeper hit that bellyflopped on it's first attempt at the springboard, only to bounce back on it's second set with a flawless Reverse 2 and 1/2 twist. The early scores from the judges are misleading, and often times the judgest themselves misunderstood as to what Dead Island intended to be, merely because it's something unique without trying to directly clone the games it makes homage to. Made up of one part Left 4 Dead, one part Diablo and one part Dead Rising - Dead Island reminds us that Zombies aren't just easy pickings for the everyday sharpshooter or mage, they're the makings of a true apocalypse that deserve respect and fear. Tack on a fun as hell 4 player multiplayer mode, and you might find yourselves with that next great LAN party game to fill the void a lack of Left 4 Dead DLC's has left in your hearts.

Skyrim is literally the first Elder Scrolls game that I've actually enjoyed directly out of the box, without any mods. While the User Interface takes some getting used to - the leveling system has been ironed out to remove the repetition needed for minimizing and maximizing one's statistics. Now, everything is streamlined to provide levels and rewards for players actually playing the game - not grinding up skills in preparation to play the game. Say goodbye to those long days conjuring up skeletons to level up one's blunt skill. Say hello to pure dungeon crawling bliss, with a dash of satisfaction in every cave and a pile of dragon bones to garnish. Skyrim is an instant classic that may one day go down in history as the best Elders Scrolls game of the five sequels to date.