Recent reviews by Doomi

it is stealth if there's nobody left alive to spot me

imagine, if you will, a game that looks like a unity asset flip
this very same game is a survival crafter much like ark and a million other copycats
this same game releases in early access, while making huge promises, and including a new element in the form of not-pokemons to catch and enslave in factories

anyone who's spent so much as a few minutes caring about the state of modern gaming would see all this as an immense red flag, a game like this should, by all account, be destined to be a garbage cash grab meant to make a quick buck before the devs run with the money

and yet, palworld is all this, but it works. It's an incredibly fun, albeit rough around the edges, game that defies the odds, taking all of these red flags and combining them in just the right way that not only do they all work together, they're incredibly fun to play with.

I could list all the problems the game has, and it has many don't get me wrong, but i do believe these problems will be fixed as time goes; in fact most of my issues with the game are addressed in the 1-year roadmap; and even if the devs prove me wrong and decide to run with the money—which, given interviews with them i find highly unlikely, those devs are very clearly in it as a passion project—the game in it's current, first release early access, is genuinely fantastic
30 bucks for 50-60hours of fun is absolutely worth it

it doesn't have much of a story to speak off, there's no big end goal, but just progressing at all is fun because the game is wonderfully well designed to make you interact with ALL of its mechanics, and none of them are unfun

(ignore playtime, i originally got it on another platform and went to buy it on steam out of respect; this is the first h game i ever actually bought and will likely stay the only one for a very, very long time)

Demon roots is an rpgmaker game. It's also the best game i've played in years.

-Gameplay wise it's pretty classic rpgmaker, turn based combat, top down view all that. On the other hand every map is detailed and full of secrets and treasures to find, and the fact i never once got lost despite having a god awful sense of direction is a testament to how good the level design is at guiding you.

.-the art is great, and the maps often have quite a lot of original assets and images used to make them look better and more unique, this makes demon roots prolly one of the prettiest rpgmaker games i've ever played. Same goes for CGs, be they 18+ or not they all look really good. Though admittedly the actual content of those CGs is not for everyone.


-The music is absolutely amazing, and is used perfectly, there's never a scene where you go "hold up this feels out of place", and we have Shade to thank for that.

-The 18+ content is really limited so if you want a porn game this ain't it chief, what's there i feel is mainly good at reinforcing the themes of the story rather than anything else.

and then there's the story

--Spoiler free--
Demon roots' story is amazing, one of the best things i've had the pleasure of experiencing in many years. You play as deathpolca, a petite demon girl with amnesia who'd been spying on the human world for a century or so to prepare for the demon's invasion as a response to their world dying.

Over the course of the story you find yourself joined by 6 other characters, and every single one of them feels unique, they all have their own unique personality, goals, motivations, fears, traumas, sense of humor etc... essentially, they genuinely feel like actual people and this applies to almost every single character in the game, protagonist or not.

As the story goes, you see more and more of the world of demon roots and boy is there certainly a lot to see, every area feels different from the last with it's own atmosphere and culture, one day you'll be fighting in a wasteland full of barbarians who enjoy torturing people for fun, the next you'll be in a massive merchant city planning a coup d'état.
The story has 5 chapters + a side story, though there's a twist here that i won't spoil

---SPOILERS FROM HERE---
The characters are actually really quite deep, let's take the main protagonist Deathpolca for example, though she acts like a dominant uncaring demon it's immediatly clear she doesn't want the war. Polca isn't a warmonger, she's simply terribly afraid of being left alone and that fear drives everything she does, she hides it due to her leadership role in the demon army requiring her to put up a strong front, but the mask breaks rapidly, especially when people she cares about become hurt and ESPECIALLY towards the middle of the game during the berserker drug incident in which she's forced to kill demons she developped a close bond with. And this applies to every character, they all get their own personal traumas and fears, and they all get their own arcs that allows them to keep moving despite those; ange hates herself for being too weak to protect her queen so she becomes an unbreakable shield, sarasa spent her entire life imprisoned, dreaming of travelling the world but refuses to abandon her fellow students, diana joined the demons in hope of being able to kill her father again despite the fact that deep down she knows if she met him face to face she wouldn't be able to pull that trigger due to the close bond they shared when she was young.

I'll stop here to not analyze all the characters but i could go deeper on all of them.Characters aside, the story is centered around slavery and the reasons for it are actually somewhat justified, it's not painted as something good but the game does make sure you understand why the empire would do such a thing, namely to keep humanity from destroying itself through wars.
Interestingly here, i find the h scene to, while personally not my fetish in the slightest, really reinforce the world building, they actually show what happens to slaves that disobey and give you good reasons to avoid a bad end. Also interestingly enough you actually get a chance to physically destroy the place said bad end takes place in later in the story, which i have to say i've never seen in a game before but it's a very neat touch
--SPOILERS END--

In the end demon roots, though not perfect in every possible way, isn't an h game, it's a story first, and that story takes priority over everything else, but it's done in such a way that i find myself enjoying even the less refined parts like the combat simply because the story makes it interesting, it gives you reasons to fight hard and be invested. In fact i feel like if this game was in any other engine it wouldn't work as well, cause rpgmaker lets you use your own imagination to add to the action given it's limitations

10/10, genuinely the best game i've played in years

Elite is a game that wants to do many things while also doing nothing
the gameplay loop is simple; get a ship, get money to buy a better ship to make more money, repeat. And that's it, there's nothing else to do.

the problem comes afterwards, while there's many ways to make money, there are also objectively better ones like deep core mining, and regardless of what you do you'll always end up getting the best ship for what you're currently doing, which isn't difficult given the incredibly low amount of ships in the game and the fact there literally hasn't been a new one since i believe the game first released

the world also simply does not matter, players will never have any kind of impact beyond one off missions that change nothing, if all players disappeared, the world of elite would not change. the game tries to have a bunch of different political factions but none of them matter because nothing will ever change

add to that devs that never communicate and completely ignore the community, infrequent updates that add absolutely no content to an already boring and lifeless game, and you just get a genuinely bad game that i wouldn't recommend to anyone.

to make it worse, basic features that should've been in the base game and have been requested since the game first launched like being able to walk in the ships you buy, which again is literally the only thing you can do in this game, have not only never been implemented, but Frontier flat out ignores those requests, the closest to it has been odyssey, a buggy barely functionning mess for a dlc they sell at full price despite being released in a barely pre alpha stage, and even after patches it's still a boring dlc barren of any content worth the 35 bucks they ask for it

don't buy it

last prism go BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

yes

i unno what to say
is good

Stellaris is one of my favorite games and i've spent entirely too much time playing it, the game itself is a really solid sandbox, if you've played other paradox games you shouldn't go in with the idea of playing this like ck2 or eu4 and thinking you need to constantly plan for the future, stellaris is actually pretty simple, focus on getting more research and improving your current economy and you'll probably win, the fun mostly comes from all the options you have of getting there. From a fanatic xenophobe who focuses all their resources on a strong military, to a pacifist xenophile who prefers to form alliances, a megacorp whose only goal is profit regardless of what they have to do, a machine empire whose goal is to ensure all biological life is as pampered and happy as possible etc... there's too many to count.
Add mods in and the game becomes even better, especially with some of the bigger mods like Gigastructural or NSC(my beloved).


But then there's the devs
Now stellaris has 2 very distinct dev teams, the main one which comes up from time to time to develop dlcs and the update that comes along, and the custodian team which does relatively frequent updates every 3 months
both are irredemable ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

Starting with the main one, this is a paradox game so dlcs are never-ending, the problem is, they ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ suck ass. Not all of them mind you, especially the older ones like Utopia or Synthetic dawn are awesome. And Machine age, the most recent major DLC, is one of the best thing to ever happen to this game.
But then you look at Apocalypse, a dlc which adds a whopping 3 notable features that should've been in the base game(planet cracking, titans and pirates), yet costs 20 bucks. Astral plane which while i quite like it also costs 20bucks despite adding ONE feature, essentially a story pack.
Galactic paragons is worth 15, a bit better, but considering how utterly useless it is to the point i genuinely fail to see when you'd ever need to hire any paragon when your own leaders are often just better options.
Cosmic storm, all it adds is a random chance for your game to just end a decade in because uh oh, you rolled a nexus storm and now everything is just ♥♥♥♥♥♥ for 50 years as your planets revolt, your ships break down and your production disappears into the void, while every other storm is completely unnoticeable


And then comes the custodian team, a barely competent B team that produces either complete garbage, or barely noteworthy updates. Ocasionally there'll be a good one, like the Unity rework, but for the most part the game would be better off without them, even more so considering the fact that those updates always, ALWAYS break every single mod on the workshop besides purely visual ones.

frankly right now i wish steam had more of an "informational review" option because i can't realistically not recommend the game on account of being one of my favorites, but i can't exactly recommend it either in its current state.