Recent reviews by Shocky

Not the most complicated game, but do you get a sense of exploring and expanding across Mars? Yup, and you can do it while winding down from other things. Would be cool if we got to go to other planets with unique biomes, but there is plenty of challenge on Mars for now.

If I were to rank cardgames I enjoy in general or with a mug of coffee / tea:

1 Trials of Fire
2 Slay the Spire
3 Monstertrain
...Griftlands? Not yet tried, but heard good things.
Hearthstone
Tainted Grail

*See playtime, hm maybe play this one again.. Not that old, checks release date... FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF'k

A great game that mixes; Heroes of might & magic mixed small amounts of civilization. So a perfect game that always remains one of my best gaming experiences.

Good fun, as long as you don't mind the characters! They are alternate versions of movies and cartoons. You find skins for all those versions ingame hidden away, no ingame store payment for those.

Gameplay wise I would say it's 7 or 8/10 that gets upgraded to 8 or 9/10 simply because there are no other games like this, with mass effect being a bit dead.

Huge bonus is all the options to adjust combat difficulty, setting by setting. Feel the group-up is a bit long, well set autowin on it and it goes a bit faster. Hate quicktime events? Remove em in accessibility options.

Levels design are real eyecandy (photomode available btw) and kickass soundtrack makes me really wish for more content.

Fast loading, no issues, runs smooth.
It's AA level kind of game, I had none issues or bugs after 31 hours played doing most side quests. Ignored the pure fetch quests (they got their own category in journal).
Guessing I got 10-15 hours left, and that is fine. Not all rpgs need to be 150 hours long.

Main quests are good, and takes some twists and turns depending on characters and factions you interacted with in side quests as well as main.

There is a lot of maps/zones, but with fast travel from camps etc. It feels right amount of time travelled. Beasts can be sneaked or ran past just fine a lot of the time if you can’t be bothered.

Voiceacting has surprised me, much better than I expected. Sure the natives sounds weird/funny, but it was clearly a choice to add to the atmosphere.

8/10 game, mostly due to the reused buildings and environments in cities, samey monsters and the loot could have been better balanced, preorder bonus has unique stat boosts which are useful the hole game because no other gear dropped has them. Could probably nitpick more, but it’s all minor stuff.
Will need to finish the game to see.

Update: 42 hours in final counting, the game has impressed me enough to bump it up to 9/10.

Feels like a baldur's gate 2 to me, but without outdated and frankly annoying mechanics that was commonplace at the time.

Fixed the issues with 1, such item stats not stacking (only some unique buffs don't stack I think) and giving nice features such as recasting spell during channel before it goes off.

Resting is now a lot less forced on you because class abilities are cast per encounter with empowering boost available (Once per combat use spell or skill with 10+level extra of power or regain used 1 level across all once per encounter abilities during combat) to regain during rest, strong food buffs are still available to use on difficult fights. Resting is rewarding, but not forced on you with only notable exception to heal wounds. As it should be in my opinion.

Multiclassing and achivements unlocking points to buy boosts for next playthrough (optional) as well the main quest structure makes replaying potential great.
There a multiple factions to be friendly with or to fight against, some of the backstabbing potential could be better, however it still offers you a choice of how you will shape the islands.

POE 2 ain't perfect, but I like it a lot for what it has and potential for future content since the proper rpgs are far between, even more so with some pirate theme set in a archipelago.

A really good point and click games final chapter. Game length is nice and short, they don't throw many nonsense riddles like some earliere point and click games do. Soundtracks also well worth a listen!

+ Best looking RTS I have played, mindbogglingly detailed maps.

+ Cities actually look like a city, as in gigantic that truly capture the magic of this world. Imposing castles, towers and keeps, mysterious ruins, tropical islands, deep jungles, creepy swamps and scorching deserts are areas you will explore.

+ Think I’m almost done with campaign, but I don’t think I have discovered 70% of the secrets in this game. Even if I go looking through the maps to remove all fog of war the maps, there stuff that are still locked and I have no clue to unlock.

+ Good Campaign that realize your heroes becomes demigods in power towards the end and reflect thus in dialogue. Your heroes will at the end lay waste to large armies.

+ Runs really smooth on my computer, however I do have Intel Xeon CPU E5-1650 overclocked slightly to 4.3 GHz, which I guess is unusual and helps a lot. Geforce GTX 970, 2x8 GB 2.4MHz DDR3 and on Kingston SSD a400.

+ Modding/mapping tools, however I have not tested it.

- Still some bugs in the later end of the campaign, but I saw nothing for the first 35 hours or so.
- Skirmish mode is in, but a small number of maps, items and heroes are bit generic. Maybe have slider for how many levels heroes can get, so we can have deeper talent trees?
So for now, nitpicking on minor stuff that I guess will be fixed.

Overall, don’t expect blizz sc2, with multiple death animations on units etc etc. However this is about as good as we can expect from someone else with a lot tighter budget. And that is a high praise.

Wasn't superhyped when I saw the this, but giving them a try I must admit I like using the Colony ship in late game to set up an offensive portal to send several fleets in, right after it to enemies doorstep. You can't make a portal in their system, however a empty system right next to it will do fine. Besides dealing with petty pirates are pretty easy when you can portal around the main fleet.
Also like the boarding tech (among others), even having a few ships with it, I grabbed good amount of ships during the game.

I have not played the game before patches, but I feel current experience is a very polished one. I felt really immersed ruling my space empire/cartel/fleet of ark ships (played 3 races).

One thing I wish for is more faction/races, guess they are dlc candidates because of graphics and the quest chains each of them have. Just please be reasonable priced.

Second is general quests and perhaps end game events, guess there is one with academy regarding resurrecting space baddies, but I have never seen it being completed even if most of the places was controlled by one faction? I have sorted of won those games before every single checkpoint is controlled.