Recent reviews by HUcast

The game was pretty immersive at first, when I thought it was going to be a game about finding your dog and surviving. Then I realized it was just another slow romp down linear dark corridors reading notes left by characters with tragic backstories. Real original. The real kicker that made me stop playing was when I realized nothing would ever kill me. Your health regenerates and melee deals so much damage you can mince anything, or so I thought. The game then preceded to pull the ol' unkillable monster into forced after death cutscene. Wow, I was floored by the originality, yet another indi game that pretends to manipulate meta elements. this really is the epitome of horror. Skip this if you are looking for a engaging horror game that will test you, as it stands its just a well presented yet mediocre medium for a poorly written and unengaging story.

Wasteland 3 is a game that has the potential to be a more streamlined experience than 2, with many features exceeding it cleanly. However, the game is NOT stable, especially in multiplayer. They've released several patched that keep it from crashing but that's it. Me and a friend since then have had not one, but two quests stuck in a softlock state, unable to be completed. Getting the needed item required a save editor.

If you can make it through the very, VERY poorly coded frustrations, the game is a fun, but unbalanced adventure through the snowy mountains of Colorado.

Rating:
5.5/10 with bugs
7.5/10 without

Pathfinder Kingmaker: A long game, but one stretched too thin for my liking, on a combat system that doesn't really feel great.

I would recommend this game wholeheartedly by basing it off the first 20 hours or so, however, after that, many things start falling to the wayside. I'll outline what they are and why I felt they did so below.

Encounter balance:
Things may have been a bit weird when the game released, but now, the first portion of the game is mostly down pat, in most places. However, things soon seem to fall into the typical failings of pathfinder. Later on, many enemies have such a high degree of chance to hit that AC is meaningless on all but the most dedicated and meta made tank builds, if you have ever had the idea of using a greatsword and plate armor to absorb some melee damage, think again, that steel breastplate is about as protective as aluminum foil. Though these things are manageable, they are made much more frustrating by the fact that many mechanics that pathfinder was built in mind with aren't here. Five foot steps and withdrawals aren't included due to the real time nature of the combat. I won't go into detail explaining what that means, but basically, it means you can't get away from things without them getting a free hit, making the game feel very stiff even compared to a turn based tabletop game. As a personal example, I died the most in this game in a tomb filled with zombie cyclopses because they would often combine a crit and a regular attack in short order, doing over 140 damage on normal and killing my main character instantly. In contrast, the boss of the dungeon, which is a caster, died in about 2 rounds.

Variety in locations:
The game really seems impressive with the sheer number of locations and events your kingdom has to deal with, tons of pins on the map really get your sense of adventure going, at least early on. Though the illusion of variety was quickly dispelled for me when I saw what most of these actually were. The best example I can think of is a blip on the map, you visit it, and it's a cave. Copied and pasted block for block, the mirror image of all the other non-essential cave maps you've visited, tile for tile. Inside is a single group of enemies and a single body with some loot. This happens 4, 5, even 6 or more times with this cave alone. Not to mention this sort of map copy style is used for several other similar applications, such as a small clearing with, you guessed it, a monster and body.

Variety in Kingdom management:
I'll keep this one short, but know that the "Kingdom management" Boasted by this game, more or less falls into getting cards with a paragraph that you throw your highest numbered people at to resolve, giving you a good paragraph that gives you kingdom points, or a bad one that makes you lose kingdom points. Sometimes people will come to you and have you make a decision on how to manage something, and depending on what you say, it can change things significantly! Haha, just kidding, it just gives you different kinds of kingdom points. What do these kingdom points do you say? Well, I never really figured it out, besides making it easier to get more kingdom points and avoid game overs, I never really saw them having any effect. For that matter, any buildings you make with resources for your kingdoms aren't ever seen in gameplay either, they just look pretty on the map. but hey they give K I N G D O M P O I N T S !

Story:
Finally, on to the big one. Honestly, story in a game is pretty important, especially in a CRPG. Early on, it seems very interesting getting to claim the kingdom and being excited to rule it (this being before you know about paragraph above). You meet mysterious people and things that allude to the Stolen Lands being much more than what you see. It makes you want to explore (Before learning about the paragraph two up), and play a character. This is one category where I don't really have a huge amount to complain about, it was somewhat interesting, and my only real complaint is that I wish companions were much more active in talking about locations and had lots more dialog, they really are the most important characters in the game, and I wish they had more to say and do. While the story is decent however, much of the sense of progression is still soured by how little the kingdom management seems to effect anything.

Overall:
This game will get boring as the vernier of interesting things to do wears off, and you realize the above points. I'd say only play it if you really like pathfinder's combat system (Why though?), and if you don't, set it on easy and disable kingdom management, and cruise through the story. Otherwise you'll get stuck in what is essentially a whole bunch of bland filler content.

Game's load times were simply unplayable, and during any sort of load strain the audio simply gave up for up to minutes at a time. I have a decent set up and experience no such issues even with more intensive games. Can't recommend.

Full Metal Furies is a fantastic beam em up with puzzles balanced around and into the gameplay. The humor and characters are silly, but he jokes in this game range from subtle to incredibly obvious and silly humor that leaves you with a hand on your forehead, jokes consistant only to the current tone of the game. Puzzles make you think, and often take out a notepad, a refreshing break from games holding your hand on every challenge nowadays. The combat is no slouch either, and while I personally am not a fan of the colored shield enemy mechanics, many others enjoy them and they bring a frantic pace to combat. Okay, maybe I like them a little bit. Overall, Full metal Furies was a great experience that left me satisfied throughout, a feat few games today can attest to.

PS: I read about this game sold poorly due to poor advertising, very undeserved. If you devs read steam reviews, my heart goes out to you, maybe it will surge back later on eh?

Brutal, unapologetic, and rewarding are what I'd use to describe Underrail for anyone. After a short tutorial to teach you the mechanics the game kicks you out into the world to help who you want, find what you want, and get shredded to pieces by occasional machine gun fire and rathound attacks. This game has a slew of content with more on the way, and If you like games with tons of varied and interesting content and options for character building, you'll enjoy this. Though I cannot recommend this game for people who want a consistently challenging experience. You will find fights you simply cannot win, and get turned into mince before you can act. The Underrail is brutal, and I love it for it.

A game that takes after older pioneers like EV nova and expands with lots of interesting quest content. But in my opinion, is held back by a few very annoying design decisions that kill the pace of the game. While optional, grounded battles are some of the most frustrating and unfun rts segments I've played. Where the AI has infinate resources and the AI used for your units is non existant to frustratingly bad. Many missions are also simple uncompletable, going to kill a bounty in 100 days who just happened to be imprisoned for four months. It wouldn't hurt as bad if the planet's opinion of you didn't fall to rock bottom after ONE failed quest, no matter how many you did before. Overall, a good game marred with too many flaws for me to enjoy.

Of all the content in this game, the graphical improvements and whathave you, I cannot recommend it. While the combat and stats are simplified and dumbed down, that alone wouldn't be enough for me to give the game a negative review. The key problem for me is the sheer unlikabilty of virtually every character in the game. They don't feel like people at all, none of them seem to have any real issues they care about, even the NPCs with you that have life changing events over their heads give up on them with a single easy persuasion check. It doesn't help either that half of the NPCs you meet seem to be smug and insulting of the party, not in a funny way either, but in a "Hey guys look at this cool guy who'll guide you through the game" kind of way. It doesn't help that a massive number of characters are introduced by showing you up in text, such as putting a knife to your throat or invading your space in some other way. In short, the npcs in this game seem to drive it instead of the players, and many seem to have a self important mary sue vibe. It really killed my ability to get in to the game as a whole.

Light heated and humorous fun at the start. Allowing you to use a combination of 8 spells to create your own clever combinations to kill enemies. This games spell system is it's biggest draw, is fun and implimented well, with many options that are just as dangerous to you as the enemy.

However, this is all trampled on by how the game tries to become difficult later on. Massive hordes of enemies that spawn behind and in front of you at once with three armor phases that can only be affected by 2-3 elements at best. Horde after horde of these that only allow very specific powerful spells and instantly kill you with any mistake you make. The diversity of spells this game promotes is destroyed by the terrible game design that comes later on. Even though you have massive amounts of potential combinations, 95% are worthless, and the game becomes a repetitive slog. I can't recommend this game to anyone expecting a fun and varied adventure.