Recent reviews by Providence83

If you like looting, it's a good game. At the end of the day that's really all there is in terms of a foundational objective. The game mechanics are accessible and it's visually gorgeous and atmospheric. I think it leans heavily on the player interaction to make it a compelling experience though, as the quests the game gives you start to feel same-same after a little bit (again, bringing back loot to a port is really all you do.) The game tries to distract you from noticing that's all you're doing by just throwing a ton of random occurrences at you with plentiful frequency. It's enough that if you took every opportunity that was presented to you to get more loot, the one hour you set aside to play will turn into 3 or 4 because things just keep getting in your way from whatever you originally wanted to do. It can often make doing anything take forever in a "surprise! This quest to tackle this fort which should have taken just 20 minutes now has you in a vise grip because you had to go through a storm to get there, defeat the fort, and now the winds are fighting against you going back to port and a skeleton ship has spawned and is fighting you and also a big shark has spawned and is fighting you and there's a ship at port you don't know is going to just instantly kill you and wow, look at that, if they do kill you that's 2 hours down the drain! Isn't that fun!?"

The problem I find is that the game is inherently a huge instigator for toxic behavior in the community. 3 man crews who have played over 400 hours will roll up on a single guy who has 2 rusty crusty chests and a bauble and will obliterate them just for the hell of it because there's no separation of strong from weak. The fact there's a button for bailing out of the server you're in if someone is just camping you is pretty telling. Most fights I cannot tell what is even happening with players just... suddenly being constantly behind you? You're INSTANTLY dead and/or your ship is sunk with no way of recovering it. For an otherwise slow game that takes FOREVER to do anything in, I find PVP is insanely fast-paced. People are CRACKED with movement and I personally will never be sweaty enough to care to get good.

Besides my own skill issues, Sea of Thieves players are downright weird too. Like any game with a social aspect you have chill people who you can chat with, maybe help each other out with supplies or asking where a tiny island you can't find on the map is, and then part ways. Then the opposite kill-on-sight, no reasoning, no comms people who will even sink you at a port when you're just buying stuff. Both of those archetypes you know what you're dealing with when you encounter them. But then, there are ones that my friend and I simply don't know what the interaction we're having with them is. They'll fight you first, then realize you're new and then switch to helping you not sink, but instead of being friendly they'll still do things to mess with you, and then give you a ball that's like 20k gold, and then seem as though they've left but then randomly reappear to troll you more because actually they've been there the entire time, then kill you again, and then hit you with a bunch of fireworks, and give you TOO MANY wet silk crates for you to sell and like... I'm just not socially equipped to know how to take all that. The uneasy terms of ALMOST being enemies but not being worth fighting broke my friend for the night. It was too befuddling for us.

There is a way to just play in your own lobby, so if you want to casually drink in the sea and hop from island to island without fear of people messing with you, you can do that, with the penalty of the game locking you out of a lot of content for philosophical design reasons unknown to myself. I imagine they want to force player interaction because otherwise, the fact that the game is just eternal looting becomes very apparent.

Great game that is tarnishing over time from neglect. The devs have put its future in the hands of people with high ambitions but little regard for polish or an understanding of overall game identity. Even still, there's a lot of fun to be had here.

If it's your first time ever playing, I recommend joining a Minecraft idle trade community server or something similarly supremely casual to get a feel for the classes and community. Playing casual official servers after that will probably be more enjoyable than if you hadn't, I reckon.

It's cute but egregiously not worth standard price. My main frustration is that this game is SLOW. You always start the same way and end the same two ways: either above water or below water. These "cutscenes" are unskippable and your characters must walk about 5 minutes before you get to really DO anything again. Seeing that each of the routes is about 10 mins from start to finish, having half of your time playing come down to waiting while your characters meander over somewhere is a horrible and unnecessary time sink; moreover, this problem is exacerbated in your mind over time by the clunky mouse-only controls. If I was insane, I would almost reckon they intentionally pad the time out to get you beyond the two hour refund on Steam. I'm no conspiracy theorist but Steam's Policy on that was put in place 2015 and this game was released only a year later in 2016 so it might have been on their mind but... who's to say?

I don't know if this is the normal experience but the Steam achievements were only given to me after I closed the game too, so I spent an extra hour doing various slow, tedious paths again wondering what there was left for me to do, when I had really done it all. That they're all hidden achievements didn't help in this regard.

Dialogue is written charmingly but flat considering some of the mad stuff that happens to the characters. All-in-all it makes for a great toddler game but with only "12" paths (which really boils down to 6 since the last choice always merely determines whether you get above or below water ending, which in-and-of-themselves are identical except for the setting they take place in), there's simply other cutesy options out there with more and better content.

Everybody always asks "how are your potions" but no one ever asks "how are you?"

My potions are excellent, by the way. I studied all the alchemical texts written by the greats, crushed the finest mushrooms and jewels into them, mixed them in a holy goblet, and boy is that weather out there nice today, eh?
[End Haggling.]
That'll be 1,200 gold for your E.D. meds, knock 'em dead, champ.

It's good, should probably get at least the Afterbirth DLC with it but the base game will still entertain you for hundreds of hours.

Already sold 12+ million units and they're just now releasing their final ("final") update 9 years later. Definitely earns my "Labour of Love" Steam awards vote. Great game.

The mods also add an endless new possibilities for what the game can become, so if you're still not satisfied with the amount of content in the game after beating it on hardcore-master-mode-10x-spawn-enless-night-ForTheWorthy, then there's always the modding community who would be happy to punish you.

I've only played about two hours so far and about an hour of that time was JUST looking around at things. This game, while having a simplistic aesthetic has incredible minute details that kept me looking at EVERYTHING around me constantly. I immediately fell in love when I could zoom in to see your companions' names on the labels of winter presents!

As for the gameplay, the first 3 non-tutorial levels have been quite enjoyable for someone who's taken a coding class before. I wouldn't say it's quite as intensive as coding though. To anyone who's played "Gunpoint" the interactions with your computer is sort of a mix between its hacking and real coding. The computer is sort of linked to everything it can interact with in the environment already, you just have to schedule those things to work for you at the right times.

A game with no inherent directions, Antichamber will bend your mind but certainly not break it.

Antichamber is ... A puzzle game? An escapist game? An experience game. Loading it up you'll immediately see three doors on the other side of a window, one simply labeled "exit." The path to those doors is a journey of reworking the way you think to approach the puzzles in this game. Using its simplicity, the colors and lack of texture, it guides you through what would otherwise be complicated puzzles but it feels like the game never holds your hand, never intentionally directs you down a set path.

The first time I played this game there were A LOT of "huh... oh? OH! WTF?!" moments. The memories of true bliss when you figured something out for the first time or when you figure out you now have exactly what you need to get to a spot you before couldn't will not leave you soon. I highly recommend this game for anyone that has a couple hours to flesh out this game's quirks.

You'll have only two questions when finishing the game, "what was that" and "WHAT DOES THE ROAMING PURPLE CUBE DO?!"

Started the game on non-chump mode.
Enjoyed the job, old man got hosed, family is happy. Little girl, daughter ... "Mary?" Maybe? Get's sick, good thing a doctor's kicking about since the old man got HOSED! Doctor needs 20 G's... Problem, am broke. At same time bigger-little son-boy asks for 15 large ones for academia, AM BROKE. Some faff about revolt is happening? Don't know, I'm a simple man, not one of morals but I value the state that's given me everything and my family after that. I do my job. Little girl dies, is tragic, wife in tears, I must live on to support family that lives... THOUSAND DOLLAR FUNERAL COST?!?! Note to self - Buy less expensive gravestone, pick flowers from the road on the way to funeral. Also, still can't pay for son, goes to mine. Directive comes in that reading is forbidden... IS THREAT TO MOTHERLAND! Have security cameras all over at this point. Catch literally every single person reading. Son is reading, he's dead to me. Catch wife reading, she's dead to me. To think I lived with such heathens! Son who's supposed to be in jail somehow is involved in a robbery and dies? State fines me 5 grand for my delinquent son hurting our glorious land, I'm fine with this. It then hits me, the funeral cost... I do not have such monies of 1,000... Am arrested for embezzeling. GAME OVER Narrator says "I wonder what happened to his family." Pretty sure I know what happened to them...

Best initial 3 hours of any game EVER!

TL:DR- Went out screaming "GLORY TO ARSTOTZKA!!!"

Running, jumping, falling, jumping again, breaking glass, breaking doors, breaking hearts, wires, PUNCHING, PUNCHING SOMEONE SO MANY TIMES THE GAME LITERALLY HAS TO SAY "WOAH BUD TAKE IT EASY!" This game has fantastic mechanics with even better quirky humor. If you plan on playing it just once for the story, it's fairly short; however, to get the achievements you'll need to play it a couple of times to get them all. A great thing about the achievements is THEY ARE ACTUALLY ACHIEVABLE, there's no bs "play the entire game without dying" or "never get seen by an enemy" achievements.

Plus, the music is great, immerses you in a snap.