Recent reviews by Impossibrulis

Fun mix of Civilization core look and functionality and politics, events, and familial legacy systems of Crusader Kings. Cities having to be built on limited city sites and transportation by sea being made with what is essentially a daisy chain of anchored ships that need to be protected were pretty interesting design choices that I like. The tech tree ends in the early Middle Ages, so there won't be nuclear missiles flying to Carthage. Good for people looking for something Civ-like focusing exclusively on the ancient historical factions and technology, but different enough to not be a copy-pasted experience.

TL;DR: If you like adventuring / dungeon crawling games like Caves of Qud with some town management and crafting on the side, you might like this.

As a recent convert to the cult of Elona / Elin, I don't think I'm too biased against this one.

I was a bit taken aback by the significant focus on town-management / building and crafting of Elin. Elona+ had crafting and it could be used to great effect, but it was nowhere near as extensive as it is now. Hell, the game's story goes as far as to make you rebuild and manage Vernis . There's some very rudimentary weapon and armour creation (wooden or stone, and the weapon you get is random from a small pool of types), so you'll have to either dungeon crawl or invest and buy them from vendors. One irritating thing before you're setup with a waste management policy and a garbage disposal area is that you need to manually gather trash (yes, just random trashbags and junk items). I enjoyed managing stores and museums in Elona+, so it all kinda clicks for me.

Weapons and items feel far less powerful by themselves, and are far more reliant on your weapon skills from what I've gathered. Then again, I think Elona+ has a lot of power creep because of the PV and DV fixers, among other things, so my perspective is a bit twisted by that. Some balancing needs doing regardless. Also I want my damage numbers.

I like what I'm seeing here and I'm interested in seeing where the development goes from here.

As much as I love the game, the community has WAY too much sway over every little thing. The game actually was going to a more even playing field, towards being more skill over gear, but they overdid it - they just would've needed to readjust it to make gear quality more significant without it going back to being an overwhelming difference. But they ditched that because Discord and Content Creators whined and complained until the devs were exhausted of being bombarded by vitriol and abuse and just reverted most of the changes. Feedback is important, it should be listened to, but there is NOTHING constructive about what was done.

I don't want the direction of the game to be dictated by some loudmouths over on Discord or Druid mains on Youtube.

Update 2: Reverted to negative as the geoblocking is still in place, and has been expanded to other Sony titles as well. Hollow words, and I wouldn't be surprised if the PSN account requirement would come back.

Update: As Sony has decided to be reasonable, I can heartily recommend the game as the game itself is phenomenal.

Forcing an account sign-up after months of not requiring it is a scumbag move, especially after letting people buy it from regions where you can't sign up for an account.

I'm doing my part.

Gameplay is basically more of Dragon's Dogma. You like it? You'll probably love this. It's an improvement on what was there before. If you enjoy Monster Hunter style of combat, you might like this as well, though I'd say it's a bit jankier than the latest MonHun games.

Pawn system is back, but this time around the pawns won't tell you that wolves hunt in packs (sadge). This time you can also set a quest and a quest reward for those who take your pawn along for their adventures. This means that you can find pawns that award gold or items for leading them to do whatever task has been set. It's a neat idea and might encourage you to diversify the pawns you pick up.

Technical issues / poor optimisation are noticeable, but I personally can tolerate lowering my settings and even resolution for the time being as it's being fixed. If you don't have a medium-high setup, you'll probably barely run the game without dropping resolution. If you can deal with this, I can recommend the game.

The DLC (or mtx, really) gives resources in such meaningless amounts that you'll outpace them after 2-5 hours of gameplay (depending on how much you powerlevel, side quest, etc.). The only notable things are the one quick travel crystal, the first of which you normally would probably get 15-20 hours in, and the camp kit, which actually unlocks the kit for in-game purchase, making it the only thing (as far as I'm aware) that you can't get in the game without an external purchase.

If you think any of these is a turn-off and won't get the game on principle, I respect that. I personally don't mind the existence of the mtx, because in my experience thus far they would just be a terrible value for money (which is a good thing - getting significant value would mean that the DLC is actually egregious.)

Braindead AI makes it unbearable.

It's Divinity Original Sin 2 (for better or worse), but set in Faerûn. I'm not too keen on 5e, but I'll let that pass.

Someone who's really bothered by random encounters should probably stay away. You can't get more than five steps before you're beset by something... but you can just not fight and flee instead if you wish to. There's not really any grind needed if you just take majority of the random encounters. You can have fights at double speed with auto-battle, you can run (at double speed I think) as long as you're not moving on the overworld. I didn't feel like the game wasted my time. I've almost 100%'d the game in my playtime.

Oh yeah, if you hate using consumables, you'll probably hate the game.

P.s. There's no post game content. I don't mind it though.

The most satisfying rhythm game I've played in years. The game just works just as it should, hitting your shots to the rhythm feels insanely satisfying, the movement is fluid, the soundtrack full of absolute bangers.

A great 30€ album with a free game.

A game that appeals to people wanting a game with a gameplay loop other than violence, to people wanting to play at their own pace, to people wanting to just chill, to people wanting to make aesthetic environments, to people wanting to optimise score in a quasi roguelite game.

The game is easy to pick up. You probably should pick it up if you want a chill puzzle game.