Recent reviews by ManShrimp

ENDLESS Dungeon is a refreshing re-imagining of the original Dungeon of the Endless as a faster paced, co-op friendly turret defense, twin-stick shooter. If you were a fan of the first game, you will very likely enjoy this game even more. Combat is more active and has far more options. You might also enjoy this game if you are a fan of other action rogue-likes such as Hades, though the combat is not nearly as demanding and a little slower paced with no need for active dodge rolls or parries. You are more likely to lose to hordes of opponents swarming faster than you and your turrets can respond than to get hit by a stray shot that was too fast for your reaction speed.

The game is broken up into 3 sets of 3 different floors for a total of 9 basic tile sets, plus at least one more area as you approach the core of the station. Enemies have 4 basic types (bugs, bots, blobs and blurs, the 4Bs) which are paired to 4 different damage types (fire, electricity, acid, light). All enemies of one type share a damage type they are weak to and another they are resistant to. For example, bugs are always weak to fire, and always resistant to acid. There is one boss for each enemy type and they each sport very interesting mechanics which ask a lot more than the usual turret defense gameplay to keep things fresh mid-run. The first boss will be either bug, bot or blob depending on the route you take to the core. The second boss is always a blur type enemy. Regions are strongly associated to particular enemy types as well, but the core pulls from all enemy types. It takes multiple runs to have a good chance at defeating the core.

Speaking of damage, you have a huge variety of weapons with multiples for each damage category and a few neutral weapons that are type-less. You will unlock a number of turrets each run in rogue-like fashion, sometimes the turret you want isn't found and you need to play around the options you get. There seem to be 2 turrets for each damage type, and one neutral damage turret, with 5 more support turrets which buff the players and/or other turrets in the same room. Rooms come with a pre-set number of build points where you can slap turrets down to make a capable defense as hordes of enemies spawn to destroy the robot carrying your power crystal through the dungeon.

Speaking of the crystal brings me to the last piece of gameplay. The dungeon is made up of procedurally selected rooms that you must navigate looking for places where your crystal robot is able to park itself and power the nearby rooms. As you open doors, you automatically generate a small amount of resources to build or research new turrets, upgrade your characters, and trade for supplies. Opening doors alerts enemies that you are in the area and causes waves of enemies to spawn which you must swiftly defend the crystal bot against before returning to exploration. This shift between combat and exploration has an excellent pace which gives you a lot of time to plan your next moves, but not so much that you can stay idle for too long. Some enemy waves will trigger with a special modifier, such as spawning only one enemy type to see if your defenses still hold up, so versatility is key. You can also trigger a blackout event which requires you to run through the un-powered rooms trying to restore the power supply so your turrets come back online.

There are eight characters in the game at the moment which have differing active abilities and passive effects. These characters have a quest chain which requires you meet special conditions while playing that character during a run. Completing their quests gives alternate color skins to wear for that character and unlock passive chip slots that you use to select bonuses you wish to use on your next run. Characters can get up to 3 chip slots this way and choose from 8 possible bonuses. Each character adds some variety to the game by having some mix of damage, toughness and support capability. Strong support characters fix turrets quicker, give bonuses to nearby players and turrets with their abilities and add meaningful quality of life without feeling weak. Tough characters can safely handle large numbers of enemies alone to slow them down and still make an escape. The high damage characters are better than a turret for raw damage, but unlike turrets can relocate when needed. A good mix of all three is best, some characters are hybrids of the two roles.

I very much recommend this game.

I do not understand all the negative feedback. The single player campaign is good, there is a pre-mission briefing with optional additional dialogue to help explain the setting and events taking place. Every single part of this game is graphically polished and a joy to watch.

The multiplayer map setup makes use of a few shield/turret/power generator options that are somewhat like a MOBA, but the gameplay is otherwise very similar to previous DoW entries and the automated defenses do little besides preventing a base rush.

I really appreciate the elites and doctrine choices, and how much they add to gameplay. There is a level up system which increases their utility that can be progressed in both singleplayer and multiplayer. Really great game!

Moon Hunters is a simple, easy-to-play game about decision making with light roleplaying and combat elements. A full game can be played solo in 10 minutes to an hour. Each play through adds to a chronology of characters which are stored for review.

PROS:
The game is rather casual and easy to pick up and put down
Controls are not very demanding
The difficulty is very mild which puts more emphasis on the decision making process that is core to the game
In game references to past characters adds weight and scope to the gameworld in spite of it's short length

CONS:
Multiplayer has some de-sync issues that interrupt gameplay and ruin some of the experience from time to time
Difficulty does not appear to scale much and can become easy to the point of tedium
Character classes are not balanced, some are quite powerful relative to others
The combat portion of the game is quite repetitive



Overall I enjoy the game, but don't expect to get 10+ hours of playtime from it right away unless you really enjoy the completionist nature of the constellation system. I feel that the game is missing more opportunities for boss style conflicts to add a sense of climax to each 'day' of a playthrough. The quirky gameplay mechanics, however, are very charming and I hope to see more from this developer

Overall, the new Master of Orion is a fun strategy game. It's a little part familiar with a few small adjustments that are overall neutral to the original experience. For those who have played the originals, I will share some feature comparisons for you to help decide if you will enjoy this addition:

Things that were removed:
-Antaran attacks against the top player (I really miss this)
-Branchless research trees
-Distance restrictions on space travel (and fuel research in general)
-Turn based combat
-Unique characters to manage colonies or ships
-Racial government traits

Things that were added:
-Warp gates (all travel between systems must go through a warp gate)
-Command points that limit the fleet sizes (no more bloat warfare in space)
-Economic Victory Condition (in addition to the research, military, and council win conditions)
-Factory ships that build system upgrades (such as star fortresses, artificial planets, etc)
-Snazzy graphics

Some things are still present that probably shouldn't be, such as space monsters, the obnoxious robot news broadcasts, and the espionage system. All of these things are even more time consuming and pointless than their previous incarnations. Fleets can't skip systems with space monsters anymore to reach distant planets because of the warp gate restrictions. The news broadcasts are rarely interesting or relevant, but still play at regular intervals if only to force a quick comparison between empires (which is viewable at any time from the menu). The espionage system is MUCH worse, spies are trained automatically, but must be moved manually, and have to complete several tiers of spy activity before important tasks like stealing research are possible.

The one feature about research I appreciate most is the research choices. In classic MoO, each tier of research had several choices and you could only select one. In the remake, you get most of the research each time you make a discovery, but there will usually be two or three extras you must choose between. Creative is still a good boost, but not nearly to the degree it once was. Being uncreative is a race trait that is actually quite playable.

In closing, I would like to share that the real-time combat system a LOT of fun. The pace of combat is very good, ships move at a respectable pace that caiters to strategic thinking. It is not at all a click-fest, weapon systems fire automatically and there is little need to micromanage. The scale of ships is better as well, titan sized ships truly dwarf everything else in the area. Large fleet battles in MoO and MoO2 are unbearable ordeals and very one-sided in the favor of the player who had the first turn. This real-time version is much more fair to both sides and actually very entertaining just to watch.

This is one of the best 4X games I have ever played. It has the best elements of Masters of Magic and Heroes of Might and Magic, with a few civilization style elements. There is a short learning cliff in your first game, you can easily become overwhelmed by the rogue-like random encounters if you are using balanced groups and playing it safe, and those can make the game seem unwinnable.

The combat system is extremely fresh and novel, if you like collectible cards games, you will really enjoy the way party members are used. To compare with Magic:TG, you have a deck in each combat composed of all your party members. They are divided in half randomly, one group is your offensive deck and the other half is your tactical deck. Party members played from the first enter into the combat, like a summoned creature, and will have stats based on what traits they have as what is gained from their equipment. The tactical deck, however, when played must use one of their traits to have an effect like using a spell. These can boost your in-play party members, empty cards from the opponents hand, or weaken enemy cards. There is an auto-resolution system if you do not want to play the mini-game, and I have found it to be extremely fair so there isn't a punishment for never using the combat system. If you are very good at the mini-game, however, you can win some battles that the auto-play will treat as a loss and you can get away with extremely risky expeditions that way.

If you are really into roleplaying story, this game has extremely well written encounters. I enjoy reading them, and usually despise story elements in similar games. Getting the same encounter repeatedly is pleasant, there are many possible outcomes which change based on who is present in your party at the time and what skills they have. An encounter will show you the number of unavailable options, but does not tell you what they are or what is needed to unlock them and the number of options for most encounters is very high. There are still some random encounters with 11+ options that I have not seen, even after clearing 2 default options.

If you are not interested in story, and just like strategy games, there are options to plow through storyline elements with minimal fluff as a default option for any storyline quest you attempt. The NPCs are very gracious about being told to shut up and just give you the things you need without explanation. Even on the first play through!

The crafting system is hands down the best thing I have ever seen. At first I was disappointed at the limited number of buildings and equipment, until I realized that using rarer materials changes the appearance and statistics of the building. You can build a smithy out of wood like normal, or build it from bones and start randomly recruiting wild animals from rats (don't laugh, a brave little rat died in a storm to save one of my veteran gatherers) to wolves and bears! Building from more exotic materials will let you get other demi-human races from fantasy lore such as Goblins, Orcs, Elves, Dwarves, and Demons.

You are limited to only one village the entire game, however you can pack up a group of people and take them into the world to camp. While camping, the party members there act like an extra village and can gather materials. If you find a good location with access to basic materials like wood and food, you can leave a second camp there permanently like a second city. The only limitation with camps is that they never build any buildings to help them defend themselves, and they can't craft new equipment for themselves. Some other group must act as the go between, taking resources to the village and then delivering finished equipment back to them. Children are only created at your home village, but can be carried out to your camps where they can grow into adults if you prefer.

10/10 game, I have no complaints about the game apart from wanting a multi-player co-operative mode!

Blood bowl is a fantasy sports game with additional emphasis on the fantasy element. Players create and manage teams composed of various fantastic creatures and play a game loosely based on American football in the sense that there is an inflated pig bladder and people try to carry it down a field. Unlike American football, it is perfectly acceptable to ignore the ball and attempt to kill as many opposing players as possible. The game is played in turn-based style similar to the X-Com games. Each player on your team may attempt one action during your turn, but the turn ends immediately should any player fail.

Blood Bowl 2 improves upon the original Blood Bowl release with smoother graphics, better visibility, and a helpful success chance calculator so that memorizing probabilities or using a calculator is not necessary to play safely keeping the end of turn on failure rule previously mentioned in mind.

The game is tailored towards players new to the blood bowl game and it's rules. The campaign doubles as a fun and engaging tutorial that slowly introduces the core rules in a step by step manner, then adds some challenges to the usual game modes to help build confidence and skill. The game is not as focused on veteran players of the Blood Bowl franchise, so please bear that in mind when reading the reviews of seasoned veterans who are voicing their discontents.

The developers are extremely proactive about adding to the game and have already made two major releases to improve the game following direct feedback from players. There is an active, and fanatical fandom for Blood Bowl spanning decades (the original game table top game was created in 1987), you are never going to be short on multiplayer opportunity if you are open to league play. The official public league, however, is not very friendly to new players so shop around for private league communities to join if you want to sample the authentic multiplayer experience and enjoy this game at it's best.

The full playset for this game includes 24 official teams and two unofficial teams supported by the developers. At the time of this review there are 8 teams already included in the game, two as DLC and 4 more announced as DLC in the near future. Each team adds it's own unique take on the Blood Bowl game for an impressive number of possible match ups. If you are a fan of sports, or a fan of strategy games, this game is not likely to get stale for you.

This game rules!