Recent reviews by The Guardian Fox

Extremely fun. My only wish is that there were more stuff to unlock, to keep progression going. If your friends can't handle an ocassionally mean-spirited multiplayer game, then you might want to try something nicer. Otherwise I highly recommend.

When this game was released I was beyond ticked off at Hello Games for the way it launched. I played the first day it came out on PS4 and it was BARREN. Many features just completely missing from the experience, and bugs that constantly stopped my progress in it's tracks. Like many, I directly got a refund, and used it for a simpler, but much more polished experience, Dragon Quest Builders.(Which is amazing, but that's off topic.) Playing this game now, however, I can honestly tell you... this isn't even close to the same experience I had 2 years ago.

What can I say, really? Bluntly put, it was released 2 years too early, likely due to pressure from Sony. I don't think it's any coincidence that this game hit Xbox with the NEXT update, because it finally feels like a fully featured experience. I'm still upset at Hello Games for blatantly lying about their initial product, but I also feel like when you really examine the situation, you can see Sony's hands are likely at fault.

Hello Games Devs were being pressured, perhaps even bullied, by a much larger company, to do things in a specific way, get this game out, and make it sell. Basic features HG WANTED and PLANNED simply didn't make it in, and what released was basically an early access title. But now that it's up to par, and still has even more promised updates on the horizon? It's finally worth looking at, in spite of the really rocky start.

I see some negative reviews with fair points, but a lot of those points seem to be related to issues with the genre rather than the game itself. Mining resources to progress is a big part the core experience here, the same as it is for games like Minecraft, and if that doesn't appeal to you then I don't recommend this. It's a bit slower paced than a game like minecraft, but the payoff is usually also a lot more flashy. You shooting for space ships, and weapon upgrades, and base parts, and progressions to all new solar systems.

The issues I do have with it, show that they've prioritized fixing gameplay over everything else. There's still not enough variety in the flora and fauna. Creatures often look too strange to be even remotely believable, and you're stuck seeing the same kind of rocks and trees on planet after planet, and they're rarely all that interesting. I'm currently only 13 hours in, but I assume most planets still end up looking way too similar. At least now the game looks good, however, and the shape of the terrain makes more sense than it did when I last played it... or at least it has so far. I'm disappointed with the lack of core customization, and I hope that more character options are either earned later in the game, which I kind of doubt, or are patched in in a future update. Finally, while I wouldn't say resource gathering completely kills the experience, I would say it's just a little slow and complicated, and that the limited storage space early on definitely hampers the fun.

I may have more to complain about or applaud when I'm further into the game, but I wanted to write this while the game was on sale. If you're like me and can easily lose too many hours into chasing the dangling carrots, and exploring for everything you can find, building cool bases and setting out to make the game your own, then this game is definitely worth trying out.

Too much RNG. You can't plan your deck because you don't know what cards you might get. Get cards for strategy A, and you're sure to also wind up with cards for B and C too. The game would be difficult even if you could plan a decent deck, but because you can't, and you can't get rid of 'useless' cards without an absurdly high fee, the difficulty is brutal to the point it feels unfun.

My original review for this game was positive. I love the concept, I love the characters, the base concepts and cards are fantastic, and it can still be fun, I just wish it wasn't so reliant on luck, and had more options for strategic choice.

So good it will make you question WTF everyone else is spending time and money on when they develop an RPG. It's the best turn-based RPG I've played in a very long time, and one where I actually feel like I'm playing a role. Which is especially good since you all know we can't count on Final Fantasy for that fix anymore.

The Good:
Fully voiced campaign, including all NPC's! (Even big budget titles don't do this!)
All playable characters are customizable, and able to be used as their own character, including recruited companions.
Pick an origin story, or make up your own.
Fun, tactical, and innovative combat system.
Very Replayable.
Moddable, with a custom campaign creator to boot.
As if that wasn't enough, it has a D&D style Game Master mode.

The Bad:
Persuasion is overpowered. Don't get me wrong, I like having a charming character who can talk their way out of some situations, but it seems like most things in this game have persuasion options, sometimes when it wouldn't even make sense for someone to be convinced otherwise. It requires little effort to make a character to fulfill the necessary requirements, as it's easy to pump your main character full of persuasion and let other characters handle other areas. Sometimes I consider this a great boon to the role-playing side of things, but it also makes for a weaker experience in gameplay. One of the weakest aspects of the game in fact, IMO.

While Larian did an excellent job desiging the areas and leveling, enemy level scaling still doesn't exist. I know some people like those moments where you revisit an earlier part of a level and you can just murder everything, but I prefer every combat encounter to have weight.

I enjoy little moments in games like Elder Scrolls, where NPC's act racist, especially toward non-human races, because it's realistic, helps immersion, and gives you an added cause, with characters and concepts to combat. You want to do your character's race justice, perhaps change opinions, or get vengence. It's good for role playing. But in this game TOO MANY characters are racist. I get that they want to add text that changes based on a character's race but, good land, does everyone hate the lizard-folk? It seems like they do! Even the *animals* slander my main character. It just takes a good, immersive idea too far, and just pushes it to the point of being expected and annoying.

Overall, however, the positives outweigh the negatives by far. This is now one of my favorite games of all time, and I could not recommend it more.

Would love a full movie adaptation of this game. Think it could be quite amazing.

And as the pet warg took it's last breath, so too did our main hero. He hadn't given up... he died thinking there was still hope. He died knowing they'd go on without him. But he was wrong. Soon no one was left.

10/10, would cry over my destroyed colony again.

Paradox took over, now if you want to own the complete experience you're gonna have to pay for half a dozen DLC's or more. Pretty sure they said they wouldn't do this when they took over, but paradox gonna paradox. I can't stand them them.

+Tons of fun with friends
+Best board game video game on Steam, as far as I've found
+Furry friendly without going overboard
+Fun lore and world
+Gorgeous card art
+Consistent updates since release (will they ever end? X3)
+Dice collections are a fun and unobtrusive way for devs to get some extra funding
+The developers definitely love and care about this project

-The developers have their own vision, and can be a bit too uncompromising
-Balance needs work:
- - way way too easy to get into the palace early game
- - - (^This is probably my biggest complaint, since my friends and I are headed toward 500 hours logged, and one of them does nothing but palace rush now. Palace rush is NOT fun.)
- - spirit stones are way too RNG, and still only have a single card to counter
- - Some vanilla characters need buffs desperately to be on par with wolves and DLC
-Overly aggressive players can ruin the fun, when matchmaking
-Bugs and crashes, most prominent after almost every update, but always an issue
-No way to rejoin a lobby after disconnect

This would be a decent free to play alternative to Minecraft if it wasn't for one thing: they lock your ability to see where you're going behind a $20 paywall. Yeah, you read that right. You can't carry a torch, and the 'flashlight' is a pro upgrade exclusive. In the past this wasn't even an option. I don't understand how you could make a game like this and not include a handheld light source by default...

I thought this game was a more of a simulation game, where you build your dungeon to entice heroes to raid it, then beat the heroes and steal their stuff to entice more heroes to raid. After I started playing I quickly realized it's actually a full-on RTS game, which I typically hate. They're too fast for me, and have too many similar mechanics that I just don't enjoy. I decided to give it a chance anyway, and I'm glad I did.

It's not what I was looking to play, but I actually really like it, at least as far as the campaign is concerned. You can't pause to issue orders, which is disappointing, but you can slow the action down and play at a pace that works for you. Unit sorting is complicated, but I never really feel like I need it, I just plop down a war banner at the center of the action and keep my units healed with magic. I can't really tell if I'm winning because I'm doing well, or because the campaign is just easy, but it's still an RTS that I can actually enjoy, and has made me decide to try more games in the genre, so in my book that's a pretty big accomplishment.