Nylige anmeldelser av The Guardian Fox

Remember that episode where Bandit asked Bluey if she was done, and she said yes.

But then it turned out the whole task wasn't done, she was just done working on it?

Welcome to the seamless world update.

I waited on it to buy the game, thinking the reason it took so long was that they were going to push it out in a more finished state. At least everything that was in the old game, into the new world... right? But I immediately noticed many translations were either absent or unintelligible. The current island is a nice size, but apparently doesn't even have all the old content on it? The sound effects were either absent or bad. And the combat is way too easy.

Let's be real here, the bulk of their resources are probably going toward Palworld, and have been for years. This game, and the seamless update needed a full staff, and with this result I highly doubt it got it. In turn, my expectations for future updates, and the speed of them, is not high, so I refunded.

Everything this game promises is a game I want to play. But it just isn't ready, and I'm unsure if/when it will be. I will probably buy this game if it ever hits a proper launch state... and by that I mean something resembling finished. Fully translated, fully polished, and doesn't feel like shovelware.

First of all, I appreciate the attempt to give people an alternative to the mediocre state that Pokemon is in. And an MMO Pokemon is what fans have wanted for decades. Unfortunately this game isn't the savior I was hoping for.

I have to address one of the biggest points of contention first. The microtransactions are a big turn off to be sure, but without playing it more, I can't say if there's enough free cosmetics in the experience to think that they're fair. However, I will never support limited time battle passes in any game, because they're designed to take advantage of FOMO, and make you play a game like it's a job instead of escape from reality. I shouldn't have to play a game at a specific point in time to get cosmetics I like, and if I PAY to get those cosmetics, I shouldn't get locked out of earning them because time has passed. This is beyond scummy and I do not support it, because no matter how good the base game cosmetics are, having this system in place makes the game worse.

But I have to admit to myself that the biggest problem I have with this game, and why I have yet to be able to bring myself to play it more, is that the monster designs are mostly crap. I could grab 10 random fanmon makers, and 7 of them would have better designs than the monsters in this game, and that's saying something. Monster games need good monster designs as the driving force to want to explore and progress and find and catch, and to want to train up a team of monsters that you love so much you would die for. Even the starters, who should be the headlining monsters that everyone wants at least one of, are just not good. Picking my starter is, which one do I dislike the least, and that's bad for starting your adventure. 9/10 or more of monsters in trailers and promo art just do not make me want to play this game, so I've had a lot of trouble wanting to play it at all. A good starter alone would give me motivation to start and continue my experience.

Seems even the ones I like the general form of, I hate the color scheme choices. Which seems to be an equal problem across most of the game, so many of the colors are muted, and there are so many greys and tans and doodoo browns, and just weird choices for monster coloring. And, again, that's on top of form designs that are mostly just bad.

If this game had REALLY GOOD monster designs, I would play it even if it wasn't a great game. That's why SO MANY people still play Pokemon, even though it's soooo mid. I hope one day I can force myself to play more in spite of these problems, but until then this is what I have to say about it.

Great game.

The gameplay is unique and interesting. The characters vary just enough to spice things up.

The difficulty is very well balanced. Hard is just hard enough to keep you thinking on most turns. I can tell that a lot of people with negative opinions about the game just don't have a desire to learn the system. (Or don't have the smarts to figure it out.) Sad, but I can't tell you how much I appreciate that they didn't muddle it down and homogenize it for mass appeal, like basically every other game out there. WE NEED MORE GAMES LIKE THIS. With an identity that doesn't fear to be unique and takes actual effort to be good at. Over the last year I've learned to quit looking at steam reviews in any kind of authority, because so many of them mean just as little as reviews you'd find anywhere else, and the amount of people that can not handle any level of complexity or difficulty is way too high.

The main story is alright, but I love the characters. I appreciate that the arc for Fleet was exactly the kind of antihero I was hoping for when I played the demo. Reminded me so much of overzealous twitter activists, except those usually just never learn their lesson. The character design and appeal is phenomenal, pretty much across the board. I think Hamir has both my favorite story and gimick. The design appeal for Artemis and Slade are very high. Probably not a character I don't like among them, though I would have disliked Fleet if she hadn't had the arc that she does. While I love foxes(obviously), and want more foxes in Aether, I almost wish they had kept her as a bat... I feel like that would have been super fitting for this town, the main story, and Fleet's general idea.

The amount of content is pretty good, but its variety may be where my biggest complaints are. The enemy variety is super low in the main biomes. 4 or so of the same enemies show up on each of them. I think it was probably difficult to come up with good and unique gimmicks for enemies in this type of battle system, but I really would have appreciated reskins of the same enemy types for each of the biomes, especially when the character designs is one of Aether's biggest strong spots. Maybe even with some slight tweaks that fit the biome or just to spice things up.

The gimmicks of each biome are just busywork and not especially fun. The Lava biome's gimmick was not well relayed, and because it's Art's starting stage and her gimmick is to take damage, initially thought the idea was to take damage and heal through the biome... I realized this mistake pretty quickly, but had it been appropriately explained I wouldn't have taken damage at all. But this is just a small complaint.

I did have a couple other problems with this game, but they were patched out. The team has been working super fast to address both bugs and balance complaints. As of this review they have yet to over-correct/over-adjust, like a lot of indy games seem to do at the slightest sign of reviews from these players that literally just want push A to win experiences. While I haven't seen any talk of post-launch content, I am hopeful for some, because they definitely have a room to make a great game even better.

The story concept is GREAT but the execution of it was really bad... like typical bad horror movie bad. The acting was also bad(except Taylor).

But I like games like this, simulating apps, spy work, and IM conversations with some puzzles sprinked in, and if you do too I think you'll find fun. This one barely gets a thumbs up from me, but only because I got it dirt cheap and don't regret playing it. Hoping the sequel is better.

Advance wars, but more lovingly crafted.

Fun. Makes me realize how much I prefer this to all these near-identical rogue-lite "deckbuilder" games. It's ironic people decided to call them deckbuilders, because in those games your deck is made up of a bunch of stuff you got from RNG and you can't really think and plan out a strategic deck like you can in this game.

I much prefer this. You earn cards through the story, you edit your decks between playing.

As for the negatives, it's only single player, so no dueling friends. The lack of New Game Plus is a HUGE missed opportunity here. I thought for sure I'd be able to go back through the game with my now quite large card collection, and everyone else having stronger decks too. But instead it just throws you against a bunch of challenges... hard to care now that the story is over and I know I can't continue with my deck in any way. The AI is bad... like very simple things they should have told it to do or not do, they clearly didn't. Wasn't a fan of mission failure conditions and the auto-save system.

That's basically the end of my review, but I thought I'd elaborate on the save thing if anyone wants to read it. There was one instance where I saved and went to bed, came back the next day and didn't realize I was approaching a mission objective on the map, chose the wrong dialogue box and failed. It autosaved. Last autosave before that was at least one big battle back, if not more, But I couldn't tell exactly how far. I figured it was probably just a side-quest thing, and decided to proceed. I only later realized it was one of the big multi-day quests, and therefore I had failed several quests with one bad dialogue box choice. That was frustrating.

This game continues to impress me more than the multi-billion dollar franchise that inspired it.

It takes upon the foundations of Pokemon and evolves and improves it more than TPC has since the attack changes in gen 4.

With the latest FREE update they have randomizers and Nuzlocke options built right into the game itself. No need for mods or hacking or emulation or just keeping up with weird rules on your own.

This is something the Pokemon devs could easily do if they could even be bothered. But no, with Pokemon we can't even get them to give us basic difficulty options.

Indy devs do what Nintendon't. Get this.

Can only recommend if you get it on a deep discount. It's a unique game with a lot of interesting concepts, and a fun presentation. However, at some point I realized the experience I was hoping for was a game where you build and manage your own magic school, but instead the gameplay focuses almost entirely on dealing with RNG.

The building components you get are RNG, meaning you can't exactly build the school in the way you want to, and sometimes go without rooms you want for in-game years. Then, even if you get a classroom you want, the teachers you get are RNG; always a choice between two, and sometimes they both suck. If you want to improve your teachers, you have to pull a card from RNG. And it only improves them in specific ways, so there's not a huge chance you'll fix the problem you have. You can't fire or hire. You can't demolish, move, or rebuild. The houses you sort students into are also RNG. You wanna focus on alchemy? Well, better hope that's a house trait you get from RNG. Sometimes you get perfect house traits, sometimes you get nothing you want, and because drawing house cards is also RNG, you have to just hope you get another even. Let's say you get your RNG students through their RNG education, and they graduate, what happens next? More RNG to determine their future. You can do everything right and still have them die or become a pea farmer.

So nothing is hands on. If I had to describe this game in four words they would be 'out of your control.'Some RNG can be fun, but it feels like this game is based completely around it, and for me that's the opposite of what I want from a management game.

So as a game where you have to learn all the weird quirks, and struggle against the RNG to beat the dark lord, this game is kind of a success. It's quirky and weird and unique, and it was fun for a while. But as a magic school management sim, it's not really what I want.

Starbound is that early access game that "leaves early access", but never really reach what they claimed it would be. The mods kind of make up the difference. Not really a fan of the whole thing where devs basically leave it for fans to finish as unpaid labor, but I can't really say I don't recommend it if you can get a good price on it.

Even with mods I think I prefer Terraria, which is a shame... this was supposed to be Terraria with infinite worlds.

Great gameplay.
Good music.
Middling graphics.
Kinda meh story.
Complete lack of race variety. I know we can't get moogles, but at least give me some kind of anthros to mix things up.