Recent reviews by Tiavor

DI1 was fine, this addon seems like thrown together in 10 minutes. shifted assets everywhere, and even more buggy in coop than the main game. doors are glitching around and killing people. mobs attack over 20m distance and insta kill you. or just do the walking effect from Monthy Python, running 10m and porting back. visited 4 caves and all of them were identical down to the item and boxes, even zombies. 3 of them were instanced for some inexplicable reason (they are pretty short) and the 4th was just in the open world.
can someone remind me why I play a gun specialist? I still haven't found a gun after almost 5 hours.
... will continue for now and update, but so far it's a lot worse than the main game.

Positive:
* boss fights are OK-ish, even on normal difficulty my team needed multiple attempts on most of them.
* graphics are fine, I suppose

Neutral:
* I found a single puzzle for a secret, if there were more, they weren't obvious. this one was at least for me, my team would have ignored it otherwise. It was on the larger desert map and gave us a really strong armor which we kept till the end of the game.
* KI was sometimes ok and moved around quite nice, sometimes it was breaindead

Negative:
* story is nonsensical and not well told, you often ask your self what even happened, but that seems typical for souls-like.
* gameplay is simplistic, reminds more of modern phone games
- e.g. two button gameplay: you have only 3 weapons active, while carrying the rest in the inventory. you can swap them any time but only by opening the inventory. each weapon has the basic attack and a special skill. (typical two button gameplay ala Genshin Impact). one of the 3 active is the close combat weapon, which is activated by attacking without aiming. for the other two you have to aim first and then attack. from those 2 ranged weapons, you only ever swap the rifle/shotgun, not the pistol, because there aren't any replacements.
- levels are relatively short and linear. only a few of them have a bit more interesting complexity and pathing. in most levels you can see and feel the blocks they are made out of and "randomly generated" put together. One block is around 25x25m and has a few possible neighbors for a seamless transition, or maybe come in larger sets. you still notice, especially in the early levels.
- early level type sewer goes on for way too long and blocks repeat way too often
- level design is also very restrictive, you move around within invisible boundaries

for 12€ (on sale) it was an ok time with friends, but that's about it. but would have never played it alone or bought at full price. There is no reason for me to continue playing after the last boss.

Presentation: garbage
Starting experience: garbage
User Interface: garbage

Conclusion: garbage

Just launched the game and the experience is already horrible:
* Sound is on 100% default (I usually dial it down to 10-15%), 50% would have been acceptable. There is some kind of voice reader in the menu, the sound is also too loud and there is no dial for that.
* default resultion is HD and windowed, why?
* Default FoV is 60(H) (WTF!?), good that there is a slider for that.
* there are things that have a slider that shouldn't have one or at least a way to manually enter numbers (FPS cap)
* basically all options have their [left arrow] covered by text, if it even exists. can't tell if an option is max or not. (please use drop down menus! most AAA games are also guilty of this)
* I often can't tell if a button is just a button or a tab on the same group

starting the game:
* had to restart with EAC (it's good that you can enable/disable it! never seen that option before)
* fps is horrible, even though I haven't built anything yet, I get only around 45 fps with occasional hick-ups.
* all the important tools are not equipped in the hot bar but hang around in the inventory, why?
* the interface is one of the worst I've ever seen. no distinction between buttons and tabs, no feedback when you did something, it's too cluttered and at the same time too basic in design
* everything is done in the [tab] menu and no one told me at the start that I had to use [tab] ... I pressed all letters and got nothing ... an all-in-one menu can be good, if it's done good, but not this way.
* the help pop-ups are not helping very much.
* a team mate had a container and was unable to share it with the faction.
* when I mined a big stone, it told me that my inventory is full. I looked in my inventory and there was no stone and still a lot of space. the stone dropped and only then when I picked it up, it shoved as much stone into my inventory as it could fit.

* the models look very basic with low texture resolution (which could be ok, other games do this too)
* the animation ... just wtf, I mean you see it in the videos, the char is moonwalking all over the place. this hasn't changed yet.

the look and feel is pretty much a "my first game"-type, but I guess that what it lacks in basic design pholosophy it compensates for with massive content later on. all these flaws and I haven't started building yet.

Mit etwa 45min pro "Durchspielen", ist es zwar recht kurz, aber jedes Ende lohnt sich. Es ist immer ein gewisser 'oof'-Moment wenn man sieht wie Reynardo stirbt ... und jedes mal anders. Es ist immer schön zu sehen wie das Verhalten von Zenobia und die Reaktion von Reynardo sich ändert, je nachdem dem was man auswählt.

Man muss Grund auf verschiedene Enden spielen, damit einem in dem 5ten Mal das richtige Ende gezeigt wird. Am Anfang wird man noch etwas mehr erkunden und liegt damit bei 1-1,5h pro Runde. Durch das Freischalten von Waffen, eröffnen sich auch innerhalb eines Abschnitts neue Pfade, die oftmals zu mehr Gegnern und Truhen führen, manchmal aber auch den Weg zum Ende verkürzen. Es gibt ein recht einfaches Upgrade-System, bei dem man nach gut einem Drittel der Endings schon alles voll ausgebaut hat. Um den Skill-Tree zu füllen, wird man ein paar Pfade wiederholen müssen, ist aber auch eher ein Bonus-Ziel und nicht wirklich wichtig (seltenste Achievement).

Das Kampfsystem ist recht simpel und lässt sich auch für ungeübte Spieler gut mit dem Controller spielen. Durch den Skill-Tree bekommt man wenigstens etwas Abwechslung rein in das monotone ein-Button-drücken für den Standard Angriff: Ziehen der Gegner, greifen und wegschubsen oder per dash drüber rennen. (das wars dann aber auch schon)

Die Präsentation finde ich eigentlich noch am besten. Es ist ähnlich wie bei Stanley Parabel, dass einem die ganze Zeit ein Erzähler die Story erzählt und kommentiert was man gerade macht. Man muss es aber halt auch mögen. Der Sarkasmus kommt jeden Falls nicht zu knapp.

None of my other selected games for any award deserves it as much as this one. "only 5 more minutes" or in Infinifactory it is more like: after completing a level "I see a way to get one footprint less" -> 5h later, done, 1fp less, seing another way to get another footprint less -> cycle continues.
There are so many user created levels that are even better than the original ones, please check out the workshop :)

Chasing Shadows is the 4th part of the GemCraft series. It is the most extensive and in depth Tower Defense game.

It is at the same size as the 3rd part GC:Labyrinth or maybe even a bit larger, hard to say. It is mostly about the endgame and the path you take to it. While in GCL you were 95% of the endgame afk and waited for the remaining ~1100 waves (of 1337) to destroy, in GCCS you have to stay vigilant till the last of the 999 waves. Even with a good Wizard Level you will have a hard time destroying the last 10 waves on harder dificulty. This is because the HP and armor isn't capped compared to GCL. At some point of the game you have all data presented you in exponential style.
Some here say that you need to grind older levels to progress, that is definitly not true. In my current game I've redone only about 10 lvls so far. To get more exp out the levels I cramp up the difficulty for new levels too, that way I don't need to redo them over and over again to get to the end.

The gem crafting is more indepth as it looks on the first glance. When you reach a certain point in the game, gems combined in a special way are stronger than just normal 'u'pped gems. There are several guides and even a gem combining tool to help out with the crafting.

While there is a free version in the Internet, it is limited in some aspects (less skills, no endless mode, etc). The Steam version is fully unlocked, has higher resoultion textures, a few additional levels and it doesn't need the Flashplayer to work.

other features:
* Story
* Skills and upgrades for skills
* Talisman (like upgrades for armor and weapons in RPG)
* countless maps to beat
* 3 difficulties that you can adjust in different ways to make it even harder and get more exp (adjustable per map) + Iron Wizard mode (like a NewGame+)

Jedes Spiel sollte in den ersten paar Minuten schon repräsentativ sein und nicht einen durch graue Korridore jagen, wo man warum auch immer irgend welche leute tötet. Als ich dann noch am Ende dieses Segments nicht einmal mehr auf meine Waffe wechseln konnte, diese wurde aus irgend weinen Grund weg gesteckt, hab ichs einfach sein gelassen -> uninstall
Dazu kommt noch dass die Grafik einfach unterirdisch schlecht ist und die Kamera nicht von dem 3rd Person over shoulder auf eine andere Position eingestellt werden kann. Ja es kommt bald eine Mod die 1st Person ermöglicht, trozdem, wenn die Steuerung so unintuitiv ist und die Texturqualität nicht wenigstens etwas verbessert wird, ist es immernoch ein eher bescheidenes Spiel