Recent reviews by XEALEEN

Another beat'em up from Dotemu? Automatically purchased on release day.

The genre and visuals themselves take me back to my childhood, when we'd play these games as kids sitting on the floor in front of the TV. It's great to see a rich roster of Marvel characters, quite unique and diverse.
I'm so glad to see She-Hulk as a playable character.

Who asked for TellTale Critical role + Invincible + The Boys inspired superhero game?

Nobody.

But also who said it was bad idea to do something like this?

Nobody.

Gosh, I do not remember when I fell in love with the game and character sooooo fast. I wish I have more of this.

It seems we're all so tired of classic superheroes, tired of superheroes with gray morals and the burden of responsibility, so I don't even understand why characters who were unknown to anyone just a year ago feel so familiar and evoke such tender feelings.

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UPDATING MY GUIDE AFTER FINISHING THE GAME

Wow, that was an adventure. I definitely don't regret finishing the game and would gladly do it again, making different choices.

The final episode was pure fusion. I can't wait for Dispatch Volume 2.

I think I should start with a disclaimer: I've played every HoMM game, starting with the very first one when I was a kid. This is probably pretty obvious, as it would be very difficult to rate the game without playing whole series.

In my opinion, HoMM 3 is a game that should be pre-installed on every PC, like Klondike Solitaire or Minesweeper. But Olden Age has major problems, and the reason is not that it's "not like Heroes 3."

The series is objectively dead: Ubisoft, after acquiring the rights to the game, tried several times to restore it to its former glory. Clash of Heroes and Dark Messiah are excellent games in the Might and Magic universe, in my opinion, but overall, Heroes 5 is considered the last good numbered game.

Can Olden Age be considered a worthy continuation of the series?
Absolutely not, at least for now. For me it feels like a concept of a soft, save try to reboot the series. A chance to find out what players want in a new big-budget game and evaluate whether it's worth the effort and expense.

I'm confused by the fact that the developer in charge of the development is not very experienced (as far as I see, Unfrozen only have one game in their portfolio - Iratus), whether they can make not just a good game, but also a good game in a place where Ubisoft-led studios have failed remains to be seen.

I can note for myself that the game is trying too hard to be like Heroes 3 and 5 (75%/25%). I won't even describe the lack of some gameplay features, it's still a demo after all. Perhaps if we support their efforts now, we'll get something more in the future, but in recent years, players have increasingly been disappointed by the trust they place in developers and publishers.

I can see the developers' enthusiasm, their desire to create something new in the genre and the series as a whole, but desire and zeal alone aren't enough, and experience and skill are apparently lacking, because my main complaint isn't so much with the gameplay itself as with the gameplay decisions.

While playing, I couldn't shake the persistent feeling that I was playing a PC port of a mobile game – weak, blurry graphics, poor animations, a terrible user interface, strange button placement, drawn-out battles, weak unit design, and the choice of in-game castles.

It's funny, but in this sense, Songs of Conquest or Age of Wonders 4 feels more like a proper sequel to HoMM than Olden Era itself. That's why I think the developers made the right decision by delaying the Early Access release. Heroes has a unique and dedicated community, which is why it's a very easy-going crowd that will settle for anything, but I think the series deserves a better approach, so please take criticism, improve, and refine the game, work with it as long as it needs to make a good game. Remember that BG3 showed everybody that devs, who were in close contact with the audience, managed to create an excellent and highly replayable game that players wanted.

I really don't want to see another Heroes VI disaster, not again.

I can't believe I just launched the game in 2025 and it works, feels and plays soooo good like back in the old days. Proper game for a proper price, when devs know how to make a good optimization without any "premium" gamers stuff.

We gamers do really need so little just to be happy

— Started the game;
— Killing everyone during tutorial;
— Thinkinh "wow, why does anyone think this game is so hard?";
— Facing Fell Omen which crushes me and the AI companion in 2-3 hits;
— Quitting the game.

Holy sheesh, was it even worth buying this game? Even the tutorial smashes me so hard.

After Starfield release this game looks like a god bless. Such a generous gift was not even in the thoughts: no one expected, no one hoped and no one even suspected, but here it is: TES Oblivion Remastered.

Although it is hard to call it a remaster, they tried too hard on the game and it looks like remake. It looks and plays simply gorgeous. If only there was a similar remastered game for Fallout or Morrowind and it would restore my faith in Bethesda, just look at how gorgeous the characters look.
https://steamproxy.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3468768510
Such a magnificent feeling just like I play in brand new game and like I know everything about it. I remember playing the original game when I was a teenage girl, and now everything is like then, only better. Moreover, I still remember the story and quests of the game very well, so I am glad to share my experience with those who are not familiar with the game yet, meet my achievement guide, I hope it will be useful to you in your playthrough.
https://steamproxy.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3468613968
P.S.
The Oblivion community made such wonderful mods for the game, I can't wait for body replacers like DMRA to appear in the game, hehe.

I know there is a lot of information noise around the game. Critics highly praised the game, ordinary players condemn it.
Microtransactions in singleplayer game, all these LBGTQ+ Stuff, Black people in medieval japan as history character — I know, I know.
I just want to say that I have a guide on how to get 100% of the achievements in the game for those who are achievement hunters.

https://steamproxy.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3449287913

Very promising and much better than I expected. It's nice that the game looks pretty decent and modern, but I can say right away that I really didn't like these long animations of opening chests and picking up items. The developers definitely need to come up with something about this because going through the entire game and picking up every item, searching a chest or corpse will be very inconvenient, boring and time-consuming.

Otherwise, I would gladly buy the game if it only gets better and more interesting.

Gosh, I can believe this is an actuall AAA game that works fine. You just launch it and play. How did gamer community even get to this point? It is just enought to be well made game to get some good reviews.

Anyway, I'm still laughing with that Kingdom C U M naming once again. Haha, this is my kingdom c u m. Seems like I`m not the only one here:

https://steamproxy.com/steamstore/app/3395080/KINGDOM_CUM/

How can I sum up my entire review in three short words? I can ll tell you:


Let me explain, Life Is Strange: Double Exposure is not a bad game, it has its good points and it gave me a short journey with dialogues, funny situations and intrigue. However, I believe that everything is relative and here Double Exposure crumbles to dust right before our eyes. During early access, the first two chapters very competently built up the mystery and set up hooks for the plot to be pulled in the right direction, but what we have is actually extremely disappointing.

Don't get me wrong, the last time we saw Maxine Caulfield as a protagonist was in the very first original game, which came out almost 10 years ago. It wasn't a perfect game, but it had everything that made the game beloved by people of all ages and types.

It was a fascinating interactive movie with complex, deep characters, the attitude towards whom could change from good to bad and back again several times during the playthrough. It was a game with interesting puzzles and dialogues, and even taking into account that it was an interactive movie, it was fun to play and empathize with. It was a story during which you could cry and laugh, regret and hope for the best, and by the end of the game it became genuinely scary, when all the secrets slowly began to emerge.


Maxine's return does not stand up to comparison with the events of its past and everything suffers here, I believe, because of the small budget. If in the first part we had the whole of Arcadia Bay at our disposal, and in Life Is Strange 2 we traveled across the country, but here the events literally do not even take place on the territory of one university, but such a sensation, as if in one room. All five chapters are just the same locations mixed up in different orders in different guises, to which you return again and again. Even Max's new ability seemed to have been invented only to stretch the already meager gameplay to the same locations. Now, instead of puzzles, we must simply run from point A to point B, switching between worlds, steps to the side are either not provided or...

have no effect on anything, oh my god, this is one of the scariest things in the game. When the game literally gave birth to the "This action will have consequences" meme, here it turns into some kind of bad pun. The game is very short, but it still could have had a lot of room for choice. However, almost all the choices in the game do not affect anything significantly, the consequences of your choices are so insignificant that sometimes you can hardly notice them in the details.


The game has its advantages. I am definitely glad to see the continuation of Maxine's story, I can't help but note the good facial animation, considering that the characters are constantly being ironic, giving punchlines and teasing each other, sometimes such a trifle greatly affects the immersion (although what else can you expect from an interactive movie?). The game's dialogues are quite good, I like how the actors play them. The atmosphere of the game is 200%. I am not a fan of this style of music, but the design of the locations, their decoration in combination with the music, really helps to immerse yourself. And I will not lie, some characters, although they did not become favorites, definitely deserve a tick in my memory.

So, if you have never played any games in the series before and you are entering this game as if it were your first time, then this game can captivate and please.

However, if you have played at least any of the previous games of the series, then you will see with your own eyes the downsides of this part and this is sad. If the previous games of the series told us about rebellious and carefree teenagers, family values, the torment of choice, responsibility and how to meet a new reality with your head held high, then this part tells more about the fact that young people these days already have a lot of psychological troubles and heartbreaking suffering out of nowhere.

This is definitely not the worst part of the game, but as I said above - Max deserves more and we as fans too. It is a pity that either out of a sense of economy or because of the script's mediocrity, but this story is not as good as I think it could have been.