Recent reviews by Steven

This game is unplayable. I have to reset this game between 1-5 times per play. Selecting pieces is difficult, some calculations of damages are incorrect, actions to march become stuck, and it's prone to freezing.

I reached out since early access prior to their DLC existed, before they had a single review, they never responded. Each update tends to break the game more.

The game and overall system is great otherwise, concept is good. I couldn't fall in love with this game because of the story. Most of the reviews seem to agree the writing was subpar.

I've only played through scenario one, and I've played it over three times now. My first play through, I couldn't see the bigger picture. I only saw right and wrong that was displayed before me. I got the "Broke Up" ending.

I can say this game effectively broke my heart. And it almost made me cry. I thought that I only had the options before me. And just like in real life, I couldn't see the alternatives. Everything was so black and white to me.

I'm quite stubborn, so I refuse to look up how to unlock each achievement... but the moment I discovered the other possibilities, I almost cried tears of relief and happiness. This game is amazing... and I hope everyone else can find enjoyment in this.

I will never stop trying to get all the achievements on my own.

Edit: Okay fine... the true ending got me...

Good concept, terrible execution. The game does crash once every 5-10 turns. The strategic level of this is not great enough to call it a "Strategy" game. This is a grinding game. You need to grind the same level 10 times (20 minutes each) before you can buy the average upgrade, which does scale. So you're doing 1 more game per level upgrade.

By the time you purchase your generals or upgrade your troops, you are going onto the next faction. You are not allowed to use your previous troop types or generals that you grinded so long for.

Only playable with cheating. Otherwise to beat this entire game (which is only roughly 10 levels/maps) it will take you around 200-300 hours of grinding.

If it wasn't for the worthless grinding only to reset you, it'd be 3/5. As is, it's not even worth a 1/5. Not playable.

After being roughly 15 hours in, Code Vein is officially the most frustrating game I have ever played... and it may have turned me into a masochist...

The difficulty of Code Vein is not for the feint of hearts. It will scare you. It will give you nightmares. It will give you PTSD the next time you walk down the street and there's an empty alleyway nearby.

Just into "level 2" alone, the city, I must've been reborn and restarted the level 13 times. Of those 13, 5 of those, I was knocked off the map by a humongous female Lost that whirlwind dreidel'd my ass into oblivion. Following those 13 defeats, I lost to the flapping boss of fluttering toxic hell a whopping 7 times.

Code Vein is unique in that it is a game that will test you at the earliest, lowest, weakest of levels. You can die if you are not careful at the hands of your first encounter. There are bloody ambushes lurking in every turn, every corner, and it will traumatize you. You will find that you've adopted new-found ninja senses after playing a few hours. If it doesn't leave you with PTSD, you're either a Revenant yourself, or have balls made of the highest quality of brass.

Code Vein is a game that will challenge the most seasoned of players, and is not for the casual gamer. You will need to use every resource you have to beat certain levels. The currency system is tied to Leveling, Weapon/Armor Upgrades, Purchasing Items, Adding New Skills... and you lose it all if you die.

But what makes all these challenges absolutely worth it is the 10/10 story and plot line that is delivered brilliantly. You dive deep into the memories and story of every character that you meet, and occasionally turning this title into a tear-jerker that little Timmy's got nothing on.

Disclaimer: I spent 30 minutes making my character, and another 30 giving it a new outfit 5 hours in. You can remake your character at any given time. Enough said.

Plot: 10/10
Gameplay: Infuriating/10
Combat: Dodge-or-Die/10

Overall: 9.5/10

Abandoned game, no updates, cannot connect to servers. Do not waste your money, you won't even get as little as an achievement for playing against an AI, because you are not connected to their servers.

Literally just bought this game... it was a promotional price, so... why not?

This would best be summarized as a classical strategy game that belongs in the 90s. It's pretty amusing. It kept me entertained for 4.5 hours. It's decent if you're looking to buy this for under $5.00 USD. It's certainly not worth much more. It's a slight bit outdated.

Starting off, you make a selection of 3 possible races, 4 magical paths, 3 map choices, any start location desired, and a lot of buildings to choose from.

Each unit has an upkeep. You either build toward military or economy. Early game I focused on defensive builds, spammed range units. Mid game, focus economy and magic. Late game, military and rush the enemy.

Want to break the game and win a lot? Just get archers or wizards. Upgrade them for better range. They can win against all melee units in total disregard of being outnumbered 2 to 1. They will suffer against cavalries. The AI will run past your frontline to hit your archers and wizards first. Simply sit your own cavalry or melee units next to your flanks and counter-attack the enemy or defend the middle of the map as your range units chip away at the enemy.

The rebellions will become so hazardous that even the AI struggles to keep the peace. I simply just held key choke points, controlled a large chunk of land at a time, and just blitz'd the life out of the enemy. You don't need to control every single area to win the game. Sack the enemy, and vacate the area. When that stack is weakened from blitz tactics, split them into single units and attack every surrounding territory, some of which will be empty if AI owned. Guerilla and Blitz tactics combined makes winning easy.

Remember children... No matter what strategy game you play... Either Run and Shoot or Blitz :)

Crusader Kings II is one of those hit-or-miss games. It will miss with 95% of the population. Hell... you probably only have this game because of a deal, received it for free, or purchased it in a bundle.

Amongst strategy lovers, 75% of you guys will consider it a miss. But... for those of you who are as stubborn as myself, this game will suck you right in.

Before we continue any further... I have attempted to play Crusader Kings II almost 5 times before I actually enjoyed it. I quit 5 times out of frustration and simply not getting this game. If you love strategy, you must keep trying. Once I did understand the complex mechanics, I fell in love... just not with my first wife Matilda that I may or may not have simply used for an alliance with the Duke of Flanders. If you're reading this... sorry dear...

My highest recommendation for beginners, start off at the bookmarked game and play as William the Conquerer. If he still holds the title, William the Bastard, you're a little behind. Move up a few months.

Playing as William the Conqueror definitely helped my learning. And once you get a feel, you'll want to play as one of the Kings of Spain. Poor King Sancho dies, leaving his kingdom divided amongst his 3 sons. They are respectively the Kings of Galicia, Leon, and Castile. Will you be the youngest King of Galicia, who struggles with his Portugese Duke who plots to overthrow him? Or the middle King of Leon, the plotter with high intrigue that holds the support of his two sisters and his mother in his realm... Or perhaps the brave King of Castile who has under him the legendary El Cid, the greatest military mind of his time.

Now, let's backtrack for a moment...

Crusader Kings II has an in-sane amount of roleplaying involved. There are even fantasy elements that are added with some DLCs that come about, some of which let you fall in love with a horse, seduce your sister, eat your vassal, sacrifice virgins to God, or blind and castrate your own father. If that's not good enough, create your own character and dynasty and destroy history as we know it.

Now here's a little example of something I normally do in a normal gameplay. Almost all my playthroughs, I hated the Holy Roman Empire. Solution? They give the pope a million reasons to hate them. Get enough money, piety, prestige, and the pope can grant you an invasion right. Net the right alliances, and you can storm into claim the Holy Roman Empire for your own. But suddenly expanding so massively will only get me overthrown... so why did I bother taking it? Simple. I destroy the title and grant everyone independence and watch all hell break loose in a nation that's magically divided into 100 country-states.

Now, that being said, Crusader Kings touches base with a variety of religions, cultures, different ethnicities, and government. There are many playstyles and no one way to go about winning. You may become the Emperor of a grand Empire, such as the Holy Roman Empire, or be a starting Count that aspires to become a Duke or even overthrow the King... If those don't work, become a Republic state and work on building your house and fleet to make money as the more notable factions of Venice or Milan.

With so many elements to this game, you may expand your influences and become Emperor through some basic means of marriage, alliances, marrying off your children and siblings, fabricating claims and fighting for claims. You can grow your power through military might and expand one county at a time. You may also save up and focus on wealth, expanding your land toward finances and heavy taxes, and putting that hard-earned gold to good use... and by good use... obviously we mean to kidnapping, assassinations of enemies, buying the pope's love, buying your liege's affection, heck, buying everyone's affection so that they may support you and elect you to becoming the new ruler. Oh... right... did I mention you could also just do the kidnapping, assassinations, and various other ploys yourself, start factions against your lord, and simply screw up anyone at your leisure? And if that isn't your thing... be pious and be with the Pope, and he will surely grant you invasion rights, which then may be called to action through alliances and simply declaring war. If that doesn't tickle your fancy, you could be the master of diplomacy, and let the people who love and support you do the plotting for you.

As a ruler, you will come across many random events that determine the path your kingdom and your character goes.

As a summary, Crusader Kings II is a must-play for strategy lovers, history lovers, roleplay lovers, and peoplewhosecretlylovedoingevilthings-lovers. You and I both know that you will all end up either castrating your own brother or sacrificing virgins somewhere along the line...

Crusader Kings II is the gateway to heaven and hell with immense replay value, amazing roleplaying elements, and most important of all... sleeping with your brother's wife and letting your brother raise your bastard child.

Did I mention you get to name your kids and any land you own...?

Yours Truly
The Emperor of Ponyland
Dynasty of Rainbows and Magic

Final Fantasy VIII is a game that was an experimental shift from the traditional Final Fantasy series. This is a game where you do not need to level and grind in order to beat the game. For that reason alone, someone can beat this game in under 12 hours if they truly wanted to. To fully embrace the characters, that is a whole different situation.

To sum up the mechanics and key differences, FF8 focuses around enemies that will scale to your highest level hero. You will be allowed to have up to 3 heroes at any given time. Your main source of power comes from your summons, which act as something you can equipt in a new system called Junctioning. In Junctioning, you must attach summons and pick their respective abilities. They act as stat boosters and provide unique skills.

Through this new system, you must "Draw" unique magic. These are much like your traditional spells/magic such as Fira, Cure, Esuna, only with Junctioning, you attach these limited spells like equipment and can potentially attach one spell to each attribute stat to boost them. In fact... this is your main method of powering up, not traditional grinding.

Drawing magic is possible through almost every monster you encounter, or "Draw-Points" that are located throughout the game. These magic spells you "draw" are expendable and limited. If you run out, even if you have the best spells, Ultima, Holy, Demi, you must re-draw them from key locations, monsters, or through a craft system called "Refinement."

A lot of people will miss the point, but this series adds a bonus method of Crafting or Refinement by means of a card game, Triple Triad. It's a simple game where you have 4 numbers for each direction, top, right, left, bottom, and you must play your strategy to beat the numbers of the previous set cards. There will be additional rules that come into play to make this much more challenging. Using these cards, you can potentially refine powerful items, some of which may make you immortal for a short duration, which is needed for the dreadful final boss.

Now for the plot...

You start off as Squall, who aims to pass his SeeD exam to become an official member of the most prestigious honor in the Garden. Squall and his companions take on various assigned missions, acting as mercenaries. Eventually, they are assigned a special task by Master Cid. The one who gives this task is Rinoa, our main heroine. Together, this sparks the start of a long, treacherous fight against the ambitious Galbadian Dictatorship that plans to use the Sorceress Edea to take over the world.

The story will be a hit or miss for most people. Squall is your typical lazy teenager who doesn't have any plans in his life. He has a very "Why should I do this...?" attitude and does not want the burden of responsibility to rest on his shoulders.

Later on, you will discover Rinoa is actually a spoiled girl from a powerful family, and everyone has a negative impression of her cause of it. She will learn to become fearful of loss as well after her first confrontation with the Sorceress. As for Squall... because Squall's "older sister" left him at an early age, he isolated himself from the world to prevent himself from being hurt. In essence, you could say these two are the most paranoid heroes you will ever come across in the FF series. But because of this, the heroes in FF8 are also the most human you will ever meet. It makes them relate-able to the average person and requires a rather mature audience to play.

By the end of the game, you will discover that majority of the characters will have something personal that they struggle through. Learning about their insecurities and pasts will, without a doubt, draw you closer to loving the characters. Several parts of Final Fantasy VIII will have your heart tugged.

I played this game throughout 3 very different parts of my life. Almost 10 years later, I finally got around to beating it. I appreciated it more and more each time I played it.

Become the characters. Relate to them. Be prepared. This game will change you.

Originally, I did think of upvoting this for a recommendation. It entertaining and amusing. Warning: Unity Game.

There's a little hurdle as a learning curve. When you first start, "Pausing" the game will give you a little hint as to how this game works. So here's an insider, and I hope some of you guys can upvote this to make it visible for other readers. It will greatly help.

So when you start the game, this is very vital. You need to start with only 1 Warehouse (which is free to make or destroy), and jump straight to making turrets. Creating the "Tools" building will help you apparently "double" your resources obtained. Now this is very important. You have 2 sides of this world-spaceship thing of yours. You can hit the first button bottom left to flip the board. You'll want to design one for internal economical and infrastructure, and the flip side will be your battlefield.

For your economical, I recommend building everything you need here. And right away, I'm going to rate each building to save you time of wondering what they do.

1. Tree: Provides your colony with oxygen. One is good enough for maybe 3-5 people. It only cost 1 tree resource, so do not hesitate to spam these on your economical board.
2. Wall: These are meant to protect your other buildings. These must be placed on the edge and corners. The AI generally hits the closest building. They cost 10 stone, so this one I really wasn't a fan of. These things eat damage hard. It takes 5 hits to destroy. Meanwhile, a turret can eat twice as much damage for 10 tree and 10 stones. There's a better means of defense and I'll detail that later...
3. Shield: Meant to protect your buildings. This thing doesn't even work right, it's as useful as a wall (NOT THAT USEFUL)
4. Warehouse: This is your key building. You'll want to centralize this thing if possible. It doesn't really matter though, because your warehouse cost nothing to build, and it does not affect stock destroying this thing. I use it on the edge to eat enemy turret damage for free.
5. Armory: This one I have mixed feelings about. Early game, you're not gonna really care about this. All it really does is give your men an "attack" or "defense" option. It lets your regular people who are not sitting in turrets invade the enemy territory. They make short work of the enemy towers and eventually mid game, you will have them fight the enemy defenders to officially win.
6. Tools: These claim to double your mined/gathered resources. Not tested. I build it just in case.
7. Artefacts: This will be your most important building. Occasionally, you will find chests that can be opened only by keys bought from random space "Stores." You can equipt up to 6 modifiers that influence building health, turret damage, people health, people damage.
8. Hospital: Heals your little men after each battle is over, not recommended.

Too long, didn't read it? Just build the Warehouse and Turrets. Trees to make your people breathe. Everything else doesn't matter.

Initial Strategy:

1. Build 4 Turrets centralized on one side. I always go for the most expensive ones. For our purpose, we'll call this side B.
2. Build a ring of trees on side B all around the edge. Remember how we discussed that the walls were utter trash? Well... apparently in space, mother nature is a far sturdier wall. These trees can eat as much enemy fire as a turret. We're using these trees to not only bring in much needed oxygen, but they're gonna be our main line of defense. With this, we should be good for 20-30 men.
3. Add your warehouse to side B. Since it will be further out compared to your turrets, this warehouse gets to eat enemy turret fire for zero cost if we ever need it to.
4. On Side A, you will need to build Tool for now. When you find your first artifact, then build "Artefact" (Which by the way is flipping stupid to spell wrong in one place and not the other...
5. Before moving into new territory, it is a good idea to put your 4 men into these turrets. When you visit new planets, your enemy will either be A. Sleeping, B. Neutral, or C. Hostile. They will start shooting you.
6. From where you first start, travel around your start point. I've found that your initial start point has much needed crew-members or settlers that are waiting to be found. When you reach too far into space, I've only managed to find 10 total. But when I started a new game and hit all the local places, I've found 12-20 early.

Key to winning:

- Do not set to closest fire, Fire at RANDOM, this is absolutely vital. You don't want 16 turrets firing at one enemy turret at a time when 4 bullets makes one go boom. While you randomly fire at turrets, they're firing at your trees.
- Don't build walls, build trees
- Turns out fuel is free, you click a button to "Gather Fuel" when you hit 0
- Always upgrade your turret to max ASAP, resources are hard to comeby early game, money isn't
- Purchase keys and repair packs each chance you get
- Mid to late game, purchase and keep stock 5-10 Medkits, 10-20 Repair Packs, 10-20 Keys
- Med Kit is more useful than a Hospital, I generally use 1 after each major battle
- Repair Pack cost MUCH LESS than going to a "Repair" spot and spending money per damage
- After you have the necessary stock, and you are hitting your surplus of 500-1000 gold, start buying crewmen
- Add more turrets at this point, upgrade ASAP
- Capture the 6 points and win the game
- As you progress, the game will add more buildings, weapons, and upgrade the enemy, just beat the game before hitting all the blues

Now... why am I rating this poorly?

Well first off, your trees work like your walls should. Resources need adjustment. The beginning, you have almost nothing to work with, and later on, all the settlers are dead, you have too much resources late game. But the best part is there's a list of bugs.
Bugs:

- Your citizens go nuts after each battle and mid game, they never gather resources. The lil buggers go raid the enemy homes, sit in there, sip on a nice cool can of figurative beer, and forget to come out. Go figure the life of a space pirate makes you a lazy buttmunch. Simply recall them to bring them back.
- When you travel to some places, you just bug the hell out. It doesn't load properly. It's fine though, I can afford one or two. But when you bug out every 1/3 treasure locations, and steal a ton of resources from me after I traveled across the entire galaxy, I'm gonna be ticked off. This was before I knew fuel was free and didn't give me a Game Over. I was paying 10 gold per fuel just to make it across... Which brings me to my next point.
- WHY IS FUEL FREE?!
- Oxygen... It bugs out. When you have around 20-30 people or more, you begin to bug out on Oxygen. It happens drastically when you turn up your speed. Your Oxygen will magically dip severely when your little men raid the enemy. I mean... why... do they breathe more heavily while engaged... cause that would be cool, a little RP... but I think this developer just... know what, let's just say he's smart and gave it a little roleplay...
- Jet fuel doesn't melt steel beams, in our case, Laser Beams (Yes, there are laser beams late game) doesn't melt trees!!!
- Oh right, the ultimate reason why I'm super pissed. You bugged 1 out of 6 of my key victory points and never gave me a proper bloody victory. I was lit-ter-ral-ly ONE EFFING stop from winning. I thought to myself, "Oh bloody hell... the enemy are starting to build Anti-Personnel camps and rocket turrets... better just skip everything and race to win the game, shall we?" So I race across the Galaxy to capture all 6 points, skipped 7 treasure locations, and I encourage my men for the final battle, "This is it men... we have fought long and hard with our 62 men... this is our final battle... To Victory!!!" but the game said, "No"

We marched into the final stop. We only saw our own base. The game said, "No."

I said 2 words... then one more, "DOWNVOTE"