Recent reviews by Grognag

It's a very solid autobattler with a great setting from an old TTRPG and is very true to the source material.

I would play more of it, but a certain boss battle is horribly bugged so I can not progress, which is disappointing. Most recent patch I hoped would fix it but nope, will have to wait until later.

After playing this before release and really enjoying seeing the evolution of the mechanics (and having Owlcat literally listen to my feedback in their massive Open Beta and a lot of bug reports) it really has blossomed into not only an extremely atmospheric game that really speaks to fans of the setting but also is a great introduction for people who know nothing of the Dark Future Where There Is Only War. Mechanically fights are fun (especially gunfights) and similar to Wrath of the Righteous, a great deal of builds are possible not only with your main character but your companions, which are interesting and great with their input on every conversation. Most of the quests are really well designed as well, some are hilarious as well for a bit of spice! Very firm recommend.

It's not bad for what it is, the dice mechanics are interesting with the spell use - you have less randomness with your spells popping up (because they're set) and more randomness if you can actually cast them effectively. Some of the spells that require, say, higher numbers or odd or even might have you screwed by RNG occasionally, but this is a roguelike so that's to be expected. If you don't want to be screwed occasionally by luck you can't control, what are you doing playing roguelikes?

Naturally even failures can give you unlocks and XP on unlocking more things, as per usual. Graphics are clean and animations are neat. One feature I really wish the game had was to preview upgraded spells like Vault of the Void has by default. There are two options for spells and I've grabbed the occasional spell and found both options for upgrades made me not want the spell retroactively. You can hand back spells to reroll them but sometimes I passed on something I needed for something I thought would upgrade better than its origin. With Vault of the Void, I could easily hold down CTRL and find out, saving myself a good choice. Without this I find that picking spells is haphazard. I know each spell has two options for upgrades but being completely in the dark isn't great. Spell choice is really important in this game and it's randomized so you really need to know what you're getting!

Also, I find that the fire dude has no way of rerolling his dice and mostly has to deal with just shoving dice for later into spells to pop in later rounds, it's a really boring and annoying style that stops you from being able to defend yourself enough. I don't mind a glass cannon character but this is just unfun.

When you consider this is the work of one person, it's even more amazing. The artwork is fantastic, the gameplay is fun and continues to be fun even in endgame. There's a fair amount of replayability due to the different classes and different specs of classes. The music is great but not distracting, the various foes you fight are generally interesting from a visual and mechanical point of view.

I got this as part of a bundle but it's honestly worth full price. The only thing I would say is a bit of a negative is that some of the artifacts are a bit lackluster in mechanics, some of the cards similar, although most are really interesting. It could be a gameplay balance thing though! There are enough good cards and artifacts that it's generally not an issue unless you just get unlucky in a run, and since it's a roguelike, them's the breaks!

Interesting atmosphere and story makes me want to explore it more, but the dull cardbased combat with very samey cards and *unnecessary clicking* that needs a lot of streamlining makes me want to uninstall. UI is unintuitive and clumsy. VA is fairly average, which isn't great if you're using voice as your narrative presentation, a matter of "do voice acting well or not at all and let people read".

The real inexplicable problem is that there are glaring things wrong, apparent to anyone who has played any other deckbuilders. I know it's probably an indie game, made by a small team but there are plenty of indie deckbuilders that are interface friendly, interesting combat without being overly complex (LoR's combat, to start with at least, is overly complex without being interesting or fun - maybe it gets better later but I don't feel the need to find out) and well presented. I feel like this game is a visual novel where someone who didn't understand how deckbuilding games worked shoved in a token game element to tell the story. No wonder there's an option to autoplay your battles - the game doesn't really want you to play it, just read it. Which is fine if we were talking about a book. Not a game.

If you want a good story-based deckbuilder, go play Griftlands. If you want a solid indie deckbuilder and don't care about story but like a good atmosphere, try Vault of the Void, made by a single person and it plays pretty uniquely for a deckbuilder (admittedly a variation on a theme sort of unique, but them's the breaks.)

EDIT: while the old review is indeed true, I found the end of the game fantastic and I also found the DLC content (especially the last DLC, which is very pulpy noir and just all around great) to be the last great gasp of the game. I would say this game is still flawed but overall I am glad I played it, if only for those elements. If the TOW team have learned at the end of their experience, I'll be happy to play TOW2 in due course. I really do hope they can address some of the concerns I have had with the game and make companion quests longer and more conversations with them as is known for Obsidian, as well as offer other options for quests (Foundation is probably the one fly in the ointment of the endgame as quests go).

In closing, this game along with the DLC is a good choice for a sale. Grit your teeth and enjoy the final DLC. The first DLC is "not bad, considering". It does seem like they're improving.

Original review follows:

I own all the Obsidian titles. Literally every one. Have played most of them more than once. Oh, and I was playing them when they were called Interplay and Black Isle.

One strength Obsidian always had was in its NPC dialogue and quest system. Each NPC in your party had great backstory and sometimes their own little unique interactions with the world. Some games more than others. Probably the best expression of this would be KOTOR 2, despite the game being rushed to hell.

The NPCs in this aren't bad ... but you never really find out much about them. Their companion quests are pretty short and so are their dialogue trees. Most of the NPCs you meet are in a similar boat. You get teased by their coolness and then they're gone.

As to the game itself, it's very much on rails which tries to be big but isn't. Each zone is quite small and quite empty. It's pretty ... pretty vacant. Choices are very boolean, there aren't a lot of "take a third option" which Obsidian have also been known for. Ironically, it reminds me of some earlier Bioware "be a baby eater or a saint" except "corporate bootlicker or people's favourite".

The game is shockingly short as well - you'll be playing it, and one part of it is a slog and you'll hate it, then you're like "oh, is this the end already?"

Oh, and the combat is way too easy for what it is. I have done most of the game without putting a single point in any combat skill. You don't even need them if you are a decent shot. Your companions are almost useless. Too often they'll either stand in the open and shoot and die, or they'll rush into melee and die. Occasionally their perks will save them versus some enemies. You mostly run with companions to get other NPC reactions or do their quests.

Really wanted to like TOW, can't. It just seems like Obsidian but heavily diluted by something. It's the homeopathic version of Obsidian.

It's EA, does that mean it's bug free? No. Occasional elements aren't implemented, some of the facial animations could do with another pass and occasionally one of my characters and an enemy creature would actually be stuck on the same tile where they couldn't hit one another. But you know, early days.

Do these aspects make you hate life and want to forcefeed the devs carpet lint? Also no. It's been one of the more polished EAs I've played, especially from an indie studio. The VA is decent for indie effort although could probably use another pass. I would like more race and class options and I know that some classes will come later but I don't know of any more races, which is a shame since there aren't even any gnomes! Some more of the outlandish races I imagine they won't run with because they won't make sense with the setting (dragonborn spring to mind) but again, this is a work in progress.

Honestly feel a bit sad I ran out of content to play during this EA because I enjoyed it greatly. The addition of vertical movement in both climbing and flying is amazing and it beats the "jump from one place to another" version that Larian added to DOS. I mean, I enjoyed what DOS gave to the genre but Solasta goes further with some more tactical options.

Highlight of my playthrough was breaking the concentration of a boss's fly spell and watch him faceplant into the ground afterwards.

I'm not sure why people are having such technical difficulties with this game. It's fantastic and honestly, I've played far worse ports. Probably the only issue I've had has been the occasional flicker. My system isn't even state of the art; I haven't had a hardware upgrade in five years.

Two things I'll suggest. 1) Run it as administrator. 2) run it off your SSD. If you don't have an SSD, why? They're cheap as hell now. 3) lower your clouds and shadows a touch from the recommended.

But yeah, I'm absolutely loving the content, the world is huge and so many different options for doing things. Nice skill tree without too many wasted options; everything's useful to someone but some you'll prioritize over others for your own style. The voice acting and cinematics are great and fighting the Machines is particularly thrilling, along with some of the set piece combats you're thrown into via quests or story.

I have been waiting for this game for a very long time - even was waiting with baited breath as it was a Broken Sword 5 stretch goal for the kickstarter.

However, like BS5 (and the reason why I am still yet to finish it) Revolution seems to release games with gamebreaking bugs that can't be reset and therefore necessitate an entire gameplay restart. Does Revolution have any QA? Clearly they're not getting beta players like myself, where I will break a game to show the devs what's wrong so they can fix it BEFORE release rather than AFTER.

It's a shame because the game is rather good, with some great visuals and sounds and especially characters and story. But why have all this when the game doesn't actually WORK? I've invested 9 hours playing and now I'm stuck either repeating all that to get back to where I was or shelving the entire thing for a few years until the bugs are sorted out, which is what I have done with BS5 and I've yet to go back to see if that bug has been fixed.

So, my recommendation is not "no" specifically but "not yet."

The development has come in leaps and bounds - I was impressed with the first act with many aspects even for Early Access. Surprisingly bug free and while there are a few things I'd like changed, the core gameplay experience was solid and some great atmosphere and mechanics. Having a dodge roll (and really needing to use it) makes it a bit harder than your average Diablo clone and the abilities, due to the rage/mana balancing mechanic are pretty fun to use and visually flashy. While the skill tree isn't as populated as PoE, there are more abilities that are not as generic as many of PoE's nodes. I don't think it's trying to be the next PoE, it's trying to do things a little different.

VA and music were surprisingly good for an indie game, let alone EA. Normally for some WIP games the VA is flat out terrible and you just hope it gets better on release, had nothing to complain with here. Combat is fairly visceral and due to having "lives" per map gives you a run for your money, no endless respawning as you slowly chop down a level monster by monster. All in all, a good experience so far.