Recent reviews by C_O

Vampyr has an amazing story, great character design, and wonderful atmosphere building. Each character is beautifully voiced, and the NPCs are well-designed. I enjoyed talking to all the NPCs, learning about themselves, finding hidden things about them (and silently judging them for their life choices). Quite a few easter eggs are hidden all over the game. It is nice when you suddenly stumbled upon one while looking around. The game soundtrack also fits the environment quite well.

However, I am not really a fan of the exp and combat. Weird combat camera angle sometimes makes the fight harder than it is. I understand why they made combat kill exp minimal compared to draining blood from NPC. You will suffer in the final battle if you choose to be good. And if you embrace evil, the final fight will be easier. But I do wish there was a better way to explore this theme than getting 5 exp per armed enemy killed and gaining 1000+ for unarmed civilians.
There is also a lot of running back and forth between different city districts. The mini-map certainly helps a lot, but I wish a fast travel system existed.

This is a game that I wish there would be a sequel to continue the journey of the main characters.

An alright roguelike deckbuilder game.

• Stamina and will: Most cards use stamina, while a few cards use will. Your character has its ability which cost will.
  
• No card upgrade in terms of the basic status of the card (if a card is called "rush", there is no upgrade that changes it to "rush+" and improve its stats). However, there are token upgrades that you can pick up that can augment a card, such as +3 bleed when you play the augmented card. These tokens are very limited and are based on luck for event encounters.
  
• No route planning, you are only given what event you will encounter after 19 turns (Mini boss). What happens in between, you don't know. And each run will be very different. I had runs where I had 6 party members before clearing the 2nd mini-boss and runs where I only had 3 after clearing the mini-boss.
  
• There are surprise hidden bosses. I somehow beat the third boss on my second try, thinking this game was not hard and started achievement hunting. I was also wondering why there is a character progression system (the more you play a character, the more exp the character and new perks and cards, and weapons to unlock for future gameplay) until I meet the real boss. Yup, that is why. All my strategy no longer works.

• Great soundtrack, artwork, and animation.
  
• You do feel accomplished after beating the boss the real one, especially when only one hero survives the fight
  
• Very 100% achievement hunting friendly. There is no achievement related to "level up each character to max level" or "collect all cards, weapons, and perks.

• Each run is quite long; even though I had the game speed set as "very quick," each run (towards the final boss) would still take about 3-4 hrs to complete.
  
• Challenging final boss fight limits the strategy you use. You would need good weapons, armor, cards, and perks to survive, then you can start killing off the minions that do a lot of damage. This limits the strategy you can use and the characters you should pick. You can use whatever strategies to beat everyone before the final boss, but there are only a few that can defeat the final boss.
  
• Limitation of the number of cards you can hold in your hand. Most of the time, it should be fine. You will run out of stamina before cards to play, but you would wish there would be no card limit for certain builds.

• Some game mechanics are not helpful or adequately explained, such as "ruin" and a lot of trial and error to figure out what some cards do.
  
• Encounters were not properly explained; I had to refer to the wiki page to find out what would happen behind each encounter. Some encounters are misleading. For example, If an event would cost me florens, the encounter card should show -### amount of florens. The game shows +### on the encounter card.
  
• Some cards/passive need better explanations of what the card does. A few cards and passive abilities are quite good, but reading their descriptions for the first time made me think they are trash.
  
• Some normal combat encounters feel like elite combat encounters (regarding the enemy type). Not sure if this is by design or by mistake.

Overall, Banners of Ruins is an okay roguelike deckbuilder turn-based game. It has its flaws, but if you are willing to check the wiki and guides, this game can be fun and rewarding (in terms of beating the game).

I was hoping for an RTS sequel to the first Dawn of War (for the single-player campaign). Kinda disappointed at first when there was no base building and different units to use. This is more like a real-time tactical squad role-playing game.

Played a few missions, and to my surprise, I actually enjoyed the RPG and real-time tactics element. What better way to capture the strength of space marine when you lead 3 other squads to defeat a full-scale Tyranid when Ork and Eldar constantly sabotage your defense.

There are so many different play styles depending on the squads you bring, the skills you choose, and the weapons and equipment you carry. Bringing the right weapons makes the fight so much easier (I once used bolters on a vehicle boss fight, and that really took forever)

The game also has an amazing soundtrack. Beat the original campaign three times (one on Primarch, one on Recruit to grind the "Legend" achievement, and one Sergeant playthrough when the base game was given away for "free" on Amazon Prime), and I am still not tired of the soundtrack!

Great dialogue design as well. I really enjoyed them whenever party pooper Cyrus spoke, lmao.

This game might be a nightmare for achievement hunters because 1/3 of the achievements are related to co-op or online multiplayer, so be aware if you don't have friends and want to 100% this game.

Now, if you excuse me, I have some Chaos Space Marine to kill!

Chaos Rising introduces Chaos Space Marines as the most prominent threat. The campaign story continues after the original Dawn of War II game. Story-wise, Chaos Rising is well-written.

They made a few changes to the campaign: Introduced a corruption meter, added some new war gears (related to corruption and redemption), broke up supply crates into three categories, reduced the energy regen on all squads, changed the difficulty setting (on the hardest difficulty, the enemy no longer do ridiculous damage, but their health is greatly increased, this makes some fight really long.), and had a set number of missions you can play.

I really liked the design of the corruption meter. It gives you different ways to play the game. Corrupting wargears are powerful, but they will add to the corruption meter. Once a squad is fully corrupted, there is no more redemption. Some of the missions also give you corruption and redemption objectives.

Chaos Rising has a lot of multiplayer achievements, so be aware if you want to 100% this game (and have no friends).

Remember the scene in X-Men: First Class when Charles Xavier and Magneto tried to recruit Wolverine?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ye05ZH0XR1E

This is what happens when you get the game from Steam.

If you launch the game through Steam, it will ask you to log in through Ubisoft Connect, even with UPlay already open. And it will ask for Ubisoft account info EVERY TIME you launch the game.

When you open UPlay, Far Cry 3 will show up on your Ubisoft account as Installed. If you want to launch Far Cry 3 directly from UPlay, it will also ask you to log in through Ubisoft Connect EVERY TIME.

And you cannot launch this game without internet connection, because they need to "verify license through Ubisoft Connect", when the game itself notes "Multiplayer and online features are no longer available for this product." right above the Add to Cart button.

"Go F*** Yourself". This is what the game tells you when you try to play the game.

I feel bad for not playing this game because a friend bought it for me to try the Far Cry games.

But I cannot beat the game in 1 sitting, and the fact that I need to type out my account info every time I want to play the game really kills my enthusiasm.

Just be aware of what you are getting into.

Dark Deity is an okay visual novel turn-based tactics game with some RPG elements. If you are not a visual novel fan, you might want to avoid this game because the story is presented in a visual-novel fashion.

This game offers:
1. Resource management: There are various items and artifacts that offer status boost or healing. How you manage and spend your gold will affect the difficulty of each mission. Upgraded the wrong weapon? You might have a tough time landing a single hit.
   
2. Limited skill management: you can only add two new skills when your heroes move up to a tier (consider it as "evolve") with 4 new total skills that can be learned. Your armor and damage type might change when you move up a tier.

1. Game Customization: You have the option to adjust settings for the campaign, such as how your characters will level up, what their stats would be at the beginning of the game, and how much gold and experience you would get. There are also a lot of characters (30) and classes (54) to choose from (this sounds good on paper, giving you a lot of play styles based on 54 different classes, but in reality, this is a recipe for disaster)
   
2. Different armor and weapon types: There are 4 different armor and weapon types. Some weapons are more effective for certain armor types than others. Such as Piercing: damage vs plate -10%, vs chain +40%, vs leather -5%, and vs rune cloak +10%. Bringing every damage type is a good strategy for every mission.
   
3. Good attack animation and character art

1. Visual novel style presentation. I put this as in-between (rather than the bad) because some people are fans of visual novel games. If you are playing this game, it surely is because it has turn-based tactics elements rather than visual novel-styled storytelling. I'm not fond of visual novels, and following the story has been painful. You must click through so many dialogues between characters or wait for the text to appear. The game also added a "Bond" system for characters, meaning you have to click through more dialogues to know more about each character. Halfway through the game, I just gave up and started to skip those dialogues. Do they offer more information on world-building? Yes. Do I care about those at that time? Noooooooo.
   
2. A luck-based status level-up: When a character levels up, only their health is guaranteed to increase by 1. The rest is based on the aptitude percentages. If you are unlucky (like me), sometimes you will only have 2 stats increases instead of 10. There is also an achievement related to full stats increase on a single level up, good luck with that grinding

1. Too many characters to manage: There are 30 characters to choose from towards the end-game. These characters join your team in a ridiculous fashion, and a lot of them are similar. I tried to level everyone up, but I gave up by the time most of them reached lv 32. There are simply too many of them, and I do not remember their strength or weakness. Combining these 30 characters with 54 distinct classes, I have 0 idea who is good at what towards the end of the game.
   
2. Repetitive combat with little tactics required: The game gives you the illusion of choosing 4 different weapons, but to be honest, the only one you use most of the time is the one that actually has a higher percentage of hits. I would choose to deal 20 damage at 100% rather than dealing 100 damage at 20%.
   
3. Horrible inventory UI and management: You will get a lot of artifacts. Some of them are quite helpful in combat. But when combined with deploying 14 out of the 30 characters, managing the best artifacts for your deployed characters really tests your memory. The inventory UI won't provide the stats or skills of your character. So the only way to give them the best artifact is to open a guide on a second screen or switch between the game's UNIT and INVENTORY tabs.

Overall, Dark Deity tries to offer a lot of freedom in how you play the game, but every aspect needs polishing. Combined with a visual-novel-styled storyline presentation, it tries to mesh too many things together but excels at nothing. It is not a bad game, but this game is not my cup of tea.

A strategy game with infinite replayability.

There are seven different races to choose from, each with its unique campaign (even though gameplay would be similar - build up your base and eliminate your enemies one territory at a time until the whole planet is under your control. But after you wipe out a race, the victory message would be different). I quite enjoy reading these victory message from different perspectives.

1st Campaign: Chaos Space Marines
2nd Campaign: Space Marines

I would definitely return to try the rest of the five races.

P.S. It is nice that the publisher decided to add missing expansion(s) if you own the base game.

-Try to be a kind and generous leader
-Pick "coward" as negative trait, if I am good, why should i worry about war?
-ppl were not happy because the nation was too poor to build better houses and apartments
-4 Rebels started riots
-Sent avatar to fight and he "strategic retreat"
-The most profitable building got destroyed by rebel
-Nation went into debt to rebuild that building
-Constant cash flow negative
-All downward spiral from here

This is the tale of how 4 ppl destroyed a nation

An okay rogue-lite turn-based combat game with strategy elements set in a zombie apocalypse.

This game offers:
1. Rogue-lite gameplay: if your main character dies, medals earned in the playthrough can improve the main character (although I find these upgrades not that helpful) for the next playthrough.
   
2. Character skill management: You can recruit many survivors throughout the game and manage what roles you would like to assign to them
   
3. Resource management: A few resources to manage to ensure the survival of the group. Some resources are linked to major missions.

1. Turn-based combat: Melee weapons, guns, traps. There are many offensive and defensive skills to use in combat. Combined with the roles you assign to your survivors, each mission's outcome can vary. Forgetting to bring a character who provides first aid? You might need to cut your mission short and bring fewer resources back to camp. Bringing characters use the same ammo type? You might have to fist fight tough boss when your ammo runs out
   
2. Different enemy types: Each area has its zombie types with unique attack moves.

1. The weapon model does not match the actual weapon during combat. You can craft and scavenge a few weapons for each ammo type. The weapon shown during combat is, however, fixed. So you can equip a Uzi, but the weapon shown in combat would be an AK.
   
2. A bit grindy. Although you are not forced to reach the final stage of each mission (area) , you do have to survive 35+ days. This means you need to go through missions (areas) multiple times. Yes, you can skip days without scavenging, but good luck equipping your survivors or finding some important resources (i.e. tool, that is used for hunting) to allow you to continue hiding in the camp.

1. Horrible UI. Finding items can be painful after you have gathered a lot of ammo, equipment, and craft material.
   
2. Generic storyline and some stupid missions. The storyline summary is that you get knocked out in a zombie apocalypse and are rescued by someone. He brings you to a camp, and now you are in charge of that camp to rescue more ppl. You hear the government will rescue you, but something happens (not explained who caused it), and now you have to go for plan B to survive and maybe save the world. You can romance some female characters (two zombie-killing missions with each character) as if this is some fantasy daydream. Does this sound unique or interesting? They have to introduce "romance," don't they?

Overall, Dead Age is an interesting game in turn-based combat but failed horribly in terms of storyline. If you are a turn-based combat fan, give this game a try. If you want to be immersed in a zombie apocalypse world, you should look elsewhere (maybe The Last Stand: Aftermath) because Dead Age's setting is too boring.

Did I have fun playing the game? Yes.

Is it a good game? Yes. If you liked X-Com, you would love this game as well.

But when you have completed 156 ground missions, it becomes painful to see new ground missions to pop up. I find myself lack the motivation to finish the final assault mission. Should have air-struck all those downed UFOs ground mission before.

This game and Red Alert 3 don't play any in game audio if you use Bluetooth headphone and the playback device is "headphone". The audio will play if the playback device is "headset"

Log into Steam on web browser:
Open web browser's console and type: addToCart(2208) and hit enter
2208 is the code for Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 - Uprising as per steamdb [steamdb.info]

A window will popup saying "Added to your cart!" but "there was a problem displaying this item, p is undefined"

Click View my cart and continue to payment

Game is yours to enjoy on Steam!