Recent reviews by RyanTohard

I'm not super far into my playthrough so feel free to take this with a grain of salt, but I just feel like parts of Hydroneer are tedious for the sake of tedium. I guess I just need to get used to the way the game plays...but a couple hours in and I'm still picking stuff up when I meant to interact, still missing dropping things where I mean to, still failing to simply put an item down properly... I don't know, there's clearly a good, enjoyable game here, but I feel like it just needs QOL. Like, it's not enjoyable, to me personally, to have to fight the game to play it, which I feel I am doing at times.

It's a fun, pretty put together demo but it kinda feels like it needs more time in the oven. The lighting is a bit weird, ore generation feels...strange, and the combat feels a bit unfun? Needs a better tutorial, but besides those few issues this feels like a good title to keep an eye on. Tentative yes.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire (PoE2 (no not that one)) is a fitting sequel to the first game. It's bigger, better, prettier, you name it and it's probably improved. Everything positive about the first Pillars game is a positive in the second; fantastic writing, worldbuilding, characters, gameplay, music, sound, art, design...it's all here. PoE 1+2 are some of the finest CRPGs ever made, and should be held up there with the best of the best in the genere.

While I will say my party consisted mostly of returning members, the new companions available are by and large worthy additions. Even the 'sidekicks', lesser companions without their own quests are interesting and well fleshed out, with a few of them even playing fairly substnatial roles in two of the DLCs.

The ending is, perhaps, somewhat weak, but I find that to be a flaw persistent through all of Obsidian's games. Ending slides are practically their calling card by now, and while they are really the only way to do it when it comes to the MYRIAD of different endings available, there is something to be said for ending cards not being quite so...cinematic, or fulfilling. Still, I do enjoy the endings to this game from a writing standpoint. They feel fleshed out and fully realized, realistic for this grounded yet fantastical world we've been given by Obsidian.

As I write this (2/17/2025), Avowed is set to release in less than 24 hours. The ending of this game, with as few spoilers as possible, paints quite the picture for the future of Eora.

What can you call Pillars of Eternity but one of the finest original CRPGs ever made? Maybe even THE best.

PoE (not that one) is another fantastic showing by Obsidian, pound for pound one of the best RPG devs out there today. Beautifully rendered with well made 3D models on gorgeous pre-rendered backgrounds, Pillars isn't going to break any new ground based on looks alone...but it doesn't have to. It's a classic CRPG, and it looks like one. Personally I think it's quite pretty, especially for a game released a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ full decade ago. Ten years on and it's one of the best worlds I've ever had the pleasure of delving into.

The world of Eora is rich and varied, with surprising depth for a completely original world, though perhaps not too surprising for veteran devs and writers. I cannot put into words properly how enjoyable it is just to live in the world of Eora, how GOOD everything is. The nations, the gods, the characters, the races...it all adds up into a phenomenal showing of writing excellence. The writing in general is just fantastic, top notch stuff from a team you'd expect no less from.

Unfortunately I'm the wrong person to ask about mechanical depth and balance, but I can tell you with full certainty you will enjoy the story and world of PoE more than most CRPGs you'll play, making it worthy of the title of one of the best games I've ever had the pleasure of playing.

This is almost certainly one of the best demos I've played in a long time. This game is good , like good for a full game good. I've gotten about seven~ish hours out of it, and that's probably where I'll leave it for the most part. As far as I can tell, the content available is four seeds, a bunch of strains, about a dozen and a half customers, two dealers, two homes, several equipment upgrades, and a skateboard with a handful of better versions to work towards. . There's a lot here for a demo, and if the full game is as good as the demo is...well, there will be a new standard for 'drug dealer simulation game' for sure. Not to mention a unique and refreshing art style, good sound design, fun minigames, and actually pretty decent humor that feels modern, drug-adjacent, and meme-esque without being cringe. It feels like a game developed by someone with a lot of heart and passion, and I hope he can see that passion through to a full release.

Oh, and the DEMO is being UPDATED. With content.

First impressions after a short playtime - while I enjoy the new combat I kinda preferred the original GFL1 gimmick of essentially autobattling with skills, and I preferred the concept of stacking doll frames to make a unit stronger. I also really liked the frames just being...different guns. They still had character while ALSO just being....... guns. I dunno, tentative recommendation based on not much

It is not a bad game, not by a long shot. You won't find even a fraction of the mods Warband has, unfortunately, to the point that I haven't even played half a dozen F&S mods. Unfortunately the game plays quite differently than Warband, too - don't expect to come in and enjoy it in the exact same way. This game is intended to be more 'story'-ish, following quests to join factions and potentially even rule them, instead of founding your own. You CAN'T found your own, in fact, nor can you even recruit from a village without being allied with the proper owner. You'll likely rely mostly on mercenaries (which are customizable to a degree which is neat) and tavern troops, until you join a faction. I don't enjoy it as much as Warband, and most of the features added to it have been back ported and improved in one way or another, but it's worth a shot.

There's not much to say in a review for the Mass Effect trilogy that hasn't been said better in the near TWO DECADES (!!!!) the series has spanned. The Legendary Edition is the definitive way to play the games in the modern day - unlike some lesser remasters, there's legitimately no reason to go back to the older games. All three of the original trilogy, all of the extra content - some unobtainable otherwise - all upgraded to look and run better on modern hardware. It's all here, and it's all just fantastic.

Mass Effect 1 is, uh, not fantastic in the modern day, but it runs well! The story is pretty serviceable, some of the characters we know and love start here (emphasis on START), the gameplay is middling, and the graphics even updated are just okay. For those of you that have never played it, myself included before getting the LE, its a game worth playing that won't eat up much of your time at all, not even to get a 'good' save worth carrying on to 2 and 3.

Mass Effect 2 is, of course, still arguably Bioware's finest showing to date. Of course there's something to be said for KOTOR 1+2, Dragon Age: Origins and the like, but ME2 puts all the pieces together in a way that just hasn't been done since. A phenomnal main story, some of the best side content in an RPG, and characters that are really, REALLY enjoyable. Just a huge cast of companions that are somehow all fleshed out and human (and alien), minus the two smaller DLC characters - but even they are interesting.

ME3 I probably have the last to say about, given that I haven't technically beat it yet. The gameplay is good, the characters are all the ones you've grown to love throughout the trilogy, and while the endings are controversial I can't exactly speak to them. This series like no other sticks to the whole 'your choices matter' mantle, and even if they aren't groundbreaking or revolutionary, it really is impressive how many small things track throughout all three games.

All in all, there's a reason this trilogy has gone down as one of the best in gaming history. That reason is mostly ME2, but all three games are absolutely worth going through for one big ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ playthrough. A 9/10 series for sure.

Kenshi feels like a game that is near indescribable. The breadth of Kenshi is greater than, I would say, most games on offer today. While there are some aspects or mechanics of the game that could be improved, (Kenshi 2 is in in active development, here's hoping for that!) there is so much on offer that can be forgiven.

Kenshi is a... RPG/RTS/Base Builder/Open World Exploration/Suffering Simulator game with more hats than old time haberdashery. You will more often than not start small, and very rarely end big. In Kenshi, you can essentially do whatever you want, within the confines of the engine/design. Say you want to...take over the world. In a sense, you could more or less conquer all of the factions of the world. Or maybe you want to get rich trading goods across the wastes. Perhaps you fancy yourself a criminal, and want to get rich off ill-gotten gains. Or maybe you're just a gods-damned psycho that wants to kill everyone you see with your bare hands. All of this and more is possible in Kenshi, which I consider THE open-ended game.

Kenshi is also...just a mean, mean game. At the start of the game, no matter your start, you WILL be weaker than basically every other NPC in the entire game. Malnourished bandits with rags and clubs will beat you to unconsciousness, wild beasties will eat you alive, wandering ronin will hack your limbs off, and you WILL be enslaved. Kenshi is rude as all hell, but with every rising stat (this is a fantastic game for fans of 'numbers go up' leveling styles) you will get stronger and stronger, beating enemies that once bested you effortlessly, until your rag-tag group of nobodies becomes the biggest threat in the world, toppling empires for fun and breaking the rulers of the world over their knees.

You can spend the entire game not putting down roots anywhere, or build a sprawling cityscape of...well, of a relatively small amount of people, all things considered. It's quite the easy thing to get a mod to expand the recruitment cap, though, which is a pleasant segue into modding. This game's modding scene is quite extensive, with built in workshop support and fairly frequent featuring from the developers themselves. Currently, I'm playing a drastic overhaul called Project Genesis, which seems to add a LOT of things and rework basically every town in the game.

Forgive me for this review being all over the place, but truly there is no better way to describe Kenshi. If you see a mountain, you can climb it. If you see an item in a store, you can steal it. If you see a man or woman, you can kill them. The entire world is your oyster, your viciously, obscenely dangerous oyster.

If you have the money, get it. Support these fantastic devs, and wait with the rest of us for Kenshi 2, may it arrive one day.

I recommend Rogue Trader for anyone who is A) a fan of Owlcat Games, B) a fan of CRPGs, or C) a fan of Warhammer 40K. On all of these three fronts, the game is good...but I don't know if its great. First of all, fair warning that I'm going to compare this game to Wrath of the Righteous quite a bit. Maybe not entirely fair, but there aren't many modern CRPGs quite like Owlcat CRPGs. That, and they share a lot of DNA.

TL;DR - 7.5/10, hurts to rate it that. Good for WH40K fans, Owlcat fans, and general RPG fans. Don't expect too much, don't play on easy, don't be surprised if you're not entirely fulfilled. But you'll have a decent amount of fun.

As always, beware of spoilers below. I'll try and mark any outright spoilers, but unless I go into detail they will remain unmarked.

Despite putting in 64 hours for my first blind playthrough, near to the length of my second playthrough of WotR, this game felt...really, really, really short. I can't really explain why, but it just...doesn't feel long enough? I know, nearly three days straight of playing a game and I'm complaining about the length, but it doesn't FEEL long enough. Wrath of the Righteous feels like a damn journey. Hell, other CRPG contemporaries (mostly) feel like long journeys. Pillars of Eternity 1+2, Tyranny...other games, I'm sure, they all feel like you go on a grant quest/adventure/journey across dozens of hours of gameplay. Sure, Rogue Trader is decently long playtime wise, but for some reason it just doesn't quite capture that feeling for me. Maybe I'm being unfair by comparing it directly to Owlcat's last game, but that feels apt to me. It's hard for me to put into words exactly the thoughts I have, but I just don't feel like I really did anything.

The game, of course, looks pretty, is well written, and plays well. That's a given for Owlcat at this point, I think. As an additional bonus, playing this game after WotR really highlights some ways Owlcat continues to improve as they develop more games. Character customization is more in depth than before, befitting such a unique setting as 40K, and they really have improved their cutscene game. In WotR, there are, what, two cutscenes with unique animation? Otherwise the 'cutscenes' are all characters doing default animations. Don't get me wrong, these fake 'cutscenes' are present in Rogue Trader as well, but along with that there are a few quite impressive uniquely animated cutscenes on display. It really helps establish a more cinematic and 'epic' (for lack of a better word) feeling. But that's just the issue...there are like, five of them? They feel really underused, and there are a lot of moments that COULD have used a proper cutscene that don't have them.

That's another chief problem I have with this game - a lack of impact. A lack of stakes. I know there are several times where taking longer to go somewhere can result in a different (usually worse) outcome, but that's really all it seems. The antagonists in this game are, unfortunately, weak as all hell. In 40K you deal almost exclusively with ridiculous scale and larger than life characters, and yet the few antagonists presented in this game get three scenes of lip service each, one fight, and incredibly disappointing climaxes.

Kunrad apparently does more to harm you after escaping, always one step ahead. We only really hear that he's supposed to be impressive, but we never see it. Then, you see him forty hours later and he dies after a single fight, to another antagonist. Come on, guys. I HATE this dude, and yet for me it felt like, in game, he was basically entirely pointless. A plot device, not a real antagonist.

The...The Word Bearers leader? Forgive me, god, but I can't even remember his name. Uralon is his name. He appears in a vision to you once or twice, he's in a single fight (the same as Kunrad), dies at the end of that fight, and has very little impact besides summoning another boss that has straight up no impact unless you go the Heretic route. Please. This man is an important Word Bearer sorcerer, one of the first heretical legions of the Horus Heresy. This guy is BIG TIME (probably, forgive me for not being a lore expert), and he has basically no influence on the story. Weak.

Oddly enough, the Inquisitor Xavier Calcazar proves to be a better antagonist than the ACTUAL antagonists. Sure, you can go against him in the very very end of the game, but throughout the game you feel his machinations behind the scenes, discovering signs of the Inquisition everywhere, hearing about him from your companion Heinrix. It's all quite interesting, but of course the final fight with him is difficult, but weightless. He just sort of ...loses.

Last one, but the NECRONS. My god are the Necrons cool as hell, and yet they are in the game for a scant few hours, and very under-utilized in my opinion. I didn't quite catch on that they were the big bads, but I believe the hints are there in the game. The tech blight, the ability to 'shut off' any Machine Spirit with a command...it all leads to one solution, now that I think of it, but for me their appearance was a surprise. But as I said, besides annoying combats and a few cool scenes, they aren't worth much. I'm aware there IS more to them, but unfortunately I missed out on that chance in my first playthrough. The C'tan is cool, making it friendly or subservient is pretty cool, but it really does just appear out of nowhere at the tenth hour. A bit weak, but cool at least.

A quick runthrough of more minor points: The voice acting in this game is top of the line. Phenomenal. Probably some of the best VO work we've seen out of an Owlcat game, straight up 10/10 type ♥♥♥♥. The companions are all nice and fairly satisfying, their quests are entertaining to middling, but my god are they not balanced. Not in a gameplay sense, but in a 'want in my party' sense. Without spoiling too much, there are three companions I can't imagine ever NOT having in my party, which essentially meant I was picking two companions at any given time. Those three are phenomenal, don't get me wrong, but main do they outweigh the others by leagues and miles. The music is good, I think? I don't really recall any tracks in particular, save for maybe one or two when fighting the forces of Chaos. Definitely a step down from Wrath, unfortunately, but still good enough. Writing is strong scene to scene, but the overall story is lacking compared to other games.

Also, if you're like me and enjoy playing games on easy mode to enjoy the story, PLEASE just play on the default difficulty at first. Adjust some settings if you have issues, but my god I played on the SECOND easiest difficulty, and I didn't have a single challenge throughout the entirety of the game. Not a single combat was hard. Do yourself a favor, you'll enjoy the story either way and can still make it easier, but if you want combat that isn't entirely braindead, play on a normal difficulty. Trust me, you can build characters to be strong as ♥♥♥♥ anyway.

So, with those out of the way, how do I really feel about the game, all flowery and possible incorrectly used language aside? Well, I like it. It's worse than Wrath of the Righteous, probably better than Kingmaker, and really the only WH40K RPG we're likely to have for a long time. Get it on sale, in the current (8/22/24) Humble Bundle, or splurge a bit. It's good, it works, but it's kinda sorta a letdown? I hate saying that about an Owlcat game, I love Owlcat I really really do, but this game just doesn't hit exactly how I want it to. Maybe I'm wrong, read other reviews and see how other people feel about it. But for me, personally, I know Owlcat can do better. Maybe 40K isn't their cup of tea, but they did a good job with what they had! I'm looking forward to the next superb showing from Owlcat.