Recent reviews by badfrog

This game seems to unfairly exploit my choices almost as often as it makes me feel like a strategic genius. Prepare to rage and exalt in equal measure. If this is what you want out of a deck-builder rogue-like with single-match sessions that last 45 minutes or longer, this is the game for you.

I really, really wanted to like this, but it's a frustrating, hard to control mess. There's no sense of tension, grand scale or wonder, and I left every session just wanting to go back and play the original. Refunded.

This is a halfhearted thumbs up from me. The game scratches much of the itch left by the last two Diablo titles, and seems to be built in a way that eschews the "sameness" problem that those games have. Character design is interesting in a way that Path of Exile and Grim Dawn both seemed to miss for me. It's also not $60 and half-finished on release. This is all good stuff.

However it's very under-tutorialized and some core bits around how crafting, skill respecs and exploration work are very confusing. In fact some of these things seem to have been designed in order to punish experimentation.

I have had crafting explained multiple times and I'm still not sure I understand it. It relies upon dumping materials into the process via a button that seems disconnected from the core crafting process and seems to consume your crafting materials with no way to undo anything. If someone explains to you how the process works, then it will sort of make sense, but it still seems unnecessarily complicated (why CAN'T I just drop things from my stash onto the crafting UI instead of having to first go through the process of putting them in my inventory and click ting the "add materials" button?) Even then, you'll be left with lingering questions that you shouldn't have to ask like, does this materials cache exist across characters, or if I add something to it is it locked to the character I'm playing? A simpler UI would avoid this and it seems to punish people who don't immediately understand it.

Skill specialization also will punish you. You don't "respec" used points so much as just destroy them. The game does award them quickly, and raises the minimum floor of points you can have after a respec, but it does feel bad to mis-click - neither the skill nor talent tree screens do any sort of confirmation that you really want to spend a skill point on that thing you clicked so this is easy to do. You can't really undo skill points you've spent, and it is not obvious that you can pick a totally different skill to specialize if you've already clicked on one - which you have to do in order to see it's skill tree.

Taken along with the way the game gates active skills so that you can only have 4 at any time you can feel punished for experimenting - and yet you have no choice but to experiment to see how anything works. A lot of this could be avoided by just having a confirmation "OK" button you can click before leaving the skill and talent screens.

Another problematic bit is how the game constantly resets things. If you go to town, your minimap resets, along with all the monsters you had previously killed. That's fine, but any items you leave behind also disappear. This punishes players for not immediately understanding which things are valuable and not knowing which mobs drop valuable things. If you leave that unique dagger on the ground because you don't know that it's not more valuable than those gloves laying slightly off screen before you port off to town... well that's too bad because they will be permanently gone.

If you leave the game during some parts of certain quests, it's really difficult to figure out where you're supposed to go when you come back due to an interplay between the main campaign map and how the game resets areas. Sometimes it's just really unclear where you are supposed to go.

Also, there doesn't seem to be a way to zoom out or pan around on an area's mini-map to see places you haven't been yet, and that leads to wandering through already cleared areas to try and find where you need to go to get to the next area. Since mobs respawn when you leave, that can lead to lots of repetition to just get back to where you ended last time.

I feel like this is a good, but flawed and ultimately frustrating game. Some of the problems I have are fixable, and some seem to be designed into it, so I'm not sure what the future will hold for me. Having said that, nothing really compares to it in this space in terms of fun right now though, so I have to recommend it.

THE BENEFICENT EMPEROR HAS GRANTED US AMMUNITION. HAVE FAITH, PILGRIMS!!!

Imagine Left 4 Dead with persistent equipment and character advancement between missions, then add a bunch of crazy Warhammer 40K lore to inform everything that happens, and that's what you're getting here. A lot of the background things won't make any sense unless you're steeped in the lore (or have someone to explain it all to you), and playing with pubbies is problematic, but if you have a couple of friends who can be dedicated in purging heresy on behalf of the emperor, then the core gameplay available here is a fantastic amount of fun.

My original review was predicated on my belief that the tutorials aren't accessible unless you run a game with tutorials enabled. Turns out that's not true - after you complete the last tutorial, the game tells you they are available from the "help" menu, and sure enough, there they are. My mistake.

I still say this is a fun game - even for a casual soccer fan like me - that has some annoying UI issues - I still don't understand which players I can or can't move around to defend a corner or free kick - but there's a fun tactical football club simulation here if you want to spend the time to find it.

I think I expected something in the vein of Sleeping Dogs, while Yakuza 0 is (to shamelessly steal from another review) much more of a visual novel punctuated by some mini-game breaks. After a couple hours, there's just not enough action going on here for me.

Not particularly deep but has a charm that will quickly grow on you.

Bought this specifically for TV couch co-op. Unskippable intro cutscene. Mouse-only main menu. Seems to have no controller support that I can figure out how to enable.

Uninstalled. Will try to refund.

@ForeverAPeon, Like I replied to someone else, these are XBOX 360 controllers, and they did not work in your game.

I get that this is supposed to be "hard core" and all, but there's a fine line between between being hard core and needlessly obtuse. Elite crosses that line.

Frankly, I expected better tutorials. The in-game ones just kinda dump you into a situation without any explanation or helpful information -- hell they can't even clearly tell you what controller button increases the throttle, not to mention explaining optimal turning speed. Would it have been so hard to put in a "your ship turns faster with your throttle in the blue area" popup? Apparently so, that's nowhere to be seen in the in-game help or in the tutorials, I had to quit the game and watch videos on YouTube to figure that out.

Speaking of the official YouTube tutorial videos, those are nice except whenever they refer to a control button, the narrator says something like "press the key you have bound to whatever." Look, I'm a noob, that's why I'm watching the damn videos. It's pretty safe to assume I'm using the default bindings. Would it kill you to just say "press the spacebar?" Apparently so.

I'm prepared to deal with a total lack of a manual or real in-game tutorials/help from a $20 indie title that I buy on a lark. This is a $60 title. As it stands it's impossible to get into for me.

A strangely compelling combination of old Final Fantasy-style turn-based combat, procedurally-generated dungeons, perma-death, town management, and loot gathering, and a nifty "stress" mechanic that works well with the punishing difficulty and the Lovecraft-inspired monsters. I can't stop playing.