Recent reviews by TSED

Honestly, 95% of the time I'm playing, I would rather be playing OW instead.

(The other 5% are probably bot lobbies.)

This is the gold standard of CRPGs. This stands up there with BG2 and PS:T. In my opinion, it has raised above them, though I understand this take is contentious.

It's not a *perfect* game, but it is truly incredible. The plot is fantastic, the characters are wonderful and believable and charismatic, and the gameplay mechanics range from serviceable to AWESOME.

If you like RPGs, this game is a must-play.

This is one of the best RPGs ever made. It's not THE best, but it's in that "top 10 all time" area. Maybe top 5.

It has a lot of the advantages BG2 had. It's not pushing for high-end technical specs or trying to do anything new and revolutionary, so the man hours are spent on content creation and polish rather than reiterating something not working quite right. It had a smaller team compared to the big bucks of today (because SRHK is a smaller indie title, and BG2 because multihundred teams weren't the thing yet) which meant more communication between the team. The team is familiar with the engine they're working in. And both BG2's Forgotten Realms and SRHK's Shadowrun are settings that the players are likely somewhat familiar with, but also being inside of established settings frees up the writers to focus on the story itself.

Now, don't assume that SRHK is like BG2. They are still very different games. They're just both of exceptional quality.

When I first played SRHK I enjoyed it but thought Dragonfall was better. Having just finished replaying both back to back, I no longer think that. Dragonfall is also a fine title! It's great and I also recommend it! But with both in close proximity, SRHK does almost everything better in every way. The things I liked more about SRDF were the climax reveal (you either know what I mean or you will if you ever play it), and, bluntly, that I liked the crew of SRDF better even if SRHK's are more realised and better written overall. Dietrich, the oldman punk rock anarchist shaman is more attention grabbing than Gobbet, the poor rat shaman who likes to eat. Thing is, Dietrich probably has 1/5th of the dialogue that Gobbet has, if that. There were also bugs at the time of SRHK's release which likely dampened the experience as well.

SRHK lets you solve almost every problem in the game in multiple different ways - hacking, magic, drone control, fast talking, or the ol' reliable of violence. Or a combination thereof. In fact, the optimal solutions to problems vary between all of these options! For example, if you always talk your way out of stuff, you'll sometimes end up spending money you didn't have to on bribes or whatnot. And money isn't excessive like it was in SRDF - you can't buy yourself all of the nicest things, only the nicest things you really really need, so that hurts when you realise it. It's a little less true for the free bonus campaign extension, though, since you probably bought yourself the nicest stuff you need!

Just... just play it, okay? It's good. It's been plopped into dozens of bundles so you can get ahold of it cheap. It was worth the full price when it was brand new and it's a near-criminal steal for how cheap you can get it nowadays.

Good game.

Some really great companions, though I wish they were a little more chatty. Sadly, the chattiest companion is also the least interesting, and he's both really useful in combat and practically mandatory if you don't deck yourself, so you'll probably be lugging him around.

Gameplay is solid and has some QoL changes that make it impossible to go replay Shadowrun: Returns, but there are a few annoyances (that Hong Kong has filed off!). Think XCOM: Enemy Unknown, but with wizards and junkies instead of soldiers and corporate security instead of aliens.

Story is both really simple and yet complex enough to keep you asking "what happens next?" It's a Shadowrun game, so it's about a big ol' conspiracy and if you're surprised by that you must be unfamiliar with the cyberpunk genre. They set it up REALLY well, though! Some genuinely funny moments, some actually heart-touching exchanges, and a lot of self-determination. Kind of weird at just how many people you can murder while still being a "good" guy though.

Soundtrack gets repetitive as there are only like 6 songs and one of them's a one-off joke. Good thing you can just turn it off and play your own!

There is zero voice acting, so if you hate reading, this may not be the game for you. There is a lot to read. You can skip right past most of it and probably be more-or-less fine, but that means you're skipping the best parts of the game, and you'll also be confused by and incapable of capitalizing on the neat little alt-paths the devs have provided.

If you want to play the whole trilogy, make sure you play it second. The story is not important, but it's really tough to go back to the prior games because, again, the QoL changes they make are tremendous.

A Final Fantasy Tactics clone that is done with a lot of care and love.

There are a few things I dislike about it, particularly in the late game. A few of my roster ended up with 'lame duck' builds and I didn't know what to do with them. They worked fine early and mid-game but once the AI starts having all tools at its disposal, the number of effective builds started feeling pigeon-holed (especially towards battlemages, gosh dang). It's as easy to change builds as you could ask for, but I didn't want to just have clones of what I had that already worked. I have a solid 15ish hours of play time that is just me tweaking and fiddling with builds trying to salvage these guys.

But ignoring that, it was a good time. The early and mid games were an absolute blast. It's not reliant on grinding. The writing's not stellar but it's not as bad as some other reviews make it out to be - it's serviceable. I personally would have tweaked the itemization a little bit but it's fine (some more interesting stuff rather than just numbers-go-up).

If you play and get towards the late game, take my advice and just ignore the vessel class (beyond mastering for free stats). It is just not good. Its passives might be usable but I eventually gave up and washed my hands of it entirely. Every other class has SOME sort of use case, but vessels just require SO much finicky buildup to get anything out of at all. I want my 7 hours back!

It's a cute little SRPG.

I'm impressed at what is there. System's pretty straightforward and easy to understand, with only a handful of abilities being confusingly worded and the like. Yet there is decent tactical depth, an acceptable variety in the kinds of fights you have, what equipment to use, interactions between abilities (especially elemental ones), and so on.

Class system is pretty interesting; 3 base classes and 18 "advanced" classes (6 per base). Each class has 8 abilities to learn and 3 (sometimes 4) passives you can learn. You have your main class and one subclass. You gain XP only to your main class, and use them to buy the abilities. You can equip bought passives from any class, but you can only use active abilities from your main or sub classes. Basically, some really nifty mix-and-match stuff gets enabled.

You could easily play the game as a roguelike, too. I did not, but the systems are pretty much all there.

I just wish there was more of the game, though. It is quite short. I have run through it several times at the time of this review, as my desire to fiddle with certain combinations kept me playing after I finished the first time. Knowing what to do / what's available / what you're going to fight / etc. makes another run through pretty easy, even with difficulty cranked.

It looked cool so I gave it a shot. I am sad to say I did not enjoy it.

- UI polish was definitely needed. Changing to, say, mouse + keyboard controls (my preferred style for any game) didn't allow mouse control in options. Typos and poor grammar (bad localization?) abounded. So on and so forth.

- A pet peeve of mine is when talent points and the like are vague and don't actually tell you what you're doing. When a talent says it gives you "more damage and energy" and then the next one says "even more damage and energy" you are choosing between a blind pick and alt tabbing to look it up.

- The BIG DEAL, the actual game breaker, the reason I'm really hitting no on the recommend option: the gameplay just doesn't work. You're one character in an ARPG but you have 3 AI bots that seem pretty important to use. Initial attack wind up time takes too long to do the normal 'kiting' you would in other ARPGs. Thus, when your bots that you can only give 3 commands to (and none individually) do something stupid like running into the nasty AOE, they die and that's that. I can tell them to clear commands (they just run towards me blindly), I can tell them to target my target, I can tell them to hold their ground and attack. There's no "avoid big obvious attack" command. I guess I have to position myself so that I can call clear so they all run towards me safely, but it just doesn't work.

It's a shame. The sprites are very well done, and the vibe in general seemed interesting. Giving up on the controller friendliness or implementing much MUCH better UI / AI would probably do a lot.

I have played a lot of music games and am always on the search for more procedurally generated music / game content.

Riff Racer is the best I've played to date. The gameplay isn't super deep, but it's engaging enough to keep coming back. Plus, hey, the graphics aren't fancy but they are pretty enough.

There are a number of things that make this game unenjoyable.

First off, it's fairly simple. I've only put in as much time as I have because it's so easy I can play it while actually focusing on something else (like youtube videos I want to watch). You can increase your character's stats a bit by crafting gear (crafting is just "have XYZ resources" and seems pretty impossible to influence, so just play the game and open chests), and choose between a small number of abilities for the chars, but that's it. Like, the characters are even premade.

Second, it's so incredibly RNG based, and not in a good way. The mission "The Curse Spreads", for example, has a hidden turn counter and you just lose if you don't find the exit by then. Just spend your turns throwing yourselves at tile edges hoping that you find the exit in time. Ignore treasure chests, ignore enemies if you need to dash - just get to tile edges at all costs. Took me at least a dozen tries. I also couldn't tell you how many times I miss an attack by 1; it genuinely feels weighted against me, even though I'm sure that's just observation bias.

Enemies always have a huge advantage in that they always get to attack first. It's just how it works. You reveal a new tile by ending your turn at the edge of a tile, and when they spawn they immediately get to act. Especially painful when you get a tile like the one that just got me to write this review: 3 creatures, one a pterafolk (which hits for 5 damage + stuns and has incredible AC), an undead girallon (which hits multiple times for 4 damage and has a lot of HP), and a spellward skeleton (read the last point for more on these jerks).

As may have been hinted at above, once you get into it there isn't much strategy or tactics to go with. At this point I just rush through every mission identically until I get to a boss or finish the mission or everything goes bad because of Spellward Skeleton spawns.

The "story" consists of an NPC telling you about whatever's going on, including relaying other NPCs' reactions or news or whatever to you third person. It's so inconsequential you can completely ignore it and not miss out on anything at all. That is a plus and a minus when considering the "doing something else" point previously mentioned.

Lastly, spellward skeletons. Screw these guys and everything about them. You can't ignore them because they hit for 5 damage where I am right now (which is extremely high - the 'tank' Dragonbait with maxed out epic armour has 15 hp; I do not have that yet), and when they die they launch an aoe for everyone on a tile to take up to 11 damage. I've lost missions because I've gotten 3 of them to spawn and there was nothing I could do about it. Once the third character goes down, you have until their next turn to finish the mission or else you fail. It's immensely frustrating and makes it feel like a huge waste of time. Why am I playing a game where I can repeatedly fail through no fault of my own?

I have been playing all sorts of RPGs for nearly three decades. ToME has more build options than the next ten combined.

It's not the most story / plot-decision rich, because it's a roguelike. The setting is pretty interesting, though, and the story that is there is serviceable enough. But really, if you're playing ToME, it's for the incredibly deep and flexible combat.