Recent reviews by zenstar

cute little horror short tale. maybe 15 minutes long.
nice and atmospheric. no real hand holding but not difficult either.

It's the most accessible entry into the series and is a great point for newcomers to jump on board.
the world looks gorgeous and is fully connected. the monsters look wonderful and riding the seikret around is a nice evolutionary step up from the doggos in rise. the usual loop is in there: do the story to learn the mechanics at low hunter levels and it's the usual - hunt monster, get bits, use bits to make armour to hunt the next monster in the chain, repeat.
there's no weird forced mechanics like rise's tower defense and the campaign is gripping enough to move you along.

overall, imo, a great next step in the series.

be warned though - the engine is taxing on your hardware and you may experience the occasional crash. hopefully this'll be sorted in patches over the next short while, but if that's a deal-breaker then either wait for optimisation patches or skip.

UPDATE: there have been a couple of patches since i wrote the review and since then i've not had another crash. not sure about the optimisation part (runs ok on my machine) but the weird crash that sometimes happened when joining a quest seems to have gone away.

addictive little rogue-like with a tmnt theme.
splinter has been kidnapped and the turtles have to fight through 4 stages to try get him back but these strange portals keep opening up when they're defeated and they find themselves back in their lair. a mysterious someone seems to be playing a game with the turtles and they're going to need to kick some ninja butt to find out what's going on (as well as collecting various currencies so they can improve their abilities and stats).
plenty to do and collect with various challenge portals appearing every now and then to make things harder while offering better rewards. difficulty is fairly mild on the normal setting although there is a harder setting for those looking for more challenge. multiplayer available and all games are better with friends.
i like the artwork in the game and everything is voiced nicely.
overall an enjoyable game for tmnt fans and action roguelike fans.

wise-cracking wizards in small-scale tactical encounters with lots of movement influencing skills (knocking enemies around) creating some great sequences where you have one character debuff an enemy to make them stagger more, a second character runs around to hit them from the right angle to push them back a couple of squares, into the path of the third character who is over-watching along that path and pops them with a super powerful shot.
exquisite.
add in the ability to see forward in time and rewind your moves and you’ll be plotting and planning for the perfect turn.
characters are engaging and funny and the art style is great.

A great story that may lose some with its controls.

Played this on my ROG Ally at 15W and it plays just fine.

It’s a serial killer whodunnit with a really good story. the writing is fairly decent, and the story plays out nicely.

however: the movement is a bit clunky. there are fixed camera angles which means sometimes you walk out of a door and the camera changes and you end up walking back in.
and all the action is controlled by what is effectively quick time events. opening a drawer? pull right stick down. need to open a sliding door? pull right stick in that direction. etc.
it’s mostly ok but when you hit action scenes like fights or chases, then it’s basically a long string of A, X, right stick up, right stick left, RB, A…
so if you don’t like QTEs then you’re probably not going to enjoy this. it was probably an interesting experiment in control at the time, but seems a little weird now.

but if you’re ok with slightly outdated controls and you’re ok with QTEs then you’ll probably enjoy this. there’s a father with issues and a missing child, a private eye, a reporter, and an fbi profiler all trying to figure out who’s been killing young kids.
the story bounces between the characters and mostly moves at a good pace to keep you engaged.
first play through for me took just under 10 hours and overall it was a great story trying to figure it out.

interesting retro style imsim with touches of rougelike
the game is split into 3 parts, the first is a sort of an intro and you play through it once. here's where you learn your objective: to save your girl you need to commit a murder
the second part of the game sees you running around a small town gathering gear for the final part and doing some simple quests
the third part is a sneak / infiltrate level where your target lays in wait

the rougelike elements come into play as you repeat parts 2 and 3 trying to get all the endings and completing some objectives along the way. completing objectives will unlock small bonuses during future playthroughs.

eventually you'll have figured out where to go in part 2 to quickly grab the gear you want, and you'll understand the layout of the level in part 3 so you can quickly complete your objective.

it's not a super long game and you'll be repeating some parts multiple times, but it's got some old school charm to it and you'll find yourself trying to find the most efficient route and where the secrets are and how to use the tools provided (it took me a few runs before i found how useful the sledgehammer was and all the places i could use it).

addictive rougelike.
the game loop is simple: take a robospider and climb up and down a giant wall looking for mine entrances. attach to the mine and leave the spider to mine out minerals and tech. use minerals to upgrade your spider and mining abilities. every now and then a wave of enemies comes along and you need to race back to the spider and pop in to defend yourself.
upgrading the spider between games lets you travel further and mine better, gaining access to further minerals and upgrades.
simple yet fun & addictive, and each run feels like you're progressing further. just what you want from a rougelike.

retro style rpg with a great horror fantasy story.
has a very d&d feel to it with character creation for your first (and a few subsequent) character(s). characters are defined by their attributes and skills and a few derived attributes. combat is intuitive with flexibility: you move around grids and have spells and skills. classes seem nicely defined with each having their unique mix of feats.
exploration outside of combat is fairly similar but more free flowing with classic "area maps" with more detail and characters and "world map" where you travel between places of interest.
the story is immediately engaging and the atmosphere is spot on. music is great and the crt filter is perfect.

well worth the small price tag

Unfortunately it's both buggy and abandoned.
The game has a lot of potential and it's great to build a gang and customise them. The atmosphere is great too. unfortunately this is pretty much all the good you're going to get.

The single player story serves its purpose and does a fair enough job linking the battles. Unfortunately the AI is slow and less than stellar in single player resulting in drawn out, lacklustre fights with occasional crashes. Even your progression is at risk with a few rare bugs here and there removing rewards you've assigned to help your gang. Throughout its life the game has been plagued with odd bugs. Patches have solved some, and opened others. Some are minor or unnoticeable, some will reintroduce you to your desktop. I believe the save corruption bug has been solved, so make sure you're on the latest patch if you don't heed my warnings and purchase the game anyway.

Multiplayer had a real chance to shine, and I bought this with 3 other friends specifically for the multiplayer. 3 of us played the original board game and remembered it fondly. The changes from the board game were all fine and understandable. BUT after numerous attempts and after waiting through numerous patches, we _never_ completed a single game without one of us crashing to desktop and being unable to reconnect to resume the game.
after each patch rolled out we gave it another go, before shelving it again, hoping the next patch would do it.
I think the closest I ever got to a completed multiplayer game was when I played with just 1 of my friends. We almost finished the game before I crashed to desktop.

None of the patches ever got the game stable enough for a full match and it's been 2 years since the last patch now. All four of us regret this purchase.

I cannot recommend this to anyone in it's current state and that state is unlikely to ever change.
If you're really hankering for 40k in a hive setting, maybe look at Darktide instead. it's not turn based, but you'll have far more fun than you'll likely have here.

Amazing game. It starts out as a nice, thematic deckbuilder set in a cabin in the woods with a crazy hermit telling you a tale. You quickly find out there are a few escape room elements around you as you get to step away from the table and look around a little. But that's just the beginning. There's a much greater story waiting to be uncovered.
While the deckbuilding element stays through the game, it's built upon and grows sufficiently complicated, strategic, and entertaining and a few other elements are added in. But the real gem in this game is the story woven through and how it's told.

This is the sort of game that I sat down to play for an hour at 9pm and looked up to discover that it was 1am. Multiple times. It's engaging. A must play.