Recent reviews by Sum-of-the-parts

I'm going to describe this game by comparing it to other games and worlds, since thats generally how people see this in the first place. Imagine conan exiles... with better graphics and a more expansive thrall system... then make your thralls very colorful, diverse and the focus of the game. Much like conan exiles, there is a thin line between liberating them from their starving savage existence and enslavement. Comparing it to pokemon games is doings it a disservice since even in beta, its a far more comprehensive game with more features then any pokemon release in memory. Also, despite the similar aesthetics, palworld is a far darker and more brutal world. Speaking of comparing it to conan exiles, this is still very much in early access there are plenty of bugs and glitches of both the fun and unfun variety aswell as balancing and additional features to be instituted so keep an eye out for those patch notes and hope the influx of money and hype doesn't have the devs looking to cash out and push for 1.0 unfinished... like certain other games.

So far as slavery themed minecraft mods go, this one is pretty alright but the authors did go a bit too far when they added a battlepass and ingame micro-transactions. If you enjoy multiplayer, you will also hate the mod mismatch screen. 6.5/10, would wheel of pain again.

Oncemore, a brilliant early access followed by a unfinished game at release. In this case, the game is more complete then Darktide, offering a finished single-player campaign but critical quality of life features especially for the purposes of mod support and multiplayer are currently missing. Issues include a lack of ingame chat and only "ping" based communication, lack of ingame indicators for active mods, no positioning assist at beginning of combat and compromised ability to choose active speaker in location based conversations with multiple players.

While not necessarily a issue with the base game as provided since there is only so much xp in the current campaign, the game will crash if one attempts to level up after a character reaches level 12 in a single class. This bodes poorly for future DLC fueled arm-twisting.

While what is there is good, I specifically got this game with co-op campaigns in mind and the poor support for such is a serious problem.

Pros:

Audio-visual treat: The music fits the world perfectly, the sound effects are well designed and communicative, the environments are wonderfully detailed and full of character. The only sad part about the graphics is that the game is paced so that you won't be able to enjoy the details... more on that later. Gore is plentiful and generally reactive to the method used. It still needs some technical polish to shine, but whats there is great.

Game-play: When its good, its great, sometimes, your a force of nature. Sometimes, your a desperate reject
thrown together in a nearly malicious matchmaking system and can't trust your squad to any extent whatsoever.

Cons:

Polish and balance: This game came out of beta too quickly and without enough work put in to make it feel like a finished product. While this is standard for the industry these days, its still a major issue at this point and issues aren't being addressed fast enough by default because, as mentioned, they should have been fixed before launch. Violent shifts in balance and performance are still in progress, so don't get comfortable.

Social and matchmaking: There is no community, the tools for making and keeping friends are rudimentary at best, ingame communication aside from voice is clunky and painful to use under pressure and matchmaking is possessed of a malevolent warp entity that will place you into games with people of the wrong level for difficulty or into a game in progress where everything is going wrong and people have quit. Occasionally, you will spawn falling through the map and dying, or be downed by the time you take control properly. Oh, and bots can't be customized and will be entirely useless save for sometimes delaying the death screen a few seconds.

Premium currency / Cash shop: You can feel the tencent charm oozing from this abomination. Its a cancer upon modern gaming and while this manifestation isn't the most malignant, it actively disfigures and damages the experience. Maliciously priced and lacking value overall, it is a blight upon the morningstar and should be purged in fire.

Early game: Special note that theoretically should be under balance, the early game is miserable, you will be miserable. You will hate your character and everyone around them until the endgame. You will become intimately familiar with the various loss cut-scene. This is because your "kit" of perks require later perks to coalesce into something effective and as you level up, more powerful weapons at a base level become available and thus investing into them and getting to the proper power level is discouraged. The game starts at level 25-30, but you'll suffer getting there.

Overall: There is a good game buried under there and a team that clearly knows what they are doing with this style of games, its just not gotten to the stage where people can agree its good.

When I was asked to describe faster then light in a few words, I said it was rimworld in space, but roguelike. To be fair, that is as much true as it is false, but like most things, that depends on what one sees as the core of the game, and much like rimworld, the RNG is both friend and enemy. You will win and lose games based on what you find in the next merchants inventory. If you want the brutality of rimworld RNG to really strike at its hardest, the captain's edition mod is for you whereas if you want a merciless RNG overlord whereas multiverse is optimal for those who want a balanced game. I find it a fairly fun and satisfying RNG fighter.

If I had to describe vanilla Starbound in a few words, I'd go with “2d scifi minecraft”. Like mine-craft, progression is based upon your gear. Like minecraft, you can theoretically progress without going underground and mining, but its almost certain that your going to have to. Like minecraft, there are plenty of systems to interact with that can be used to eventually accomplish similar things. Also like minecraft, your personal and emotional experiences playing the game will be very different depending on play-style and which systems one engages with. Much like minecraft, I'd say playing solo is a profoundly lonely experience with a far more overt sense of cosmic horror, but that has more to do with a mining/adventuring playstyle.

Like Minecraft or Skyrim, Starbound can be highly modded, to the point where the game can change completely from the introduction of certain overhaul mods and almost nothing in the prior paragraph can't be changed with the exception that Starbound is a 2d game with a pixelated art style. That isn't a criticism, the art style makes adding new content and having that content blend in far easier and the lighting along with particle effects can make it a very visually appealing game.

I'd recommend starbound for just about everyone with a single clear exception. Despite being capable of multiplayer slash co-op, the game does not handle multiplayer well. Outside tools and websites are required to join the collection of public servers available and there is no ADL system for mods or custom content, so if one wishes to play on a server with mods, you must sync your personal loadout with the server. If multiplayer is essential to your enjoyment and your not highly tech savvy, this is not the game for you.

You know what your getting into with this one, its a paradox interactive game, and that comes with some good things and some bad, but so long as you understand the nature of the publisher, this is a fun game.

Stellaris is a strategy game. In terms of gameplay and especially in multiplayer, I'd perfer to play it in hard realtime strategy, your probably not going to enjoy it nearly as much if you do so for your first time since stellaris is much about the story and will involve a significant amount of reading. This is important, if you don't want to read during your play time, this is not the game for you. Similarly, this game is made by paradox interactive and that means that its decidedly a two to three dolar sign experience. While your friends can lend you their copy of DLC during a multiplayer match, your not going to understand all the systems or be familiar with them and trying to read everything during a match is not feasible, so your going to want your own license and will be peer pressured into it and the the DLC will not go on clearence, ever, your going to be getting, at maximum, 60% off under special circumstances, meaning that the expansions, which the game is designed around being played with, will eclipse the price of the base game significantly. Graphically, while the base game doesn't look "bad", this game is not well optimized and, dependent on your hardware, the less then impressive visuals might have to be cut even further. You'll know when your machine has reached the limit when stellaris freezes and goes unresponsive at the end of each month or when triggering a significant event. (IE, conquering another empire.)

Onto the positives, Stellaris scratches a powerful itch that isn't touched upon by any other game I know. A sci-fi universe, as hard or soft as you make it, the sense of wonder in exploring the cosmos transitioning directly from the moment interstellar travel becomes possible to the moment when your civilization either met its end, or defeated the biggest hurdle the universe could throw at it. This is very much going to be "your" civilization, no moralistic judgments from the game itself, but you will judge it, and so will the AI. I will also count both the ability to mod and the complexity of the game as positives. Some civilizations are far more simple then others to play and your playstyle and tolerence for micromanagement and fine tuning can range wildly. Mechanically, the game is a good deal more complex then something like supreme commander, but not so complex as civilizations, but this can change drastically with mods, to your desired extent.

Given how inexpensive the base game is and the DLC sharing schema, its perfectly reasonable to buy the base game on its steep sale price and use it as a demo. If this is your thing, then by all means, its worth its cost.

If you liked beat hazard 1, this is very much worth it. While not far removed from its previous incarnation, it has already been expanded upon and offers extended functionality and updated gameplay.

If you've never played beat hazard in general, I would describe it as a 2d space shooter with levels generated by music rather then a rhythm game and is very much a visual spectacle with a crowded screen and overwhelming amounts of action happening on screen at any given time.

One of the fairest free to play economy you will ever see along with actual fun gameplay? Amazing.

To clarify, you can buy completed weapons, nonpremium curency, mods and, at some points, the "primed" teir items with real world money or premium currency but most players will spend their premium currency, either acquired through trade or other means, on slots (cheap, you can build every item, but you can't hold all of them at once.) cosmetics (not cheap) and upgrade items (Mostly cheap). Upgrade items can be earned through time based alerts and luck but it is somewhat uncommon. Cosmetics are given away cheaply on holidays and some other occasions, or can be acquired through certain ingame achievements but this is very rare.