Nylige anmeldelser av Wulibo

A great conclusion to this amazing series. This game does a great job of making me feel like every choice I made mattered in the previous two games, and manages to escalate the tension quite high. As before the writing and artwork are outstanding, and I strongly recommend playing all 3 games.

This game has a fun free demo, it's just hidden. Here's how you get it (review to follow):

1. Buy the game (stay with me here)
2. Go to the workshop while it's installing, and subscribe to the Tomb of Heroes fanmade dungeon.
3. Start a timer for an hour and 55 minutes, and start the game. If you want to use your own characters, spend up to half an hour making characters for a level 1 undead 1-shot. Otherwise we can use pregens.
4. Click on Dungeon Maker, and then Tomb of Heroes. Start the game with whatever party you want.
5. Play through the dungeon. It's a really well designed standalone module that showcases a lot of what the game has to offer, and it's just fun on its own. You can mess with difficulty settings as you go, they're highly modular and will help you get the experience you want.
6. After you're done, check your timer. You could have anywhere from an hour and 10 minutes to just 25 minutes left based on how fast you play and whether you've done your chargen. Budget your remaining time between messing around with character creation, starting a campaign to see what the dialogue and everything looks like, and if you've really got time, maybe even the dungeon maker.
7. The moment the timer goes, even if you're not done all these steps yet, close the game immediately. Alt+F4, CTRL+Shift+Esc, whatever. Now, Steam will accept a refund on any game at all within a certain time window, if there's fewer than 2 hours played on it. In the "reason" window you can write "some idiot in the reviews told me to do this, IDK why," and that'll work just fine. So, you've got a choice now. What do you want to see more, what happens next in the campaign, what other fan dungeons are on offer, or the $<current price> back in your bank account?

To help you make that decision, here's a review.

Solasta is a great engine for playing 5.1 SRD games in single player or player-run couch co-op. It faithfully implements the mechanics, gives granularity of difficulty and some convenient houserule options, and results in some interesting and tactical gameplay.

The game's major shortcomings are in the graphics, the writing, and the scale. The graphics you can see for yourself. The writing is poor in that the campaign has stunted dialogue and a weak story (I can forgive doing Secret Lizard People Control Everything in 2021 but not if nothing interesting is done with the idea), as well as in that the rules text on abilities is unclear and incomplete. And by scale, I mean that classes are missing, the main campaign is short, and as of right now the dungeon maker tools give less than ideal control. But don't let these things turn you off the game.

Its strengths are that it's a really good-feeling engine with no serious competitors and really amazing combat, and that it has a built-in system for sharing user-generated dungeons. There is currently no better way to share your ideas for interesting 5e dungeons than to make them in the Dungeon Maker and share them on the workshop. With time, mod content will greatly expand available character options and story content, and I could easily see this being one of those rare games I spend 200+ hours on, because of the user-generated content.

As for additions beyond 5.1 SRD, the non-SRD subclasses they added are on the overpowered side compared to the SRD ones, but they have great flavour and feel fine played alongside SRD ones. The focus on lighting and verticality do not break from SRD RAW, but there is attention payed to where light sources are placed, and many light-vulnerable and darkness-exploiting enemies available (as well as wall-climbing ones).

Great time waster between Runeterra patches

I tend to like this kind of story... but I feel a little baited and switched by the community. It's definitely a "go in blind" kind of game, but some of the hints about what was interesting about it seem wrong.

Basically expect an open world that is entirely geared around solving one single puzzle without explicitly being told what that puzzle is. That's an awesome concept! The trouble is that you *really* need to not let yourself expect a specific outcome of solving that puzzle.

Overall I liked this game and I'm glad I played it, It's unique, and the things it does differently are well-executed good ideas. Other games are setting a really high bar for innovation in gameplay-based storytelling these days, so it's not quite up there with the greats, but that is by no means anything like a criticism; it's still fun, well-done, and innovative itself.

I'm only reviewing Hades because I'm anal about reviewing all the games I play. Nothing new to say, it's the best game of 2020 and costs $20, you already know you should play it.

If found does some unique and interesting stuff in the interactive novel genre. More importantly, it's a really powerful, good story.

I don't think it's a spoiler that you play as a trans woman coming home to small town Ireland as yourself for the first time. The game doesn't outright tell you this right away but the kind of person for whom this story is for will know immediately. Kasio and the rest of the cast are all very real characters, and the story is only fictional in the most superficial possible sense; I know so many people who've lived it. The Sci-Fi framing device does a good job of capturing the feeling of this kind of story, and helps characterize Kasio, though it did confuse me at points.

The game does a great job of using the medium. I don't want to spoil how, but if you're really into that like I am, this is definitely a game that, though it doesn't require skill or use a lot of "gameplay" elements, should definitely be a game and not some other kind of media.

I have no serious critiques of this game. It needed to be made. I'm probably going to play it every year for... a while. You should play it.

I'm not a big fan of platformers, but this one appealed to me nonetheless. The feel of the platforming was in a great spot of being loose enough that as a more casual player I didn't feel too out of my depth, but tight enough that I could do what I wanted to do and it felt very rewarding to do so. I'm a big fan of the music and artstyle, which is what brought me here, constantly having the soundtrack come on Spotify and enjoying it.

I was blown away by the story! It matched up well with gameplay, especially in certain areas, and avoided many pitfalls of this kind of story.

Definitely worth playing even if you're somewhat averse to the genre, and a must-play if you're not.

If you are here because you enjoyed the gameplay of Dishonored 1 and want more and better, or you are here because you want a magic-powered stealth game and didn't play 1 because you heard the gameplay wasn't as tight, you're in the right place and this game is for you.

If you are here because you enjoyed the writing of Dishonored 1 and want to experience more in that vein, this game is not for you.

My biggest criticism of Dishonored 1 was that its gameplay and story were so divorced that it's almost incoherent as a "story game." Dishonored 2 is worse in that it does not even seem to attempt to be a story game. The writing takes such an immense step down in quality, and is weirdly apolitical for a -punk setting. In comparison, Dishonored 1 blew me away multiple times in both how compelling the narrative was and how willing it was to be explicitly anti-capitalist and make stunning predictions about how plague and capitalism can worsen each other. As far as I can tell, though, this game's thesis is something like "monarchy is good as long as you make a trip around the country once." Nothing really changes by the end of the game, none of the characters really have anything interesting to say, it's not clear to me why I'm the good guy and the other faction is the bad guys aside from all the moustache-twirling.

Indeed, the only interesting thing about this game, the Dust District, was glossed over, and it makes a huge disappointing leap into square-centre by treating an organized worker's revolution as equivalently problematic as a fascist government-backed witchhunting "church" whose real goal seems to be the systematic murder of magic users who are almost always marginalized people turning to the occult out of desperation. Compared to a game that confronts the player with a sobbing whale being kept alive to torture out a little more profit by the game's "brilliant genius," it is shocking that these games share a name and universe.

All this said, this vapid game does play in a tighter and more satisfying fashion than the first. It is a perfectly fine stealth game, having none of 1's biggest gameplay problems. It just doesn't have anything else to it, and in context that makes it a massive let-down.

Summary: Get this, but understand it's buggy and annoying at times. I really hope the devs improve it, but even in its current form I've thoroughly enjoyed playing it for some time.

The base game is excellent, it has won many board game awards and the community buzz about it is deserved. Best asymmetric game I've played. If you're already a fan and now find yourself wanting to play online, this is worth the buy, and if you haven't/can't play the board game, you need this even more!

The port leaves a lot to be desired in terms of UI and bugs, but has excellent art direction.

The UI does not leave many ways to get information that should be accessible, like having cards flash by your screen and not showing up in the activity log, the Marquise being unable to choose which wood is used, and (AFAIK) the Alliance not being able to view what cards their supporters are beyond suit/Eyrie view what cards are in their decree beyond suit (very relevant as Alliance against a Tinker Vagabond or when using a Dominance card). The activity log gets in the way of the board, even when (and especially) zoomed out to board-game view, which is very annoying if you have trouble following certain factions at the fast pace it plays AI turns and turns that have been taken when returning to games. On the other hand, the left side of the screen when zoomed out is mostly unused, with a lot of space that could be used for crucial faction info being blank other than a small turn-order indicator. As well, the game does not teach you its UI well, and it's only through conversation in online games that I've figured it out (and in turn have continued to help others).

The bugs are very serious. I have had multiple instances of a bug where after a certain point I cannot see the discard pile or mouse over cards to see what they can craft. I've had this multiple times as a Tinker Vagabond, which is game-breaking as you cannot do your faction's main strengths. Restarting does not help. I have also had an AI game boot everyone on what was likely the last turn with an error message and no other explanation. We have encountered several others I have done a poor job of documenting, but as I recall/more arise, I will try to document them here.

Despite all this, I cannot call this a negative review. The gameplay is incredibly good, with a lot of replayability. The online community as of writing is friendly and accommodating. The animations, model realisations of the game art, and music are all incredibly well-executed, and it is clear throughout that this game is a labour of love. I am sure that the above bugs will eventually be addressed, and the expansion factions will eventually become available as DLC. While it's a real shame about the UI, it ruins relatively few games, and you can always just play the Ranger or Thief when getting Vagabond and be careful to remember the cards you draw (though I see most people choose the Tinker and it is my preferred playstyle).

If you have encountered other bugs that you think someone buying the game should know about, feel free to comment on this review.

edit: new bug encountered: a couple times tonight, when I started online games, I wound up with only AI opponents. Oddly, the second time I did this, my partner playing on another computer was in my game, but our two online enemies turned into AI.

I'd recommend the game but not the DLCs.

I often hear the perplexing complaint that "steampunk" isn't deserving of its "punk" moniker. Stories like this are why it is so perplexing. The setting is built around the exploitation of whales, and the game rarely relents in showing you the horrors of this practice. The depiction of a mix of rampant capitalism and a plague exacerbating each other also feels unbelievable prescient playing from the end of 2020. This is a punk story.

Gameplay is fine, but is *so* divorced from story and themes aside from the whole "will I kill people or not" thing that it's easy to get to a point where the game feels like busywork to finish the movie. Enjoyable and unique stealth game with magic. Story about the pitfalls of revolution for the wrong reasons in a dictatorship falling to capitalism and a plague. A lot of players will care more about one than the other.

Easily worth playing to experience the world and story, but the DLC story feels scattered and less compelling. After seeing what the loyalists are like in the main game, Delilah's point about having a ruler who didn't have their rule handed to them by inheritance doesn't sound all that bad.