Recent reviews by maximumcool

This game is just BORING. At no point was my character in danger of taking significant damage, let alone dying. The game so closely mimics Diablo 2 you're better off just playing Diablo 2. The easiest monsters drop amazing loot and I got a "satanic" level item in the starting zone. I guess if you're a player who likes walking around and collecting loot (you don't really have to fight to get the loot the enemies die so easily to any attack) then it's the game for you. I just found it very dull.

This is a great game. It might not be perfect, but I think it's at least a solid 9 out of 10 all things considered. The game mechanics are simple and require little research to be able to enjoy it and "get into the game". There is also some depth for those who want to do things like breed a Pal with the best combination of traits. There is a lot to explore in the world. I frequently say to myself "I'm going to just fly north and uncover more of the map" only to get sidetracked by picking up eggs, opening chests, and capturing Pals in that area.

It is still early access so yeah, there's bugs, and the AI on the Pals is still far from perfect when they are working in your base. But the developer has made some massive improvements just in the last month or two and I expect they will continue to do so.

I really like the way I can adjust settings on a world both when I first create it and then while playing it. I had to restart my progress (not their fault, I switched from Xbox to PC) so I turned the xp gain up high and increased how much resources were being dropped so that I could quickly blow through the first 30 levels or so and then turned the settings back down to normal. Many games I've played would only allow me to change those settings when creating the world, so I appreciate the flexibility this one offers.

My biggest criticism would be that there's no real endgame. Once you hit level 50 and capture a Jetdragon (or whatever it's called) there's not a whole lot left to do. But I think the game is definitely worth buying and I can see it being a game like Terraria where every 2 or 3 years it will be fun to dust it off, start a fresh world, do it all over again, and enjoy whatever new content has been added.

I wish I could recommend this game. It does a lot of things right. But there's three major problems: first, even after turning off every option I could find there was still so much of the game screen constantly moving and swaying you get seasick after a few minutes. No idea why the developer made it this way in the first place, just no idea what was going through their head.
Second, there's absolutely no guidance as to what really leads to what. You're supposed to be earning coins to buy lands? I guess? No idea how. It says the game is an idle game but if I tab over to something else a monster comes and kills me after a minute or two. Ironically Steam wouldn't let me post my original review and won't tell me what the problem with it is. That's kind of how playing this game is.

And third, as a result, it's just dull. There's no challenge to this. It's just a grind with no payoff.

I really wanted to like this game. I'm a fan of almost everything about it from its survival nature to fun graphics. But unfortunately the crafting is a huge part of the game and is just a mess. It's not intuitive at all. Items don't really stack in your inventory so it's a mess with 30+ leaves, another 20 branches, some poles, kindling, and some logs, and whatever you're looking for mixed in. And the decision to make all five of those items do different things when crafting was mostly just very annoying and unnecessary since they're all similar. There's a reason most games just settle for "wood" as a crafting ingredient and don't try to break it down into 5 different subcategories. It might work if they cleaned things up a lot. Perhaps if I need a pole for a recipe and can get it from deconstructing a branch you could just make it automatically do that.

And then there's the karma system. Y'know what? If I want to do a bunch of mining I don't like a game to kill me for it. I mean there's ways to slow people down a little and make a penalty. In 7 Days to Die mining attracts monsters. But it doesn't make the game (basically) irrevocably harder so I get killed in one hit by the suddenly much more powerful monsters that are spawning. It's a good idea but it's just implemented poorly.

And that's kind of the whole game. Good ideas, bad application of them to the genre. I hope the developer keeps working but there's lots of improvement to be made and I just can't recommend it to anyone at this point. There's a fine line between challenging and frustrating and if after 30 years of gaming experience I can't figure out how to do the most basic actions without watching a Youtube video, then you're doing it wrong.

This game has been a favorite of mine since I first played it over 20 years ago. The depth, especially for a game of that time, is simply amazing. Diplomacy, duels, warfare, and personal missions exploring an enemy castle to sabotage, humiliate, assassinate, or take a hostage (or get one of yours back!). And while the graphics show their age the writing is still well done and I think the artwork in the still shots is still enjoyable. But it's the gameplay that I'm buying this for, not for pretty pictures.

There's some tricks to the game of course and the enemy AI has its weaknesses. The battles especially are easy to win at once you learn a few tricks. The enemy AI isn't very aggressive and will sit there and let you surround it and hit it's army from both sides at once, guaranteeing victory. And with the duels you can pretty much win by just hammering away. But the AI is much stronger in the diplomacy section with enemies working against you. The first time someone shows up with a pack of ninjas to kill you, you'll probably die.

It's in the over-head battles/adventures that the game's AI really shines especially while sneaking into an enemy castle. If you're not seen or kill the guards before they sound the alarm you can actually succeed just by stealth. Usually tho you'll end up with the alarm being sounded and you'll have to fight your way through. That's when you learn to hate the spear wielding enemies and that's when you see the enemy AI be smart, especially on higher difficulty. I generally will set up in a long hallway and use my bow to kill enemies as they charge at me but after a while the guards will notice the pile of bodies and do two things: they'll try and work their way around and hit you from another direction and they'll start to wait for you as reinforcements arrive. Time is on THEIR side and if you wait until there's three swordsmen, an archer and a spearman waiting for you, you're in trouble Charlie. On higher difficulty settings the number of enemies increases until even today I find those types of fights a challenge on highest difficulty.

And on that note I'd like to recommend the roleplaying aspects of this game. When you're in that type of battle you can take two hits before losing and/or dying but when you get hit the first time your character starts to move noticeably slower as his wounds slow him down. Your enemies have morale and if you slay enough of them the others will run away like cowardly dogs! The writers had a good understanding of Japanese culture and it shows in the diplomacy and how you go about getting ahead in society. That's the kind of thing you just didn't see that often in games of that time. There were individual games that had these aspects, but few that combined them all.

So... if you're more interested in gameplay than graphics, give it a shot! You'll be glad you did. And of course ignore the limited number of hours it shows me as having played this game, I've played it for hundreds and hundreds of hours, just not on steam ~_O

This appears to be a faithful recreation of the card game. Unfortunately it appears that this card game sucks.
95% of your game is determined when you create your character and if you don't have maximized stats then you will need to be very lucky to win, even on the normal difficulty. Most of the encounters are boring and there isn't really much in the way of decisions to make one you pick your gear at the beginning. Almost all of the enemies are so weak as to not need a dice roll and then the final boss is so overpowered you'll need to be rolling 10+ on the dice to do any damage to it. I was so bored after several games that I couldn't be bothered playing through it enough times to beat the final boss by sheer luck and get the achievement for it.

The game has some style and potential but the actual game mechanics ruin it. If you've somehow played the card game and enjoyed it then I am sure you will enjoy this version of it. I've played worse games but it gets a solid thunmbs down from me. Maybe a 3 out of 10 for style.

I wish I could recommend this game. It's got a really fun concept behind it but unfortunately it fails to deliver. The gameplay is monotonous, the controls are clunky, and there didn't seem to be any reason to really keep playing after the first hour. No goals to work towards or units to unlock really. It has some potential but that's the best that could be said for it.

Whenever the discussion arises as to whether or not games are art you can be sure someone will mention "Braid". In addition to being a fun puzzle/platformer game it is visually stunning, has music so beautiful I often listen to the soundtrack by itself, the storyline is not only deep with many layers (there's 3 completely different interpretations of the overall meaning of the game that I am familar with, there might be more than just the 3), and the writing itself is poetic and meaningful. One of the best overall games out there.