Recent reviews by Marcos_DS

Great game with well written, quirky heroes, each with their own background story and problems to overcome - they feel quite real with strong personalities, friends & families and a very fleshed out personal background. The world is filled to the brim with explorable story content, with tons of secrets and hidden paths.
I would say worldbuilding, characters & character interaction is very strong. To fully appreciate those strengths, you should like to read however - otherwise you'll miss much of what makes the game great.

This RPG is a hidden gem:

the bard would be proud that someone still uses the english language like this. The use of courtly language is rare today even in games with medieval fantasy settings, but this one doesn't dumb it down and manages to pulls it off while still feeling natural.The characters are well thought out and complex, the worldbuilding brims with depth and the environmental interactions are superb (the main character will comment on so many things if you click on them, its unreal).

. Alexander (the MC) has rich history and personality - this means however its not a "write your own story" kind of game, since values, morals and even love interests are determined by his backstory. There are different paths & decisions leading to different outcomes, but think of it like playing Geralt of Rivia - the things he does and doesn't do are shaped by personality and backstory. To me, this is a good thing since it enhances and elevates the relationships of the game and makes them feel more real.

Each character has his own upgrade path and focus, with distinct roles and gameplay. Almost every ability and passive is unique to rach character, the mechanics feel very well thought out. So far: a duelist using precognition and wind magic (the MC) to bolster his dodge and riposte based fighting style, a fire sorceress that sets things ablaze using burn effects, an archer focusing on momentum and crits, an assassin with stealth and poison/alchemy, a defender/fighter focused on using vengeance-fueled abilitiye, a healer/divine blaster using magic and holy magic

I'm at the start of chapter 5 (~50% of currently available chapters) so i cannot tell you much about the kingdom building aspect (yet), but i hear it really starts to take off in this chapter and aspires to be similar to in scope to The Last Sovereign in the future. I'll update the review when i know more.

While the game is still in EA and far from finished, i can recommend anyone who enjoys good writing and story. You should to love reading however since most of that is conveyed via text. If you do, you are in for a treat. Oh, and it's free to play!

402h with no regrets...^^

The game is quite unique, but if i had to make a comparison it would be a bit like Fallout 1/2 or Wasteland - but on a multi-generational space ship where the ship authority was taken down, society splintered and the ship is slowly failing. You (and your companinons) are just trying to get by, but get drawn into a multi-generational conflict about who controls the ships future (or its downfall).


Great writing, both storytelling, worldbuilding and dialogue. To fully appreciate the game, you should like to read & immerse yourself while reading tho - there is LOTS of text & no voice over/voice acting. The companions are interesting have their own quests, agenda and opinions. However its not a compaion-focused game like Dragon Age & there is no romance (not a detriment for me, but still worth mentioning)

If you know the old Fallout games (3rd person, i.e. Fallout 1+2 or Tactics), you have a pretty good idea how combat and game mechanics work in this game. Skills increase by using them (not on level up), but you get a feat each level to flesh out your character and crew. In addition you can get unique bonus feats from gameplay, and up to 7 implants which be upgraded and overclocked. Combat is in-depth and hard to get perfect on the first run. In several harder fights you actually need to use resources like grenades and stims. But there is a hero mode if thats too much

The storytelling and worldbuilding are simply amazing, similar to Age of Decadence, another hidden gem by the same team. But unlike Age of Decandence, the graphics are really atmospheric now. Each part of the ship feels unique and different, the monsters are not reskins but each have different mechanics and challenges. They even make sense from a storytelling perspective (you can find out more how they were originally bioengineered species created for planetfall conditions). Visuals don't have to hide from other games like Wasteland 3 from much bigger AA teams, however its not and cannot be on the same level modern day AAA titles of course.

IF you like reading a lot & good, somewhat dark scifi storytelling, as well as challenging tactical combat in your RPGs, this game is for you. If you are unsure, the first act of the game - my guesstimate is ~20% - is available in the free demo & your savegame can be used in the full game.

Enjoyed the game in the style of the older bioware titles (dragon age/mass effect etc). Interesting Setting (colonialism - but the colonized lands are inhabited by celtic-inspired magic-wielding natives + a horrible plague is threatening not the natives, but the colonizer nations). Excellent storytelling, well written companions & companion quests. No filler quests. Beautiful graphics.

The game was created by a very small studio, and it sometimes shows in things like lip-sync or repeating models/faces, static npcs etc. But overall, they did a really good job for their size, and all the (imo) important areas are covered. If you liked the old mass effect and dragon ages series, this game is for you. Previous games by the same dev suffered from lots of bugs - this is not the case this time around fortunately.

So i can definitely recommend this.

If you like old-school party based RPGs in the tradition of Baldurs Gate, Neverwinter Nights and similar titles, its an instant buy. Good Storyline implementing the Tabletop "Kingmaker" Campaign, Pathfinder Ruleset (basically D&D 3.5), interesting companions, challenging encounters, conquering and improving your barony (later Kingdom).

The game had a bumpy start at release, with tons of serious bugs and missing QoL features, but fortunately the Developers were able fix and improve the game so much that by now, it is a definitive recommendation.

However, fair warning: unlike many games, difficulty is not easy, even on the medium settings (in many recent games the default difficulty can be solved wihout any effort). So in this game, start with normal or challenging and only increase difficulty if you really understand the mechanics very well.

Played the game for an egypt campaign and had fun. However, watching twitch streams and the dev clash before buying, i knew exactly what i was getting:
A good/decent strategy game set in ancient rome comparable to other PDX games, especially EU4 and Crusader Kings 2. But, without the years of refinement and DLCs those two games had, obviously.

Good points:
* Trade system with plenty of trade goods that have value beyond just more money: Some are required for unit types, all have a ingame bonus for having them available in the province, as surplus, as export and in the capital.
* Diverse unit types beyond just infantry/cavalry/artillery (and each can be modified by tech, military path, trade goods etc)
* Beautiful world map with detailed provinces
* Interesting era
* great modding opportunities

Some issues i had
* bad at showing important information (no ledger at all, no information which techs i took, which techs are "hidden" since only the most current three for each category are shown)
* bad at showing unit movement path on the map, light grey/yellow arrow on bleached out map
* user interface could use some improvements (but might just need more time to get into it)
* boats cannot be loaded with troops in harbor (but can enter harbor with troops and auto unload them)

Also, the typical game release problems you get with every strategy game (but PDX keeps patching)
* Some imbalances
* Some AI problems
* performance: at max speed some stuttering (Edit: Demetrius patch mostly fixed that)

All in all, like most PDX games at release its a diamond in the rough: Good at release, but not (yet) great. Looking forward to see it grow to greatness & have no doubt it will get there...

If you like PDX grand strategy, you will probably like it, and i recommend it. If you expect a game with the same amount of polish as EU4 and CK2 have after years of DLC and patching, you are in for disappointment - maybe buy it later. If you have huge problems with the PDX DLC model, buy games from another company - preferably without whining about it all the time, just let your money talk.

Bugs:
The press preview was plagued by some bugs including gamebreaking ones, but they were fortunately fixed for the release version. They are still hunting and fixing bugs, 4 small patches already in 2 days, but i didn't encounter any so far. Edit: Ok had one bug, but this was just fixed in patch 5 (day 3 since the game went live), so not everything was fixed, but they fix em fast...

RPG: You create a hero choosing 3 (out of 6) skill trees (ranged, offense, defense, elementalism, black magic, white magic) and get the leadership tree automatically. Companions get 3 predefined trees, one or two of them unique to the companion. Storytelling, quests and loot were great. They could sell it as a pure RPG and it would do well. 9/10

RTS: Playable races are humans, elves and orcs. I'm not that far into the campaign, so i only played humans so far, and only the lower tier units (more can be trained and upgraded as the campaign progresses). Map has sectors with resources (food, wood, stone, iron, magic-resource). Fights are realtime, there is a system called click-to-fight for ability selection which allows a kind of pause, but i would have much preferred a real tactical pause (with unit selection and task assignment). I enjoy this part, but the RPG part is why i play it 7/10

Graphics: Its missing some quality of life functions, especially the ability to highlight all interactable objects (loot is highlighted, as are some lore things, but many others are not), since depending on the current camera position and zoom level its very easy to miss things. Zooming completely out applies an ugly blur effect for some reason. But other than that, the graphics are great, and show some very diverse and interesing environments. 8/10

Music: The Soundtrack is really very good & orchestral 9/10, i would listen to it without the game or use it for PnP RPG sessions.

Sound: Environmental sounds and fights sounds etc. don't really stand out 8/10

Text & Voiceacting: The game is fully voiceacted, but there are still many (skippable) lines for lore and background. Many books to read more about the history and lore of the world of spellforce. They use some very amazing voice actors (including the voice of Geralt from Witcher 3), enjoyed the dialogues a lot so far 9/10

General: Unique mix of RPG and strategy, with a long campaign including tons of sidequests (including some well-hideen ones). 8.5/10

Currently on sale (75% off) for 7.50€, which is less than the two story DLCs combined (also on sale, but only 50% off), and imo those story DLCs are worth your money (see their individual reviews to get an idea). That idiocy with permanently disappearing items is still not fixed, and before the sale it rightly deserved the many negative reviews. The two included packs are nothing to write home about, but for the current price, i would say its worth it for the story DLCs alone...

I'm 9 hours in, the game is just oozing cyberpunk atmosphere. Love the setting, love the interesting characters & level design (with hidden secrets, sidequests etc).

The release version was apparently very buggy, but they seem to have fixed that completely by now (July 16) . I didn't find a single bug so far - however i use Windows 7 64bit so maybe its different for other OS.

Some of the animations could be more fluid, but thats about the only negative i found so far (and i would consider that rather minor)