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Succubus is a game which is deeply mediocre in every way. Its action is just passable. Its story telling is nothing spectacular. Level design is not absolutely boring. However, greatest failing of this game it is that it tries to be shocking, obscene and filled with gore, but it comes off as childish. Nothing in this game is shocking and it plays as safe as it can with controversy.

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This game studio loves to try out new genres. It started with a walking simulator. Then it created an action game. Now it is working on strategy game. This results in them not specializing in anything and being good at anything. Agony AT LEAST was original. It tried to be brave and was for its time. However now Succubus comes as quaint. Game tries to be repulsive and obscene, but it fails to shock players at all. All what it can do is to depict orgies and old men being hentai or demon fucked. Like, it is all what it is actually is trying to do. All the assets, all the ideas were already done in Agony. Nothing in this game is actually shocking, because gore is excessively re-used as a background ornaments. It never tries to depict some terrible things, it only talks about obsene things. However, real life has a lot more messed up shit than we see in this game. At one point game tries to portray rape. I thought at that moment game is finally getting serious and showing something interesting. However, our strong woman defends herself and then is saved by her hero. Like, why? You try to shock your audience with gore and sex only to chicken out at trying to portray the slightest controversial thing? Your protagonist is always in control, always dominant, always get what she wants and is never screwed. Yet, developers put self-rightous line about censorship and how brave they are. If anything, they are delusional about their game and how unimpactful it is.

This game could be best described as exceedingly mediocre. Gameplay could be a filler for something far more interesting like story or sexuality. However, there is none of that. Only gameplay which is done in a very lazy and rough way which is stretched very thin.

Cheap Difficulty
• The difficulty settings in this game are busted. Early arenas are never meant to take that much time. Game is designed around 5-10 minute levels. Except on extreme difficulty level, health and damage is so cranked up on enemies that nothing you do causes any damage to them. Simple levels are being dragged down mercilessly for 30 minutes straight with no checkpoints in between. That means that you can spend hours before beating a single 5 minute long arena. Game fails to offer anything more than just cranking up health and damage of enemies thus any higher difficulty levels are just making tedious game even more tedious.
  
  Repetition
  
• Combat itself is very repetitious and lacks any attention to detail. I just spliced a person in half with a hammer... Animations make gore look silly. Gameplay is designed around spamming animation kills over and over again due to brief window of invincibility and health regeneration. To make matters even more repetitious, your character will get stuck on few very specific lines, sometimes it feels that you can hear: "You die little too quick for my taste, buddy" ten times in a row.
  
  Pointless Systems
  
• Throwing enemies into environmental hazzards might be cool thing to do, but in practice it varies from impossible to impractical. You see, shift + attack combo barely works in this game. You cannot push enemies naturally into traps. You have to rely on E - kick, but that makes you stationary and puts you in melee range which causes you just to lose health. Then were are force push, but it requires a lot of mana and time to charge up and then you need to lure enemy to you, dash around them and then force push them into the trap. Most of the time they will not be pushed predictably where you want them to be. In general, spells are very weak and next to useless. The most use you can get from spells are in unintentional uses. Shield is useful against bosses and their charges. Firewall is useful because it staggers normal enemies. This leaves combat just all about taking best AoE weapon and spamming damage or best single target weapon and 1 hit + sync kill throughout entire game. Gameplay is very bland and repetitious and elements which developer tried to put into this game simply doesn't work as intended.

Story is non-existent. For the most part it is just mission after mission with little context. The little story there is, it is often self-contradictory or downright silly.

This screenshot represents how serious developers are in portraying realistic world. This is one of the first areas in this game. It doesn't look like hell, more like resort.
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3093221159

Low effort story telling
• You have a beef with one main demon. He beats you. Then your shadowy friend releases you supposedly. You then go for super weapon to kill him. You get generic weapon not worth using and armor too for some reason which you just replace. Then you proceed to go and kill him for reasons not clearly stated. It is revealed then that Nimrod made a deal with a devil and hell is coming to get him for his sins. Like WTF? It is hell! Everyone is doing that! Story is bare bones and even when it tries to say something, it is just doesn't make any sense. Even the ending is equally nonsensical. Baphomet resurrects after being killed in order to kill Nimrod and then they both die in an unclear way. Also, why Nimrod is just chilling in his own castle, waiting for his princess to rescue him while it is conquered by the Baphomet? There is very little story telling in this game and what is there is very amateurish.
  
  High school level argumentation
  
• Game also tends to insert some theological philosophy against God or religion. However, it comes as arguments you would expect from a first year philosophy student. Arguments which are raised by everyone and there are established FAQ to them. Game asks questions, if it is wrong to do, why it feels so good? Why we can disobey God and then get punished for it. It keeps on talking how men knows nothing outside his own self benefit which by its face value is false. Another argument made by the game is that God is hypocritical, because angels are very physically attractive and thus God is a pervert who just like to watch nice people. Game tries to insert philosophy, but it comes as amateurish and low effort.

Studio had inserted self-righteous shots in game how everyone trying to censor things are weak and small minded. They had a run in with authorities before. However, it was due to them not offering properly labeled version. Then it gets that resolved, their further game is full of re-used, poorly animated and endlessly re-used assets. It thinks it is shocking and obscene, but in reality it is as safe as it can be. There are more obscene adult games on Steam. There are certainly more disturbing games out there. Even Hatred is far more contraversial and messed up. This however plays as safe as it can. You are a strong woman on a quest to get your man and to avenge for someone screwing with you. Throughout entire campaign it only once tried to portray rape which by comparison in hell is just a kinky play. Yet, your strong woman defends itself and then is saved by her hero immediately. Game is afraid of contraversy and plays safe while developers delude themselves on being brave.

It further doesn't help that developers have no clue of what hell is. They based it on Christian parody of hell rather than occult texts or more unbias views like from Greek mythology. It tries to make even greater parody of something which in itself is a parody. This is why they fail to establish any sense of connection with their audience. It is sad that they had created entire game around Succubi and their understanding of what it is supposed to be is extremely questionable. Deciding to cast 40 year, heavy smoker for voice actress and make their own characters ugly. This game is a misguided, low effort game which fails to be unique on its own and it fails even in what it tries to do - to portray literal hell.

I think that this screenshot represents them the best. Despite trying to be as shocking and obscene as possible, they introduced Holy Mary statues everywhere. Developers try to act edgy, but deep down inside, they are just fearful of God.
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3093223515

Calicifer's Reviews

If you are interested reading full review or want to discuss something with me, please follow the provided link. I do not allow endless discussions under my reviews, because it rarely ends well.

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Planetary Annihilation Inc developers are same developers behind Kerbal Space Program 2. They also had a disastorous kickstarter launch to the point that they had to delist old game and make a small expansion to get fresh reviews. This studio has a habit of overpromising and underdelivering. This game is no exception.

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Is its planetary annhilation. This game allows you to fight through multiple different planets and end game tools literally destroy planets. Either it would be by making a projectile out of small planet or a massive cannon which destroys other worlds or just plain, good, old Doomsday device which is going to jihad the planet when it is done. Game is fun at this scale. It is fun to propel the entire moon to your enemy and destroy his entire planet. This is what I enjoyed about this game.
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3066270816
This game reeks of just one thing. Inability for studio to deliver a good product. Everything what this game does implies a game developer which bitten more than it can chew. Nothing in this is done well. Graphics, scale, balancing, bugs, audio, personality, gameplay systems. No aspect of this game is well executed. It plays as a vastly inferior version of a Supreme Commander. It is ought to be successor to an ancient Total Annihilation from 1997. However, even compared to that game it looks somehow worse.

Gameplay
• There is very little what is interesting about this game. Does it have great economy system like in Supreme Commander? No. It is very easy to float resources doing any kind of expanding. Meta from what I had heard then naturally devolves into who can spam the quickest. There are no tactical options. No factions. Only a player which can outproduce enemy the fastest matter. Units are damn cheap and effective. From the moment you start, you will have a never ending stream of them. This makes all late game units kinda pointless, because games rarely would get to the point where it would matter. It is kind of a game where each player agrees to sit on their own for a few hours and build up slowly with no pressure rather than jumping into mindless spam which competitive game is. It speaks volumes that a Supreme Commander player does not like the gameplay and its spamminess. There in that game, everything is balanced. In this, it just feels like all the pieces were dropped in without any care how they each interact with each other.
  
  Presentation
  
• Remember when I said that Total Annihilation from 1997 looks better? I'm not joking. Game looks and feels terrible. Developer does that shady thing of misrepresenting their game in screenshots. In this case, screenshots are totaly made up. Graphics in this game is absolutely awful. There is no detail in this game. Each unit seems like uninspired, AI generated lego construct. Terrain is bland. Structures look just bad.
  https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3066271304
  This does not end here. Detail of units are lacking. Sprites from 1997 look better. Terrain is actually more detailed with hills and rivers. Buildings are distinct from each other. Units make individual sounds. In this game, it is stock pew pew sounds for everything. Even Titans are not impressive. They are in screenshots, but in game they are just as ugly as everything else.
  
  Bugs
  
• Initial impression was terrible. I started tutorial, but I wanted to improve my graphical settings. Game crashed. I tried loading the tutorial, game was all white. I tried to play galactic conquest, jumped into a game. I could not save game nor quit from menu. Eventually game crashed after going to third person view. Game is a technical mess. I experienced constant crashing and it is not just my system:
  https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/app/386070/discussions/0/7098294290806571322/
  While developers or hard-die fans are mindlessly bringing troubleshoot links for users, it doesn't address any of known bugs and generally are unhelpful advise like: "update your drivers". Empty advise just to soften the criticism. The fact that there are known multiple crashes which affects players and developers never fixed them speaks very poorly about them. If they had left this game in such a state, how anyone can trust them with any other product which they make in the future? False advertisements, game-breaking bugs which were left completely ignored.

This is one of the most disappointing games out there. It struggles to compete with game out of 1997. Beyond all reason mod is better than this paid game. Supreme Commander from 2007 is still king. This game offers very little to the player. There are better alternatives left and right. Furthermore, controversy of a kickstarter, false advertising on a steam store page via screenshots and long unaddressed critical bugs makes this a shovelware product. They just show no passion for their product. They over-promise, under-deliver and go on to the next trendy thing which happens to be Industrial Annihilation.

Calicifer's Reviews

If you are interested reading full review or want to discuss something with me, please follow the provided link. I do not allow endless discussions under my reviews, because it rarely ends well.

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It is surprising to see Wargaming to be actual developers of this title. A company such massive being responsible for a game this tiny. It reminds me that huge companies often have a humble beginnings. First this and then that sorry looking F2P World of Tanks open beta. This game comes from a different era which even Wargaming itself would want to forget as they do not feature, support or advertise their own 'beloved' game. Probably for a good reason too.

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I tried demo of this game long time ago. I remember that I was impressed. I loved the idea of secret allies where you can have secret alliances which you could use to deceive your opponent. I did liked how smoothly game played. However, coming back now it seems that past me was just a stupid child. As all stupid children, I allowed my imagination to run wild with what these 'secret allies' were without being able to actually play them. Gameplay itself was only good, because there weren't any alternatives. It is one of those games which people might remember fondly due to nostalgia and speak BS how good it is then in fact, it is just bad by today's standards.

Massive Assault plays as a board game at its core. It seems simplistic and ill suited for PC format. There are countless design problems with this formula and it just feels simplistic for a PC game. I was felt wanting more from it, because even judging by board game standards, gameplay has its issues.

Secret Allies
• It sounds like a cool idea. I was fascinated by the possibilities as a kid. You have a diplomacy system where neutral or enemies can be your actual allies and turn on you at an instant. That was what I was imagining them to be back then and why I came back to play this game again. In reality, you merely choose additional cities which are yours. These cities then will give you money which you burn for initial deployments. Often you cannot have them in your own island or nearby. Gameplay then devolves into building turrets to slow down and hopefully inflict minimal loses on an enemy and its overwhelming force which wants to capture your allies. It is inevitable and there is nothing you can do about it. It captures your allies and get resources and gameplay from that point devolves into two areas which had cleared each other through overwhelming numbers mobilizing everything into a big clash. There is no depth to your allies and they might as welll be removed from the game. It is a cool idea on paper which might work slightly better on a board game.
  
  Units Overflowing
  
• Gameplay is completely stagnant. You destroy the frontline and enemy just fills it up with cannon fodder again. It can last for entire game. It feels really cheap and makes gameplay very cheesy. You can capture enemy cities only if you rush them. Later on enemy AI will just replenish every tile which you clear with new units. Since your units cannot shoot and move, it is impossible to capture those tiles. Entire frontline will be full of stuck units and no matter if you destroy all of the enemies, AI will just repopulate the entire province to the brim with cheap cannon fodder. This results in a really bad gameplay where you cannot progress despite absolutely crushing your enemies.
  
  Death Timer
  
• Well, it is not a literal timer. It is finite amount of money which you can spend from each city. A fixed amount is generated each turn for a certain amount of turns. This puts a hard cap of how much you can produce and capturing cities kinda pointless. It is pointless, because you will never be able to muster enough of a force to capture it before its resources runs out and then it is kinda pointless to control it anyways. Gameplay devolves around the most efficient combination of units. Usually it is artillery which dominates the battlefield, but planes and walkers are also good while you deploy bikes or tanks at the front to soak up damage. There is no depth to the gameplay neither from economical nor military perspective. Its entire economic system feels so simplistic that it could outright be used for board game, except that you end up controlling so many units that you clog the entire map. Then you just proceed to sacrifice everything in a meatgrinder.

There is nothing good in this game. Campaign is silly. World domination modes are tiresome. Skirmish maps are simplistic. If you want a good story, it is not here. If you want good gameplay, it is not here. If you want a challenge, it is not here. There is nothing of interest in this game. On top of it, it has several issues.

Cheating AI
• Enemy AI not only gets a lot more resources on normal difficulty levels, but they are not playing by the same rules as you do. Enemy can deploy their troops globally whille you cannot. You can only deploy your troops at the city where they are purchased and surrounding tiles. Enemy can deploy them at any ally at will. Enemy can deploy units from captured city while you can only gain bounty from capturing the city. Enemy AI cheats so much hard that it is impossible to play against it without constantly rolfstomping it. Forget any tactics or experimentation. This game is solely about cheesing or losing.
  
  In need of Remaster
  
• Game suffers from same issues as many old games. It hardly runs if runs at all. Many things are broken or not there in a first place. It is missing sound effects. Game crashes from time to time. It is not a good experience to play it.

Is Massive Assault: Phantom Renaissance. Every aspect of this game is painfully mediocre no matter how you would look at it. Does the game run well? No. Does it run badly? No. It is somewhere in between. Is gameplay fun? No. Is it painful? No. This can be applied to every aspect of the game. It is pointless, unexciting game with no redeeming qualities for a player to go and check it out. I played this game for you that you could save your money and more importantly - time.

Calicifer's Reviews

If you are interested reading full review or want to discuss something with me, please follow the provided link. I will only allow one post to which I will respond to and will ask to post in the forum. I retain the right to delete any disrespectful or argumentative comments at my discretion from comment section.

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People are talking about some bizarre katamari thing. I do not know what it is. Is this some sort of Japanese fish dish? The point being, what is the point of a game if it is on a platform on which nobody plays with? Thus this game has no competition. Backwards compactability is just one thing out of many why console peasants are incomparable to PC games.

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That this company, Dejobaan games brings you quality games for 75 years? I did not knew it to, but it is in the intro. In fact, there is a lot of cool stuff just before you start playing this game. Game has a fun intro song which ties into main character, you and what you are doing. It is wonderfully done song which is masterfully woven into this game.

Game is simple. Eat smaller objects. Grow. Eat larger objects until you become the biggest. It is simple game where you have to find the most efficient route to grow the quickest. Game is fairly short, so it doesn't overstay its welcome with simple mechanics. It can take few tries to complete a level with highest score and some levels are notoriously difficult, but it is doable to achieve in half an hour the best score if you have one functioning brain.

Improvements

1. The only thing which I had missed are levels which allows you to scale a lot. It might be an engine limitation, but game is pretty limited in how much you can eat before completing entire level. You can't eat a lot of small objects when you scale out of control nor you can scale into ridiculous levels.
   
   
2. Another issue which I had is that when you try to complete time based challenges, I did struggled with two things. As you grew, it was unclear if you can eat an object until you waste time coming to that object and bumping awkwardly back. Thus wasting your precious time and getting annoyed. It then reveals engine flaw as it hasn't any way of determining what you can eat. Only what developers wrote on text file. This arbitrary number often leads to you being unable to consume smaller objects and vice versa, being able to consume bigger objects a lot sooner than you would expect.
   
   
3. Also, as you grow bigger, you might end up bumping into massive objects which you cannot eat. Then you will awkwardly turn around and lose control for a second until animation is finished. It feels very annoying and can be frustrating. Game also slows down as you become bigger and traversal becomes frustrating as you are racing against the clock in a slow character trying to eat fewer and fewer objects which you might or might not be able to eat since you can't tell that just by looking at them.

I played a demo for a bit long time ago and since then I wanted to come back to this game. I enjoyed game a lot back then, thought it to be original and full of soul, creativity. I found it fun and creative up to this day. Even if it is simple, one-man indie game by today's standards, what sets it apart is that you can see that developers clearly cared and they tried to make a fun game.

I did enjoyed growing mechanic. At first you start at someone's garden. As you eat small objects you gradually grow until you break out of a garden into an yard. You start consuming ever bigger objects until the house itself doesn't seem massive. Then you go on the rampage as last seconds is usually where you start scalling out of control, eating entire neighborhoods in a desperate attempt to just get a little higher score. You can feel growth of your character and shift of scale.

This is something which a lot of game struggle when trying to implement scale. Armored Core, Planetary Anhilliation try to do scale. However they fail at it since they forget one simple thing. In order to get feeling of scale you need two things:

• A size comparison;
  
• A small world;

These games fail at one or both of those aspects like every similar game which I saw. First of all, world in which you play must not scale with you. You won't feel big if you scale game's asset with character. Also you need to establish a size comparison. If your character is huge, you must have ordinary units small. This could be done by having one big unit and normal comparison units small. For example, you want to show how big tank is? You give player a normal infantry man which serves to establish scale. Then you bring a tank which is many times bigger. Most games fail at this, because:

• Tank is not up to scale;
  
• Environment is not up to scale;

World around you will be made bigger. Thus, you will feel equally small. Even if you make environment small, it will create feeling of playing in a sandbox since everything else will be just as big. The Wonderful End of the World and Psychonauts and Dark Souls are the only games I know which did scale well. Even the fact that I have to bring up games which fail at scale is a reason why we should call out game designers as frauds and bring them back to programming.

There isn't much to say about this game. It is short. It is simple. It is well crafted where entire story leads to the last level when world actually ends. Achievements are also interactive, well one at least is. A simple game often avoids perils of more complex or longer games when some mechanic in them breaks. Thus it is just better to play this game than spend more time reviewing or reading reviews than it would take to complete a small an hour or two adventure.

Calicifer's Reviews

If you are interested reading full review or want to discuss something with me, please follow the provided link. I do not allow endless discussions under my reviews, because it rarely ends well.

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Aliens: Dark Descent is not only a fun and engaging game, but it manages to be a truly unique game which perfectly captures atmosphere of Alien franchise. Like Alien: Isolation, this is the only game which faithfully recreates what game about Aliens should feel like. This is a great example what all games should look like!

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It is not every day you see a genuinely unique AA game. I struggle to think of any similar game. Imagine a game where:

• A stealth game where you control group of characters from a top and have to perform myriad of objectives together with gathering supplies;
  
• A game where you own all the guns and can easily plow through enemies, but you shouldn't do that for the optimal gameplay;
  
• Gameplay where you can abandon mission at any point if it is going south and continue from where you left off with fresh troops and supplies;
  
• A meta game above all of it where it matters supplies you had gathered, how quickly you complete missions, side objectives which you complete;

I do struggle to find a single game which would have such an interesting combination of gameplay elements. What is more surprising that everything genuinely works well together. You can retreat at almost any point in a game and reset hive aggression, making next run easier. But it touches on human psychology where you want to just keep on pushing and end up being screwed not due to some arbitrary BS, but due to your own choices.

A general overview of game's flaws.
https://youtu.be/EQW-AuZIQbw
Game's performance issues.
https://youtu.be/ymBNbBJfPcM
A nice example of in-game bug.
https://youtu.be/BgTgAD4osYI
Game strongest point which holds it together is its atmosphere. You go through spooky maps. You see motion movement. You open doors and there are immobile enemies which your motion detector didn't pick up. You have massive maps to explore. And tension just adds up. Aliens are dangerious and can close up in a moment. You always have to sneak around them. Always have to work around hunt triggers and your abilities where a second can mean between detection and successful Snipe. When you see an area devoid of aliens, you want to rush through it, to explore before they start roaming that place. They can appear at any moment. That add to a sense of urgency. A lot of areas are difficult to fight in. Narrow corridors, small rooms where line of sight is short and perfect for aliens. It all adds to constant tension and for some people it is even a horror game. I really enjoy this extra spice of tension on top of a game as it often helps to tie everything together. A good atmosphere in game is that secret ingridient where everything starts just working for you and you get lost in a game.

Then there are more difficulty levels. The fact that you have a deathclock in a gameplay adds to a stress even if it is very generous. Then there is a difficulty mode: "No one can hear you scream" which allows saving only on HQ between mission deployments and in safe rooms in missions. The brilliance of this is that you are in full control when you are going to make a safe room and recover your marines. Thus, you can overwrite that single safe slot in a mission as many times as you want. It is even better when you can just end a mission and extract your troops at will. Those mechanics really compliment each other very well. Then there is another modifier "Perfect Organism" where you could potentially increase damage which aliens do. It would become important as Aliens on highest difficulty don't get many opportunities to inflict damage. In fact, game is kinda easy if you know how to play. And there is another difficulty level "We came too late" if you want to remove planet infestation growing and to roleplay as it is already post-apocalypse.

Story starts with your direct supervisor just letting ship leave with weight discrepancy, claiming more profit for himself. He ignores protagonist urging to not allow ship to leave as per protocol. He says ''screw the protocol, it doesn't matter there''. This is just such an unrealistic portrayal of someone being evil. This childish like perception of what ''real jobs'' look like from people who never worked in any serious position. This would not fly, because Hayes (from now on - protagonist) could just write a formal complaint to the director and to the internal investigation board. His boss would be dismissed immediately and Hayes would be promoted to his place. People might not be aware, but there are entire departments of people very motivated on putting such people behind bars due to their own pay being tied to how aggressive they are in pursuing such people. Story all in all is unrealistic and it is made by clueless people for clueless people.

Then these is a main plot. Hawker (main marine) uses his authority to find his daughter. He is a wreck, constantly passing out, giving authority to strangers at moment's notice, using his authority to risk lives of marines and of people on the ship for his personal goals. The real problem is that game is not even aware of this. It ironically goes with it as a main plot without seeing a massive conflict of interests at play.

Story isn't great in this game. It tries to get more of a dead horse by showing how evil Weyland Yutani is. However, that is the story of basically every Aliens stuff. Whatever it would be a book, a movie, a game or a candy. They all would feature that as a plot element. It is childish and unoriginal. You can expect similar level of writing throughout the whole game. Enemies motivation and their plot is senseless. They could had worked on entire cult angle and explained it, but that was far beyond capabilities of their 'writers'. Main antagonist, Wayland executive is also straight from comically evil section with her actively sabotaging her own efforts just for the sake of being more evil. It ends with barely conscious commander risking his entire company for his own personal needs, assaulting main cultist complex and prime hive of a planet. There you find more nonsenscial writing of million years old aliens being of course perfectly alive. All for unexciting chase and last minute departure from a planet which is going to be cleansed by nuclear weapons. When main alien concetrations are deep underground... Yeah, just don't think about poor writing too much. You are not for it after all.

In game chatter is equally unprofessional. For some reason everyone abroad the ship is listening on what is happening on a mission and commenting like it would be a football match. They are making jokes at very tense moments. It takes you away from the moment and put a wrench in the wheels for the story. You cannot have fun, light hearted chatter and a serious story. It is one or the other, because either one of them takes away from the other. If you want for people to take situation seriously, you must emphasise how serious situation is. Having the whole cast of characters sitting on the sofa and hooting at your marines as it is a show for them completely ruins that atmosphere of seriousness.

This game even months after release feels unfinished. You can look forward to these issues:

• Failed Saves for no reason which locks the game out;
  
• Animation errors or lack of relevant object in an animation;
  
• Poorly written codex;
  
• Bugged hunt triggers;
  
• Some areas are puzzling empty of aliens;
  
• Performance issues with explosives;
  
• Alien statues;

Some of those things were addressed, but even then it is the matter how much you trust the developers. There were multiple times when they said something was fixed in a patch notes, but bug was still there. They then would fix unnoficially again giving community no notification if it was finally resolved.

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This game is original, unique and fun to play. It's also an AA game without excessive resources under its belt. It is rough around the edges and production values are often tend to vary immensely from brilliant to mod-like. It reminds me of old games where developers were talented, passionate, hard working, but also amateurs often working with questionable budgets. This game has the same feeling. It is brilliant in some places and questionable in others. While being not exactly a small game, an indie or alike, but its cheapness or rather cost-effectiveness feels all the way through. Games rather relies on its core moment to moment gameplay being engaging rather than anything else. In the modern industry, it is refreshing to see game like this and it is worth playing for anyone who finds themselves interested in it.

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Calicifer's Reviews

If you are interested reading full review or want to discuss something with me, please follow the provided link. I do not allow endless discussions under my reviews, because it rarely ends well.

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Reus is a well looking game for its time period. It is charming and friendly looking. However, this is where its strengths ends as despite having a strong gameplay foundation, game itself is very bothersome to play.

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It is a pretty game to look at it. It has a soul and it goes a long way to carry a game. It is the thing which attracted my attention. I enjoy pretty things. This is unfortunately also the strongest aspect of this game and why it holds up as well as it does.

Four Giants
• Your giants are well done. They are distinct and memorable. The best proof of how attached I grew to them is how immediately I missed the Swamp Giant when played Reus 2 demo. Characters are fun to look at. It is a good thing that they memorable since they do take a lot of visual estate in this game.
  
  Four Biomes
  
• Another game's strength is its varied biomes and possibilities it brings. You can create island nation, desert, swamp and forest nations. All with their own buildings and specialisations. It allows to evenly cover entire planet with different types of nations and this results in different mini-games for each. I enjoyed variety which I immediately missed while playing demo with its three biomes.

Sadly, this is where good things end. Game is deeply flawed mechanically. It has conflicting design goals. At one end, it markets itself as a zen like nurturing game. It ends up as a time based micromanagement hell. Gameplay is fun for a first run, but it quickly fades away as it doesn't hold up.

Time based rush
• One of the key problems is game's insistence on time. Every major project will have a time limit. These projects can stack on top of each other. They do not give you a lot of time. You need to figure out how you are going to achieve your goal. Then terraform the environment. Then proceed replacing previous bonuses with ones which you think will get the best chance of achieving your goals. Then you adjust things you need and have too many of. Eventually your village needs to consume these bonuses which takes quite a bit of time. To put salt to the wound, there is greed mechanic in this game which punishes you for allowing village to grow too quickly. Do you see fundamental problem here? Game demands you to quickly grow your village and at the same time punishes you severely for doing so.
  
  Achievement grind
  
• Another surprisingly bad thing about this game are the achievements. The problem with achievements is that they are tied directly to in game progression. In order to unlock best upgrades and longest game modes, you need achievements. However, progress is so slow that in over my 4 hours play, I did not managed to unlock any longer game modes. Neither I unlocked the best upgrades. I was left with a game where I seemingly could not do much more than I already did. There wasn't a clear way to progress either. The worse thing is, this is a short game. People get bored of it quickly. However, it doesn't unlock most of its features before most people stop playing it. This system is directly detrimental to the quality of their game.
  
  Memorisation
  
• Gameplay meat itself is very distasteful. This is actually a memorisation game. There is no intuitive thinking. You need to memorise all the combinations in order to effectively use them. Thus the difficulty comes directly to you knowing specific combos to achieve the best results. It is simply not fun. It is not the type of game where I would want to memorise combos. I want to see stuff happen. When stuff is happening, it is brilliant. I want to focus looking at it rather than frantically rushing to micromanage my giants and wondering what combination does what.
  
  RNG hell
  
• The greatest offence this game commits is its focus on RNG. In order to unlock greater potency upgrades, you need a special ability. You unlock those abilities with advisors which you get from completing quests. However, ability has 66% for lesser boon and 33% for greater boon. You can only try once. If you do not get greater boon, you need to remove upgrade, place it again and try your luck again. This system has no complexity, only frustration. Since it is time based game, mixing extreme RNG elements is extremely frustrating as you will be losing your games solely due to your bad luck. How bad RNG is? Well, in order to get two greater boons in a row the chance is: 10%. Then you might need ANOTHER greater boon on top of it. Remember, if you get lesser boon during any dice roll, you have to start again. This is why percentages are low, because you need successive successful rolls. This results in a chance of mere 3% to get late game upgrade. Percentages are insanely low. You know how you will be playing this game? All four giants standing in one place, constantly removing same few upgrades and hoping for a lucky break.
  https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3029190354
  This picture reveals how you will actually be playing your game. All giants stationed in one place and you will be spamming same few abilities to get upgrades you need for a project.
  
  Clumsy Biome Creation
  
• In the end, Biome creation is a mess. I cannot easily adjust my biomes. If I want a little bit more desert? Ocean? What if I want mountains? I cannot just change my environment. I need to guide giants to a general area and they will clumsily change terrain. This results in it being imperfect, always one or few tiles having too much of one biome. It is frustrating, especially in a game where every tile is of paramount importance for stacking upgrades.
  
  Synergies
  
• In this game you upgrade your tiles. Then you upgrade your upgrade. Each upgrade has a different symbiosis which gives you extra stuff when combined with the other upgrades or stuff. However, sometimes it is not clear what it does. I often would find wondering why something did not activated when it should have had. Maybe these are bugs. Other times some of these symbioses are just bad. For example, you have a cactus which need to have wealth on a tile to get additional bonuses. However, this is early game upgrade when there are no upgrades which would give adjacent tiles enough wealth to get it. When you might have it, you already progressed past it. Other upgrades are also very questionable like chickens. They are early game synergy, but it is so easy and weak that it serves no purpose. I wish that early game synergies would had been a little more complex and meaningful since only tier 3 upgrades starts to really matter.
  https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3029189872
  Could anyone tell me why this synergy activated when there is less wealth than required?

The Earth itself goes through cycles of sleeping and being awake. When Gaia is awaken, its giants stirs and seeds the life on its surface. Our purpose is to take care of Gaia that life could sustain itself while it sleeps. We are its guardians entrusted with dominion over its life. This is the message of this game which echoes through religious messages of the real world.

However, despite how cute and clever this game can be, I cannot recommend it. Its gameplay at its core is not fun. It wants to be a thoughtful game where you can relax and inspect your inhabitants, but at the same time it constantly rushes you. It adds meaningless RNG which devolves game into spamming few abilities to get combination you need. This game is not worth playing, especially considering Reus 2. After playing demo, I see that developers are trying to address its shortcomings. I recommend playing Reus 2 over its predecessor since it is a classical case when sequel is just better in every meaningful way than its predecessor.

Calicifer's Reviews

If you are interested reading full review or want to discuss something with me, please follow the provided link. I do not allow endless discussions under my reviews, because it rarely ends well.

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Far Cry 2 has all the making of the greatest entry in Far Cry series. Sadly, it is held back badly by heavy emphasis on annoying mechanics and complete failure to make interesting world in between missions. Core gameplay mechanics are deeply flawed while everything around of it tends to be really superb.

---

Far Cry 2 represents a developer trying something new from linear Far Cry 1 experience by branching into open world gameplay. Their lack of experience and resources really shows in this game as mechanics are shallow and poorly thought out. Open world can barely be counted as such. Mechanics like factions or diamond hunt are lacking substance. Malaria and weapon jamming is disliked by the community. All of those issues speak of fixable problems which could be addressed through rework of a game. Sadly, this is never meant to be.

Far Cry 2 had laid down the blueprint which Far Cry 3 ran with it. Everything in it, including missions were copied, expanded and improved. Even what game lacked was addressed and vastly improved. Far Cry 2 does stand up as its own game with its own unique and beautiful setting in Africa. It story is amazing white's man fantasy. For these qualities, game is ageless and is worthy of trying out for anyone interested.
https://youtu.be/3uXTJHhvppg
I imagined it to be more hard core Far Cry 3. I loved it at the start where you are without upgrades and thrown into a jungle which is full of deadly predators and armed militia. However, you quickly become God with its RPG elements. Far Cry 2 lured me with possibly more hardcore gameplay which would capture that feeling better. Sadly, even if battles are more intense and fun, rest of a game is a wreck.

Curse of an early open world game
• The greatest issue is how this game is made. It is a game which is in-between stage from ancient old-school game of Far Cry to modern Far Cry 2. This means that there are a lot of compromises. It is supposedly an open world, but entire map is often just a giant corridor which sometimes opens up into a valley which is again, locked up by few keys roads out. At those roads and at the checkpoints there are enemy troops. They are everywhere and they are very aggressive and effective in preventing you from moving past those chokepoints. You stop and clear them out. Then you get moving. However, even if you spent like 5 minutes and came back, troops will respawn. There is no way to take over the map. Their positioning is predictable and bothersome. Game constructed its open world in a very artificial and annoying way which massively takes away from the rest of the experience.
  
  Tedious navigation
  Ironically, it would had been a lot better if game would not had been an open world, but a linear, mission based game. You are constantly looking at the map, trying to figure out where you are supposed to go. Maps are small and thus there are a lot of junctions. Junctions means spending time looking at the map and fighting enemy patrols. Thus, gameplay devolves into a frustrating navigation with constant fighting in a corridors. At least you would hope that corridors would make navigation less confusing, but we can't have that. Junctions are non descriptive, you do not have active navigation. You need to get to point A to point B in the hardest way possible.

This game can be very pretty, especially at sunsets. However, it is usually oversaturated with yellow. Entire game has too much of yellow lighting.

Some places can get very bright. Even unnaturally so.
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3042195034

At other times, games tend to be washed out. It is very noticeable in a twilight. You can see on the left how colors are washed out. However, on the right you can see the unnatural yellow sweeping in.
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3103949300

There is more footage of a game where I describe things which stood out to me.

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/profiles/76561197998038269/screenshot/2119563543026428017/

Even with community patches, game is quite buggy. First you have to go to older DirectX version. Then you have to cap your FPS at 60 since programmers were still coding game engines to CPU speed in 2008... Then you have to download community patches. Eventually you get this thing working, but it is still full of issues. Phone calls stop randomly working. When you get to the point where you need to go to Sefapane, map will show wrong position as it is not coded to work with two game worlds (different areas). Mouse cursor can get stuck in the menus, scrolling options on its own. Countless small issues like that which detract from experience and show just how problematic and undercooked game was in its base form. Even today, game is far from fixed and common bugs are part of the course.

Game also lacks some polish around the edges in its gameplay. At the start you need to go to Mike's Shop. However, it is never open. Little town is completely deserted no matter at which time you come there. You can easily think that you are at a wrong time and never progress through the main story as many players evidently do judging from their responses in how they had played their game. What you need to do is to sit on old school computer and purchase weapons. Then they are supposedly unlocked at unlimited quantities in a next building, except pistol which I purchased is locked. I need to purchase a secondary crate to get it. How I'm supposed to do so is unexplained. Then people show up in another building to give me more quests. Game is so rigidly scripted that it actually hurts gameplay and the way it is done is so unnatural. It leaves often leaves player puzzled over the most simple things.

This game is like its currency, unrefined, unfinished, imperfect. It has an amazing core which made future Far Cry games so great. It can be tactical, it has brilliant setting, beautiful environments. This is all shines here and it could had been the best entry in the series if not for those glarringly bad mechanics which do nothing, but take away from the game. I was annoyed playing this game as I was enjoying destabilizing some random African nation for our own benefit. At its core it is a blueprint for a vastly improved sequel which sadly puts this only worth playing for nostalgia purposes. It is also a worthile game if you want to sate your curiousity as an elite gamer and I mean it.

Calicifer's Reviews

If you are interested reading full review or want to discuss something with me, please follow the provided link. I do not allow endless discussions under my reviews, because it rarely ends well.

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Overwatch had set a standard of what you should expect from hero shooters. However, years of development led to very little what developers can show for. Content which they did created is recycled, heavily cut down and outright poorly made. Title had awesome initial release with updates which somehow managed to make game worse as time fly by.

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Blizzard had announced PvE content for a sequel. While it doesn't explain why we needed a sequel for that, it was acceptable to go to a different monetisation model and get tons of new content. However, what we ended up having is a lower quality game while missing PvE content. Instead Blizzard employees gave us whining how it is a lot of work. This what happens when you employ not on a basis of merit, but diversity. Nevertheless, I will review what people working from kindergarten for adults managed to achieve through years.

The greatest issue with this game is that developers promised us PvE content. It was not available at launch and later heavily cut down and even what little we received is in bad shape. It is bad not, because it is broken. It is bad, because it is painfully mediocre. What has become of Blizzard quality?

Heroes
• The issue with missions is that they are limited to very few heroes. There is no reason for this limitation as there are no story elements with those heroes. They do not even talk anything worthwhile. It is decision which they had on paper to balance game mode, but in reality they did no balancing. Tracer for example was always high mobility - low damage carry. It fares exceptionally poorly when faced against PvE content where are a lot of auto-lock bullet sponges. She simply lacks DPS to be viable against other heroes. She also lacks survivability and sustainability. That is the worst part, because PvE game mode requires your team to send one hero to duel enemy elite for a repair core. While she is mobile, she simply lacks sustainability to be effective in this role. All of these issues could be resolved by augmenting her with talent trees, but alas, it is nowhere to be seen.
  
  Enemies
  
• It feels like a studio which is learning on a job and doesn't have a lot of resources. Enemy variety is feeble. They are not memorable and their models are bad. Through missions you will be fighting same few enemy models which are made as an incredible bullet sponges and can dish out a lot of damage. It is just boring to play. Especially on highest difficulty settings where you feel like your entire team just has to exploit enemy AI with little room for free-style playing.
  
  Unfair
  
• In the end, content is poorly balanced and designed. One particular boss robot lady can just grab a tank, stun lock him for eternity and kill on its own. You can't do anything. You can't counterplay it. You must stand in front of her, be grabbed and hope that RNG doesn't screw your team and they will figure out to focus her. On highest difficulty levels it is incredibly frustrating as there is little room for error and things like that can wipe your team when you almost completed your mission. Game developers added a boss with no counterplay which can wipe your entire run. It cannot be killed quickly enough. It cannot be dodged. It is just bad game design done by amateurs.
  
  Environments
  
• PvE content is made by individual missions. Those missions are isolated from each other. They are about irrelevant characters, goals and stories. It is in recycled environment from other maps. So, you will be fighting in relatively low detail maps which were optimised for player versus player combat. Few areas which are not available for PvP are directly connected to PvP map for transitions or start of a match. I cannot believe just how cheap Blizzard is to recycle the old content. It is very bland experience, equivalent of Free to Play games where they try to create new content on same maps by just changing few variables or adding few models. To make it worse, they are charging 40 euros for this. For low effort PvE content which otherwise is available for free. What you get is just recycled old, bland terrain with nothing interesting in it. Just pay and enjoy what you played for years...

I gave a short look to PvP and monetisation of this game. It would not be bad if not for the fact that Blizzard destroyed large parts of their old content only to reintroduce it with a sequel. Or that stuff they did are so mediocre that it is something which any generic company could have done. Long gone is Blizzard premium feel. Only nostalgic fools are left to be milked.

PvP
• New Flash Conflict game mode seems to be fun. You go to fight for one point then location for a point changes and you have to run to the different place on a map to fight for it too. It is a nice, casual game mode. It is not very competitive, but I did enjoyed more randomness and less meta in my games. That is sadly the only thing which I genuinely enjoyed from this sequel.
  
  Monetisation
  
• With change of monetisation model comes battlepass. Personally, I do not mind it, because it doesn't impact me and there are countless other, worse ways to monetise your game. However, Blizzard managed to fuck it up. First of all, what is available in battlepass is very generic. A lot of stuff is just a filler and battlepass is expensive. Even if I would want to spend money on this game, rewards are simply not here. It is a low effort content designed to extract the maximum amount of money for the least amount of work and it shows.
  
  The greatest offence is that they monetise heroes in a PvP game. This is very bad, because it prevents people from freely picking heroes in a match which might be most optimal. It also opens a can of worms about OP paid heroes. While I'm not aware of it being a real problem at the moment, but this is a very bad path to go and people are well within their right to protest.
  
  Monetising bad PvE content
  
• My other complaint is just how expensive everything is. Blizzard made bad PvE content. It is just few missions long. They did not made any eco-system to make people want to engage in it. No meaningful rewards. No achievements. No community support for hardest PvE missions. Nothing. However, they charge exuberant amounts of money for it.

While Overwatch 2 doesn't deserve as bad of a rating it has on Steam. It is however an expression of people's hate. They once loved Blizzard and Overwatch, but that love was abused and taken for granted. Thus it turned into anger. Sadly, I do not see Overwatch 2 as a result of top management mismanagement. I see that Blizzard simply lost all of its talent over the years due to one or other thing. These people were replaced by leftist, woke individuals. Thus naturally, they cannot be as productive or talented as old crew. Seeing people behind this project and other Blizzard projects for me it is crystal clear that company had lost its talent to produce gem after gem like they did once upon the time. The old king is dead. Blizzard had fallen in Icecrown Citadel and now only petty pretenders and usurpers to the throne remain.

Calicifer's Reviews

If you are interested reading full review or want to discuss something with me, please follow the provided link. I do not allow endless discussions under my reviews, because it rarely ends well.

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Hades is actually a fun game to play on its own and not just for story. Main attraction here is seeing interaction and story between various characters. Though, your goal is as meaningless that of Sisyphus itself.

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Hades in many regards feels like an ultimate evolution of Bastion. It has beautiful hand drawn art. It immerses you into its world. Game revolves around story and characters you meet along the way. All warped in a top tier voice acting. Supergiant Games shines in Hades as it is their best game yet in these regards. What is different this time is that gameplay actually do not suck anymore. It is fun, fast and exciting rogue-like to play. Traditional weakness which plagued their games are now gone and Hades is genuinely fun game to play.

Story
• What story had presented in first dozen hours is interesting. Story is directly tied to gameplay and what you are doing ties naturally to what story is telling. It is light-hearted tale. However, it has a tendency to focus on a wrong elements. It doesn't explain how Hades mother escaped. Nobody seems to care how he can stay in world of the living. Hades himself just dies before giving you any answers and then he acts like he doesn't know anything about you beating him. While some of it might be explained further I go, I found it odd that massive plot holes like these are left unexplored and game seemingly is completely uninterested in fundamental questions. After beating game first, Hades outright pretends that he doesn't remember it for the sake of the story. That nothing will change and you are still going to receive his mocking each time you die and everyone else could just dump their lines at you just as before.
  
  Another problem is that Hades himself is not developed. Story goes in tiny bits everywhere and it is presented by minuscule portions between each run. This works fine for the gameplay, but it never had that big exposition dump to establish context and background. Even your journal just have generic information. Major questions like your beef with your father remains unexplored. Why are you allowed to flee each time? Why your relationship is so bad? It is done in such a sterile way that it doesn't feel real or that either of them really cares about it. Hades is a terrible father, because game tells you so.
  
  As such, game story failed to entangle me. It was delivered in tiny bits and it did not provided me with a push to go for another run. If anything, it established only meaningless of doing so and I wished an option at that point to reunite with my father. Admit that my quest of escaping is pointless. I wished that I would had earned his respect by successfully escaping underworld. At that point, we could had lived happily ever after in our palace and I could just end the game where I felt was a natural conclusion for it to end.
  
  Characters
  
• Characters are lively and chatty. They each have their own unique personalities. As Gods, their roles define who they are. I enjoyed that you can build relationships with them and denizens in your palace. The only thing which felt forced and gamey is that they would force me to choose and ALL of them would act so insulted that one won over the other. Like, what did you expected? Then they immediately calm down and give their boon. This felt so gamey and could be done better. First, via dialog which some Gods give. For example, God of War couldn't care less about it and just see this as fencing match. Even preferring that you do not choose him and instead choose to face his wrath, seeing you as a fencing partner for it. One God could even be cool with that and just laugh it off like God of Wine and celebrations. There was so much potential here, but this mechanic felt gamey.
  
  Gameplay
  
• Game gives you that rush of adrenaline when you are beating hard boss for a first time. It felt exciting, difficult, intense, fun. This is what I game for. One game which felt like this was Synthetik. Hades managed to induce the same feeling of challenge and excitement with its challenging and fast gameplay.
  https://youtu.be/wfZ1NUF_lkY
  I even recorded my second attempt at finishing this game. Like Synthetik, first try is to learn the boss. Second attempt is to defeat him. Games like this are more intense and exciting than I felt in something like Doom 2016. Shooters tend to rely on their gameplay all the time. It gets boring and repetitive pretty fast. Rogue-lites have an advantage of having periods of intense fights and then long periods of build ups. These pauses in intensity and variations between gameplay which Hades does better than Doom Eternal does. Intensity is not always up 100% and thus it doesn't get exhausting. Nor you are forced to play same game. With shooters, it is always shooting with slight variations. In rogue-lites there are two games. One of character build up, discovery and RPG. Another is of intense action when you are facing hardest challenges game can face. This formula works a lot better for creating intense and exciting fights than traditional methods.

This game is remarkably well refined thanks to all that Epic deal money no doubt. However, there are small things there and there which could be improved. These smalls things however are ones which also prevents players from actually playing this game for gameplay alone and not its story or visuals.

Interface
• When you start playing, game doesn't try to teach you its own mechanics. They are self evident for the most part. However, certain details confused me. Like what my shard is supposed to do. Why it is so weak? What is God Gauge? Where I can find it? How it works?
  https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3018035834
  Likewise, game is confusing until you memorise what these symbols mean. First dozen hours to people are spent them getting familiar and comfortable with a game.
  https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3018034699
  
  Imprecise Combat
  
• While Supergiant Games made huge strides in their gameplay, it is still not great. It is just good, something which doesn't take away from the experience. However, it is still floaty and imprecise. First of all, your character has a lock on. On some precision based weapons like a bow, you can't aim. You will feel how your aim is being locked on target. It prevents doing something more advanced and it makes aiming feel sticky. It lowers skill ceiling and what you can do with gameplay. In general, developer did not spend much time in fine tuning it or paying attention to detail. A lot of mechanics are just badly done. For example, power shot from your bow. You can do special shot if you time it just right. However, indicator is only a visible flash on your character. However, you want to look at your target. So, you have to train to shoot at a specific interval in order to hit those power shots. This isn't reliable and you just can't master it. Game wants you to look at your character while doing a power shot where a player who wants to master gameplay wants to free aim and to get natural feel when to release their shots. Small things like this puts a hard cap on how good you can actually get in this game. Combat is not deep. It is not complex. It is not something which you would want to stay for.
  
  No control over drops
  
• Another problem is that drops are completely random. Boons which Gods give are random. You can influence slightly what you going to get with an artifact, but that far from guarantees specific playstyle. If you want to combine two Gods, you are out of luck. Game decides before a run which Gods you will have access to and it just keeps on spamming you those options. You do not have a choice nor influence in deciding which combination you would want to have. This can lead to bad runs where Gods do not synergy well with your playstyle and with your weapon. As there is a lot of power in rare boons and especially Duo boons, they are important and run can be won or lost not due to your skill, but simply luck of the draw. I would wish that there would be more systems in place to tip odds to your favour somehow.

Your goal and dream is ultimately just as pointless as of Sisyphus. You can't ever escape underworld. Hades was right from the very start. This is a fun journey, but ultimately it doesn't felt that it has pay off. You are either smart enough to realise that in your first victory and then materialise that first escape into a real escape from your loop or you are stuck in it. Forever doing one more run until you tire and collapse from an exhaustion like a hamster in its own wheel.

Calicifer's Reviews

If you are interested reading full review or want to discuss something with me, please follow the provided link. I do not allow endless discussions under my reviews, because it rarely ends well.

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Remasters like these are the best. They keep original game intact. Make the old game objectively better without introducing questionable changes. It allows players to play their game on modern systems and re-experience it again on higher resolution. However, this remaster in particular is quite underwhelming from technical standpoint and it highlights that not all old games were as good as we remember them to be.

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Quality of a remaster is disappointing. While developers did a great job in creating large ticket features like remaking game engine, remaking cutscenes and for that they need to be applauded, they still failed to deliver on smaller features. For one, it does not feature multi-monitor support. It is a pain to set game to run where you want it and even then, mouse will move to the next screen. On top of that, it does not support multi-channel sound. Game sends sound to my motherboard instead to my sound card which is default sound device. Then there are issues like Geforce Experience an OBS being unable to catch its API. I thought that the whole point of remaking game is to make it be modern and applicable to most modern software. I disliked game's technical aspects, not to mention that community reports plenty of bugs and you need to download community patches.

Combat is quite terrible. It is just one giant insect fight, every ship goes into one massive blob and flies around. There is no tactical element outside of rock/paper/scissors. Furthermore, a lot of your ships are just straight out better variations of a same ship which results that you have to build specific units and others are quite frankly useless.

https://youtu.be/xNlUfZMXdME?si=21GmHW_7NTgtc6ok

The most interesting and underwhelming mechanic are salvage corvettes. They can easily steal enemy ships. Even though they are quite fragile, they can capture enemy ships and convert them into their own. If sent individually, they are easy to destroy. The issue arises when you have to win your battles through sending swarms of them in order to capture the whole enemy fleet and convert them into your own doomstack. It is just all about that. The entire fighting system revolves around stealing ships while your fleet distracts them. It feels very gamey. While on the other hand, you must mine out the entire map as resources carry over. This results in 20 minute mission lasting over an hour where you do nothing, but mine entire map out...

You are further incentivised to do so due to limited resources on a map. You have to be cost effective from mission to mission. Thus, cheap salvage corvettes against distracted enemy is the only way how you should play this game. Try to fight enemy head on, you will quickly lose units and be broke for the rest of campaign. You might end up in unsalvageable situation right before final mission and be forced to start entire campaign from scratch. Yeah, good old games...

Gameplay of a Homeworld 1 is disappointing. It is an old school try till you make it approach. Each mission is completely overtuned and unforgivable. Even when I returned home and I needed to dispatch some enemy ships, they were completely wrecking my fleet and it was a close battle. Next mission where I escaped to meteor field to recoup my loses, game just spawned a massive enemy force out of nowhere without warning me. The first time I knew of them was when they had hit my harvesters. They easily overwhelmed my fleet even when I had built more ships during downtime.

This game is just annoying. Each mission is either way too easy or way too hard. Each of them has a gimmick or something about them which you need to figure out. A strong attack might be coming. You might need to build specific counters for that attack. Then in others you have something like a derelict ship commanding other ships and taking control of your entire fleet. If you send your bombers at it, they are destroyed by capital ships easily. You need to figure out that you need to lure out other ships at the edge of its range, destroy them and then cheese it with bombers, attacking for a really long time before something happens. Either you can either lose your entire fleet or waste a lot of resources.

Each mission is like this. You need to figure out its twist and then it is dead easy while others are just dead easy. From mission to mission you accumulate resources until the last mission throws you an immense challenge. It just spawns billion ships next to your Homeworld and focus fires it. You cant even intercept them in time as you are not given enough time even to move your ships into position. The only way how you can counter that is by pre-spending all of your resources in previous mission by building a massive fleet to specifically counter what is coming in the next mission. The entire bank which you spent hours gathering after missions and accumulating need to be spent at that specific moment to build up fleet which you are going to encounter in a next mission. It is so damn cheesy and cheap. If Homeworld could get a medal for old school game BS design, it should get it.

I played the first campaign. People have good memories of it, because it starts off strong. However, it rapidly falls apart and starts to wander, doing nothing much. Gameplay is very unforgiving if you do not know what awaits you. Controls are here to fight you. There are tons of issues with the first game and people had to enjoy what they got.

Story
• The problem with a story is that it tricks players that it is actually good. It has a strong start. It is impactful, easy to understand, delivered amazingly. However, from that point it wanders aimlessly. It logically leads into vengeance, but from that point we just wander across the galaxy. Somehow during that time we become the Chosen One. Then for some reason we have a perfectly good home planet to which we are travelling. Now we are target of an entire Empire for some reason. At the end Dark Vader uses Dark Force on our Karen to kill her. I'm not taking anything out of context. This is what happens. This is the exact amount of context you are going to have when playing through the campaign.
  
  Research
  
• The problem with research in this game is that each research is only shown once during a mission. Also, it is only sometimes shown. Some research has a possibility never showing up. It appears to be random and you can get different results restarting a mission. This is problematic, because some more complex ships require multiple technologies and you can easily lock yourself out of more exciting tech. In my playthrough, I locked myself out of missile destroyers. Research is such a fundamental feature in a game and Homeworld managed to mess even this up.

I do not write these reviews to crap all over old games, because they are old. I understand that old games have natural shortcomings such as graphics or scale. However, I had seen plenty of old games which are actually fun to play and compares well to modern day games. You do not even need a lot of resources to create a fun game. A lot of indie devs do just that right now. Thus, it does not matter if a game is old. Some of my classic games which I could play right now and are tons of fun. They are very old and are coming from my childhood.

What I dislike is when people uncritically review them, boasting how good they are. They are not. You are blinded by your own nostalgia and stupidity. Game which you just played do not compare to what you could had played otherwise. Given two options, you would never choose the old game, you will always pick newer if both of them are unfamiliar to you. Old games can be judged by many metrics. One of it is how fun it is actually to play. Other is how well story is being told. It doesn't matter how old game is, anyone can make a fun story or fair gameplay. This is why it is important to remain objective and not give a bad game a pass just because you happened to play when there wasn't any other games and all what was available was very low quality. Stop lying to people that your childhood games are good. They are not. You are just blinded by your own bias and nostalgia.

Calicifer's Reviews

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