Évaluations récentes de archonsod

Gameplay is fairly straightforward - you pick one advisor from each house at the start of each season, then use up to three of them each month (three to a season) to balance out the 'virtue' levels of your village.
Each potential advisor has one virtue (which will boost one of the bars) and one vice (which will drop one of the bars). Hidden amongst the advisors are eight who have unforgivable vices that you're trying to hunt down and sacrifice at the end of the season.
Alongside this you're also balancing out your reputation with each of the houses, who tend to get annoyed when you sacrifice their people or fail to consult their advisor. Let a house get too annoyed with you and your career (and life) will come to an end.

On the whole it's a nice little logic puzzler / deduction game. Presentation is good - the monochrome grows on you after a while (and you can switch between three colours). Music is nice and atmospheric, with each house having it's own signature tune.
The game generally takes around 45 - 60 minutes for a full three year game. There's no save feature, although it's not really needed - it's the kind of game you can dip into while listening to a podcast or have an hour to spare.

Imagine a turn based 2D fighting game. Except instead of slinging special moves and uppercuts you're insulting your opponent's fashion sense and insinuating some unsavoury things about their familial relations. Wrap it around some Monty Python style skits and some wonderful satirical humour. Then charge less than a cup of coffee at Starbucks.
The game itself is relatively simple. Each round presents you with a collection of words and phrases, and you and your opponent take it in turns to select words to build an insult designed to bring your opponent to their knees. Each player also has two private cards only they can use (which can be reshuffled once during each round).
There's some nice strategy in picking those insults though - each character has vulnerabilities to certain topics and chaining together insults on the same subject applies a multiplier. There's also some interesting decisions when it comes to picking words - both players can see the insult being built by their opponent, so sometimes it's possible to effectively block them by removing a word they need, assuming you can build it into your own insult. These add some surprising depth to the game given the price.

Some nice enhancements from the original Oh Sir. You now have a comeback meter which will slowly fill as you take damage, and can be used to add a witty ending to an insult adding between 4 - 10 points to the insult depending on the meter level.
By far the biggest enhancement is simply more information though. You can now see how the parser is assessing the insult and the scoring for each individual clause, so it's a lot easier to understand why certain combinations are scoring higher than others.
The core gameplay remains largely unchanged, which is not a bad thing, and the humour is mining that same satircial, python quoting seam as the last game. If you enjoyed the last game this is a no-brainer. If you haven't it's hard to go wrong at this price.

A major let down for what used to be a great series.

I can see where the MOBA comparison comes in (which I disagree with. F2P Mobile would probably be a better comparison) - your basic units have very little survivability while your elites can simply carve a path through a multitude of them before dying. Unfortunately this means the combat has all the depth of a rather high mountain peak - spam basic unit of choice (theoretically they're split into anti-vehicle, melee and ranged. In practice it makes very little difference), charge like a mindless horde at a given target. If an enemy elite turns up tackle them with your own elites, send whatever is left in to do as much damage as possible to whichever of the three targets you're currently trying to take out. Rinse and repeat until either someone wins or the heat death of the universe, whichever comes first. Most units have abilities which can change the tide of battle. In theory. In practice while you could micromanage your way to RSI in an effort to play optimally the difference on the end result is again pretty negligible.
The unit cap is much higher, so you can field a lot more units which in theory should lead to a spectacular epic-scale battle. Unfortunately the practical once again falls flat - graphically it's pretty drab (and by default you're zoomed so far out what you're largely watching is one indistinguishable blob fighting another), and since the unique death animations and similar have been dropped in favour of people simply falling over in a pool of blood it's visually about as enthralling as watching paint dry.

Unfortunately with the core gameplay being so lacklustre not only would I not recommend buying it now, I can't really see a way they could salvage it enough to recommend it after a couple of years and a 5% off sale.

Part RPG, part strategy with an excellent and under-used fantasy setting in Slavic mythology.

I really wanted to like this game, however I get the feeling it was released just a little undercooked. At it's heart it's a L4D clone with a Warhammer flavour, and a loot system thrown in for good measure. You pick from one of five characters (Witch Hunter, Dwarf, Human soldier, Bright Wizard or Elf Waywatcher) and then choose a mission which will involve navigating the streets while being attacked by a horde of Skaven.
Like L4D the Skaven come in various flavours - from the relatively easy skavenslaves to the huge rat ogres or devastating ratling guns. You can pick up various bits of equipment along the way to help, including firer bombs, strength potions and similar. Wander off too far from the rest of the group and you risk being picked off by gutter runners.
The combat itself is fairly mediocre - most characters have the option of ranged attacks for which there's limited ammo and melee attacks which usually come in two forms (one quick slash, one stronger attack for armoured opponents). While not as sophisticated as Dark Souls or Mount and Blade it gets the job done.
I bought it on launch and found the experience marred by some pretty horrendous bugs. The AI suffers from some pathfinding issues - many times I watched the skaven simply spin rapidly on the spot, or get stuck on scenery. The same affects the friendly bots which can fill in for missing players, although they'll also just as often decide to run off like some kind of medieval Rambo until brought down by the horde; but just as often you'll find them refusing to move from a location because there's a skaven slave stuck on a nearby ledge. They refuse to assist downed players, and in fact when the host went down the AI bots seemed to simply freeze in place. This wouldn't have been a huge issue, however the matchmaking system was also flaky meaning the bots often had to make an appearance in order to get the game started.
There's a core of a good game in here, however I think it could probably have done with some additional time on the stove to really bring it out. While I've no doubt these issues will be patched out over time, it does mean rather than a recommendation I'd say "come back in a couple of months".

If this is the way DDII is heading then I'm not optimistic about the future.

Always online and no single player; microtransaction store; horrible texture streaming (so you need to wait five minutes for the graphic fidelity to reach the level of the original game) and no capacity to import existing characters.

They've made some tweaks and rebalances to the gameplay, but not to a noticeable extent. Perhaps this will find it's market on mobile devices, but for the PC it's inferior to the original in every way.

About the only good thing I can say here is that it made me start playing the original Dungeon Defenders again.

Think how great it would be if you had some kind of insane mashup of Baldur's Gate and Divine Divinity. Now treble it, throw in a healthy dose of Larian's usual tongue in cheek humour, and you're looking at Original Sin.
Beginning with two characters (with more NPC's available to recruit along the way) you're a pair of source hunters (think witch finder ♥♥♥ inquisition) dispatched to investigate a murder. Though as usual, things aren't quite what they seem, what with the mysterious undead horde at the gates and constant attacks by an Orc invasion fleet.
Combat is turn based and thankfully manages to remain interesting. All combatants act according to an initiative order, with a reserve of action points they can use for clobbering, shooting or spell slinging. What's likely to garner most attention here is the environmental effects - create a poison cloud to gas your foes, then ignite it with a fireball to set them ablaze for good measure. Then douse them with water, which puts out the fire but creates a cloud of blinding steam instead. A cloud which can be electrified to bring a shocking conclusion to the fight.
Dialogue is your good old fashioned multi-choice dialogue tree. Your party members will chime in frequently when certain events happen, both within the party and without. For your two initial characters you can choose their responses to each other, which seems weird but works quite well. Conversational skills are handled via a mini-game of rock-paper-scissors (though this is skippable) with the character's various skills impacting how this plays out.
The little touches are great; enter sneak mode for example and your character will pull off the old 'walking bush' trick with whatever seems to fit the environment. The screen fades slightly with character's vision cones highlighted so you can try and avoid whoever you're trying to sneak up on from spotting you. The ability to move objects within the world is put to good use in some of the puzzles and offers an interesting means of dealing with things like traps.
Writing so far is fantastic, with Larian's tongue being firmly in their cheek. Three hours in and I'm dressed as a barrel trying to pickpocket the commander of the city guard so I can steal his handkerchief to take to a dog I met in the graveyard so it can tell me if he's involved in his master's murder. This is after I've returned a talking clam to the sea and been transported through time and space to meet the weaver of time who'd quite like some help dealing with the final death of the universe.

Never mind RPG of the year, this is probably my RPG of the previous decade.

It's a mix between hack n slash and tower defence, and it works amazingly well. The four classes of hero compliment each other making for excellently strategic multiplayer, while the ability to swap out the character during a game allows you to experience the same fun in solo play too. Plenty of challenges and a campaign to work your way through, and of course all the collectible loot to keep you going.

If you're at all a fan of strategy, buy this. It's probably the most revolutionary RTS since Dune 2. Your task is to defeat two rebel AI's before they wipe humanity out, with the small catch that the AI starts off in control of the universe. What's more, it works just as well in single player as it does when playing with the drop in co-op mode. Oh, and the developers regularly chuck in new content, patches and a near constant stream of expansions. A very generous time limited demo is available, and you can even demo the expansions if you want to check them out before buying.