Recent reviews by Banthalore

THIS GAME IS GREAT

I love the simplicity of this game. It's a great casual city builder. It definitely gets a lot of inspiration from city builders like BANISHED. However, it reduces some of the details of some of those type of games. For instance, instead of picking one of several crops for your farms, you just have one type of crop, one type of orchard, etc. You also don't need to worry about clothes and what not for your winters.

Some may find the lack of detailed tuning of your city to be a CON. I find it as a PRO, as i'd rather focus on the structure and layout of my city rather than the fine details. That being said, there is still some depth to the game. There is plenty of building types and defensive units to learn and master. I personally think it's a great balance of detail and simplicity, HOWEVER, I do know that the city builder genre type of gamer may find the lack of super details to be a turnoff.

If you're like me and love a more simple city builder with a little bit of depth, this is a top notch city builder. If you are an uber brain city builder player, you might find this a little less whelming.

Overall this is a solid base of a game for 2 dollars.

MAPS
- There are 4 maps which are cozy in their own way. Two fresh water maps and 2 salt water maps. There is also an aquarium map where there are 4 separate tanks that will hold 1 of each type of fish whenever you catch one.

FISH
- There are 5 fish per map (4 maps) so in total there are 20 fish. In less than an hour of game play, I have caught 18/20. It seems like there is at least 1 fish per map that is a lot more rare than the others and 1 that is slightly more rare.

FISHING GAME PLAY
- The fishing mini game is actually kind of fun and different than other fishing mini games I have tried. It is simple and it goes quick. You get a bite within a second or two of your bobber touching the water and the mini game takes 5 - 10 seconds making it easy to rack up a ton of fish very quickly.

SOUND
- The sound effects are good. The plunking of your bobber and the sound of the ocean waves are satisfying. However, there is no music. While I can easily find something on YouTube to play to this game, I feel like having a solid soundtrack would allow people to spend more time getting lost in fishing. It is probably my largest complaint about this game. It really needs a soundtrack.

THINGS THAT WOULD DRASTICALLY IMPROVE THE GAME
- Other than 1 fish of each type going into the aquarium collection, there is no purpose for any of the fish you catch. You can't sell them or put them in other tanks. They just exist as a stat. It would be nice to either allow different aquarium builds, or let people sell fish for aquarium decorations, which leads me to my next point.

- The aquarium map is super basic and unpleasant to look at. The fish hardly fit into the tanks and the tanks are basic or next to completely empty besides water and fish. There needs to be a way to customize aquariums by adding decorations, adjusting what fish go in, and decorating the map around the tanks as well. Decorations could not only be bought by selling unwanted fish, but it would be nice if they could also be caught as rare catches in the various maps. It would also be nice to be able to choose a tank to display on each map that you actually fish on. There is a lot of empty space on the screen, and while that's part of the aesthetic, I don't see the harm in using a corner for a fish tank to have something pretty to look at while fishing.

Incorporating baits would also help to chase certain types of fish. It doesn't have to be super intricate, but at least 1 or 2 different types of worms or bugs to use per map would be awesome.

ALL IN ALL
A good base of a game for 2 dollars. You won't get lost in it. It goes by quick. However, if they add a few things as mentioned above, it could be something you could chill and zone out for a bit in.

TLDR: I love this game! Anybody that has enjoyed the past two entries of the series, batman games in general, or someone who has enjoyed the Spiderman games will get a massive amount of enjoyment out of this game. Compelling combat, intriguing story, and a lot to do for completionists.

I have over 26 hours in my playthrough and I have completed 86% of the entire game and side quests. (100% Main Story) Almost the entirety of what I have not completed is the Riddlers puzzle missions, which there are over 200 trophies to collect. I'm not into completing large collection quests.

Story (Very Minor Spoilers)

- It was a great mixture of multiple plot points all contributing to an overarching plot. Though Scarecrow is the main villain from the onset, multiple other villain come into play to either aid Scarecrow, capitalize on the already chaotic night in Gotham, or reluctantly come to Batman's aid. Additionally, a carryover story from the last entry to the series plays a role in Batman's challenges and decisions.

- Even the side stories have incredible depth and background to the characters and their goals.

Combat

- If you loved the combat in Arkham City, then you'll love the hand to hand combat in this game. The gadgets are nearly the same with some minor tweaks. The enemies have multiple ways to hinder your gadgets but can also be countered by improvements to your combat and gadget trees. There is a mix of attack types that all have different counters to avoid taking damage. If you've played the recent Spiderman entries, this combat feels very similar, with less web slinging, and more grapple hooks.

Batmobile

- Honestly, this was the least favorite part of the game for me. The batmobile is not really a part of past entries and this game focused quite a bit of the gameply on the batmobile mechanics. If you love vehicle combat, you'll love the batmobile mechanics in this game. The controls are fluid and it feels great to be in the batmobile. This is more of a subjective taste for me. I would much rather be doing hand to hand combat than using the batmobile to take out other vehicles. There are a few main story missions where you have to switch back and forth between yourself as batman and remote controlling the batmobile. These missions feel extremely sluggish and hinder the otherwise fast paced nature of the game.

Audio

- The music is on course with what you would expect out of a batman franchise entry. It is great and captures the feel of both Gotham city and the frantic nature of the situation.

- Voice acting is superb. The actors played all of their characters very well and their lines aren't overly cheesy.

- NPC henchmen actually have quite a bit of interesting dialogue to listen to. They also react to major events in the story. Flying through Gotham is full of NPC's laughing at each other, reacting to other villains and batman over the course of the story, and sometimes longing for a day before the present state of Gotham.

Overall

- This is a 9/10 Game for me. Some of the vehicle stuff killed my mood in certain areas of the game, which is my biggest complaint. If you like the vehicle stuff this will probably be a 10/10 game for you. Otherwise, the hand to hand combat, music, story, voice acting, city layout is so well done in every aspect. I can't imagine anyone getting this game at this point in its life and being upset with their purchase. It was a refreshing single player experience and I hope that there are more superhero games that take all of the good from this game and incorporate it into even more compelling experiences in the future.