Recent reviews by Debug Username

I have now finished the main campaign at ~102 hours (DLC next!), but have so thoroughly enjoyed my time that I definitely feel the game merits two big thumbs up. I primarily come from the Firaxis XCOM series, and picked this up to have something new while X3 won't come out (and without Jake Solomon and team, if it does... might not be what I want). But Troubleshooter IS what I wanted to see from a worthy, newer TBS game in so many ways:

+ Interleaved turns with speed mechanics and time boost/delay (oh, and enemies ACTIVELY aggro the map in a relatively intuitive manner!)
+ New enemy variety and challenges with more mechanical variety
+ Another amazing soundtrack
+ The mastery system (Highly customize-able, deep-but-approachable per-character builds!)
+ Massive scale battles (my record so far is 128 enemies) with huge allied parties (up to 8 of your own characters + some friendly NPCs on certain missions) that wage across huge terrains
+ Deep bonds between units with mechanical passives that actually reward you with insane power
+ More stats and RPG equipment (and crafting) that allow for even further customization and progression
+ Pets and Robots as summon-able allies (and even tame-able/hack-able within the field!)
+ An optional 3D-traversable "hub" to interact with other players, receive side quests, and manage everything
+ A great story (it has a bit of a clunky start, but once you accept the premise and let the cast and plot develop I find it to be very rewarding)

With the more-than-fair sales price the game frequently goes on, I'm having a BLAST and am so glad to have picked this game up. There are still a number of small updates going on, not entirely sure if they are fixes or include content but it's great to see the devs still kicking the odd bone to the game as I am playing through.

If you liked any of the OG/Firaxis XCOM games, Phoenix Point, or other spiritually-similar games then I feel quite confident that you will also enjoy Troubleshooter Abandoned Children!

There are some things I'd consider minuses, especially compared to XCOM. These don't ruin my fun but for the sake of setting expectations, you may want to consider:

- Missions generally lack a turn / time limit and most timed missions are superficially restricted, which can encourage some degenerately slow map-crawling. The motivation system for Troubleshooter is at most a small tax on your ever-accumulating hoard of money rather than a real concern like X2's combat fatigue
- The art style works, but is objectively lower fidelity/polish than Firaxis. In exchange, you get a lot of static shots that are pleasant and more variety in map environments (more content!)
- Large portions of the campaign (normal difficulty) are less about map vision than XCOM -- you can pop a lot of enemies at once without issue (until later in the campaign) and the game focuses more on resource management. Many fights are attrition-based and frequently take 40-80 minutes which can be a limiting factor. However, the autosave system has been extremely reliable and includes auto-saves within missions, so if you really need to step away you can save and return at a better time
- With a fixed cast list, you don't have unit permadeath / new unit rolls, but recruiting each new party member is very exciting, especially early on. This contributes to the ease of early game as losing a unit carries a much lower cost, which could be a plus or minus depending on how you feel about permadeath in these games
- While I enjoy the overall variety and strategic variations of enemies, a lot of them simply aren't as inspiring as XCOM's cast of xenos. However you learn more about foes as you defeat them (loot drop tables, stats, locations for farming, etc) and get some per-enemy-type stat bonuses for that knowledge, which is neat
- RPG equipment / mastery / crafting management eats a decent chunk of time as it lacks some QOL features, but this doesn't bother me too much in the grand scheme of things
+/- The side quests are really cool when you first unlock them but can quickly become repetitive and less exciting as they ramp into rarer and rarer materials -- the rewards are usually not too exciting either. But they make grinding some XP much more enjoyable than replaying missions waiting for the next story beat to drop

One of the best turn based tactics games I've played in quite some time.
Fantastic story, acting, music, visuals and very fun / continuously evolving gameplay.

I HIGHLY RECOMMEND AGAINST SPOILING THE STORY FOR YOURSELF.
If the basic combat doesn't look appealing to you, you might not like the game.
If it does, go in as blind as you can and I hope you enjoy the ride as much as I am!

-- Update after completing the game --
I hope there are many similarly strong competitors for game of the year, but this is a clear nominee at minimum.
There are **minor** inconveniences in the final act that could be addressed by QOL, in the meantime if you use a scratchpad for notes, you'll mitigate almost all of the annoyances.
I don't usually 100% games and I think 100% progress would be a bit tedious, but overall I am astonished by:
* How beautiful and varied this game's art (visual and musical, especially) is
* How touching and heartfelt the story is
* How amazingly the game runs (zero crashes; no more than 5 observed frame drops; only ONE bug that required reloading a save to fix)
* How rewarding the game continues to feel all the way to the end with magnificent progression, felt mastery growth and power upgrades, and a tractable but HUGE variety of build elements to play with

I HIGHLY recommend this game.
Fair price, all content included, offline-playable if you want or need that.
If it's not for you today, then tomorrow comes.

New to Monster Hunter? This is an easy starting point that reduces your need to have a friend guide you through the onboarding experience.
Familiar with Monster Hunter? This one is alright, but some of that new-player-friendliness + live service plan takes a bit of the edge off. Still fun to play, but I'd be surprised if it becomes your favorite in the series.

I'm not an RTS player, and I didn't expect this game to change that. However I'm going to make this review in the good faith that the developers might want to entice new RTS players or for other newbies. I'm positive some of my complaints will be "genre staples" that would upset entrenched players if addressed, but for me these are issues that worsened my experience and don't encourage me to keep playing.

UI/UX:
+ Out-of-game Menus are very clear and easy to understand/navigate.
+ Fonts are slightly stylish but easy to read and subtitles are supported to the extent that I enjoy in most games (not evaluating for accessibility, but no issues noted).
- Lore appears in the bottom right corner by default and automatically disappears until you mouse over to re-reveal and click to dismiss it, which is a pretty bad reading experience.
- Lore can only be picked up by heroes which means you can't sprawl out to catch it when you see it.
- Tooltips can appear _during cutscenes_ which is distracting and not useful.

View/Scrolling in Game:
- In-game edge-based scrolling is atrocious for accessing elements near the edge of the screen. Disabling it is an _option_, but one that the game currently ignores (regardless of what you pick, it will happen).
- Drag-scrolling for map manipulation also feels bad because it teleports the mouse back to the start of the movement when you release it, preventing you from netural-resetting the mouse between moves. There is no option to disable this behavior and it feels very bad.
- Map scrolling is overly sensitive and the least amenable manner to manipulate the camera.
- If keyboard-based camera moves are available, they are not advertised and I did not dig to see if they exist.
- I make a big deal out of scrolling because the default zoom is as far out as it goes and I cannot comfortably see enough of the map to plan routes and movements, especially while uncovering fog of war.

Characters and Characterization:
+ Models look really nice and are distinct in cutscenes...
- But I found it difficult to distinguish some troops from one another in missions. In the third campaign mission, I thought some red soldiers were my blue soldiers merely because they are predominantly grey-colored and I didn't look close enough.
- Heroes talk _incessantly_ when following commands, and they have neither the personality nor variety in voice lines to merit this.
- In the tiny slice of gameplay (67 minutes total client time) I played, the VA work was already subpar in terms of QA. Lines are mumbled past mics, have varying loudness, and are read with the enthusiasm of someone reading the tax code.

Hero Abilities:
+ Add some spice to these special units and I imagine it gives them a lot of very cool design space.
- Are only halfway introduced in the campaign and even then have undocumented abilities (the first skill is a teleport that lists an energy cost + cooldown, but neglects to mention it also has a range limit that is extremely tiny).

Campaign:
- Writing is very slow on the narrative side with almost no feeling of urgency or importance conveyed past the initial exit from a cutscene.
- Major story beats exclusively happen in cutscenes and make your gameplay feel like its an afterthought between moments that matter. In the start of the second mission two of your squad mates straight up leave because they have better things to do despite you outranking them.

Base Management:
- None of the campaign material explains any structures, basic strategies, or units. They even auto-build a base for you the second time you encounter one rather than let you reinforce your learning by building it on the spot.
- I found out (not via the game telling me) that you can build a base upgrade and a unit at the same time, despite the UI not making this clear.
- Announcer messages for bases/units being attacked come years late.

I uhhh... have a bunch of hours on console too, but realized I haven't written my review on PC.

X2 is one of, if not the best, turn-based strategy games of all time.
Highly recommend starting with the base game (it goes on ridiculously good sales). If you enjoy the game enough to finish a campaign and want more, I can also highly recommend the DLC -- War of the Chosen is the obvious stand-out but Alien Hunters and Shen's Last Gift each have great additions to spice things up (the DLCs also go on ridiculously good sales).

And as if that weren't enough, the game has loads of mods in the Workshop and on Nexusmods to keep everything continually fresh. Better AI when you want a tougher challenge, new mission types and modifiers, UI improvements, brand new character classes, tons of voice packs and cosmetics, entire droves of new enemies to fight... the long-term value is stupendously good.

Also Firaxis if you're reading this: X3 when??? Take your time and make it a worthy successor--but also please announce/release it soon <3

Ghostrunner is a rhythm game with the most unclear and unpredictable judgement line I've ever seen.
Die, repeat your actions, randomly enemies behave differently.
Your hitbox is as wide as three men and you always die in one hit.
Even the platforming controls are variable based on angle of approach, mantling (or more like... mostly never mantling), deflections and angles can be aimed but its not easy when every enemy can prefire you.
Later they introduce melee units that would have been far more forgiving to start off against, as they are actually negligible unless paired with an enemy who can shoot.

I was going to push myself through to the campaign's end, but the game is mechancially too frustrating for me to bother.
In terms of other aspects: graphics look great, framerates are great, soundtrack is OK but not stellar, story is typical low-grade cyberpunk garbage that I'd be shocked if anyone actually cared about.

Great first person horde co-op with fun rogue-like and campaign modes at no additional cost.
In the base game you've got multiple flavors of each character, if you like one in particular they'll have a DLC bonus class variant that expands upon the base set nicely at a pretty good price (these DLCs go on sale too).

The banter between the party characters is obviously better when shared with your actual friends, but the matchmaking experience isn't so bad. The bots to fill for empty players, however, are pretty bad at... everything. Better to play with randoms than alone if you're one or more persons short of a full party.

Cute game with an above-average quality story and an absolutely wonderful soundtrack.
The game is basically a visual novel, but even though I'm not typically huge on those this one held my attention after a bit of a slow start during the tutorial phase. No auto-clicker needed, and the VA for the narrator does a great job most of the time. Other characters aren't voiced but have distinct sound cues as their text is written out, so you can read it aloud yourself if you enjoy that.

Overall my experience was well-paced without overstaying its welcome. Nothing frustrating or annoying for me to really complain about, easy to recommend taking the plunge if you are interested. Best experienced without spoilers, of course.

Extremely solid action game. I greatly enjoyed my time and will probably revisit it to grind out a few more of the optional items.
The big selling points for me (after beating the campaign):
* Fantastic fixed-camera controls in open world (combat camera is player-controlled except during certain big boss battles). It just always felt really good and responsive, like a refreshing look back at older game design with modern polish
* Great combo and weapon system that is paced well enough for you to get a real feel of each weapon and ability's contribution to your kit. You can have your favorites but you'll probably end up using a bit of everything as the balance is quite solid
* Kickass soundtrack that sets the mood just right. Nice work!
* Surprisingly solid story that I ended up caring about waaaay more than I thought I would based on the genre. It's not mind-blowing, but the execution is extremely solid.

Easily a top-contender for my game of the year, I strongly endorse picking the game up at full price. The game experience is fluid, the content has good but not overwhelming variety and solid progression and I absolutely adored the cast of characters.

Despite the protagonist's limited vocabulary, CrossCode is the best-written game I've played in ages, with challenging but rewarding combat and puzzle mechanics. If you're nervous about the difficulty of either component, there are assist modes in-game that you can only blame yourself for not using as you need to benefit your own experience. As a rule I am terrible at platforming puzzles etc and usually dread it, but not only did CrossCode make me feel like it was worth bouncing around the world, it made me REALLY enjoy the process!

On the fence? Fun fact: Because the game is written using HTML5 you can play Steam's demo or see how buttery smooth it plays on your web browser at the game's official website. No install required, just get right into the start of the game. The demo obviously contains the story's hook but it also sufficiently demonstrates a small slice of late-game combat and the intro-level combat. I don't recall how well it showcased puzzles compared to the rest of the game, but I assure you that the full game's puzzles are the very satisfying glue between the narrative, combat and exploration.