Recent reviews by Forgoten Null

1) Game has not received a major update in over a year despite the fact that a casual player will be able to see that certain units and alliances are simply significantly better than others. Most successful compositions have a shortlist of units and alliances.
2) AI is very poor at the best of times, making it a crapshoot as to whether or not the units you have will decide to simply kill an enemy or bring it down to 1hp and then move onto another unit while ignoring the 1hp unit.

This game has deceptively deep gameplay mechanics and has a strong and immersive style. At the time of this review I only have five hours into the game, but I'm actually excited to put more into it.

Game is fine and pretty much everything works as intended, but being that it is a purely community driven game I can't recommend the game in it's current state. The community as a whole seems very hostile towards newer players or even just players making mistakes, which happens frequently as the game is very complicated and each match has a lot going on. At the same time it's full of people who are also intentionally throwing games and trolling people for the sake of getting a reaction, with most games having at least two people either leaving, trolling, or both.

I might to back and try the game again to see if the community issues are resolved. If they are then I will revise my review. For the moment though, I'm sick of getting torn to shreds for making a simple mistake when I'm trying my absolute best.

tl;dr
The game is fun when all fifteen players are playing as intended and being respectful towards each other. In my experience that doesn't happen in most games. As such I can't recommend this game.

https://youtu.be/QmngXTJbnoA

For lack of a better way to say it, this game is far too casual and shallow to warrant the $15 price tag. It's not even worth the $10 price tag in the bundle with Beyond Earth. Only buy this if it's on sale for like $5 and if you want a pure strategey game that will not challenge you whatsoever Even then I would recomend just looking it up on Youtube or something. You would probably get more enjoyment out of watching someone playing it than actually playing the game itself.

It's not the fall that kills you, it's the sudden stop at the bottom. It's not the sudden stop at the bottom that hurts, but the feeling of your heart pounding out of your chest as you count down the seconds to the final impact.

You don't play this game, it plays you. Hold on tight and don't let go.

What are you waiting for? Shouldn't you be spending time with Monika?

At the moment I heavily recomend this game, though I haven't fully cleared it (when I do I will update this review). If you're a lontime fan of the rougelike/rougelite genera you should have no qualms with picking this game up for full price, if you're new and your skeptical then I would still recomend picking up full price but if you have a tight budget then consider putting it on your wishlist and picking it up when you find the funds or when it goes on sale.

As a cavieat to that I will say that if you haven't played rougelike/rougelite games that you should understand what those labels mean. This type of game will challenge you and it will frustrate you, but if your patient and dedicated then you will find that the feeling you get when you push past whatever was holding you back before is one of the most rewarding things you'll experience in gaming.

General Gameplay:
The gameplay of this game is increadibly fun and while it's difficulty can be frustrating at times, like many games in the rougelike/rougelite it's increadibly rewarding when you do finally manage to beat whatever you might have gotten stuck on before. The controls are very smooth and responsive and everything works as described. I haven't encountered any bugs or glitches so far.

Design Of Levels & Enemies:
The design of the enemies/levels/rooms/hazards/bosses is such that there is a very smooth difficulty curve. You really never find yourself in a position where the game is impossible to beat and you will never find yourself in a position where your victory is assured. Yes, because of the RNG involved in the game you will find that some runs are easier and some runs are harder, but every run win is a victory earned and every defeat will be something in the end you can only really blame on yourself and mistakes you've made.

My only gripe about the level design is that the procedural engine requires that the levels broken into linear branches. I.E. if a room has two diffrent doors that lead to two diffrent branches then those branches won't meet up again even if two rooms in those branches end up touching later on. Though it doesn't really distract from gameplay so it's a really minor thing.

Story/Atmosphere/Theme:
The atmosphere of this game is increadibly compelling with an artstyle and soundtrack that while simple are quite compelling. The theme is very dark and sinister and after more and more of the backstory is revealed about diffrent enemies and bosses and about the games world in general you'll find yourself wondering what exactly happened in the halls of Edgewood before Cordy woke up after the encounter again and what is really going on in the school.

I have noticed many people commenting about the game's story feeling unfinished, but I can't really comment on that due to the fact that I haven't actually finished the game yet.

My only advice in that regard is that if you do get this game that you should keep playing, the end might not exactly be where you thought it was and it might take a few more runs through before you can get to it. That's something I learned that plesantly surprised me.

Replayability:
The game like many of the more recent additions of this genera is predicated on being replayable. You will try and fail multiple times before you're finally able to succeed, and when you do succeed you'll unlock new content that will give you a reason to play through a few more times.

The game also has a system where you can customize your character to a degree between runs. This is not only something that is nessary for you to do to be able to get through to the endgame content, but it's also something that allows you to experiment with competley diffrent playstyles and turn the game into something diffrent. An example of this would be that after you complete the prerequisite challenge and then unlock the option with the games credit system you can change Cordy's dodge roll into a blink. Another example of this is the option to drastically increase Cordy's health pool at the start for the downside of not being able to replenish your health normally. There are a number of big changes you can make like those as well as a very large number of minor tweeks you can make as well.

As I mentioned in the above paragraph there are a multitude of challenges in the game and they all reward something, be that additonal credits, lore, item unlocks, character options, or even staight character upgrades. Some of them are rather simple, while others are diaboliclly difficult. If you are a completionist you will not be wanting for something to do with this game. Though if I remember correctly there is one specific challenge regarding the champion cat enemy that can appear that is either bugged or is just virtually impossible because the chance of finding that particular variant is effectivley zero.

Oh, and did I mention that this game also has a hard mode for those of among us who might find the base games content too easy? I haven't tried it myself, so I can't speak about it, but whenever finish the game's base content then I'll be sure to let you know if it's balanced as well as the rest of the game.

tl;dr
This game is better than Binding of Issac, and this is coming from someone who has completed the original Binding of Issac and has 100% cleared Binding of Issac Rebirth and it's Afterbirth DLC (currently working on Afterbirth+ so I can leave a proper review on that game)

This is a fun game for causal play, though severe balancing issues make it incredibly frustrating to play at any higher level than that, at least as far as difficulty is concerned. Also the developers very clearly don't understand the diffrence between American politics and European politics, and if you don't understand the diffrence and you're American you're going to have a frustrating time playing your home country. The credit rating adjustments are increadibly unrealistic and disproportionatley effect the economy.

That's just one of the more obvious things, there are tons of little quirks and inconsistineces in the game's balancing that sometimes are inconcequential and just serve to pull you out of the expereince and other times they activley make the game a chore to play. I won't go into them because I would have to type several pages out, I will say however that the DLC packs and certian mods will help, but they won't correct the issues entirely. Hell, sometimes they just make them even worse if you're not careful.

The real problem is assassinations and re-election. If you're playing on the base difficulty setting, fine, you should not have a problem getting re-elected whatsoever if you're paying attention. You probably have a 30% chance of getting shot down, but as bad as that sounds even that's managable. Turn up the difficulty slider and you're going to have a bad time unless you turn them off entirley. The concept makes sense, but it's the execution is increadibly poor.

Except for your own, of course, if you try to play on a higher difficulty you will die repeatedly to ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

If you want to just mess around to make policy changes, this game is fine. Just turn on monarchy and turn off assassinations and have fun. If you want a serious and well balanced political simulator then make your own, you won't find it here. I personally wouldn't recomend buying this game unless you see it on sale with the DLC's included.

Also, if you do get the game and decide to play America, have a tip. The thing you absoultley must do on the first turn is institue the anti-descrimination policy, because apparently the developers think we're all racist ♥♥♥♥♥ and don't seem to realize we have dozens of laws and several amendments that do just that. Otherwise you're going to be shot by minorities who did absoutley nothing wrong.

tl;dr Get it if you want a casual game, turn off assassination if you want to actually play the game, buy it on sale if you must.

The game from a techinacal standpoint is nigh flawless. It's fun, engaging, and just as difficult as you want it to be.

Though, we all know that there's more to a game than just the technical presentation and flow.

As for the feel of this game, it plays like a love letter. If you want to play a game that will steal your heart then I would definitley recomend giving Transistor a playthrough.

Simple, all the fun of space oprea games without the annoying parts. Just design ships select taticts and throw them against the enemy.