Recent reviews by Admiral Billy

I have a feeling I'm going to keep coming back to this game for a long time. Even in its current state, this game has a huge amount of content, and that amount of content is only getting larger while also becoming more refined over time.

If I had to describe the game, I'd say it's sort of a mix between Noita, Clash Royale, and Slay the Spire; it has Noita's complex + expansive interactions, Clash Royale's battle mechanics (defend your leader(s), place stuff down when you get the mana you need and it'll do its own thing), and Slay the Spire's game structure (perks to pick up over time, the map layout, the deckbuilding aspect, etc).

If you get some crazy idea in your mind about something you could do with a given cube/perk, you can probably do it, and that's the best part of this game by far; everything plays by a consistent set of rules, and thus everything interacts the way you think they would. This includes game-breaking combos; if something sounds like it could have some stupidly powerful combo, it probably does somewhere in the game. There's hundreds of cubes and hundreds of perks, so there's almost certainly some way to abuse any particular part of a cube if you look hard enough. As an example, maybe there's a cube out there that is pretty awful on its own, but if you play as an Engineer and use their Tinkering ability to combine it with another cube, it's a catalyst for something busted (like, say, turning your boring triple wall into a triple laser tank). The reverse is also true, so you need to watch out for that; the game is not holding your hand, so if something in your perk/cube list interacts in a disastrous way, you're going to suffer the consequences. For example, there's nothing stopping you from making a machine gun that shoots projectile versions of eldritch cubes, cubes that hurt your leader whenever they die for any reason (including just being a projectile and impacting something).

This game gives you tools and wants you to be as creative as possible with them in order to survive. After all, you're up against an enemy that has the numbers advantage in terms of how many cubes they can place, so you're only going to win with some sort of strategy, be it inside the battle itself or in the decisions you make before it. Either outsmart the enemy with your cube placements or ensure that your cubes are going to be overwhelmingly powerful.

So long as you can get past the simplistic visuals, there's something truly special here, and the dev is a pretty swell guy as well, interacting regularly on the official Discord server. The only other game that I've really felt this way about in recent times is Crystal Project. There's a free demo you can try to see if you like the game, so don't just take my word for it! And trust me when I say that there's a lot going on here; I feel like I've barely scratched the surface of what is possible.

If I had to describe this game to a friend, I'd call it a Quake/Doom-y version of Gunfire Reborn, and I heckin' love it!

It's got plenty of its own tricks up its sleeve so it isn't just a shameless clone, and it nails the comic-book graphics style.

It's a shame I have to leave this review, because I really did enjoy the game for what it was when I bought it. However, a couple things have changed since then that have compelled me to write this:

1. The dev just won't stop trying to make their political opinions known. Political opinions are opinions, and I won't try to tell someone to change their ways even if I disagree with them. However, there is absolutely no reason to spew political opinions in patch notes, at least in a blatantly inflammatory way like this dev did. There are plenty of other ways to let your political opinions be known, but the dev chose perhaps the worst way possible to do so, and is rightfully getting flak for it.

Even if you don't care about the above, though...

2. The game's price doubled because of said incident with political opinions, and the chance of updates in the future is looking pretty slim. It's a solid enough game, but I don't think I'd pay the current price for it, especially when that doesn't include DLC (which was fairly made, by the way; the commenters saying the dev cut out DLC from the base game are incorrect, although the dev didn't do the best job of communicating how the DLC would work between the live update and beta updates). When you also add in the fact that the dev intends to stop support entirely because of recent incidents (at least on Steam), it's pretty hard to justify the cost.

So yeah, while the game is decent, I absolutely do not want to support this dev any longer and recommend others to do the same. And even if you don't care or (for some reason) AGREE with the dev, the price is hard to justify and was changed without telling anyone, probably in an act of defiance for being banned from their own forums. This recent backlash is almost entirely the dev's own doing, even if some of their points are valid (such as about the DLC), and it's a shame it had to end this way.

At least the forum drama is fun to watch.

Before I begin, let me start by saying this: this *is* an early access release. Features are missing, bugs are aplenty, and there's a general lack of balance in some areas.

With that out of the way, this is definitely well on its way to being the best Swords and Sandals game. The combat feels meatier than ever, the progression is a lot more diverse, and the overworld adventures are basic but fulfilling. The item rarity/enchantment system has undergone a bit of a rework and is now more controllable and more exciting.

That being said, as this is an early access release, there are a decent number of pain points that I feel like need addressing (and this may change with more playtime):

1. Magic seems like it's a bit overtuned; this is due to a combination of magic DoTs dealing % health damage (meaning even a 1 int character can get use out of spells if they hit), and Intellect increasing damage *and* hit chance, meaning you don't have to split your points between Attack and Strength for example. This means that any magic-focused character is essentially guaranteed to hit their disgustingly powerful spells, and with a bit of defensive investment there isn't much you can do about it due to how strong the DoTs are + their effects (such as necromancy halving damage dealt, or lightning preventing the use of skills/spells).

2. It feels like there could be more of a tutorial for a few aspects of the game, such as the new armor system and the morale system. The effects of morale are significant but there isn't a lot of information as to what raises/lowers it (so far it seems like missing/hitting changes morale, but there's also more to it than that and I'm unsure of exactly what).

3. Adventures are fun to read but less fun to engage with, as most of them have strict "good" and "bad" outcomes. E.g. if you pick the right choice you'll gain a stat, and if you pick the wrong choice you'll lose a stat. I imagine this means that repeat playthroughs/save scumming makes the game significantly easier as you can bank all of the extra stats and steamroll equal level opponents due to that, and it just generally feels terrible to lose 2-3 levels of stats due to picking the wrong choice when you could've *gained* that amount of stats instead.

4. From my experience, the game seems to get a little funky when played at high frame rates, resulting in things such as enemies getting extra turns after a morale buff or winning the dice roll to not fall off a ledge. I'm not 100% sure if all of these are related to frame rate, but there are definitely some bugs with combat that can be frustrating.

5. The early game is a bit vicious at the moment, but the difficulty curve quickly levels/inverts with the bonus stats from champions and adventures.

With all this said, if you're willing to deal with some of the issues the game currently has, I'm 100% certain we'll see the best Swords and Sandals game ever made after some time. It's already up there, but is being held back by a lot of missing content and balancing/bugs. None of the issues I have are fundamental, so patches are going to be able to fix them. If any of these issues turn you off, you should definitely check back in after a few months; by the time 1.0 rolls around, I can't imagine we'll have anything but a damn fun game that really captures the nostalgia we have for the original series!

TL;DR: Pick up the demo, see if you like the exploration, and buy the game if you do! Demo saves transfer, so there's no reason not to.

I'm only ~15 hours in and I can already tell that this game is amazing! I'm sure there's plenty of mechanics I haven't unlocked yet as well...

The JRPG combat is elegant in that everything is telegraphed, turning it into a puzzle of sorts with a bit of variance in hit/crit chances and the variance stat. Not to mention that it just feels good to play.

Outside of combat, the exploration is easily the game's strongest suit; you're rewarded heavily for exploring just about everything, and get more movement options as the game progresses. If you see suspiciously traversable terrain, there's a good chance there's loot or even a whole new area behind it. And sometimes even the things you *don't* see have some things behind them...

The story is very light, at least early on. If you're a person who plays RPGs for their story and character development, this is definitely not the game for you, but I personally like the light, unintrusive story.

Graphically, the game looks pretty great, with a style that resembles Octopath Traveler in its blend of sprites and 3D environments. A lot of the game is made up of free assets from what I've heard, but I don't think this detracts from the experience at all since it all fits in well. In fact, I wouldn't have known about that fact at all if I didn't glance at the forums!

My biggest overall gripe with the game ties back into the exploration; fast travel is incredibly limited, as you can only mark one save point at a time as your "home" that you teleport to, and get an item here or there that gives access to another teleport separate from home. This works out well enough, but given that a lot of the game relies on parkour to get from place to place, it can not only be time-consuming to get to where you want to be, but also difficult, and that takes the fun out of backtracking occasionally. Also, it just plain makes it difficult to remember where important parkour locations are sometimes; you get the ability to place map markers to help, but I'm very forgetful and don't always know that a place is important before I've forgotten where to get to it.

I'm also not the biggest fan of how the game's map system works. It's perfectly fine when you actually have the map, but you have to purchase the map for an area before you can see it (even though it fills in retroactively after you get it). This is a nightmare for completionists, since oftentimes you won't know you missed an area until after you've completed it and gotten its map, and it makes me feel as blind as a bat going through a new area. Of course, you'll still never permanently miss anything and sometimes new unlocks make traversing the area more fulfilling anyways, but it makes initial run-throughs feel weird, especially since you can't use the aforementioned map markers in a map-less area to mark any interesting spots you come across.

I also have a very small gripe that the game's FPS is capped at 60; it isn't incredibly important in a game like this, but also it'd look so much nicer at a higher refresh rate as well!

If you don't mind getting lost in the game's world, though, and aren't a graphics snob like me, these negatives basically don't exist (apart from maybe some wasted time here and there), so if the positives sound...positive to you, pick the game up! The demo is incredibly generous, and you'll 100% know whether you like the game or not from it. Plus, your save transfers over from the demo with no issues, so there's no reason not to pick up the demo first.

This game was a one-person passion project over 5 years (at least based on what the menu says), so they definitely deserve a reward for crafting such a wonderful game! I'll be going into game development myself too soon, and I can only hope to do as well as this person did with their game.

Don't let the lack of animations and pretty simple art turn you away; this game is a total gem. I'm surprised the idea wasn't elaborated on sooner: singleplayer autobattlers, and roguelike autobattlers at that!

The gameplay is simple, with lots of depth: You grab a band of heroes and send them on a quest to clear the corruption threatening the world more or less. These heroes have a passive and an active ability, as well as a set of base stats. As you go through normal enemy encounters, events, elite battles, and shops, you'll find items that you can equip to your heroes to add stats/effects to them (that can also be upgraded at shops), as well as orbs that can be used to enhance one of their abilities.

The entirety of the skill in this game comes down to decision making, knowing how to make the best of what you've got. The only even remotely mechanical skill in this game is using potions during a battle, and that's literally the only impact you can directly have during battles. Everything else is set up beforehand with the aforementioned items and repositioning heroes to draw aggro/attack certain targets/inflict certain effects in certain places/etc. And that's really refreshing, as this makes it a great game to play while doing something else, as well as a great game to sit down and do *nothing else* and stare intensely at, finding out who's pulling their weight and why, or what needs to change for future fights.

And on top of the game itself being incredible, it was made by a single dude (with small amounts of art help from others according to the credits), who saw the opening in the genre and sat down to work 4000+ hours on making every piece of it happen. Dale deserves way more credit for that and his post-launch support, and that's also why I can forgive the graphics being less than snazzy in terms of animations; that's a lot of work that I don't think actually adds that much to the gameplay, and the art itself still looks nice to me. When you're a single developer, knowing how to prioritize where you put your work is key, or else you'll never release a game in time for it to be remotely relevant.

So yeah, this game is a crazy good roguelike, and will be a breath of fresh air for anyone who tries it out. Give it a chance, and you absolutely won't be disappointed. You might die a lot though, it's not an easy game.

TL;DR: If you like the original, then you'll like this one for sure. And if you don't like it now, there's a very good chance you'll like it in a few days/weeks.

Battles are revamped and streamlined (but still play out in the same way as the original in terms of what you're doing), the realm-portion of the game has had its management elements polished and expanded upon, and the graphics of course have gotten an overhaul.

Most interestingly to me is the expansion of leaders; not only are they how you choose your starting position/skills, but your leader is also an actual unit you can summon on the battlefield. Whenever you level up, you get to increase their stats in addition to their skills.

The game had a bit of a rocky start due to bugs/gameplay issues, but the dev has been hard at work cranking out bug fixes and changes; many of the negatives listed in negative reviews you see have actually been completely ironed out (barring some more expansive requests like multiplayer)! The dev has really taken the feedback to heart.

All that's left after all of the ironing out of bugs/issues is a fun strategy game with a hint of nostalgia. And let me say this again: if you enjoyed the original in any capacity, this is an objective better version of the game, so try it out!

This game reminds me a lot of if Reigns were a dungeon crawler...but that being said, this game is a unique one, so no comparison is going to be completely accurate.

Essentially, I'd call this game a fast-paced roguelike dungeon-crawler with some card game elements. The "card" elements take the form of the dungeon; each dungeon level is made up of several cards, with some being hostile, some being friendly, and some being neutral. You have two cards in front of you at any given time and can rotate through the "deck" or interact with the cards. Sometimes interactions will be forced when you try to rotate through the deck (usually monsters attacking you if you fail a stealth check).

So the goal is to make it to the exit of each floor while killing as much as you can for souls, the game's currency (without losing out on too much health; health stays between floors after all), as well as picking up treasure along the way.

My only complaint is that RNG can play a bit too heavy of a role on the early levels, but if you get out of the first few levels without sacrificing too much loot, the rest of the game will primarily depend on your decisions. As it turns out, early game RNG was addressed in the latest update and I can safely say skill is the predominant factor in success now! Like any game with roguelike elements, RNG will definitely work with/against you, but a single instance (or even a few instances) of RNG shouldn't be a run ender, or else the run was liable to fail anyways.

But either way, a simple description of the game is going to be a bit confusing and doesn't do it justice; try the demo! The demo should be enough for you to tell if you're going to like the game or not. Notably, the main game is a more updated version with unlockables and also doesn't cut you off like the demo does; the demo cuts you off roughly around 1/3 of the way into a run, and runs get more interesting the later they go...

And a quick tip since I struggled with this; run away or pass by exploders if you can! They deal pathetic melee damage so failing a stealth check basically doesn't matter, and the ones that chase you and try to self destruct won't follow you on the explosion turn, so you can flee to safety.

This game is honestly a *gem*. It's easy to tell how much Matt cares about his games by the sheer effort put into each and every one of them, and they're only getting better and better as time goes on.

Even upon release, Epic Battle Fantasy *3* was one of my favorite JRPGs for a number of reasons; the complexity of the gameplay, the enjoyable story/characters, the world design, etc. EBF4 improved on this formula in a number of ways, introducing another character (and therefore swappable party members) as well as generally improving the gameplay loop.

EBF5? Blows them out of the water IMO. The gameplay is *crazy good* by JRPG standards and the customization is insane. While each character has a bias towards one playstyle or another, there are plenty of ways to influence what skills they learn, what skills they have, and what equipment they're using (and equipment is crazy impactful in these games, not just simple stat boosts). And surprisingly enough, it's pretty hard to "cheese" the game; with all of the customization you have, you'd think you can break the game, and you *can't*. Sure, some combos are more powerful than others, but even the "best" gear and skill layouts will require some thought to operate them without dying to the game's more powerful enemies. But the joy here is that the "best" gear/skills is impossible to objectively figure out. Oftentimes you might be slightly sacrificing one character's power for a significant boost in another's, or focusing entirely on one attribute in some cases and swapping in others. There is no "best" setup because the enemies mandate careful choices if you want to play optimally. This sounds super tedious, but isn't actually necessary unless you're playing on Epic mode with some of the challenges enabled. And either way, careful thinking that's *worth* doing isn't incredibly common in this type of game unfortunately; oftentimes a bit of grinding can easily overcome any hurdle that thinking would.

But besides the gameplay, even the rest of the game is fantastic IMO. When the biggest problem I have with the game is its engine (Flash, which *is* a problem due to its performance, not its functionality), you know you've got something worthwhile. I'd describe the out-of-combat systems as a parody RPG of sorts; lots of 4th wall breaking, lots of tropes (that are called out), strangely arbitrary location design, etc. This parody aspect doesn't detract from making the world fun and interesting to explore though; sure, most things are trope-y, but they aren't designed in such a way that they're *annoyingly* trope-y, and there are plenty of ways to accelerate the less exciting aspects of the game if you know what you're doing. Also, on top of the parody roots, the game *does* have an actually interesting story to boot; a fairly typical or overly crazy one, but one you totally get into towards the end (or at least I did).

And the developer. Don't even get me started on him (in a good way). This dev as previously mentioned puts *SO MUCH LOVE* into his games that's it's crazy; the art, the character design, the gameplay mechanics, the world design, the story, the music (oh god the music is wonderful), etc. Everything gets refined with each installment, and if that's not enough, patches (and occasionally *huge* ones like 2.0) come out to fix problems with the game or add extra content to make a great game even better. If you have a problem, just let him know and he'll talk about it! He's a genuinely good guy and a great dev, so don't be afraid to speak up. He's even helping someone's mod project out by doing some of the art, and no one is paying him for this.

So yeah, this (and the other EBF games) are incredible, and deserve your money. And even if you don't have it, Good Guy Matt still uploads them to the flash game sites they originated from, albeit slightly stripped down in terms of side content (hey, you have to have a reason to pay for a game, and devs need money right?). But the entire base game and its mechanics are intact, so if you're not sure, go check the game out on one of those sites first!

Yes, there's a 135 MB version of a 400 MB flash game (mostly) freely available online. DAS A BIG BOI

This is a game that is very heavily inspired by the mobile game "Dungeon Raid" (my personal favorite of all time tbh, rip 32-bit support), so if you know what I'm talking about you already know if you'll like the game or not.

For complete newcomers (aka most of you), the game has a simple premise: match tiles and collect loot/do damage. It isn't the Bejeweled type of matching however; you draw a line between similar types of tiles and collect every tile the line goes through. You can continue the line in any direction as long as there's another tile that can be matched with it. It's not a very "puzzle-y" type of match 3, but a strangely compelling type. In terms of what your brain has to do, you can't completely zone out, but you can play effectively while paying attention to a movie or something on the side. Of course, you can focus entirely on the game as well, and that can lead to clever plays that make/break the run.

The game has a roguelike structure, where you level up throughout a short run, and get permanent unlocks that show up in other runs. I personally think the acquisition of Tentacles (the main currency for unlocking new things) is on the slow side, but the unlockables aren't necessary to have a successful run so I don't mind it as much. My biggest gripe has to do with the unlockables that are gained through treasure chests, as they're random and sometimes you won't get what you need until much later on. As an example, the last two classes were locked for me due to requiring you to get certain items unlocked from the chests, but those two classes were the last things I unlocked due to the random order. Again, you don't really need the unlockables, and arguably the starting gear is the strongest apart from one or two pieces, but variety really helps in a game like this.

As for cons, this game has very similar cons to its source inspiration. Truly "insane" runs require specific setups, and you won't get anywhere near them if you try to diverge due to some glaring (at least from what I can tell) balance issues. Notably, the active skill Treasure Hunter and passives that accelerate gold/armor/exp gain are the main culprits. Regardless of what build you try to go for, you *need* to accelerate the speed at which you level up you and your gear if you want to have any chance of keeping up with the enemies (especially if you go for hard mode at every option). And Treasure Hunter is almost a necessity as you can easily double or triple your gold gain throughout a run, and gold can be used to get all 3 of the juicy passives. To make matters worse, some of the permanent unlockables *also* boost gold gain, meaning that gold is the de facto resource to funnel as much as possible. Also, apart from some things being OP, some things are very UP as well. For one, many active skills simply pale in comparison to alternatives; usually the skills that do direct damage and skills that are overly situational. For upgrades, some are simply worse than others, either because of weak scaling or simply being inferior; sneak attack vs. base damage is a good example of this, as both are almost always offered at the same values and sneak attack only helps you for one turn vs. base damage's continuous value. You can argue that you need "weak" options to dilute the item/skill pool, but I'd rather buff the enemy's overall strength and make every option viable. Some of the enemies are clearly stronger than others as well, but I assume that this is intentional to an extent; the only suggestion I have on this point is making enemies that have stat-related abilities scale more effectively by making the abilities affect stats as a percent instead of a static +1, as when you end up fighting enemies that have double/triple digit stats, they basically have no ability.

That being said, balance issues aside, the gameplay loop is *great*. Just like the game that inspired this, it's a game you can sit down and play for hours just because it's relatively simple but has room for creativity, and the constant upgrading/fighting/looting/matching feels great. Additionally, the presentation makes the game feel better to play too, as everything you do has a nice visual/audio effect associated with it that breaks up the otherwise bland (in a good way) screen. You can just get into a state of flow with how clean everything looks and feels. Also, the Steam version of this game has cross-save support with the mobile version, so you can take this game on the go where its casual but deep nature truly shines. Games tend to be fairly short (maybe 5-30 minutes or so?) although they can go on for a long time if you have an insane run (my longest is about 3 hours long!), but regardless, the game has a save and quit option so you're never going to lose a run because of time constraints.

TL;DR look into the free (with ads) mobile version of this game and/or Dungeon Raid to get an idea of how the game works, and if you can get past a relatively slow progression system and the preview you got seemed to appeal to you, you'll enjoy the (great) gameplay loop that's very easy to learn and has a decently high skill ceiling, albeit a few balance issues that I'm sure will be ironed out.