Recent reviews by Pyrithe

Rimworld is one of those games that you'll either love it or hate to love it. If you are playing to "win" right off the bat, then expect a rough time of it. Unlike most games, this has the most unique series of systems that work both for and against you depending on how well you play. Often times, you'll find yourself frustrated, other times you'll be miraculously saved by a sudden stroke of good luck. Due to the nature of a lot of things, it's easy even for an experienced player to miss something which causes issues. For example, in my current playthrough, I had some of my military off to save a downed person and recruit them. While they were gone, a pack of foxes showed up ready to rip up some colonists. No big deal, but then the caravan got ambushed. Okay, and while dealing with that, an infection on a wounded character drew my attention. Once my medic handled the infection and my caravan defeated the ambush I thought "That was easy." Suddenly, colonists at home begin dropping like flies... I forgot the foxes! So yeah, lots of pretty severe injuries, a couple deaths, but nothing I could do but carry on.

And that's ultimately why you should play this game. Not for "winning" but for the stories. I've often gone through the forums and loved reading the tales people told of how catastrophically (or humorously) things went. From drunk kittens to pyromaniac lovers burning down an entire base together, everyone who plays has their own unique tales to tell and when you play, you'll have your own as well. Like the dreaded "Deerpocalypse" that ruined one of my absolutely best runs. I had two hunters, one during the day and one during the night. Well, the one during the night was still hunting in the morning even though he was supposed to be going to sleep... well, he managed to anger an entire herd of 10+ deer. The entire herd. Every. Single. One. He did not survive. Meanwhile, my main hunter was down with plague so I had my other colonists form up to defend the base. The deer smashed through the doors, destroyed our turrets, and begin shredding my colonists one by one before running through the base to ensure the destruction of all. Many bled out, and with the medic down, plague took my hunter... Learned a valuable lesson that day... be VERY careful what you hunt, when, and how.

As you play, you'll find your own little tricks and quirks, your own preferences, and eventually you'll get to modding the game. I own over 400 games on Steam alone, and I can honestly say that Rimworld's modding community is on-par with that of Skyrim. If something frustrates you (like "ruined fertilized eggs"), chances are there's a mod that fixes it. If you want to add extra challenge, get something to add more micromanagement like Dubs Hygiene mod, or want to find a new experience then grab an overhaul mod and turn Rimworld into Borderlands.

And best of all, no matter your playstyle, there's really no "wrong" way to play. Often, I try to build an actual civilization, city, or community and just see how long I can survive. I've never once built a ship, never even tried. But why leave when I can stay and some day, build the greatest city in the Rimworlds. Or die trying. Oh, and one more thing. I've still yet to get either DLC (want to, no money though) so all my experiences are from the base game and mods. It's easily my most played game with 1799 hours of playing at the time of writing this review. But if the base game alone can hold my attention for that long, the DLC probably add so much more that I'm missing. This game is an absolute must, whether you just want a chill game to build in or a difficult RTS that pushes you, it's got it all.

TL;DR: The game is a scam, TFP want your money, not your input.

I've been a player of this game since before it came to Steam. This game has been in Alpha for 8 long years and is currently in A19.5, talking about their A20 update. I've supported lots of Alpha's over the years, but I gotta say that 7DtD is absolutely NOT worth your time, and certainly NOT your money.

Firstly, this game has changed a lot in the past years, and not in a good way. What once was simply a zombie survival sandbox game is now trying to be a little of everything. But the worst isn't the game itself, but the devs TFP and their drones on Steam like SylenThunder. In a single thread, I watched SylenThunder berate a PvP player for being in "the minority" of players, ignore legitimate criticisms such as my own in regards to their current perk system (more on that later) only to later respond to another player with the same issues with a fix: play the game until max level of 300. Mind you, I've been playing in their creative mode for about 2-3 hours a day for 2 weeks now with horde night every night, and I'm only about level 40. Trust me, the grind is BRUTAL in this game, he likely just wants her to pass the "refund" threshold.

So the issue with the perk system? It's not properly implemented. They tried to make some sort of stat-tie-in balance with it, like Strength dictates shotguns, mining, and cooking. Defense dictates farming, Assault Rifles, and hunting. Perception is looting buildings and sniper rifles. When you actually play these trees out, you've got buff zombie head crushers wasting time cooking blueberry pies and snipers trying to use a rifle indoors! And these aren't isolated examples, the ENTIRE perk system is full of this. Players have complained about this for years, since the system first got introduced in A16. But considering this is the same company who makes a survival game but removed the hunger and thirst meters (just the meters, NOT THE ACTUAL HUNGER AND THIRST) in A13 and it took them until A19 to FINALLY REALIZE "Maybe having hunger and thirst meters so people know their characters are hungry and thirsty is a good idea?"... And again, this is the level of "quality" you can expect from 7DtD and TFP's ability to listen to their actual players.

Their lack of smart moves doesn't just show in the game either, just ask the countless people they scammed with their console ports (because if it wasn't a scam, I can't believe anyone would KNOWINGLY make this error...) They gave their console rights to a company that was popular and well known... for visual novels. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed games like Tales of the Borderlands and Minecraft Story Mode... but would I trust a company known for Visual Novels to handle a Sandbox Survival game? Never, and no mediocre business mind would even consider that option. That's not even considering the fact that the game is in Alpha and changes drastically on a regular basis. At this point, the disc games have nothing even remotely the same as the current PC version, and they claim they can't do anything to fix it now due to Sony and Microsoft... so what do they want to do? Re-release the games on the current consoles, which again will quickly become obsolete and the patches will become the entire game itself, leading to them being unable to update them again.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. You may notice I mentioned that I've owned this game for 8 years... I've got a criminally low amount of hours on record for a game that I've owned almost as long as my Steam account, but that comes down to the game failing me with every update. Zombie Survival Sandbox game... it sounds so great, but every update only degrades the game further and further. I play long enough to get a base going, get bored, go creative and play with the new stuff because the grind has always been unbearable. The perk system compounds that 10x over and in A20 we get to look forward to another downgrade... currently, we have 3 full sets of heavy armor, 3 full sets of light armor, and tons of clothing variety from suits to goth outfits, with a variety of ways to mix and match and dyes to change the colors for loads of unique customizations! A20 will be removing all of that and giving us outfits with abilities which fit the perk system's wonkiness to a t. Basically, I hope you snipers like looking like farmers while those of you who want the best deals at the store will be walking around with some crazy looking hazmat suit thing. You gotta choose between looking good or minmaxing, there is no middle ground there anymore.

So this is the end of my review. I hope this review has helped you in making a purchasing decision and honestly, I hope you don't waste your money on this broken, buggy, constantly changing mess of a game and a company so full of bad decisions that I could continue this review well into a 10 page essay. While I covered a lot of the bad stuff I've seen over the past 8 years, keep in mind that this is in no way the end of it. They've done plenty more, but if you really want to see more, go check the state of their forums for yourself. From chicken coops to new weapon types, the players suggest stuff all the time only to get told "no" quite a lot. TFP stopped caring about this community long ago, so don't get scammed into buying this game as you'll watch it further devolve and nothing you say will fix it and you'll be led along until it's too late to get your money back.

I'll be honest, this game barely earns the title of game. Originally, I had heard so much great stuff about this game and had planned on reviewing it for my newly started adult games blog that I created with the intention of showcasing great quality adult games that were overshadowed by bad games. However, after playing into the game, I began to realize this game is not one such hidden gem but fools gold instead.

Firstly, I scrapped my review of this game, so maybe someday I can come back and review this one honestly and say it's a great turn around story of it's time, the "No Man's Sky" of adult games. But for this review, I merely intend to point out a lot of the flaws and my feelings on it that led me to not reviewing it in the first place.

To start off with, there was only two aspects I felt this game did right and that's the creature variety and capture mechanics. They are fun and unique, but the rest of the game drags them down drastically. So now for the bad...

-First off, the sliders. You have them in character creation, shops, and even as a speed increase/decrease in the sex scenes, but they are extremely clunky and cannot be fine-tuned, which was especially annoying in the shops.
-Next, you have barely any tutorial, story, or interesting characters. I honestly think Fern was the best written character, which is sad considering all she wants is your "fluids". I get that in your "lore" that nephelym's are just horny 24/7 creatures, but that's no excuse for uninspired characters.
-The tutorial itself explains nothing, I had to experiment and learn about stuff like the Lust gauge, the billboard, and most everything else.
-The money feels almost pointless. The only think you can buy are fluids you can also get for free and housing for creatures which is a one time purchase. Oh, and breeding luck, I think?
-There doesn't seem to be any real purpose to the breeding aside from just wanting to check off the box for "♥♥♥♥ Catgirl" and even then, the sex scenes are boring. They do one animation for the "sex", another for the "finish" and you're done.

If you want your game to simply be a "quicky in the bathroom" kind of game, then it's perfect, but you can just watch a video for the same thrilling "gameplay". But if you're intending this game to become something great, those are your main issues right now. As of the time of writing this review, I cannot recommend it in version 0.751.5. But it has potential to be great, so I'll keep an eye on it and maybe someday, I will change this review but also be happy to review it on my blog as well. Until then, best of luck to the dev working on this game and I hope you find success with it.

Original review posted Mar 17, 2019:
Normally, I tend to avoid Visual Novel style games mainly because I feel the stories feel shallow and the characters are simply a stereotype, often leading to relationships feeling forced, lines in places they don't belong, and characters being extremely predictable. After watching a few episodes of this on ProJared's youtube channel, I immediately got sucked in and didn't want to wait on another episode. I bought the game and played it for a little over 10 hours at the time of this review. The story was extremely rich, beautiful, and the characters were very well written out and designed. My usual style with any "dating sim", I'd be more inclined to date the girl I enjoy the most and be done with it. However, by the end of this one, I fell in love with all of the characters. ALL OF THEM. I intend to go through and play it multiple times to get all the endings and learn more about those I didn't pursue, make choices outside of my comfort zone, and see where it all leads. If you are on the fence about buying this, consider this: I avoid this genre like the plague usually, and yet this one truly stood out as an exception to the rule and taught me to love again, to have hope again. I hope a lot more people take the time to experience this masterpiece of a game and I look forward to seeing what the writers and devs have in store for the future.

Edit: 10/20/2023.
In the end, I only managed to get a total of 13 hours into this game. I haven't played it since 2019. But this game, in that short amount of time, it has still stuck with me. I still think about it, I still wanted to play it again. I still recommend it to EVERYONE I know. This is a game that is absolutely an experience worth getting. And in a time in my life where everything is going wrong, I'm going back in. I remember this game gave me feelings that, at the time, I felt were dead in me. I laughed, I cried, I fought to keep what I loved. And it helped me in ways I couldn't believe. I'll have to start over, but you know what... I'm happy for that. And I hope that after reading my review, you too will decide to have your own experience in a game that is worth every penny and then some. And then maybe, just maybe, it could change your life too. I don't often speak highly of games, let alone dating sims/visual novels... but to this day, none have even come close to the time I spent in Arcade Spirits. So do yourself a favor, pick this game up and enjoy it for yourself.

I'll be honest, I've never played Half Life so I don't care much for whether HL3 is released or not, but considering the facts that Half Life doesn't seem like the only abandoned project at risk here, I may as well stand on their side. I like Left 4 Dead and Portal and I'd like to see them eventually get a 3 as well, but with Valve's sticking all their eggs into the Dota 2 basket, I doubt any of us will see release of more of our favorites from Valve. Also, I don't all that much care for MOBA games to begin with, especially one with a toxic fan base like this one. I know all the fanboys will give me hate because they don't like their precious game being attacked, but sometimes you have to man up and take action. If Valve won't listen to memes making fun of them or general complaints, then the fans need to take action. So pre-warning to all the toxic fanboys, save your breath, because I'm just going to laugh at your petty attempts to insult me or tell me to "♥♥♥".

Also, I've posted about how easy it is to review bomb games because I've seen a lot of my favorites getting review bombed too, but Valve never listened to the fans or devs about that either. So this is another reason I'm here. Let's see if Valve will do something now that it is their own precious moneymaker getting the down votes.

To sum it up, I'll even use a couple of the most common non-review review bomb phrases I have seen.
0/10 will not play again.
This game gave me cancer.

Again, not a fan of doing this, but sometimes you have to take a stand for something you believe. I see this mostly as a demonstration, people rallying because they are tired of the developer becoming lazy. I'm sure I'm not the only one, but once this is all done and over with, I plan to remove this review. I don't hate Dota 2 particularly, so I have no other reason to keep this review here. This is just as part of the protest to get Valve off their lazy butts and make some games again like the good old days. Or at least teach them that the #3 exists.

Edit on 9/20/17: Seriously Valve? A graph? That's your "solution"? That literally fixes nothing, you've not listened to your fans on both sides of the equation. Those still fighting for sequels to your old IP's are still left without sequels or news of sequels and your Dota 2 fans are still trying to save your skins by going to war with your old IP's fans trying to review bomb the hell out of each other.

As for helping prevent review bombings, you still get the bombings, but now you just advertise the point even more. People who see a bombing in the graph can check it out and find out why and that actually hurts your point even more. A person who has never played a game can just as easily see a cause they feel is worth aiding and joining in on the review bombing.

Furthermore, this doesn't help curb the constant "Game gave me cancer 0/10" type reviews because people who can't actually talk about their reasons shouldn't be allowed to leave a review. This is further perpetuated by companies offering bonuses to reviewers. I've seen this in a lot of games such as MMO's, for example, offering a unique, free pet if you review the game. To those who would leave a positive review, this is a fine reward since it's something they can use, but to those who don't want to play the game, it's pointless. They can leave the review, but if you hated the game enough to leave a negative review, explain how a bonus in-game item matches in terms of compensation for the review? It's like giving out a free bike to those who like and hate bikes just to get a testimonial. Obviously, you're going to draw in the people wanting the free bike while those who don't like bikes will just pass up the offer altogether. The review system itself is a horribly flawed program and needs either a serious overhaul or to just be eliminated completely.

So first thing I'm going to do here is cover the negatives of the game, firstly that there are some issues regarding stairs which likely won't be fixed. Seems more noticeable if you play the Sylph race (which happens to be my race, yay -.-) Aside from that, the combat seems simple, the emotes are a bit lacking, if the game crashes, any ui or options you changed revert (you can use the /saveui command to prevent that and force save your keybindings and such), the Steam version seems to crash a lot and the linking page issue, and there's a good chance you'll be starring in tentacle porn when you meet Supergrass.

Now that those are out of the way, the game is very charming, the graphics are old, but stylishly so, the class system is unique while a few jobs should probably be renamed in my opinion (Wizards should be Priests, Doctors should be Vampires >.>), the community is great, sure we get a few nuts here and there, but for the most part, everyone is very helpful and if they can aid you, likely will. There is a relationship system that adds various abilities which can be triggered if certain conditions are met, the item shop is mostly items you can live without, aesthetic items, and pets, but there are plenty of people who often sell some cash shop items through their own stalls. It's a huge game with lots to do, it's not all about fighting monsters. People who like business and making money can utilize the Commoner and Merchant classes as well as alchemy to create items to sell, people who like playing games can often join events that happen frequently throughout the day, if you enjoy hunting for treasure, you can get treasure maps and find chests with tons of booty (buy yourself a pirate costume and be a Blade Master to complete the pirate theme, arr!), if you prefer just hanging out, you can just chill in town and talk with people through Broadcast like a giant chatroom, if you like hunting big monsters, there's plenty of those lying around. If you like being strategic or designing unique class sets, you can do that as well, mix and match any class with other class skills until you find that perfect combination you like. If you enjoy cosplaying, plenty of characters can be designed through cash shop costumes, in-game armors, and even mixing classes together to complete your characters skills.

So you should certainly try this game if you want something more relaxed and with a good community. What I mentioned are in-game things, but some guilds add to the list doing various things and also giving you a group of instant friends who share a similar interest as you. Some prefer doing stuff like hunting big monsters and being the best (like Prestige) others are just more friendly and prefer hanging out (like Muffins).

And insert shameless plug here: I'm working on my own guild as well called the Crimson Clerics, to pick up where Rifa'iya (http://rifaiya.tripod.com/index.html) left off many years ago. It's a large-scale operation guild focused on helping the populace with 5 sections of assistance: Military to hunt down newbie killers like Leech Lich and Supergrass, Teachers to find newbies in town and help them out, teaching them how to play the game, Item Management which will focus on getting items, finding/creating equipments to help people, Guild Management which will put efforts into helping level and expand the guild (as well as recruitment), and Events which will focus on setting up in-guild and out-of-guild events, anything from setting up a play to entertain people to running newbie help events where we sell cheap newbie equipment and help people with finding a career they can be proud of.

I love TCG's, I've played most of the big names like Pokemon, Magic the Gathering, Yugioh, Duel Masters, and some lesser ones. This one I would have to say is probably on equal grounds with them as far as cards, rules, and uniqueness goes.

For starters, it's a TCG, so yes, it is in a way pay to win, but so is every other TCG, if you don't want to buy booster packs, I'd say avoid TCG's altogether. You can get IP and free packs of cards every level, so there is plenty of opportunity to get more cards without spending money. When starting out, you also get a chance to obtain all 5 starter decks as well, which gives you quite a lot of cards to work with. My main deck was built primarily from the Flame Dawn and Verore starter decks and over time has been augmented with a few cards I got from packs. But the majority of cards in it are still from the starter decks.

Back to the "pay to win" the pricing to buy packs is pretty fair, compared to many TCG's out there, you get 15 cards a pack for about $5, most TCG's range from 9-15, 15 being the highest I've seen, but only once. On top of getting LP to buy the decks with though, you also get IP, so it also acts like a Buy 2, get 1 free deal. The rarity of cards can also be combatted with knowledge, they allow you to buy a Collection booster, but for the same price you can get specific set boosters which greatly increases your chances if you are looking for a specific card and know what set it's from.

Now about the game itself, it's unique in that it uses the fact it's computer run to manage the rules, so they can use that in their advantage, doing stuff like simultaneous turns where not only do you have to decide what you are doing on your turn, but trying to figure out your opponents next move. It takes some time to get used to, but once you do it's pretty fun. There are 3 combat zones and certain spells and effects can only target specific areas. You have the Assault zone and Defense zone on opposite sides of each other, trying to attack your foe and defend yourself at the same time and the Support zone for cards you want to keep safe to use their abilities. You also have 3 Commanders which are just cards you want available whenever you want, but they are present from the beginning and can often use their skills from the Command zone, making strategies easier to work into a deck with less reliance on luck. There are plenty of cards that can disable or destroy your commanders though, so having a strong deck strategy is also just as important.

As for the few problems I have, there is a lack in single player activities, perhaps having a few more AI opponents, one that you can give a deck to so you can test your own decks against each other would be nice. The biggest issue I have is the cards hold no actual value and in some cases you can only use 3 in a deck but you get way more than that. If there was a shop or "sell card" button of some sort that allowed you to sell cards. You could even have add an unlocking feature as a cash shop item where you unlock all the cards you have for trading and selling for IP, and if the IP is ranked by rarity, perhaps more common cards only worth maybe 10 IP each, it could help get new packs, but might not be worth levelling a whole new account just for another 15 cards or something.

Aside from those few issues which are rather minor gripes if I do say so myself, the game is very well done and thought out, I've heard of a few bugs but have yet to experience any of them myself. If you want a TRUE virtual TCG, this game is definitely worth a look.

After being lured in by the letters TCG, I enjoyed it for a while, but there are too many glaring faults with it that I feel the game is too far beyond being fixable.

First, I'll talk about the TCG part of what is wrong with this game. For those who do not know, TCG stands for Trading Card Game. The cards are untradable and the game part is pick and pray. There is no true strategy in the game, it's mostly choose six cards and hope for the best. The campaign feels more like a puzzle game, trying to figure out the best way to win, then 2 more objectives where you have to win under certain conditions, most of them being "shoot yourself in the foot" types like "This monster powers up when damaged, use 3 weak AoE characters to power him up, then survive for 40 seconds before you win." Sounds easy, right? But you have NO control in these battles, which is another issue. If you could control your own team, you could hold back and then once 40 seconds was up, unleash all hell. But as I said before, it's Pick and Pray. You choose your team, then you watch as they fail monstrously. In a normal match of trying to win, this sort of works... sort of... but in trying to devise a team build which can do some monumental task against all odds, you need some VERY specific cards. So most of the objectives are undoable until you get 1-3 of these very specific cards to do it with.

The next issue I want to cover in depth is this pick and pray gameplay. In the campaign, you can see your opponents deck and pick a team accordingly, but multiplayer you don't have such a luxury. You have to design your team and then hope your opponent doesn't have some deck breaking card. For example, you go with a team who focuses on magic damage, but then your opponent has cards that disable and/or destroy spell cards. GG, you lose and not only do you see that instantly, but you have to watch and wait as you are crushed inevitably. Any TCG I've played, there is a small amount of luck to it, but usually you can come up with more than one combination of cards or tactics, so even if your ace in the hole is destroyed, you can usually have some back up plan. No such luck with this one, it's all or nothing because 2 strategies with 3 cards each just weakens your "deck" that much more instead of adding to it's diversity. The real "strategy" of this game isn't trying to figure out a good tactic, it's how do you defeat said tactic. Or just spend money to get 5 star cards which are usually pretty powerful.

Speaking of power, there is also a card "levelling" system, but for the cost of the levels and the bonuses they get, it seems pretty pointless unless you actually go from level 1 to level 50. In most cases, a stat only goes up one point or so, which is a pretty small drop in the ocean. In the long run, it's actually rather pointless as I saw no discernable difference in my battles with the few cards I upgraded. The only point an upgrade had a statistical advantage was in a battle where I needed one card to tank an enemy with Threat targeting, so I gave one level to the tank card so it was one point stronger than the other. That was the ONLY advantage I saw with levelling in the 20 hours I've played.

Now that my little rant about the problems with the game are out, I will share what I did enjoy from the game. Mostly the fact that every card had a purpose. Unlike most of the major TCG's who just make "filler" cards such as Uraby from Yugioh, every card in this game had some use to it and could be properly implemented into a deck. And there are some good combinations and strategies you can go with, but the gameplay itself is so limiting that it makes them all pretty pointless.

I feel this game COULD be good if a few features were implemented, changed, or removed, such as Trading, more player control over battles (like after the CD completes, then you choose when to trigger the card), actual decks where you draw and play cards from (or a hand where you can hold 6 other cards, then withdraw a triggerable card and summon a new card which then has to charge it's CD as the "cost"), either better card levelling bonuses or scrap the levelling system completely (perhaps just do a branching skill tree for some cards, some that boost a stat or add an alternative ability at the cost of some strength?), making ALL RARITY CARDS available to players and find some other cash shop bonuses that would be worth going for, like new avatar images, or reskinned cards with a different Limited Edition image. If people enjoy the game enough, they'll willingly spend money on trivial stuff like that. Many games already do this, Loadout, Awesomenauts, Dream of Mirror Online, etc.

Also, couldn't hurt to add some bonus to the levels that makes it feel like you are accomplishing something with every level, add stats in for the player themselves that could affect things such as getting magnified bonuses (and penalties) for putting points into a faction loyalty for those who like a specific faction, or a luck stat that increases your rewards from farming, etc. Then reskill books as a cash shop item, plus it would make the XP gains from VIP more worth spending money for.

I also won't get into too much detail about the drama I saw with the dev in the forums, but your attitude also needs a change. You need to be the professional, even if others aren't. I appreciated the fact that you palled around and were there to help many players with their problems, but you gotta change your attitude about accepting criticism. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's just straight up hurtful, but you gotta understand that some people out there will hate on your game. Just accept it, either change what they attacked you for or stick to your guns, but don't single out or attack specific people for a bad review or comment, that will only lose you support, not gain it.

In the end, I want to see this game succeed, so I won't really abandon it. If the devs truly want to improve the game, then I hope they will bounce around a few ideas with the community and see what sticks. Some of mine might be good, or they might be bad, I know a lot of them are undoable due to hardware limitations of phones and such, but the game as it stands right now is far from being something PC users would expect to enjoy. Perhaps instead of trying to do just a cross platform phone game, you might even just focus on a new, standalone, virtual TCG project that has everything and specifically cater it to the PC market.