Recent reviews by N3xu5

I played the original server from 2009 to 2015. At this point I have cap level 100 content completion on one of the private servers as a Holy Knight. I spent over $100 on one of the private servers happily, and maybe $30 on AeriaGames' server begrudgingly. I have plenty of nostalgia and would love to enjoy my time here, and spend on good deals (I suspect they will fix some glaring issues, but won't hold my breath on the good deals considering current prices).

Can't give this a pass. In the current state of the game it will be crippling the core 2 elements of the game in later levels, dungeon repping (late game PVE) and PVP. Not sure what's left to keep an active player base without the most prominent features of the gameplay being enjoyable, but I'm hopeful this is just due to the limitations on content for the release beta. And this is an important point, this is already confirmed as a Beta by X-Legends. It's clear that they want to test the new class, and see how the game runs at 40 content. I'll hold final judgement until 60 content.

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Most Important Points:
Put the content back that makes the game enjoyable. MOs, Guild Boss guild exp, PVP (pretty sure this is already a given that they will), and proper rep quest rewards in general for ALL rep quests including MOs and guild reps. We need merit based activities that can fuel the economy by investing effort and time on the game. Having meaningful things to do is what drives players to want to exist on your game, believe it or not.

Also at least AeriaGames offered increasing purchase incentives (8000GF/$250=32, 64GF/$2=32). You get a whole 32 GF per dollar and some spit bonus points that don't equal even 1:1 points per USD until after $100.

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Exclusively Pay Content Rant Below:

For the talking points and references to "$50 armor sets", the real price is $32 if you learned math. Can we be smart and hate the factual costs of items? Stop with the hyperbole and use logic to target bad practice. It still costs $32, the equivalent of HALF of a AAA game at launch for a set that won't last past level 60 for 90% of classes, 70 for Tanks and Healers.

Third Tier Legacy sets are worth at most $10 for someone that can weigh value against function (slightly more than an $8 average priced cosmetic DLC that takes more effort than saturating a model in MS Paint for reasonably priced games), and yet we actually have people paying $32 for an inferior electronic item than what will be inevitably released with higher content. Same people buying $2 for 3 M-clay, scaled that is $200 for 336 table attempts and some change. If that works out to being logical in someone's mind more power to you, you'll be the inevitable "slow clapper award" that has issues seeing through these practices once I post this. Far be it from me to tell you how to live your life, but I'd like to buy into this release a bit AND feel satisfied with my purchases rather than turn my wallet into in game gold.

I played it on itch.io before release. I was really impressed with the concept and the design, figured it could use some polish and balancing changes to make the game more satisfying to play and replay. Saw the announcement for Steam, and picked it up.

Previously rated it poorly for a few blaring issues with maintained play and balancing, particularly with curses being an unpleasant item management issue and frequent run killer.

Most of my issues were addressed shortly after in an update that I noticed in my feed. Just played it, and I have to say the new game modes, reworked curses, gold no longer taking a slot, among other things make this game stable and playable enough that I can recommend buying the game.

I would still like to see run completion perks. And I think balancing is still a ways off from completing a few of those challenges in any realistic timeframe without extraordinary luck.

It genuinely feels much better to play. I actually have more control of my runs now.

It's closer to the original, uses the original art and stat building mechanics, but has most of the dlc content.

I just straight up love this game. I've stopped playing to wait for it to come out of Early Access, but it lives up to the marketing. It feels AAA as it already is. Needs some more variety with enemies, and some more progression would be welcome, but if I didn't know based on the teasers that more is coming I wouldn't be mad and I'd be playing it now.

* Before going into my general review, I'd highly recommend this as a kid's game. *

I don't see the appeal of this at all. I think I got it in a humble bundle. I mean people seem to have the opinion that it's got good/cute design, but I just think the graphics are cheap with respect to standards 4 years ago and vaguely fox like with cheap animation/models/texturing. I mean if that is enough for you to like something I guess I could recommend it to the people who like how it looks, but that's all the game is to me, just a progression of visual appearances with no real purpose to continue (I enjoy games where superficial upgrading and customization is the primary core feature, like Spore and pretty much every RTS and TBS that exists). Games like Slime Rancher combine progression, gameplay, and cute aesthetics in a way that justifies the price just for the sake of something cute. I'd much sooner recommend that.

* That all said, I read a review that gave a different perspective of their kid loving it, so genuinely as an introductory game for a kid into video games I would highly recommend this. I could easily see this game being a current child's favorite thing, like some of the 90s-2000s games that I played in my early childhood.

I love that I can watch a literal tsunami of creeper/anti-creeper now as opposed to just imagining it. I haven't even scratched the surface, I knew this game would be good.

1 review over 10 hours. Because the play time of this game is so genuinely short that it serves no purpose being a paid game. You do menial tasks while learning how to pat your head and rub your stomach at the same time. Woooo fun, I had a misconception and thought this game would be something akin to VR hilarity where you pick up and throw stuff that goes flying making huge messes and being weird for the slapstick element, but it's not, even being chaotic is slow. Hand Simulator, but not as interesting. If you like hand simulator so much that you want to take it into the dating world then buy this, otherwise nope.

This project clearly has a long way to go to completion, and I don't think they are hiding that as you can see it in the description. I'd recommend this as an investment toward something that looks like it will be promising. Personally I see strong elements of Age of Empires.

Development looks promising, and the small fix updates are a sign of good development to me as a software developer. I'd rather even see that something is taking longer than expected than nothing at all for 10 months.

My only primary qualm with the game (aside from the expected bugs) would be that something needs to be done about the villager production methods. Carrying materials back and forth through AI pathing that can collide with each other doesn't just create a logistics challenge for engaging gameplay. It creates gross looking bottle necked management requirements. As realistic as it is that a person has to carry a sack of grain back to the bakery, etc, unless you have the AI prioritize methods for mitigating collisions it causes issues. Castle Story is a perfect example of this, FPS loss from clunky AI logic loops that freezes as the game progresses, unit clogging, stutters, crashing, arduous workarounds for the user that limit creative/efficiency freedom of building and unit placement, constant AI bugfixes that may or may not address the issue. Roads exist, one fix could be a pathing that utilizes roads as lanes that require passage in one direction on each side for non-military units, or remove collisions so that friendly non-military units pass through other friendly units. I'm unaware of the plans for the game, but this one thing if not fixed would change my recommendation pretty fast. If realism isn't a concern I would simply make gathering exactly like they do in the tried and true triple A titles, my bet is that a lot of these games don't include physical back and forth exchange for gathering with collision for the sake of making the game cleaner for the user experience.

Edit: For context I'll just keep this review and add this. Apparently they are already working on the first two issues that I have with the game, so yeah. I still recommend it either way, but once the changes are in I'd say it will be much more polished.

Love the genre, I'd long given up the idea that I'd ever play a game like Advance Wars ever again unless I dug up an emulator or old game cartridge. I do wish there was a game made and polished by the original production team of the Advance Wars series, but I appreciate the invested interest of a separate group creating this game. That said, I hope that the creators here actually persist in maintaining changes/improvements to this game as I don't view this as end product worthy (as an avid strategy gamer and software developer). There is a lot of artistic creativity (maybe more invested in that aspect than the rest) and while the mechanics are enjoyable enough to play the game, there are some small and large things that make it a game that I would rather pick up and play every now and again rather than put sleepless nights and hundreds of hours into like the games that make up its game style origins.

As a blanket statement I'll just say I like the game for almost everything that isn't in my list of critiques, and I'm still recommending the game.

- Pixelated images of unit features do not make for a good explanation of countered/effective units, because it doesn't lend itself to new players or people who pick up the game after stopping for awhile. It's not hard to learn after playing a few hours with all units (and races), but it's semi-ambiguous until that point (and it uses other races while all of your units look completely different). When I look at the countered units of any unit type I instinctively try to see a hover-over tooltip that just lets me know what the myriad of units are individually as I move across them. If the platform that the game is built on doesn't lend itself to adding tooltips add a clickable option or something, objectively as a software developer this particular one annoys me as a basic user interface problem.

- Holding a button to skip animations instead of instant skipping. I don't know if I should make an analysis of someone's artistic ego for not allowing instant skipping or if it's just an unfortunate choice that they put in that I hate. In certain animations it almost defeats the purpose of skipping to wait halfway through it to skip. Just add an option to make it instant skip while maintaining the ability to watch all animations if desired. Sometimes I want to see animations. I want that choice, but not at the cost of wasting time. Perfect example I love watching animations when I finish off an enemy unit, but I hate watching 10s of combat instances when I'm in the beginning stages of units clashing. There are already options for only your turn, never, commanders, always. All it would take is Always (Instant). Depending on how it's built an even easier option would be to just add an event listener for a keybind that overrides the wait time functionality, then the choice is always there to make the key something that you won't accidentally press when you don't want to, but you can still instant skip if you choose to.

- The AI. I'd seen a couple of reviews mentioning it being terrible before playing. I don't agree that it's terrible, but it does lose a lot of points for the lack of efficiency. Advance Wars AI would voraciously eat cities on the map at every location within its immediate vicinity and yours if you lost ground. Wargroove's AI I've noticed tends to grab what it can while it prioritizes meeting your units in combat. It will close distance with your units even if there are neutral buildings within 8-10 tiles from their HQ. Even if your units are 15+ tiles across the map, with gates that you have to break open, in order to get to a single tile land bridge across the water to reach you. Needless to say in the referenced co-op game that I saw this behavior we ultimately won due to an overwhelming cash flow advantage. I was taking neutral buildings on their side of the water 30 some turns into the game that they simply ignored the whole time to come fight us. It just seemed off to me that they didn't expand to all of their immediate surroundings to maximize profit and unit variety considering one of the buildings was air unit production. Attack priorities seem fine to me, which were some of the only complaints that I read about the AI when I was reading. I haven't seen them utilize a single carrier unit though, nor build one.

I love the workshop content concept. I've already downloaded maps, and enjoy it. That's easily one of my favorite aspects of this. I would recommend this game as much as I've complained for the game style and workshop content alone. I can only hope that these issues get handled whether a developer sees this or not.

I have been waiting for a game that could carry the torch of the Myst series from its root games and aesthetics. I loved this entire game. I really hope this group isn't done with this title or genre. This was a masterpiece for this type of game. I may have only got 12 hours unless I achievement hunt another run, but I am happy with every dollar and hour spent.