Recent reviews by Irving

I'll keep this simple, the writing of this game can and will rip your heart out. The writing and the music in the Clockwork Kingdom alone justifies the asking price, and the soundtrack and writing quality are a constant positive. The combat isn't anything crazy, your typical ARPG block/parry stuff, but you don't necessarily need to deal with that.

I'll be blunt here, if you love: any kind of folk music, claymation, scotland, fairytales, or Englishmen who speak like pokemon; this is your game. It's here, waiting for you.

So. Mechanics, the balance is very tight, music is wonderful. The plot is great with a few twists I've never seen before.

Lovely game, the soundtrack and artstyle is absolutely beautiful, if you like a little bit of surf rock, you'll be at home here. Ditto for medievalists. This is a wonderful artstyle you're not going to see anywhere else, and it all comes together beautifully. I will say, depending on your playthrough, this may take more like 5 hours, and there are some varying scenes depending on your choices, so there is a bit of replayability.

Not gonna lie, I'm a little nervous typing this in at 8 hours of the 4 everybody else seemed to speed through at, but there's no question here this is an absolutely darling game. The spritework is wonderful, it's neat to see scumhead's work when I'm not speeding past it at 100 mph.

The music is great, particularly certain bosses where it fades seamlessly from the environment to the battle track.

The lead couple of Lefsa and Franz, as well as the rest of the party, were an absolute joy to be around for this game's runtime.

I'm a simple guy, I played the first one, but never finished it until this one came out. After Hunt Down the Freeman came out, I was a little worried on how the characters and storytelling would be handled here, and honestly, they did a brilliant job. You could argue they even better than Valve itself in some cases (Their Gnome equivalent is much easier to deal with, you're signposted when you cant take it with you, or major firefights where it'd be at risk.)

Music and animation are on point too.

In short, if you like anything in the Half-Life universe, you owe it to yourself to play this one.

Overall, a wonderfully aesthetic game that comes across as this lovechild of Metro and Deus Ex in presentation, with gameplay by way of the original Fallout series. The soundtrack in particular really helps it come into its own.

In short, when a game makes you want to lose to a CPU so it can go free, that's amazing writing.
The music, being a Supergiant game, is par for the course, even exploring styles I wouldn't expect to hear from Korb and his team.
As for the gameplay, it's complete and well balanced, but the lack of online multiplayer may be a sticking point if you're not into replay value, which this game has from its branching paths.

A. it's a 4X game with a proper system of trade routes
B. it has empires with more distinct mechanics than Civ V
C. the combat's in-depth, but has an automatic option for faster gameplay.

Need I say more?

Fairly fun physics puzzle/action game that shows that the source engine still has some tricks up its sleeve.