Recent reviews by Amatsu

Its good but has some bugs or just weird gameplay problems I guess.

Like Enemy that does ground slam on permadeath mode.

I jump to avoid slam, as I have everytime before, While in air the ground slam hits, and decides to double my height mid-air and kill me in one hit. Wonderful. Crashing on exiting areas also quite annoying. But overall decent game.

Its a shame, this had such potential, I was smitten with it, even though I had other obligations with games, take like reverse 1999 for example. I played this PRIOR to trying reverse 1999 and reverse 1999 gets it. This game doesn't.

The #1 redflag everyone said right off rip was "lack of F2P, expecting everyone to spend money, and alot of it"
This is the most unideal way to make a gacha game. The trick to a gacha game, which is silly when you realize this as a consumer. Is to make sure people get just enough F2P currency to matter and test their luck, to then trap them into spending money for premium currency. I can do a 10x summon on R99 atleast 2 times a week. The rates are even worse than this game to an extent. R99 also convinced me to spend money pretty easily too, took a note out of Genshin and said "Hey heres this super awesome 1-3 month login bonus that costs either $5 or $10 once. Thats how you sell people.

Tribe Nine felt like it just thought it was going to become a gacha game that appealed to the masses based off its hype of its IP and artistic stylization, when they didnt even put the work in.... Seriously bro how hard is it to give people a keybinding option with a PC game. That's just silly.

If you ever plan on making a gacha game, this is the perfect advice to you. More Events, More Booba (the normies love this) and accessible F2P currency. Your rates can even be dogwater just aslong as you give people a fighting chance to get lucky and get characters they potentially want. If people arent getting that little bit of freedom to try their luck, you're gonna lose the broke players, the whales dont have infinite money hacks either, you need to bait them into buying. So when they summon on w/e they want multiple times and DONT get what they want, thats when the card comes out. It is funny though how they really tried to run rates like Dokkan or hoyoverse games at the start with how stingy their business model was. Definitely wasn't the way to win community favor.

Balancing will always be an issue in this game until the dev's realize how much stat weights should be affected and how much each class needs to have its own benefits rather than lumping the same weights for practically all classes and allowing them to benefit equally off stat increases (just about anyway)

The community is really the problem though because they dont know what they actually want and tend to be like any other game community and just parrot whatever favorite streamer of the week says. The amount of unnecessary damage to Rogues and Wizards has been crazy, and Ironically I've been a Fighter Main since like PT2. Just to really give an understanding of how silly it is, the same people who think wizard is a low skill class, are the same people that say Ranger is hard or Warlock is the hardest class to play. The same people who say Rogue is insanely OP, are the same people who never complained about fighters running at 98%+ move speed with sprint w/ max phys damage reduction plate armor.

Moral of the Story is : Dont listen to other people and generally just avoid the community in this game lol.

It's not a bad game, its going through alot of development transitions but hopefully one day IronMace will just stick to the vision and shut out all the noise and go about making the game how it should be. One of the biggest fixes that needs to come is the movement system but tbh I have no idea how long that will be, or if it will ever happen. This game has a similar movement style to Source Engine and honestly, its a bit goofy.

Still though, + review from me because while it has its quirks and issues, it tore me away from Tarkov and I dont have any regrets. I still have fun PVPing and getting mad. I still enjoy playing with friends and I rather enjoy the PVE aspect of the game for what its worth, its always fun to feel yourself improve and learn new tricks, cheese and develop as a better player as time goes on. I only have about 200 hours in the game, though I've been playing it since before launch, there was just some seasons I couldn't stomach (like the recent multi-class awful idea, no thanks... Sandbox mechanics in a competitive PvEvP game is disgusting..) But every wipe/reset always has something new, whether it be a new meta, new mechanics, or just a general balance change that brings you back enough to enjoy it and thats good enough for me personally.

Also they finally removed themselves from the Battle Royale game aspect they were going for and it will be a hot take with all my friends but, honestly? I'm here for it. I hated the Battle Royale style this game had, the circle was bad, I could hardly see a damn thing if I stepped outside of it, the locations of portals was a nightmare most games, just being forced to drop to level two after searching for literally half the match for a single blue portal, they've made static exits that are always there ontop of static 3-man escapes which are also always there. Idc if everyones able to leave the match, nor do I care about being forced into some small blood bath over the last escape. Especially in High Roller where people sweat super hard and bring in the best gear and would camp the circle until the end just to grief. Wasn't very fun lol. I really enjoy having free roam of the maps and being able to do what I want/need to do, especially with the questing system. Also have yet to have an issue finding PVP, if you look for it, you'll find it. It's not as bad as people try to act like it is. People just got complacent and lazy, or just wanted to have ambush priority by camping the circle. It's way better than its ever been now.

A true hidden gem in the masses of bad games.
Just want to note I have more hours than listed, steam bugged or something, probably did around 200+ runs at time of review.

Clunky controls would love to see an update that would register multiple keys in a single input
IE: pressing up arrow + right arrow moves you north-east (instead of taking 2 turns because its north then east also aware its a bindable key but 8 movement keys is a bit much with all the other necessary hotkeys.)

Overall this game is masterful. Difficult as all hell, enjoy your deaths :) Doesn't matter if you just spawned in on turn 1 or think your invincible on turn 12038, death will find you. It's not particularly "unfairly" difficult, it can be a bit bullcrap spawning in ontop of an orc axeman that one shots you, BUT thats the allure of the dungeon. Full of traps and monsters, you can spawn in a dungeon that has virtually nothing but snails and traps, or spawn into a dungeon where theres an all-out war where you get a ton of loot and equipment you never dreamed of seeing before. The dungeon giveth and taketh away.

Also cheers to the dev still updating the game 10 years later. Thats amazing dedication and wish you the best.

Edit : Whew 70% done the games achievements/challenges, been really hustling through. Definitely love this game to bits. The only gripe I now have, removing all others aside from pressing 2 movement keys together is the fact of Fire,Frost,Shock & Poison/Disease being unable to be enchanted onto gear as singular enchants.

I would STRONGLY like to see this in the future of this game as it kind of forces a meta around Ring of Elements, Ring of Immunity, and Ring of Ebbin.
You can drop Ring of Ebbin but its really stupid to in a way because it is by far the best ring in the game, but you cannot really drop Immunity or Elements without being severely punished for it and I dont particularly enjoy that aspect of things.

Hopefully we can expect this in a future update as the Dev still seems to be working on the game :) I would really strongly like to try other setups for melee especially but its hard when you hit lvl 20 and get pushed into wearing specific things. Hell even level 5+ is ridiculously hard without a ring of elements, a single burn can instantly end a run.

I'm a massive fan of Ishtar games, even go as far to say you's are my favorite indie game dev as of late. Dead in saga is something I'll forever cherish. Last spell was a ton of fun (even though I dont own it, I had the pleasure of playing it through alternate)

Lakeburg Legacies I was definitely hugely looking forward to and I feel like alot of the critique was unfair, because it is a thorough management game, its not meant to develop liking characters, or relating to them, its not meant to really be a dating sim, or anything of that nature.

You're basically "god" and you try to put together the best civilization possible, the matchmaking aspect is how to recruit people outside of using money that will nestle perfectly into your little city and become a productive member. This game does have downtime, management games always have downtime. It takes time to acquire resources and such to make things happen, thats okay. It's meant to be cozy and relaxed.

The only TRUE problems with the gameplay, was people were cheating on their partners, divorcing and enslaving children way too often, almost instantaneously off meeting someone, no endless mode, and character balance RNG.

To break the three down
Soon as someone met another person, they would have a near 50-70% chance to develop interest in them, which lead to cheating and breaking households, which can put alot of pressure on gameplay loop due to having to rehouse people, the slave relationship with children being mentored also just incredibly drove morale down which lead to even more problematic situations with cheating, marriage problems, etc. It became pretty stressful fast.

Endless mode - We all want an endless mode, we cant really go into too much detail on this, just 100 years isn't very long for gameplay and we wanna see how much we can keep a civilization thriving and last in the endgame. It's a feat of strength for sure and tends to keep us interested rather than constantly restarting runs.

Character RNG - This is a general problem with any game with RNG, but you would get floods of characters with negative traits, and negative offspring traits, low stats, etc. I have went through over 3000 hearts trying to get a character decently matched up with someone at @15 per next (nearly 200 left swipes) This is just something that will get better overtime I'm sure, and also just heavily RNG to begin with, theres no way to control it for the player, but it does suck.

Now, the thing is, Ishtar is already handling all three of those things. (except slave trait I think) which is great, it shows active balancing, they've made meeting romances less often, better character traits and already had plans for & are working on an endless mode thats accessible in an alpha state.

With all that out in the open, the game is great, I would love to see it expand and grow, more unique buildings, more resources, more endgame management, etc. Which I imagine we will get some of if not all of. Lakeburg legacies is a cozy game with a bit of stressful management but its cute, its in a nice artstyle, it has a lot of funny moments, it allows a person to feel challenged, and has a great management system that is mostly lost in modern gaming, as it was a thing of older games. I continuously look forward to Ishtar's games and I'm already excited for the next chapter to come.

People may write my review off as fanboy-ism but I promise I would be even more harshly critical of the game if I didnt enjoy it because I have high expectations from this dev. So in fairness, I'm not being incredibly biased, I do genuinely think theres potential and that the game is a lot of fun. I would put a lot more time into it, but fortunately games of these types are pick up and go whenever, rather than just rushing through them and never playing them again. So I can relax and play it as I want.

Hey Ishtar games, big fan of your works and really hope to see a successor to Bermuda/Vinland someday.

It's wishful thinking you's read this, but I feel like Ishtar is the only hope to get another solid management game although its a pretty unpopular genre.

Heres to hoping though.

Game review:
Ever play those flash dating sims / "mcdonalds management" game? Add some RPG elements to it, and add some mythology, you have Dead in Vinland. It's an exceptional game, a last bastion of a dying genre. Theres some Pro's and Con's to the game but I think the Pro's outweigh heavily.

Real question is, are you able to manage the lives of multiple people on a remote island with limited resources and potentially harsh weather conditions & an enemy tribe that wants to kill you spending several days grinding it out trying to figure out a strategy to make it happen?

On the bright side, if you do it. You'll be told you're better than the Dev's & also not human.
10/10 would do again.

This is the ONLY game I can think of off top that the more I play it, the more the game internally breaks and falls apart. You hit 100+ hours in a save file and your textures are all whacked out, NPC's with wrong faces, people going into the ground, codex's being under the world, being launched at mach 5 off a dash ability.

It just gets worse every single hour I go further into the game, and its incredible as much as it is awful. AAA title almost 10 years old and its still this broken lol.

I recommend this because its a dragon age official game so if you plan on playing Dreadwolf it would definitely be worth to learn about Solas. Otherwise, game is pretty mediocre, choices dont really matter as much only in crucial moments, or stuff that effects the whole game from the very start that will later piss you off (ie: Lelianna's hardening) War table is basically a mobile game, Grind is monotonous, Every map after Hinterlands feels like its 50% complete in comparison. It's a shame this could have been the best title hands down but way further in the future it feels like they just kind of rushed everything last minute and shipped it.

Cassandra also probably the only character that has an actual moving development segment, rest of chars I could really care less about lol.

VHS could be great game.

Problem 1: Werewolf just too strong, steamroll killer for new players. If a team doesnt communicate/ping, you arent winning against a wolf unless you're generally already experienced due to alpha/beta playtime. The lunge needs to be shortened, got hit vaulting a window by a wolf literally down the hallway of double doors on school. Thats insane distance to make up in the 1 foot it took me to vault the window, and also was animation locked due to vault so couldnt move immediately afterwards, fun stuff.

Problem 2: Bugs, ex: Drink a pop, get a .5 second sprint burst, Werewolf is somehow an inch behind me and immediately hits me. As if she was in striking range throughout the whole sprint boost. Why did that pop only last 0.5 seconds? Big rip. Or setting a wolf on fire and watching the bar increase as it just howls while taking dmg and downs you. That's also fun.

Problem 3: Progression locks. Werewolf wouldn't be such a strong killer if players had access to weapons that are dominant to the werewolf IE: Solar Flare, Molotov, Enigma, Shock Sphere, RC heli, etc. As the system stands you're just telling people to get steamrolled by a killer unless they win the team lottery and get all experienced players or high level players that can deal with said killer.

The common theme is WW is just too strong of a killer to be pitting new players against with progression locks. We had fun our first few matches against the other killers but soon as we got multiple WW's in a row we just lost interest in the game because it wasn't even a match. It was a slaughter, we never stood a chance lol. Howl to disable survivor, sprint to make sure they cant get any distance or defend themselves before howl ends which lasts a pretty long time considering how fast WW's speed is when using ability to sprint.

Theres a lot of Git Gud involved I know, but just something as small as opening up the weapons even just for Early Access until the full game launches, would do wonders for new players. It at least would give some counter play to the people trying the game out.

I like to pick on people for being like "420 weed is life baby woo get highhhh" because they are todays version of hipsters with vapes. However this is a good game. Would like to see more customization options, a little more variety of people, potentially a relationship system where you can go out with friends and potentially date people in the game. Feel like it would really solidify the "lifestyle simulator" aspect of the game that somewhat exists. Something like so is probably in the works already.

The early grind is a little lengthy, 3 customer limit really slows the game to a crawl at points but just toss up a TV and watch some youtube during those moments, look back after a video and continue upgrading. The TV is probably one of the best aspects of the game having a fully integrated web browser that registers inputs and runs as a universal sound system for music, videos, podcasts, flash games, whatever you wanna do. All in all just a fun little time-waste game like a modern cookie-clicker with a little bit of uniqueness, memes and what feels like a lot of moistcritikal inspiration.

Recommend for content

Dont recommend for souls-game generally.

Pls actually go watch dunkeys video and start addressing some of those things because as a veteran souls player that doesn't rely on cheese to beat these games, theres a lot of problems that kill the fun factor in this game. Went back and played DS3 for an hour and had a blast in comparison to elden ring.

Enemies attack too fast, You attack too slow. Pushed to use Jump Attack in a lot of situations.
Players being punished for punishing. (bosses have faster recovery frames than most fighting game characters)
Mix & Match combo bosses was a weird decision, please give them a realistic stamina bar.
Fix rune count on all enemies (DEFINITELY BOSSES) & maybe adjust damage values a bit. (a 3x crystaline fight gives 7100 runes.. one of the harder fights in the game)
Did every enemy need an instant-kill (or damn near) grab?
Immunity, robust, vitality, etc dont feel like they do anything. Using the highest potential set for each one and still eating debuffs within seconds.
Not everyone wants to use offline summons, balancing around those was kind of silly to begin with and I think largely what the balancing team honed in on.
Every enemy (especially larger ones) is like a brick wall that can move you around at will, would be nice to have hitbox adjustments but doubt we will ever see that.
Also realized a +5 BK Greatsword hits about as hard as my +23 greatsword right now, kind of sad in a way. (DS3 char was lvl 95, current char is lvl 119 w/ higher str and dex lol.)



Just stuff off the top of my head that has made the game more stressful than fun at times to me. Is good game, but definitely needs some adjustments to be a great game.