Recent reviews by FohnJarmery

Heavily recommend!

The first Monster Train was already a fantastic edition to the roguelike deckbuilder genre with a lot of really unique and engaging mechanics that set it apart from others in that library.

This game takes what made Monster Train unique (priority units, movement, multiple floors) and manages to do so much more with them in a way that I think really demonstrates the dev's understanding of the game they've created.

Difficulty is initially fair with new difficulties unlocking with each subsequent victory. I'd say the first couple of difficulties might prove simple for people used to the genre but once you start reaching difficulty 4 you'll start experiencing combats that will actually test even people experienced with these types of games. Winstreaking at the highest difficulties is certainly possible and once you understand the bones of the game is something you'll probably want to try - I think this is a good sign of a game that's managed to minimise purely luck-based losses.

If you've never played before the artystyle may initially take some getting used to. This was an issue with the MT1 as well and frankly I think it's hard for deckbuilding games like this to distinguish themselves from mobile games. That being said there's some genuinely great creature art in this game and you do get used to it after just a couple of runs. I think in general they seriously stepped up the visual presentation from the first.

Overall - just a really, really great card game and creature collector.

This game feels so close to being up there with others in the genre such as Monster Train or Slay the Spire but is really held back by mistaking randomness for depth.

Unlike other games in the genre where players have options as early as the first battle to mitigate RNG, this game seemingly uses RNG as a stand-in for difficulty. You're offered random dice to draft, which are then drawn in a random order and then rolled in a random order. Unlike other games which may offer you cards to shuffle your deck to mitigate randomness, this game offers you rerolls which only further plays into the game's randomness.

This problem is only compounded further by each character having a dozen more mechanics than necessary and it really, really harms the game particularly early in a run. Most characters tend to be juggling 5 or 6 different mechanics and very rarely do these different mechanics interact - indeed characters have dice which will outright contradict or weaken other dice in their pool which can cause completely dead drafts which the player had no way of predicting/playing around.

Without a doubt the worst part of the game is starting a new run. Combat in early sections is slow, tedious and often consists of just rerolling your starting turn over and over to deal with the completely unnecessary amount of self-harming die that the game shoves into your deck. Once you've invested 20 minutes into a run you might find yourself finally having something resembling a build or more likely you'll find your deck full of random dice that don't really interact as you struggle to utilise half-finished builds because the game simply didn't offer you the dice you needed out of the too-many options.

Overall this game might become really great after some hefty balance changes but until the core system of randomness is addressed it simply doesn't feel satisfying to play.

Ordinarily, I don't write reviews - but I've always been pretty invested in the Ensemble Studios games and seeing what Microsoft and Skybox have done with one of their all-time legends has pushed me into comment.

Age of Mythology: Extended Edition. Ordinarily, to extend something means to prolong it or make it bigger somehow but if you're hoping for new content, this game does not have any. It's just the same game you played back in 2003 - but that's not so bad, because that game was great. This however, isn't - and there's some vital reasons as to why:

1 - The Multiplayer.
The most important aspect of any Real Time Strategy game is its multiplayer community and Age of Mythology has always had a creative and thriving one. This Extended Edition would too - if the multiplayer actually worked. You don't need me to tell you, just go check out the Support forum for this game. The game suffers from consistent crashes, desync, stuttering, framedrops and lag when attempting an online game. The developers blame "ancient bugs" left over from the original game despite the fact that none of these bugs were actually present in the 2003 release and accusing the now defunct Ensemble Studios (thanks Microsoft) for being responsible for your own mistakes is downright cowardly. disrespectful and lazy especially seeing as you're now flogging their product to an unaware market.

2 - The Single Player.
The AI during Single Player matches is bizarre, eclectic and at often times completely incomprehensible. Prone to suddenly stopping all activity halfway through a match for completely banal reasons (there was no food in their line of sight, you spawned too close to them etc) every Random Match is essentially a roll-of-the-dice of whether or not the AI feels like playing along this time. This problem has only been made worse by the addition of the new, COMPULSORY DLC which has 'updated' the AI to coincide with the introduction of a new civilization. Unfortunately, those who don't purchase the DLC are still obligated to download the patch, meaning they suffer from all of the bugs whilst receiving none of the reward.

3 - The DLC.
Most likely what drew you to this Steam page in the first place seeing as this game hasn't seen a real increase in playerbase in almost a year. I followed the development of the DLC for a good few months and have been heavily invested in it. The attitude of the developers and their 'effort' as far as producing quality content goes is detestable. Aside from the rather invested and community-involved attitude from those at ForgottenEmpires (a small team of fans), comment and involvement from the lead developers (Skybox) has consisted of grade-1 piss-all. They spent a good few months assuring us the DLC would contain strictly new, fresh content without any reskinning, repackaging or rebranding of existing content and that turned out to be a complete lie. They also lied about having playtested the game for balance - admitting during a public streaming of the game (you can find it on Youtube) that they purposefully left the DLC broken and unbalanced as a means of making people have to play it. The DLC itsels is incredibly broken as of writing this (again, check the Support forum), with half the playerbase unable to access the DLC at all and the other half jokingly trying to laugh off the regret of their purchase.

One of the developers admitted on the Subreddit that they are currently "using the public to beta test the game" - meaning that if you buy this DLC you are not getting content, you are buying into the opportunity to test unfinished content. This coupled with the fact that the developers openly laughed at the idea of fixing the Multiplayer (again, check the stream) tells me that we aren't dealing with incompetent developers - we're dealing with scam artists.

I don't like having to write this sort of stuff about any Ensemble Studios IP because it sucks seeing their legacy shat on by untalented coat-tail riders, but if it means discouraging people from wasting their money on what is essentially a gigantic bug test, then it feels somewhat worthwhile. Only buy this if you absolutely *must* play Age of Mythology again and don't want to go through the effort of pirating the old copy and getting it to work - but know that this is not the Age of Mythology you played ten years ago and it certainly is not a well-supported or active game.