Recent reviews by Pyetech

Timberborn could become something great, but it isn't anything too special in its current form.

Due to their similarity, any review must bring up Factory Town, which came first and is more full-featured (most notably including conveyor belts and logic operators). Timberborn has the stronger theme but it doesn't do it justice, both graphically and gameplay-wise. Setting the game in a post-apocalyptic world rather than in a lush forest with giant trees was a very weird design choice. The only redeeming aspect of the setting is the minor satisfaction of revitalizing the land as you slowly bring water to its farthest corners.

Speaking of water, the waterflow mechanics in Timberborn are clearly its most interesting aspect, and even those don't feel fully realized yet. Creating reservoirs and diverting the river is unique, however.

I'm not crazy about the district system, and giving exclusive buildings to different factions is a poor choice as the number of available buildings is already limited.

I can only speak for the early game, but it was extremely linear, with shallow and repetitive quests that you zip through. I was hoping to explore a living world, but it's just a series of drab corridors you can run through. Enemy quantity is substituted for quality. Lost Ark seems to have embraced the worst attributes of modern World of Warcraft.

The only 4x game I've ever had the desire to replay. The varied lore/story abounds with flavor, yet the gameplay remains competitive. Free (and paid) updates are regularly released that boldly improve and overhaul the game. Excellent mods like "Gigastructural Engineering & More" flesh out an already feature-rich game.

Very much inspired by (the first half of) The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. It doesn't necessarily bring anything new to the table, but it's a fun, charming little game. I would've liked the inclusion of a Hard Mode, because rarely did it offer me a challenge.

Disappointing. A bad user interface, nondescriptive tooltips, exceedingly bland enemy design, little strategic difference from game to game, and no sense of progression other than by sheer grinding. There's a real lack of both short-term and long-term goals. Play Defender's Quest or GemCraft instead.

A buggy mess to the point of unplayability, at least for my group of 4.

Too quest-driven. Exploration is actively discouraged, not that there's much of anything in the world for you to find. The ability to grab and climb monsters is neat enough, but the combat system is nothing special.

Good, not incredible.

At first, I was not feeling the game at all, to the point where I was tempted to stop playing. I missed the various RPG elements from the Souls games that were simply not present in Sekiro. I didn't enjoy the more realistic Japanese aesthetic nor world nearly as much as Dark Souls' fantasy one. The combat seemed like an unnecessarily hard parryfest that required catlike reflexes. The enemy variety was abysmal.

As I got farther into the game, it started to click. Bosses stopped being random Japanese generals surrounded by random soldiers. The world became more fantastical (though I still wish From Software had drawn more heavily from Japanese mythology). I realized that my classical training--circle-strafing and dodging through attacks--was not working, and that you're intended to parry nearly every enemy attack, pretty much only jumping and dodging to counter specific moves. I started to appreciate (and even prefer) the way the combat system encourages action and reading the opponent in more detail, though I must note that you are not penalized for repeatedly tapping L1 as much as you should be. The vitality/posture system rewards both offense and defense, and smoothly allows for finishers.

Stealth has been implemented better in other games, but it's serviceable here, and backstabbing unaware opponents is always fun.

The grappling hook makes for interesting environment traversal, and allows for more vertical levels. However, it also means that the developers have to artificially hide grappling points until you've, say, completed a boss, and it's easy to miss hidden areas if you don't happen to be looking at the seemingly-random right spot.

The game is a bit more story-driven than the Souls games, which is fine, but it seemed silly to force players to re-traverse explored areas once minor events occur there.

The ultimately irrelevant Dragonrot mechanic, where it is falsely implied that if the player dies enough times, friendly NPCs will start dying, seems like objectively bad game design. Maybe it's a remnant from another stage of development or something.

I did encounter a few minor issues/bugs with the camera (specifically the lock-on), which got me killed a couple of extra times.

The lack of build variety, multiplayer, covenants, etc. will probably hamper replayability, but Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is still well worth playing through once.

Unexceptional in pretty much all areas. The exploration is satisfying enough, at least at first, but the quests I've seen have been of terrible quality. The game feels dated, reminiscent of something like The Witcher 1. Its only saving grace is the multiplayer system, which also has its faults.

An elegantly designed "turn-based RTS" that features no RNG whatsoever, making battles feel more like puzzles where each player must balance their economy, defense, and offense.

Presentation-wise, Prismata comes across as a souped-up Flash game, and that's because it is one. But between the "first one's free" campaign, challenge scenarios, puzzle packs, and bot matches, there's plenty of single-player content here to keep even the "free-to-play" players occupied for quite awhile. New units are frequently introduced to keep the game fresh, and achievements and other short-term goals keep the metagame engaging.

Multiplayer is full-featured; it is complete with replays, spectatorship, a ranking system, and all the cosmetics you could ever want to show off. A randomized pool of available units (identical for both players) is enough to keep each match unique. The playerbase seems small and experienced but dedicated, so expect the grind to be competitive.

The devs avoid "pay-to-win" like the plague, so you can easily play to your heart's content without ever spending a penny.