Recent reviews by Quacky

Listen, before you scroll past, thinking "this game isn't for me because of x" take a second and listen to my review. I don't write many, but this one had to have it. If you're in a hurry, here's the summary: This game is more than a normal picross game or anime game or whatever. If your initial thought is to give it a skip, I'd encourage you to reconsider and look deeper at it first.

Have you ever thought "I wish I knew more about art" or "I wish I was more sophisticated"? This game is for you. This game has a bunch of artworks across many periods, and insightful commentary from someone who is a nationally accredited curator in Japan (the host of the game: Juufutei Raden).

Have you ever thought "I love picross/nonograms but I wish there were harder versions that could challenge me?" This game is for you. It has 40x30 picross pieces that will legitimately challenge you. Some of those are literal hours of fun brain training and puzzle solving.

Have you ever thought "I wish I knew how to play picross/nonograms?" This game is for you. This has THE best UI and QOL of any of the games of this type, and perhaps the best tutorial as well. Made a mistake? Turn back time while watching a cute mushroom dance. No pressure.

Have you ever thought "All of that's great, but I don't like anime/Vtubers/Hololive" This game is STILL for you. You can turn off Raden's (the anime woman's) avatar from the options menu, and play with just the dialogue alone, or even turn that off.

Have you ever thought "Man, I love Hololive and Raden." ...Do I even need to spell out that this game is for you? Buy it already. One of the most quality branded collabs in a game I've ever seen from Hololive or anywhere really.

The devs have been very responsive to bugs and feature requests too, which is just the icing on the cake. Good game devs are like diamonds: treasure them.

In short, everyone should be encouraging this kind of high quality game with this much polish and this kind of high concept. It's $20. I've spent 3 times this much on games that turned out to be disappointments multiple times from AAA companies, and if you're here on Steam, there's a decent chance you have too. Why not give a game with less cost but more soul a try?

An excellent gem of a game, just like pretty much anything from Abbey Games. They really excel in putting depth into everything they touch. I highly recommend getting this if you like puzzles, simulation, or strategy games.

Different from the original game, and they both have their strengths, but Reus 2 has done a great job of eliminating superfluous annoying features. Reus 1 was about adapting to the humans quick in many ways. Reus 2 is more about careful planning ahead of time. Ideally, go play both!

A rare game of surprising depth and complexity, that's surprisingly hard to describe. It's a turn-based TRPG semi-roguelike, with deck building elements? It has so many small events, that I'm STILL discovering new dialogue after 250+ hours of play. Regardless of what it is, it consistently brings the best parts of all of the elements it's drawn from. Notably one of the few games where you can win the entire games through either fighting everyone to death, being mean and tricky, or just being nice and talking them down.

I rarely write reviews, as freehand writing is not my specialty (as seen above), but Renowned Explorers (and all of Abbey Games' series honestly) are chronically underrated and almost unknown, and they deserve better. They took a chance on a game with cool mechanics, surprising depth and complexity, and interesting writing, and should have been rewarded for it instead of financially punished. If you have a complexity addiction, like me, or are a fan of both optimizing characters AND good worldbuilding/writing, give it a try.

A good showing for the Democracy series. If you love simulation and management, this is a great choice. Not without flaws of course (which should be expected in an Early Access game). Some are some odd balance issues and weird policy effects that don't quite mesh (a fair number of policies SAY they influence something, but then it turns out they modify that thing "0%", some policies don't seem to logically make sense, etc.), but for an early access game, quite promising. As the Democracy devs have always been pretty trustworthy with their releases in the end, why not give it a go and help contribute to beta testing if this is the sort of game that appeals to you?

Like a dozen others have said: started out only so-so. But though mistakes were made, this may be the strongest Paradox game now (in terms of depth, features, and to some degree polish) because of the devs learning and growing from them. Cui peccare licet, peccat minus. Ave Roma invicta!

A gem of the SRPG genre, Troubleshooter is a game that continually surprises you with increasing depth of gameplay and customization as you play. It has been compared to X-COM meets Final Fantasy Tactics with a dash of visual novel mixed in, and I have to say that this comparison is apt, and also tells you a lot about how highly people who've played it think of it.

What's more, the developers are constantly adding more content. It's improved monumentally over even just a few months, with the translation in particular getting significantly better. They constantly listen to feedback too. Go ahead and look at the bottom of the other reviews on this steam page. I'll wait here. Notice something? That's right, the devs have responded to nearly every review there is. I tried to find one that didn't have a thought-out response, and couldn't find one. That is outstanding outreach, to a degree I've never seen in a game company before. Not only that, but they are unfailingly humble, almost to the point of it being a problem, refusing to charge for DLC even though the lack of funds could cause problems for the game's future, and having already delivered far more than their $25 pricetag for the game. Which is why this review was made.

I don't generally do reviews (and others have done more details on pros and cons better than I for this game), but Troubleshooter deserves more of a spotlight than it gets for the love poured into it. And it needs more audience to grow. So I'd encourage everyone to "vote with their wallet". Why give EA another $60 to not listen to you and then break their own game, when you could pay $25 to support a studio that has consistently listened to what players have had to say?

(Full disclosure, I received this product for free as a closed beta tester.)

Never one to keep the course steady or "easy", Weather Factory has released a bit of an odd duck in the form of the Exile DLC for Cultist Simulator. Long story short, I advise getting it, and the more you've played the base game, the more I advise getting Exile.

If you would like more information, first come some truncated pros and cons, followed by my thoughts. (Yes, it's a bit much. You expected a CS fanatic to be brief?)

Pros:
+ A completely new game style you get to learn. (For some.)
+ Multiple "tiers" of difficulty for different victories
+ So many lore and backstory snippets! This may have the most expansion to the physical world of Cultist Simulator yet, just due to the unique nature, assets, and descriptions of each location you can visit.

Cons:
- A completely new game style you have to learn. (For some)
- Steeper price than previous DLCs for Cultist Simulator
- Not sure I'd recommend it for new players, as it seems to rely somewhat on the knowledge of the base game.

Overall:
As may be indicated by item one on both the pros and cons list above, this is not the standard vanilla Cultist Simulator by any means. Exile takes you out of your comfort zone as a Cultist Simulator player in order to be chased across Europe. Gone are your helpful cult, your safe headquarters, your "favors from authority", your steadily growing cache of artifacts. Your opponent this time is no mortal detective, but an implacable adept with great resources and powers, with an almost mafia-like feel to him (complete with seemingly limitless underbosses and soldiers to chase you). If you stay still, you will die*.

Some people won't like having to relearn how to play Cultist Simulator, as that's to a lesser degree what this DLC asks of you. Sure, there are still Verbs (slots), and still cards, but almost all of them are different from the base game in one way or another. Exile demands a new approach to most obstacles. And I think that's what is intended. Exile is a DLC for those who have (like myself) gotten so used to the world of Cultist Simulator that the CS world has lost some of its mystery and wonder just due to understanding game mechanics. Charting a path to ascension should feel raw and confusing, and involve you most likely dying, and that's what Exile delivers.

As such, the path this reminds me most of is a different flavored Apostle Legacy (the hard mode ones), but with more emphasis on running and fighting. Whereas that was a race up the spiritual "Mansus" side of things, this is a race across the physical face of Europe...at least at first. Nonetheless, they both completely change the game into something more "high-stakes" and mysterious again.

Now, this isn't everyone's cup of tea (cup of Leathy?), so if you're routinely frustrated by Cultist Simulator and was overjoyed when you got the game "charted", know that this will take a while to understand too, and you might want to think carefully about buying it. If on the other hand, you feel complacent in your victories in Cultist Simulator, and want more mystery and more lore, or even if you just have the capability of stomaching a little confusion, I would seriously advise getting this DLC.

Is it more expensive? Yes. But it shows. This is by far the most content I've seen added, both in terms of art and mechanics. There's a number of different victories, and they seem to be tiered, which is to say, there's some that are quite easy, and some that are punishingly hard to achieve. This is a nice touch, as you can "aim" for whatever difficulty level you want. Personally I have no idea how to get ANY of the victories in Exile yet. I keep dying, and I couldn't be happier.

They Are Billions is a good game. It is also a not completely polished game. There's some area for improvement, but not enough for me to think it's recent rating of "mixed" to be fair. I will divide my review into pros and cons, and general thoughts.

Pros:
- An excellent survival mode that no one has complained about (or few at least)
- Compelling and interesting mechanics
- Challenging, almost brutal, but not unfair
- Devs that appear to listen to the community and care for the game
- A campaign mode that has a lot of promise, and that I feel is already fun, if not perfect
- A pretty deep tech tree in campaign mode (a personal love of mine, though see notes below).

Cons:
- Some mechanics are not explained particularly well, an easy example is how useful patrol can be for units. So far as I can tell, the patrol feature is barely mentioned. Yes it seems obvious, but these things help.
- You can progress the tech tree any way you want...but will be punished essentially for not going certain paths for certain missions. An excellent example is the early mission with the rich farmland. If you haven't unlocked farms...it's not gonna go great.
- The voice acting and some storytelling in the campaign mode is not...great. The story could use more depth, and the voice actors could use more takes.

Summary:
A lot of people are slamming the game for being simultaneously too hard for some people, and too easy for others. To me, that seems like it's in the right place, difficulty-wise. It has a compelling mechanic, and if the campaign was not quite as compelling as people thought, please note that Numantian is not a triple-A game developer. They are barely a step above indie, and even with assistance, there is a limit to what they can do logistically. Overall this game is no flawless gem, but more of a "diamond in the rough".

With polish, I believe the flaws it has will be eliminated, and the good emphasized. This is particularly true because it seems that Numantian truly cares about this game as a overall work, not simply a catalog item. They have proven that they will listen to the community, and I believe that amount of passion deserves our respect, and possibly even our trust and faith that they will do the right thing once we point out a problem. For this reason, I do recommend this game, not only for what it will become, but also for the fun it is right now, despite the rough spots.

Not sure what the fuss is about, considering this is actually CHEAPER than the Civ V packs, for as much content.