Recent reviews by Talismonger

To watch the videos you would think this was a fast paced tower defense game. It's anything but. It feels very much like two disparate systems (1) a base crafting/tower defense system and (2) a first person technician - were combined. The exploration is clunky, slow, and generally dull. It makes collecting the resources to build a base seem like a chore. You also don't get to revel in the glory of your planned based holding off the horde, since you are too busy running around refiling the ammunition for your turrets.

Interesting idea, poor execution.

It's hard to say enough good things about this game. Very deep strategic and enjoyable gameplay. The depth guarantees a different experience every time you play. If you're on the fence, you should try it.

I've revised this game after the company was able to address their server capacity issues, which I can now confirm are resolved. Now for the game. It's a tactical co-op FPS with 3 main enemy sets - Alien style, robot/terminator style, and zombie style. Interestingly, the different factions add some freshness to the experience and require different strategies. There are also a variety of missions that require different objectives & strategies that offer some variety to the experience.

It doesn't have that much to unlock and develop, but the core gameplay is solid and well worth some time. Give it a spin if that sounds interesting to you.


----------Prior Reivew-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Once you install & boot it up that perpetual "servers are too busy" message makes the game unplayble. (You are required to connect to the servers to play in any mode)

Company has capped the player amount to keep the servers from crashing, but have not yet provided the server infrastructure necessary to support the amount of players based on sales. Hold off on this one unless/until the company figures this one out or you'll be stuck holding a $40 IOU from Arrowhead Game Studios.

As a huge fan of Darkest Dungeon (1), I had high hopes for this game. The rapid, one-off rougelike plays of this game leave me unsatisfied.

The same voice acting that I loved in Darkest Dungeon is back. So is much of the character art. Unfortunately so much is back that it feels more like a derivative fan work that a sequel.

The play style is also quite different. With the rougelike runs, you end up playing many short play throughs that largely feel repetitious. There isn't the same element of character/team development that Darkest Dungeon 1 had. Similarly, for me, the madness and recovery system (combined with changing quirks) in prior game really helped the characters feel like they were going through real struggle and had depth. That element doesn't land the same way in this iteration, due to the lack of continuity between runs.

Overall this is a game you can pick up, play, and put down more rapidly. Much less of an RPG feel. More accessible in some ways, but very different (and less deep) overall. If that type of experience appeals to you, go for it. As someone looking for even more depth and story to Darkest Dungeon, I was left wanting.

Prior review below - I checked back in on this game another 6 months later, and it seems to be stable now. It's a great game, and a very faithful adaptation of battletech. If you enjoyed battletech at an early point in life or in an earlier game incarnation, this is truly the best version around right now. Recommended.

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I'm a longtime fan of Battletech, but this game is simply buggy as hell. There seem to be a million different ways that it crashes or freezes. Initially, it ran ok and would only crash after about 4 hours of play. Now, it is unplayable, as it freezes before even starting the first battle. I assumed the devs would improve the stability of this game over time, so I walked away for a while (around a year maybe?). It seems the game has only become less stable over time. I have spent more time troubleshooting this game than any game I have ever owned. Truly a sad state of affair. Good game, if it would run properly. Shoddy programming.

This is a nice casual dungeon crawler. Interesting mechanics for different attack and effects help to differentiate combat. The choice of dungeon "size" for each leg of your run allows you to customize the playtime around your schedule. This is the perfect sort of game for someone who has time in limitied blocks, but still wants an enjoyable hack and slash rpg experience.

As a veteran turn-based strategy gamer, I cannot recommend this game. It does have a number of positives, which I will enumerate at the end.

CRITICAL FLAWS
-- Poor enemy AI --
The enemies seem to lack the ability to use any items other than their primary weapon. Your characters, in contrast, have two weapons a piece, and up to two usable items. This makes you a powerhouse compared to EVERYONE else. More troublesome is the terrible enemy AI. Turn-Based Strategy means that battles are meant to be tactical challenges. This is essentially a squad-based, tactics game. Enemies all act individually, but seem to lack the ability to work together. I realize that AI programming is complicated, but it is essential for a squad-based tactics game to be challeging. This game takes the cheap way out by simply increasing enemy firepower and decreasing your hp for higher difficulty settings. So, if you think that making the enemies tougher by giving them the power to one shot kill your characters makes the game tougher, then you would be correct. It doesn't make it more enjoyable. It simply turns the game into a squad-based puzzle game (avoid all shots). Not my cup of tea.

Big match up at the end of the main scenario line - over in just a couple rounds. I don't even think any of my characters were hit once.

-- Main Character restarts at each new chapter, so all items, injuries, fate cards, etc. are lost (this destroys the role playing element) --
I love rpg advancement because it allows attachment to the characters. Ex. My bounty hunter gets a mangled hand during a firefight. Now, with a mangled hand, he can't aim worth anything, so give him a sawed-off shotgun, sneak him in close, and it won't matter. This sort of thing makes characters develop and change over time - they gain character. In this game all rpg-esque advancements are reset between scenarios (a couple hours a piece). No character has any permanency. Think of it more as Commandos instead of X-Com.

-- Poor proofing & crashes --
I only had a few actual crashes, though there were many lags & slow down. For a while I had a game-breaking error that was caused by having a gamepad plugged in but not using it. (took a while to figure that one out) Fate abilities that I had placed on a character would mysteriously not be present in some combats, and other character would be completely rekitted within the same scenario. Just seemed to lack polish and playtesting.

-- Lack of explanation --
I still don't know what the defense statistic does, and there are less than 6 statistics per character. Perhaps it reduces the enemy chance to hit me. Perhaps it reduces my chance of receiving an injury when hit. Perhaps it increases the effective of cover for that character. Perhaps it provides a chance of decreasing incoming damage. It likely does one of those things. I shall never know which.

Making certain storyline advances in some scenarios prevent completion of side content (with no warning). Combined with the lack of ability to save and reload, it means that you make simply miss big chunks of content unless you want to restart the whole scenario from scratch.

Enemies have a radar-looking effect that appear near them if you walk too close. It means that they get a free shot on you. Given the "closeness," a hit is almost guaranteed. This was never brought up during the tutorial. I permanently lost one of my secondary characters in the first scenario when I "discovered" this mechanic, and was a bit salty about it. Further it is a poor, jury-rigged mechanic to offset the lack of an overwatch mechanic. The jury-rigged nature of the mechanic is clear because it only applies to enemy characters (from what I could tell).

-- Poorly implemented mechanics --
This is mostly about "heat" and "daylight" vs. everything else. Heat is about how suspicious/dangerous your current weapons look. It has gameplay effect related to subduing enemies, but was otherwise largely ignored. There was the potential for prefight setups where you have to enter a guarded establishment and must adjust your kit to below a certain heat level to get it. Never happened in any scenario I played. It felt like heat was a mechanic that the developer had intended for much more, but then ran out of time/money to implement fully.

Daylight/Night had the same feel. There are ablilities that are "stronger" in the shadow, but the difference is tactically insignificant. There is no option to allow your to plan an event during the day or night to get the effect of favorable lighting conditions. They simply are preset going into each encounter. Felt like it had potential that wasn't fully implemented.

CRITICAL SUCCESSES (the things they got right)
-- Has a good flavor for the period/setting they try to create --
Lots of dialogue, old west movie style narration, and some graphical flourishes (ex. gunsmoke effect following shooting) all greatly aid immersion.

-- Basic combat mechanics are solid --
Cover based shooting, sight distances, fog of war, actions points, etc. All tried and true mechanics. No innovation here, but they apply them well to the setting (except for the poor AI noted above).

-- Music --
I thought that the music was well applied and thematically appropriate. Some will certainly find it repetitious, though.


OVERALL
There are some fun things about this game, but the overall game lacks sufficient development to be a challenging, immersive experience.

Interesting dark sci-fi story line, which actually seems fresh. (hard to do with a story line in a game) King's Questy point & click exploration/puzzle solving combined with periodic 2-D sidescrolling shoot-em-up. Interesting game well worth a look if you enjoy any of the above mentioned game types or stories.