Recent reviews by Zachariah Wildwood

Relaxing, cute and with just enough challenge for you to want to try a few runs.

Get this if you enjoy:
- building characters and seeing how they grow
- light puzzle solving
- roleplaying through dialogue choices
- strategic decision making/optimisation

Criticisms:
- the story is fairly generic. You're a kid with kid problems.
- lack of vision over how the final choice of job is calculated
- maybe a bit trite
- some of the mechanics aren't well balanced
- repetitive

Praise:
- the music is weirdly soothing
- good value
- easy to learn
- the variety of skills/jobs/fun etc creates challenge
- the brain map puzzle is very original

Overall, this is a good thing to pick if you're looking for something chill and cute, but maybe give it a miss if you're looking for a challenging game.

I grew up playing Baldur's Gate, Fallout, Arcanum, Planescape: Torment. The classics.

This is every bit the classic isometric RPG. Far more than Pillars was. Even Tides of Numenura didn't quite hit the same sense of exploration, and adventure that I remembered from the late 90s, though of course the story was excellent.

So far, this game has an amazing amount of depth. It's pretty much flawless graphically, the sound design is beautiful and subtle, the writing is engaging without being formulaic or overly prosaic, and the quests themselves feel organic, like you truly are roaming around a vast open land, stumbling into the wrong place at the wrong time.

I don't need to play this on Challenging. I don't even need to play it on Normal - I'm still learning the mechanics of this game, and the only thing I have to prove about how I play games is that I do really enjoy sending a party of adventurers off into the wilds, and choosing how they tackle the challenges they face. I'm here to immerse myself in a vividly realised fantasy world, and through my actions determine its fate.

I've barely scratched the surface, but I'm already feeling just as invested in this as I was in my recent BG1 replay. I'm already thinking I need to go back and do a lawful evil play, because those were always so satisfying on a second pass.

I don't often write reviews, but this game having mixed reviews is such a shame. I'm sure you've read about the balancing issues, but I guess I'm not the sort of player that is bothered by lowering the difficulty to get through a hard bit. My God, some of the 90s classics had ridiculously hard bits, and the thinking back then was "are you good enough" not "is the game good enough". Anyway, if you are fan of those old classics listed in the description (and it's right there in the game description) then this is something you'll probably get lost in for hours. Days. Months.

Anyway, I need to get back to it.

If this game was $15-$20 and a little tamer in its promises - something like "Use our world generation technology to explore endless permutations of life and scenery while flying around on distant worlds" you would get a small, very niche following of gamers who would be praising this game. It is fun to hop around and see what the game engine can do - but then I've always like playing with world similator games. Even back in the nineties I had something called Darwin Pond where you could make little "swimmers" that would randomly mutate and then track how they developed and which swimmer was the best. Most people hate games like that.
I'm appalled that this game is still full price. They seem to have broken every rule in the book on how to not piss off your customers. I did genuinely enjoy playing this, but there's no way in hell that it lived up to what it was projected to be. I suspect some of the people who worked on this may have gone on to work for United Airlines.
If you ever see this on sale, and you do like quirky exploration games - maybe you're the kind of gamer who spends most of their time in Minecraft travelling to find new biomes - then you would enjoy this. At a far reduced price.
What is wrong with these people? Why the hell is it still full price?

I am recommending this, but only for certain people.

You need to know going in that this was a very ambitious game, and while they sort of pulled it off there is a lot that they didn't get to, and it does feel unpolished. There's a lot wrong with this game, but I actually do love it, and I feel that I will keep coming back to it for a long time. Particularly if it is updated. I think the reason this game has turned out the way it has is because the devs waded into uncharted territory without a map. They get a lot of points from me for doing something different.

A lot of what has been done is very innovative, and if you are a fan of this genre you will love playing with the highly customisable workshops, houses and special buildings. It's great fun drawing a blueprint for your carpenters workshop and deciding where everything will go - you feel like you are building a colony from scratch rather than just planting down premade buildings. The work crew system is unique and while I have a few issues with it, the idea is good. You have a supervisor who can employ up to four people. Those four labourers will join the supervisor on whatever task they are assigned to (you do this based on their traits and skills) and their effectiveness is determined by a few things including the skill of the supervisor, the buiding quality... and probably some other nebulous thing I haven't figured out yet. From that example you can probably see that you need to invest some time in order to understand the complex systems going on. It's not obvious. This is for people like me who actually enjoy figuring that stuff out and find it really satisfying to understand a complex system enough to be able to build something thriving.

What I want to add to all of the reviews so far (including the negative ones that make good points) is that there is huge potential for fun here. If you took a look at Dwarf Fortress and thought you couldn't handle figuring it out, maybe skip this. If the reason you skipped Dwarf Fortress was solely down to graphics, hey, this could be a gold mine for you.

- Highly original turn-based survival game.
- Think very carefully about your next move as biting off more than you can chew will end up with you being bitten off and chewed.
- Very satisfying to scavenge and carefully arrange all of your loot, choose a good base, and take on the post-apocalyptic world.
- Replayable due to different character builds, random map generation, and choice of approach
- In-depth, detailed crafting and injury system that is reminiscent of Dwarf Fortress' detail.
- Unique combat with a heavy focus on strategy and avoiding injury rather than mindlessly hack and slashing.
- Great writing and intriguing premise.
- Interface looks intimidating but is suprisingly easy to learn.
- Pick up and play for ten minutes, or get lost for hours.
- Permadeath makes it all real.

Way too difficult. The devs set us unrealistic challenges that no human could ever know the right answer to. 10/10

Besiege is to Mechano what Minecraft was to Lego.

My initial impression is: How have I not heard about this before? It feels like this game was tailor made for me. It's a mix of Civ and Heroes of Might and Magic without stripping down the hefty ideas from those two games. This is a very deep strategy game that allows for a lot of customisation - a sentence that always wins me over. So far I have been able to create an evil mage warlord from a fantasy story I wrote a long time ago and live out his career. The game is moulding itself around my play style rather than the other way around which is an absolute win. I forsee many late nights with this one. It's like discovering HoMM3 all over again...

It's a medieval history simulator. The most deep, immersive and intricate game I have ever played - takes hours to get into it but is more and more rewarding the further you go with it. The ultimate strategy game