Recent reviews by 人外スライム

Why would I want crossplay with people dumb enough to install epic games malware?

Having cleared the true ending of the game I have come to the conclusion that the average steam user would call a crosswalk unbalanced because they tried to cross the street when the light was red and got hit by a car.

Feel bad giving this a "No" because the this game is so close to being perfect. The sprites are gorgeous and expressive and the music kicks ass. I really like the concept of drafting dice against your opponent, as it gives you a lot of strategic options in what to pick and when. The problem is the actual combat needs some serious rebalancing. So many turns are spent just spinning your wheels and waiting for an opening to attack. Every fight feels like a slog. The optimal strat for every character is just tank and build stamina, which kinda defeats the purpose of them all having different skills. Artemis seems like she's supposed to be a berserker archetype, with self damage and healing abliities, which you would think means you can play more fast and loose with her, but since a bunch of her skills get way stronger on 1 hp, and you need stamina to heal, it ends up being better to get down to 1 hp and then just tank and build stamina like the rest of the cast.

If I was giving a recommendation based purely on presentation this would be an enthusiastic thumbs up. The game looks and sounds amazing. In it's current state though, I don't think I'll come back to it unless it gets some sort of major overhaul. Everything feels a bit too samey to give it that "just one more run" type of appeal that similar games in this genre have.

This game is literally a reskinned Civ V.

Like I had heard people say that about it and thought "Oh ok, it must be pretty similar like how people called Fallout 3 'Oblivion with guns' or something"

No.

This is 100% just the base Civ V content with outer spacey looking graphics slapped over it. It's ridiculous how blatant they were about reusing assets and mechanics.

I will say one big change that has been made is also one that seems like it has the most potential, although it's not being put to much right now. Tech trees now have "leaves" and "branches" so can pick between going down a branch and reasearching a higher tier technology, or putting more research into a leaf of technology you've already discovered to get further benefits and upgrades. Ultimately it's not a whole hell of a lot different from just having a larger tech tree with more branches, but it makes things a bit more interesting and leaves room for upgrades that increase speed in reasearching leaves vs branches.

Affinities seem interesting on the surface but are basically just Ideologies + 1.

The ability to pick and chose your starting bonuses seems interesting at first, but really it just means there's only one defining difference between factions and everything else is more homogenous.

It feels like there's even less to do than there is in Civ V when it comes to managing your cities, so they've made up for this by giving you "quest decisions" every couple of turns to make you feel like you're doing something.

I'm sure that, like Civ V, this game will get better once it's got a few expansions under its belt, but for now save yourself the money and the disappointment and buy something else.