Recent reviews by κattehus

It's a pretty - and cute - game, with a fair share of flaws. Perfect for short sessions!

I forced my way through this game in what was, in essence, a single long session. Deiland is very cute, but it was constantly pushing back, trying to tell me to enjoy the scenery instead of forcing progression.
At times, it feels like an idle game - crops and berries are based on (real world) timers - and trying to force it just makes for a frustrating experience.
The quests seem straight-forward, but sometimes you'll be stuck on a quest from person X because you haven't unlocked something but the game doesn't tell you how to unlock it! (Turns out, you just have to do quests for someone else for a while)

I flip-flopped between being annoyed and pleased with Deiland. The characters are cute and the story is enjoyable, but the gameplay can be obtuse.
Overall I thought it was a fun experience, and I will recommend it with the caveat that you probably shouldn't play for more than 20-30 minutes at a time.

If you enjoyed Shadow of Mordor, you'll enjoy Shadow of War.

The Nemesis system is a lot of fun - unfortunately, it only really shines if you have a tendency to die. Die too much, however, and your enemies will become too strong for it to be enjoyable. It's a hard balance and it's sad that you have to maintain this delicate balance to get the most enjoyment out of the system.

Overall, the story was ok - the characters play their part, and seeing the differences between them (and their viewpoints) is enjoyable, if predictable. I enjoyed the end of the story a fair bit.
The biggest obstacle to the story is, of course, that you can spend a lot of time not interacting with it - simply running around taking over fortresses/orcs (which is a large part of the story, sure). It's the same-old problem as most open-world games have; although at least taking over fortresses plays into the story here.

Sieging fortresses also need balance; you can infiltrate a fortress prior to a siege, rendering it (mostly) a walk in the park - or you can up the challenge by deciding to infiltrate less (or not at all). Unfortunately the overlord fights are somewhat lacking in excitement, rather than being a cherry on top. The online conquest makes up for this a little, as it removes the ability to infiltrate the fortress beforehand.
Defending fortresses is harder as you cannot infiltrate an assaulting force prior to the assault, but they're easier with a bit of planning (siege upgrades). The most unfortunate part of defending is the mass combat, the controls for fighting big crowds aren't exactly great - and your warlords will fall and start to bleed out; forcing you to rush around the battlefield trying to take out enemies whilst healing your minions (if you're not interrupted by a grunt deciding to throw a spear at you..)

Overall, it's an enjoyable game with some flaws (certain "boss" fights are terrible and don't even get me started on Pit Fights).
Certainly worth playing.

Great idea - looked like a fair amount of fun.
Too bad execution isn't there. Physics feels flimsy, which I suppose is the point (given that it was inspired by Surgeon Simulator), but it needs a lot more polish.

"I need something to open this."

I played this through to the first crash-to-desktop, at which point I decided I wasn't having fun with it enough to re-do all of it up to that point (about half-wayish or something, according to walkthroughs).

This game has not aged well. The graphics are shoddy and the animations are, well, bad. The dialogue is putrid and very dry, which seems very unlike Doyles' Holmes. The sound of the game is quite good, although the dubbing is dull and lacking of any real... Character.

Most of the game is your standard point and click "find hidden item, use X with Y to do Z and then maybe find something useful". There was a time where I had more patience with that sort of game, but this just seems needlessly complicated. Find all the pieces to be able to find the puzzle, so you can do the puzzle and move on to the next room. Boring. Nothing is really complex or challenging - at least once you've figured out what you actually need to pick up.

Speaking of things to pick up, that's one point I really like.. Some other reviews noted this as a bad thing, but I really love that the items you need don't "stand out" more than any other. That philosophy is brilliant, and, had there been fewer things to pick up, it really helped the game along with regards to immersion.

There's not much else to say about this, really. The game is dull and features way too many "This door is locked" or "I need something to open this" lines. I'm a big fan of Doyle's Holmes, and that Holmes would, quite likely, just have bypassed those locks in some ingenious way - not just looked around for a bit and hope to stumble upon the key.

So, I just finished this game and.. It wasn't that good.

Firstly, the game is more-or-less built to be played with a controller. The camera-work is neat and all, but it moves around in such a way that just doesn't feel natural with keyboard/mouse. Which is weird, as it wasn't released on console (...According to Wikipedia) and it still has "save-points" and the like, which are(/were) typically signs of a console game.

I played the game over three sessions, the first two of which lasted only half an hour/quarter of an hour, simply because I got bored of the game. The button-mashing was too much and the combat wasn't that great. Only in the last session did I "truck through" and play for a whopping hour and a half, and then the game was done.

The combat is nothing to speak of, with just a handful of combos (of which 'block+jump', 'block+interact', 'block+light-attack' and 'block+heavy-attack' being the majority) and a few (quite satisfying!) finisher-moves, that boiled down to either weird QTEs (which were, at times, notoriously hard to pull off because the game'd be too quick to register your first "command" and then you'd fail the QTE) or automatic KO's.
The bosses are, at first, interesting - but their moveset is way too easy to figure out, and then they become ludicrously easy.

The graphics are subpar, with a lot of visual artifacts. Animations are, at times, pretty wonky and there are places where it's possible to see through the terrain.
The camera moves by itself, which is probably for the best w.r.t. the graphics of the game.

The "levels" were very linear, although there are secrets (health-increasing bitbobs) that can be found by "exploring" a few hidden crannies here and there. The checkpoints seemed spread out quite generously, except for the few places where a mistake in your platforming would mean death.
Speaking of the platforming, it was fairly dull and easy - with the controls being the major reason of dying.

The story is okay-ish, but I could not stand the voice-work and the constantly repeating "combat track", although the three/five-ish instrumentals were pretty decent, they certainly lacked variety.

As an aside: The achievements seem fairly buggy. They (seemingly) only "count" your latest playthrough, as I got the "complete the game with no gameovers" achievement, although I know I died at points (but maybe that's just me not dying enough to not have a "continue"? I didn't see any indication of this, though). I also got the "Kill both Vlamboor without getting hit" achievement, but didn't get "Kill Vlamboor without getting hit". Who knows?

All in all, I wouldn't recommend this game. It's dull and subpar. Sure, if you _really_ need to kill three hours, but then, there's plenty of other indie games out there that are better. The legend of Garshasp deserves better than this game.