Recent reviews by Kithop

First off - this plays totally fine out of the box on the Steam Deck, without needing Proton, and it does feel like a pretty great experience for a retro-style platformer. If you squint, you could imagine this being a... Well, maybe a little spicy for the GBA, but it fits that portable vibe.

This feels like a love letter to Super Mario Bros 3 (with a little nod to Super Mario World here and there - without spoiling it, I *just* reached the 2nd world map and immediately cracked a smile at the riff on an old familiar friend 😋). The physics are meant to be broadly similar, there's a... not-P meter, your character holds her arms out when at full speed... if you played SMB3, you know the drill. However, different powerup options, and neat little touches (I see you, Celeste-esque air dash section :3 ) all make it feel more than just a 'what if?' sequel or level pack.

The inclusion of different difficulty settings, including a no-penalty 'oops, you fell in a pit, how about we respawn you on a temporary movable cloud so you can find a safe landing spot and continue', is a very welcome addition. While I'm sure I *could* 'get good', and I have an inkling the speedrunning community could be all over this, it's got a cute enough (and queer!) storyline going on that I actually want to see more of, incentivizing further play.

Gosh, and on that - actual story writing that makes you *want* to keep playing, instead of reach for the volume controls and/or skip button (of which, both are available to you!). Speaking of volume, dialogue is voice acted as well. Maybe a little bit anachronistic considering the era being echoed (unless you count the likes of contemporary systems like the SegaCD/MegaCD, my beloved), but I don't think bitcrushing it to fit virtual limitations would have been the right idea either.

And the cherry on top is the extensive sounding modding support - beyond my skillset and expertise, to be clear, but I'm excited to see what the community cooks up here. This could be a big one.

If you're of the age to remember the source material being referenced, this is a gem. Even if you're not, this is a solid retro-style platformer with an adorable main cast and cute story to reel you in.

Pretty much my most-played game in my library at this point - it's not perfect; it definitely has its quirks and limitations that I don't foresee changing any time soon, if ever (e.g. 'max speeds', no standing in a moving ship without getting thrown through solid blocks regardless of the presence of any gravity generation, no physics collision damage at all, etc.), and some others that may still be improved (mouse sensitivity/scaling when ADS, particularly at high zoom levels, the XP system/tech tree unlocks that feel like needless grind sometimes), but it's got the right blend of your typical survival, mining, building thing and decent enough combat to at least scratch my personal itch. Other games come close - there's probably an apt comparison to something like Space Engineers - but Empyrion's had FPS combat and such a lot longer, and they're divergent enough that if you don't like one, you may like the other instead.

I've spent most of my time playing this on Linux via Steam Play Proton with great success (add 'PROTON_USE_WINED3D=1' to your launch options if you have framerate issues like I did), though I've had to run a Windows VM to host my own multiplayer server. EAC is not supported under Linux, though. (Check out user reports on ProtonDB: https://www.protondb.com/app/383120 )

I'm a pure PvE player in a private group of friends, so I can't speak to the PvP or 'big server' experience, but the faction mechanics, offline protection, per-zone configurable PvP, and general moddability/extensibility looks like it could support some really interesting long progression type servers.

PvE Points-of-Interest are varied, even though after a while you may see the same buildings and start to memorize their layouts. The procedural generation reminds me a lot of my other favourite game, 7 Days to Die, in that it designates zones and then plops in buildings and such from a pool. Said procedural generation makes a *big* galaxy by default, too, though you don't *need* to go beyond your home system if you don't want to; all of your raw resources and materials are in-system, though they'll be behind jumps to other planets in said system.

You can also still play this single player and have a decent enough experience, but like most survival-build-craft games, it's more fun with friends. Maybe one day I'll try messing around on some of the bigger servers, to see how people expand to fill said galaxy. ;)

There are *severe* performance regressions on Linux that don't seem to be getting addressed any time soon.

That said, my friends who play on Windows have steadily watched their average framerates drop, and drop, and drop with each successive patch.

We wiped and restarted our server with the new map, "The Centre", because it *wasn't* developed in-house, and it helped... at first. Until that got updated by the in-house devs.

I have an: i7-4790K, 32GB RAM, GTX 980, 1TB SSD - and the regression is so bad that I can't get more than 3 or 4 FPS on the absolute *lowest* graphics settings.

My friend with an AMD A10-7890K APU went from a solid 20fps down to 14.

Maybe when they finish optimizing for their upcoming console release (and realise that yes, the underpowered consoles are basically little AMD APU PCs), and those optimizations come back to the PC builds, I might be able to actually pick this game up again and play it, but until then, I can't recommend it until the devs actually put a *lot* more effort into getting the performance up where it needs to be, and making sure that changes (like the never-ending stream of new dinos and biomes and other content) don't cause such severe regressions that make the game (and thus said new content) completely unplayable. :(

It sure is a *pretty* slideshow, though...

I've sunk some time into this one - still figuring it out. It reminds me a bit of the 4X games like Civilization, but with a much bigger focus on diplomacy and trade. It seems a touch more realistic in that if you go around angrily stomping on your neighbours, they will form a coalition against you to keep you in check, and you can easily find yourself running out of cash and manpower to keep it up.

It's also a bit more freeform in that there's no real 'win' scenario - you just keep going until you're either completely wiped out, or you hit the hard time limit in the 1700s, so it's got a bit more of a sandbox feel in that regard.

Despite the name, too, it's not just about Europe - this has a complete world map and you can choose to play as just about anyone in those time periods - even the various Native American tribes (though with a severe handicap - this is like 'hard mode') and twist history around so you're the one coming across and 'colonizing' Europe. Or you can start as one of the various clans in Japan and fight to unify it, and expand your reach outward, etc.

There *are* some crashing bugs we've had playing multiplayer, but the game does autosave every year by default. It could use some polish in that regard, but it's a solid timesink and definitely a lot more fun multiplayer (though the single player is still decent on its own with lots of replayability). 7.5/10