Recent reviews by Kurika

Even when it's frustrating, when you're trying to find where that one piece attaches to that one other piece, it's STILL one of the most relaxing games out there. Especially if, like me, you've assembled gunpla before. Does need a little bit tighter painting, but we can't have everything.

10/10, would clip from sprues again and again.

A fun little time sink. Reminds me of the Flash games that used to be available all over the internet back in the day. (Hush, I'm old.)

Hope we'll see even more quality work coming from this developer!

An excellent way to trigger PTSD from years working in tech support. Bring back memories of cleaning out computers coated with dust and sticky with cigarette residue. Fix computers broken in new and interesting ways while being given no more information than "it doesn't turn on any more." Grit your teeth in frustration at having to build a rig not to reasonable design specifications, but to hit an arbitrary benchmark score. Fun for hours!

...or you could play the free build mode and just, y'know, have fun randomly building. But where's the soul-scarring fun in that?

November 26, 2019 Update: I'm still playing this. I obviously must be having more fun than I initially thought. And despite what I originally wrote, I find that the "free build" setup is actually LESS useful than the career mode... because although you have access to absolutely everything, you don't have any data on any of it. The store page no longer exists (everything is treated as being in your inventory at all times), so there's no way to tell what sort of specs anything has any more when you're browsing through them... it's a little annoying, honestly.

So unless you're playing with one browser window open on another monitor to check specs on the parts you're playing around with, I guess... just grind your way through career mode so you can eventually have access to all of it through the store?

Anyway... the customers are still fairly idiotic. So there's that. But the plotline requests are a thing of hilarious beauty, so it's all sort of worth it in the end.

It's a very nice way to just pass some time when you don't feel like crushing empires, shooting baddies, or any of those other high-impact/high-stress ways of using Steam. Dev support seems very involved, with new free pics already added, and the price of the upcoming DLC seems reasonable.

The only minor complaints I can bring up would be that the music (while nice) can get a bit repetitive when you're doing a large picture (or just binge-coloring), and I'd love the addition of a fill tool (or even just a larger brush size) for some of the huge single-color sections. My wrist can only take so much repetitive motion when painting a mono-color background with nothing breaking it up.

In short, you could do far worse than picking up this FREE game.

Well then.

Normally not my type of game, what with the psychological horror tag and all that. But it ends... well, you'll have to play it to see how it ends, won't you?

And don't spoil things for other people.

Just.... don't. You won't be able to explain it anyway.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to start the game up again. There's someone waiting for me.

She's always waiting for me.

With this entry, Magic has obviously decided that it would like to tap into the Hearthstone market. Earning gold from daily quests, or from finishing tutorials, or even from doing the storyline quests, and utilizing that gold to purchase new cards... it's pretty much a direct copy. And that's not a bad thing, really.

I'm sure many veteran players find themselves a tad annoyed at being forced to play through the tutorials and initial storyline before being provided with any cards to form decks with and play against anyone else, but just look at it as a way to get some easy free gold. (And before you ask, I've been playing the physical card game since Revised.) It's quite easy to just read the text, click the button to Continue, finish the exceptionally easy puzzles, and move onwards with your rewards, there's no reason to complain about it. And it's teaching the people who AREN'T seasoned veterans necessary skills.

As to many of the complaints the other reviewers seem to have, quite a lot of them can be dealt with by simply going into the Options and tweaking the settings. Don't want to deal with the interminal damage animations? Turn them off. Want to make sure that the AI isn't taking control of your blocking, or automatically using abilities for you, or quite a lot of other "helper" sort of things that it has turned on by default? You can turn those off as well. It speeds things up considerably, and gives you far greater control. If you're not used to the intricacies of playing Magic just yet, then it's not necessarily a good idea to mess with the Options, but if you already know what you're doing then the vast majority of the Options can (and should) be disabled.

The card selection is definitely minimal compared to what we're used to in the other DotP offerings, but this is also a very early release that is specifically only covering one expansion. I would fully expect that when the next year's Core Set comes out, it is going to very quickly be added, and possibly further expansions after that-- but only if this first foray becomes profitable. The lack of including the 2015 Core Set is somewhat troubling, but understandable when you realize that they wouldn't want to impact sales of DotP 2015. It's always about the money.

Lack of chat between players is a bit of a downside, but they would seem to be going with the Hearthstone example again, where there is no chat in-battle there as well. If you're paired with a friend in a Two-Headed Giant game, you can shift-tab into the Steam overlay during your turn and discuss things with them, although that's more than a bit clunky. Setting up a voice chat ahead of time would be a better option, although still something that the player shouldn't have to fix on the developer's behalf. If you're randomly paired with someone, though, planning communication could definitely become an issue. But again, they're trying too hard to emulate Hearthstone, which has no reason to have such a communication system in place-- so they didn't bother creating it either.

So, to sum up... My experience with the game thus far has been fairly smooth, with none of the connection errors that have plagued other people. The AI suffers from the same artificial stupidity as ever, but this does mean that you'll be able to earn gold with the meager starting cards you get in order to increase your collection and then play against other people. The deck creation utilities are the same as DotP, so no surprise there. And I found the interface to actually be an improvement over DotP 2015, with no time limit countdown when you pause the game to cast instants (at least in single player mode), more fluid combat (without the giant chasm animation every time), and better handling (assuming you turn off the extraneous options).

It's definitely no MTGO, but it also doesn't cost any money to get more cards if you have time to waste, so there's that. I suppose a tentative thumbs-up for now, with a stronger one if they actually add a core set and more expansions.

I never learn.

I told myself after Civ: Beyond Earth that I wasn't going to pre-order any more of Sid Meier's games, that I was going to wait and see how they were recieved first and then make an informed decision. But the lure of Firaxis is not so easily resisted.

Sadly, in this case it should've been. The sirens have once again lured us all onto the rocks.

Now, full disclosure, I am writing this review with less than an hour of play time on this game under my belt. It honestly doesn't take all that long to get a feel for the game, I'm afraid. The entire thing was obviously designed for the mobile platform release first, and then reverse-engineered for the PC relese as an afterthought. It was bad enough when this was being done with console games...

The interface is a joke. The game starts off windowed, has no graphical settings to change other than setting it to "full-windowed" (And when IN "full-windowed" mode has no way to exit the game other than reverting to windowed mode or alt-f4... seriously, there is no "exit game" option on the menu.), and everything inside of the game was designed with a touchscreen in mind. And then there's the gameplay...

If you ever wanted a "simplified" version of a civ game, this is it. Tech tree? Nope. There's a set list of technologies, and you just level them up from one to six. If you get three of them to six, then you win a Science victory. Because you're smart. But what about unlocking buildings? Nope, there are set buildings ("Improvements") that you can make on planets. You build them, you upgrade them, they make more of resources as they're upgraded. You can build Wonders, if you stockpile a ton of Metal over a lot of turns, and then if you have enough of those you can win. You can win by standard Domination, but if you're playing against the AI be prepared for it to be its standard cheating self-- don't bother using cloaking devices. It will go straight for your position every single time even though it supposedly can't see you. (...why no, I'm not bitter.)

Planets have cities, cities produce metal, food, energy, science. You spend science to research tech. You spend metal to build improvements. You spend food to build new cities. You spend energy to build and upgrade ships. And... that's it. Everything else is going from planet to planet and fulfilling "missions" with your ships.

Oh, and they even managed to put one more annoying mobile thing in-- a limited amount of stamina! Yes, your fleet has a "morale" limit. It goes down each time you do missions, or travel. When it goes down, your crew becomes less effective. This keeps you from taking your potentially awesome ships of awesomeness from mission to mission, getting every planet to join your federation, all in the same turn.

Oh, wait, it's not really a turn. You don't hit "end turn", you hit "shore leave" in order to end your turn. It refills your morale. That's not made entirely clear, but that's what it does.

There's more I could bring up, but really I think you get the gist of it by this point. This is not a game worth spending $14.99 on. This is a mobile device time-waster that should be on an app store for $5 or so.

I suppose we can at least be glad that they didn't put the name "Civilization" anywhere near it.

I tried writing a longer review. Tried several times, in fact. But it all really boiled down to one thing:

If you are a fan of the original Borderlands, or of Borderlands 2, I would not recommend getting this game. You will probably be very disappointed, and find yourself constantly asking why things changed from those games to this one, and where it all went so very wrong.

...and also asking who thought that so many jumping sequences were a good idea.

A lot of reviews state that Beyond Earth is "unfinished", "unpolished", and similar words and phrases. And in many ways, they're correct. But there's a slightly more insidious truth to the statement as well.

Start up Civ V with all of the DLC expansions and play through a game. It's well-balanced, deep, intricate, and takes a good amount of effort and understanding to make it work. Now start up Civ V WITHOUT any of the DLC expansions.

Drastically different game, isn't it? Suddenly the balancing is gone, the depth has disappeared, even the use of culture points is different. You're playing something that seems... unfinished. Unpolished. Broken. It's not the full game yet.

That is what I feel is happening with Beyond Earth. It's not just the standard glitches and problems that every launch title ends up having, it's that people are comparing it to Civ V with the DLC, and not Civ V as it was when it initially came out. And it's an unfair comparison.

Beyond Earth is not a bad game when judged on its own merits. The graphics are clean, the tech tree is deep, the bugs (both literal and figurative) are not overwhelming. There are definitely aspects that need work; the interface is drastically in need of an overhaul, the civilopedia is missing critical information on some of the structures, some things are never explained at all, and there are graphical glitches here and there among the prettiness. But unfortunately it's never going to be judged on its own merits. It's going to be judged against Alpha Centauri (which, let's face it, people are viewing through rose-colored glasses) and against Civ V.

Having said all of that, though... the fact that we're going to be forced to wait for DLC in order to have a great game instead of merely a finished one does not lend itself to much of a positive review. So even though I still feel that Beyond Earth is being unfairly maligned, I cannot in good faith recommend purchasing it in the form it is now. At least not at full price.

Wait until the next sale, or even better wait until the first DLC and then get them both on sale.

**Edit 10/2/2014: A bit of information on the tech tree and my feelings on it added.**

Having played an ungodly amount of Endless Space, I of course was looking forward to Endless Legend. And overall, I'd have to say my experience has been a positive one-- but not without numerous potholes.

First, the positives: The graphics are gorgeous. Just totally amazing for a 4X game. Units move fluidly, resources sparkle invitingly, and the transition from summer to winter and back again is just lovely to watch. Then there's the level of customization you can get into with your armies.

It's basically the massive level of outfitting you could do with your ships in Endless Space... but with people! Mix-n-match older tech with new, or just put everyone in the shiniest stuff you can find, and upgrading is nice and easy (if ludicrously expensive sometimes). And the game is definitely engaging; my first playthrough was of the "okay, one more turn and THEN I go to bed-- oh, wait, I just won a score victory. Huh. That was 300 turns?" variety.

The quest system keeps things fairly fresh throughout the game as well, as it gives you something to actually work towards instead of just the standard "build stuff, build armies, kill everyone" or "build stuff, research things, wait for end of game" ideas. You have a series of tangible goals, with rewards, and can even get massively advanced technology through them. And it can make pacifying those locals with parley much more of a rewarding endeavour than just beating them until they stop moving.

However, there are a fair amount of balancing negatives to look out for: Remember those gorgeous graphics? Yeah, I'm going to be turning those down for my next playthrough. The transition effect for the season change is lovely, true, but it also causes some lag when you've got the graphics maxed out. And maxing the graphics also doesn't help with the next complaint...

There's no mini-map. At all. You would think that a mini-map would be standard for a 4X game, yes? Well, you don't get one. In order to move around the map, you can either drag the viewpoint around (which, on high graphics settings, causes the aforementioned lag), or zoom all the way out to the 2D map representation, scroll to where you want to be, and then zoom back in. A total waste of time that could be avoided with a simple mini-map somewhere.

Battles are also...odd. After playing through several of them, I fail to see why anyone would use anything other than ranged units. For any battle. Ranged units with high enough initiative, on high ground, can slaughter anything else. Even if not on higher ground, they're still going to take out most of the opposing army before anyone else even gets a turn. It just seems fairly broken. I acknowledge this may need more playtesting on my part, though.

Then there's the problem that Endless Legend has with giving you information on how to actually PLAY it. Don't feel like reading the manual? Then you, my friend, are going to have a VERY hard time playing this game. "But the tutorial will tell me everything I need to know, right?" Wroooong. The tutorial completely leaves out several important things, not least of them the highly important district/city center upgrade procedure, how trade routes happen, how to use ANY of the special abilities for the various races (And no, they're not particularly self-explanatory. For instance, the Vaulters information in-game just says that they can designate a Holy Resource. Several techs say they need a Holy Resource. Nothing bothers to tell you that you have to activate a booster effect on a resource to designate it as "holy".), and the rather important bit of information that only one city can be placed per region, so you'd better be dang sure that you're putting it in the right spot. Or even what a "region" is, other than just referring to them.

And if you try to open up the Archives in-game, thinking it's the equivalent of the Civilopedia? It minimizes the game and takes you to the Endless Legend Wiki. And that may or may not have anything useful for you.

There's one more major thing that I've decided counts as a negative, and it's enough to warrant an edit to my original review. I originally just thought that the tech tree idea was "original, but a bit rubbish", and not terribly impressive, but after further thought and a few more tests, it is my opinion that it really does need an overhaul. Now, I realize that many players treat the tech tree as an afterthought, merely a way to get their new weapons to beat other civs over the head with, but to me the tech tree is one of the main parts of the game. And Endless Legend downright punishes you for using it.

The tree is split into six ages. You start in Age 1, obviously. After nine technologies are researched, you advance one age. This seems all well and good, but there's a catch; it's not just "nine technologies from the previous age." It's ANY nine technologies. Research nine technologies from Age 1, unlock Age 2, and then want to get the rest of Age 1 that you haven't researched yet? Congrats, you're progressing towards Age 3! That may not seem so bad at first, but then you hit the second catch: every time you advance an Age, the technologies from the PREVIOUS ages become MORE EXPENSIVE. Yes, that's right. Suddenly, in the more advanced ages, it becomes harder to learn how to make more primitive things.

Now, I'm guessing they put this feature in to make sure that people couldn't rush to the Sixth and Final Age just by researching lower-end techs, but you know what would've been an even simpler fix? Make it so that the nine techs you have to research to advance an Age can only come from the Age directly prior to it. Not particularly difficult to implement, one would think. And it would allow you to have a little more time to actually get all of the techs your civilization needs, rather than having to rush through and try to pick out nine per Age before they skyrocket in price.

Now, you may have noticed that one of those negatives is fixed by reading the manual, another is (potentially) fixed by turning the graphics down, and another may not be a problem if more playtesting reveals other strategies to work better than just all-ranged-all-the-time. So yes, overall I'm rather happy with Endless Legend. It's no Endless Space, and it's no Civ V, but it is something sort of halfway between the two. I'm not terribly impressed with how they messed up the technology tree, and I'd like quite a bit of refinement with things like starting position and a few other minor gripes, but overall it's a good way to spend the time until Civ: Beyond Earth comes out.

...c'mon, you know we're all thinking it.