Recent reviews by Linux_user404

This is a great game with DLCs, yet somewhat different from the XCOM: EU/EW. The setting is less serious than the previous game. At first it didn't feel like that game was properly communicating to the player its mechanics, the strategic ones. There are many things to scan on the map, some would disappear, others would stay, some have to be interrupted and it is not clear what would happen afterwards. Events often pop up when the scan is almost finished... Like there is 1 second left to scan and there is an urgent mission - is that a bug? It seems that every missing triggers a new scan being available also the new scan is available if the previous one has finished. One could also completely discard those scans and scan one of the bases instead. This scanning mechanics was very confusing for me personally. Similar mixed impressions I had from story mission. Narrative says they are urgent, yet I can just ignore them for as long as I want, mostly because my crew isn't ready enough to go on a mission. If I play with WOTC I would have to chose integrated content for the balance, but it would skip the interesting story mission from Alien Hunters(which isn't clear from the integrated content description). I also miss the opportunity to complete squad of faction soldiers unless I am very low on soliders, So basically it seems I can't get multiple squads of faction soldiers at the same time. On the other hand game seems to give the player some good options, when he is about to loose. So playing on ironman is interesting - things are getting difficult, hard and it is often possible to recover even if it feels like the game is lost. When I played on Classic difficulty on Ironman I almost lost the game with getting the avatar project counter time being resumed multiple times and barely made it when it almost reached 0. I thought the game was lost, but no - I was able to recover and completely revert(except for the timer) the avatar progress to 0. Ironman Classic difficulty is mandatory to play to understand this game. Without playing this difficulty the player is tempted to reload to early after the failure and would miss lots of the content in the game. There is also some depth, which unfolds only there. Before I played on Ironman I would take every mission and would reload it until the mission is successful. When every encounter is a success, some strategic points of what would be the right decision and what would be the wrong is often missed as well as the implications of such decisions. Also if the player just reloads on failure, he would completely miss the strategic decisions about evacuations and when the mission has to be aborted. I have only attempted the ironman after couple hundred hours in game and I would say I rediscovered the game. In WOTC one might raid the chosen and loose. That's part of the game that would be just missed if player can reload. The raid of the chosen is as the narrative says is a ONE time opportunity. If it is lost however, it will haunt the player till the end of the game across MULTIPLE missions. All those dialogues and jokes would be missed entirely if the player simply avoids failure by reloads rather than accepting them, recovering from the mistakes and learning. Missions without evac opportunity also bring some strategic considerations that would be missed otherwise. If losses and failures are possible, one has to think about how to minimize them. It is one thing to lose a soldier on a mission and the other to loose entire squad because of a single mistake. Some mission are basically traps, so you would be tempted to risk your higher ranks despite the lack of evac and the risk of ambush. The reward is high, almost too good to be true - IT'S A TRAP! How would you realize its a trap if you don't fail? Some tasks would require a very specific soldier to accomplish. For example taking down a "very powerful" alien or chosen is best done by someone with a very specific weapon and skills. So even if you risk the soldier and it dies in action you would still have to evac his body to recover that specific weapon, which you gonna need later. Not all failures are the same, from some it is easier to recover than from others, and some are permanent(non-reproducible weapons/armors). Significant part of the game mechanics seems to be about strategic decisions and about recovering from the mistakes. There is a lot of content in the game and it might surprise you even after many hours of gameplay.

Better than the original, works in Linux with Steam Proton. Not sure if it is just me, but there were some second long silences in the audio in the game.

Things I like. The art in game is amazing, dialogues are good as well as the plot. Traps are fun. Lots of objectives and side stories, yet it is possible to rush the game skipping all the optional content. Achievements are nice - inspire the exploration of the game content. Some fancy animations are really cool. Loot items have perks. These perks are quite fancy and interesting. I really appreciate the amount of content this game has.

Things I didn't like. UI could have been much better. I'd like to have a hotkey to turn the power on/off for structures, a hotkey to remove/sell items, or even select a region to sell. It is just way to many clicks needed for some very common repetitive tasks. Same for taging agents. I have to click on the agent to select it, then using mouse hover to the applicable tag and click it. I would expect having an active tag(activated with a hot key) and then just clicking the agents to assign tag to them. I would expect seeing the agent info by hovering the mouse over it. Way to much clicking and moving the mouse around for the most trivial stuff!!!
I would like to rotate the camera using the hot keys when building items in the rooms. Loosing the keys for rotation when building is counter intuitive and just uncomfortable.
Progression through the game requires some guessing. What are the conditions to get the side objectives for the loot items? I felts like I was doing all the optional stuff, but still didn't get some loot items and missed some henchmens. The order of main and non-main goals isn't clear and is confusing.

Things I am not sure about. Character traits. Every minion has some traits. I guess it adds something extra to the game, it appears there are some bonuses and debuffs. Yet it is a bit confusing, some appear to be purely artistic, others seem to have effect. Minions are expandable mostly, yet there is some micromanagement elements present, which seem to all get messed up as soon as I send minions to a mission.

Overall thoughts. The game is great in terms of content, quality, technical perspective and the most complicated in my opinion things are done well. Yet it lacks some final polishing, tweaking game balance, UI friendliness and other gameplay features. This is a great piece or art to enjoy, and a fun game to play, yet experienced gamers will find it frustrating at times.

There are things I like and things I don't like in this game. I have gotten and completed all the DLCs. I have also completed Dungeons 2.

I start from the things I didn't like.
The trailer shows a nice movie - that is just an ad in the store. There are no such animations in the game. After some missions(not all) you are shown a partially animated 2d cartoon. No 3d animations like in the trailer, nothing like that in the game.
Dungeons... There were dungeons in Dungeons 2, but in Dungeons 3 there is just 1 dungeon in each of the missions. It was fun to visit and explore dungeons other than your own in Dungeons 2, nothing like that here. There are no other dungeons.
User interface. It is quite different from other games in this genre and it covers way to much space on the screen.
Steam achievements. You'll get 100% by just completing the main campaign with all the bonus objectives regardless of the difficulty. That's it. No achievements for DLCs, no achievements for higher difficulties and no achievements for exploring game mechanics or completing the missions the hard way(by not following the narrator's direction). Compared to Dungeons 2 the steam achievements here are meaningless.

Things I liked.
There is an in-game manual, where creatures have stats and it becomes clear how they should be used. The upgrades and tech tree mechanics is well thought and works really well.
Traps are more interesting and nicer than in Dungeons 2. There are also iconic mechanics, which were kinda missing in the previous game. Torture chamber, converted heroes, skeletons, temple and sacrifices. Those are well thought, fit naturally in the setting and seem not to break the balance.
DLCs are nice, they introduce new mechanics and we get to play as heroes. The visuals and mechanics introduced are great. I also liked the plot and the narrator story. I think it is really nice and hilarious. I've had 150 hours of joy playing through all the missions, though it probably can be completed much faster. There is also an in-game reward to finding all the golden pickaxes, so it makes up a bit for the disappointment with the achievement system. I have spent up to 3 hours in some of the missions, that is how good the overall game play is in the game.
Lots and lots of new and actually cool mechanics.

Things I don't know what to think about.
Temple and sacrifices. It seems too random. Manual does not say much about it ether. This is an interesting and cool mechanics, yet it kinda creates confusion instead of predictable rewards. I would expect it to be used as the late game means of obtaining the ultimate composition of creatures and bonuses, but it is clearly not the case.
Co-op mode for every single mission in the campaign, DLCs and skirmishes. Sounds cool, but I don't have a friend to play this with.
Game allows to build really cool and nice labyrinths with traps, which would be nice to test with some boss attacks on the dungeons. Unfortunately there are no such bosses and attacks. Some can be immune to traps, while all others die on the first couple of them. I wish there was some tough guy attacking the dungeon to be smashed repeatedly and tossed around with the help of the Hand of Terror and experience the full potential of the labyrinth of death I've built just for him.

Works on Linux, looks great, sufficiently optimized. I got the Platinum Edition. The base game overwhelms the player with mechanics, content, abilities plus there is some plot and also encourages you to go to multiplayer. It also does not communicate well to the player. Story says that I have to run all the time, but killing enemies gives me experience and almost every single one of them drops loot. It also says that exploring the environment is crucial for surviving. So it gives contradictory goals of rushing and exploring/looting. However there is a DLC - Hellraid. In that DLC your character can't craft things and the economy as well as mechanics is simplified. No more lots of ingredients, recipes, repairable/upgradable weapons, the loot is in plain sight and with less items the loot is either consumable in battle, a weapon or currency. The setting is different, really enjoyable gameplay focused on running, hitting, smashing etc. That single DLC is enough reason to play the game, Reminds me of good old Blade of Darkness, but with significantly better visual, juicier battles and fatalities. There are other mods and multiplayer which I have not explored yet. Without DLCs this game is just good(because the gameplay is confusing), with them it is beyond my expectations.

Totally worth the money if you get all the episodes. Works in Linux flawlessly. In the first 2 episodes there were couple of places where the player could take some contradictory actions and trick other characters to says thing which would not fit in the plot. Trying to do similar thing in later episodes results in some interesting and hilarious comments from your character.
The plot is really nice and brings things together eventually into a finished story, voice acting, animation and texts are superb, as well as the design of some levels. I really appreciated the game only when I got though all of it. The last episodes that finish the story are really touching and made me cry a few times. It was a wonderful emotional experience trying to make the right choices as they get harder and harder towards the end. They did put a lot of art in the game about art, which is an art of its own. I would say this game is a masterpiece.

This is one weird somewhat puzzle game. Works in Linux flawlessly. Not sure if everyone would enjoy it, but I did. As a software developer I see lots of cool and interesting decisions here. The game isn't long and you will die a lot unless you know all the answers beforehand.

This game is similar to Dungeon Keeper 2 and Stanley Parable. It feels like good old Dungeon Keeper, but it is quite different in many aspects. I would say this game is inspired by Dungeon Keeper and something like warcraft. I appreciate how user friendly this game is. Complicated hidden mechanics seems not present here, everything is pretty obvious and straightforward. Visuals are really eye pleasing and made with lots of tiny details. The game is not punishing, but encourages you to make rather stupid decisions to hear the commentary and potentially increase the difficulty. That's actually a lot of fun. One of those games where you get emotionally rewarded for loosing the tutorial level. They did a really good work thinking this game through and filling with dialogues. There are lots of corner cases in this game, which are appropriately filled with content. Being the absolute evil and one-hitting everything with 666 AoE DMG makes perfect sense.

I would recommend this game if it was early access. It is nice and fun, works in Linux, etc. But the game is NOT FINISHED! Lots and lots of glitches, no music, game mechanics are not polished, some menu buttons are missing text, UI fails sometimes to properly render itself. Placing a building sometimes leaves the brush on the map until you pick another building and discard, planes can fly backwards and sideways, as well as cars... Cool idea, cool game mechanics, etc, but bugs are killing all the fun. And I am not even trying to push the game to its limits. All my builds so far were really simple - 1 terminal, a couple of gates, under around 50 employees in total, Building a nice airport takes time. I was playing, building, selling, for a few iterations and then my workmen just decided not to build anything anymore... Not cool... Some AI got broken and the player cannot progress. Pax also get stuck sometimes on escalators. All your flights can get cancelled because some piece of baggage got stuck somewhere(plane can depart leaving all baggage and some people behind, but it can depart if it is missing just 1 bag!?!? Really?!?!). I am dedicating some time to build something nice and complete the achievements and then some random glitch pops out to ruin all the work I have been doing. I work as a software developer and this software is just not finished as if it was abandoned in the middle of the development process... Did they even have a QA team? Or testers maybe? Or did they decide to fire all the devs after the first internal release? I would really like them to complete the game or at least honestly say it is early access or something. One of the in-game windows moved slightly outside of the boundary, so it was not closable... Luckily there is an option in the gameplay menu to reset all the game windows to their default positions... It would be nicer if there was just a hot key to close the unwanted window, which close button went out of view...

EDIT: Well, I have completed the game and got all the achievements. Saving and reloading the game usually fixes all those minor glitches the game has.

This game is great. It really sets the atmosphere for someone mature and has a nice plot. The mechanics are also nice as well as the difficulty range and options. It works on Linux natively and flawlessly. There is only one downside, which is probably just a matter of taste. It rushes the player through the plot and lacks the strategic aspect of building multiple bases like in the previous X-COM games. DLC's are really nice - they add that extra immersive atmosphere and some mechanics that naturally fit the setting.

So I have completed the game and got all the achievements. This is a really nice well made game. No bugs, no glitches, works in Linux, good level design, nice puzzles, intuitive game play, simple story, great sound and particle effects. There are no difficulty settings, no twists, so I don't see the potential for replayability. This is a game just for one night. I really enjoyed it! Hm, speedrunning this should be fun I think.