Recent reviews by magnaƒerox

A hell of a game

Despite the steep difficulty curve, that borders a little on frustration, this game is very fun!
An amazing mix of great design, excellent execution, and one of the best art styles I've ever seen.

+ Basics are very clear to understand but there are many deep and complex interaction and actions to take.
+ rearranging your companions and recalling them being free actions adds so much depth to all fights
+ Many interesting deckbuilding synergies and combos are possible* (caveats below)
+ Amazing artstyle.
+ Hilarious theming combos of art + names.
+ Great music.
+ A nice thematic surprise awaits when defeating the final stage* (caveats spoilered below)
+ All interactions feels crafted and polished to perfection with amazing feedback and juice
+ Many QoL polish features that other games take for granted
+ good controller support (options for alternate button glyphs for PS controllers would be nice)
+ steam cloud sync saves
+ sane install size

- daily challenge being fixed seed unfairly benefits people who wait till late in the day and watch the results of other people doing the challenge, e.g. this item available here, that companion available there, they can then minmax OP synergies.

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The only other gamewide issue I can think of balancing feels somewhat off, many other reviews cite this, but dont really elaborate so I will share things that I've thought about while playing.

- The face value of many cards is low, but the last stages seem to be balanced to be unwinnable without having some good luck in forging OP synergies.
- OP Synergies are a definite potential, but the deckbuilding limitations during each stages makes those quite rare.
- RNG of spawning particular events along between fights curbs forwards planning: e.g. as the clunkmasters / Snowdwellers it is almost always a detriment to keep all the starting copies of scrappy sword or gearhammer, but the ability to remove / add consume to them is very down to chance, and I've seen nothing that would synergise with keeping all the copies.
- Picking certain offered companions early is a roll of the dice to whether you get charms or support companions to enable them to be good. This plays off the above point that many cards are not good enough to be used past early stages by default, but very quickly become extremely powerful if any only if combined with very specific things.
- All the above combined sums up to there being far too many stars that need to align to survive to the end, let alone beat the final stages. Other games in the genre offer a bit more generosity in the levers available to tip the RNG of deckbuilding in your favour, AND have way less moving parts in a battle to reduce the number of deaths to player mistakes. The moving parts add a lot of enjoyable tactics to each battle, but the RNG of deckbuilding being slightly too miserly compounds the difficulty here to be a bit too much.
- Spoilers for after winning the last stage Your winning party replacing the previous boss is a very cool idea, however depending on the makeup of that winning combo you might be making your future playthroughs miserable. It seems that only companions cards are kept in the boss fight and not items, this means that winning with a team that heavily leans on item cards for power leaves a weaker bossfight to take on next time, but if you win with companions that have a lot of inherent power from charms you are dooming yourself to extremely hard future bosses. This also spoils some deckbuilding and planning, disincentivising winning by having a strong hero or companions.

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This game is still amazing despite all the balancing feedback and deserves to be recommended. The balancing is something that I think is very fixable with tweaks to the stages, such as the number of inbetween fight stops, what those things offer to you, shop stock and other event related things.

This is a steam port, the craftsdwarfship is of the highest quality. It is encrusted with fun. It menaces with spikes of fun.

meh

I could play this...ALL...NIGHT...LONG...

Archnemesis, is dead! nyeh heh heh!
and now is the time to declare this game recommended.

The game Thief reboot wished it was, and you're a goblin.

Pro:
complex level designs allow for creativity in achieving goals.
new abilities, esp the clone add a lot to the sneak em up formula.
Non-standard protagonist, with entertaining character and good voice acting.
Story seems pretty interesting.
Cons:
Standard stealth game AI isnt a big leap forward from other recent titles like Thief/Dishonored
whilst an overall visually appealing game there are some rough edges on the graphics
some people may find the scarcity of autosave points an annoyance