Recent reviews by LictorXIX

I typically do not write reviews for Early Access titles because so much can change between when the review is written and when the game is actually declared "finished," but I am totally willing to make an exception here.

If you like citybuilders, this game is right up your alley. At the time of this writing, the devs have a very strong skeleton in place and are working hard to flesh things out and balance the different systems. There currently is a lot of guesswork involved because the tutorials don't teach you everything you need to know to get a city up and running, but once I finally got the hang of things and watched some Let's Plays to better fine tune my colony, I became addicted.

This is quite the little gem, but it's not without its problems. I think the price point is perfect for what you ultimately get here, and I do have to hand it to the dev for pulling off an Action RPG using the RPG Maker engine.

Pro:
-fun concept
-oldschool Action RPG feel
-"diet Pokemon" pet system
-Business simulation is nicely tuned
-Developer currently seems dedicated to fixing bugs and applying polish

Con:
-control response is like a snail moving through maple syrup
-have to switch desktop resolution to run the game in fullscreen
-One background music piece on constant loop

EDITED

I'm going to be frank and say this game is not perfect. It's far from it, and it really should be labelled as Early Access. Putting this game on an arbitrary ten point scale, I'd score it around a 3. I originally gave this game a down vote, and I do strongly urge potential buyers to do their own research and know what you're getting in to.

However, the concept alone is something fresh and is a breath of fresh air on Steam. The developer also keeps a close ear on the forums and is taking the criticism and suggestions offered to heart. As long as the developer keeps putting in the effort to fix things, they'll have my confidence.

I cannot recommend Darkest Dungeon enough. Art and sound design have a great synergy, plot is a little thin but would make Lovecraft proud.

I can see where the nuts and bolts would cause some people to think the game is in need of rebalancing, but as with any decently designed Rougelite, there *is* a system, a method to the madness, that can be sussed out to help make things a little easier for you. One of the key factors with doing even halfway decent here is finding a balance in the risk vs. reward with the different game elements, and it's something you have to learn on your own according to your play style. I managed to log in about five hours before I finally suffered my first PC deaths, and it was mostly because I rushed in to a boss quest with an unoptimized party build because my main work horses were all out of commission healing up back in town.

There are a few tweaks I would make to help make rendering blood sacrifices to RNGesus less necessary (mostly adjustments to Accuracy), but it's not in need of a major overhaul.

Dive in and go mad. MAD, I SAY!

Textures are buggy (even had a few missing skyboxes), graphics aren't optimized and have horrible FPS stuttering. Load times are horrendous. AI pathing in combat is sketchy on any map with rugged terrain, even saw several instances of soldiers just playing through the marching animation without going anywhere.

This needs a major, and I mean major overhaul.

Graphics: 2D setup that combines the detail of Shadow Complex and the art style of Limbo. Everything is dark and brooding, which really sets the overall tone. Their lighting system is a thing of beauty as well: rays of light shine through broken walls and windows, fire barrels give a nice ominous glow in the night.

Audio: Somber acoustic guitar soundscapes reminiscent of The Last Of Us play during the day, and the night scavenging missions feature very tense, suspenseful string and synth arrangements. Environmental sound effects like artillery shells landing and the crack of sniper fire constantly remind you that you're never really safe.

Controls: Point and click adventure style. You navigate around the environment by clicking where you want to go, objects you can interact with in the environment have their own separate icon. While in the safehouse, you control each character independently by selecting their character photo then giving them their own commands. Navigating the menu system is simple and straightforward.

Gameplay: Everything is randomly generated at the start, so no play through is the same. The safehouse sequences are fairly routine. Build this, repair that, eat, rest. The game really comes alive when night falls and you have to decide what to do with your survivors. Sickness, hunger, and injury are very serious threats to your group, and losing anyone significantly increases your risk of having the whole thing come crashing down on you. Managing your survivors is key to getting through the siege. There's also significant danger when it comes to the overall scavenging: rolling over those weaker than you and taking everything they have makes you a target for vigilantes and decreases morale, and some of the more well-stocked areas tend to be heavily guarded by hostile military forces and other survivor groups who have no compunctions about killing anyone who sets foot on their turf.

My one major complaint is the lack of a tutorial or tool hints on the environmental icons. It doesn't take too long to figure stuff out, but the initial learning curve can lead to some restarts. There are very few bugs, which is always a plus.

Overall Score: 9/10

Take the original Binding of Isaac (which is one of my personal favorite rougelikes), improve on what little shortcomings it had, redesign the graphics and sound, and this is the result.

I can't speak highly enough of this game. If you haven't purchased this already, you are doing yourself a great disservice.

I really hate to give this a NO because I am a fan of the IP, but alas, it can't be avoided. Here comes the breakdown:

Graphics: Not too bad at all, but any time there is an intense animation on my screen, I get a very noticable framerate drop in the animation itself. The good looking scenery is actually a little bit of a hindrance, because the environment doesn't offer a lot of context clues on items to be picked up or alternate rooms to go into. Everything blends together a little too well.

Sound: AMAZING. Orchestral arrangements of the classic music, decent sound effects.

Controls: The UI is clunky beyond belief. SCUMM worked back in the day, but In the modern era, not so much. Not tweaking the interface (and actually making it worse at times with what changes were made) for the sake of nostalgia is a bad design choice. The inventory system is horrible. Click command. Open inventory. Click on item. Close inventory. Click on environment.

Gameplay: I remember the old NES version well enough to remember most of the puzzles, but when the devs added in their new content, everything falls apart. They provide little to no context as to what you need to do, and the in-game hint system is a joke. They also put in a "banshee curse" in the beginning section which will eventually kill you, and if you take too long getting through the game and can't complete it in time, you will have to start over from the very beginning. These two elements together ruin it for me.

A good adventure game should make you have an "Ah-HA!" moment when you get to the next section, not cause you to punch a hole through your monitor out of frustration when you hit the next barrier of progression.

Overall score: 5/10

A breath of fresh air for the franchise. A little more micromanaging that previous titles but I love it regardless. A must-buy for citybuilder fans.

Okay. Where to start...

Graphics: Very simple, cartoony buildings and landscapes. The game almost looks like a slightly polished SimCity 2k, right down to the building models. It's uncanny. In the large post office garages, the vehicle interaction and information tabs actually go outside the border of the building screen, and can be hard to see with the city in the background.

Audio: Not a lot of variety in the background music loop. Note the singular noun there. It all sounds the same. Sound effects and incidentals are okay.

Control: Clickdrag to pan the window gets a little annoying at times. I'd also like the ability to zoom out further to save me the trouble.

Interface: Simple, but it works 95% of the time. An area I would suggest for polishing would be for changes in paths and other variables to go into effect while the game is paused instead of having to unpause the game, then pause it again to go back to what you were doing.

Gameplay: Incredibly uninspired. A sim junkie can figure out how to game the engine within the first hour or so. Get both your first and second post offices fully developed (which can take maybe two hours after you've taken the engine back behind the tool shed), and you can then just leave it running and walk away while the money pours in. On medium difficulty, I completed all of the "missions" and eliminated my AI competitor by day 45 or so using the walk-away method.

Bugs: Surprisingly few and far between. Kudos on this.

Final thoughts: This is a very shallow game across the board, definitely not worth the full $15.00 price tag. This game is categorized under the "casual games" category, and should have been priced as such (if this were maybe half the price, it'd be a little bit more reasonable and falls in line with the one-and-done depth). Save your money and spend it on something with a lot more teeth and replay value.