Recent reviews by maddmagician

I received this game as part of my monthly Humble Bundle subscription.

This is an excellent JRPG, it's incredibly rich in story, you really get to know many people along your journey, and I feel like even being at nearly 30 hours I'm not all that far into the experience. YLaD is a very deep game, dialogue choices you make impact your relationships with people as well as your personality, which also has a direct impact on how well you are received in interactions, the way people perceive you and much more. There are several mini-games, of which many are fun and can earn you currency. The graphics are pretty darn good for this not being a newer release. If you are a fan of RPGs, I'd recommend this game.

The fighting style is turn-based RPG, but if you're near certain environmental items (like bicycles, signs, etc) your characters will use those as weapons as well. There is a LOT to do in this game, and it seems as your progress more and more systems and mini-games become available to you to further enrich the experience.

The only thing I really don't like about this game is the fact that you can't exit immediately when you're done playing, you have to "return to the title screen" first.

Palworld is an excellent game. If you've somehow missed hearing about this game, it's an open world survival type game where you can capture creatures (pals) and have them fight and work for you. This is quite a nice feature because it takes a lot of the grind out of the play loop. If you need wood or stone there are buildings you can put down that will allow certain pals to grind away for you. For ore and other similar materials, you can build a base nearby and have your pals hack away at the resources and even deposit the harvested materials into chests. The game is fairly light on the survival side of things, in that you only really need to manage your hunger...and berries you find all over the place are easily enough to keep you fed.

At the time of writing there are 136 unique pals to capture and 10 achievements to obtain. As in many games, each pal has an "element type" such as ice, fire or dragon. Oftentimes pals are weak to certain elements and this can be used to your advantage by bringing the proper pals with you to a fight. There are guns in the game, but they are a fairly late-game feature, and to be honest, unless you stat your character in a very specific way your pals should be doing most of the fighting.

In my 175 hours of playtime in this early access title I've experienced only 2 crashes; and neither caused an issue beyond having to boot the game up again. I was also unfortunate enough to locate 2 spots on the map where I fell through and got stuck.

I very much recommend this game if you're a fan of this type of game. I feel like I have already gotten more than my money's worth from Palworld and I eagerly look forward to future updates such as new islands, more pals and just content in general. Why are you still reading this...go play Palworld!!

1/20/24
This game is pretty darn good for being in early access and developed by a small team, don't listen to the recent negative reviews. I've got a little over 115 hours in and I've done most of what there is to do in the game at the time of writing. The only thing I've yet to do is get animals to put in my breeding pen, but since I have the NPC buildings, they bring me plenty of materials and I don't know that I even need animals at this point.

The survival elements are pretty good, but if you loot the right locations food and water are really not an issue. There is still balancing that needs to take place in several places, notably the trade prices, food recipes and how damage works in regards to vehicles.

The melee fighting is a bit lacking as others have said, but if you play a little you'll get the timing down it's pretty easy to handle. You can become overwhelmed pretty easily if there are 5 or more zombies with only melee though, especially if there are runners or any of the 3 special zombies currently in game.

The driving experience obviously varies across the 3 different vehicles currently in-game, but is universally dangerous to some degree when done off-road. The good news is at this time you cannot blow up your vehicle, it only stops working when you break it...but it's pretty easy to damage the thing if you're not careful.

I like the apparently new NPC system, but I think it's almost too generous honestly. I only recently got mine set up when I actually realized it was a thing and it's given me so much ore I hardly need to mine at this point.

This review may come off as somewhat critical of the game, but as I have over 100 hours and counting in the game and I am only 2 achievements shy of a perfect game I clearly am having a good time. Survival games have been my go-to for nearly the last decade, and assuming the dev team continues working on this title, it has amazing promise in my opinion.

I plan to update this review as things develop. In fact, I think I might start a new game and try to base in a new area for a different experience. If you're on the fence, you can wait for a sale; but I'd say go ahead and pull the trigger because it IS a good (early access) survival game.

Being just over 900 hours and many full playthroughs into this game I figured it was time to leave a review. I bought this game in late 2013 and I loved it. It is now late 2023 and I still love this game. The Fun Pimps continue to add quality content (a decade later!) that keeps pulling me back to this game and the value of that cannot be understated. This is clearly a passion project and I love their enthusiasm.

This is a zombie survival game, as you may have surmised. You can build bases, craft items and all that jazz. The twist here is that every 7 days all hell breaks loose - your base will be relentlessly attacked by a horde of zombies from dusk till dawn. You must defend your home by whatever means necessary. If you manage to survive, you then collect your well-earned loot and repair things as needed. You can generate a static or random map and it can be quite large if you so choose. There is a large skill tree in which you can specialize in several areas. This game has depth and the difficulty scales nicely.

Nearly everything in this game is fully customizable and you can use simple XML files to add or change almost anything in the game. 7 Days is actually the first game I ever used to dive into 'modding' via creating and changing its XML files, it can be a lot of fun to create new or altered content for a game you enjoy.

If you are a fan of zombie survival games, you can't go wrong with 7 Days to Die. It's even more fun with friends!

I've just finished my first play-through of the game, which in my case had me playing as 6 different teens before I finished my run; all with the same goal - escape the tyranny-ridden and fascist country you've been thrust in to. Firstly, I'd like to mention that I am typically an open-world crafting/survival player, so I am glad I got this in my monthly humble bundle subscription or I may have missed this gem.

This game is almost more like a movie that you get the pleasure of influencing the course of. There are about 10 "main character NPCs" that exist in the R96 universe and on each play through you get to meet them while you play as a different teen trying to escape the country. This allows you to really get to know those NPCs and it's quite an interesting way to tell the game's story.

Many of the choices you make alter the storyline you find yourself in and overall it has a pretty chill atmosphere. Generally speaking I am a tightwad when it comes to games, but I'd say if you find this on sale you're doing yourself a disservice not buying it...and at regular price, it's definitely still worth it.

This is a great city management game with other game aspects sprinkled in. You manage your people, resources and buildings like many other city builders...but in this game the very land you live upon is alive and must also be tended to. Your living vessel named Onbu must be taken care of; he has a health bar, can be poisoned and it gets tired and requires rest. As such you have a symbiotic relationship with your host and you can perform actions such as mining giant rock spikes to gain stone, at the cost of hurting Onbu, thus lowering its trust in you. If Onbu has high trust in you then you are able to give it commands, telling it to walk, run, sleep and more. This is beneficial in many cases, especially if you need to get through a dangerous area quickly.

There are currently several biomes with more planned to be added. Biomes affect many things including crop growth/decay speed, humidity (for water generation), poison level and more. It can be challenging pivoting between which type of crops you are growing and how you obtain food & water based on your current biome.

There is a researchable skill tree that is currently modest but will surely grow as this game is in early access.

Another feature I like is you can create a scavenging team that will visit more distant POIs and can acquire resources for the city. This also sometimes allows for "side quests" where you get to choose from a list of options that can affect the outcome and resources gained.

Currently I have a little over 12 hours into the game so far and have not seen a single bug.

All in all this is a very well made game and you can see the love that has been and continues to be put into it. 5/5 from me, as far as an early access game goes. At this point I feel like I am very near end-game so I look forward to more content as the game develops!

Valheim is the best early access game I have ever played. Overall it's pretty well polished and has a good amount of things to do. I've always been a fan of survival crafting games and this one including boss fights and a trace of a story line are nice touches. Co-op is wonderful and you can host a dedicated server without being forced to pay a third party to do it for you, this is a huge plus for me. Another feature I like is that PVP is off by default, meaning if you did join a public server people can't come and bash you to death unless you turn PVP on. Honestly, about the only complaint I have is the fact that your health bar is tied directly to your hunger bar, meaning that as you naturally get hungrier your health decreases in line with it. The devs coded the game in such a way that you can also add mods, which I always think adds a lot to a game because some people in the community often create amazing content for the games they love.

The building system in the game uses a pretty darn good snapping grid and once you get the hang of it it's a lot of fun to build things. It does have physics and they can be pretty unforgiving but it seems that if you anchor things to the ground you can build some amazing structures. The inclusion of teleporters is wonderful but sailing the open sea can be a blast as well...hopefully the wind is blowing in your favor or you will be moving at a sail's clip.

In summation this game gives you a lot of bang for your buck and I would be willing to pay more for it than the sticker price. I am very excited to see what this small dev team has in store for the future and look forward to playing this game for a long time to come once more updates are introduced.

UPDATE 5/30/23:
I am now almost complete with my third full playthrough, this is my first time playing through the completed mistlands area. The mistlands biome feels very unique & adds new dangers to the game, not to mention the additional difficulty of navigating the misty areas. The game is still a ton of fun and I can't wait for the ashlands update to play through again!

UPDATE 3/15/24:
After not playing for more than a year I still think this is an amazing game, but what keeps me coming back personally is the updates and friends willing to play the game with me. Exploring new areas and solving each new challenge with friends makes this a really fun game to play. Still a 100% thumbs up from me!!

Overall The Legend of Bum-Bo is a great game. Yes, the loading screen is hastily done and the RNG can ruin your day quickly but at the end of the day this is a tile matching game at heart with a lot of extra mechanics mixed in for good measure. It has enjoyable cardboard graphics that any Binding of Isaac fan will enjoy as well as the unforgiving difficulty of BOI. This game will make you rage like a madman in one run and then make you squeal with joy when that perfect run finally falls into place. If you're looking at the reviews you are probably already a BOI fan...if you like puzzle games then I recommend you give this one a shot.

This is an excellent throwback turn-based RPG with a good storyline. The undead are taking over and as the king's right-hand man you are tasked with making things right again. You'll meet many people along the way and recruit several of them to join you in your mission. I've had a lot of fun saving the world from necromancy.

Pros:

• Turn-based RPG goodness with fun cartoonish graphics
  
• Upgradable weapons and armor via earned items from battle
  
• Several characters available (once unlocked) to allow various combos and play styles
  
• Dialogue that is amusing (at times) amongst the characters

Cons:

• Can only have 3 active party members
  
• Grinding may be required (though I'm not sure this is actually a con since it's a turn-based RPG)
  
• Battles are often heavily influenced by you having the right element equipped

For the money it's absolutely worth the purchase, though I wish it was a longer game.

This game can provide quite a bit of fun, though the tutorial is a bit lacking. At some point it does become somewhat repetitive in that it's a lot of the same thing; attack pirates, kill them, smash their ship up & plunder, go to the nearest island to grab supplies and on to the next fight. I over-prepared my crew before going into the first of 4 legendary pirate fights and pretty much smashed his face in.

The only problem I've had with the game is once you get a large ship and a lot of crew then engage a level 8-10 fight, the game becomes extremely laggy. The fix is simple enough, you just close your game then load it back up, though it is annoying. In addition, there is a motion blur setting that is on by default that I personally do not like, though this setting can be turned off.

TIPS:

• Make sure to have a good sized ship crew with the cleaning skill or you may quickly find yourself overrun with poop on your ship. This leads to quickly diminished morale and a sure mutiny!
  
• I prefer to pay my crew as soon as their happiness is lower than the green happy face to prevent a mutiny as well.
  
• To keep my crew fed, I make sure there are plenty of watermelons on the ship as they cure scurvy (deadly) as well as have a higher number of feedings VS citrus or fruits.
  
• It's not a bad idea to have one pirate dedicated to fishing for additional food. (make sure they have a fishing pole and the fishing skill)
  
• What's worked well for me is to have 2-4 gunners that operate your cannons in the pre-boarding phase (make sure you have cannonballs "bombs" placed near them!), 4-6 cleaning/cooking crew and 7 or so strong boarders for attacking. I then usually keep about 2 people in training (use training swords and weights from towns on your ship) and I send these guys in first to fight, but be sure to keep them healed as they are weaker than your boarders. I also generally have 1-2 crew that mainly collect animals (they must be equipped in their melee slot with an animal cage).

PROS

Building your crew and their skills is rewarding

Customizable ship, built block by block

Classic retro graphics

Humorous dialogue

Has a decent amount of items/weapons to mix things up

CONS

Is often super laggy in later game stages, causing rubber-banding and difficulty in playing

Only really provides about 24 hours of gameplay before you are a beast & with only 4 "legendary pirate" (boss) fights, the game is relatively short

I waited to find this game on sale before I purchased it, I am not sure I'd recommend it at full price mainly due to the low number of hours you'll likely get out of it, but on sale it's a great buy and you'll get more than your money out of it.