Recent reviews by Soxxox Smox

I've been following Arcen Games' work for some time and I think HotM has to be their best yet. It has everything I've come to expect from this studio: a novel angle on an existing strategy genre, an eclectic pile of mechanics and systems to mess with, a mix of simulation and narrative driven stories, and totally off-the-wall sci-fi worldbuilding.

In my current playthrough, I was in the midst of fending off an army of mutant velociraptors pouring into the city when the local private military spotted my skyscraper-sized liquid metal dragon and freaked out. I found myself fighting off dinosaurs and enormous mechs using my own armies of teleporting karate androids. Just when it looked hopeless, I unlocked a new armor-piercing weapon that let me chew through the mechs while the dinosaur invasion turned tail and ran. It ruled.

Like all these games, HotM often struggles to direct player attention to what matters, which can make playing it a bit mentally fatiguing, but it's also a bit more narrativized and on-rails than their other games, which eases the burden. Arcen continues to make games that are wild and unique experiments; nobody does it quite like these guys.

Edit: ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ okay, forget everything I just said about this game being too on-rails, I just unlocked the time travel mechanic. This game kicks ass.

A unique and cute hybridization of genres. It's satisfying to build up a small army of souped-up forest critters to follow you around and chew through armies of enemies.

It does suffer from some balance/positive feedback issues; the game has a few different core resources to juggle but some of them (like Sylph) don't really matter. Overextending your squad is an easy mistake to make, and it only takes a few seconds to lose all of them, at which point it's very difficult to recover.

The demo is plenty of time to decide if you'll like it; the full game is pretty much more of it. It gets a recommend from me because it's a unique idea that is competently executed.

Shadow of Doubt's premise - procedurally generated murders - sounds too good to be true, and it is. Like any game that relies heavily on procedural generation, SoD is in a race against human pattern recognition. The first few mysteries are incredibly cool, as you scan for fingerprints, break into phone routers for call logs, scrub through security cam footage, and record all your findings on a sprawling murder board. The level of detail in the sim is impressive.

Quickly, though, you work out the patterns for solving each type of case, and the game becomes stale.

The best moments in Shadows of Doubt are those where you earnestly use your own reasoning to draw conclusions about a case. The worst moments in the game are when you hit a wall, and aren't sure whether you're missing a critical clue, blocked by a bug, or are just attributing too much trust in the sim's fidelity.

Overall, Shadows of Doubt is a game that is often either irritating or deeply compelling, (rarely anything in between). The game is most fun if you do a bit of roleplaying, leaning into the noir setting by grabbing a drink at a bar while you read the newspaper for clues to your latest case.

Reluctant thumbs down. I didn't play the game while it was in early access, so I can't corroborate what others are saying about the game being stripped down from its previous versions. All I can say is that what's here is shallow, samey, and a bit mediocre, with occasionally glimpses of a project that was clearly larger in scope.

I enjoyed going through the motions of combat and exploration while I had a podcast or video running on another screen. Other than that, I didn't get much out of the 14 hours I spent playing this game, and didn't feel any need to pursue side content or endgame content.

For a ratio of "how long it takes to play" to "how long you'll think about it when you're done," you can't do much better than Mouthwashing. I think the best case for the game is made by the amount of loving fanart it has inspired on its subreddit that is bizarrely at odds with the game's bleak tone. By the end of the game's two hour runtime, all we want is for the crew of the Tulpar to just be okay.

They never will be.

Hard to overstate just how much of a joy Tactical Breach Wizards is. Every turn is an open-ended puzzle and devising your own clever solutions feels like magic. The ability to freely try things out and quickly rewind takes away all the pressure and replaces it with the glee of discovery. The first time you set up an absurd chain of six perfect actions to knock 3 people out of windows with a single click, you'll be hooked.

On top of that, the writing - both the larger plot and the moment to moment banter between characters - is a blast. Even if it gets a bit whedonesque at times, that just means the parts where characters let their guards down are extra impactful; there's a surprising amount of heart in this story about wizards exploding doors as a metaphor for their own personal anxieties. It all concludes in an off-the-wall finale that had me grinning the whole time.

There's something here for everyone. Puzzle fans will love tinkering with all the game's tools and rules. Turn based strategy fans will love getting cool new abilities to kit out their team with. Fans of Tom Francis' previous work will love seeing new iterations of the ideas he's been developing since Gunpoint. Wizard fans will love wearing silly outfits and shooting lightning at people.

10/10, wouldn't change a thing

From city building to unit customization to tactical battles, Age of Wonders 4 is the best the series has ever been. Each of the DLCs adds new variety; I picked up the expansion pass and it's well worth it.

An excellent sequel to an excellent game. While it isn't quite on the level of the fantastic story of the first game, Deadfire does a great job of expanding on the original's themes and scope. Its world is vibrant, its story engrossing, its characters charming. I found myself moved to tears, anger, and at one point, literally jumped out of my chair and cheered.

Even if the story isn't *quite* as good, the combat and user experience is hugely improved over the first game, overflowing with tiny little tweaks to the UI, mechanics, and other little details that make getting pulled into its world a breeze when compared to PoE 1 whose gameplay was serviceable, but often clunky and awkward.

Combined with the open-world sailing and exploration mechanics, Deadfire is a huge world to get lost in, without sacrificing quality for quantity. I still recommend playing the original first for 2 reasons:

* Moving from Deadfire's gameplay to the original's will be frustrating and awkward, while moving from the original to Deadfire's will feel like a huge breathe of fresh air.

* PoE 1's story is phenomenal, and PoE 2 opens with the first game's massive plot twist already revealed.

Once you've played the original and are inevitably hungry for more, you'll fall in love with Deadfire.

Pillars of Eternity is the high water mark for fantasy RPG writing.

Pillars of Eternity actually changed my real-world political and philosophical beliefs.

Pillars of Eternity is a game about "what if a bunch of fantasy characters had to fight dragons but the dragons were a metaphor for a postmodern epistemological crisis"

While the first act of the game will shake a lot of players off (unfamiliar RPG systems, a huge amount of context and worldbuilding to learn up front, and some pretty brutal initial encounter difficulty), it's worth pushing through: once you're hooked, you're hooked, and you won't be able to stop playing until you reach the (phenomenal) conclusion. Along the way, you'll find a game overflowing with lovable (and hateable) characters, excellent reactivity and roleplaying opportunities, and varied tactical challenges.

Pillars of Eternity is an absolute must-play for CRPG fans. Can't recommend highly enough.

Insider tip: For a character with a little extra involvement/stakes in the story, play a Priest of Eothas. I found myself emotionally invested in my character to a degree I've never felt with any other RPG, and a huge part of that is due to how central Eothas ended up being to the plot of both the first and second game.

The game ends quite suddenly, and is overall very short (I beat it in about 4 hours). I would have preferred a bit more of a narrative arc. As is, it feels like watching the middle few episodes of a cancelled adventure serial: A few loosely connected mini-stories, but missing any kind of rising action, consistent throughline, or character arcs.

Still, what's here is an absolute blast. Every arena is a joyful medley of cartoon crates, bombs, chandeliers, and other conveniently placed traps, and every tiny detail of En Garde is designed to encourage you to make clever use of them. The tone is unique and spot on - each character in the game is having fun and playing along, from the heroes and scoundrels swapping banter, to the guards who play dead when defeated.

Fans of Dark Messiah or other games that encourage creative use of the environment will adore every second of En Garde.