Recent reviews by Barry Wall

Best CCG ever made.

-Fantastic game play.
-Great strategy and variety.
-New content Weekly.
-Frequent balance updates.
-Quick low commitment games make it easy to play on the go.
-Loads of content for free.
-Amazing art work.

Has potential but too many bugs.

Also, the turn timer is terrible. If someone rage quits they do not lose ... instead have to play the game out while the clock takes 2 mins for each of their turns. This can easily waste 5-10+ minutes of your time. Turn time is also an issue vs a slow player. Its not a very difficult game and yet numerous times I've been griefed by players taking the full turn timer to play a basic turn. So painful.

Speaking of time, f2p progress seems slow too. So long individual game times is a bad combination. Makes the game experience a real slog.

I'm a boomer who finds the game fun in little bursts. I love in game cosmetics in games like these too and they design some cool things. Theoretically I should enjoy this game but I just get frustrated by the grindiness of the battle pass. I wanna unlock cool stuff without having to play a bajillion hours.

So from a business model stand point I'm not down with this game. If you are the target audience ie a child that plays 4 hours a day or a streamer it kinda makes sense.

The negative reviews at the top are pretty exaggerated and misleading.

Its definitely a fun little metrodvania platformer. Its easy to recommend for fans of the genre. Especially if you want a lighter experience.

The story is a tad dry and don't get me wrong its not the best in class but its good. Better then good in many ways. Its got a nice retro feel. Like NES Zelda: 2 turned up to 11. Theres a nice mix of fairly straight forward exploring and backtracking for secrets. Theres loads of secrets big and small. Theres some cool items, clever elements, and fun surprises. It really achieves alot and was an ambitious project. The game has some replayability and extra challenges if you want to add them.

It is a tad light and found it pretty easy on the normal difficulty. You could plow through it in a day or two if you rushed. I took about 9 hours but backtracked whenever I could, got 100% explored, and made sure not to miss much of anything.

I also found the art, sounds, and music enjoyable. Not sure how some are ripping on these elements. Its not hiding its style.

One reviewer said the game got old but I found the end games stages the best.

Overall I had a great time. I'd love to see it get a sound pass but I doubt that will happen. Some quality of life improvements to save you time would be nice. Maybe some new areas, items, characters. A magic overhaul could be great too. Maybe for Chasm 2 fingers crossed.

Cons:

I was pretty disappointed the characters appearance didn't change the whole game. I like to customize and feel like I'm growing. Tho you do get a little of that from the different weapons. I wanted more. Would been so cool to see the equipment change your appearance.

It get a tad tedious at times. The back tracking. short cuts, and save locations, can be annoying or feel unnecessary. Back tracking through the early stages is not threatening at all. It could have been a little more dynamic. Like maybe some new enemies populate at certain points. One thing desperately missing and an easy fix would be to be able to save at any portal. Instead you got go in the portal, switch area, then walk over there, then save, then back track to the portal... All extra steps for nothing really. You are just clicking and switching screens for nothing. Also, I wish I knew the map had a marking system sooner. Mark those chests and areas you can't get too it will save you loads of time.

Mild spoiler, there are invisible walls. They are kinda annoying tho because most of them have boring rewards. Theres also no indication they exist. I found my first one by complete accident. Which made my ocd kick in overdrive. Now I had to check every wall and they were are pretty rare. Only a couple times did it feel worth it and rewarding. More interesting stuff coulda been done with this for sure.

The magic system is kinda lack luster. Well it does have a retro nes feel but thats kinda dated. They dont really explain it much either. So you gotta buy and try your spells to know how they work. Id really recommend looking them up online before buying any. You'll only want one or two. The magic could be more dynamic for sure. This is one thing I think could really be reworked to add alot to the game. Have some more progression and flavor. Maybe add some secret spells and interactions with items and monsters.

I should add I only did one play through on normal. I wanna try it on hard or hardcore with the classes add on.

My review is about buying EA Origin games on Steam.

It kinda doesn't make sense or at least from my experience. Launching the game in Steam just opens the Origin app anyways. So I have two game platforms running for no reason really. Stuff seems ever so slightly cheaper on the Origin store too. I much prefer using Steam but the way this game is implemented just seems like a silly redirect to Origin. Not a fan of EA in general I try to avoid it but starwars is a great franchise and I didnt want to miss out.

I kept running into issues with local saved data and cloud. which doesn't make sense because I would have assumed that is all server side. I wonder if it has to do with the two systems running.

Whole thing is convoluted.

As for Starwars Battlefront 2 in 2020 there are still people playing multiplayer. Its fun but feels dated compared to other modern shooters like Warzone. The video settings seem funky too. I've got a great PC but the game was running bad until I fiddled with it a bunch. Its definitely a console port. But hey starwars is cool so I can take the good with the bad I guess.

All in Its hard to recommend in 2020. You can find better games but if you are a die hard fan then this will be fun anyways.

I really really want to give this game 5 stars but I can't because there are game breaking bugs.

One bug made is so I would randomly lose all control of my character. Making certain sections of the game unplayable. The other bug made some objects uninteractable. This started randomly after a few levels. I lost the ability to pick up healing items and crack golden eggs. I tried things like restarting the game, changing resolution, playing with different controllers but the bugs persisted. My theory is these bugs come from different item combinations because replacing a few seemed to get rid of the first bug temporarily. It also could be some sort of memory leak thing because they seemed to get worse the farther into the game I got. Sadly these bugs took all the fun I was having away.

This is a fun 2d platformer with metriodvania like qualities. Its much more relaxing and less challenging then most tho. It would be a great first game for someone to get into the genre. Again if the bugs were fixed.

To the developer, feel free to contact me if you would like help sorting out or recreating the bugs. I screen captured some of them. I also took some notes on general quality of life improvements that I thought would help take the game to another level. I feel this game has loads of potential so I hope its not abandoned.

All my progress got delete for some reason. Very disappointing to have over 140 hours in a game wasted. I contacted support and they gave me some points as compensation but It does not seem enough. It was one of my fav games and a true classic. So I have to recommend you try it. But support failed me and did not restore enough of my account so I am going to stop playing.

It quite comparable to the board game. Which is also great if you have not tried it. High level strategy game with some fun random elements.

This game is good for the most part but does occasionally feel unpolished. For example the card text does not pop up quickly and its a tad clunky at times. Also theres alot of things you have to click on to see so its not as easy to glance at your opponents resources. Tho if you are playing online I suppose you actually have more time if to study your opponents.

My biggest knock against the game is actually something quite trivial and fixable. there is no volume slider for the music and sound fx.

Still all in I would give this a thumbs up and highly recommend.

Like the game. mostly because of the theme and I like most card games.

Not sure what they are doing with this new expansion. They seemed to change the rules with little explanation. all my old decks are currently invalid for some reason (figured this out they changed it so you cant use "elite" cards from allies. super dumb move. "hey you know those cool cards you have? yeah you cant use em anymore").

Also, they did not give any free cards from the new set and you want at least 10 to be from a new country to include in a deck. To get the right mix of cards is gonna be bare min like 15 packs (20usd). So feels like a massive disadvantage and missing out on the "new" stuff with out dropping cash. Dumb move imo. I am still trying to get into the game so unlikely to spend serious money right now. These problems are a huge deterrent and likely to get me to stop playing the game before I really start.

Still I'd recommend people try the game out especially if you are into ww2 stuff and like card games. Just don't hold high hopes you are getting into a game with clever devs. At this rate I struggle to see the game thriving outside a niche die hard player base.

Fun free to play game. I always loved robots and mechs so this is right up my alley. Was a fan of battletech universe as a kid too. the cartoon, ccg, and table top games ive dablle with them all. MWO does the brand/lore justice even if its not exactly like what you may be used to. The game plays a blast at first but some frustrations to arise. So id reccomend it but its not perfect. It seems pretty close to WOT or Warthunders business model.

The best part, is that bad ass feeling of taking control of a giant robot and fighting other bad ass robots. You get those sweet FPS moments to where you clutch for your team or beat the odds. Its got the collecting and progression model which can be fun to sink your brain teeth into but becomes pretty grindy. Customizing the mechs is super fun too but its kinda diluted with min maxing.

Biggest gripe has got to be the price point they targeted for paided content. Ill always support games I like but my commitments gotta be relative to all the game out there. Theyre looking for $20-60 for mech packs witch seems quite high to me. Ill play a few dozens games this year and cant be shelling out that much regularily for trinkets to play the game. if that same content was $5-10 i wouldnt sweat it and could do it over and over again through out the year. think of having to pay >$20 for a new League of legends character. That price just doesnt work for me. Id happily spend $100 a year on a game I like but I gotta feel like im getting good value for that and a few playble characters doesnt really do it for me. not when that totals the amount of a new AAA title.

Second gripe, the meta seems kinda flawed. For a world imersed is so much history and story the games kind of diluted by the shooter game at its core. Min maxing seems to be the most popular style. which take you out of the immersion. Everyone seems to strip off the classic mech configurations to load on the seemingly op weapons. feels like every ones got a million lasers. The light mechs go as fast as possible with biggest engine no matter what. peek out for a second and your bombarded by dozens of missle strikes. players strip the armor of the backs and unused limbs to max out stuff. anywhere people can, they go for the extremes. and why wouldnt they. they are kind of rewarded for doing so. its simply the math of it all. even tho the practicality of it would rarely exist in the battletech universe. in a shooter it does work. dps is king. you just have a round to work with and little consequence for losing. The last few decades of FPS gaming strategy doesnt exactly allign with the classic battletech universe. I think it needs work. Compromises to be made. Id like to see them address this. id like playing true to lore to feel more viable instead of a liability.

All in all I say give it a chance it might be for you. Ive definitly sunk some hours into it ive even bought a few things and not regret it. The devs seem commited to it and the games improved in the short time ive been playing. I like it but im on the fence about my commitment to it long term. I hope it not just a flavor of the month because it really could become a classic.