Recent reviews by JozziBoi

HE CAN'T KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH THIS

(please please please keep getting away with it)

JRPG/10.

Decided to give this a shot since it came with the October 2024 Humble Choice. With the main campaign (which unlocks all achievements, thank you devs) and all side quests clocking in at just over 6 hours, this is a very difficult sell at $20, and even a sale tag of $8 feels a tad overpriced. While the visuals, lighting, and sheer amount of optional npc dialogue betray decent measures of effort, the music is very conservative and the level design and story are middling at best.

However, the main aspects that cause me to not recommend this game are its dialogue, which suffers from the cheap 'nonsensical geekspeak to replace profanity because cyberpunk' syndrome, and its extreme cookie-cutter adherence to its genre. When I had fun, it was due to my enjoyment of JRPGs, not anything this game did. When I felt underwhelmed, it was due to the game's refusal to innovate upon the genre.

Buy the game, its a two for one deal!
- Stick Fight: Offline edition (friends not included)
- Stick Fight: Online edition featuring (not bugging) noclipping, weapon dupes, stand power, knockback like you're at 999%, and COD voicechat but its actually textchat!

On the macro level, Beacon Pines has a good story and characters, wonderful art style and soundtrack, and on-point comedy beats that provide an engaging experience for most of it. The player has enough agency through some miniquests and dialogue options to immerse them in the story, though I would caution that this is not a "choices matter" game, despite the assumptions that the badge system might lead to.

At the micro level as an avid reader and "story rich" game enjoyer, completing this game was like reading a nice 20-chapter book that has had chapters 18 and 19 removed. It sets up so many interesting concepts that could be explored in great depth (specifically, the Clipboards, initial relocation of Beacon Pines, and nature of the Source ), but answers practically none of them, prioritizing following the ending climax abruptly by an (otherwise very satisfying) epilogue that is so definitive in tone, I experienced whiplash at the sheer amount of previously setup concepts ignored. There is an artistic, poignant way to leave open-ended questions for the reader (player) to answer in a story even upon finishing it, but this game does not accomplish that, or even give enough clues for the readers to speculate on the author's (developer's) intent.

Review is positive, as I enjoyed the other aspects of the game, and the above most likely isn't a breaking point for the majority of the audience here.

"I'm not being ironic here; this is a real question: Are there any ugly women in the franchise?"

~CONEY (the funny content man)

If this game gets online and a workshop, it should become the Rivals of Aether for traditional/anime fighters.

That should let you know the downright absurd cooking the game engine lets you do; buy it!

> Sees Game
> Installs Game
> Game-Breaking First Run
> Gets Golden Achievement
> Positive Review
> Uninstalls Game

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TLDR; Wonderfully original real time strategy game with no lobby browser. Opinion: game flopped because nobody who would give the game a chance was allowed to find matches to play.

Let's talk Legends. In concept, the game is brilliant: a symmetrical RTS with an asymmetrical campaign/PVE element that places you, the commander, in the middle of the action. The restriction on your POV is made up for by your teammates, giving each player a specific role to play between builder, jungler, mob grinder, and offensive coordinator (or the like). Pair this dynamic with a lovely voxel Minecraft-style world, familiar unit faces, and the creative nonsense that ensues when placing freedom of building into the player's hands, and you've got yourself an incredible game. This is Minecraft the RTS.

The REAL TIME STRATEGY GAME, Microsoft.

See, the best way to enjoy Legends, as with all competitive real time strategy games, is versus other humans. The thrill of competition will allow the most avid fans to look past sloppy mouse controls (present here), inconvenient building placement mechanics (here), lack of updates (here, after just 9 months mind you) Even the least well-known games of similar genre always have a dedicated smaller player base thanks to the comfort of being able to boot up the game and slide on in to whatever few people are hosting a game.

UNLESS YOU CAN'T SEE WHO'S PLAYING?!?!

This game has NO LOBBY BROWSER SYSTEM. No way to even see what options are available to you when you hit that multiplayer button. There is no way to communicate to other players that you are here and ready to rumble. Even in its heyday by launch, there were massive wait times while the powers that be queued players into isolated random rooms, leaving them constantly wondering what the heck the other 5000 (peak at launch) players were possibly doing and denying them the option to simply set one up themselves. In my opinion, this singlehandedly killed the game, denying fans a chance to even try to play. Even Steam doesn't know what to make of the absence of this genre staple, with the RTS tag being towards the bottom of the list, just above... psychological horror? ...Right then.

My theory is that somebody at Microsoft hard stopped any form of free communication in this game in the name of the young target audience that Minecraft draws. Hence why the game did not launch with any in-game comms (bruh), but seriously? There are over 1000 item names in Minecraft, make a lobby browser with titles being just one of those to stop people from having lobbies called "morning oak wood" or "Steve's meat." Ironically, it was never the innocent 12-year-olds of the internet that the game behind the IP was going to appeal to anyways.

I knew exactly what kind of game I pre-ordered, and I desperately love it. The other reviews that narrowmindedly complain about the gameplay loop of an RTS campaign clearly did not. I am vastly disappointed that I do not have 10s or 100s of hours in this game because it was simply not worth my time to sit in a random room that may never fill with no way to check if anyone else in the world was playing versus. If the one dev keeping the servers alive ever reads this, please consider lobbying for a lobby browser in the game. Until then, I hope all you buyers have friends that love this game's concept as much as I do, because they are the only people you will ever play with.

Review is positive because many current negative reviews are undeserved and will more than make up for the negative this review should be. May the creative minds behind this game one day get their chance in the spotlight without being hindered by corpos.

I mean yes? And then you notice that every object has dynamic environmental noises and the game goes from 10/10 to 11/10.

JRPG/10.

If you are like me, and enjoy the 24-hour journey from fearing a 3k hp mimic to the absolute dopamine kick of seeing a 75k hp boss and saying "nah, I'd win," Ara Fell is a game for you. The vibrant spritework and a soothing soundtrack help the experience along quite a bit and offset the ofttimes cheesy dialogue and mildly overused setting and character backgrounds. I do recommend, but probably get it on sale if you can.