LaughingProphet

Binding of Isaac is the game that made me like roguelikes. It is unfortunate that as things have panned out, it's one of the only roguelikes I have thoroughly enjoyed. Binding of Isaac is retro arcade good times with unlockables to keep you working toward something and just enough of a bizarre, twisted story to keep you trying to piece things together. Simple, fluent controls stay simple until you happen upon one item that changes your whole play style, perhaps for the better or perhaps to your chagrin. I have scrapped a few runs from picking up items I just didn't want to deal with, but when you hit that sweet loadout and you're mowing things down like the tortured floating head of an angry god, this game can't be beat for triumphant satisfaction. A genuinely good skill challenge combined with the blessings or smitings of fate, Binding of Isaac is a game that deserves a look, and then a few-dozen hours of play. Truly a benchmark for indie gaming, and a reminder of what we can pick up from the past and improve through the future.

I was hoping for something close to Warlords, an old-time fantasy strategy game (been waiting something like 10 years for Warlords 5... Come on, come on...). This game is close, and a fine strategy game with a few problems. Deer should not pose a threat. Just sayin'. There are too many wild neutrals wandering about, and dedicating heroes to mopping them up from my inner territories is more of an annoyance than a strategic challenge. I like that it keeps me from just clearing out my interior, but it would be nice if I could just move a few units and attack without recruiting a general. While there are a good number of different races to choose from, the actual units you can produce within any given one of them is sadly lacking. I would have preferred half as many races with twice as many unit choices for each. The ranked combat system is good, as is its use of spells and special abilities. Adds something nice to the "line up and kill each other one-at-a-time" systems I was used to in these kinds of games. Definitely an improvement and probably what this game does best. Starting up was not terribly forgiving. It's incredibly easy to lose in the first few turns if you don't know what you are doing and a deer with murder in its eyes happens to wander into your unguarded capital. Judging how strong your army is against another is difficult, and I miss the days of an adviser telling me how my three archers will fare against six dragons with a simple shift-click. Overall, I'd still rather be playing Warlords 3 if Warlords 3 could run on any computer that wasn't old enough to vote and die for its country. The annoyances in this game will keep me from dedicating any time to it, but it was a nice reminder of old glory days. I'd love to see this genre land a solid title again. Some day. Some day.

When I first booted up Rogue Legacy, I loathed it. It ran slowly, the controls made me feel like I had brain damage, and the art was revolting to look at. When I ran it on a better computer and switched from a keyboard to a controller, my complaints about the game mostly vanished. It reminds me a bit of old Castlevania games in its mechanics and layout, and definitely left me with a retro feel. The art is still disappointing, and there were some graphical glitches (for some reason the sword vanished from just one of my classes until I attack). I played it through to the end (I skipped the seemingly impossible remix bosses after trying the first two a few times), and feel fine about that decision. The game is definitely incredibly unforgiving at the beginning, but once you claw your way up to get your characters some competent stats (if you have nothing better to play at the moment), and you get **** feel for the enemies, you can zip through to endgame pretty quickly. Rogue Legacy also employs a clever way of keeping you playing -- You can't spend the gold you earned on your last run without picking your character for the next run, forcing you to feel like you're abandoning a run any time you want to put down the controller. Sneaky. Roguish, even. After being fooled by a number of games touting themselves as roguelikes, I'd begun to worry that only FTL and Binding of Isaac could pull it off right. Rogue Legacy did a competent job of putting a unique spin on the roguelike class of game and implemented the system well. My hopes are buoyed for another day. While I'm not terribly tempted to replay or go for any achievements, this one turned out to be surprisingly enjoyable and satisfying. A nice "pick-up-and-play" while it lasted.

If you are thinking of buying this game, I have a better idea. Pack some food and get in your car. Spend the price of the game on gas. Drive somewhere you've never been. Get out, look around. Enjoy the day. Have a picnic. When the sun goes down, try to get home without running out of gas. You've just had a better time than playing Sunless Sea. (If you don't have a car, put the money in a coffee can marked "Savings for a Car." You will still have a similar experience.) This game is truly a waste of time and money. Sunless Sea tries to be a lot of tantalizing things, but does just about all of them poorly. Combat is atrocious, exploration is tedious and unrewarding, movement is inexcusably slow, the "story" seems to be an assemblage of set pieces with no interconnection or apparent coherence. My first biggest problem on a game level is a fundamental one. I don't understand why this game calls itself a roguelike, or features permadeath. Since it is supposedly story-driven, if you are expected to frequently die then you just sit through the same story elements every time after every restart. I would opine that the fact that you have the option to turn the roguelike aspect off indicates that it was an early concept that became obsolete during development. I do have more cynical ideas about why it exists, though. My next biggest problem is the speed of the game. Your ship is inexcusably slow, even with upgraded engines. Maybe later ships are better, but the price of these ships is so steep I never got a chance to try one (the reward-to-cost balance is an issue of its own). Regardless, to somehow make enough money to buy better ships and equipment, you will waste hours watching your little boat inch its way sluggishly across the pretty but mostly non-interactive environment. A simple fix would have been a fast-forward button, featured in many similar games. I suspect that the choice not to include such a boon, however, was in deference to maintaining the atmospheric quality of the game. I could see the difficulty in progressing as being in deference to the atmosphere of the game. The pointlessness of everything you do as being in deference to the atmosphere. These unenjoyable aspects foisted upon the player bring me to the core problem with this game; The creators' artistic vision is allowed to interfere with the player's good time. Every element that would make Sunless Sea a competent game seems to have suffered in favor of story and atmosphere. That could be excused, to a limited extent, if the story were well put together. By the game's nature of exploration and horribly ill-conceived roguelike elements, however, there is little hope for a linear plot. It feels like a series of set pieces strung together ad hoc because it is, out of necessity. If instead of making a game the creators had created a short animated film with a coherent story set in this universe, it might have actually been good. This game is not, and should not exist. I was actually excited when I first heard about Sunless Sea. I loved sea-trading games like Port Royale but wished they had better developed worlds, I loved FTL, which some crooked critic compared it to, and sure, steampunk, I'd love to see that done well in a game other than Bioshock for once. Review scores for it were really high. But Sunless Sea is not a game. Every time I tried to give it another chance I quit playing with an unpleasant taste in my mouth, wishing I had my time and money back. Everything in this game is done better elsewhere. The art is pretty, though in no way does it justify a game.