Mathalor

Dragonfall was a lot of fun. Pretty buggy, though. In the Dragonfall campaign you quickly become the leader **** of mercenaries that attack and kill corporate security and occasionally gang members in an attempt to seize momentary plot devices. In the better missions, you can choose to talk or puzzle your way past potentially hostile targets. The setting is a future Berlin after magic and magical creatures have appeared alongside current and sometimes futuristic technology. Most people either live in poverty or labor as slaves to large corporations with more money and power than morality or sense. The game also comes with an editor, and consumers are encouraged to make their own campaigns. I've never gotten into that, due to a lack of information on how to do so and a large amount of bugs in the released campaign. Your main character in the campaign has little to no back story. Your regular mercenaries have back stories which you can explore between missions if you wish. All the dialogue in this game is text that appears on the right hand space on your screen. I enjoyed reading what the other mercenaries and characters had to say. The combat gameplay involves turn-based top down squad combat where the chance to hit or to be hit was often the deciding factor in my choice of action. Bunching up invited grenades. Spreading out made good cover harder to obtain. It's a good system, marred by the amount of surfaces that look like they should give cover, but were never programmed to do so, and a formula to determine chance to hit that seemed to fluctuate when it shouldn't have. I usually played on the hardest difficulty setting, but occasionally my chance to hit would climb 10 to 20% higher than it should have been. Loading a save fixed it for a while. The 'RPG element' involves earning karma points and money, usually from quest objectives but sometimes from other things, and spending them to improve your main character's skills and equipment. You have very little control over your mercenaries' skills and equipment, they will be at one of three or four points depending on your main character's progression through the game, and can pick up an item during a mission and use it for the rest of that mission if you so choose. I liked the music, but there are others who hate it, so your mileage may vary. There is a soundtrack available for paying a bit more. This game has been out for a while and still has a large amount of bugs. Their first released campaign is rather old now, not as good, and still has bugs. I remember on one mission (in Dragonfall, not the older one) activating a pet robot from one of my mercenaries and watching as the usually controllable robot automatically used all it's movement to make a dash for the level exit instead of letting me use it to fight. I ran into two to five bugs per mission I ran. They usually weren't game breaking, but they were annoying. I tried to fill out as many bug reports on their bug report google doc as I could while playing. I hope they fix them. I never finished the game, but I got to what I think was the last mission.

Call of Cthulhu is a funny game with good music that capitalizes on nostalgia for SNES RPGs. While not everyone shares taste in humor or music, the game is inexpensive and fun. Comes with a great deal of alternate modes to play the game in, which vary in difficulty. I liked the music so much I downloaded the free soundtrack from their website and occasionally play it over the music of other, less musically entertaining, games.

Atlantica Online centers around one fun game play aspect, marred by terrible corporate decisions. I cannot recommend it to anyone, especially if you have ever had problems with a gambling addiction. The Good: The turn based formation combat is entertaining and rather unique. Where you place your mercs and which mercs you use and in what order makes for fun game play and interesting decisions. The journal that collects battle info is very well done. There are several different pvp and pve activities implemented, allowing you to use your mercs and strategies in different ways against different types of obstacles. The Bad: Your mercs must level up from when you first get them, often placing them far behind your main character and the rest of your team of mercs. Keeping a large stable to switch out for different strategies is not practical for this reason and the cost in real money to buy licenses. The artwork in Atlantica Online is dated. This one doesn't bother me that much, but I know people who are put off by such things. The depiction of women is insulting; expect nearly any woman in this game to be very buxom, half naked, and usually underage. The experience required to level drags the leveling process out beyond reason, after a certain grace period. The crafting at high levels is so tedious and time consuming that most people who use it fire it up and then alt tab the game for a few days to craft whatever they're working on. You can recieve free experience for sitting, rewarding alt tabbing the game for long periods of time. The North American version of the game is approximately 10 updates behind the Korean version. I estimate that to be about 2 years, perhaps more. Expect whatever bugs they fixed long ago to still be around for you, and whatever features they are accustomed to to still be unavailable to you. The Ugly: This game has the worst item store of any free to play game that I have ever seen. DO NOT PLAY THIS GAME IF YOU HAVE A GAMBLING ADDICTION. Two item types, available only through the store, have stats equivalent to the highest level gear or higher, and have no in game available alternatives, meaning that they will be needed to be competitive in pvp, especially at lower levels, and many strategies for fighting higher level, tougher dungeons, will be more difficult, if not impossible, without them. To attempt to buy one of these items you must pay 10 dollars US for a 'box' that might contain the item that you are after. The odds of containing your coveted item are not listed in the store, but the internet suggests 5% or less. The cost to buy the points needed is also not listed in the store, without first giving up your credit card information. I found it through internet searches. Finally, there are four powerful mercs available through the item store, which will also be difficult to progress in higher level content without, and needed to be competitive in pvp even at low levels. Each costs seventy dollars US plus more for any skill up books. For comparison, a newly released major company video game typically costs 50 to 60 dollars, if it's 18 months to 2 years old it typically costs 30, and for something 5 years old or more, as many good turn based games are, 5 to 10 dollars. Finally, customer service tickets take a ridiculously long time to be answered, if they are ever answered at all. There are people in the forums that have been waiting for six months on unanswered tickets about serious issues such as account or item theft. My suggestion to anyone considering this game would be to spend less time and money than you would spend trying to succeed at this game buying several turn based games from steam and from gog. If you enjoy the few redeeming qualities enough to play it anyway, at least know what you're getting into.