Noviere

Utter garbage. Tries and fails to capture what made the series great. This is not the Star Control you are looking for.

In Heroes of Dragon Age, you watch your heroes fight stuff. Your only input into to actual fights is if you want to use a rune or not. Unit level seems to play only a minor role in their power, and is totally overshadowed by rarity... The higher the rarity, the more powerful... but also the harder to acquire. This means you will always lose to people who were lucky(or rich enough) to get one of the legendary heroes. It quickly becomes obvious that even your team of mid-rarity heroes can't beat the mid-tier content, so you will grind endlessly for gems(or crack, and waste money on a lotto ticket) in the hopes of getting a legendary so you can actually play the game. While there is a certain novelty to collecting your favorite heroes from the Dragon Age, you will quickly realize what a soulless, blatant time/money sink this "game" is.

As a point and click adventure, Broken Age will get mixed reviews depending on who you ask. The story is very enjoyable, with two playable characters each with their own set of unique areas to inhabit. The puzzles tend to err on the easy side, though I say this as someone who has been playing point and click adventures for 20 years... On the forums, there are plenty of people getting stuck. It took me just under 4 hours to complete Act 1. Assuming that Act 2 will be a similar length, it's safe to say that it is on par with most games of the genre. The puzzle difficulty will obviously be a factor in this, as well as how much time you spend just soaking it all in, and examining every thing. From an artistic stand point, Broken Age is truly amazing. The art style they used is charming, and utterly unique. The voice acting is spot on as well, with cast of truly talented individuals. The music ties it all together... The cherry on top **** sundae.

Pros: The setting. The noir-ish writing. Multiple solutions to many of the encounters. The combat is quite fun, if a bit simple. The potential of user-generated content. Cons: The save system checkpoints are hard to accept in a PC RPG. The RPG systems seem a bit lite. Conclusion: For the price, Shadowrun Returns is a great value.

TSW is all over the place -- it has so much potential, but falls short in several ways. The setting, and lore are amazing, as are the cutscenes and voice overs. The investigation missions are really fun, especially if you muddle through them without resorting to guides. Graphically, the game is a mixed bag -- the world is very immersive and creepy, and the creatures look quite good(though are a bit repetitive). The humans on the other hand? Not so much. Faces look very weird/ugly, and most of the hair looks like Oblivion-mod stuff, all wispy alpha-map stuff that. The characters run and jump very oddly, even moreso when they have their weapon in hand. Character creation is very limited, though there is a good selection of clothing to offset this a bit. Sadly, many of the more interesting options must be purchased using real money from the cash shop(despite the fact that they charge you $15/month). There are no classes, which is a nice change, though the skill wheel is a bit overwhelming when you start. Despite the huge assortment of skills, combat boils down to spamming a resource builder, pressing 2 resource spenders, and repeating(with the occasional cool-down skill peppered throughout). Crafting seems largely useless, and there is no auction house or mail system(though apparently that's coming soon). As someone who has been following the game since it was announced years ago, and is a huge Ragnar Tornquist fan, I am a little disappointed... I was hoping to spend years playing it, but probably won't make it til the end of August. FunCom seems dedicated to improving TSW and I hope they can make this game the gem it deserves to be.