Could have been incredible, but too many flaws hold it back. I do like the cards, the art, and way combat pauses every several seconds. I do not like that starting decks are identical/boring or that there's *severe* imbalance that makes too many "builds" not viable. Also a bit disappointing they never address this after release even though it's been communicated to them repeatedly by many people.
My most played game of 2024. It's flawed, but still extremely fun. Fast paced combat, customizable skill grids, many party combinations, and tons of deck possibilities. But the best part: it actually has a campaign, which is rare for these kinds of games.
Incredibly boring game. Heroes all feel the same, and you don't get any input unlike better autobattlers out there. And the music is just terrible, too, and no sound effects in combat (or if they're there, you can't hear them because the terrible music plays over them). Skip this.
Fantastic tactics game even though it looks like it'd be for kids or something. There's quite a bit of depth to deck/group building and gear changes things dramatically. I'm on my third run in a row, which says it all right there.
Not a tactical game, it's a puzzle game. Minus 9 points for lying to players. Also, it's terrible. Crashes frequently, looks bad, and there's no challenge since you just rewind until you win. Pointless.
Very mediocre. Ranged units needs to spend entire turns doing nothing but walking towards enemies to get close enough to shoot them? Horrible. And you get "mana" from your units to cast spells, but it ends up being very awkward and limiting. Everything else in the game is BORING. Boring heroes, boring abilities, boring graphics, boring combat, boring everything.
Bait and switch, a rare 0. Starts off as a fantastic Secret of Mana/Evermore type rpg: fun, light, colorful. Then it suddenly changes into a non-stop puzzle game. And has "bullet hell" stuff, too. I don't understand why the game suddenly changes into a different genre halfway through. Disgusting.
Pretty good, but visual issues (clutter and inability to see certain tiles - especially directly behind bosses) almost ruin the game. Weapon system is somewhat unique, but healing limitations make melee weapons non-viable at the start of most runs. Could have been amazing, but we're left with mediocrity.
Not usually a huge Roguelike fan, but this is the best I've ever played in my life. Extremely fun & it doesn't bog you down in excessive mechanics like other Rogelikes do. This is what I wanted games like Tangledeep to be. Tons of hidden, unexplained mechanics (that can kill you) hold it back from a 10, but it's still a ton of fun.
Very unpleasant to play. Samey robotic enemies floating towards you and hitting you from far away in melee kind of ruins the game. You slowly die in the dungeon if you take time to read what your items actually do, but if you rush without looking, you'll die. Just lame.
"Cute" mission based adventurer guild management game with tactical turn-based combat, but... grindy-ness, limitations, excessive dialogue, and shallow combat makes it a letdown. I'm especially disappointed with limitations on higher level classes and on titles, which greatly affect group building in the late game. Further, sudden enemy immunities make the late game even more of a terrible chore. Just avoid this trash.
6.5/10 Good bones, but terrible visuals and combat imbalance distract from impressive group building options. Wasn't really ready to come out of EA, but it can still be enjoyable. Supposed to be improved in Q4 of 2024, so maybe wait for that + the winter sale to buy.
Very rough game right now. Servers are still borked weeks after launch. One-shot mechanics are too common. Game becomes boring too easily. You permanently brick your gear upgrading it. Really needs severe improvements. On the other hand, the way you can customize skills is pretty impressive.
Wildly overrated garbage. It's just a restaurant serving game mixed with a fish/ingredient collection game where you dive. Both parts are painfully boring and painfully unoriginal.
An amalgamation of references to old RPGs that doesn't mesh or come together in any way. Overdrive system ruins the game and feels like a straightjacket. Every battle is long and drawn out for no reason. Either make Overdrive unique to boss fights, or make it a bonus *only* and not a penalty. Finally, too many characters are blatant plagiarism.
Difficult to review. Some of the changes are terrible (new soundtrack, changed victory animation, mini games hard to play on sensitive switch controllers, etc). And some are incredible (swap party members in combat, different triple attacks for different situations, more frog coins available, fast travel, etc). Ultimately, the price brings down the score more than anything, as even the positive changes cannot justify such an outrageous price tag.
Would be about a 6 if it wasn't just recycled stuff from 20+ years ago (and if it didn't have in-game purchases). The PvE battles require some kind of strategy and countering enemy units to win, which is good. Just a shame that even though they're raking in BILLIONS they can't be bothered to come up with something new.
Note that it's not a cRPG, it's a combat-focused RPG with elements from cRPGs, MOBAs, ARPGs, etc all blended together. But it feels like an Early Access title and not worth the cost. Pros:
- Visually appealing
- Combat is fun
- Good character customization where every stat matters
- Magic shield system gives you leeway in taking damage
- Challenge is good - random optional dungeons go fast/easy, story dungeons have a few fights that will really test you, as they should
- Fights involve using objects, terrain, hacked turrets etc to your advantage... but you probably don't *have* to unless playing on a higher difficulty Cons:
- No respec
- Dodging red stuff is a little too much like a MMO/MOBA/whatever
- VA is a bit weak, it's often rushed, making it sound very unnatural
- Some annoying minor bugs
- General lack of information and no combat log
- Can't make characters
- Feels like Early Access
- Balance issues
I LOVED Wargroove 1. Wargroove 2 is an absolute disaster in comparison. Every battle is insultingly easy and requires no strategy at all to beat. The story makes no sense and characters behave in ways that make no sense. Nothing is resolved. It's kind woke. The new game mode isn't fun. There's nothing good about it at at all.
Fairly disappointing. We were told we'd have more control over builds, but I feel like I have less choice vs diablo 3. Also, D3's graphics were better, it didn't suffer from being open world, and combat felt better and faster. D4 is so dull in every way. Definitely not worth the price.
If anyone gives it a 0 because it's not a carbon copy of 3H, you can safely ignore their review. I'm very critical of games in general, and I have to say I'm *really* enjoying this one. I'd only recommend it to people who have played previous FE games, but to those people, it's going to be very enjoyable. I love the control you have over the characters and their classes, changes/additions to weapons, and the whole Engage system is pretty cool too. The more I play it, the more I like it.
I'm thoroughly enjoying it. There are still some bugs that have existed since og Wrath, but I suppose that's to be expected. Planning on raiding all the way to the end.
Unoriginal disaster. Battles are all nearly identical: bash gates and 2 shot all human enemies with nearly identical white male allies. Woo, what fun. Then out of combat, you have to do an hour of tedious fetch quests and listening to everyone babble on about nothing if you want to unlock extra characters and get stuff.
Unfinished, buggy mess. There are game-breaking bugs everywhere. Look at the forums and you'll see pinned posts by Owlcat warning you not to use basic game features, as these can break the game and they know it. They've known it for a month. They've known it since before release and decided to release anyway. I've personally reported 50 bugs since launch and not a single one has been fixed yet. Do not support this. Do not try to play it, because bugs will destroy your experience, if not your game.
TL;DR: Meh, a modern masterclass in mediocrity. The least exciting CRPG I've ever played in decades of playing them. You're mainly watching boring characters struggle to position themselves in combat, then gently tap each other with weapons. About as exciting as watching paint dry or eating a piece of cardboard. Pros: - Decent graphics, overall - Decent portrait art - Decent class ideas even if they're somewhat limited - Decent spell icons - Cool potion creation system even though it does have too many moving parts and button presses required Cons: - Missing banter, missing achievements (there are still 5 from EA, none were added), missing support for features. Calling this a 1.0 is a complete lie and a total insult to players - Crazy long loading screens even with SSD - The story doesn't make you care about it. The characters sound bored and actively make you dislike them. But then you're supposed to care what happens to them? It doesn't work that way. - Maddening, overly repetitive music. We're literally talking about 2-4 seconds of the same thing repeated over and over and over and over until you leave the zone... only to be greeted with 2-4 seconds of another grating, repeating motif. - Characters look ridiculous in combat. The movement of swinging weapons has no weight to it so the weapons may as well be sparkling wands with a star on the end because that's what the characters are doing with them: fairy taps. - Somewhat tied with the previous point: there's almost no blood or gore. I don't expect anything excessive here, but the game has a serious tone and people are smacking each other with weapons. There should be blood. - Also somewhat tied to the combat point: the sound design for combat is weak, which exacerbates the flimsy feeling of combat - Characters get in each other's way in combat constantly and waste time moving around each other to get into melee reach - Excessive restrictions. Class/race restrictions, gear restrictions, spell restrictions. I feel like the fun is being restricted. - Apparently no way to hire mercs or custom characters. This wouldn't be so bad if there were more companions to choose from. And it wouldn't be so bad if the companions were remotely interesting in any way. - I'm a caster, but the game doesn't explain this elevated spell thing at all. There's a severe lack of relevant information about spells, actually. What spells will I get to choose? How long do they last? - Why aren't there ANY cold/ice/winter level 2 spells for a WINTERmage? You literally made a whole class around winter-y spells, then only gave them exactly 1 cold spell for the first several hours of the game. Ugh. - Characters do that "skating" thing where they still move even though their feet aren't moving in a realistic way, as if they're ice skating. I don't expect perfection on this, but it's so bad as to be noticeable. - Very annoying UI, especially for spells. I have to click on too many things to cast a spell - On the world map, area names are in text of the exact same color as the map itself, so you can't read them. - Overly complicated resting mechanics at the inn - My character literally walked off the edge of the map for 8 seconds to magically walk over a river. Never seen that happen in a CRPG before.... - Apparently no autocast options and no hotkey options?? I can maybe accept no autocast but lack of spell hotkeys is ridiculous. - No subtitles option. While most dialogue is subtitled in scenes with action, not all of it is. - Game looks too similar to Pillars of Eternity
As usual, the 10s and 0s are all ignoring important points; the game deserves neither extreme. Pros: - Very fun turn based combat. This is the most important thing about the whole game. - The story is like "choose your own adventure" GoT. - Huge cast of unique characters - High replayability Cons: - The music is absolutely shockingly bad. Colossal disappointment after hearing the Octopath Traveler soundtrack, which they just did not long ago. The music is extremely important in a game like this because it's designed after FFT... and the music was extremely important back then. because you're forced to listen to battle music for hours. The battle music in TS is just grating and repetitive. I had to turn it off, which says a lot. - The story blatantly "borrows" moments from GoT and FFT. Not original enough. - Story recaps "the story so far" over and over and over and unfolds very slowly. - Rewards on New Game+ do not scale with the increased difficulty. So, you can't afford upgrades for the first half of New Game+ It would be 8.5-9 easily if not for the huge misstep of the soundtrack.
One of the worst DLCs ever made. It's short, filled with puzzles no one asked for, and doesn't connect with the main story. I don't know what they were thinking, but at this point, I hope Owlcat just goes out of business.
It's a 5th Edition D&D based, turn based CRPG with 4 characters you create (or you can choose from some premade ones - but they're not any more special than the ones you make). There's a little less combat focus vs most other CRPGs, and more of a focus on using skills, talking to people, jumping, climbing, flying, crafting, etc. Pros: - Good music/sound - Decent character creation on the whole, with problems below - Unique system where your created characters actually have a personality and actually participate in all conversations - Pushing enemies off ledges is fun - Spell animations are rather impressive - Fast travel is very nice to have in a CRPG - Scavengers that automatically loot and sell all the junk left on corpses is very convenient - The turn based combat is rather decent at first Cons: - Terrible camera - Severely limited class selection. I mean, no Bard, really? There's only one Charisma class yet a number of Charisma skills. It all feels bad. - 4 member party is too limiting for me. You're going to end up short on either skills or combat effectiveness with such a small group. - No way to play as evil beyond being kind of greedy/violent - No way to specialize in most magic besides Evocation - Classes feel pretty severely unbalanced. Rogues really get the short end of the stick here while casters are king. - Absolutely hideous character models and character color options (it's almost as bad as TES:Oblivion). Faces look like a 4 year old slapped silly putty on a potato. And those are the good looking ones. - Jumping/climbing mechanics don't add anything fun to the game, they're just tedious and it's often difficult to see what's going on. - Can't tell where to go often times with the camera constantly blocking what I want to see - Lighting mechanics don't add anything fun to the game, they're just tedious - Cover mechanics should be more visually obvious, both when attacking, and when choosing a square to stand on to not have cover - I feel like I'm fighting the camera more than enemies - Inventory management, especially for storage and crafting is an inexcusable *nightmare*. There's no way to automatically store crafting materials, the storage window is minuscule, and your storage is arbitrarily limited. There's no way to automatically take out what I need to craft, and no way to use stored materials to craft. Crafting feels incredibly bad, and it's mostly useless because by the time you unlock a recipe, you've already got items of that level or better. - Relatively low replayability value - Some bugs like getting stuck in objects, requiring a reload - Combat becomes rather boring very quickly except for casters as it's just repeatedly trading misses otherwise, and constantly moving to see if you can avoid cover penalties or not - They're deleting/removing multiple threads in the forums talking about the more controversial aspects of the game. If the devs didn't want people to talk about it, why include it at all? And at this point, the least they could do is have the guts to stand by their product instead of spinelessly deleting any mention of it. (For reference, I don't have any issue with pronouns... but I *do* have an issue with censorship and not standing by the product). - Can't skip the long tutorials at the start - Can't respec - Did I mention the terrible camera? TL;DR: Devs wasted a lot of time and resources implementing tedious things from PnP that don't translate well to a video game... it's still maybe fun for those absolutely desperate for a CRPG (and if they've already played literally all others), but no one else.
Terrible game. First, it crashes constantly. Second, the dev doesn't respond to attempts to contact. Third, the game just kills you with RNG. Fourth, recent changes make the game even more random for no reason. 1 star instead of 0 because it looks nice.
The English voice acting is absolutely HORRIBLE. The game is too bright with no option to reduce that. If there's snow, you can't see anything at all because it's just pure blinding white. But worst of all, the game has all these cool looking mechs... and you don't get to use them. You play as some girl. Oh also, the game released missing half the features it was supposed to have. Stay away.
Rarely can we say that they would have been better off not attempting anything at all, but that is exactly the case here. Gone are the days when Blizzard would rather scrap a project entirely instead of releasing a poor one and damaging their image.
A big step down from Cat Quest 1. The biggest problem is the fact you're forced to play with someone or endure extremely unintelligent AI controlling your second character. If I'm playing this single player, like I did the first game, I want to control ONE character, not switch between two. I feel like I'm being punished for playing solo. Also, the equipment screens are terrible and unintuitive. It feels so painful just to equip a piece of gear. Finally, it's almost exactly the same as the first game. I was really hoping for more new spells, more new mechanics, more new ANYthing. Rather disappointed.
It's decent, but nothing really "grabs" you. The characters, music, environments, enemies, abilities, etc are all just "ok". None of it is especially creative or new or terribly interesting. This is particularly disappointing due to how unique the Grimrock games were. It's like they've just given up. If you're desperate for some typical fantasy turn based action, it's barely acceptable.
A game heavily inspired by Final Fantasy Tactics, but still original in every way. The music, art, and classes are fantastic. The combat is fun and satisfying. The story is surprisingly well done. It could maybe use slightly better animations for some spells/abilities and a few other minor tweaks, but overall, it's amazing.
Pros: -fun & unique turn-based card-based combat -shared resources means you can make one party member the star with all their special cards -the fights... for the most part Cons: -you have to do the exact same fights too many times -Art style -not enough control over decks for a long time due to lack of cards -healing/shielding kinda blows. It's generally so weak it's a waste of cards/time -not nearly enough materials to craft with, and the crafted cards mostly aren't that good anyway
Unfortunately, the text is *so* small that I cannot play it. This is not an exaggeration. I literally cannot play the game because I cannot read anything, and there's a lot to read. I've never had this problem with any other Switch game. The controls feel terrible too, and you don't get any options to change them. I'm absolutely baffled at the terrible design choices here. This is the lowest I've ever rated any Switch game :( Update: Still absolutely no word from the devs on this a week after launch. No word on the Steam forums. No word on other peoples' Steam forum posts on this issue. No word anywhere. It's like they've completely given up.
Not good. First, it plays like a console game so if you're not using a controller, it feels terrible. Even with a controller, it still feels awkward due to constantly switching between characters. Second, and more importantly, the "puzzles" are absolutely terrible and not fun. I actually stopped playing the game because of these horrible, dumb time wasters. There are other problems too, like ability cooldowns being too long and such, but they pale in comparison to the first two.
Would be a great game if not for the massive difficulty issues. It starts off *way* too easy and eventually becomes *way* too hard. I almost quit playing because there was no challenge at first, and I ended up not finishing because it becomes so punishing and grinding isn't fun (I actually do enjoy grinding in many games, just not this one. Your only option is to replay the same tiny maps near your level over and over and it's just not fun). The middle of the game, however, is quite enjoyable. It's basically a Final Fantasy Tactics like game that takes place in 2 dimensions. At first, the movement limits make combat a cluster**** with all your characters stuck together, but later, you get move speed increases and such and it's better. I'd wait for a sale.
Absolutely shameful game. It's one of the shortest games I've played in the last 20 years, without exaggeration. It has terrible DLCs and one of them (the Druid) is all but required to play the game for more than an hour. The other DLCs are essentially just paid cheats. It's not just extremely repetitive, it literally uses the same tiles over and over again with no variation until near the end of the game. So the whole game just consists of jungle tiles and tomb tiles and that's it. The classes and abilities don't make any sense. The so-called "Wizard" doesn't get *any* damaging AoE, but the Ranger gets multiple high level spells? Wth? The Bard inspiration is an attack? There's no direct healing ability in the whole game, no lay on hands or heal. Nothing about this interpretation of D&D is remotely respectful of D&D on the whole. Just skip it.
This could have been pretty amazing, if not for the horrible and unintuitive controls. The music is good, the classes are pretty cool, and it looks nice. But the game doesn't tell you how to do most things, the controls are terrible, and it makes combat an absolute slog if your class uses abilities fairly often. You can't remap anything and there's no options for a "quick spell" except to put it on a bar so you can use it at all, which means multiple button presses just to use anything. Oh, and the text is really tiny. The reliance on items for recovery is extremely tedious and outdated. And because items can be used to do almost anything, unique class skills are greatly devalued. A forced female protagonist is lame, especially because it's a roguelike. Class balance is a complete joke too, especially for Spellshaper. I'm especially disappointed because it took them so long to port it to the Switch and we get this half-baked result.
I'd love to give this a green score, but I just can't... because it's cobbled together recycled content from previous games. Like not even an homage to them, but *blatant* copy/pasting of previous games. While I am rather enjoying it for what it is, I'd much rather see NEW stuff. Edit: Class balance is a complete joke. Of 19 classes, there's one INT caster and one buffer. And balance between the remaining classes is very poor. The game has major pacing issues and is slower than previous EO games. Subclasses take forever to unlock. And it's just not as fun as previous EO games. I'm lowering the score because it basically requires people to buy the DLC to play, which is really slimy. Hopefully, the series will just die here.
It's got everything going for it: a nostalgic feel that's not plagiaristic, retro graphics that are done well, and fun gameplay that can be customized in terms of challenge. It's a bit heavy on the "strong female" characters, but we can forgive that because it's so good overall.
I'm extremely conflicted by it, but here are some pros and cons: Pros: -When you're not looking at a cutscene, the graphics are actually pretty nice. Many enemies (like say, demon heads) look really badass. The elemental spirits look great too. -You can hotkey 2 spells/weapons/items to the L and R buttons. Extremely useful to me for Magic Absorb and spamming on boss fights. -Autosave! -You get all your MP back when leveling up. This is a freaking game changer. You can now blow all your spells in a dungeon, level up in the dungeon, then go fight the boss. No more hoarding every last MP for the boss. -The remastered music is less obnoxious (Dwarf Village anyone?) but can be changed to the original if you prefer. -The Javelin is better now, every attack is a line AoE attack. -Attacking with the Glove can pick up enemies and slam them behind you (without stunning, though, so it can actually be bad as it moves the enemy closer to your casters. In fact, I think this is the only physical attack in the game that doesn't stun, very odd). -You can now change direction while running, but the charge meter very slowly drains. -You can now attack in any direction, not just 8 directions. This can be bad at first, as you may miss more until you get used to it. -On Flammie, the game tells you what you're hovering over, like "Potos Village Cannon Travel" or whatever. Pretty nice feature. -Boss death animation is much better. Cons: -The price is inexcusably high. I'd say $15-20 would be more fair. -The menu doesn't remember what you last selected. This is painful when repeatedly casting a spell you don't want to hotkey. -Every enemy always takes at several seconds for a physical hit to register and die. Multiple hits means you're waiting a long time. At least in the original, enemies had a chance of just dying instantly without lying on the ground for a while. -Combat feels less satisfying because no enemy will ever just blow up instantly, even if you crit the hell out of them. -Sometimes, enemies just can't be hit or die. No, they don't have Lucid Barrier up, this can happen with level 1's. -Crashes sometimes (for me, once every few hours). -Default keybindings are really bad. I used a gamepad which apparently, you can't change any binding for. It worked well for me though. -Very difficult to exit the game. You have to go into "Settings". And you can't exit from the title screen. WTF? -AI is horrible. It won't ever attack at all unless the character you're controlling does. There is no grid anymore. -Pathing is improved in certain areas, made worse in others. -English voice acting is horrible. They should have just scrapped it and focused resources elsewhere. -You can't "stack" certain spells anymore, like Dark Force. -Weird, lengthy "talk" scenes between the 3 main characters added every time you sleep at an Inn. -Cutscenes are ugly, as none of the characters look good up close. -No cannon travel animation! You can still see the world on Flammie, so why not here too? To sum up, you may want to just emulate it. You might be really mad if you paid full price for it. Waiting several seconds for every single enemy to die is probably a deal breaker to many people... that's my single greatest complaint.
It's only January and this is already the most overrated game of the year. There are very few heroes, few enemies, few bosses, etc. Once you've played for a couple hours, you've seen all the game has to offer. All that's left is to go through the same thing over again with a crappy deck again. Custom modes help slightly, but they're not nearly enough. As someone else put it: "the rogue-like elements destroy the deck building elements". It's true, and unfortunate.
Terrible graphics, passable music, boring abilities, passable story, mostly boring classes, horrible stat/leveling system, and inexplicable design choices (like permanent stat drain upon resurrecting someone). Oh, and the DLC is extremely lazy. Orcs? We've already seen them. Why not do Elves or something that's actually new? If you accept that the entire game is just fighting attrition, you might kind of enjoy it. Overall, it's meh.
