savvym

I had a great time with the remake. While the game still needs polishing and bug fixes, it successfully captures the spirit of the original while modernizing the presentation. For me, it was an enjoyable adventure, a satisfying RPG experience, and a nostalgic return to a world I was happy to revisit.

Mafia: The Old Country is a story game set in Sicily, where the main role is played by Enzo, a good-natured miner, who very soon meets a new family and begins to fight against tyrants. However, all of this is given an even greater dimension in the presentation of love, which entangles the story and motivates Enzo to act. The story is more or less monotonous in the first half and introduces the player to the characters and events on the island, many twists and turns are not seen until the second half. The missions are very similar to those from Mafia 1, so it is quite possible that fans of the original work will like this one too, although it is different in terms of gameplay and the plot itself. The characters are reasonably presented, logically thinking and have their own motives, the dialogues are believable, mostly tense, and rarely humorous. Cutscenes capture the atmosphere well and very often divide the game part. Approximately half of the time is spent on dialogues and cutscenes. After all, the missions are one after another, there are no side quests that would divide the main storyline, the game does not allow you to deviate too much from the mission until you get to one that gives you freedom. However, there is really nothing to do in the world except collecting collections, taking pictures and completing a collection of weapons, suits and amulets. You can listen to short dialogues of people or exchange a few words with someone from the story. The island is picturesque and mountainous, there is beauty everywhere and there is a pleasant atmosphere. It is possible to travel on horseback or in a car, I mostly chose horses, cars are slow or clumsy. The gameplay offered many challenges and fun elements such as knife fights, sneaking, shootings hiding behind walls, and a few other special missions, but these three elements were often repeated. I did not get bored and I enjoyed their difficulty. What I didn't really enjoy was that I often got lost and that the checkpoints weren't set up very well. Namely, I had all the UI elements turned off, and I played with hard difficulty and manual car control. All for total immersion, but the game apparently often expected you to know where to go only thanks to navigation using objectives, which I never saw, fortunately I could look at the map where to go. I got stuck in some missions, but I noticed that the game uses white markings of places that you can climb. A few elements of the game seemed a bit unnecessary to me, such as putting corpses in chests, it was easier to move the corpse a few steps further and no one ever discovered it. It was important not to be seen, because Enzo could very often fail the mission if he was seen, or in the worst case, he could die quite quickly. The only help in combat were various amulet bonuses and then it was up to you what weapon you would equip yourself with or what you would keep after a fallen enemy. In many shootouts I ran out of ammo and was forced to avoid confrontation with enemies, it took me a long time to figure out how to use the knife even in such situations and it saved me a lot of trouble. Enemies sometimes ran out of cover, other times they just held their position and I shot everything. Some died much harder than others and knife fights were a story thing, a kind of mini boss fights. Expect long linear missions, which are unique to the story and take place relatively quickly, a lot of shootouts, and the knife is a very useful helper there too, a lot of dialogue and well-written characters. Enzo's personal plot was also interesting. The message that the story gives at the beginning and at the end is strong and I'm glad that the story got the right focus. You'll know if you hear about characters and places from other Mafia games. One will be prominent there. The game will also help you a few times thanks to checkpoints. The game ran on my i5-13400F, RTX 4060 and 32GB RAM at 1080p resolution and lowest details, quite choppy, averaging about 45FPS. In places filled with many characters, the game started to lag a lot, and the lag was repeated even when entering cutscenes. The game crashed once during a shootout. I recommend that you don't turn off all UI elements, because for example, I had no idea that I was supposed to hold E to interact with objects and Q for others, I also got lost in space and never knew where to travel by car. The characters told me that we would meet "there" but they didn't say exactly where. I also never saw what I was stealing into my inventory, I was aiming at enemies blindly and I didn't know how many bullets I had left. No game has ever offered me such a minimalist UI as this one, but to my detriment, I rather recommend turning it off until you get used to the controls and the world. I rate the game positively, I enjoyed the story, I enjoyed the difficulty of the shooting. Nothing was easy, but by the end I got used to the mechanics and was able to hit the enemy from a distance.

Epic story, many twists, believable characters, much combat, lots of improvements over KCD1. You start with nothing, the game is hard in the beginning, easy from mid to late game. The first map is small, the second map is a little bit bigger. I was immersed into the storyline because of great writing, you can talk a lot to various people and even side quests have complicated stories. There is a lot of humour, curse words, sensitive situations or grandiose cutscenes. Fighting is a big part, lots of skirmishes, sword fighting is the best, they also have the best stats, the other weapons are simpler, it is rather challenging to hit something with ranged weapons,with bow and crossbow because they swing, with an early pistol, because it is short ranged. Game performance is great, 30-45 FPS on High settings and 4K resolution: i5-13400F, RTX 4060, 32GB RAM. It drops a lot of FPS when there are too many people next to each other using torches and fighting, or when I drop a hundred items at once. Kuttenberg city runs the same as any other place in the game, developers prevented our horse from galloping, so that helps graphics loading in time and keeping a stable FPS.I encountered 2 game breaking bugs, game froze once, one quest made me go into infinite loading, I also had infinite loading when enemy surrendered, and a few quests are still unplayable or can not be finished after the game ends, apart from two which clearly failed due to us progressing the main story, which was warned to us, there are those which should not even be existing there in the first place, should have been failed as well, and need to be done before we finishing the game. There are more floating objects, people too, people also walk inside each other or get stuck on objects, or gather in front of doors, open doors backwards. The rain effect does not work properly, sometimes it is raining indoors and it also creates pools of water. I ended after 77 hours. The main quest is probably 60 hours long. I spent 40 hours doing side quests.

Hack and block, shoot and drop. Simple but fun. It's got a pretty wide variety of weapons and skills and there are mutations which provide special bonuses. Starting level is always the same, but the map is randomly generated. You achieve orbs from slayed enemies and by other means which unlock more equipment. You also collect gold which is used to buy new gear or upgrade equipped one. The gold also opens up doors with gear behind them but you don't have to pay. If you break the golden door or open up a cursed chest, you will become cursed which means you die in one hit unless you slay enough enemies to lift it up. In between each level, there's a resting room for upgrades. Weapons can freeze, burn, stun, root but you can also damage and stun enemies by dropping onto them, you can hook them, dash through or push them. The final goal is to reach the final boss. When you beat this boss, the game difficulty increases by 1 and this repeats. There are melee, ranged weapons, grenades and powers. They all belong to some of 3 stats, Brutality, Tactics, Survival, providing you more damage. The more you level up one stat, the more damage you deal with these weapons and receive extra HP. It's good to choose 2 main stats to not waste boosts. Tactics offer the least bonus HP, because these weapons are generally ranged. Brutality has a little more HP, because they are melee weapons. Survival is focused on slow weapons and shielding attacks. Enemies take fall damage and some have special abilities like resurrecting their allies. Elites provide extra challenges by having unique attacks around them. Bosses are all very unique and sometimes you don't stand a chance if you haven't geared up properly. I found one in particular too easy while the very next level boss kills me almost always.

The game is very challenging and has only a few story missions but lots of collectibles, hidden paths, bonus levels and unlimited mode which I enjoyed more than story mode. There's no true story, it's only a theme. Level design is interesting but requires lots of precise jumping. We move by sliding to the sides of the screen. We can only "jump" with help of other objects. Each story mission is evaluated at the end by pearls collected, time spent on it and lives used. Endless missions end on first death and are evaluated by pearls, time spent per level and levels passed. The game design is very unforgiving and you need to learn the behaviour of dangerous objects and which of them can kill you before you stop dying so much. There are also hidden paths you will be aware of on the next run. I'd say it's better to play it slowly and stop at the edges before sliding down so you can read the pattern of movements below. I finished the story mode in a few hours, the same goes for endless mode. I haven't collected all the plates or didn't get many gold medals. I find this game very difficult and nervewrecking.

The game has a terrible setting and story. The fish get special bread which probably gives them intelligence and they are separated. Our fish is overcoming obstacles in the clunkiest way possible in order to get into a larger area of water. There's a lot of barriers in levels and particularly one in the sewer was annoying. I was doing the right thing over and over because this game is linear and there's no way to get lost. The fish just didn't want to jump out of the water high enough. I finally had enough when I went through level 3 and I was stuck in a jar bottle which requires inverse rotating so I managed to get at the end of the platform near the checkpoint, parts of the platform fell apart and there was created a path of the edge, only it wasn't the way of my objective. This is a frustrating design. The game is more frustrating than fun and feels very little rewarding. Controlling fish in the objects is clunky, but there is simply no way around it. The camera also doesn't help well to see what's below, you have to go to the very edge.

Darkest Dungeon 2 is a sequel to an 8 year old game. It didn't hold over its side-scrolling nature of travelling through dungeons, nor its management of many characters. The city where we used to find new heroes is a thing of the past. We're travelling in a stagecoach with 4 heroes, moving to the left and right and we get to choose 1 of 3 paths. Stagecoach can seem unresponsive but turning speed can be increased. We're getting some extra loot from hitting objects on the road sometimes. Some paths are slightly more dangerous and there are even watchtowers which reveal the rest of what's ahead. There are mission objectives that give us rewards after fulfilling these simple tasks that can be failed very easily by choosing the wrong paths or not fighting enough enemies. At the end of each run there's an inn where our heroes rest, buy consumables only used here, combat consumables which are free actions during hero combat turns and we can upgrade skills, each skill only once. Here, we can also buy trinkets, which are hero equipment boosts, and stagecoach upgrades which provide us with more slots or stacks in inventory. We can not sell anything in the whole game which may sound like a bummer but we're gaining Torchlight after discarding items. Torchlight is still crucial and works similarly to what we've known already, when lit to full, provides the heroes with minor buffs but when poorly lit, it's the other way around. There are events on the road where I get to decide what my character does, influencing the relationships. Sometimes two characters want pretty much the same thing but only some hero will react to that positively, it is a bit of role playing here, some like each other naturally. Negative relationships also affect which abilities worsen it, so occasionally, you are forced to play outside of your comfort abilities. Another novelty here is a focus on narrating hero stories. They were just fodder in the previous game. Here, they seem more important. Once we choose the hero in the shrine, the narrator tells us a little bit of their backstory. We either get a new free skill or we need to win a mini combat to get it. Sometimes after winning a combat, the game offers us to fight the second and then another "round" for even better loot. There's a loathing system which increases the strength of enemies and affects the Torchlight. The more fights we attend, the lower it goes so it's better to fight early against weaker enemies. Finally, there is also a new type of burning enemies. We also get a new hero with burning skills. We can still use stuns but more often than that we'll daze enemies instead, which changes their speed to the lowest for that turn Some enemy types, especially bosses will sometimes hang on the Death's Door, like heroes usually do when they reach 0. Characters also lose any debuffs, dots and replenish some HP with stress after combat. I've had my number 1 frontliner on death's door most of the time so he eventually died because his relationships were all negative and despite him having the biggest HP pool, he tanked the most damage and stress. Heroes also receive quirks which I can cure or lock the good ones. It's only happening on the road when reaching "ward stations". Here I can also replenish the HP and buy some items. Game is very good at explaining all its features. Not only is the tutorial extensive, I can come back to it from the main menu, and I can also hold ALT and G for icons. We can prepare before combat. The combat is either a barricade on the road or inside a building and there's really no way we can walk around it or go back. When I enter a building, I can choose to escape and I have failed only once in my last fight. I spent 8 hours on my first run and almost reached the final destination. After that the game evaluated my hope, I jumped from level 1 to 6, unlocked two heroes and many more items and quirks. There are a total of 50 profile levels to unlock which could possibly result in 80 hours of gametime. It's way too different from the first one, only the characters, their skills and atmosphere remain the same. There's no hometown to come back to but inns on the road while travelling. It's also got simpler micro management and focuses more on relationships between 4 heroes. It's slow paced but less epic, and I would say it will find a niche audience as a prequel as it is slightly more story oriented and less repetitive. I find more diverse enemies and still many fights and even more boss fights with similar combat mechanics to Darkest Dungeon 1

Rogue Lords is a nice candy with a tasteless filling that will bore you after the first 2 hours. After that, it is the same over and over. Nice setting, graphics, interesting set of skills and good voice overs but lack of real depth in combat, poorly balanced essence feature, empty useless world, too linear, merchant is a bummer and it is a bad roguelike. More specifically, you encounter events on the map where your lords can improve their skills or get more souls and create terror advantages throughout sections of the world. Combat is turn-based where each character has their unique set of skills that needs recharging before next use costing the action points from the same action points pool. The events are varied but it is always about cheating the skill checks. In combat, you deal physical and spirit damage with actions points from a conjunct pool, similarly to Iratus or Darkest Dungeon but the problem is enemies deal too much damage and your lords have short physical and spirit bars which get restored after every fight but after just few fights, your demonic essence, which is used for cheating skill checks as well as moving statuses, will get depleted, and it also works as back up health and stress pool if your lords are on a brink of dying, so if it reaches zero, it is game over. You can regain this essence only in a specific shrine in one of the world paths. I also do not understand why we have to walk through the world if there is nothing in it and you only walk from combat to event to merchant to combat to shrine. And that is it. Instead, they should simply make it like in Slay the Spire, click on these events directly on a map and not waste our time walking and getting stuck on trees and "exploring" a linear lifeless world. Merchant aka Grim Reaper is another supposedly complex feature, we get to buy new skills or upgrade existing ones by merging 3 of the same kind, or upgrading one but we will lose it until the next merchant encounter. And then, there are relics which can be either good or terrible. By good, you get to be lucky to buy one that synergizes with ones of your lords and by terrible, it will give you some bonus but will reduce something else important like give 1 more action point but all incoming damage is doubled. Merging skills is too expensive and it is better to lose one temporarily and fight with another lord or skill with similar values. I can barely afford anything useful if anything at all at merchants also thanks to negative effects on the world map which can sometimes not be avoided altogether. The 3 lords I start with are a vampire who deals only physical damage and can cast stealing physical damage to allies but can not receive any spirit stealing from his allies so easily “dies” to exhaustion and is otherwise almost useless. His special skill is recharging all other skills. Another lord is a headless guard who is supposed to work like a tank but somehow does so ineffectively. He deals massive physical damage. Third starter lord is a witch who can deal both physical and spirit damage and can double attack with her special ability. She is a very potent fighter but she has short damage bars. I unlocked a fourth character who deals spirit damage only with stealing spirit and her skills cost only 1-2 action points, but can not withstand damage much more than any other physical only character. This game is a huge disappointment for a roguelike game. I do not get stronger after each run. Yes, the new lord is slightly more effective at dealing spirit damage but the main problem is still persistent. Demonic essence pool is too small at the start and used for so many things, do not forget that enemies deal more and more damage just in the first stage of the world and you do not get many occasions when to replenish the essence back. In many matters it feels like a Banners of Ruin approach when you start each game with the same enemies, and waste so much time before you reach something slightly so interesting. I like the narration and events are quite a nice touch but gameplay wise it is very linear, there is no strategizing, you only have to get so lucky to get high damage spirit skills and kill enemies before they kill you. I would rather lose some of my lords and go on then having to perish in a failure every time I run out of demonic essence. I also discovered I can not snowball my damage with extra status points which deduct each turn, they get reset to the same number, so I have to keep using and recharging my skills and keep playing with just one lord while the other two lords just stand there aimlessly. It is a bad design that annoyed me in Banners of Ruin as well but it was better executed there.

I played it for 2 hours straight and was bored by it. I played stealthily and I noticed that AI is awful. They do not see you through the window of your apartment, not see you when you are loudly slashing their friends even when you just duck in plain sight 50 meters away but as soon as you stand up, they hear you even behind the wall. And when it comes to stand-off, they react very slowly, sometimes running in place and missing shots on me. Hacking their machines makes this game super easy. Furthermore, you can make them friendly and turn it against them which is just a terrible idea. The game is divided into 4-day stages and each is played in a different region, you always appear somewhere from underground. It is easy to run away, hide and you can die twice every loop. I thought to myself this game is very repetitive and I was curious whether it becomes more fun later on, I watched an IGN review, and they only praised the game and showed what I played already, they gave it 10 - masterpiece. Not reflecting the real quality. Objectively speaking the game has some terrible AI and interesting level design but is very demanding on mid-range gaming PCs. It has repetitive game-loops, useless character customization because it is first person, and the story is not really funny as it is trying to be not serious. Then I watched a different review from Classic game reviews and the guy mentioned the problems I have with the game giving it real objective review and IGN proves once again it breeds incompetent reviewers who are not talking about the game issues, moreover, say it is the best game.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Supraland Crash is a FPS puzzle adventure. Gameplay 4.5/5 I finished the base game 8 months ago (74% of it), so when I came into its DLC I was fairly oblivious and forgot what my abilities and tools are capable of. There are not so many tools as there are unique puzzles but with very few approaches on how to deal with them. They provide the player with new choices and so we get access to new areas and obstacles. I struggled to perform the precision, timing or I simply spent too much time on a puzzle that I could not crack without further improvements. Some puzzles were rather simple and knew how to solve others. Despite a rare frustration and jumping around frantically, I was having fun and laughed on NPC comments. There are also not so many annoying enemies and we do not fight them with a sword and a gun from the start we were used to but in a less effortless way. Combat was really nothing to brag about and I am happy that this diversion took place. Replay value 3.5/5 NPCs are making the sandbox alive in a simple humorous way, even though it is not the reason you would probably visit Supraland for, but they lighten the mood. There were many secret areas with loot but many of them were not very well hidden and especially in very late game, it was easy to treasure hunt but I never had surplus to run through the main questline. Nobody hides a treasure behind an obvious area here but I am still accommodated to the way they were hidden in little small gaps and non visible side paths from the base game. One thing I strongly welcome in this DLC were more hints from a clown. The game is pretty helpful with cables and other dialogue pop ups so I should not complain about the difficulty, but I am especially appreciating these as they do not really reveal too much but still aid. I must point out the checkpoints or automatic saving system, it was pretty often but did not seem to work as I expected. I had to leave at certain times so I solved the puzzle and quit the game only to see that I loaded before the puzzle was solved, thankfully, I remembered the solutions, but reminded myself once how I got annoyed by one particular puzzle. Graphics 4.5/5 We happen to play in a somewhat big, cute looking world that is filled with color coded characters and objects. This time, there are not so many colorful tools to confuse us, so in that matter it makes ideas more focused. After we solve puzzles that have no meaning later, they stop functioning and are disabled which is a nice touch and there are always some new objects in the way of progression. Performance I did not have any issues whatsoever, it ran mostly well on my i7-8700, GTX 1060, 16GB RAM, 1080p and HDD. The only thing I noticed were some post loading screen load ups of the whole world objects and lights and that the game lagged occasionally but ran well above 45FPS at most times with almost all settings maxed out and VSync on. As a bonus, I can hear how fitting the theme song is, there were only two in total. Verdict 8/10 As a standalone expansion, it repeated some previous formulas and made it a fresh experience that was composed of more puzzles and exploration rather than combat. If you have played the base game first, you should have an easier time with this one, solutions were not fully visible even to me because I just forgot they were possible. On the other side, there were some extra hints and interactions that you can not just overlook and will not only help you to solve but also have a laugh often on absurdity. If you are a newbie at first person jump precision like me, you should probably take a tiny bit of care, there are a very few puzzles that may annoy you but can be overcome with practice.

TLDR Story 3.5/5 Mediocre start but likeable protagonists. Stereotypical antagonists and outstanding historical people. Setting of the era and place is well chosen and one bonus era is also welcome but somehow underwhelming. The dialogues are mostly filler but the voiceovers and some rare funny moments are really good. Main protagonists evolve slightly which only shows in the late game. Gameplay 3.5/5 All guns blazing in close combat with easy to counter attacks and combos or more tactical stealth options. A few uninspiring missions repeat themselves too often. Some interesting bonus objectives which promote an additional challenge. Parkour and travelling across the city is easy and enjoyable but the combat can be abused very easily and assassinations can be over with quickly. Some cool ideas with combat tools and upgrades. Replay value 2.5/5 A lot of loot and experience make the game significantly easy in the end game and grinding is only required for a couple of hours at the start. Two independent protagonists but their playstyle is almost identical. We can't choose who to play as in main missions and we will also easily unlock all upgrades in the mid game. We may play with a better knowledge of our opponents and mechanics in the second run and it would be a walk in the park, I don't see a real point in replaying it. The game offers a sandbox after the end which I guess is in place because there are more missions and places to visit. Verdict 6/10 I was very conflicted at the start and wanted this to be over quickly but in the end I started to like the protagonists more. The gameplay and missions won't blow anyone's mind. The world itself is quite nice when it opens up and options are ever present for exploration and a few unique moments in the story itself and some funny parts helped me get through thousands of mindless assassinations. Assassin's Creed Syndicate is a 3rd person sci-fi hack and slash RPG set in the historical era of mid 19th century to early 20th London portraying real historical figures mixed with fictional stealthy assassins. Two playable protagonists are conflicting with each other. And one of them later grows in character but initially the game doesn't start with a very good first impression. Furthermore, the area we start is a tutorial one and the first borough of London we visit isn't impressively big or nice. The gameplay doesn't offer much variety when it comes to two characters having their late game unique skill upgrades and that's the small problem. Those skills aren't needed for the late game and even when they would matter I found myself playing for the second character because the game doesn't allow me to pick one for the main missions. There are also two differences between the two characters. Evie has a cape while Jacob has a belt. They can wear their own sets of clothes and their personalities make more difference than the actual playstyles. I've spent half of the game grinding and oblivious to understand that it wasn't even necessary to progress. I was vastly overpowered from mid to late game and I wasn't offered any real challenge, at least I made it a little more interesting by fulfilling the bonus objectives, like not killing policemen or staying undetected. We receive experience for a lot of activities, destroying city lamps, multi kills, fancy kills, vanishing, etc. It's simple to gain a new level up and it is wise not to waste the points into something pointless at the start. I've found a few upgrades to be pretty useful for both characters; auto looting enemies, unlocking doors, eagle vision 2 and health boosts. One line of upgrades in particular wasn't very useful; carriages. There are seriously a lot of loot chests. They all contain money and materials, the golden ones gave me some special drafts for equipment. With eagle vision 2 it's even easier to find them, I was initially not playing with vision through walls which felt like a cheat against enemies but saved me a lot of frustration. Getting all upgrades is inevitable. The story of activities like taking over the boroughs isn't interesting at all but the encounters may sometimes be fun and funny, especially if you're like me and take the effort to achieve some extra experience for doing objectives. This aspect of the game felt very grindy and dragged my interest in the game less. On the contrary, the historical figures added some flavour to the otherwise tasteless world of assassinations. Almost all of them were eccentric but didn't always offer me the most interesting missions to fulfil, however taking into account all they offered, I enjoyed a small couple of them much more than the rest. My upgrades provider and my secret accomplice were quite fun.

Death Stranding is a realistic walking simulator in a post-apocalyptic fantasy world based in the territory of America where we play as a cargo porter. It's story driven and has repetitive quests in a semi-open world. Story is captivating and mysterious but I feel like there are some strange explanations inside missions and the initial tension and horror features evaporate shortly after experiencing them 10 times over. There are long cutscenes and a lot of unplayable scenes which you will be skipping on purpose after seeing them so many times and this happens when delivering a cargo, going to private room, repairing a bike and even when entering a BT territory, game stops you and goes into slow motion, like if it was not clear that you are going into danger zone from the signs around put by other players and these zones are same. Even facing BTs who are supposed to kill you, you repatriate and you need to be very bad at game to get to 0 health because after 20 hours in, they still did not manage to kill me, on the hardest difficulty. Walking is the most common way of getting around, the transport on bike comes into play after 7 hours but still walking will be required afterwards. We have to balance our body so we won't fall and damage the cargo which in some cases can still be delivered if it's not too damaged. The problem is our character will start losing balance easily when carrying over 120 kg and everything above that makes him move very slowly. When our guy - Sam - loses too much stamina, he walks slower, he can rest and sleep outside, refuel stamina by drinking a monster energy drink. The bike is charged at the power station but the territory first has to be connected to the first main city which requires you to deliver certain supplies. Besides taking 2 to 3 km walks across rough terrain with heavy load on the back, there are two types of enemies; BTs and MULEs. First, they are ghosts presented in the very start, they appear in the rain which happens in certain areas. They react to sounds and drag you to death if you fail to run off. They can even throw you off the bike. Second, they are bandits stealing cargos and use scanners to track your cargo whenever you pass by, they are using electrical weapons to stun you. They are afraid of rain. The enemies almost always respawn in the same areas. Many players have put up signs of warning areas but still we can not fully avoid the danger zones, we can only maneuver in between them and outrun them when they start chasing us. The bike can also be stopped easily and it's frustrating to beat the same opponents especially because we will be running back and forth a lot. Your character is a one man army but without real weapons, he is using his pee and poo grenades and can throw cargo or ram enemies with bike. He can knock them out. I see a big problem with building ladders and such to provide me the ways to cross some rough terrains, when going on the edges of areas, you are not allowed to build these bridges despite not being on the edge of the world map, just trying to avoid make a shortcut with a lot of fabricated ladders, the game easily prevents new players from seeing other players bridges and signs, why did the developers have to prevent a solo player from building in their single player game building anywhere they want when they grinded so long to have spare materials. The game does not respect a lot of my time and fails a mission by losing materials due to aging rain or BTs, but even worse when an NPC warns me about a nearby body to turn to necro but there is none marked on my map, nor receiving any objective, a couple hours later, a game is over when this supposedly marked body was not near, and was secretly time sensitive main mission as I can progress a couple hours but I can not continue afterwards. It is also dragging through its chapters like no other game. The story starts to stagnate just a few hours in, I reached only the 3rd out of 14 after 20 hours, still not completing all missions, you can see for yourself this game is grindy, frustrating and punishing despite not being very difficult. Verdict: 5/10 If I took the story separately, I would probably say it is worth watching if you like a sci-fi horror movie but the gameplay drags it so low despite being rather innovative at some areas and definitely a good portion of the struggle I was having fun. I can not recommend this game to the general audience, nor to the fans of long story driven RPGs. It is an exhausting and not very rewarding experience. I almost loved it for its visuals but then I get reminded how bad the missions are and how grinding has not helped me at all.

Monster train is a turn based card strategy where you fight your opponent inside the train, protecting the Spyre. It's very much like Slay the Spire with extra layers to the combat system. It's also less RNG as you know where you're heading to. Each run starts by selecting one of two (three in total) superpower options for the champion and an artifact of our choice. There is also a temple (from DLC) which allows us to gain artifacts and various rare upgrades for an additional difficulty. Our goal is to get through 9 rings of frozen hell in a monster train; that is 8 battles if we get to the final boss. Each combat starts off with deploying your champion unit against waves of enemies. Most of the time, the enemy boss will be flying between the floors deploying some distractions and joining the forces at the last wave into the combat phase or simply spawn last. Until that time you're supposed to fill up all floors with units and buffs to survive. The boss destroys the floor once it clears it from our units and it means we have less space to put units and less turns to beat the level. If the spyre falls, it's game over. Luckily, spyre still shoots back so it can serve as a 4th floor well if you've got dazed cards and increase its strength. We can also upgrade our Spyre with additional damage, armor, health and apply dazed to enemies entering it. The cards have various effects and can be upgraded, having 2 upgrade slots by default. The best part is 5x duplicating double, triple or even quadruple upgraded cards but having so many upgrades on one unit is uncommon. Each unit takes up space in the floor so when they're full we can use magic on top of it, and it's wise not to have too many units without enough buffs because they will be easily wiped out in the late game so there should be a nice balance. Another great feature is the alliance. We get to receive cards from two races depending on which railroad we choose or when we receive after battle rewards. We can make useful synergies, but sometimes allied cards just do not fit with our main one and only take up valuable space in our deck, but we can still get rid of them. Between battles, there are events like merchants for units, spells and artifacts, special caverns, duplicate hellvents, remove vortexes and health wells. We can even gain an extra gold. And the best part is, we can preview our run from start to finish, however we do not know the outcome of special events. So it is always wise to first take gold, buy upgrades, visit cavern, and then take artifacts, duplicate and regain health. Apart from those, we will be able to upgrade our champion 2 more times, once in mid and once in late game. We can have as many different artifacts as we get. They make the run easier in a way. Early game offers 5+1 champions, starting at level 1. We can also play Daily Challenges which are always Covenant 1. That is where the PvP element comes in. We can create our own runs and share them with friends. Our rankings are saved after we finish the run. We can also play simultaneously with other players at the same time, being only time limited. In mid game, we unlock the second champions and higher covenant ranks, probably reaching covenant 10 and getting used to all of the races in the game and learning some useful strategies. Now it is about making the perfect decks with a bit of luck from rewards. We will understand the whole concept of the game once we reach Covenant 20. Upon reaching 25, we gain even more difficult challenges that are usually available to mix up in custom games. The game is significantly more challenging than Covenant 1 and we can even easily lose the first battle with all challenges accepted. The game has a very high skill ceiling and me as an occasional card player, now only became an addict thanks to this game. I usually gain half or third of the best players ranked in the daily and custom challenges. There are 5 races + 1 in the Last Divinity DLC; Hellhorned - high damage multi strikers, rage and armor gainers focused on melee combat. Awoken - high health gainers, multi strikers and sweepers with abilities to draw more cards. Stygian Guard - incanters, frostbiters and spell users, low melee damage and starting HPs. Umbra - unit eaters, lifestealers, damage shield gainers, a lot of small units, late high stats. Melting Remnant - stealthers focused on resurrecting units and slow stat and gold gainers. Wurmkin - eggs and worms, echo infusers, focused on making the floors magically strong. Every run is unique, we can replay the same alliances and get different starting decks and meet different bosses. There are 3 major bosses and 12 minor bosses; they are accompanied by many heavy and support units. There is also a bonus level with 1 more boss but I only got there once.

(Preview) Turok is a fast action FPS. There are huge levels with iconic dinosaurs which you do not have to shoot as many of your enemies too, you can run past them, just to get to your level keys alive. I have not gone far in 90 minutes, only reached level 3 out of 8 it seems, got a key 4 and 5 but I can not access them for some reason. Once I got the key for level 3 in the 2nd one, I returned to the start of the level, jumped to a portal to start from the beginning of the 3rd level. There is not a map and levels are pretty extensive, deep, high and low so you need to remember where you went and to get further, you have to keep searching. Sometimes you need to just jump to a higher platform to get there or find a mechanism that opens a door, if not give you some reward. The most frustrating thing for me is to search the whole area and find the next stage of the level, mostly resulting in backtracking and I usually found the next part, or at least a treasure so it was not time wasted. There are always places to go but to get there, you just need to find a way. You will be required to precisely jump from platform to platform, move around constantly to dodge shots from enemies and maneuver in close combat. Enemies respawn in some places, there are checkpoints sometimes respawning you in a different level so you will need to backtrack again if you die. There are lives to pick up but this game is ridiculously easy if you are used to FPS games, that is on normal difficulty. If that was not enough, you can also save at certain points. There are some hidden levels as well as a lot of items to pick up, boost your health, armor and a lot of ammo for your arsenal. Your weapons are a knife, bow, pistol, shotgun, assault rifle, grenade launcher and some more, these weapons can also have explosive shots so you can target the ground instead of precisely aiming at the enemies. Enemies are moving around from side to side, if they are not shooting with a ranged weapon, but despite not having a reticle in the middle of the screen, it is pretty easy to hit them even from a distance. Graphically, this is pretty much what you can imagine old games looked like, but it works well, still we are not to stand still and watch the nature because there are enemies around us to kill. Levels are well lit, the fog covering the big area but we can still see pretty well into the distance.

Table Manners is quite annoying physics based simulator. It is all about moving and rotating the hand to serve the food. And very often some items glitch into another objects, or get stuck to the hand we are using. Our goal is to please our date and it is not so hard to maintain.

Preview: This is the Police is a story driven management adventure where choices matter a great deal. The city is filled with crime and some cases will falsely be assumed criminal. We are organizing a police unit and investigators with two shifts, having an option to call someone to work the next day or take extra tasks. Some people will call in sick, or there will be a corruption occurring. The worst part is, that sometimes we will decide badly and our team members will die which will trigger an investigation and the difficulty will only ramp up as our team tightens in numbers because make sure to be ready for a lot of unpredictable events and our finances and total amount of workers are limited so some games may spiral to defeat very easily. We sure can get a valuable experience out of each playthrough, however cases are repetitive and main events happen the same way, we can even know the exact proper action when deciding how to approach those same cases. Investigating the homicides are nice puzzles that bring up new photos of proof as a new victim or information is provided to police over time. I have replayed it a few times but always failed. It is an interesting game concept with good voice overs, visual and musical atmosphere. Story is a bit lackluster and gameplay frustrates me a great deal but still I reckon it is worth a try.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Mysterious deaths in the family, fantasy histories that Edith needs to touch and discover on her own. This game made me feel sad. It is basically about deaths in the Finch family and how you experience them from a first person view. It is a walking simulator with few object interactions, the story is offered in a somewhat linear way, is fantasised, dreamed, narrated by Edith.

Far Cry New Dawn is a not so serious FPS in a post nuclear war world. Story 2/5 Gameplay 4/5 Replay value 3/5 Graphics 3.5/5 Music 3/5 Verdict 6/10 It has a laughable story with some decent spins, annoying and loud music, the same colors that are overused. The core elements are fun though, so there were more moments of laughter than of seriousness.

Western 1849 reloaded is a third-person shooter. Gameplay 3/5 This doesn't have any story and is very simplistic to play. We are pulling out of covers and moving between views to surrounding enemies. Each map consists of 3 waves and we're choosing a perk after each finished wave. To make survival complicated, the game gets significantly harder with dynamites, throwing knives and stronger enemies. Our primary weapon has unlimited ammo, then we have two secondary weapons and one bonus weapon. When we deal a lot of deaths in bursts, we'll go into rage and shoot without need of reload. We can upgrade our weapons, vest representing health and buy cards with upgrades in inventory. Achievements grant gold but are only few, so last difficulty is unlocked very slowly. Replay value 3/5 Game is challenging from the start but early difficulties get significantly easier with upgrades and we slowly build up our perks. At the end we'll be saving gold for inventory and weapon upgrades to stand a chance. Pity, maps are way too repetitive and few and only the last difficulty will present all maps. Graphics 2/5 There is a perk to hit cans to refill HP but these cans can not be hit because they are placed behind cover. Verdict 5/10

Coop or competitive online game about making way for your railroads which you have to build fast. You control a character with basic movements and you only use two tools, one for wood and one for stone. Furthermore you can equip your train with extra wagons and improvements, such as dynamite producer, extra space, ghost wagons, jet pack and such. GAMEPLAY 5/5 The game is divided by stages, so your goal in each one is to reach the final station by putting down the rails in front of your train. If you fail, the train will derail and game over. The players tend to block each other, even the terrain complicates movement. They can use predetermined icons for simple interactions. GRAPHICS 3/5 Very simplistic, colorful and in later stage somehow confusing change of perspective. There are few models of character. There is a day and night cycle, during night each player has its own small light radius. Orientation and planning is important. The map moves slowly to the right towards the final station as the train moves, leaving the left side of the map covered but the player can wander off there. The main menu is nicely done controlled as if playing game itself. REPLAY VALUE 5/5 The coop offers three difficulties and few modes. As you progress further, you have new fauna and flora, some is just annoying, some dangerous, some slows you down and some prevents you from advancement. You can collect some yellow things while running around. Each map is randomly generated seed. MUSIC 5/5 It is soothing, little playful, good ambient sounds, not distracting from my objectives and nice at the same time. HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS Non-gaming. HOW DIFFICULT Normal and Hard. Gets really nerving when your team does a lot of mistakes. HOW LONG TO FINISH Competitive mode lasts for few seconds, depending on the player skills and speed. Other mode can be endless. SIMILAR GAMES Graphically: Kingdom series Gameplay: Overcooked!, Minecraft VERDICT 9/10 Entertaining. Original coop multiplayer with simple controls and limited maps. It is like Minecraft from a top-down view with objectives, the map keeps track of your distance so when the game is over, you will see a presentation of all your railroad through the map which is a satisfying look. Early access game with well implemented ideas. It is what it is. Time limit is crucial factor. Communication options could be improved together with additional view options, like zooming and disabling flip screen which I personally welcome.

Mafia Definitive Edition is a third person story driven shooter with linear missions. It is situated in a fictional city of Lost Heaven based on real-life Chicago in 1930'. This game is a Remake because it is very different from Mafia released in 2002. 4/5 Story is very linear and the missions are diverse. Few, unique and interesting characters. Our character is changing. 3/5 Gameplay has a lot of driving, hiding and killing. Movement is wonky and the camera is rather loose. Cars are fun. 2/5 Replay value is very low for Story, decent for Free Ride. Game has many collectibles but they don't matter much. 4/5 Graphics are quite sharp, a living city and rather odd animations. Nice effects, great immersion, a decent optimization. 5/5 Music offers old-timey songs, great voiceovers and good effects. Radio adds an extra layer of immersion with events. Some hits from the original are missing. Verdict 7/10 Story is rich and gets pretty interesting at times but takes risky turns unlike in the original, it surprises a classic player like me. It's got various mission objectives, fun driving in cars and a decent cover shooting system. World is big and full of collectibles. The ending conclusion didn't make any sense when comparing the character development and what they did then.

Warsaw is turn based tactical RPG during WWII. Story 2/5 We are sending our heroes to aid momentum of uprising in Warsaw streets and help raise morale of locals. It has historical setting with fictional stories. The codex will be filled with characters stories, weapons and enemies. There are plenty of events that will unfold stories of our characters and inhabitants. Objectives are way too repetitive and it shouldn't happen on same run. There was one event as part of main objective that repeated all the time when picking the same mission rewards. Gameplay 4/5 Before entering streets, we will have option to aid some of districts that are losing morale using supplies. There are 6 districts and I've usually finished with only 1 at the end because I didn't focus on supplying them. I have only been able to keep 4 districts when I supplied all of them every possible time. We will set off with 4 members loaded with supplies, mostly ammo, and choose their starting combat positions depending on their equipped skills and their position requirements. Some skills of new characters are unassigned despite having free slots. There are events that can be also solved with stat checks, and usually span from 60-80% chance of success. These usually didn't repeat themselves in same run and when I got into battle there was no exp or reward for me. We'll be able to run around city even after finishing the main objective just to collect and refill the loot as it's very limited in inventory. There's also a sidebar with remaining enemy encounters, events and loot to be found. Replay value 3/5 Each new game is bit different and offers different mission choices, events and companions. We can pick our 3 heroes when starting new game. Some events may occur in different run or different heroes may join us. We will not unlock all heroes in one playthrough and have limited number of them unlocked per run. I had 14 unlocked out of 17 after 4th run. 28/32 enemies and 33/47 weapons. Game clearly doesn't offer all its features at once. It's pity game doesn't always bring some fresh characters and ever changing events. The outcomes are same if we succeed or choose same options. We are able to unlock all skills and stats for a single hero in the end and we can fill up our 4 slots easily with high end active and passive skills. I tried all difficulties. Easy is basically running through gameplay without challenge. Regular is a bit easy. Challenging isn't really hard and Extreme is slightly hard and forgiving. Whoever says this is very hard doesn't really know how to play a game. Graphics 2.5/5 It has unique looking characters, their skills animations and weapons. Different environments depending on the places we encounter enemies. Central room is a bit destroyed later on, city is also damaged. We might play in same districts in later stage. Smoke and clouds cover up areas. There is also night/day cycle. Once we're in the streets all enemies, events and loot positions do not change and we just have to discover them, while some enemies will have a small or big spotting radius to detect us. Another small problem is that pictures are reused over and over in different types of events, so unless we read the text associated to them, it feels like doing the same thing again. Music 2.5/5 Repetitive but subtle music. Non spoken story, companions and enemies shout in their language when acting. Similar games? Gameplay: Darkest Dungeon/Iratus (combat system), Slay the Spire (random events). It's NOT similar to This War of Mine. We're spending most of time fighting in turn based combat. It doesn't run in real-time during missions or in safehouse. It misses survival features, like eating or sleeping. This is an RPG with stats based combat. We don't construct anything Hardware requirements? Low and mid gaming. How many hours? 7-8. Verdict 6/10 Game has great potential with combat mechanics but falls short in storytelling that is represented with text and some events are too repetitive. Map is small and feels same whichever district we play. The stats about uprising are uninteresting. However codex is good. More diverse music and story narrator are so much needed. Game difficulty is pretty forgiving and some items and weapons skills are too powerful and heroes become broken strong after few missions because there's too much loot and experience from foes despite having very limited inventory. It's pity I wasn't able to unlock all heroes after finishing on all difficulties and good thing there were sometimes brand new events, however some runs may be less interesting than others. If the game had DLCs, more content and further balances, it might pick up on popularity but developers seemed to have abandoned game and haven't got planned new updates.

Ryse: Son of Rome is hack and slash story of a chosen hero from 3rd person view. Story 3.5/5 Our character tells a story of his past. The story is interesting, however I had minor issue about our hero, but it all makes sense at the end. The characters are well done, some moments are predictable. It is a story of good vs evil, so it wasn't much surprising but pleasant nevertheless. The war we will be part of, is between Rome and Britons. Gameplay 4/5 We are mostly fighting with sword and shield, on occasions with scorpion and javelins. There are few times we will command our units and lead them in formation. The slow time events are very important feature and are required to be mastered till the end game, however they're slowing down time so they're easy. Execution kills reward us with health or focus and are valuing our performance which doesn't seem to have huge impact. We can unlock various stats and execution animations by gaining experience. I haven't been able to unlock all but most. They make our character stronger. I wasn't initially very happy about boss fights but there are few, and the last ones are more challenging. The difficulty feels a bit off on Centurion, if not for bosses I'd say it's pretty easy, hence the time I spent playing it. I haven't touched multiplayer, but worth mentioning it exists. Smart and custom matches, customize your gladiator. Replay value 3/5 The game is linear and can't approach even the main objectives differently. It has some collectibles. Chronicles are comics. There are total 39 and our showing some of stories related to characters in game. Scrolls are something like personal notes and there are 27. Vistas are nice pictures of places we visited. There is also music in collectibles unlocked. The highest difficulty (Legendary) unlocks after finishing game on Centurion (Hard). Game saves on checkpoints and we can replay by chapters as well. Graphics 4/5 Beautiful characters and great animations, cinematics all over the game. Some characters look a bit worse than main ones and enemies are same people, which makes it easy to differentiate their types and how to fight them. I must mention that movement made me feel uneasy, and even after disabling the blur motion effect, I had issues, probably caused by simplistic control of character. Console port screams out loud here. Also some colored features trying to hold our hand. Camera sometimes does not show close up executions from right angle, so we can not time them right by seeing them but sound helps despite that. Hardware requirements? Mid and High gaming. Apart from some chapters, game ran well, and when it lagged it was only short a not interrupting. How many hours? 5. What games are similar? Gameplay: Batman: Arkham Asylum. Graphics: Dead Rising 4. Verdict 7/10 It is fast burning fun. No much thinking and a lot of action moments with nice cinematics, decent story, and easy overall difficulty. I liked they added some extra touches to collectibles. Combat gets a bit repetitive but it serves us some new features here and there, linear levels don't give this game much replay value and there's not really much to prove since game's pretty easy. Especially after we figure out how to beat bosses and time attacks.

Owlboy is a story adventure taking place in cloudy world with cave systems. Story 4.5/5 From the small owl we have a teacher who has despised us, soon enough the first problems appear and we'll coop with one of our friends. There are some surprising parts of story, turns and we'll get engaged with well done characters. It's not only serious and there are some funny moments. Lastly very interesting history of owls and enemies. Gameplay 4.5/5 It has pretty big world, however there's no map in game. We'll be using 3 different companions and encounter challenging bosses who act in patterns. We'll have 4 different weapons or tools to beat various opponents and bosses, at some point we'll need each of them at once. There's a bonus level for finding lost creatures. Replay value 3/5 This bonus mini game is quite challenging. We'll be collecting coins for special items and content which we can do after finishing main game. As mentioned, enemies are predictable once we figure out their patterns but they pose challenge at first encounter. Graphics 3.5/5 Characters and environments are lively. There are traps and dangerous objects. How many hours? 10-19. Hardware requirements? Low gaming. How difficult? Hard. Games similar to Owlboy? Gameplay: Yoku’s Island Express Graphically: Keep Me Burning Verdict 8/10 Interesting story-driven adventure. It has really cool characters and dialogues, though not voiced. Going through various cages and overcoming challenges is fun. Boss fights are hard at first, but every enemy is moving in same patterns. We are using our friends for solving certain puzzles or getting rid of different enemy types and obstacles. It is very well done.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Story ⅖ unaspiring +transition to mid-world is well explained -story is stagnating until another level -bland characters, uninteresting villain Gameplay ⅘ good +place our melee, ranged and mages +positions are limited, range is important +upgrades of certain units are preferable -grindy, no fluent progress between levels Replay value ⅗ good +4 levels of difficulty with stronger foes +custom character creation -limited weapons, armors, just go for stats Graphics ⅗ acceptable +characters swap expressions in storyline +main hero uses spells around battlefield -units are stationary, not lively, static back Music ⅖ -repetitive short loop How many hours to complete 10-19 Hardware requirements Non gaming How difficult Normal Verdict 5/10 Defender's Quest: Valley of the Forgotten is tower defense with an uninspiring story characters, interesting tactical mechanics but lacks a customization of a real RPG. Graphics are relatively bearable with some nice touches to it but overall simplicity. Music gets overplayed in short loops, it would be ok if maybe more interesting. Game gets grindy early on which holds story back and does not justify the backwards running all the time.

Original, violent, mysterious story with great voices and atmosphere. It's weird looking and empty at start. We get a book from a doctor to solve what happened to the crew. Then we spend a huge amount of time running around scenes and looking for details, hidden clues, guessing and deducting by selecting names and fates from a list of options. It can be frustrating and annoying if we don't see any clues, hopefully there are various details that matter and help.

TL;DR Pilgrims is a short hand drawn adventure card game with fairy tale about 4 pilgrims. What story? 3/3 Good. You are watching your pilgrims play card game at the beginning. They separate their own ways and it's up to you to befriend them so you can solve rather simple riddles. First walkthrough finished in 30 minutes. Second was speedrun in 15 minutes. Game play? 3/3 Good. An adventure game offers various items to try and even if you don't get the right one, you get to see animation for it. You can combine characters and items (cards on the bottom screen) simply by drawing them in right order. Each character has their abilities with the cards you own and are treating the puzzles and NPCs differently. Re playability? 3/3 Good. One of main features of the game is that you will unlock new little stories as you solve puzzles in different ways and so you have 45 achievements to unlock. I had 20 unlocked after two runs. Having possibly extra 30 minutes of content. Graphics? 3/3 Good. Its hand drawn style and funny animations are self explanatory even without sound that only adds to great atmosphere. Music? 3/3 Good. Music is brilliant, it spans from string to wind instruments and filled with electronics altogether in uplifting, rather cheering theme, voices are intelligible in Czech but mostly fit in as blabbering, and ambient sounds are spot on relaxing. Hardware requirements? Non gaming. How difficult? Easy. How long? Less than 2 hours. Verdict 6/6 it's humorous logic game, slightly drastic animations, happy music, atmospheric sounds, little harsh words, distinctive characters, nicely drawn graphics. I'd say it is focused on age 7+, if you considered getting this as bedtime story to your child.

TL;DR Call of Juarez is well narrated story driven FPS where you will play for two characters who will exchange roles between the chapters of western world. What story? Great. 5/5 Fully voiced linear story with cinematic that gives this game a soul. It grows and gets better as you progress. Game play? Great. 4.5/5 It has original ideas like shooting from two guns separately, slow motion with them, duels with guns and fists. Fun ways to get through certain levels. Riding a horse from mid-game. There are pistols, shotguns, rifles, stationary machine guns, whip and bow. First three have few variations on top. The only annoying feature was duel because it is very mouse sensitive and took me a while at start and even in later game to get my gun out of pocket. I had to adjust sensitivity for this to lower number. Another tricky part is aiming into the distance. One thing is effectiveness of shots too far away, but the hard part was to align reticule with stationary target but enemies were mobile, crouching, rolling, running and using cover and explosives. It was fun at the same time and required patience. Replay value? Good. ⅘ Rather linear experience with some exception of divided paths and big open areas. There are various approaches to achieve your objective, like full head on attack or little sneak, use environment objects for cover, enemy weapons and destructible materials as well. You get to collect wanted papers of game developers. I had 15 out of 40 after 1st walk-through. I hadn't looked everywhere because most side paths led nowhere, had no enemies or loot, though the world was still present for the purpose of believability. Graphics? Nice 4.5/5 Game is 10 years old now but looks well preserved, it has nice atmospheric distant views, though trees are not rendered all the way to the edge of the map. Character models are distinctive. Music? Great 5/5 Hardware requirements? Low-end. How difficult? Easy. Normal. Hard. It had easy parts, hard fights and some tricky missions. Overall felt balanced. Furthermore game offers three difficulty options. How long? 5-10 hours. Verdict. 9/10 it's great. I do not want to spoil the surprises.

Innocence is the beginning of a plague tale. Young siblings were cast off by unfortunate events in 1348 and are constantly in danger of a plague. Amicia and her half aged brother Hugo from de Rune family have become the target of the most evil they intend to avoid. However, the story of two gets more complicated as they must fight these enemies till the end. Game is story driven with lots of cut scenes and dialogues in between, heavily based on stealth rather than combat which is streamlined into using sling as a main weapon and alchemy as essential additions. Amicia is able to craft these potions on the go while upgrading her weapon and equipment only at the crafting table found throughout each section of game. What story? Great. 5/5 Beautifully romanticized tale of evil versus good which is accompanied by great fully voiced performances, new characters giving it the proper spice of feel for believability. It spans to 1349 over the course of chapters towards the end. Game has got real fantasy features, like bloodthirsty rats, secret magic and seems to be set in realistic world. Details of pictures and symbols on the walls are also serving the story purpose, collectibles adding up to the educational level towards historical and factual grounds. Game play? Great. 4.5/5 3rd person view. Female protagonist. More than a dozen of linear chapters with side roads for achievements and collectibles. There is so much loot all the time, essentially making each situation solvable. Puzzles are rather easy, in any case you have got enough time to think of them, no pressure. Enemies are mostly pretty passive or walking predictable paths with various options to distract or eliminate them. In case of disturbing enemies, there is fast action and movement required. There is no pacifist approach to most situations, making you lose the innocence in the process. However, Amicia leading her brother is teaching him something useful as well. Your inventory items and their respective recipes are being unlocked as you proceed, they are limited by maximum amount which can be improved by crafting bigger backpacks. Re playability? Good. 3/5 I was looking under each stone besides the first chapter, while avoiding dangers I missed 11 achievements. I could find more flowers, gifts and even more peculiarities. To collect them all might be the reason to play the second time because otherwise the story and approach would be the same, unless maybe taking out more enemies and discovering interesting side stories. Graphics? Nice. 5/5 Colorful and shadowy environments contrast each other. Sometimes blurry, sometimes very sharp. Daylight giving you chills, nighttime feeding you horrors. The stories are also much more lighthearted once the sun is up, stumbling across the dark areas filled with more scruples to overcome. Music? 5/5 It is rather dynamic, emotional, mostly in the melancholic background, supporting storytelling and indicating something happening during moments. Hardware requirements? Mid range. It ran very smooth and probably even lower range gaming PCs might run this. How difficult? Easy. Normal. How long? 10-19 hours. Verdict 9/10 Approachable adventure with kids and rich fantasy story with curses, easy puzzles requiring a little bit of patience, your companions will indicate solutions for you, linear world reminded me of Metro Last Light, enough space for running around and collecting interesting objects, beautiful atmosphere, smooth performance.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

What story? Background. 3/5 There are no speeches only some shouts of guards. But the background atmosphere is supposed to inject you with feelings of oppression by Communist regime. There are in between parts which show you the world. They are called chapters and you get a checkpoint after each puzzle solved. Game play? Good. 4/5 It is rather relaxing puzzler where you solve puzzles and use reflexes to jump around or time your escape under the lights of enemies. You continuously get to understand your controls and how to get past guards. Some puzzles are repeating themselves with slight variations inside the environment. Mostly, you need to be attentive to the signs giving you clues. Re playability? Acceptable. 2/5 I have got 36% achievements in 1st walk through, though it seemed very linear to me, surprised that I did not unlock 100%. There were machine buttons that did not move a thing when pressed. There are probably some collectibles or hidden rooms I am not aware of. Graphics? Good. 4/5 Art style is great, light effects too, there is some music here and there, but most sounds are coming from the machines around you. It is 2.5D side-scroller and you will turn to the sides when moving around. Hardware requirements? Low range. It ran smooth on my GTX 1060 and i7- 8700 with above 150 FPS. How difficult? Normal. You should get through by trial and error, watch the reactions of guards and environment changes. Lights and sounds also play their roles to trick player. There are only few controls, walk, crouch, jump, fall, use, aim and command. Exhaust them all, look around your chapter, your options are limited. How long? less than 2 hours. The fastest you can get through is little over 1 hour. 2-9 hours. I finished it in 3 hours. I am giving Black the Fall 7/10. It is short and linear puzzler, not very frustrating if at all, atmosphere is kind of a background story.

What story? Great. 5/5 You are 911 Operator and your role is to navigate your three units of policemen, medics and firefighters towards the sites in fastest possible ways and deal with situation that might come later. You receive phone calls where you ask callers about their situations? Those are fully voiced, some sentences are repeating but they are great and short dialogues. Game play? Great. 5/5 You have limited human resources as well as money which you can earn for good deeds for the next round, vehicles such as bicycles, cars, motorbikes, helicopters, and you can equip your staff with various weapons, armor, tools and technical equipment for more effective working. You will receive different cities with different number of your units at a time. Re playability? Great. 4/5 You can deploy units in different spots and deal with situations differently while receiving emergency calls that you can lead into other endings with consequences. Change the pace of time as you need. I am happy there were surprises on top of what I thought will repeat only. Furthermore, there are difficulty levels which slightly change your experience, when you feel like you are too good, select higher in next city. Or go lower after a hard map. Graphics? Good. 4/5 It looks smooth, clear (after you pass tutorial mission) and you have two menus on bottom to show you which units are available and which accidents take too long, while receiving calls on the right screen, time slows down. You also receive nice stats afterwards. Music? 4.5/5 Music can be slightly annoying and you can hear the edge of the loop. But the voice overs are great and pretty much all the other sound effects are impressive. How difficult? Normal. Game is rather easy but because I did not play hardest difficulty. There were times my reputation dropped really low, so I would say it somewhere in between with difficulty. How long? 2-9 hours. I finished career mode in 6 hours. I can still play afterwards. Final result: 9/10

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

From the Ashes DLC is natural addition with decent amount of content that focuses on rebuilding of Pribyslavitz. That is the quest from sir Divish who lets you finance this project. The quest is accessible after completing Baptism of Fire. First you need to find his locator who will become your personal assistant and looks like the most important person of the place as he takes care of where to build what and has his own table since the beginning. If you want to start building, you have to put enough groschen to the chest in rathaus and later find the delivery traders who will sell you resources providing further buildings’ needs. Updated map of Pribyslavitz changes the old Cuman/bandit encampment. You get pretty strong mace for becoming the bailiff. Prologue and epilogue dialogues to DLC are nice. New scenes of built structures are short enjoyment. Simple and funny stories with locals when solving their disputes every day. New traders with few coins at start have more later. New horse head armor at forge and upgraded stable is unique. 3 new better horses at the stables. Armorsmith has very good selection of high quality armors and unique strong shield. Dry meat in upgraded bakery, smoke it at upgraded butcher which turns stolen to normal. Gambling den with dice has 2 tables which provide side income activity. Herbs in garden regrow in a few and more days. There are almost all types of herbs. You can not build all available buildings in one game or choose all additional settlers. You can offer jobs to special NPCs which will increase profit and uniqueness. More you build, more villagers appear, full village has around 63-69, maybe less. New buildings add new inhabitants and opportunity to invite someone special. After rebuilding everything, you have steady income everyday. Later main quest objectives are also related to nearby areas of Pribyslavitz. It's on the edge of map in the woods surrounded by wild game spots. Guardhouse has arena and you can train unarmed as well. You can't talk to anyone unless they're quest related. You are not given your own bed, however you can sleep wherever you want. If rathaus is Henry's home, he must be very generous to share it with many people. Fritz, Mathias and Nicholas won't join me after end game. You can set building from the book and Marius will react. Marius chooses where to build. You need to follow him everywhere. You can't take down building once it's finished. Some NPCs deny your invitation, so you need to look further and hidden in between. Dice players seem to be little better than other ones, but still not a real challenge. Easy to manage good reputation. Building with Marius is repetitive. It takes few seconds and two in-game days. Dealing with delivery traders is almost same. Find and pay. No haggling except one. No challenge or rough decisions. It is simple. Choose higher or lower profit, never bad. I couldn't turn page in structure book. I had to load saved game. Cuman from quest Lost in translation is sitting in the village centre. Beehives produce 6 units of honey per day that is not accumulating. Brewery produces 1 unit of unique beer per day that is accumulating. You can build only between 6AM and 9PM. Income or expense is counted at 4AM. There are total of 11 different structures to see. 2 free appear after visit in Rattay. You can see, build, repair or have upgraded 28 different structures and advancements, 15 upgrades throughout multiple walkthroughs and stages of village rebuilding. 10 structures can be built, 8 can be upgraded of which 6 are exclusive buildings for 1 walkthrough. You either build Stable or Guardhouse, Butcher or Bakery, upgrade Forge to Blacksmith or Armorsmith. Each building provides different bonuses. You can choose only 3 of these. Labourer’s Camp, Woodcutter’s Camp, Beehives, Trader’s and Bridge with Road are required for further advancements. Rathaus and Church are the most expensive and only cost maintenance. Trader is essential for delivery of resources like charcoal, grain, livestock and stone. Rebuilding whole village costs around 90-91k Groschen and it takes about 5-10 hours to finish the quest related to it and daily disputes. If rushed, rebuilding can take under 2 hours. However, playing it mid-game can extend the time spent. I played it after 90 hours endgame. Village gives you a little over 2k Groschen per day at most without upgrading Rathaus and Church and 1.8k Groschen once it is fully upgraded. All additional guests invited to village increase profit over 300 Groschen together. Groschen from profits are added into the chest with the investments in Rathaus. After finishing the quest for sir Divish, you have no more job to do there besides activities. I acquired Armorsmith, Bakery and Stables as exclusive buildings so I might miss some points. Short extension of mid-game if you want to invest into idle village.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Take a look at old-school RTS game which plays so simple, while it's beauty is in micromanagement and complexity of resources. Knights & Merchants offers story of Anglo-Saxons around 1200 A.D who will fight their enemies right from the start of campaign. There are 20 missions in total, starting with the easiest, teaching you how to build town and army, combat focused skirmishes without building management, evolving into intriguing strategy where you will use your accumulated knowledge against incoming enemy attacks. It received Remake which allows multi-player and more polished controls. Despite it being old, it has still active community and developers of Remake are working on total remake as anyone can even create his own map and play it with his friends. You will often fight with tens and hundreds of units while maintaining your base and defense. You can not forget about limited resources and feeding your people, otherwise they'll die of starvation or upon aggressive foe. Game goes into details of building up houses from base and you will see putting every plank and stone into the shape as it simulates real building. Maintain resources well to not hit the dead end. Your warehouse is very important, you lose without it. Your workers will constantly do look for a job or at least eat out your food from the inn. They get stuck on the narrow passages and they can go around, if there's nothing in it's way back, so plan carefully before constructing buildings and leave space for walkers. Knights & Merchants has nice music and only day time. It has nice balance between playing it peacefully from behind your watchtowers and being aggressive nomad as you will have to find new resources after depleting them and even weapons can not be made endlessly. You can also set your game faster and thus multi-player does not need to be sluggish strategy as it is intended but rather fast paced arms race. Your army is fully depended upon your command and without you, it will not do much to enemies' numbers. I also come back to it after years just to test myself, mostly for online experience. It eats all of my free time, it grew on me while I was addicted. It made me strategy fan, despite not being hardcore. There is absolutely nothing bad despite it's new buggy controls in HD Version. That's why I have Remake.