Recent reviews by AlStar

Turn-based tactical game with RPG and minor citybuilding elements. Each night, hordes of zombies besiege the town (and, more importantly, the town's spell circle) that you're protecting. You know the general direction and strength of the hordes attacking, so you can pre-position your heroes and static defenses.

Generally speaking, any individual zombie isn't much of a threat - most of your heroes' attacks will one- or two-shot them. The issue is that you're generally facing between 100-200 of them a night, plus a spattering of specialist (armored, blocks LoS, moves fast, dodgy, etc.) and/or elite zombies. Your heroes, of which you start with three, and can eventually field up to six (after having to spend a very much not insignificant amount of gold), only have 5 APs each round, and a limited amount of movement.

Each weapon (of which there are many, falling into the general buckets of melee/ranged/magical) all have a range of different attacks they can perform, which have different costs - some only cost APs, some cost APs and mana, some require movement points too. Most weapons have a mix of single-target and multi-target attacks. Some, such as the rifle, are extremely specialized - dealing almost exclusively long-ranged, single target shots - perfect for sniping dodgy and/or fast enemies who threaten to run into your town; others, like the one-handed hammer, have a bit of everything and can hit single melee targets, targets at range, as well as a stunning melee AoE. Heroes can have two weapon sets that they switch between instantly without cost (and which give any attribute bonuses even when not wielded, handily); so picking two sets which complement each other is part of the fun.

Heroes level up during the daytime production phase, assuming they've gotten enough XP during the night. Levelling up gives you a selection from tiers of perks from different categories (different per hero, and somewhat randomized), as well as two rolls on improving attributes. This can be extremely rewarding, as what you can improve, and how much it improves by is randomized, and can include things like APs and MPs. You get half a dozen selections to start with; but if none of the choices interest you (or if you're hoping for better bonuses), you can use up to two rerolls, each of which cuts the number of choices in half. Getting too greedy on trying to get a good roll might mean that your melee hero ends up having to choose +5% magic damage; which is either a waste, or means that you need to change around his gear to take advantage of this.

My only complaint about the game is that losing a run can be very punishing. Getting to the final night in a town then losing to the boss battle means that you've lost hours of work. Fortunately, even lost runs give you currency which can be used to unlock various meta-progression elements (new weapons, items, buildings, etc.) The game pretty much expects you to faceplant at least a little, since some of the unlocks massively increase the power of your heroes (buying or making 20 hats unlocks all your new heroes - in all future games - starting with a hat. That doesn't sound like much, but it's giving you dozens of gold of equipment for free. The one that gives all your heroes a starting consumable is even better, since that can make them much more versatile right out of the gate (and also saves a ton of gold.))

Would recommend.

The game where you start by growing opium and shipping it out of the country either on fishing trawlers or small aircraft; but work your way up the tech tree to growing and processing weed, meth, cocaine, and more. Grow legitimate crops and pack your drugs inside them so that you can sneak them aboard cargo ships or over borders for bulk exports or faster turnaround.

There are some interesting systems - primarily is the split between clean and dirty cash. Clean cash can be used to instantly build buildings, pay your lieutenants, and upkeep production buildings. Dirty cash can do the same... but needs to be physically shipped around in trucks. So you set up elaborate networks between ports and airports to your mansions, where the cash is broken down, then shipped off to your farms and factories to pay your workers, and into your "legitimate" businesses in the cities, which can launder the money.

Another system which is interesting is the terror meter. As you do things that catch the government's attention, you'll provoke increasingly aggravated responses. You could, when faced by a police raid on your buildings, tell your lieutenants to shoot it out. You can even win that fight, and it'll stop that property from being raided and locked down... but the fighting will raise your terror level and might trigger something even worse - like the military getting involved and firebombing your operations. Better to let them take over your facilities... then give the local city governor a bribe to release them - no muss, no fuss, no escalation.

Of course, there's also rival gangs in neighboring provinces who will mess with your ♥♥♥♥ during all of this, so you can't just lay low all game.

There's both story missions, which are part tutorial, part guided experience; as well as more freeform play modes.

It's got some interesting things going on - I'd recommend it.

Praise the Omnissiah! Really get into the 40k universe in this surprisingly deep game, which absolutely revels in the lore, tone, and graphic grimdarkness. Everything's plastered with purity seals, skulls, and candles - heck, even the pause screen has them!

Although a special treat for anyone who's familiar with the setting, the game also goes to great pains to include mouseover text popups for anything that would be unfamiliar to the uninitiated.

There's a wide range of companions, each with their own issues and backstories. You can take a larger party to battle than in most RPGs, but even so, I found myself wanting to take even more of my retinue along with me. Virtually all skill checks use the highest score amongst your active party, so it makes sense for each companion to specialize. If I had to note a negative with the companions, it would be that their battle cries/acknowledgments are all set in stone from their personalities when you first pick them up, and don't update to reflect their changing views from being on your crew.

The turn-based battles start off fairly difficult, but, at least on normal difficulty, become progressively easier as your party levels up, gets new skills, weapons, and equipment. There are just so many overlapping skills, item benefits, etc. that it can honestly be difficult to not bend the game to your will. Fire off a burst of 16 pistol shots, 90% of which crit, followed by 8 more, followed by 8 more, finished by a finisher of 24 more shots? Sure! Or just open up with a heavy bolter, then, after reducing your foes to a fine mist, activating your ultimate and getting half a dozen additional single shots... which, thanks to one of your artifacts, are all guaranteed to hit? Why not?! Or maybe just go old school and chop up your enemies with a chainsword - ideally taunting your enemies to strike at you, as each parry causes you to strike out with yet another swing.

Lots and lots of excellent dialog. Tons of choices - many of them sub-optimal or picking the "least-bad." Tons of alternate answers hiding behind skill checks, sometimes very difficult skill checks. Three alignments - Dogmatic ("Praise the Emperor! Death to the xenos!"), Heretical ("Hail Chaos!") , and Iconoclast ("Can't we all just get along?")

The music is excellent, and feels suitably majestic for the situations that you find yourself in.

It's a long game. I've got some idle hours here, but I would say you're looking at around ~130 hours for your first playthough.

Apparently the game was a bit of a buggy mess on release, but I'm happy to report that I made it through without running into anything worse than some enemy corpses becoming T-posed when they happened to die in an unusual way (I think death by burning damage tended to cause it to happen fairly often.)

Would absolutely recommend.

As a transfer student from the city into a quaint village, manage your friendships, growing your personality, keeping up with your studies, part-time jobs, solving a murder mystery, and fighting nightmare abominations.

Grow increasingly annoyed that the protagonist refuses to crack open a book on nights where he's sitting around until midnight. Curse your friends and family when they drag you to events that cause you to miss out on timed appearances with people who you could form stronger bonds with.

Fight your way past shadows in the themed dungeons, watching as your resources grow ever more tight. Do you have enough left to defeat the boss; or do you need to return to base to rest, restock, combine new personas, and come back another day?

Combat is elemental rock-paper-scissors, with the resistances of monsters being between reflection (total protection that hurts your character), nullify, strong, normal, and weak. Handily, the known statuses of any given monster can be checked at a press, and the game remembers what you've discovered between battles.

The writing is well done, with each of your companions and S-Link acquaintances being real-to-life people with stuff going on; and are, for the most part, more than their first-glance stereotype.

If I had to give one flaw of the game, it's that the bosses are all HP-sponges (with a notable middle finger given to the retro game-themed boss), drawing out the fights for just a little longer than feels needed.

This is basically "Stacking Bonuses, the Game"

Start with picking a race, class, and god; each of which has bonuses and maluses.
Then you have 10 points to spend on skills - there's 9 elements (fire/electricity/poison/death/ice/astral/psychic/life/blood) plus martial. These skills range from inflicting damage of their element on your attacks, to stat bonuses, debuffs, summons, and transformations. Each costs a certain number of points (2 for the cheapest, all the way to 7 for the most expensive), and you can mix and match up to 3 different elements on a character, and up to 7 different skills. Each skill can be leveled up to boost its effects and/or damage.

Additionally, you have 6 item slots (two hands, head, arms, chest, legs). Each class has mostly mundane starting equipment, but each zone you pass through will have magical gear that can be collected to improve your character, either by wielding it, or by sacrificing it to improve the stats of what you're wearing.

Each race/class/god/skill/item has effects which can be triggered. These range from 'on attack', to 'on movement', or 'when standing still', 'when entering a new level', 'on enemy/ally death', 'when attacked', 'when you pray', 'when you deal x damage' - all kinds of things.

The goal is to combine as many of these triggers to become insanely overpowered. You might create a close combat warrior that swings their weapon half a dozen times each time they attack, each time adding ice damage to that attack, and each time ice damage is inflicted, bonus astral damage occurs; or maybe you create a ranged wizard who automatically fires bolts of magic whenever they stand still; or a summoner that floods the arena with creatures that do the fighting for you.

Minimalist graphics and music - gets the job done.

Recommended.

An excellent entry in the monster gathering/battling genre, featuring an amazing soundtrack.

You start your journey washed ashore on a beach of a mysterious island. Shortly, you'll be joined by a companion, one of half a dozen available; all of whom have distinct personalities, and, after completing their varied personal quests, you can build friendships with them.

The mix of monsters is quite fun - in addition to the regular types (Fire/Water/Earth/Air), they've also got refined materials (Plastic/Metal/Poison/Glass), as well as some other oddballs (Beast/Astral/Ice/Lightning/Plant). Interactions between the elements are funky (in a good way) - for instance, hitting Earth with Lighting turns the Earth type into Glass Type; hitting Metal with Poison gives the Metal type a contact poison attack that it inflicts on anything in melee with it; or hitting Lightning with Plastic will cause the Lightning's area attacks to be reduced to single-target.

The game features a large explorable world, with a bunch of minor Legend of Zelda-like terrain puzzles.

One feature that must be brought up is the designs of the monsters - which are unique and well done - but, even more so are the fusions: giant mini-boss monsters that are formed from two regular monsters. Each and every one of these takes the characteristics of the forming monsters and makes them recognizable as a new beast. I can't even imagine how much work must have gone into making sure that each of these hundreds of different combinations fit together and looked good.

I've only got two main complaints:
1) Some monsters are only available as an "extra" monster - they'll be backup to the main monster you're fighting. Since you can only see the main monster in the overhead map, it might take dozens of battles to track down the monster you're looking for.
2) Related to the above, while there are many things you can change about the gameplay - including how intelligent the enemy AI is and how much the enemies' levels scale - one glaring omission is that you can't increase the animation speed. Not a problem in regular gameplay; but tedious when you're fighting the dozenth mothman, just hoping that this one happened to bring along his swashbuckling ratman friend.

Recommended. Main story doesn't overstay its welcome; but there's lots of extra content to test high-level and/or endurance-based combat if you're looking towards extended play.

Video poker, taken to the next level. Customize your deck by adding, removing, and duplicating cards, turning cards to glass, gold, or steel, and/or adding seals; all in the pursuit of building a deck that can generate the most points possible each round to pass the continually growing blinds.

To aid you, you also have jokers - cards which will change scoring. Some will increase the multiplier with each face card, another will turn all cards to gold. Their effects are as varied as the cards themselves; and combining them is key to building a deck that can win the game.

Features unlockable decks, jokers, and difficulties.

A return to the world of Monkey Island, following the continuing adventures of our favorite hero/mighty pirate Guybrush Threepwood. This time around, we're discovering the Secret of Monkey Island before the evil LeChuck.

Filled with the same glorious wordplay and maddening puzzles as the previous games - although this time there's an in-game hint book, which will give a series of progressively complete answers to your current problems if you find yourself unsure of what to do.

I'll start off with my complaints: First: I don't love the new look, to be honest. I got used to it, but it never resonated. Second: the game gets significantly more 'rushed'-feeling as you progress through it. The first two parts are just about a perfect love letter to the original games; but the content gets stretched thin later on, with Terror Island being the most notable casualty - several locations exist, but there's nothing to do there beyond having Guybrush look at/comment on a couple set pieces.

On the pro side, the game treats us to Guybrush's unique brand of chaotic problem solving, with the Mop Tree quest being a standout. The dialog (turn on the "Writer’s Cut" option for maximum effect!) is just about perfect, and simply running through the dialog trees with everyone you meet is a pleasure - I think my favorite bit of dialog is the (ridiculously long) set of warnings and conditions given to you by the Voodoo Lady when you buy a knife from her shop... which Guybrush immediately ignores.

In conclusion: a decent addition to the Monkey Island franchise; I feel it's more of a "wait for a sale" entry, though.

Final thoughts: I wish they'd involved Elaine more in the game; and apparently it's not Monkey Island if you don't have a surreal ending.

TLDR: An excellent factory game played from a 1st person perspective, with a large, handcrafted world.

industrialize an alien world, all in the name of the kittens and/or puppies that need you.

Going from chipping away at ore deposits with a hand tool and handcrafting ingots, you'll move up to automatic miners, smelters, and constructors. Those constructors will start with just a single input and single output, but as you move up the tech tree, you'll unlock constructors that take two or four inputs, as well as refineries that take both solid and liquid/gas inputs.

Your goal is "Project Assembly" - a space station connected to the end of a space elevator. Each stage requires more and more complex parts. Sourcing the resource nodes to fuel the construction of these parts, as well as all the smelters, constructors, refineries, and power plants to turn the base ore into advanced goods like supercomputers and magnetic field generators is literally the game.

Also important in the game is exploration - while roaming the (beautiful) world, you will come across various wreck sites, alien artifacts, and hostile fauna. Starting with just a small taser-like weapon, research will wield a taser-staff, then a rebar-gun (with various ammo types), grenades (of various types - including a nuclear variant, which your AI companion warns you is probably a bad idea), and finally a multi-shot rifle (with various ammo). Go from cowering in fear from the animals you run into (especially the advanced variants) to a god of death, slayer of all those that would wish you harm.

Bonus - the graphics are very pretty. The soundtrack is good, and you can craft a boombox that you can load with various tapes to liven up the sound.

My only note under the 'cons' section would be that, even with a decently beefy rig, I would occasionally experience some stuttering, especially in certain biomes like the Red Forest, or when in my main factory with its myriad smelters, constructors, and belts. It wasn't a dealbreaker (in fact, if a stutter occurs when you're using your jetpack, you can actually use it to get a major vertical boost, which can be useful), but it was somewhat annoying.

A point-and-click item puzzler, with a number of mini games / puzzles thrown in.

You play as an adventurous brother/sister duo, whose overactive imagination takes them to strange lands and stranger people. The graphics are charming, and all the characters are just oozing personality. Almost all the puzzles are straightforward enough / give enough clues that you should be able to figure it out on your own; but if you can't, there's a hint button that will point you in the right direction without entirely spoiling.

Short and sweet - doesn't overstay its welcome.