Recent reviews by Stexe

Like its predecessor, It Takes Two, Split Fiction is all about collaboration (or "col-lab-or-a-tion" in the words of the famed Dr. Hakim). For me, it is a small step up over It Takes Two in a few aspects, but not as many as I would have liked. While most of the game is very "on rails" and linear, there are some interesting twists here and there that make up for it. The puzzles are also somewhat straight forward and a bit simpler than It Takes Two, but work overall.

Switching between sci-fi and fantasy worlds is fun and refreshing, especially the levels where you have multiple forms and can swap between your powers. While the sci-fi worlds do feel a bit samey at times, there is enough variety to keep you engaged. The game will often harken back to other classic games which is a cute shout out at times.

There are two big problems for me that hold it back from being incredible.

First, and more minor, are the powers given to Mio and Zoe. Mio has a lot of cool powers that are flexible and used in lots of situations, while Zoe almost always has "magnetism" based powers (outside of one place where it is somewhat the reverse). While not horrible, it does get a bit repetitive to have "yet another power that moves this to that" or "pushes this to there" or whatever. Just a nitpick, but would have liked to see more variety in the powers between the two characters.

Second, and the more major, is the story. It is super tropey, cliche, boring, and one dimensional. The bad guy, Rader, is a bad guy without any redeeming qualities, interesting character development arcs, or any narrative twists. He is just evil through and through. His whole motivation on "stealing ideas/creativity" is pretty silly too, especially when Mio and Zoe don't seem to be very original. Ideas are largely a dime a dozen and it is more about execution, which neither Mio or Zoe can pull off, let alone someone as banal as Rader. Mio and Zoe as characters are fun, but their "I'm serious and you're silly" into them both (somewhat) swapping roles and then finally warming up is very played out. The idea that one person can be only for sci-fi and another for fantasy is pretty ridiculous too. Basically, the whole premise on why they dislike each other at the start is extremely artificial feeling. At least It Takes Two had some fun moments and lightheartedness with Dr. Hakim, but that is completely missing here outside of a few minor gags.

Overall, the game is amusing and something to check out if you really liked It Takes Two and want more. I'd say it is also good to support developers, like Hazelight, who are against scummy monetization models. So, if you can look past the narrative and the on-rails, largely straight forward gameplay, it is an overall enjoyable experience.

7.25/10

Incredible game with so much hidden complexity behind a seemingly simple covering. Like a lot of "discovery / exploration" games there are rules and other things hidden that you won't understand until you get farther into the game. Try the demo or download the free PDF of the game if you want to try it out.

The negatives? A little heavy on "order of operations," but the hints help reduce that significantly. I love puzzle games that rely on clever "out of box thinking" instead of "do these in a certain order to win," which this has, but it also has the out of box stuff in spades. Sadly, the hints don't appear on overworld levels or daily levels (I guess for leaderboard reasons? But that's a bit silly since someone could cheat and redo them to get high scores anyway).

There are some discoveries and unlocks that require you to replay things and "hunt" for them, which is a little tiresome retreading ground (guides online can help you find them at least, but I wish they maybe gave more hints at where they were in-game). Plus, there's a lot of hidden levels that require some meta thinking to unlock, which are a bit obtuse. I also wish you could access settings without going back to the main menu and that they had a "Darker Mode" as the Dark Mode is still a tiny bit too bright for late, late night gaming.

But all things considered this is an incredible satisfying puzzle game with a lot to like! Highly, highly recommended for thinky puzzle game fans!

8.75/10

Tentative review. While I've finished the basic game, there's a lot more left to do and explore. I'll try to remain as spoiler free (outside of the basic premise and starting intro of the game) as possible in the review.

Blue Prince is a fascinating game both from an artistic and game design point of view. It smashes together rogue-lite elements and environmental puzzle solving into a unique blend that both hits and misses at key points.

Artistically, the game looks beautiful and there's a deep lore and an interesting story at the heart of the game. While the story is a bit straightforward-ish at times, there's enough there to tell a charming and somewhat moving tale, with more to learn and figure out if you want to delve deeper into the world.

Puzzle-wise, the puzzles are (usually) neat and clever. Some make you go "OOOH!" and change how you think about the game, similar to Outer Wilds, but some other puzzles are just obtuse and/or poorly designed and/or repetitive. Generally, the puzzles for the base default ending are not too bad, but too many things mislead you and/or hint at more complex things which are only used after finding the 46th room. The lack of an in-game notebook or tracking system is hugely problematic to me, and just having SOMETHING (like you do get in Outer Wilds) would help significantly.

Many people complain about the sheer RNG of the game, which I agree is a bit high, but it is largely mitigated once you figure out how the systems work. There are some times where it can be VERY frustrating and an entire day can be "lost" (with little to no learning or progress) due to a single bad roll or tiny misstep. The most annoying part is when you solve and/or figure out a puzzle, only to not be able to actually complete it or progress around it due to not getting the correct room, which is heavily exacerbated when the puzzle requires multiple rooms (sometimes even adjacent-ish), and you just can't get the combo when you need it. This also happens in reverse, when you get a cool combo but don't actually realize it until after the fact because you didn't have enough information to actually solve it at the time. Honestly, they really should be more forgiving and make things easier to explore and achieve. It feels a bit too tight, even with permanent upgrades that eventually help, and could easily be 20% more generous with resources and still be a great but challenging game.

Either way, despite all the bad things, the good elements far outweighs them and it is a game that has a lot to offer for those who don't mind some level of frustration and random elements. Just go into the game with those things in mind and you'll feel a lot better about your experience.

7.5/10 (would be an 8 with some QoL improvements and better ways to mitigate the RNG outliers, like maybe even just seeing 4 rooms at a time once you have more rooms in the drafting pool or something)

EDIT: After playing more, I can definitely see some of the repetition and grinding issues, especially in post-game content. I got stuck on a puzzle and decided to look it up -- it was a bonkers rabbit hole of a solution. *MINOR VAGUE SPOILERS* They require solving multiple higher level puzzles with specific room formations over multiple days, comboing it with other bonuses (stars / shrine / chess), multiple upgraded tools, translating an alien language, and studying an alien history ... to even manage to figure that out, let alone to get those combinations, would take over a hundred hours. Even knowing the general solution, I could see it taking 20+ hours of repeated runs just to get the correct combos.

So, while the game is still good overall, and something I am happy to have played, the sheer difficulty in the highest and most complex puzzles is just way too much for 99%+ of the players out there and thus I'm reducing my rating down to a 7/10 and with QoL improvements it would probably go up to a 7.5.

EDIT: Having nearly 100% the game at this point, I largely still agree with my initial impression. RNG can be mitigated mid-to-late game with a few other features, which makes it less problematic, but the fact you get them so far in and have to suffer through earlier issues is very frustrating. The rogue-lite elements of building up currencies feels a bit off putting at times because you'll have to grind at some points unless you get very lucky. Plus, some of the mid-to-late game puzzles are so silly and require weird logical leaps. There's very little feedback on puzzles and you could be working on them for hours or days and be completely off, never knowing it. To me the game is still a 7/10 for the initial gameplay and drops down to like a 6.5 in the mid-to-late game since the puzzles just get bonkers and there's no real hints. Hopefully, with some QoL adjustments it will improve the game to around a 7-7.25, but without a lot more changes to things (which I highly doubt would happen), I don't see it improving significantly. Still something to pick up if you love environmental puzzle games and don't mind the RNG and rogue-lite elements, but a much less accessible and enjoyable game than something like Outer Wilds, which to me did an incredible job in a semi-similar space.

Still rough around the edges, but it brings an interesting twist to the auto-battler genre. Each player is a "smash up" of two different factions with a subset of the faction's units. This allows for some interesting combos and unexpected surprises when playing as it is extremely rare to play against the same exact combo ever again.

However, there are a few sore spots at the moment that I can only imagine will be improved as time goes on. I wish the rules were explained a bit more -- it can be difficult to parse why units take a certain path or do certain things. The game definitely needs a fleshed out tutorial and maybe a Wiki / encyclopedia to show all the different factions, units, spells, and other things.

Having a timer for re-rolling squads makes sense in a competitive environment, but is also a bit long and punishing for someone who wants to see and try out a certain fun combo they've been dreaming about casually.

Some stats are a bit frustrating and binary, like high dodge or armored units, and there are times where an early location win can snowball someone ahead over and over (bonus gold into a lucky unit that you then can win the bonus gold again and so on). Lucking into initiative can be huge sometimes, especially early in the game, and can be the difference from a close fight to a huge mop up.

Finally, a lot of the deployment -- which is completely blind where people will deploy units -- can be hard to plan around. The can lead to some feel bad moment where it feels like a lot of it was a coin toss.

Overall, these problems aren't too bad and I suspect they will be ironed out as the game is developed. The "Statistics" option that shows all the possibilities with tons of simulated games is really neat and appreciated, but does highlight some of the issues. Richard teased on BGG that they might look into using the "Statistics" analytics in gameplay, which sounds very exciting. Either way, I just wish there was just a tad bit more agency and less swingy aspects to it, but besides that I can see it has some solid potential, especially as more factions and locations are added.

Has some neat ideas, but is really suffering from a few major issues.

First, you'll sometimes fight enemies at different stages than you. Like I fought someone who was at round 8 when I was at round 7.

Second, each system doesn't act simultaneously, and you have to wait for other systems to process before one starts, spends the time cooling down, and then activates. The means getting one or two powerful systems is much better than lots of little systems that might take time to activate.

Third, the game doesn't explain stuff to you UNTIL you buy it. At that point you might have just made a huge mistake and you don't know.

Fourth, the speed up function doesn't speed it up much. Against some ships with a lot of shields and defensive attributes battles are very long and you have to wait until "overheating" kills you/them (basically like the sandstorm in The Bazaar).

I'm sure there are more things I'm missing, but it is still VERY rough. Interested to see where it goes but at the same time it needs quite a bit of polish before it is there and does something to differentiate itself from the countless other similar asynchronous auto-battlers out there.

It starts out great, but then devolves into an open world puzzle game, except you don't know what tools you need to solve some puzzles. Some levels are very punishing and the rules are often finicky or obscure. Other puzzles have hidden walls or special objects you can only find by looking at the slightly different pixels. You will probably be backtracking quite a bit or going to islands that you can't even progress on. The star locking system works at times, but then feels arbitrary at other times.

I'll give it a tentative thumbs up, but it has a lot of rough edges. Really wish it didn't try the Metroidvania/Zelda lite aspects and focused more on the puzzles than the hidden elements and "trying too hard to be clever" designs. 6.5/10

Nodebuster is interesting and there's a bit more skill expression there than I originally thought. However, a huge amount of that is undermined by the fact you can't remove upgrades. Without the ability to remove upgrades it takes out clever strategies. Like being very tiny in size, to avoid taking damage, and focusing on boss damage upgrades. Or removing ranged upgrades to more easily idle farm, instead of killing enemies at a distance where you can't claim their resources while idling.

The pacing is a bit off at times -- little too slow at the start and the end game feels a bit of a slog getting the final currency, but overall it isn't a bad experience. It is definitely "on the fence" for me and only barely pushed over due to the low cost.

Pretty short and has no real replayability. The game doesn't do a lot to innovate and only adds a tiny bit of agency to an idler game format, that often works against itself with the upgrades, so overall the game is fairly average. 5/10

Quick review with first impressions and oof...

tl;dr: Meta progression doesn't belong in a Civ game. The rest can be fixed, but I feel the meta progression is way too baked in that it won't be easily fixed or removed.

As much as it pains me to say, Civilization 7 is very rough. The idea is great and I love splitting the game into eras where things change and gameplay resets somewhat, but how they handled it leaves a bit to be desired. It is such a hard cut off between eras and feels horrible if you miss a HUGE upgrade by a single turn. Like imagine missing a Wonder by a turn, except times 10 the frustration. Especially if you're trying to unlock a specific civilization to play in the next era and again miss it by a tiny, tiny amount. Feels odd to not be able to change your leader too.

The game also is lacking a lot of UI things and abilities to easily quell unhappy towns. There seems to be no way to remove towns or make them stop bleeding if they are angry because you went over some threshold by just a tiny bit. You can have just a tiny amount of unhappiness in a town and completely lose it because there's no way to get them happiness, despite having a TON of gold you should be able to throw at them to build stuff or give them things.

These things can largely be polished and improved, but what really annoys me is the whole "meta" game around leveling up leaders and doing things for XP and other unlocks? It is mindboggling they added this to a Civilization game. Like ... what? You're locking options behind playing the game a lot? Really? The whole point of Civilization was a freeform exploration into cool things, not playing over and over to unlock new options that you can't get access to at the start. And it is spread throughout the game and has links to 2K Games with your own 2K Games account that logs in and links to your Steam too? Why? The game screams like some 2K Games exec wanted to cram live service things into it and have Twitch drops and other event unlocks for a game that shouldn't care about that stuff. Ugh... just no.

There doesn't need to be meta progression in a Civilization game.

Game has pay-to-win features and isn't a truly competitive game on an equal level. Seems like a lot of fake reviews here. The UI is also very clunky and the gameplay pretty formulaic. Wished there was something unique that it brought to the table instead of just more of the same with p2w stuff.

This review will compare the game to Factorio (not Space Age, as I'm currently playing that while writing this review and might update this afterwards), since they are very intertwined as capstone automation games. Both are incredible and something to check out. If you're new to the genre, check out Shapez first and if you like that but want more, go for either. Minor spoilers for both, but not a ton.

tl;dr: Needs more fauna and personal upgrades, otherwise a near masterpiece. 9/10

Full Review: While not as good as Factorio -- it is damn near close. Satisfactory has a lot of great aspects to it for an automation game and surpasses Factorio in a few key areas while lagging behind in others. The exploration and first person perspective adds a neat layer that you don't get in Factorio. It focuses more on power consumption and connecting remote locations with exclusive resources and less on logistics of organization and optimization paths. The efficiency / optimization in Satisfactory is significantly easier to manage due to underclocking/overclocking things directly and seeing exact input and production values (which makes it much easier to optimize around and something I think Factorio could really use).

Because the world is in 3D and you can (largely) use no-clipping for planning connections, it becomes more about having enough power and then just feeding long lines to other locations (direct connections, vehicles, trains, etc). While Factorio often is about how to smash together the pieces to get the correct combos feeding into the automation factories, Satisfactory has so much space that you can just crisscross things to match up as needed.

While the first person perspective offers a lot of awesome things (scale, immersion, jumpscares), it overall hinders the experience from a planning perspective. Being able to see all the connections and lines becomes much more difficult, and you have to keep a lot more of it in your head, which isn't really fun or meaningful gameplay. The overall perspective is a negative factor for a game like this, even outside of the motion sickness which a lot of people experience while playing it.

Research and technology progression is different, and overall slightly weaker. Researching is less piece-meal and grouped into multiple discoveries at once. This often leads to explosions of new buildings which can be overwhelming to deal with, instead of a more gradual refactoring and improvement cycle. Additionally, research is gated by large blockers revolving around building the space elevator. This results in large down times as the space elevator pieces build, which while it does give time for exploring, feels a bit too artificial in how much it constricts.

The lack of being able to build/combine components to make more advanced components in your "backpack" also results in some odd moments where you're stuck and have to return to another factory to just get the ingredients. Factorio lets you combine things as you move, which is technically inefficient, but at least solves a lot of issues about forgetting tiny things when building new bases.

Where Satisfactory shines above Factorio is in exploration. After setting up your production and research tracks you have some downtime for things to complete, instead of just sitting around optimizing (or going around killing alien bases to reduce incoming attacks), you're actively scavenging the world for resources and artifacts. These artifacts allow for interesting new discoveries and ways to supercharge your base. The ability for "alternative recipes" is brilliant and can completely change how one person approaches Satisfactory to another -- one thing Factorio could REALLY use. The other artifacts are technology blockers for digitizing components (giving access to things from afar) and output multipliers, both of which are cool, handy, and useful. Additionally, the verticality aspect of Satisfactory allows for a lot of fun movement modes and exploration options solved by construction or technology. It does feel a bit limited on what could be possible, but still something unique that isn't seen in Factorio.

While there are weapons and other military options in Satisfactory, they are pretty generic and pale in comparison to those in Factorio. The fauna is pretty straightforward and easy to defeat, even with the most basic weapons, which is very disappointing. There is no base defending and combat usually boils down to strafing / jumping while shooting. Had Satisfactory doubled the number of fauna and weapon / movement / personal upgrade options this might be a different story, but it was the one area that really felt lacking. Fighting the same rhino-boar-like enemy for the millionth time was just meh. Give more diversity in the enemies and strategic planning on different upgrades to overcome them! I understand that isn't the focus, but why not lean into the biggest unique factor that would set it apart from Factorio? Oh well. Plus, radiation and poison clouds feels overly punishing and there aren't great options beside stacking filters or avoiding/removing the source. Great for limiting players and creating interesting barriers at the start, but just becomes annoying in the end game.

There is a lot more hand-holding on Satisfactory, which is nice so you can get into the heart of the game faster, but also leads to less discovery and needed improvement. Factorio says, "get this end goal, figure out how to do it," while Satisfactory says, "these are the steps needed to reach the end goal." Neither a good or negative thing, it is just something to consider when comparing the two and if you like something that is more obvious or something that takes longer to puzzle out.

Either way, Satisfactory is incredibly well designed, fun, and rewarding. Highly, highly recommended. 9/10

EDIT: Minor typos.