Recent reviews by YearsLate

This'll never be a replacement for the original Half-Life. There's just too much that's changed, even just for the sake of changing things. But it's definitely a love letter to Half-Life that's worth playing for anyone who has already played Half-Life.

One of the most important things for Turn-based Tactics games is to have good controls and responsive UI. This genres gameplay is ultimately fairly simple, so you want to have these things be spot-on so players can quickly get into playing and evaluate their every option- what order to move their units in and what weapons to attack with. All this to say that the PC controls for Stratagem Lost are great, which is a rare sight within the games that try to imitate the work of Intelligent Systems.

This is only the first of many hurdles this game managed to pass in good grace. Although there are no combat animations, the still art and particle effects make the combat vibrant and fast. Units have just enough abilities to offer depth, without having so many as to be redundant or meaningless. Even the story, which I expected would be its weakest point, proved itself to be immediately engaging.

I'm very much looking forward to the full release of the game.

Remember to update your reviews in light of the game returning to a more playable state again.

Not everything about this game is what we wanted- the polish in some places is eh, and the single-player content is... amusing, but far from cute. But this is the game we needed, and I'm happy to welcome it.

The most significant addition from this expansion would have to be the grievances system. The AI themselves are no different than they used to be, but they do respect grievances. Someone declares a surprise war on you early in the game? You get grievances on them; go ahead, take their capital city if you can. This alone makes Gathering Storm very playable for me despite my issues with the AI's incompetence.

Fortunately, there is the mod AI+ to mitigate that. Not happy about the fact we need a mod to patch that up, but beggars can't be choosers as they say, and I was certainly looking for an improvement to that.

The thing I really like about Civilization 6 on the whole though... is just how distinct each faction feels from one another. The district system is neat and all (to me at least), but faction uniqueness is the real change in the game from Civilization 5. I consider Civilization 5 a better game as of yet, but I honestly enjoy Civilization 6 more now and find this game way more interesting to play when hitting the random button before starting a new game.

First off, I should say that this is my first and only AoE game. I picked it up recently after discussing it with a friend some while back, and was surprised at how much I was enjoying it and disappointed I'd missed out on this series when I was younger. This is a great RTS for players who prefer taking things at a bit slower of a pace, or happen to enjoy history or alt-history media.

The games best features are its mildly-randomized maps and that you are rewarded with level-ups for factions you take a liking to and keep playing. While the 'card' system can be seen as a distraction to the actual gameplay, I find it a compelling way to customize a factions call-in abilities.

This review is for GD's ALPHA. Nevertheless, the game is in a perfectly playable state and is very fun too.

Grim Dawn is an unusual spiritual successor to Titan Quest, to whom a few of the people working on it had a hand in making. Stylistically, the games are quite different- between the vibrant fantasy Greece of TQ and GD's own grim take on Victorian fashions and weaponry. Mechanically though, it's the perfect successor to TQ, taking the good aspects of TQ's 2-mastery system and deepening it with a greater variety of skills available per mastery. Item drops are far improved over where TQ was, with a far better rate of blue items

The amount of actual content the game has to offer can't rival that of many other ARPG's, past or present, but Grim Dawn's lengthy amount of time spent refining what is there isn't an accident- it's a lean game with a focus on replayability through quality and a small amount of variation in your journey through some minor randomization. It's a small thing, but entrances to underground areas changing to be located somewhere else drastically changes the pace of going through zones you already accomplished with another character before.

And, as a final selling point for Grim Dawn, as with other popular ARPG's these days, support for the game won't end upon final release. It's a bit far from now, but future expansion including new areas and masteries, just as meticulously crafted as those in the original, are something to look forward to- and with GD's current record, unlikely to suddenly go awol as the developer decides to work on other projects.

A very silly game which acts like it's an ARPG. The simplistic variety of gear and items, as well as the lack of any skills and abilities make it a bit hard to call itself one, but who cares if the game is entertaining and funny? (Which it is.) It's not all low-brow humor either, though that's certainly there. Just be prepared for a light-hearted experience and be looking to laugh.

It's difficult to say whether I'd recommend EUIV as it is now or not- especially since I see more of its faults than its good points. Fortunately, as with a lot of Paradox titles, recent updates have been increasingly making the game better than what it originally was. While some changes have been poorly received and needed adjustment later (Paradox's newfound popularity has also come with a much larger number of people only familiar with EUIV and CK2 giving feedback upon yonder forums.) Paradox seems to have found a direction that properly takes (good) player feedback into account, without relying upon it too heavily.

It's not quite the game I wanted it to be, with some mechanics changes simplifying the game in a negative way (restoring stability with the push of a button when you have sufficient points is far too simple.) and other EUIII mechanics remaining that are only hurting the current state of the game. (Missions are terribly outdated things which can hardly be said to function in the current state of the game.)

Despite all this, it's still a very fun, easy to play game. Perhaps with some more updates (and a few mods...) I'll be able to say EUIV is a masterpiece of a grand strategy game.

While I liked it, I can't really say there's anything here to recommend to others. It's a fine use of 30 minutes, as long as you're fine with only getting some atmospheric music and a small amount of wandering out of that experience. But that's all the game has for it, nothing more substantial than that, and the ending, while certainly not what I was expecting, is still little more than a curiosity.