Recente recensies door blue

nothing the game pulled made me care about the characters, unfortunately. i do like the worldbuilding and other little tidbits scattered here and there, but just a massive faceplant on getting me to care about anyone past their visual design.

that aside, i did like the gameplay. i do think it's fairly fun on that front. fast-paced and hectic encounters just about every mission. unfortunately, there's not a lot of variety in terms of encounter, they all amount to some level of gun down something, even if at times said things are a bit bigger. didn't get to dip my toes in co-op personally but i can see it being some amount of fun, especially since it's a different pool of missions than the "main story" ones

i think it's a decent package as a whole, worth a look at least if you like mech games. unfortunately it doesn't come close to other offerings like older armored core or mechwarrior titles, but i think it's decent on its own!

a 8-bit inspired modern take on the old school platformer genre. it sticks the landing pretty well and removes a lot of frustrations in favor of more (solid) gameplay.

the different characters are fun to play and the silliness of the game also adds a lot to the charm. would recommend it, i think it's a good offering to the genre. it really does a lot of things right, and i think you're missing out if you like retro-inspired platformers.

if you want the pure gameplay of strike suit (which is very good, to be fair) then this is the game you want. it also goes on sale for like a dollar regularly, and i think it's a killer deal at that price. not that it isn't a deal at the regular price.

i scream the names of the items out loud when they combine

off the bat : no matter what i humanly possibly could do, i could not get a controller to work in desktop mode on a steam deck

as for the actual game, this is a weird mix between a plane dogfighting game and a mech game. and you know what? it's really fun. strongly recommend people to play this. banging OST too.

it's pretty alright. weird mix between ARPG and soulslike. could've used more enemy diversity overall though!!

had a fun time overall, will probably not play it again, but would still recommend a playthrough!

child left behind

it's alright! it's more splintered fate. if you liked the base game, i think it's worth your money.

i'm not a huge fan of how casey plays but i think he's a strong character. new area looks cool, soundtrack is solid. not much to complain about.

when it goes on sale for like 3-4 dollars i'd say it's worth a pickup. otherwise, would recommend it mostly for people into the genre - it's fairly clunky being a set of arcade title, and most people would not like that.

in terms of gameplay though, it's pretty alright. the inventory and spell system is pretty cool, the characters actually play decently differently with their own niches and quirks, and the presentation is overall pretty good.

not a bad time overall!

i have a bone to pick with a lot of people regarding AoE2. specifically, the older campaigns are seen as better by some (especially the Conquerors ones), when in reality they are way more bare bones than more recent additions to the game. how does that tie into this review specifically?

well, this expac pushes AoE2 past its pre-conceived limits. you can sort of see it in scenarios added past the original games (AoK and Conquerors) that people who worked on it subsequently made something fun, if not better than the original, but try to push the scope of campaigns and solo content forward. and i think this expansion pack adds a lot of needed diversity to the game for solo play in that regards - more specialized scenarios for solo play, that will tend to push you to play better to beat them.

in regards to difficulty, i don't think this is all that different from a lot of the current existing campaigns on "hard" - scenarios can get very brutal, and i think these battles serve as a decent extension of that.

with all that said, definitely the easiest to skip of the bunch, as it does not add new civs to play with for people, so feel free to completely ignore this one, even if i'd recommend it personally. would scenarios and campaigns for civs that do not have one be better? sure. but i'm never going to spit on officially supported solo content for AoE2.

for actual criticism : a lack of polish in terms of presentation (narrator being the same for all scenarios, re-used slides from past campaigns) kind of hurts the package, but doesn't detract from the experience.