Recent reviews by Fnord

There are loads of 8-bit inspired platformers on steam, some of them are very good, like Shovel Knight, a fare few of them are not so good, often made with more enthusiasm than talent, which can have its charm. And then there’s Mighty Gunvolt.

One of the biggest platforming franchises of the 8-bit generation was Mega Man, which received 6 mainline titles on the NES. These games remain popular to this day, and have had a couple of imitators and spiritual successors, among which was the not so good Mighty No. 9. Mighty Gunvolt might look like one of these attempted spiritual successors, and it even has the main character for Mighty No. 9 in it, but while it looks like a Mega Man title, Mighty Gunvolt isn’t, it’s a straight forward platformer with 3 different characters you can play, over 5 main stages and 4 bonus stages. You don’t earn new weapons and you can’t chose which order to do the main stages, so don’t go in expecting Mega Man here.

This game is actually more of a piece of advertisement for three other game franchises more so than anything else. Azure Striker Gunvolt, Mighty No. 9 and Gal Gun are all represented here, with Mighty No. 9 being the only game I have any actual experience with (Azure Strike Gunvolt does look like something I might like, and Gal Gun looks like something I would hate)


Graphics & Sound
Mighty Gunvolt looks and sounds like a late-era NES game, particularly one of the later Mega Man games, minus some of the technical issues that were common on the NES, like slowdown and sprite flickering.

The spritework in Mighty Gunvolt is pretty good, even if the enemy designs are not the most inspired. They seem to be drawing inspiration from all three games that this game is advertising, and as a result some enemies, and bosses in particular, look out of place. At least everything reads easily, there are no instances where you get blindsided by projectiles that you can’t see or enemies that blend in too well with the background (there are some that are meant to be hidden, but that’s fully intentional, and they’re easy to spot anyway). Speaking of the backgrounds, most of them are quite nice looking, and really the visual highlight of the game.


As for the games music, it’s well made. It’s not on par with the best that 8-bit games has to offer, but it fits, and all the tunes sound good. There’s not a whole lot else going on with the sound design though, you get the usual sounds for shooting your weapon and hitting enemies, but nothing that stands out as being exceptionally good, or bad.


Gameplay
Mighty Gunvolt is a short and very easy 2D platformer. Imagine taking a game like Mega Man and stripping out all the challenge, complexity, and choices, and you’ve got Mighty Gunvolt. Well, not all choices, you’ve got three different characters to chose when you start the game, each one having a unique moveset.


There’s really not much to say about the minute to minute gameplay, if you’ve played any other run & gun platformer you’ll have t decent idea of what to expect here. You move through the levels, usually from left to right, shooting enemies and avoiding their attacks on the way. Sometimes there are spikes or other stage hazards in the way, that needs to be avoided. And here we have the first real issue with the game, the level design. It’s pretty generic feeling and sparsely populated. There are rarely many enemies on screen at any given time and the platforming challenges are almost trivial. There’s little nuance to the level design and nothing that elevates it above “alright”. That said, there’s nothing terrible either, everything works and there are no frustrating “gotcha” moments where something appears out of nowhere and kills you. The levels also have some slightly different paths for each character, as they have different ways to navigate the levels, but these are ultimately pretty pointless, as all you’ll really get for taking a path that’s unique for the character you’re currently playing is a few score items and maybe a health pickup. The fact that you have three different characters with different movesets, all having to be able to navigate the same levels, can probably explain some of the issues here, as the levels had to be kept simple as to avoid any one section being too hard for any given character, but they could have done more with the level design.


Each level ends with a boss, as you would expect, with one level just having a boss and nothing else (there goes one of the 5 levels!). The bosses are decently varied and some have interesting attack patterns, while others are mostly just there. At their best the bosses are fun, if a bit easy, at worst they’re inoffensively bland.


As mentioned, there are three different characters, each one with their own unique movesets. Gunvolt has a double jump and if you hold down the fire button he’ll stop in place and release a rapid fire stream of short range shots, which can be aimed up or down and goes through walls. Ekoro can hover in the air, like Princess Peach/Toadstool from Super Mario Bros 2, and can take control of enemies with her charge shot (though which enemy you take control over does not matter much, as they all just hover behind you and shoot occasionally, with the only major difference seemingly being their size), and Beck can slide along the ground and his charge shot sees him ram the enemies, often not dealing enough damage to take them out in one hit and thus making him take some damage instead. While it might sound like the characters would feel radically different to play, they don’t, and the level design does a remarkably poor job at making use of their special abilities.


This game is really short. It took me 1½ hours to beat it with all three characters, doing all the bonus levels as well as the main ones, and I did not see a game over screen even once. No matter what character you pick you can take a lot of damage (no instant death spikes here!). With quite a few bosses it’s an entirely valid strategy to just not worry about taking damage and hammer the “fire” button as you can outlast the boss.


Closing thoughts
There’s nothing seriously wrong with Mighty Gunvolt, well apart from one thing, but we’ll get to that. It’s a game, it exists, it functions. But apart from some nice backgrounds and music there’s nothing all that good about it either. The big problem with Mighty Gunvolt is that there are just better options out there, and lots of them. Be it the earlier mentioned Shovel Knight, or even just the re-releases of Mega Man. Mighty Gunvolt is ultimately just a rather bland game. And that is why I can’t really recommend it.

But what about that thing that’s “seriously wrong” with it? Well, I can’t seem to be able to turn off the game. Not because I don’t want to, but because the game just locks up when I try to exit it, and it covers up the task manager if I try to open that one. The “windows” key works and with that I can access the taskbar and close down steam, which closes down most of the game, and then I can open the task manager and close down the final remnants of it. It’s not a complete dealbreaker of an issue, but it’s an annoyance added to an already hard to recommend game, and it’s a known bug that’s remained unfixed since launch. You might be one of the lucky ones who don’t have this issue, but I could find several others who do. So save your time and your money and just get something else, like Panzer Paladin, Kero Blaster or heck, even the Angry Videogame Nerd games (and that’s coming from someone who does not care for AVGN).

This is an abridged version, the complete review can be found over here at Save or Quit[saveorquit.com]

Combat Mission Shock Force was released back in 2007, and while it reviewed poorly at launch, it managed to find its footing, and ultimately sold well enough to get 3 expansions, and a decently sized, and very dedicated, fan community. Combat Mission Shock Force 2 is an updated and expanded version of the 2007 original.

The Combat Mission series has always been one that valued a realistic depiction of how battles were fought, over a fast pace, making it an interesting counter point to the popular Men of War series. And Shock Force 2 is no exception to this rule, combat is slow paced, and mechanically very detailed (even if the graphics don’t quite match this).


Last time I played a Combat Mission game was in 2002 or 2003. I remember being fascinated by it, but ultimately I did not get very far into it. I was a bit worried about Shock Force 2 when I started it, after all, it’s a venerable series with a rather fanatical fanbase, but it’s a series I have little first-hand experience with. What if I can’t get into it? But Shock Force 2 was surprisingly easy to get into, at least with 18 more years of gaming experience since the last time I played a game in it. And I had a lot of fun with it. It’s also very different from other supposedly realistic tactics games. Don’t go into this expecting Men of War, because while MoW has more realistic physics and visible damage models it far more arcadey in its playstyle. Instead this is a slow-paced game, where pinning enemy soldiers and making them keep their heads down before you advance is the key to success, and where you need to advance slowly, as to not be ambushed by something that’s sitting in a hedge, 1km away.

In a way I feel like giving this game a rating is pretty meaningless. This is a game for a very specific audience, an audience who will be willing to overlook the games dated graphics and sometimes slightly clunky interface, for the staggering amount of details, and depth that this game has to offer. For someone who’s not heavily invested in the genre, but who still enjoys the occasional grounded tactics game, this game might be worth picking up if it ever gets a steep discount, particularly as the asking price for this game is quite high, but for fans of realistic tactics game, set in a modern setting, it’s a no-brainer, and well worth the price.

Owners of the original Shock Force do by the way not need to buy the complete game all over again, there’s an upgrade that can be bought on the developers own website for $15, that should give you everything Shock Force 2 has to offer.

This is an abridged version, the complete review can be found over here at Save or Quit[saveorquit.com]

Tears of Avia has had a lengthy and not entirely trouble-free development. 5 years ago, back in 2015, they launched the game on kickstarter, and the campaign did not reach its goal. Development still went on and now the game has finally been released.

SPRGs have been around for nearly as long as JRPGs, and the genre is quite diverse. Tears of Avia seems to be aiming for something somewhat in-between two of the genre’s juggernauts, Disgaea and Fire Emblem. Like in most SRPGs you’ll be recruiting new members to your small army who will level up and grow more powerful over time. Permadeath is an option, but it’s not mandatory, and like Fire Emblem you have a limited pool of characters that you can recruit along the way, but unlike Fire Emblem you can go back to past levels and level up anyone you think is trailing behind.

Tears of Avia has some major balance issues. There’s no real difficulty curve, items drop with insane stats early on and certain classes do seem to scale better than others. All of this adds up to a game that’s not very fun to play. The core mechanics are sound, if a bit shallow, but even if they were amazing, and offered a lot of depth, it would not be enough to make up for the busted balance.

Some RPGs, strategy or otherwise, do have stories that are good enough to make up for humdrum gameplay, but sadly Tears of Avia does not have that either. The story is perfectly serviceable, but it’s not enough to carry the game. Most of the issues this game has would also not be very easily fixed with a patch or two. If they lower your damage output, it would make the long levels really tedious and even more unfair, but at the same time they need to reign in the damage output from the players characters in order to get most of the rest of the game to work. Hopefully the developers will be able to overhaul the game, they have after all shown to be very responsive to criticism, but at the moment I can’t recommend it.

This is an abridged version, the complete review can be found over here at Save or Quit[saveorquit.com]

Back in 2012 a small game called Legend of Grimrock was released, and it was a surprise hit. It brought back a long dead sub-genre of CRPGs, namely the first person tile-based dungeon crawler. After it became clear that there was a market for these kinds of games other developers went to work putting their own spin on the formula, with mixed results. One game really stood out from the pack though, and that was the original Vaporum.

Vaporum: Lockdown is a prequel to the original Vaporum, and takes place in the same massive steampunk tower as the first game, although not in the same part of the tower (it’s so big it can house several games worth of stuff!). You’re playing as Ellie, a scientist who worked in the tower when things went horribly wrong, and now you need to find your way out, while finding off mutated creatures and robots that have gone insane.



I played the original Vaporum, and found it to be one of the best games of its type. So it was hard to not go into this one with some expectations. Luckily Vaporum: Lockdown more than lives up to those expectations. Combat is fast and fun, although ultimately very similar to the original game, but where Lockdown truly shines is with its puzzles. These has to be some of the most well designed puzzles in any RPG to date, and the balance between action and puzzle solving is really good. It’s only right at the very end of the game that this balance ends up feeling a little bit off, but even then it never ended up feeling tedious.

A lot of comparisons were drawn between Grimrock and the first Vaporum, and the same comparisons are likely to be drawn between this and Grimrock, and apart from the obvious change in setting, and the lack of a party, the games are very similar. If you enjoyed one, you’re likely to enjoy the other. Which one is better is hard to say, and that alone is high praise for Vaporum. Fans of first person RPGs, who enjoy a good brain teaser from time to time, owe it to themselves to play this one.


(note: For some reason the achievements did not unlock when I played through the game using a review copy, but I did beat the game)

This is just an excerpt, the complete review is posted over at Save or Quit[saveorquit.com]

Before Bungie became a household name with the release of Halo, they create a real time tactics game called Myth: The Fallen Lords. It was a bloody game about small bands of warriors who went up against hordes of undead, and most importantly, it had bomb throwing dwarfs that turned said undead into tiny little gory pieces (and also your own troops, if you were not careful).

Despite Myth’s popularity, there’s been no real imitators, with the games that has taken inspiration from Myth still straying quite far from the formula. That is, of course, until now. Nordic Warriors is a game that draws a lot of inspiration from the Myth series, without just being a modern-day reimagining of it. It’s a game about a small number of Viking(like) warriors, fighting hordes of undead. And yes, there are bomb throwers in this game.

......

Nordic Warriors might not be the deepest, or the most complex tactics game out there, but it is really fun to play, and that’s what matters the most. It’s oddly satisfying to land a perfect bomb throw into a group of enemies, seeing parts of them fly all over the place. The fact that you need to dodge projectiles gives the game a slightly more actiony feel than many other tactics games, but it’s never to the point where it replaces the need for proper tactics. The more straight forward nature of the game also makes it an easy pick up and play game, you don’t need to spend a lot of time learning the ins and outs of the mechanics to play it properly. It is a game you need to approach on its own terms though, if you’re the kind of person who just want to rush in and see things blow up, you’ll end up losing all your troops very fast. You need to play this game in a slow and methodical way.

I said earlier in the review that the game looks about 15 years old, and that was not meant as an insult. There are games from that time, like Spellforce 2, that still look remarkably good. It might not be on par with games like Dawn of War 3 or the latest Total War, but 15 years ago we were past the “awkward phase” of 3D graphics.

Fans of real time tactics games, and particularly those who have been yearning for a game similar to Myth, should really check this game out. The few rougher edges are easy to ignore, and the game also runs very well, even on a modest PC.

This is just a short summary. The complete review is posted over at Save or Quit[saveorquit.com]

It’s a good time to be an RPG fan, in the last couple of years we’ve seen a lot of great RPGs being released, and it’s in this crowded market that Fates of Ort tries to find its place. The makers of Fates of Ort have been smart though, and instead of trying to go toe to toe with the giants of the genre, they’ve made a unique, and interesting game that’s different from anything else, yet feels familiar enough that it’s easy to pick up and play.

In Fates of Ort you’re playing a mage, in a world where using magic has a cost. Either the magician will end up drawing from their own life force, or that of the world itself. This makes using magic a strategic choice, do you want to pay the cost of casting spells, or would you prefer to go at it the old fashioned way and hit the enemy with your sword? That’s not the only thing that sets Fates of Ort apart from other RPGs though, an even more significant thing is how time stops when you do, turning this action RPG into a surprisingly tactical game.

Fates of Ort is, at its core, an action RPG. You move through the world, fight enemies, and earn experience and gear. Were it not for the fact that the game stops when you do, it could be compared to games like Sacred or Divine Divinity, only a bit simpler. But the fact that the game pauses makes a big difference. It changes combat from something very hectic, where you would normally end up taking a lot of small hits into something more strategic, where the game can afford to punish you for your mistakes, but always gives you the tools necessary to avoid them.

While the setting in Fates of Ort might not be quite as well-realized as some of the genre’s greatest, there are still a lot of small touches that make it feel coherent. People do for an example share religion across the world, although there seems like depending on where you are, people have a slightly different view on the exact details. There are also a lot of quests that intertwine in different ways, and this really does wonders for making the world feel more alive.
Less good at making the world feel alive has to be all the weird places you find hostile people. Why are all the castle guards attacking you on sight? Highway robbers make sense, most RPGs tend to have a lot of those, but castle guards? It would have made more sense if they turned hostile after you had done something to upset them.

Fates of Ort is a really good game. Let’s just start there. It takes a few risks and does a few things in ways I’ve never seen before, but it still remains approachable, and easy to play. Combat is fast and fun, the soundtrack is nice, and the world was a blast to explore. I usually don’t enjoy games that just dump you into a world and tell you to go out and explore it, with little direction from the start, but the way this game handled it made it feel less daunting, as I always knew what I wanted to do. This is simply one of those games where it feels like all the pieces fit together.

But no game is perfect, there are a few bugs here, some even somewhat serious, like a black screen bug that happened on two occasions for me. There were also some problems with collision detection at points, and one of the bosses in the game became unresponsive for no apparent reason, and I had to restart that fight. It would also have been nice if the world felt a bit more alive and reacting to you, particularly as the quests do such a good job at letting you chose different ways of tackling them. It feels like a bit of a missed opportunity.

Those issues aside, I really enjoyed my time with Fates of Ort. In fact, it’s one of the few games I’ve played, that’s longer than a couple of hours, that never really had any moments where I thought it dragged, overstayed its welcome or were becoming tedious. It’s not a super long game, but there’s on the other hand also next to no padding, and personally I prefer it that way. And it’s just a really fun game to play in general.

This is just a short summary. The complete review is posted over at Save or Quit[saveorquit.com]

Bookbound Brigade is a 2D Metroidvania set in the world of history and literature. You control a band of characters from around the world who need to save B.O.B, also known as The Book of Books, which has been stolen from its place. Without it, all the world of literature is at risk.

As you venture through the world of literature, you'll run into a large number of different characters, some historical, some made up, and this is where most of the games humor comes from, the dialogue between your party of characters, and the people you run into. While some of the dialogue can be a bit funny, it can also feel a bit stilted, and the game has a tendency of lingering on jokes that don't quite land, and having King Arthur say "LOL" is more likely to make people cringe than laugh.

Bookbound Brigade has a distinct and consistent art style, and the character designers have done a good job, because despite being heavily stylized, most characters, even less famous ones, are easy to identify. All the different areas also look quite different, but sadly different rooms within the same area tend to look very similar, which makes it hard to remember where you've been and where important objects that you have to return to might be. Luckily the map marks the rough locations for different objects, but this also takes away a bit from the sense of exploration.

Sadly, Bookbound Brigade's biggest issues are related to its gameplay. You control a "blob" of characters, that move as one, and you can change formation in order to get past different obstacles or fight enemies, and while the idea is fun, controls feel unresponsive. If you try to change formation in a place where the new formation would not fit, you get a red outline showing this, but quite often the game won't respond to commands to change formation, despite repeated key presses. This is extra bad in areas where you rapidly need to switch between formations, to avoid hazards.
Combat is requires a lot of mashing. So much so that I started experiencing physical pain while playing the game, something that's never happened to me before, not even in notoriously mash heavy games, like Mario Party. So I could not see the final parts of the game. Bosses are the main issue, they're massive damage sponges, and while there are ways to deal damage other than just directly attacking them, like with abilities, you don't deal enough damage this way to kill them, and you still need to do a lot of mashing to get through. So sadly, with the unresponsive controls and the mash-heavy combat, I can't recommend this game.

This is just a short summary. The complete review is posted over at Save or Quit[saveorquit.com]

Praetorians is an old RTS first released in 2003, by Pyro Studios, the people who gave us the well regarded Commandos series. Pyro studios is no longer with us, but Kalypso Media has decided to bring back this classic, with a fresh coat of paint.

Praetorians is set during the time of Julius Caesar, and shows some of the major campaigns against the Gauls, Britons and also the campaigns against the Parthians and Egyptians. While the game uses a historical backdrop, it does not focus on historical accuracy, and particularly the Egyptian faction is far from what they would have been during the time if Caesar, and instead looks like they're based on "the New kingdom", which was about 1500 years before this game takes place.

Historical accuracy aside, Praetorians is a good game that puts a heavy emphasis on tactical combat. While you can produce units in villages that you capture, this is not the focus of the game, and unit production is limited, instead proper use of the units you have is the key to success. Using the right units against the right targets, using terrain to your advantage and holding up dangerous foes to protect your weaker and more vulnerable units. Scouting is particularly important, as units can hide in terrain features, and moving past or through unscouted terrain features can result in costly ambushes.

The HD remaster is somewhat limited in scope. While the remastered edition is better than the original, the difference between the original and remastered are not huge. Better textures and a higher resolution makes this version look nicer, but the models and terrain still look dated, and there's a lack of any real graphical flares. This is an old game, and you can tell from the way it looks.

For people who don't own the original, the remastered edition is the version to get, but the changes between this and the original are minor enough that it might be a tough sell for people who already own the older version, at least for those who are just interested in the singleplayer portion, and don't care about multiplayer.

This is just a short summary. The complete review is posted over at Save or Quit[saveorquit.com]

Fantasy General 2 is a really good sequel to a classic turnbased strategy game from 1996. In terms of gameplay it lands somewhere in-between the classic Panzer General series (or the more modern Panzer Corps) and Fire Emblem, with units that gain experience and improve as they fight.

In the main campaign, you only get to play as one of the two factions, namely the barbarians, while the empire is just available for Skirmish and multiplayer. Chances are we'll get an empire DLC soon though.

The level design in the campaign is quite varied, and stays that way through it, and despite you only having access to units from one faction (and some neutrals), you end up with a surprisingly diverse force, with units that have several different upgrade paths that lets you tailor your army to your liking. Prefer fast hit & run units? Go for something like stag riders. Want a slow and heavy unit that can stop a charging cavalry unit? Then shield maidens are for you!

Overall, I really enjoyed Fantasy General 2. it's surprising to see such an old game series getting revived, but Owned by Gravity really managed to create something great here.

This is just a short summary. The complete review is posted over at Save or Quit[saveorquit.com]

Close Combat is an old series. The first game was released in 1996, and things did not change much since, apart from a somewhat misguided tactical FPS that was released in 2005. Heck, they've even been sticking with the same game engine all this time, although obviously with some upgrades along the way. With The Bloody First, Slitherine is trying to take the series forward, keeping what made people like the old games while also fixing some of the issues they had and finally bringing the series into the 3rd dimension.

The Bloody First follows the exploits of the US 1st infantry company, as they fight against the Germans & Italians in Tunisia, Sicily and finally Normandy.

If you've played any previous Close Combat game, the gameplay will feel immediately familiar. While the new engine does bring with it some changes, the basics are the same. You're leading a small force, and it's up to you to make sure that they stay alive as they push the enemy off the land. Much like the previous Close Combat games, this is a relatively slow paced game, rushing ahead is a recipe for disaster, instead you need to take your time, pin the enemy troops with one or two units, and then try to flank them with another, while keeping a careful eye on the moral of your soldiers.

With it being so slow paced, this is a niche game, and people who expect instant action will probably end up really bored. People who are fans of tactics games that reward careful planning over quick reactions will likely love this game though.