Recent reviews by jimm3ron

🛡️ Gameplay & Mechanics
At its core, Wartales is about managing a mercenary company. You recruit companions, each with unique skills and backgrounds, and equip them with gear suited to their roles. The game emphasizes survival elements—managing food supplies, paying wages, and maintaining morale are crucial. Neglecting these aspects can lead to desertion or worse.​

Combat unfolds on a grid-based battlefield, where positioning and strategy are paramount. Each unit has action points, and the order of actions can be decisive. Environmental factors, such as terrain and weather, influence battles, adding depth to encounters.​

Exploration is non-linear; you're free to roam the vast world, taking on contracts, discovering hidden treasures, or engaging in side quests. The game doesn't hold your hand—there's no overarching narrative pushing you forward, allowing for organic storytelling through your actions.​ Unless of course you choose to have the enemy levels scale with each region, and not with your level.

⚔️ Comparison to Mount & Blade
While Mount & Blade offers real-time combat and large-scale battles, Wartales opts for turn-based skirmishes, focusing on tactical depth over spectacle. Both games share an emphasis on player-driven narratives and sandbox exploration. However, Wartales leans more into RPG mechanics, with detailed character progression and equipment management.​

🎨 Visuals & Atmosphere
The game's art style is grounded and sombre, reflecting its harsh world. Environments are richly detailed, from dense forests to dilapidated villages. The soundtrack complements the setting, with melancholic tunes underscoring the game's themes of survival and hardship.​

📝 Final Thoughts
Wartales is a compelling experience for those who appreciate tactical RPGs and sandbox exploration. Its blend of mercenary management, strategic combat, and open-world freedom offers a unique take on the genre. While it may not cater to players seeking a tightly woven narrative, its emergent storytelling and challenging gameplay make it a standout title.

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https://youtu.be/xWrledHDYMA

​Roman Triumph: Survival City Builder is a compelling blend of historical city-building and mythological survival strategy, developed by Coreffect Interactive. Set on the volatile northern fringes of the Roman Empire, the game challenges players to construct and manage a thriving settlement amidst constant threats from barbarian invasions and legendary beasts like the Hydra and Minotaur.​

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At its core, Roman Triumph is a survival city-builder and colony simulation game. Players are tasked with overseeing the development of their city, ensuring citizens are well-fed, healthy, and content. The game features over 60 historically accurate Roman buildings, including temples, forums, and aqueducts, each contributing to the city's functionality and the populace's well-being. ​

A standout feature is the dynamic interaction with Roman deities. Constructing temples and making offerings to gods like Jupiter and Mars is crucial; neglecting these divine relationships can result in dire consequences such as plagues, storms, or attacks by mythical creatures. ​

Defence is paramount. Players must build fortifications, including walls, ballistae, and archer towers, to protect their city from external threats. Training legionnaires and progressing through a detailed research tree unlocks advanced military units and technologies, enhancing the city's resilience. ​

Resource management is equally critical. Cultivating crops, raising livestock, and trading with neighbouring cities ensure a steady supply of essentials. Strategic city planning, considering the placement of residential, industrial, and religious structures, optimizes efficiency and growth. ​

The game's procedurally generated landscapes offer unique challenges and opportunities in each playthrough, enhancing replayability. The integration of historical accuracy with mythological elements provides a rich and immersive experience for players.​

Roman Triumph is currently available in Early Access on Steam, inviting players to participate in its ongoing development. For enthusiasts of city-building and strategy games, it offers a fresh and engaging take on ancient Roman civilization.

https://youtu.be/V-1Bl1KNANI

Farm Manager World is the sequel to the previous Farm Manager instalments. It is a farm manager in which you must raise crops, animals, care for your workers, and handle the logistics of all of the above.

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The crop planting goes quite in depth. Nitrogen, PH levels, as well as temperature and amount of hydration are some of the things you have to take under consideration when choosing your plant. Crop rotations are also part of the puzzle.

Soil quality will dictate how much yield the crop will provide. Staffing your farm with permanent and seasonal employees is the tip of the iceberg. Permanent employees have specialisations that make them more effective when they are utilised correctly.

The Manager menu is plentiful with options and information that you can use to your advantage, as well as a lot of research that you can take on.

Making money in this game is quite easy. Having a few animal farms and selling the produce and the meat they provide is the most effective way of making profits. Unlocking tractors and attachments for them will only further your progress faster.

The only thing that has a bit of a confusing learning curve is warehouse management and the resources. When a resource is requested by a warehouse, any quantity that exists until that demand is fulfilled will not be available for sale or contract satisfaction. You must reduce the request amount for said resource before the excess can be freed for sale.

Overall, there are a lot of things to do in the game. Sure, some tweaking and bug fixing here and there can improve the overall quality of the game, but there is nothing game breaking in its current state.

https://youtu.be/7_kuKUqfmF4

Dystopika is a low stakes, stress free, sandbox, Cyberpunk city builder. Let your creative mind take over and construct the city of your dreams. Dark, atmospheric, and unrestrictive.

You do not need to worry about resources, trades, micromanagement, population needs... Your mouse is a brush. The screen is your canvas. Create.

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https://youtu.be/2_J0vsxlhFs

Two of some of my favourite genres combined in one. A colony sim with a turn based battle system fused in a way that makes absolute sense.

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https://youtu.be/v6cOZ1mes7Q

This game serves you with two main objectives: Build up your base to increase your magicians' strength, and battle monsters in the underground levels of your school to unlock more features and tougher battles.

The base building has some elements to keep in mind. There is a room type for each function, as well as a tier level for that type of room. The research room for example has three tiers. You need to reach the highest tier room in order to unlock higher tier researches. You achieve this by taking a look at the requirements each room tier has in the room book and simply meeting those requirements. The higher the difficulty, the more absurd the requirements will get.

It is a good idea to have at least once magician for each of the elements. Some elements serve a purpose better than others would so synergy is important.

Another thing you need to worry about is the fog that engulfs the surface. Occasionally you will have to push the fog back by completing rituals. The further away the fog is pushed, the more expensive the rituals will get, unlocking more valuable materials in the process. It is quite the double edged sword.

Building out your base does not come without its challenges. Eventually you will unlock more support beams to help you stretch further out into the world, but until then you are limited to what you can do. The more you build out, the less durable your building gets, preventing you from expanding. Do not fly too close to the sun.

Those are the basics about the game. It does get quite in depth within the confines of a colony sim, but do not worry. This game has one of, if not the most, helpful tooltips of any game I have seen. You can hover over a word, or a material you do not have. Once the description underlines certain words, you can click those words, opening up the codex to explain to you how that item works. Incredibly well done.

In summary, this is what I would consider a 2.5D colony builder with turn based combat. Two genres that I did not know could work this well but here we are. Well worth the asking price.

River Towns is a simplistic looking game but in actuality a very challenging one. It is essentially a Tetris-like city builder in which you have to plan out your city in the most efficient way in order to rack up as many points as possible.

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There are side missions you can complete such as picking up gold by placing a building that will occupy the box it is in, or building around dead trees to revive them and acquire the extra points they offer.

Over all, this is a very simple game but at the same time it is incredibly unique, fairly challenging, and most importantly, fun. The asking price is also very fair at 15$.

https://youtu.be/J5BjIh1SaS4

Memory lost is a top down view beat-em-up that is ultimately a fairly enjoyable experience. albeit one that lacks a lot of polish and is frustrating at times.

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Memory Lost is not the prettiest game on the block. It is not the most polished game either. Nor does it have an immaculate level of dialogue or story to tell.

The gameplay is fairly smooth with some performance hitches here and there, but overall not too buggy.

The audio design is fair, but the music is quite enjoyable. The key gameplay mechanic is that you can transfer into most enemies after you defeat them, including larger enemies that do good AOE damage. The more you transfer back to back, the more health you regenerate.

There are a decent amount of enemy types but not many. The checkpoint system saves your progress often enough.

Overall, if you find it on a sale and you like the genre, I can recommend the game. Otherwise, not so much.

https://youtu.be/h85LEdiDPhY

It has been a while since I played a game that is so good at setting the tone and building up tension in an impactful and effective way. This is one of them.

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Trepang2 is a gore horror FPS in its core. There are FEAR 2 vibes in its gameplay and graphics style, but without the poltergeists. Later on, however, you get to experience enemies that are more than just mortal soldiers firing at you.

One of the main things that attracted me to this game is the music. It is incredibly effective at creating tense moments where there is not a lot going on.

The graphics are serviceable and the performance is overall quite stable. Sadly you can only carry two weapons at a time. Ammo is quite scarce as well. There is stealth but it does not always last long.

What I believe to be main focus of the game is the gunplay, and the cinematic in nature gunfights. Debris flying everywhere, bullets coming from every direction, sliding and gliding and griding all over the place. The AI is quite smart but also quite realistic in tricking. They do not always know where you are so you can flank them if you are quick and crafty enough.

You have two abilities, a regenerating but short lasting invisibility, and a slow motion that only regenerates as you damage and take out enemies. They are somewhat optional to use but as you get to discover, the game is designed around forcing you to use them. A fun challenge would be to try and use them as little as possible.

Overall, as an FPS, this checks a lot of my marks. Fun gunplay, great enemy intelligence, great audio design, great level design, fairly decent graphics, and just a fun, well paced gameplay. Generally speaking, I would recommend this game.

https://youtu.be/SKvogWC6VBI

Pacific drive has to be one of the most unique games in the survival genre. All you have in your disposal is you trusted car, your only protection from the elements. And trust me, there are a lot of elements out to get you!

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The developers of this game have done the best job I have ever seen in letting players customise the gaming experience to the fullest extent. From an extensive difficulty setting menu, to giving the player the ultimate control over what features they want to enable or disable.

You can turn the difficulty all the way up and challenge yourself like you have never been challenged before, or you can turn it down to the most peaceful of settings, even disabling death, in order to fully enjoy the story that the game has to offer.

Maybe that is the trade off that makes performance not so stellar. The game is fairly basic graphically, yet the framerate I was able to achieve was nothing extraordinary. If having all that customisation available is the reason, then so be it.

The goal of the video is not to show all the gameplay elements that are meant to make your experience as exciting as I lead you on to believe it can get, but rather so that you get a better understanding of how the game operates in order to best help you conquer your most challenging of adventures.

https://youtu.be/5LMlTWEC5p0

Laysara is a unique city builder in which you have to build your city on the hills of a mountain. You must be aware of your limited growth due to the size of the slopes, your economic balance, as well as creating proper protection against avalanches that can easily take down your village in one go.

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The game follows the standard Anno model, gather raw materials, convert them into ingredients, use them to create items to satisfy your villagers, upgrade your villagers once their needs are met. There is a twist however.

You can build all 3 villager types. Upgrading the villager house only increases the villager count in the village, therefore increasing your growth within the limited space you have.

One baffling choice the developer has made and stuck to it is the omittance of a building rotation feature. Does it add to the challenge of the puzzle? Sure. Is it also a very surface level difficulty mechanic? Absolutely. Would I be happy to see it go? Significantly.

Other than that, the roadmap seems promising. I will be keeping my eye on this game and give it another try once it releases to cover the changes they have made and all the additions.

https://youtu.be/DHuVNqvYEQk