Recent reviews by mwhym

And yet I keep playing... so I guess it would be only right to recommend it... its one of those love/hate relationships.

Update: cant help it but note that GGG absolutely dropped the ball on poe with the launch of poe2 - virtually abandoning their successful flagship in favor of their highly problematic new venture, both of which I am sure will be fixed eventually - but why they would ever let poe performance be so affected by the issues of poe2 is nothing if not poor planning.

Other than that, for the most part it is an amazing game - and it can appeal to most, if not all, the fans of ARPGs - its depth and diversification is both a blessing and a curse - to master it across the board you will need to invest more time than is possible for most normal human beings. However there is a plethora of guides out there that can help with the may different aspects of the game. The one thing I dont personally like is the constant need to destroy existing builds - rather than fixing the content. While some skill is needed for sure - taking it to the max is not skill related it is the simply the ability to invest the time, follow a recipe and get to a point of having enough dps to do stuff comfortably.

There is a mid point where I was at for sometime where you can kill some or almost all of the end game content with great effort and not consistently, which is not a problem in itself, but it really is not the place you want to be at, because given the game's RNG and the fact that 97% of the loot you get is crap (even from end game encounters) - the only way to consistently kill those encounters and have a chance at any of the loot is to follow some build guide and achieve the current very high dps class.

To make the counterpoint one could simply look at dark souls - super hard game, but with skill alone one could defeat the whole game without any equipment playing with skill alone - far sight different - and i am not saying POE should be Dark Souls, but it could incorporate skillful playing a bit more than what it is now.

Quite fun playing with a friend !

Very nice casual fun that requires some thinking and decision making. Its not very deep and its perfect for some quick fun in and out.

It feels a lot like a board game (in some ways it is) and it does require some strategic thinking.

Overall its not very difficult (though i have not tried the higher difficulty settings). I am playing through the characters it offers and must say, been enjoying myself.

Dont expect something tremendous, but it is fun and addictive.

If you liked the first one, its a must. Its larger and plays much more smoothly.

Overall it is a great game, challenging (as expected) but not impossible and providing once more a world that is a delight to traverse. It does seem slightly easier than the first one, but don't think you wont die and die and die and die in this one as well.

Also present here is the lack of direction which may put off some players, it can be difficult to follow the plot line (what is it really ?) and it can be a challenge to merely figure out where to go next.

Graphics are great and it plays smoothly on my older gaming laptop.

The one thing I found its lacking, compared to its predecessor, is the atmosphere, it just doesn't instill the same sense of dread the original one did where everything was designed to fascinate and make you feel insignificant.

That being said, I still feel it is a better game - its far more polished (especially for PC's) than the original ever was.

Its a no brainer if you liked the first one (or the third) and a great choice for anyone interested in a hard action rpg, with lots of lore, enemies and beautiful locations.

A wonderful effort, its retro, its hard, its random, its roguelike (sort of roguelite) and most of all its fun. The game is very fluid and seems (so far) rather balanced. You get to explore floors and floors of dungeons, going from room to room with the clear cut objective of cleaning house. The amount of rooms and layout are randomly generated and at there are some special rooms every so often. The special rooms that come after moving from one general area to another (not sure how this is exactly determined - there is no specific pattern as far as I can tell - but so far its predetermined). In these "peculiar rooms" you get some rewards - (items) and you also get to store the coins you have amassed so far - while also being provided with the opportunity to return to your camp.

The coins you gather after your runs allow you to add options to your camp, with merchants and new playable characters (each with a unique fighting style). You can chose which special item/ability you will take with you in the dungeon (after unlocking/upgrading them). This is where it becomes more roguelite than roguelike as there is some progression/advancement go on. Still its not overpowering and the core game is affected that much.

There are many random abilities you pick up as you progress downwards into the depths and some of them create amazing combinations and playstyles.

Gameplay is very fluid and I encountered no glitches.

So if you like retro, roguish, dungeon crawling runs, you cant really go wrong with this one, its a keeper !!!

Quite the fun game this one. In my opinion a rogue(very)lite action hack and slash game that delivers quite well. Tying everything together is a nice story that is both compelling and interesting. The general idea is completing areas filled with monsters, goodies and some quest/story material. The action is great and its fun and the pixel style graphics are superb, movement is great and the game feels very fluid, without any glitches so far. Each grand area contains a boss fight and major part of the missing story. There isn't a huge variety of enemies but its still fun to deal with them and each has different style of attack, oh there are some minibosses too. What truly great is that as you progress you gather together the family, each of which is a playable character, each with their own unique talents and style of fighting. You can level all of them and the game forces you to try them all because as each one levels the other characters gain advantages as well. Abilities gained through leveling remain with you, while specials gained on each level disappear each time you complete an area, it works well.

Its by no means a hard game, took me only a short while to complete it, but it does have game+ mode which is interestingly more difficult, even though you start with all abilities and characters from the previous run, kudos on that :)

If you like this type of casual arcade action, its great fun, lite rogue elements, leveling and a nice story --- all fun and well worth it.

i will reserve further judgement for when I have explored it more but for now this game makes me feel like a masochist who is about to walk in their favorite BDSM establishment..

You need to be in that sort of frame of mind to enjoy it and yet I keep going back at it. Of course I cant speak to its longevity since I have only been playing it for a couple of days, but it is a game you get a better understanding of as you play more. The first half hour I was lost at sea... a couple of hours later I was still lost at sea and several hours later I am still lost at sea, only now I see some lights in the darkness. Will know more soon :)

It looks very crude, but that may have been done on purpose (i am not sure), but it lives up to its title, it is very hard and needs alot of practice to get through the various "impossible levels" - the main issue for me is that there is no sense of reward for anything you do, even if it seems impossible... a great game for masochists. There is not much more to say its pretty linear without any variation so once you master each level (or better say each step on each level) its pretty much it. Still if you enjoy pulling your nails you will probably enjoy this as well :)

Lets just get it out of the way, this is a, hands down, great game. If you enjoy horror survival/action/stealth type games you cant go wrong with this one.

I played this on a gaming laptop that is more than capable of running everything maxed, and the performance was spotless, however I cant honestly speak as to how it behaves on lower spec machines.

The graphics, even 6 years after its release, are still impressive and the settings are meticulously created. Some settings are a bit too dark (even with the lantern on) for my taste, but I believe that was intentional.
Overall the enemy models and locations you will visit look great, the enemy models are slightly limited - don’t expect tremendous variations, you will see most of them throughout the game with some new enemies introduced as the game progresses.

The gameplay is nice - it is fully linear in terms of progression - although it does allow you a substantial degree of freedom in terms of how you want to tackle each locale. In more ways than one it seems that the game was meant to not be "doable" on the first go as it seems very hard to tackle several situations and enemies without having some prior experience with them.
The game offers a mix of chekcpoints and the ability to save (via a special location made available at several points throughout the game). Since you will die often you will appreciate the frequent checkpoints available. Most situations are straightforward and a few of them require some tactical thinking as the game forces you to conserve ammunition, due to haw scarce it is and how little you can carry. As such it does reward stealth since you can use it to kill enemies without sacrificing ammunition, something that is exceedingly important on the harder difficulty settings.
My major beef with the game is also with the checkpoints as in many cases you are forced (due to dying over and over) endure some unskipable cinematic or sequence which can make things extremely tedious - especially if you are stuck somewhere, it doesn’t happen often (as most cinematics are skipable) but it did to me at one point to such a degree that it almost made me stop.

Difficulty wise its a bit tricky to describe - the first run through the game is quite tough - but once you know what you are doing - even at a more difficult setting you will fare far far better the second time, plus the benefit of knowing the general layout and setup of each location is a tremendous asset.

Bosses can seem very hard at first but all of them can be handled once you figure out how to deal with them, though in the later difficulty settings you will need a more coordinated and long term plan of how to deal with them and the enemies on the way to them.

The music/soundfx are spot on and add to the overall mood. talking of which the general mood was far less horror than action for me - its definitely not as scary as I expected it.

The story line is interesting and even though it can be a tad difficult to follow at times, I appreciated the fact that it allowed me for some interpretation, rather than handing it out completely in the clear. It is not absolutely original and it is not without its expected clichés, but it’s still rather engaging.

There is also an rpg style element - with the ability to upgrade your abilities, weapons, ammo etc - via green gel you acquire throughout the game and the nice thing about it is that the changes do have an effect on the game - so choose wisely - especially on the higher difficulty settings.

I expect most will want to play it again (either in new game+) or in more difficult settings as it does make it feel rewarding to prove toy yourself you can do it. There is even a mode where any damage kills you... but you will need to run the game once to unlock the more difficult levels.

There are some aspects of the game I found annoying, such as introducing some mechanic that is only used once that doesn’t really seem to offer anything to the game, almost as if they were testing stuff they can use, but its a marginal consideration in the grand scheme of things.


All in all a great and engaging experience that will absolutely please any fan of the genre (just don’t expect it to be too scary - I felt far more anxiety playing Dark Souls than this).

Starting to write this review I was a bit confused at to how I would characterize this game. In some ways it is an action RPG, in some ways it is a Action board game. I would not characterize it a deck building game as cards simply represent items and "abilities", just disguised as cards.

Lets get this out of the way - its fun - loads of fun - I doubt anyone who enjoys games in the general spectrum of actionish rpg's wont enjoy it, even if its only a single run through the campaign. I have played action rpg games for a very long time and though I might not be a true hardcore arpg'er I have some skills, thus I have to say that on normal difficulty playing through the campaign seemed very easy... I didn’t die once, I came close only a few times and that is basically because I was learning the mechanics, but still I didn’t expect to be able to finish it without dying - not that this was my intention anyways.

So if you are into arpg's and you decide to play this one, definitely opt in for the higher difficulty levels. There is a permadeath option as well - and I am going to try that one to see how different it will be.

There are still aspects of the game that I have not fully explored as I have only recently finished the main campaign, but I am eager to explore what seems like, infinite levels of, hell below and see how far I can last.

The graphics are rather unique and remind me of a board game more than anything, but they work and they are fun and the game plays like a breeze on both my laptops (one is good the other kind of sucks) so I would think most can play this game without any issues.

The RPG aspect is there but it is rather faded, if you like character building with complex options (like Grim Dawn...) then no this is not for you, the cards (items) are the main source of differentiation between builds - still fun though, but in a more casual manner.

I would absolutely recommend playing it unless you are looking for a deep/complex arpg or a heavy Role playing experience, its a an interesting unique and fun game.

PS will probably amend this review when I explore it a bit more.