Recent reviews by Commanduf

There are a lot of cool ideas here and what game play there is there currently is quite fun though a lot of polish is needed for sure as I found myself getting bored fairly early on for an rpg.

I love the fact most things you do in the game can be leveled, it would be nice though to be able to see exact stats of how our level of a skill effects it, for example my jumping skill is 200+ and It would be nice to know exactly what % that adds to my jump height.

The combat being physics based is fun, I specked into unarmed and have had a blast dropkicking, kicking and throwing my enemies around, however I have found that combat in general is far too easy or at least most enemy spawns are far too easy, it would be nice if that game had more complexity to it as currently I can just unga bunga my way through limitless hoards smashing enemies with my stone fists and honestly it barley took any real time to get to that point. I am not sure if this is just an issue with unarmed but im thinking not as enemies really didin't seem to grow much stronger if at all the farther I travelled out the map.

The calendar system is a fun idea though being almost 2 months in game now ive yet to see any days that had anything truly unique or amazing that I thought "oh I better make sure I'm at that location on that day" and have stopped looking at it for the most part.

Looting items also I think could use some love, I like having not to think about carry weight too much towards the latter half of RPGS though having unlimited carry weight from the start is honestly too much, it makes me not care about what im picking up and just infini loot everything without really looking at what I am getting, better imo to start with limitations and upgrade as you go along to get to that unlimited bag of holding point at a later point in the game.

Most quests I have found so far are not worth doing, almost all of them so far just confer a usually pitiful amount of xp and gold which if you had done something else more freeform you could have had many times more, for example why travel across the map to specific location to get a specific thing and travel again to bring it back when you can just open the overworld, hold space till a roaming bandit squad attack (which takes like 20 seconds if that) and kill the 5 dudes for an instant 150xp, which is good bit more than most quests ive seen, it just doesn't really make sense.

Adding to quests and xp rewards, there a system off "assignments" that is a bit whack, you can PAY your own gold to get harder assignments which I don't think makes any sense and usually the 500 gold doesn't seem to really get you all that much which again can just be like an extra 70xp in some cases, where again why would you not just do an overworld battle for?

The taming system is fun though I have yet to be shown how to tame anything bigger than the rabbits or slimes, tried the traps on pigs, flying eyes, chickens and nada which is a shame.

The main story seemed to just... stop, I was to get a certain reputational score in a city, reached it and poof, end of mainline quest so far it looked like which is very very dissatisfying.

The biggest issue I found though more than anything was the amount of unfinished content spread throughout the game along with content that IS finished which was very jarring, so example for the Halloween event I was going around wheat-fields in a priory fighting pumpkins, going into it I found a preist waiting in an abandoned church called "the mad monk" but talking to him I just got a dev note saying this npc had no purpose yet. And its not just NPCS but I have found many places throughout that have stairs leading to nowhere, full empty buildings and dead ends making the game feel like some 2d film studio, I get the developer maybe wants to leave these here to show that things are gonna be pretty big and epic one day but I would honestly rather these things just not exist in the game till their fleshed out that walking into a tomb that tells me it is not really done and has nothing but basic loot in it.

The gameplay is fun and that has not changed, however I have to review this negativly as people like me that bought the game have been ripped-off in a pretty huge way.

Since the game started all skins could be unlocked absolutely free, they were part of the game you bought and part of the progression, now though those same skins If you haden't unlocked them yet have been retroactivly changed to be behind a paywall, this is taking content you paid for and locking it behind another purchase which is completely un-acceptable and should be illegal.

The way it should have been done is everyone that paid for the game would be able to unlock all costumes that were in it up until it went free to play freely, all the costumes added after the epic buyout should have been the only paid ones.

Again I cannot stress the point you now have to pay money for something that was previously part of the game you already paid money for, that is disgusting.

Overall I had a great time for most of my playtime with this game, its a good life cycle game like Stardew/Harvest moon with some uniquness to it and some flaws. Also I played this blind with all DLC from the beginning.

The in-game day to day cycle is packed with their being lots of objectives and goals to balance, especially if you have DLC installed and it keeps you busy. You can always feel the next upgrade/piece of equipment on the edge of your fingertips to expand your abilties/facilties and its quite satisfying while you are in the situation of having a million things to go after. The game is not always quite so clear though and if you don't want to use the wiki (like me) for most of the game then their is going to be a lot of trial and error especially when getting to grips with alchemy under the church.

Later on in the middish to late game I would say it degrades quite a bit though, once your goal list chips down to only a few objectives youll spend more time waiting for certian things to be farmed or days to come which can create a bit of a fizzle out scenario when you do complete the game, doesn't ruin the time I had with it, but not a satisfying way to end given how strong it sucks you in for most of it. Also make sure if you do decide to get DLC, do it early in your playthrough if not right from the start as most actual gameplay benifets from the DLC won't really be useful in the lategame.

There is no dynamic social system like other life-sims, with NPC's friend meter being more of a meter of storyline progression than anything else, what it lacks in NPC relationships though it makes up for in backstory with a interesting lore behind the townspeople, their relationships to eachother and the world itself, though I would say this was primarily a winning point of the DLCs. There are some objectivly bad things I would like to point out, the fishing system of this game has little purpose with their being only one mission that requires silver star quality fish, but for some reason there is an achivement to catch 200 of the buggers, this serves as padding to gameplay time at the end of a playthrough so keep that in mind. Also there is a critically important item that is never directly introduced to the player, a permenant resuable teleportation device that is sold by the barman for an insanely small amount given its power, this leads the player to believe its single use seeing it and could be far better introduced.

For DLC recommendations Game of Crones easily takes the spot for both gameplay progression and story adding a decent side campagin, stranger sins adds a good gameplay benifet with some decent backstory and lore delivered via cutscene and better save soul is... uneeded, its quite un-substantial compared to the other 2 DLC offering a system of convinence that is not really worth the full asking price, buy on sale and its maybe worth IF you have not started your playthrough yet, as for game of crones id say its worth the full asking price and stranger sins probably a sale, but not as much of a sale as better save souls.

Lego Indiana Jones 2 has gameplay thats out of the norm for a typical lego game removing the replaying of previous levels for 100% and having substantially smaller levels, but many more of them. in a typical lego game you can expect 15-30 decently long levels with hidden collectibles which you are to play 2x over at least, but in this game there are instead 90 short levels that you really don't need to replay provided you collect enough studs with 1 third being the story levels, another those same levels Post-story events in a kind of remix and the last third being custom levels that serve as an example of what can be done with the new level creator.

This is the first lego game to feature proper hub-worlds with a lot to explore in-between story missions, each episodic act in this game features its own play-set sized hub-world to hunt down bonus missions, characters, vehicles. races and cheats to unlock. Honestly its a very refreshing take on the lego games and made it much more interesting than previous entries.

There are some low points though, most of the brawl and vehicle missions can be quite samey which are 2 of the 5 missions in each act, but the vehicle post-story remix missions are quite fun. Some remix missions are way cooler than others, one you have to put out a fire from the story which is pretty meh, another you find the ship from the intro of the movie in the hands of a giant squid and need to take its treasure which was cool as hell.

All lego games feature "bonus" missions in full lego enviroments requiring 1mil studs to be found to be completed, this game I feel overused them making them no longer special with each act have one for a total of 6.

This game EASILY has the coolest bosses of any lego game yet! Most of them are large beings made of some kind of element run wild and are always an enjoyable spectacle.

This game has a create a level mode that I don't really care about but its nice to have the option I guess, though I will say the 30 levels the makers made using this mode in the main game I could take or leave and don't do anything for me, I woudl rather they had been replaced by another 15 story and 15 remix levels.

So to summerise the game does have some negatives, but overall I think it did a lot to shakeup the forumla and was the most interesting one to me so far and the first oh the OG lego games I fully recommend.

Honestly I don't think it's a very good game story wise and gameplay wise. The first mission of the game sets it up to be a very cinematic story driven game, and that parts great, but then it pulls the rug out from under you and most of the game is just doing very samey quests in bland open worlds with the rare bit of story every now and then. The core gameplay loop is usually to infiltrate a base/outpost, perform an objective and get out again while trying to remain un-detected using a variety of gear. The games progression system of equipment unlocks its mostly useless though, the game has an insane number of weapon trees and upgrades but the game will ALWAYS detuct score from you for killing, meaning the most of these give you no real incentive to go after.

The game also has a very shoe-horned in online mode that actually interupts the main story halfway through with you needing to having online bases to have any chance at unlocking later teirs of equpiment, of which only a tiny number will even matter to you since lethal options are dis-liked by the scoring system. It's so bad in-fact that you could earn items and resources by playing single-player and a multi-player player can steal them from you if you are not careful about keeping the online mode away.

I installed a mod that allowed me to customize actual gains to resources and even setting them ALL to 2x it was clear the later tiers of unlocks would still take an insane amount of time, my friend set his to 10x and was still having to grind like mad for some.

I don't know quite what this game wanted to be, going by the first mission it would have been something great but the online components and need for an open world really got in the way of that and I don't even know what else behind the scenes ♥♥♥♥ nerfed it before it could even fully develop, I don't recommend this game :(

If you got this free with pre-order then fair enough but please do NOT buy this seperatly if you did not. It is 1000% not worth it at ALL and was absolutely just put it by the devs to appease to they money hungry producers/execs who did not want to leave "Money on the table" or some ♥♥♥♥ like that.

Please note I do actually recommend this game but there is a reason for my red flag just a bit under.

The game is great 3rd person shooter having fast paced combat with a huuuge amount of customization and variety of weaponry and abilities, The story/lore is really interesting though imo not explored enough. A big point in its favour is that you can play the whole thing totally free with no part of the game paywalled and I would recommend buying a 2000 - 4000 platinum bundle once you get a 75% off voucher to give yourself a big headstart but mostly to support the game.

HOWEVER, despite being a free game the prices of the ingame items "prime access" is quite unethical imo, the amount they charge for a single cosmetic armor set + syndana thats part of a primes release is 31.99 pounds (so like 40 dollars). That is insane, whoever thought it was okay to charge as much for a couple of model assets as for an actual fully made game should feel ashamed of themselves. Heck there are games that cost a couple of quid that are VASTLY more worth it, seriously do NOT waste your money on prime access, I did once and regret it immensly. And thats not even to say anything of the actual full prime access that comes with the accessories, weapons and profile icons ad ONE HUDNRED ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ POUNDS, 1/3 - 1//4 of the price of a nintendo switch that also come with ingame currency and boosters for drop-rates, both things designed by the game makers. I seriously cannot stress enough how much I like every aspect of this game apart from prime access, its a cancerous unethical pox and I hope it dies I really do.

The games okay, defo something you can spend 1000's of hours getting good at but can't approve of charging 25 quid for a skin, its unethical even if the games free.

I got this on the Friday from Humble Bundle... and 18 hours of intesnily focused gaming I have no regret, easily the most sucked it by a game I have been in a long time. A first person puzzle platformer collectathon with some combat and action elements, its actually so damn good, I would even rate it HIGHER than portal.

This game is shockingly addictive and one of my favourites of the year but has a lot of flaws that if fixed would easily make it a game of the year hands down, so this review is meant more for feedback for the dev's as well as buyer advice.

The central gameplay loop is quite different from harvest moon what with farming actually being a small side thing to do than being any sort of actual requirement. I actually made it to the 4th month of the year before I had to plant anything and even then it was like 2 trees and a couple kinds of plants. The main goal is building/crafting items to hand in for assignments, every in-game day you are going to be juggling resource gathering for commerce assignments (you're main way of making money) as well as story-centric assignments, side quests and the development of your workshop itself. Having different goals to work towards everyday keeps you very busy not even counting in the relic hunting, friending, fishing and slew of other things to do, you won't have a min to waste!

The constant evolution of the town via small things like streetlights or chairs for the park to large projects like the public transport system and bridges to new lands keeps the world fresh and it just keeps growing in scale. Speaking of scale though, many things in the game are too big, while you get used to it when you first start and walk into the graceyard and every headstone is 10x the size of you its quite jarring, like the editor had all the proportion values accidently set to 3.0x or something while placing assets.

Another few points about the presentation is that the characters rarely ever emote, their faces don't change as so characters can often look a bit like dolls. Also the sound design BADLY needs some love, there was bossfights that kept playing casual music, dramatic heavy scenes followed by a sound effect that killed the mood and several cutscenes where the speedup was so obvious it was like setting a video to 1.25x playback on youtube. Some other minor things to point out is the need for a turning animation and the endgame metal mount is a bit janky/shakey.

Combat is... okay its awful, there's no real system other than just hit stuff and dodge if they try to hit you, if you hit first you win via stunlock. For some bosses though theres is no stunlocking or dodging attacks so it becomes a matter of being able to out-dps your opponent and see who dies first, but even then the game gives you multiple lives in many dungeons and in story-centric fights simply respawns you at the side of the combat zone so honestly there little to no real penalty for dying, even for how bad the combat system is its still gives you too much of a chance. Lastly the weapon you get at the end of the main questline is unquestionably overpowered, all these things together make the combat skill tree a total skip aside from the +xp perks.

Mentioning skill trees there are 3 of them, Resource gathering, Combat and Social. None of the perks offered by the trees are game-breaking and honestly none of them are needed, just an additional layer or progression to give you more to work towards.

Something strange to note also about difficulty is that there is no penalty for passing out outside at the end of a day cycle, there is no actual reason to head home to get into bed so you may as well log till you drop! There really should be some sort of penalty such as diminishing stamina gains from sleep or random gold or item losses, also the max time you can stay up to is 3am and you always wake at 7am meaning your character can survive on 4 hours of sleep everyday with no ill effects...

The characters of portia are... fine, some are for sure better than others. There are special cutscenes and quests you can get from characters that offer a better look into the personality and make you connect with them but they are few and far between. I am not going to go into specific detail for spoiler reasons but regarding that romance character that there was a big kufufal about a while back I actually support the dev's in this case, while the change in tone was jarring I for sure cared about the character and feel the subject matter was well handled. Again though if the characters could actually emote it would be so much better.

I know it seems like I have been mostly ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ on the game, but its because I enjoy it so much and really do love it that the flaws stand out so much to me. Some things I really loved are the minigames, lots of fun ones to do. Filling out the museum is satisfying as always. Higgins, the rival builder actually being able to take the best jobs at the start of the day if you are too slow is genius! The actual setting being post-doomsday and being so upbeat and happy is a refreshing take compared to other stories like it like fallout or mad max. The way improving relationships with one person can also chain-react improve relationships with others feels like a feature that should be standard in these type of games now. The tree and Ore passive farm you have access to later while being a little op take a weight of your shoulders allowing you to spend more time with the townsfolk and your home which is great! The social perks you can get from be-friending people aside just getting gifts should also be a standard other games should take. Being able to set the stats of any weapon or armor you like visually to the stats of your favourite stat-wise is a nice touch. Having lots to cook is always nice too.

Some things I really have to bring up though which I felt brought it down a little....

Factory needs a re-balance, as soon as you get it the game becomes far far too easy and that gameplay loop of constantly working to have everything you need for the next day is broken. Also as mentioned before the tree and ore passive farm is a bit too strong and needs toned down a bit and is also quite confusing when first presented how it works. There are not that many species of fish in the game which was a let-down. The photography system outside of the press mission-line is just kind of there and could use more gameplay additions I think. Dijango gives far too many duplicate recipes. Starlight island and most of the marshes all just feels like so much dead space and was a let-down once I actually unlocked them for exploration.

I will add anymore I think of, I ABSOLUTELY recommend everyone to buy this flawed game, I love it to death and really hope it gets the TLC to make it perfect one day because if it does it will be legendary.