Recent reviews by Miggly

I can't recommend Talespire as it is right now. Talespire has a lot going for it: it's pretty darn simple to run and the model of building out the world is pretty interesting with the Dwarven Forge inspired design. What makes it a hard sell at its current state though as the lack of small features, and as a GM, those absences compile for a rather frustrating experience. As advertised, it is a system-agnostic tool for GM's to play TTRPGs online, I would NOT recommend this game for people looking for that substitute from a physical table top setting. If anything, it is a supplemental program for your physical table or your choice of a virtual table top.

Now, for the GM's looking for a supplemental program for their games, you may like this program if you are ready to be frustrated often. Here are a few of the little things that has been failed to addressed:
1. Limited camera control - you're always looking at a weird angle at the ground and there's nothing you can do about it, There's no skybox either so don't expect this being added in anytime soon.
2. The assets - First off, props to the devs for releasing assets every month. That being said, the assets are.... limited. The assets that I would expect to have been prioritized are missing and the monthly asset packs are thematic, making a lot of the wanted assets like more doors or different styled building walls rare and instead you get modern toilets and other things that I'm almost sure I and many other GM's will not be using. So we either need to wait on community released assets or try our hand at trying to replicate things, like why haven't we gotta more nature things like different colored flowers. I'd almost compare it to if I wanted to build the Millennium Falcon with Legos but I only had an Indiana Jones The Temple of Doom Lego set, it's possible but it'll take quite a long time for the busy GM's out there to sink into a supplemental program to get even close to a idea they had in mind.
3. Building Mode - God, just make tiles not have auto snap, if you let it clip, why not just also not snap tiles too? It's a small thing but that makes doing buildings so much more tedious as you end up with half walls and only the shapes you could make must also be possible in Minecraft. The only time they don't have this annoying snapping feature is with props, which you'll have to use if you want to make a cave or something else that doesn't adhere to the shape of a box. Something else is that YOU CAN'T SCALE PROPS OR ANYTHING, I know with the texture, stretching, and models that it will be difficult; the tiles would have similar issues with the grid movements but these absences take a lot from the game. Want a mountain without copy and pasting the same boulder over and over again? Or maybe you want a kraken that isn't just slightly bigger than a PC's figure? No you don't get any of that and they aren't intending to add to the game either so I guess don't have any large to gargantuan in your next campaign.
4. The cost. For what it's worth, Talespire is in early access and is getting updates often and goes on sale frequently, but the standard $25 for players is too much. They aren't going to build anything, or even use 60% of the game, so why is it the same price for a GM? What happened with me is that the players I run for online are unable to buy the game as we're all poor college students and I just end up with a digital paper weight for the info I have on Foundry VTT, which is completely free for players other than the GM by the way. It just makes it harder to get use out of it when looking to run with any party who doesn't have it cause they'd all collectively have to pay $150 at standard price just to be have as a supplement to the the main programs. I would MUCH rather see a free to play model with the standard price for GM's to build and even provide asset packs a la carte so I have my players in the game so I'm not alone with my tiny raccoon model that I carefully placed on the porcelain toilet from the latest content pack release.

Overall, there's potential in this game. There's not much like it in the market and it can be great for people with aphantasia, but having a lot of the quality of life features that are expected by many GM's completely missing destroys the convenience and burdens GM's that already have a lot on their plate, resulting in Talespire being a novelty that you pull out at times if you have a couple hours of prep that you can spend getting a hypertensive headache. What's worst is that since there's nothing else like it in the market that has this type of community, there's no competition to make problem like the one's I'm and many other GM's are having go away. There are many forum posts suggesting these features as far as 2 years ago when it was in it's early stages, just to be archived by a dev member who would either say, "It's in development." Or "We're not intending to add that feature." So any progress in this sector will continually be at a snails pace. I recommend for any GM out there looking for an online program for their TTRPGs to find another VTT and give this one another year or two to fill out it's shoes.

6/10 - Still better than Roll20

Heroes & Generals had potential, but had to mess it up with greed and apathy. This game had so much potential to be a good game, in fact it was a good game before these updates messed up EVERYTHING. The updates ruined the German faction to the point that any game with the Germans is a near certain loss, they don't listen to community requests and go on their own to buff things making them OP or nerfing the hell out of items whcih devalues the time put in that endless grind to get any item in this game. It took around the 60 hour mark to actually get a bare sniper rifle for my infantry which needs an extra 30 hours to get the essential attachments to be any use in matches. Moving to gameplay, it used to be pretty fun with games having an even match that last a considerable amount of time compared to the current match stomps, where you only see paratroopers and people sneaking past the lines to steal the obj while the other team goes for their base. I have seen countless times where our or the enemy team, after a long battle capturing the objective, getting their point capture by those paratroopers that drop in every minute right before the point was secured. Moving past that, infantry destroys tanks which makes them obsolete, there's barely any reason to play recon since everything is speeden up from the constant stream of crappy updates, and they ban many people who hadn't even done anything, there's too much to list and it makes this game incredibly boring as well as tilting. I can't find any reason why you would play this game in it's current state unless you want to waste time or money (which I might add is completely pay-to-win since the most OP weapons are sitting on top of a hefty grind or a pretty penny). This game is horribly executing and since the developer don't care of the popular reception, will continually to dig a grave for this game.