Recent reviews by Ruse

I love this game but it has very big problems that make me struggle to recommend anyone else play it.

I will be making a lot of comparisons to its main inspiration Plants vs Zombies. While it is certainly not entirely derivative, every time it tries to go its own direction feels like a misstep.

First of all, it looks like a game you'd see a cartoon character play as part of a joke.
Like PvZ it's very story-light, but it doesn't carry any of the charm. The shopkeepers being elementals in different outfits is very cute, but other than that there's very little about the experience that makes it memorable.

The mechanical design is not very interesting. Every enemy ability can be countered with an interrupt, which half a dozen spells qualify as. It's not like in Plants vs Zombies where you see a Bungie Zombie so you bring an Umbrella Leaf and then a Balloon Zombie so you bring a Blover; it's more like you see a spellcaster, executioner, archer, and a miniboss, but luckily you have Zap to take care of every single threat. Enemy modifiers do little to visually differentiate themselves and are often pointless as they don't change your strategy at all. Elementals are fairly boring too, mostly being this game's equivalent to some form of Peashooter, Sunflower, or Walnut. Almost all of the evolutions fall into either of the categories "make its status effect and damage stronger" or "give it a gimmick that makes it borderline worthless".

The balance, though? My god. This game is about as balanced as a 50-year-old 4-legged barstool. Fire elementals are straight up worthless. Burning doesn't synergize well with anything and it also makes the enemies faster. For what? An ok damage over time effect? And both of its evolution paths are bad. Water elementals are at least usable, but they pale in comparison to the horrifically overpowered air elementals. The electric elemental and its evolutions are stupid broken, they can stunlock the entire enemy force by themselves, and they synergize with the most overpowered character in the roguelike gamemode. Thundarius's special ability lets you relocate an elemental anywhere on the field, damaging and stunning nearby enemies, for free. If you've ever spammed Puff-Shroom in Plants vs Zombies before you know how big of a deal free damage is. This is in addition to the passive ability to call down lightning strikes on defeated electrocuted enemies, which can easily turn one kill into an entire screen wipe, assuming you're using the overpowered electric elementals.

I would not bother with the endless mode. It's 50 waves of sitting AFK watching the enemies die, and then the game gets tired of playing around and starts sending high-health, high-armor, instant-kill skeletons that are immune to all stuns. There is no strategy to defeat them, you simply hold on until they send too many at once for you to handle.

I didn't make it very far in the story mode, it's not very interesting and not the star gamemode.

If you really really want to play a roguelike Plants vs Zombies, I don't know of any alternative, maybe try it on sale.
If all you want to just scratch the PvZ itch, I would recommend the PvZ DLC mod for fans of PvZ1 and Gardendless for fans of PvZ2.

The dev of Helltaker learned how to make a good game

If it's cold in your room, just boot up this game for a free space heater.

Inscryption fans when their wife "inscrybes" the divorce papers:

I'm not sure I downloaded the right game. There seems to be a lot of women with penises and absolutely no sign of Guy Fiery.

better than fortnite

I played it a bit. It's ok I guess.

me irl

I really liked the old game.
When they added MOBA mode, it was still ok.
When they took away armor tiers, I stopped playing.
Looking at recent reviews, I'm glad I did.

The game so popular even the Pope has a copy.