Recent reviews by Magjistar

This game rules. If you like hard, punishing, slow paced RPGs that rely on mechanical mastery, grab it. Absolutely not for everyone but oh man is it for me. There are SO many builds to go and so many more to discover. Each mechanic you encounter you'll say "oh that's busted, lets make a comp around that", and each one seems stronger than the last. Then you'll get so good at making comps, killing the final boss before he casts a special spell is a mark of quality. But it will take some time to get there. By the third run my friends and I got to the final boss but weren't able to beat it with that comp, but next run we smashed it. Each run takes about 2-3 hours and is autosaved every fight, so even with some of us having very tight schedules it's easy to plan to play.

Can you beat the game on the first go? No, but yes. You are absolutely strong enough, but there is no way you would instinctively know what cards are best. How do I know? There is a mode that removes all of your rougelite upgrades and gives you way sh*ttier random decks in a draft-like mode, and my friends and I just beat it first try. You also can use any character regardless of unlocks so you can try out and look at their decks before you go unlock them.

Speaking of character unlocks, the grind for upgrades is fair and you see most of the cards by your fourth or fifth go around. It really depends on how far you get. And I personally like the process of exploring and unlocking characters. It is confusing at first to be fair. Overall AtO has way better paced upgrades than games like Rogue Legacy or Loop Hero.

This game is also a secret Warcraft loveletter. Well, somewhat secret. The first boss is called "Yogger" after all. But it goes much deeper. I bet most of the card design notes were "Hey remember that time I Mortal Strike'd that druid so hard he uninstalled? Lets make that a card", "Hey remember when pyroblast was terrible? Lets make that a card". The game does have its own identity, however. The only reason my friends and I picked it up was our collective cackling at the screenshot of the pig priest (Ottis, the protagonist) with a spider pet casting holy nova. Gold star to whoever picked that for marketing.

Thumbs down for lying about allied victory conditions, having broken and untested mechanics, having no cooperative features (helping in battle, trading territory, sharing tech, etc.) and for a lack of an infinite turns option in multiplayer. Which is due to lying about allied victory conditions, because the game would be unfinishable without killing your allies.

There are so many issues with the game mechanically. I wrote up a longer review but I don't think anyone would read two pages of mechanics talk. Here’s the rundown:
-Alliances don't work. There are ZERO allied victory conditions, or even basic cooperative options. You can't trade territory, you will constantly generate war grievances and popups, you will lose stability by declining cultural edicts, you can't support allies in combat, you can’t share tech, and probably more things I'm forgetting.
-Cultural edicts have insane bonuses and objectively correct choices. Propaganda literally breaks the game as it deletes the Stability mechanic all together. This makes every game the exact same.
-The playtesters at Humankind did not- ever- think to raze a city and see how it interacts with the warfare system. Not once. And warfare in general makes absolutely zero sense.
-Religion does nothing but give you more grievances popups that the AI will never accept because why would it, and gives you very small empire bonuses.
-In 4 full games I've never successfully launched a nuke before I won because you go to Mars BEFORE the nuke tech. And there is no way to stop producing science so you will eventually get every tech and win anyway.
-The AI is programmed to never step foot in territory guarded by any air force, so I’ve also never seen a plane do anything.
-Sometimes the AI will teleport units to random squares on the map, that only happened once and it might have been a desync issue.
-Multiplayer lobbies randomly shut down all the time and require everyone to reconnect.
-The AI is completely braindead and will spam hundreds (look up screenshots if you think I’m exaggerating that number) of the same district, destroying all usable land, making conquered cities horrible to even have.
-At the end of the game a top tier fighting unit, like an attack helicopter, will have 58 strength- medieval knights have 41. There is no ramp in fighting power. Also I think the AI is incapable of building the higher tier units.
-You have no way of knowing where pollution is coming from as it does not have an icon on the map. So good luck trying to stop the AI from polluting the world without killing their entire empire.

Honestly the mechanical stuff doesn't bother me too much. I'm not a powergamer by any means, I see the value in building a personal narrative. The alliance stuff really gets me. Playing these games alone is fine, but man- what's wrong with wanting to sit down, grab a couple bevs, play some 4x with some buds, and sh*tstomp some AI. I don’t want to fight my buds, I want to chill out and try to race to nukes so we can disassemble the d*mn dirty Italians at the atomic level. What's so wrong with that?

Pretty fun! Requires quite a bit of source jank knowledge and good reaction time to complete (air-strafing, lightbridge shenanigans, and shooting 3 portals in a second is a requirement). So if you think you're doing the level wrong you probably are not... maybe. It's hard to know in a romhack/mod. Only took me about 3.5 hours, so a good length for a single sitting! Even if it sounds intimidating, try it. Some great and creative puzzles, and some not so good ones too.

A nice 12ish hours for 100% completion.

Combat is stupid easy, even on hard I think I only died twice from actual gunfire. The story/levels are bit weirdly placed and seems to be patchy in a way... like they finished some parts first and moved them around for no real reason. The platforming is frustrating, some of the puzzles bug out a bit so you might have to do them a few times for it to work properly, and Laura sometimes just does what Laura wants and just will not listen.

The story is bland. Most of it is hold forward, wait for the quicktime events, wait for the critical cast to stop talking to you, wait for Laura to get a new scar, feel bad for Laura moment, resume gameplay. The audio logs are the good part. They go a bit more in depth to what's actually happening and make you somewhat care about the island.

But the game really shines in the collect-a-thon area. Its really fun to get all the artifacts, read the logs, find the GPS cashes, and do the challenges. Overall, worth a play. Especially when its frequently only 3 bucks.

Really bland experiance, got my fill with the little of the tech alpha I played. The pricing model is just laughable to boot.

By the time this game ever gets to a reasonable price there will be no one actually playing it anymore, so maybe just watch a stream of it.

whoops i died simulator

AHHHHHHHHHH DARKNESS IS SPOOOOKY