Recent reviews by Mercy

I'm enjoying Nightengale so far! It's a fresh take on the survival/builder genre that combines many aspects of other games into a surprisingly-complete package for a game that just entered early access yesterday.

The setting is refreshingly different, the graphics are cartoony-enough to fit the fey vibe, but beautiful enough to make you stop and stare, the tarot card/portal system has a lot of potential for future development, and I like that they've brought back a few elements that have been missing from survival games recently (like heat/shade mattering). Furthermore, we have some hints of a story (which is practically unheard of in survival games), and there are already some boss fights in the game too.

The game will obviously benefit from further development, but this is one of the most-complete early-access survival games I have seen to date. All of the basics work on day 1, and they are planning to add more from here.

My only real complaints so fare are: 1) enemy ai/pathing leaves something to be desired, 2) your companion is WAY too strong - they can carry too much, and are way too good in combat.

I'll update the review if anything changes significantly positively or negatively, but right now I'm content with the state of the game at launch, and excited to see where it goes from here!

Planetside 2 is one of the best-designed games I have ever played. It's free-to-play without feeling like pay-to-win. It has a class system that makes a difference in your actions, but you can switch easily between classes, and almost every class can do most things to varying degrees of success. Vehicles are fun, and take skill. Meaningful upgrades can be unlocked fairly quickly. The scale of some battles is trule awe-inspiring. I have been in battles with over 1,200 players at one base - AMAZING.

The classes all play out in a unique way, and the various racial backstories do a good job of putting you into the shoes of your character, and it's culture's way of thinking. The game is decently challenging at medium diffiulty, and can actually be quite punishing at higher levels.

Dragon Age: Origins - including Awakening - is probably my second favorite game of all time. I picked it up on sale for about $10, but I would gladly pay $100 looking back at it. I'm not really one for single player games, and especially not for replaying them... but I have played through this game 3 or 4 full times now.

There are some things to nitpick, of course, but that is inevitable with something that you spend 100 or more hours doing. If you like games with a fantastic setting, or RPGs of any kind, you should play Dragon Age: Origins. You'll thank yourself later.