Recent reviews by Spaceman_84

Bless the Maker and His water. Bless the coming and going of Him. May His passage cleanse the world. May He keep the world for his people.

It's DayZ/Rust with weird SCP/Lovecraft monsters. Idk what everyone is mad about, but I've been enjoying the ♥♥♥♥ out of this so far

You are crab, You have gun. There are many things to shoot with your crab gun.

Don't listen to the haters. Yeah, it's got micro-transactions, but it's all stuff you can get by just playing the game. Also performance is fine out in the open world, it just gets bogged down in populated areas due to a bug with how NPCs use your CPU or something.

In Dragon's Dogma 2, you're some guy with amnesia who wakes up in a labor camp. Then the guards get stoned and you escape by hitching a ride on the back of a gryphon, which is then shot down by a ballista, leaving you to navigate the wilderness/tutorial area. You soon regain your memories and find out that you're the Arisen, a guy who is destined to fight the Dragon (after said Dragon poked you in the chest and ate your heart). Also, by virtue of being the Arisen, you're supposed to be ruling the kingdom, but some pesky nobles didn't like that so they had you drugged and sold into slavery or whatever. Things escalate from there.

Combat generally feels pretty awesome; if you've played DD1 or any of the Monster Hunter games, it will seem familiar. And with all of the different classes, or "vocations" as the game calls them, it's got something for everyone. Fighters are tanky front-liners that can take hits and smash stuff. Thieves can zoom around and stab the hell out of everything. Archers commit murder from a distance via gratuitous use of arrows. Mages shoot fire/lighting/whatever and support your party with heals. There are six additional classes that unlock as you progress through the game, though four of which are exclusive to the player.

The Pawn system returns from the first game, which basically lets you create a waifu supporting character that accompanies you on your adventures. In game lore, Pawns are humanoids that lack true emotion and will of their own, and are bound to the Arisen. They also travel across dimensions or something, which leads to you being able to summon other player's Pawns, as well as lending yours out. Pawns learn while they go on adventures, so a Pawn that's already completed a quest you're still working on can actually guide you through it. They can even keep track of hidden chests/passages/etc., and will offer to guide you to them if you haven't discovered them on your own. It's a pretty neat little system.

The open world of Dragon's Dogma 2 feels absolutely massive. IIRC, it's somewhere around four times the size of the first game, which still felt freaking huge. And it's not just empty space, either. There's all kinds of handcrafted dungeons hidden away, waiting for you to explore (and loot) them. Even just walking along the road, you'll encounter various monsters and bandits, NPCs who might hire you for work (usually of the "slay all these monsters trying to eat me" or "help me get to this location" variety), and even the occasional Pawn should you need to hire another on short notice.

Anyway, if you liked DD1, I would definitely suggest picking this up; it's a better game in almost every regard. If you're unsure, maybe wait a bit for the performance issues to get sorted out or hold off a few months for a Steam Sale.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go climb on a dragon and stab it in the neck.

If you've played the first game, you know what you're getting into. If not, imagine if someone got incredibly stoned then watched Starship Troopers and Spaceballs in rapid succession, then wrote down the ensuing fever dream and successfully pitched it to a game developer as an idea for a co-op shooter.

As a Helldiver, you'll travel across the galaxy to "spread managed democracy" for Super Earth. This mostly entails getting shot out of a cannon at a planet full of giant space bugs or killer robots and shooting them as you move around the map to complete various mission objectives until it's time to extract. You also have a selection of stratagems to call down to help you in this endeavor, which include things like supplies, specialized weapons, automated gun turrets, airstrikes, and artillery fire from your ship in orbit. And yes, it's as glorious as it sounds.

There are some ongoing launch day issues still lingering (crashes, disconnects, unable to join games, etc.), but when the game works it's fun as hell, especially with friends.

The bosses make me want to bang my head against the wall, but everything about this game looks and feels awesome. Been playing these games since the good ol' days of 1997 and I gotta say, it's damn good to hop back into the cockpit of an AC. Well worth the 10-year wait.

Let's get to work.

Unlike real life, everybody in BG3 wants to bang me.

11/10 GOTY

In all seriousness, BG3 is a masterpiece that's (rightfully) shaking up the slump that the modern gaming industry has found itself in. If you've played any of Larian's previous titles (particularly Divinity: Original Sin and its sequel) you mostly know what to expect. It takes the Dungeons & Dragons 5e TTRPG ruleset and puts a few spins on it here and there (elemental arrows/bombs/surfaces and some other minor rules changes), but they mostly work for the better as far as translating a TTRPG into a video game goes.

Avoiding spoilers, the plot is weird and a little bit dark at times, and depending on some of your choices, you can end up "accidentally" killing innocent villagers/party members. Several quests have multiple approaches in dealing with them (do you storm the goblin camp by force and kill everything in sight, do you sneak your way in all sneaky-like, do you bluff your way inside by pretending to be a cultist, or do you straight-up side with the gobbos in favor of that sweet drow nookie?)

All in all, this game was well worth the wait, and I have to go now because I had another idea for a character I want to build while writing this.

This game managed to scratch a very particular kind of itch that I didn't even know I had.

Symphony of War is a turn-based tactical RPG that feels like a mishmash of elements from Fire Emblem and Ogre Battle. Your big army fights the enemy big army on a big battlefield, taking turns trying to murder each other while taking objectives and resources and what not. Each unit you control is actually a squad of soldiers that auto battles when attacking/defending against an enemy unit, and there are all sorts of different class combinations you can use to round out your squads.

Each class has its own distinct advantages and disadvantages: Heavy Infantry are your front-line tanks that protect the rest of the squad but can't do much beyond attacking what's in front of them. Light Infantry deal lots of damage and can ambush enemies, denying them the chance to counter attack, but have low armor. Archers can attack at range, but are highly vulnerable to melee attacks. Cavalry can move -> attack -> move, but are weak to units with spears and polearms. Healers help keep the squad on their feet, but are easily defeated and have no offensive capability. Mages drop fireballs on your enemies, but their spells have a wind-up time and they are very squishy wizards. There are plenty more advanced units you can come by later by unlocking advanced classes like horsebows (archer/cavalry), paladins (heavy infantry/healers), and even dragons (idk, it breathes fire), to name a few. Story characters of course have unique classes that do their own thing as well.

Game took me about 40 hours to complete, which honestly feels refreshing when you have a market full of open-world AAA titles that take over 100 hours to get through everything. Story isn't really much to write home about but it was interesting enough to keep me playing. Pretty standard "hey go kill this evil guy doing a rebellion" but the guy actually wasn't evil and it turns out this other evil guy wants to form an evil empire backed by a cult that worships some ancient evil and also the main character is like the reincarnation of Warlord Jesus I guess?

TLDR; overall a very solid indie title, absolutely worth dropping 20 bucks on a game that'll keep you busy for a couple of weekends, especially if you like tactical RPGs.

It's Pathfinder as a video game, but your DM is kind of a jerk sometimes and throws stuff at you with grossly inflated stats. That being said, WotR is a relatively faithful adaptation of Pathfinder 1e, even to the point where a lot of the crazy builds you can do in tabletop are just as effective in the game. If you've played Kingmaker, it's pretty similar, but the developers have improved the base systems in pretty much every regard (more classes, more feats, mount mechanics, etc.)

They've also added the new Mythic path stuff, which add a whole other element of shenaniganry to your builds. Like vanilla ice cream and being a goodboi? Go Angel. Like chocolate ice cream and being a badboi? Go Demon. Wanna gather a plucky band of misfits to rock out with as you fight the demon invasion? Azata. Wanna be cosmic Judge Dredd and tell people they are wrong? Aeon. Wanna be a spoopy scary skeleman? Lich. Wanna annoy your DM? Trickster. There's some late game paths you can switch over to as well, such as Gold Dragon (we're playing Breath of Fire now), Devil (thanks, Satan), Swarm-That-Walks (all of your friends are food), and of course Legend (I'm too awesome for this Mythic bs, brb gonna level up to 40 instead).

The Crusade stuff is like... a thing that exists I guess. It's basically a dumbed down version of Heroes of Might and Magic. You have different units that do different things, but honestly if you can just pump out archers you'll win pretty much every battle without much difficulty. The mythic paths have some unique units as well, but you don't get enough of them for it to really matter. Your recruitable units will carry you the whole game. Really the Crusade mode is more of a distraction from the main campaign, but you can get some nice bonuses and unique magic items out of it, so it's worth doing (mostly), even if it can get to be a slog sometimes.

Lots of stuff to do, lots of demons to fight, and if you're one of those people like me to tries to obsessively do everything you possibly can in an RPG, a single playthrough of the main story can easily take you well beyond 100 hours. TLDR; if you like Pathfinder (or ttrpgs in general) and want to play an entire campaign over the course of a couple weeks locked inside of your house, pick this up.

POV: You're an amnesiac white-haired anime sword guy with a weird mask and you fight an occupation of evil magical space people with a sword made of fire that you pulled out of a magical space woman's chest that's so powerful it gives you 3rd degree burns whenever you use it but its okay because you can't feel pain for reasons anyway and the magical space woman is also a white mage with a gun who can heal you afterward and she wants to defeat the evil magical space people also.

It goes pretty well.