Recent reviews by Diggly Cerides

Closer to the Animal Crossing side of things than "desperate FFXIV omnicrafter looking for their next hit" that I was hoping for, but still a very relaxing game with a very charming and cozy feel. A nice detox game.

Mechanics veer dangerously close to too simple but have juuuust enough complexity to keep it interesting (fun timed minigames where your performance improves quality, weapons come with different traits to encourage recrafting the perfect fishing rod, etc). I thought I would get bored of repeating the same tasks over and over again, but the chase grinding up all your skills and collecting mats just so you can go from a iron pickaxe to a gold pickaxe hit that crafting/gathering itch.

I don't think there's anything particularly compelling enough for people who are looking for a interesting crafting/gathering game. But if you loved decorating and building up your town in Animal Crossing, or are looking for just a very cozy game to play to wind down before bed, I can definitely recommend this game.

I will say they let you just grind out the game like crazy and let you go off the tutorial rails SUPER easily, so for the people who love grinding everything out before advancing the main story, I recommend doing the main quest at least up until you have all your classes unlocked as some core features don't open up until you progress (laying roads in the town, crafting wallpapers/flooring for your house, etc).

I havent played that many roguelites, so the closest thing I can compare this to is a SUPER fast Dungeons of Dredmore. Quick games at lunch, this game has a automove/attack key built into it so you just zoom through the rounds.

You create a character by picking a race, class, and religion at the start, then try to cram your gear into creating the perfect build. Almost idler-like in its simplicity and straightforwardness. Try the demo!

Much like their Pathfinder games, Rogue Trader comes strong out of the gate with compelling world building and an incredibly polished act one/two. I'm not sure what happened after that point, because around act three and especially four the game starts unraveling quickly. Logically, it's due to the difficulty of accounting for and incorporating multiple player-driven choices from the first 50 hours into the latter half of the game, but I'm feeling extremely spiteful after how deeply disappointed I am so I'm going to exercise my right as an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ on the internet to baselessly speculate that they only concentrated on polishing act one/two.

By the end of the game I had major sunk cost fallacy kicking in and was rushing through the game hoping not to get soft-locked by a broken save. Fortunately I think the developers were rushing too, because a lot of the quests around act 4 felt extremely abrupt and strangely disconnected from all my previous interactions with the world.

Frequent bugs/technical issues (game freezes, I can't see enemy health or unit movement ranges, quest text repeats multiple times, quests breadcrumbs/journal entries don't update, frequent and long load screens), curious design choices (a stealth sidequest in a game system that doesn't have precise movement, a maze of void clouds that give you giga-debuffs that you have to point and click stutter step around and hope the bad AI pathing doesnt YOLO into one, a maze of zones that you have to load screen between each zone transition), and sadly, story/quests that don't particularly feel like they built off of previous interactions in the world. I didn't particularly like the events near the ending which felt somewhat forced (I did like that they incorporated them. just not how they implemented it almost out of nowhere) and some of the companion quests near the end felt very rushed and unfulfilling, considering how attached you can get to them (the companions are mostly great in my opinion), but that's entirely personal preference - I think a lot of people will find it's fine.

Despite all that, the fact I can still give this game a recommend should speak to just how GOOD the beginning of this game was. I cannot understate how hooked I was in the beginning of this game. Your character feels important in the universe. You feel like you have player agency in the game. Your choices are respected by the game and impact the world around you, and these choices are interesting and feel like they build your own unique story (side note - I was VERY surprised that you can play a "light side" character in the game, which I definitely was not expecting for 40K, but was happy to see the choice was there). The game slowly introduces you to the world and lore of 40K with every set piece and interaction just oozing the flair and flavor you'd expect. But man, when technical issues/quest design makes me have to start checking a Reddit because I'm not sure if I bugged a quest in a game I'm primarily playing for the story... again, just like their Pathfinder games, a deeply flawed but enjoyable game. It's maddening how close this game was to greatness. Now I truly understand what kind of things drive a man to heresy...

Ark-type survival game with Pals ("legally distinct portable monsters") for use as base automation and battle instead of dinosaurs. Skews way more toward the survival base-builder genre than the typical monster collecting-type game, so keep that in mind if you wanted a straight monster battler.

Game succeeds by emulating multiple other games and "lovingly paying homage"/copying the best parts of them. However, this may leave some people unsatisfied by not emulating enough or improving them enough.

The scariest part of this game is the somewhat distracting difference between the models and the world design make it look like a scam knock-off cash grab. If it is one, it's got enough gameplay to keep me interested, but that might be more of a comment on how low my standards are and not the quality of the game.

For me though, that wild difference is one of the core parts of the fun of this game, which may lead to it not having very long legs as the shock factor fades over time. A lot of the fun comes from "what if Pokemon wasn't so PG?"-hypotheticals and the "WTF?" moments it creates. Seeing Raichu/Yellow Totoro with a gatling gun, capturing people with pal balls, butchering Pals for meat, disturbing Pal o'dex entries, etc...It was one of those moments that hooked me. I invaded a Ream Tocket base to redistribute their captured Pal to myself and as I was freeing their Pal, a wild wolf monster came in and started eating Ream Tocket's corpses. Slap that WTF factor on a decently competent base builder, and the game is a lot of fun, at least for now. I foresee myself getting way too deep into selectively breeding the ultimate Meganium later, though...

Other notes:
-Huge world with Breath of the Wild design. Largely barrren with some points of interest, but little collectible power-up korok seeds are squirrelled away everywhere that are fun to find. Traversal using your monsters is nice (I can fly around on my Moltres? Neat!) with largely just ambient sound and no music. Pretty chill. Dungeons, boss monsters, and hostile NPC camps dot the map. Some usual "open world game where player can place environmental objects" jank with pathfinding - Pals will maneuver and get stuck in a wall, or you can cheese someone from a cliff or rock. It happens, but not irritatingly much.

- Models that look like they were ripped off a premade model pack. Monster designs are surprisingly good, but that's probably because they were super "inspired" by other monster games (Pokemon, Monster Hunter). The clash between the cartoon-y model design and the realistic world makes the game look like a cash grab early access hell game.

-Genshin Impact/simplistic mobile game combat(?). Pals can learn three moves. Players can equip simple melee weapons and guns (...) and fight independently or astride the pal. Dodge rolls in game, but most moves have projectiles that move slowly enough to see them coming and move out of the way with no need to use the dodge beside looking cool. It IS nice that later on I feel like a lot of your power comes from the Pal and not from you taking potshots at their head (it was surprising to see that head/weak points shots were guranteed crits and were detected).

- Ark base building. Buildings are created with wall and floor segments, no pre-made buildings. You'll want to build on large, flat surfaces as there is no terrain manipulation beyond laying out flooring everywhere to make a flat surface. If you dont, you'll get objects jutting out of the ground diagonally on slopes, which isn't gamebreaking, just distracting. Workstations can be built that you can craft from, but pals assigned to your base will also work them automatically. Decent amount of customization options. Some "player created survival game" jank where Pals can't pathfind or work correctly, mostly from me putting workstations inside - resolved by putting them outside or with ample headroom for the bigger/flying Pals. Bases are periodically invaded by hostile factions.

-Pokemon-esque breeding. Pals can be bred together to create the ultimate Pal. Pals can have four passive traits that are passed down via breeding. Duplicate pals can also be cold-pressed for their delectable essence and fed to another pal of the same breed for rank ups. Shiny pals can be found which have a rare trait which can then be bred/passed down (although you dont keep the shiny effect, sadly).

I usually don't like the supply chain type city builders, but this game perfectly captures the magic of spamming new games in Civ with random civ selected, finding the perfect start and getting stabilized, then resetting because you assume you'll win from that position.

As of 2/18/23, may need some more time to cook and work out the post-release jitters. Keep getting "fatal error" about every 20 minutes, crashing the game and resetting the run.

I actually somewhat enjoyed the kingdom management in the first pathfinder. In this one, they shoehorned a shallow heroes of might and magic clone into the mix and I can honestly say it ruins the entire game for me. There's an option for easy kingdom management, just like they added to the first game, but it actually turns off quest progression for anything related to the crusader battles. Just...why. I know that kingdom management was especially divisive in the first one, so why would you double down on it? I don't want to play a bad heroes of might and magic clone, I just wanna play frickin pathfinder!

+Get it if you like mindlessly grinding and trying to craft the perfect squad through multiple evolutions and ending up with various Animal Gundam bros. The focal point here is definitely the digimon, and designs are varied and interesting enough.
-Not much of a story here - the fun is in evolving the digimon, in my opinion. Since it's so grindy, you'll be doing a lot of combat, which uses a rock-paper-scissors model and isn't terribly engrossing.

The best part about Pokemon is grinding and seeing your dudes evolve into an even more awesome dude, like a cute turtle turning into a giant with tank cannons in their shell. Well, this game lets you evolve AS MUCH AS YOU WANT due to the necessity of de-evolving.

This is the ultimate mindless grinding game as you are constantly required to evolve and devolve, thanks to an evolution TREE. So you grind, evolve, see that the creature is ugly, reset back down, evolve, see that the next tier is locked by evolution points that you get from evolving and devolving, and the cycle continues. Grinding is aided by some "hacks" (basically spells the protagonist can use on the field) - one hack instantly causes combat, so you don't need to run around in a circle to find a random encounter.

Monster designs are usually a hit for me, but I do love armored dudes. Since this is a JRPG, armored dudes do tend to lean towards Gundam more than medieval knight, but there's some variation there.

Story is pretty average, and feels like the more recent Shin Megami Tensei devil survivor games - OK but nothing amazing. Translation is not great, with some dialogue responses seeming to have no connection to whatever was said previously, but nothing terrible that causes the game to have issues.

Overall, I wish more was done with raising the digimon like back in the old PS1 games, with feeding and exercising them. Each digimon has a personality attribute, but it only decides stat growth and not any actual character of the digimon. In the end, the fun of evolving the digimon and seeing all the awesome evolutions in a particular branch of monsters was enough for a grinder like me.

If you're a fan of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, you'll enjoy this game. Otherwise, I'm not too sure if it adds too many new features to be a "must buy" for Total War players. Having hero type units is a very fun addition to the game, especially if you have a favorite historical character. Watching Lu Bu just run people over is very satisfying.

Havent played since the Ezio trilogy. Surprised at how much I enjoyed this game. They've added some loot elements to the game, and diversified combat based on how you gear yourself (fighting, ranged, assassination). I actually got super invested in the storyline, and found Cassandra to be a pretty likable main character with a decent bunch of supporting characters. As always, I found it really fun finding out how all the crazy ancient technology fits into the story.