Recent reviews by emote_control

Dang, this scratches the Patapon itch. I like the additional strategy in positioning and jumping, and the music really hits the spot.

Caves of Qud is a game about being covered in liquids.

I have submitted 4 bug reports in the last 24 hours. I am not being paid to do all this QA work. This game is so buggy it's making it impossible to keep playing. All my industry is losing money due to astronomical rent even though the land they're on is worthless. Supply and demand for resources and manufactured goods is completely broken. Placing commercial zones causes residential demand to collapse. The oil refinery is actually a plastics factory. Resources are being imported despite abundant local supply.

The first few hours of the game are pretty normal, but once you get to a big city the simulation starts to break down. So I'm not going to play this again until either they patch all these problems or they hire me to do QA for them and I actually get paid for all the labour I'm performing for them.

Edit to add: And I still can't turn off those godawful spoken interruptions on the radio stations.

Switching this review to positive.

Sony, you degenerates, we're watching you. GFY

Two words: Civilian Alerts

Stops those stupid children from "playing make believe" outside the fort while a horde of goblins is charging at them. Everyone stops what they're doing and goes to the burrow. Should be in the basic version of the game, but it's not, so DFHack comes to the rescue.

Good parts:

• Seems like a good implementation of the D&D rules, with adjustments to make it work as a CRPG.
  
• The premise and opening are very cool, with great visuals and lore references
  
• The combat system does a decent job of previewing how a particular action will play out
  
• Game looks gorgeous. The artists have really knocked it out of the park, with a couple exceptions...
  
• They seem to have put in some work to make rangers worth playing, which is better than D&D has ever done.

Bad parts:

• Combat interface is a bunch of tiny buttons that all look pretty much the same. Hard to keep track of where things are and what you can do
  
• Camera pitch is locked, and is somehow at exactly the wrong angle most of the time. There's so much good environmental design that I want to look at, but I can't. Let me tilt the camera.
  
• Character art is...weird. Some of the faces look like they were designed by whoever made those wonky faces from Fallout 3 and Skyrim. They're also really similar to each other (again, like Skyrim). Maybe we'll see some more face types at launch, but for now they're all kind of weird and seem to lack character and variety.
  
• There's no main character voicing. Maybe there will be at release, but for now all you do when it's your turn to talk is silently frown and furrow your brow, and then a choice of text dialogue options pops up. So a conversation feels like: NPC delivers a line in their trademark style, absolutely dripping with character. *dead silence* NPC delivers another line. *dead silence* etc. Really breaks immersion. This works better in that style that some CRPGs use where all dialogue appears as text in a panel at the bottom, and NPC lines are voiced out loud while you're reading it. Not so good when it's an audio-focused conversation while the camera does close-ups on the speakers. This setup really needs voice acting by the PC for it to not feel bizarre and jerky.

Neutral parts:

• The game has that Larian vibe. It really reminds me of Divinity: Original Sin II. It just feels similar, right down to just walking around and talking to people. You may or may not like this if you're an old Baldur's Gate fan. As a point of comparison, Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous feels more like the old BG games, and this feels more like D:OS2.
  
• No alignment system. They're going for a more "Everyone Liked That" vibe like more visual-novel style games do.
  
• The differences from the tabletop D&D rules and limited options available compared to the TTRPG might make it difficult to theorycraft builds and multiclass paths until more options become available and we've had enough time to master the in-game system. If you're big on crunchy D&D builds you'll have to re-learn the system and figure out how things interact again.

I'm sure I don't need to explain this game. Its reputation precedes it. I expect there will be some polishing up of the graphical interface over time, but the core Dwarf Fortress gameplay is there, along with a lot of great new ways of doing things.

Things I don't like about the Steam version so far:

* I can't find a way to set archers to use wooden arrows while training but metal arrows while in combat, which you can do in the classic version.
* It doesn't auto-pause on important events. I want a toggle for this.
* There are lots of places where text gets cut off because it's so long, and a simple line wrap would fix it.
* It doesn't show the translation of artifact names in the object detail view.

It would be great if there were an easy way to give feedback on this sort of thing.

Things I do like about the Steam version so far:

* Overhauled job system makes it easier to ensure stuff gets done
* AUTO-MINING
* Multi-designate bedrooms
* The graphics are actually super nice
* Worldgen is *fast*. No more "go make a sandwich".

This game is a buffet. It's an action RPG. It's a roguelike. It's a management sim. It's got a fishing minigame. It's packed with unlockable cosmetics and decorations. You can get married. You can get married and then sacrifice your spouse to an elder god. It's got something for everyone. The fighting feels solid and responsive, and the art direction is fantastic, particularly on the bosses. I'm really enjoying it.

Such a cute, fun, charismatic game. I could not stop playing until I finished it. The combat felt just hard enough to be challenging, but not so hard it was frustrating. The writing is funny and surprising, and it's full of memorable characters.

Does what it says on the box. You're a shark. You eat things. Fish. Mammals. People. The gameplay gets a bit repetitive, but for what it is, it's good. Very polished story elements, considering you're a shark. A lot of "collect 14 glowing things on the map" style side activities. The combat is a bit chaotic and it seems like the best way to fight things is just button mash because at least half the time whatever's attacking you is behind you, and attacks from other animals aren't terribly well telegraphed, so the dodge mechanism is a bit, um, dodgy. It would be great if there were better visual cues like there are when fighting humans. Swimming around eating random things feels good though, and the environments are interesting and immersive. There's enough background comedy elements to keep the energy and momentum up, which is something that I always have trouble with in these map-based action games.

Overall, lots of biting and devouring. Lots of fun, if you're into that sort of thing.