Recent reviews by Rob

I give this game a tentative recommendation. It's a flawed roguelike teambuilder with some interesting ideas certainly worth exploring, especially if you get it under $10.

What works well:
- Runs are short and varied. You move quickly through the floors and losses never feel miserable.
- Pleasant art style with minimal reuse of sprites. Yeah there are recolors, but there's a LOT of unique art in this game.
- Addictive gameplay loop. Build a team, level them up, give them gear, die, repeat.

What needs work:
- Once you've built your team, there isn't a good reason to go to the campfire (the place you buy units), but it keeps showing up! I have zero motivation to switch up my party once I've spent gold, xp, and items on them.
- Lots of the non-battle rooms feel bad. Treasure and the merchant: good! The potion witch is rarely useful, the demon that offers you a "deal" is almost always skipped (2 - 4 gold for a massive disadvantage in the next battle? No thanks!), and the gnome with the keys I haven't figured out (and he doesn't explain himself).
- The difficulty spikes pretty heavily after the second boss. Your team scales linearly with a ceiling, but the encounters do not. Obviously, this can be good for a challenge. But the overall power level of most of the units available seems very low.
- Roguelike progression feels like a chore. You unlock a new class in the unit pool with every player level (you gain XP after a run), but it feels like the cool stuff is still being kept from me after 5 hours of playing. I play for the cool stuff, I don't want to sink another 5 or 10 hours of playing with the weak units to get there.

Absolutely amazing VR experience. Do not hesitate to pick this up. Great music, great gameplay, and great variety in levels.

This is not only the greatest VR game I've ever played, it's the greatest game I've ever played. Period. I beat it in 8 or 9 hours, so don't expect months worth of playtime, but the game is incredibly dense: every minute is perfectly paced, every puzzle is difficult without being frustrating, and every fight seems choreographed down to the second.

This game proves that VR is the future. Playing Half-Life: Alyx gave me the same sense of wonder I experienced when playing a 3D game for the first time. It may take a few years for the whole industry to follow suit, but everyone will be building games like this in the future.

Disclaimer: I played on a Valve Index. I can't vouch for the immersion of other headsets/controllers.

Very addicting. This scratches the tower defense itch perfectly and has tons of variety in "mastermind" mode where you pick units from all factions. Definitely recommended!

Duo mode is a game-changer for the auto battler genre. Well balanced and crazy fun.

I'm a huge fan of Tales and have played almost every single game in the series. I couldn't finish this one.

The protagonist is an idiot and the cast is almost entirely forgettable. I had to quit over 50 hours in because I couldn't stand the painful cutscenes and god-awful writing, and the battle system did not keep me hooked. I kept waiting for the classic Tales twist of some kind, but it never came and I was left feeling frustrated.

This is by far the worst Tales game ever released, and I wouldn't recommend this unless you don't mind sitting through the terrible story.

This is a MOBA for people who don't like MOBAs. I've never liked Dota 2 or LoL, but Smite hooked me instantly. Not only are all of the characters really cool with unique mechanics, but the game modes have so much replay value. Don't like tower objectives? Play Arena. Want to play 5v5 in one lane with random gods? Play Assault. Joust has one lane, Seige has two, and Conquest has three. You'll find yourself skipping around game modes and gods constantly, which prevents you from getting bored.

The game is also very beginner-friendly, with suggested item builds (3 suggested "core" items, 3 suggested offensive items, and 3 suggested defensive items), so you don't have to search through every item in the game when you know nothing. Last-hitting on creeps and enemy gods is still there, but you get partial gold for every kill your team gets so it's harder to fall behind when you're still learning.

I bought the $30 all-gods-included-forever add-on and never looked back. Compared to some other MOBAs, this game is a great value for what you get. I would 100% recommend this game to lovers of MOBAs and action RPGs in general. I'll be playing this for a long time.

Short and sweet. You'll be it in an hour or two but it's an interesting experience.

This is a charming and sometimes incredibly difficult logic puzzle game (really it's just visual assembly programming with registers and jumps). I'm about halfway through and the optimization challenges for the levels are tough. It's definitely rewarding when your code works and the little guy executing the commands does everything right.

As you progress through the game the little cutscenes get hilarious. I definitely recommend this game.

8/10, it's worth the money.

I'll keep this short.

- It has very tight controls, and you never feel like you've been killed unfairly.

- The classes are well-balanced aside from the temporary OP Phantom (which was nerfed today, July 22 2015). Not only are they balanced, but all of them have valuable contributions to make to any strategy. I love the variety of reviving/healing/bombing/guarding that the classes provide.

- This game is NOT pay-to-win. Period.

- Newcomers can come in and learn the basics very quickly and be competitive. There's depth, but it's not overwhelming and thankfully does NOT encourage any form of min-maxing.

- It has some the best maps I've ever seen in a shooter. They're varied, huge, and have no wasted space. As each game progresses, you'll encounter new hiding spots and alternate routes.

- The sniper rifle is not OP and can be countered easily (I hate shooters where all the best players snipe 100% from a distance).

I would 100% recommend this game and I see myself playing it well into the future.