Recent reviews by VodkaWraithLizard

DLC difficulty? ♥♥♥♥ you Fatshark.

♥♥♥♥

You

In short: For the price of two drinks when going out (or even less, depending on where you live) this game is absolutely worth it. It definitely has significantly more content and better replay value than most Devolver Digital titles, as a comparison.

Will you like it? Depends on what you're looking for: if you want your regular "I am above mere mortals" kind of traditional RPG where you kill dozens or hundreds with little effort, then no. If you're looking for a realistic "I'm one of those low level NPC's that are in the background of Scipio Africanus, a regular joe army recruit mostly focused on trying to survive the war I've been drafted in, fighting opponents of similar or higher skill than me" then absolutely yes.

The game in mechanical terms is simple, but very well designed and executed. It's very immersive and in my case somewhat addictive, it offers me a high incentive to keep replaying it.

Most of the negative reviews complain about an apparent RNG element that seems to be predominant, but after 3 successful playthroughs followed by two early deaths I can safely say that is not the case, I'll explain why and how one should approach the game in general.

The player should really focus on the whole idea of surviving a realistic scenario: you start off as a raw recruit who is part of a military unit, when offered chances to do risky things such as dueling enemy leaders and champions, breaking out of formation to perform a heroic action, answering the call for volunteers to keep fighting on, facing élite mercenaries who haven't been broken by the army yet, a call answered only specifically by "the most experienced veterans", remember you're *not* above the common man. Even a regular professional soldier is probably going to get themselves killed if they choose to rush up the ladders of a besieged city to help their Centurion be the first to get to the top.
One last tip: you killing troops in regular battles isn't going to change the outcome of the battle itself, it is enough to just survive the engagement, earn rewards for having taken part in them, live another day and train to be better in the future.

Play it safe, focus on surviving, don't do things you wouldn't do if you were in that situation in real life. That way I managed to get promoted to Optio (2nd out of 4 promotions) and survive until the end of my first playthrough, gaining me the rarest achievement (completing the game with no ehnancements).

In regards to replaying: you can choose to boost your starting attributes, equipment and skills with points gained from previous playthrough scores, thus allowing you better odds at trying things such as winning duels, being the first to get to the top of the enemy walls, and in general being that "above average" warrior who goes beyond the call of duty.

Finally, there's also a free demo of the first three acts of the campaign (roughly a little under a third of a playthrough). If you like it and choose to buy the full game it'll let you continue that playthrough.

Version 0.9 came out very recently, and after 100 hours and years following development I've decided it's worth spreading the good word: Early Access *can* be done right!

Currently it is well worth the asking price for its content, but it may take a year or more still to reach the end of development, what it provides now is a truly unique experience you won't see anywhere else ,an endless game mode called the arena, and a not-short Story campaign, all of which combined with the time required to understand and master the game's mechanics will keep you busy for a long time.

What sets this apart from everything else is its physics based combat system -no, not the "wonky physics" kind of game - realistic and fluid that ties in perfectly with the combat gameplay.
Basically the cursor acts as the general direction and objective of the body weight of the character you control and where their blows are aimed; rather than having a fixed motion for an attack the swing or stab can dynamically be aimed at any point in space, though it takes a lot of practice and patience to understand how the system works and how to use it to your advantage.

The result is the best melee combat simulator I have ever seen, both in terms of realism and immersion.

In regards to the development: I've grown tired of wasting money on Early Access titles that stretch forever from their initial stated goals due to adding features nobody asked for, often to compensate for not being able to deliver on stated objectives, or because the developers radically depart from their stated original vision for what would end up being their product. All too often in the other projects I follow is the lack of improvements on AI that upsets me the most.

This is where Bare Mettle have done things differently: while they do release updates only about once a year, not only do they expand significantly the available amount of content, but they improve on what's already been done, with this last update for instance they somehow managed to improve enemy AI very much, taking me completely by surprise with how competent the opposition has become, literally wiping the floor with my character the first arena match I played post-update as I previously relied a lot on how predictable the AI would often be, with me therefore relying on the same few tactics. Now every fight feels genuine.

I am *very* satisfied with the work the devs have done and even *if* this game were not to be finished I can say buying and playing it was very much worth it.

Exanima however is intended to be a prelude for a much more ambitious game they're working on, utilizing it as a practical platform to develop their engine, tools, mechanics, combat system, the "meat" of the main project. And it's already at a very good stage.

Devs just announced the game's full release in October. This product is the final argument in favour of *never* pre-ordering or falling for the Early Access scheme, no matter how beloved a franchise is, regardless of the devs' previous work.

I supported the game's EA funding based on many promised and showcased features that will not make it in the end, it was supposed to be more than a step above Warband. We were shown many possible forms of strategic and tactical interaction that breathed life and would have made for a living world, with Towns featuring Notables with their own agendas, gangs of bandits staking their claim over areas of the towns themselves, a real economy that if hurt through interactions other than "do battle" would result in enemy Lords seeing the quantity and quality of their troops diminish significantly as a result.

As it stands, none of that promised "different ways to play the game" have any noticeable impact, and what new there is only appears late into a character's progression, usually by which point they aren't needed anymore (smithing your own quality weapon? You'll be so rich you can buy twenty of them by the time you can craft just one, after grinding *thousands* of other weapons with a limited stamina system resembling MMORPG crafting grinds, except even worse).

Early Access means such promises are not set in stone, I've heard that bs excuse too many times, but what is by far the most jarring is how broken or lackluster everything else is: AI units who still don't know how to climb ladders during sieges, groups of AI soldiers standing still and not reacting to the PC approaching until two-three of them get killed, AI Lords on the campaign map dragging their allies into suicidal army battles due to bad positioning and random-walk maneuvering, tournaments being only *slightly* better than in Warband (I've played warband mods that made them a lot more engaging and interesting), early game progression still being a boring slog, in certain regards even worse than in Warband, the companion system being *definitely worse* than in Warband; generally speaking the design and execution of this game follow a "Warband +" idea, with the player having the same goals and methods as in Warband but without a superhuman hero of a character who can keep swinging a greatsword cleaving through several enemies tirelessly like a war machine.

Lots of half-baked ideas poorly implemented (if at all) is how I'd sum it up.

The only good thing coming from the release will be the possibility for players to make their own game via mods, *and* inevitably fixing this game's bugs and technical failures instead of the devs, because they *cannot* do in 2 months what they haven't been able to do in 6+ years.

Lastly regarding my playtime: I've had "fun" for about 1/5th of the time I've spent in it, mostly it was regularly coming back to check the state of the game after several major updates, coming away very disappointed each time. I'm sure that in time, thanks to mods, I'll clock in a lot more playtime, but a triple-A pricetag for what is essentially a base for modders to work on is most definitely not worth it.

Wait for after release and buy on a major discount.

TL/DR
AWESOME! Best devs of the year :DD
Am hoping for new equipment to be honest, even if it will take a while, but great game anyway still got a lot to try out in overclock department.

Graphics: Excellent
This isn't minecraft, you *will* enjoy having 120 FPS on a 2K monitor and good setup, will also run on lower end. Very optimized.

Gameplay: Excellent
It's a pure blast to play and accomodates lots of different playstyles.

Content: Great
Lots of ingame currency store variety and rare unlocks that can't be purchased with RL money, the DLC is really just rewarding extra funding for these devs. Good mission variety, biomes, emerging narrative etc.

Gameplay and replayability: Great
Extremely immersive! Most of the time you can enjoy it with 3 random helpful guys without ever having to use chat, very intuitive and fluid. HIGHLY addictive.
Few bugs that aren't that bad, because nothing is perfect.

Totally get it on discount without even thinking about it, start with lower difficulties. Then play with friends or make them along the way.
Still worth it full price, as I got it.

As soon as I launched this 2 of my steam friends immediately congratulated me for being a person of culture.

Thanks to mods and the sheer variety of factors in the base game itself (including the wide selection of difficulty levels for each storyteller) you can play this game exactly the way you want, unless you utterly hate management and RPG's there is no reason not to play this.

You could treat the pawns exactly as their name implies, pawns to be sacrificed mercilessly for a greater plan, or grow fond of them and want to nurture them individually and observe their virtual life like a psycho would with a colony of ants.

9.8/10 because I don't believe in perfection, but this gets darn near it. DLC *is* overpriced for what it offers but the handful of devs have earned my money by continuing to work on their product and offering me endless top quality entertainment.

Truly well made, great for those looking for a bit of a challenge too.

A little short but I can't complain, nobody should, it's a free mod that had some great ideas that got implemented perfectly. The atmosphere is dark and can feel claustrophobic, enemies will take you from behind without you knowing they're there, always watch your back.

Short Version: This isn't the real deal, 4000 LP and FOUR card spots? This is dumbed down beyond belief, this is NOT yu-gi-oh, it's a bad port for a mobile cash-grab that looks like the original card game animated series.



More details:
1) Bad port: you can't play this in full screen. Even if you alt+enter (as suggested in their official FAQ, lol) you'll get the windows bar on the bottom cutting the screen. No way to resize the window, either.

2) Grindy beyond belief. I know it's F2P, and that it's a card collecting game, you're kinda supposed to buy card packs, but even before you can unlock more advanced features of the game, you have to defeat the same basic AI opponents hours upon hours, after the first hour I just said no, I've got better things to do.

3) Returning to the "not the original Yu-Gi-Oh!" point you can see that even in their marketing model: card packs give you 4 cards, as opposed to the standard 7 that you bought back in the day, this flawed digital "version" of the game is even more expensive than the real life one.


There used to be a free project that gave you everything you needed to play the real Yugi, digitally ofc, online and offline, and included good AI as well, but apparently they've all been taken down by the Konami ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ for....whatever this lil' ♥♥♥♥ is.

Negative recommendation because Konami takes down good, free projects in order to give us bad, ♥♥♥♥♥♥ cashgrabs.

The next-gen battlefield 2142 mixed with SW Battlefront 2 (the original, 2005 one!) and some Section 8 aesthetics, this game only needs more players.

The devs are constantly finishing the game, and among most early access titles, this is by far among the most playable. I usually don't trust Early Access anymore, but this seems to be an exception.

What will you notice as "not finished", you ask? Voice commands and the space-to-planet feature, mostly. And the UI will need some tune-ups in the future. That's kinda it.