Recent reviews by vesmo

This is a tough review to make, since I'm sitting right on the fence whether to recommend this game or not. In the end, I'm tipping over to "No", though it's a close one. Let's go over why.

The good:

This game has extremely crisp turn-based combat. It's simply good, and easily the best part of the game. Health system is great, the way it reduces your max hp as you take injuries makes dungeon crawls feel tense and every fight counts.
The graphics are gorgeous -- the best pixel art I've seen.
The save system is brilliant -- prevents save scumming, keeps you honest while putting actual weight on trying to stay alive and not die.

The bad:

Loot is pretty absysmal -- all you can expect is to find more money so you can spend the money on buying better gear.

And pretty much everything else. The survival mechanics (hunger, thirst, fatigue etc) are a chore. Caravan management is a chore. It's like the rest of the game is this boring and arduous management sim with no quality of life improvements that's just there to keep you from the actually good part of the game, which is the combat and dungeon crawling.

Here's an example of the gameplay loop: You travel overland to a town and take a contract. You then spend time buying supplies, resting and setting up. Then you travel to a dungeon, complete the contract, get back to town and claim your reward. Sounds great in theory. The problem is that the actual good part of the gameplay, the dungeon crawling, is maybe one third of the time. The rest you are spending running from merchant to merchant, repairing equipment, buying things, juggling items in your tiny-ass inventory and, this is the absolute worst, running across mostly empty fields and forests because the game doesn't have overland travel.

It's just a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ chore. If the towns were faster to deal in (just a screen where you click which merchants to visit etc) and there was less pseudo-simulated busywork, then I would have no problem with it. But as it stands, it's just not worth my time. If you don't mind all of this, then do go ahead and give Stoneshard a shot.

One last note: this game is not actually a traditional roguelike, it just looks like one. It's a turn-based crpg. If they actually added a roguelike mode where you just go down in dungeons and get to enjoy the best parts of the game, it would be godly.

If you're a fan of deck builders, turn-based hex-tile tactics, roguelites, party-based RPGs or, preferably, any combination of those, then I can only say: try the game out. With Steam's 2 hour refund system, there's absolutely no reason not to!

Evolve Stage 2 is an extremely flawed game. People whine it's hunter-sided, others that the monster is op, or that a specific monster is op. This is because the game has NO balance.

When you start playing the game, you will find out that the monster loses almost constantly. This is because the newbies have no clue how to play it, they panic, and end up fighting too much and losing. However, after some 20 or so hours, you will start to notice the MONSTER winning all the time. This is because it's much easier to learn to play one character than it is to successfully coordinate with a team of four (even if you're all on teamspeak). And lastly, once a good monster starts to run into good hunter teams, then the monster has no chance. He simply can't out-dps a well-organized hunter team, nor catch them off-guard. To top it off, playing against good hunters as the monster is one of the most frustrating and awful feelings I've had in online gaming. You're the helpless kid on the schoolyard who is surrounded by bullies and there's NOTHING you can do about it.

The game is deeply flawed. Have I had fun in the 50 or so hours I've played it? Sure, but most of that was because I was on teamspeak with my mates as the hunters, or absolutely stomping pubbies as the monster (as evidenced by a 96% win-rate as the goliath). The only games I lost as the monster were frustrating, and I can recall TWO whole games where it was a back-and-forth, balanced fight. One where I was the monster, the other where I was the hunter. That's not a good percentage out of some two-hundred games.

Despite giving the game a negative rating, I would still say give it a shot. But don't expect it to become a long-term time investment for yourself and if they actually implement the cash-shop at some point, I would advise against spending money on it. It's quite easy to obtain silver keys just by playing and chances are you won't be playing for long.

ADOM is the definitive rogue-like experience. If you're a fan of rogue-likes, you've probably played ADOM already. However, this is the first of the classic rogue-likes to make its way into Steam and a wide new audience. People who are interested in rogue-like themes and the so called rogue-lite games might find a lot to like here.

As a rogue-like, ADOM is a turn-based RPG. This means that every time you take an action, all of the other characters in the game do so as well, including enemies. In a sense, it's not really turn-based as all the movement happens at once, meaning you never have to wait for the enemy's movement. Combat is a simple matter at ground level but gets more complex as the game progresses. In its most basic form, you are simply "running" into enemies. This causes you to attack them and they will attack back at you and so on. However, you can influence this combat in many ways. This includes switching your tactics to gain better to-hit chance and damage at the expense of defenses (can be used flexibly and in different ways depending on the situation), casting spells, drinking potions, zapping wands, reading scrolls, firing missiles, using skills and maneuvering around the dungeon to name a few. Trash mobs you can simply run into and destroy with ease, but whenever you encounter a new and unknown, potentially strong monster, you might want to slow down the pace and consider what gear you have to help you. And remember the number one rule of rogue-likes: always have an escape plan in mind!

ADOM is absolutely brutal. Rogue-lite games often mention how they are extremely difficult and will require multiple tries before you beat them. These games also tend to be relatively short, 1-2 hour experiences in various genres from fps to platformers. ADOM on the other hand is a purebred rogue-like through and through; a successful game is likely to take 15+ hours and the hundreds of failures you will suffer on the way will add even more hours on top of that. Now I happen to think this is a strength; there is immense amounts of replayability in the game due to a variety of races and classes you can play as, in addition to a huge amount of procedural generation when it comes to monsters you encounter, loot you find and dungeon layouts you will explore. And once you beat the game normally, guess what! There's several Ultra Endings to attempt as well! These endings are insanely hard to pull off, require EVEN more tries than the normal one and are virtually impossible without some outside information sources.

ADOM's strength in relation to other rogue-likes lies in its structured nature: Terinyo is always in the same place as well as the main dungeons of the game. There are quests that you will undertake in a logical order and once you learn your way around the early game, it is possible to form a strategy. This is absolutely key; where many rogue-likes hinge purely on RNG to get you going, ADOM actually has a very deep strategy layer to its gameplay. The other notable selling point in relation to other rogue-likes is the skill system; every race and class has a set of skills they start off with, and these skills can be improved as you advance in levels. This gives leveling a more meaningful feeling compared to some other rogue-likes where you simply gain more health and magic points.

Now this review could go on forever, but hopefully I've given you some insight into whether or not ADOM is something you might be into. Personally, I love this game. I have beaten it three times the normal way and once I've achieved the Avatar of Order ending. I've played this game over the course of 15 years, two development cycles and who knows how many hours. It is truly something special.

Lastly, some meta-advice:

-Do not play the game in softcore mode! Permadeath is an integral part of the rogue-like experience and you will hate ADOM if you don't have permadeath on. A character is very likely to die; you have to learn to deal with it. The entire premise of the game is that you roll hundreds of characters until finally one of them sticks and gets farther into the game than the others. If you keep struggling with a character who was never even meant to survive the experience will be miserable. Not to mention you will never have that feeling of utter disaster when your best character dies at the final level. Or on the way back after winning the game. And all of those losses will build up to the final success; when you finally, after all that heartbreak, beat the game and leave Drakalor Chain, you look back at the time you've spent and go: "♥♥♥♥ yes, I actually did it. I beat this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of a game. Hell yes."

-Don't be afraid to look up stuff on the wiki: ADOM is a massive game and very cryptic in some areas. However, I would suggest avoiding making a habit out of this. Explore the game freely; you're going to die so many times anyway so what's the point of completely spoiling yourself? But once you get a promising character rolling, you might want to check up on the effects of eating this specific monster's corpse, or how dangerous exactly that Gorgon is ;)

-Give the ASCII version a try! The tilesets are very nicely done and the bare-bones ASCII style might seem clunky and unintuitive at first. But you'd be surprised at the advantages it has. For example, you will easily identify new enemies: a small "g" is always going to be a goblin-like small humanoid, an uppercase "D" is always going to be a dragon or dragon-like huge lizard like drake and so on. Very clear and handy compared to the tilesets imo. Not to mention the ASCII graphics are just so damn charming!

-vesmo

If you like stealth and/or turn-based strategy, Invisible, Inc. is an absolute must-buy. The gameplay is sharp and tactical: the game never misinforms you or tricks you, every mistake you make is definitely your own. This combined with the cutting throat nature of losing agents extremely easily when you get caught out makes for a thrilling permadeath experience.

The core gameplay itself is simple: stay out of sight and steal a lot of dollars. But of course there's much more to it. The hacking aspect is sublime, forcing you to manage your power as a resource is as huge a deal as putting your agents in the right spots. The choice between full-on ghost stealth or a bit more aggressive (but smart) use of weaponry to kill guards is balanced well: weapons make a lot of noise and you have to pay a clean-up cost at the end of the mission for every bodybag. A vast array of items and hacking programs mean pretty much every playthrough is different since you never know what you find this time. Combined with the progression of receiving XP from every campaign you complete or lose and unlocking new agents and starting programs gives the game a ton of longevity.

It should also be noted that this game has a great set of options, including colorblind mode. Also, you can customize your own difficulty or choose from presets: if you find that some aspect of the game irks you in a particular way, chances are you can tweak it to either be easier or harder. These options are available from the start, which is really cool. No more banging your head against the wall trying to beat the game to unlock second wave options.

I absolutely recommend Invisible, Inc. The game was good in Early Access when I played back in September 2014; in full release, the game is just stellar.

An amazing game where the first blind run-through is bound to give you some real feels. Getting into horrible situations and having to do everything to survive is an experience not found in any other game. Definitely avoid spoilers before playing this game for the first time.

For subsequent playthroughs, the game still holds up even if the cutting edge of the moral choices and atmosphere is dulled and once the same places start popping up and you know where to go and what to do. But the game still holds up with its extremely solid and satisfying survival mechanics and after the things you end up doing on your first blundering plays, finishing a run with no one dying or not having to steal still gives a truly gratifying feeling.

I recommend to EVERYONE to play this game at least once. Obviously it's not the same as being in a war, but it might just be the closest thing any media has to offer.