Recent reviews by Zed

A glorious triumph for comrades and capitalists alike, this game is a very deep, very intricate city builder combined with a very deep, very intricate logistics simulation, combined with detailed sewage, waste, energy management, traffic simulation, and other features. The 1920s DLC is very challenging and adds even more complexity and difficulty. It's sim city and transport tycoon in one game with enough difficulty you can throw years of experience with this genre at it and still feel challenged by managing the numerous systems. I absolutely love it.

There's so much about this game that I adore that it hurts to review it negatively. It seems that a recent patch has made the game far harder economically than it used to be, and this really degrades the new player experience for me as a player who doesn't intricately know the scripting and under the hood workings of the game, as the game doesn't play like it was designed to be this hard. Despite playing on normal, this created a serious mismatch between expecations and reality, especially because the game doesn't follow normal economic logic as far as I can tell.

The economic simulation seems to be devoid of any internal engine of cause and effect. The game starts close to US great depression levels... 16% unemployment, -6% GDP, and 10% inflation. Traditionally, investing money to invest in businesses, infrastructure, agriculture, tax cuts, jobs, and central banking would be investments to try to get you out of this crisis if done intelligently. However, there is no pay off or tax revenue for any of these projects, so going into slight debt paying for investments in the economy will, despite making economic sense, lead to your just landing on the pavement when you realize the game doesn't actually simulate economic growth or tax revenue, but does have a flag in place to kill you if you enter enough debt.

In year two, on discovering there is no tax revenue simulated in the game, my attempt to open energy markets to investing (I was told this was required to join the game version of NATO) ended totally catastrophically and reset my economy to depression levels (I asked an AI and it suggests that despite this happening 200+ times in recorded history, it went worse in this game than has ever happened in human history), and none of my investing in my economy paid off in any way, and several events created unavoidable forced spending, my debt was over doubled with no control, and the game basically is about to finish me off with a polio outbreak on top of all of this. I just can't go on. If I do something wrong, go ahead and sentence me to death, but I feel like I'm being punished for not having known about the game's shortcomings that I couldn't possibly have anticipated.

I actually enjoy some really hard strategy games like Deity civ4 and I/I ironman xcom but those games have transparent cause and effect. For playing a "story game" blind on normal difficulty, I feel really let down by the economic system here, especially for making pretty mainstream economic plays and basically being crushed by unforeseeable future events as a consequence. Worse, there was no warning this would happen. Everything was fine, and then just... "rocks fall and everyone dies."

I would actually brush myself off and try again, but I don't feel like the game is transparent enough in its systems for me to learn and adapt. At best I can just do it again until I get vaporized by the next scripted landmine I couldn't possibly have foreseen and eventually learn the game's own backwards logic through trial and error, but that just sounds miserable. So I feel a kind of learned helplessness. I guess I'm moving on to the next thing. I really like the writing and I love what the devs are trying to do with this game. I was having a truly great time before I felt kicked off a cliff. That's the best I can say.

The combat in this game has some serious problems that make it so bad I am personally attacked and find it personally offensive

I am a 42 year old nerd with nearsightedness from back when being a nerd meant you were an actual nerd i should be having problems here and first of all this game is horrendously easy no matter how you play it you just repeatedly block and counter anything and then you win but you can also spam lots of other things like a stupid jumpkick with no effort and the game is also completely trivial

unless the enemy is overleveled enough, in which case it literally actually takes no damage, you can actually counter that ♥♥♥♥♥ fifteen times and a row and it will do no damage, and also it will kill you in one hit from full health, lots of games have overleveled enemies, but i have never seen them be literally, actually invincible, and it feels weird with human zombies that just magically don't die

and did I mention that countering plays a cutscene and you also get a quick time event during the cutscene like 40% of the time? wow so much more fun than actually playing a game please end my suffering now

also, all the weapons feel the same. blunt weapons used to knock enemies around based on the body part you hit in the first game and it was fun crowd control. now if you want to knock things around, it's easier than ever it's actually the most brain dead garbage and way better at doing it than blunt weapons ever could, but you have to do a stupid jump kick with one and only one animation and it outright launches the enemies on the ground every time. it all just feels horrible brain dead and repetitive.

it also has the usual aaa garbage of the game being a giant extended tutorial of itself unlikeable characters unearned relationships and other trash but the unearned relationships are especially bad here. the characters are acting like they have a reason to care about each other when it's completely unearned and they just met and are barely even acquaintances. really just awful all around

One of my favorite games in my favorite genre. The real joy of dungeonmans is that it applies roguelite progression to the traditional roguelike formula. It also features an extremely flexible and open-ended skill system that lets you make powerful chracters, and it has a ton of content. It's old but it's great, and I've silently enjoyed it ever since it came out.

To the dev, congrats on your thousandth review and here's to ten more years of dungeonmanning :)

This game merges and condenses the complex character building of action RPGs like Path of Exile, Last Epoch and Diablo into a condensed version of a traditional turn-based roguelike experience. Games are shorter, simpler, and faster than other traditional roguelikes in the genre, playing out over an hour or two. Battles take place in a small arena and the gameplay is almost similar to a turn-based Vampire Survivors. Almost all of the gameplay is focused on optimizing the player's build. As someone who plays games ranging from Tome2 to Last Epoch to Path of Exile to Vampire Survivors and its relatives for the pure joy of playing around in broken builds, this is one of the funnest games I have ever played.

This game has basically carved a new niche into existence. While the game is brilliant, the only feedback I would give the developer is that I think the game would be more interesting with more unpredictable itemization, as the player would be tested in his ability to adapt to the circumstances. I also think that in the long run it woluld be good if skill trees were itemized or swappable at startup so that more skill lines could be added to the game. And I think that while the game already has lots of content, it could benefit from even more. None of that is to detract from what the game has accomplished. It's a completely brilliant game.,

As a 15 year veteran of the software industry I've been thinking about starting a traditional roguelike game as a side project. If I do, it will definitely be iterating on the genre this game has carved into existence. This is the sincerest form of flattery.

This game is so good that I'd feel like a jerk if I didn't leave a positive review. Crystal project is a CRIMINALLY unknown semi-open-world jRPG that is story-light but features incredible exploration and good game mechanics. The game features a 4-character party with a dual-class job system (I.e. FFV, Bravely Default) with additionally MMO-like threat mechanics. Combat is challenging and fun and playing on hard, party optimization is required, but you can turn the difficulty down. If you're about exploring new game worlds and systems like me, and this sounds fun to you, you should without hesitation pick it up immediately.

The amount and quality of content in this game is insane proportional to how many reviews / active players this game has.
The world is enormous and the exploration is similar to Elden Ring in the sense that there are open areas that are connected by key funnels the player has to pass through. As soon as you think you've explored the world, something new is revealed to you that makes you realize the world is actually twice as big as you thought it was, and this keeps happening over and over. The exploration in this game is incredibly rewarding, with hidden items / hidden tools / class unlocks / metroidvania-like mobility upgrades. Closing thought, I just finished a key piece of endgame-ish content and it only made me realize that, oh ♥♥♥♥, this was all just the tip of the iceberg, and I still haven't even found half of the amazing secrets this game has to offer. This is quickly becoming one of my favorite games of all time.

Good game

Not even harmless. It ♥♥♥♥♥ up the initial outfits of your recruits with costumes and haircuts that are so outrageously stupid they are immersion-breaking. The costumes come in three varieties, ♥♥♥♥♥♥ '90s punk, ♥♥♥♥♥♥ fallout 4 cosplayer, and homeless person, all of which are randomly mixed together in your recruits and completely clash with the game's art style.

On the other hand, if you want your recruits to look worse dressed than homeless people, you may enjoy this.

PS - don't know why it says 0 minutes. I have used the DLC for a few hours. Turning it off really is a relief.

Ah, behold the genre that never existed. There are two games of this genre: OTC and MULE. MULE is like, 20 years old and while good, this one is better. This is a real-time strategy game where you control a corporation on Mars, but unlike Starcraft, your goal is to extract resources for money and buy your competitors hostile-takeover-style rather than kill them. To do this, you're going to want to manipulate market prices ruthlessly, causing shortages of what you produce and surpluses of what you buy. There are a whole lot of ways to do this, from obeying supply and demand, to sabotaging power plants and key buildings to disrupt the production of a resource and cause a price surge / achieve a monopoly, to outright hacking the markets and resorting to orbital liftoffs that are pricy buy use a different market, to a wide range of tactics that are predatory and designed to weaken everyone else's earnings.

There are a ton of tactical ways to ruthlessly manipulate the market, and even in multiplayer, the game rewards fast reaction to changing strategic circumstances over fixed build orders. Basically, if you enjoy the idea of experiencing capitalism at its nastiest and most ruthless, or you just like damn fine strategy games, or entire unique genres, this is a great pick. Oh yeah, solid procedurally-generated single player campaigns too.

I don't usually mention sound tracks, but this one's is great and is timed to in-game progress that really feeds a feeling of intensity to every fast-paced match. Its intensity fits the tone of the game, and the music actually changes as base levels and in-game progress increase, building from brooding but relentless marches to symphonic, percussion-heavy crescendos of full-blown planetary exploitation. The music is a constant reminder that love it or hate it, the Martian capitalist machine is relentless and insatiable. The sheer tone of the game is accidental social commentary that can be appreciated, no matter your political leanings.

The game deserves "Overwhelmingly Positive" reviews IMHO in that it does what it aims to do amazingly well. That said, this game is NOT for everybody. Not everyone likes number-crunchy market manipulation at coke-addled-quant realtime paces. You need to be the kind of person who enjoys the mathematical/strategic exercise here to enjoy this kind of game. Not every game is for everybody; so when you're deciding whether to buy it, don't think of it as a traditional RTS.

Delicious tactical and strategic crunch w/ many different units on the board. RPG elements where you customize every individual character, their gear, and your templar company'soverall technology tree. Typically anywhere of 4-9 of your guys per battle vs lots of enemies. Story is pretty decent too.