Recent reviews by a loaf of bread.

gosh I sure like roguelikes where you're constantly bumrushed by level 1 enemies that take 5+ hits to kill when they can kill you in 2

gosh i sure love roguelikes where i cant tell the range of my weapons

gosh i sure love roguelikes where i have to constantly swap to a torch cause i cant see ♥♥♥♥, even when its point blank in front of me, which also disables my ability to defend myself

gosh i sure love roguelikes where the tutorials are tiny 100p videos that look like a hyper-compressed realplayer file from 1999

gosh i sure love roguelikes where its only entertaining with 3 other players

gosh i sure love roguelikes that are designed by people who dont play roguelikes

props to the voxel art style but even a game as barebones and lacking in content as Delver is better than this

glad i got this for free years ago. was wondering why i barely played it until i reinstalled it. now i realize why i played it so little.
one of these days I really want to find something that will fill the grimrock/elona-shaped hole in my heart but this aint it. never again.

This game is an absolute mess. The only way to make progress is to play hardcore mode, since almost nobody is playing vs other players. Hardcore mode means the enemies health and damage gets inflated. Watch 2 venomancers shoot poison at each other, but mysteriously the enemy veno always seems to do more damage and have more health...huh. What clever gameplay! Thanks Valve! I love when hard modes in games is just the enemies having bigger stats.

But hey lets get into the other flaws. Theres no quick or easy way to distinguish what characters are worth the gold to put on the playing field. The descriptions of the powers are too simple and the characters dont really function the way they do in DOTA so your knowledge of that game is kinda useless here. For example, in DOTA having 'Vladmir's Offering' is nice to have on melee heroes who do high damage or attack very rapidly. Here it feels like a waste of a slot. You will almost never see it making any meaningful change in your characters survivability.

Meanwhile other items, like Mekansm or Arcane Boots or Pipe of Insight, pretty much win the match on their own. But good luck ever seeing these. The items are purely rng drops, but unlike other autochess games you dont get the option to sell or trade these items for other items or more gold.

And for every good item theres about 5 bad ones that wont do jack. Go ahead and give your level 1 Kunkka a sword that gives him +33 bonus damage. Watch as he mysteriously dies to the enemy level 1 Kunkka who has no items at all. Ponder how or why this happened.

And you might be thinking, maybe it has to do with the Alliances mechanic? Nope. Cause these dont work half the time either. Make a team of heroes who are in the Fallen alliance who are supposed to heal each other on death and even come back to life sometimes. Watch as they neither heal nor resurrect.

Go ahead and get the Spirit alliance where you have Ember/Earth/Storm/Void on a team so they form a triangle of damage. Its a lot of work to get these heroes maxed out. Then sigh in frustration as the triangle they form does pitiful damage or sometimes is so small it hits nobody. Sigh further when forming this triangle forces the characters to hold still, meaning any Slark or Lycan can just walk up to them and murder them in moments. Astounding.

The general way the game is meant to work is you sell heroes for gold to buy better ones. Problem is you cant really tell which ones are better. Bristleback for example is very cheap but he does a lot more in a match than Sven who costs a hell of a lot more gold. You have no way of knowing this outside of trial and error and frustration. Because, again, theres no easy way to compare and contrast characters or to even be really sure how their powers work in a match until the match is already happening.
Thankfully heroes sell for the same amount of gold they cost. So swapping heroes out for others is pretty painless. The issue is that every single damn character in DOTA is in this game and they are all presented pretty early.
Oh did you see a Troll Warlord who costs 5 gold on turn 3? Well enjoy never seeing him again for the next like 10 hours of gameplay because theres too many ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ characters and no weighting on who or what can show up.

Meaning even if you sell heroes for gold to buy better ones to try and form anything remotely like a coherent strategy, rolling for new heroes still costs 2 gold and you generally only get a measly 7-12 gold (if you win) per round. Sometimes you get lucky and get more. You wont get lucky. Meaning you will be eternally poor in this game and stuck with bad items and cheap heroes, most of which suck.

The Overlords themselves are also woefully imbalanced. Annesix can enslave an enemy unit which is very handy or she can summon a big demon that hits like a truck. Jull is a tank that can heal the team and hits harder than most of the characters. Enno causes constant chaos and very nice poison damage-over-time all over the map. And then we get to Hobgen who likes to die before he even uses an ability, and when he gets lucky enough to live his ability is a bunch of bombs that have small aoe, bad damage, and tend to miss every target on the map since they take like 10 seconds to go off.

All in all its pretty clear Valve spent little to no time playtesting this steaming heap. Any other autochess game in the world will look far worse but play far better. The face Valve hasnt updated this game in like 3 years is also proof they are well aware it is unsalvageable. And it kinda blows my mind how hard they dropped the ball with this. Its not good autochess game. Its not a good strategy game. Its not a good dota game.

Its not a good anything. I gave it a fair chance over many hours. I tried many strategies. I did it all, baby.

It just sucks. What a waste of potential. How a studio as good as Valve managed to screw up something this obvious and simple kinda baffles me, but here we are.

Dont touch this game with a 49-and-a-half-foot pole.

Rock? Stone? It matters not.

This game is a gem, both literally and figuratively. You like games where you mess around underground like Minecraft and Metro 2033? You like games that require teamwork in utter chaos like Left 4 Dead and Killing Floor? You enjoy the nutty sometimes dry humor of Team Fortress?

Well here's Deep Rock Galactic. A game that delivers all this in one finely tuned, polished package. Four different dwarves, each incredibly well balanced and necessary for smooth gameplay. Each dwarf has different ways to play, unlockable weapons, mods for said weapons, and it all just works. Theres a weapon type for every playstyle amongst the four dwarf classes. If you like precision, its there, if you like colossal explosions, its there, you like bullet hoses, it there.

Easy to use waypoint and mark system with the laser pointer also means its quite easy to communicate with your team without needing to type in the chat or use voice chat, although both are available. The biomes are all unique and beautiful in their own way.

Each dwarf has their own way of getting around the randomly generated environments, each very different, but when working together you can turn even the biggest clustered mess of topographical nightmares into your own weird jungle gym.

And best of all? Low-spec. The game has a very early-playstation-2 look. Everything is designed to be low-poly with simple textures. Its clean. Its consise. You always know what you're looking at from a distance. And this allows the devs to go nuts on the particle effects, of which there are many. Lots of smoke, fire, steam, sparks, fireballs, etc. Enemies are generally color-coded as well so even from far away you can identify critters in the caves based on their hue or the parts of their bodies that glow.

Theres a lot of interesting features in the caves as well besides the enemies. Old weird dwarf machinery, strange geological formations that can be interacted with, hazardous plants and fluids.

And it just WORKS. Very very few bugs. Almost no crashes. Even when theres hundreds of bugs onscreen and explosions everywhere. And that WILL happen. Sometimes, often, ♥♥♥♥ just hits the fan in this game and you'll find yourself going toe to toe with craploads of creatures of various types. Theres no healer in this game. Theres no regenerating health. It's all on you to mitigate damage and know when to shoot and when to run.

I wish games like this came out more often. No predatory practices. No fomo. No bad balance decisions. The developers actually play their own game and understand how it works and you can feel the difference between this and a lot of other modern games where you wonder if the devs have even played their own software.

I'm glad this game is as big of a success as it is. It deserves all the praise and accolades. Its intense, its hard, its silly, and it pokes you right in that wanderlust gland as well. Its the full package. And one nice feature is if you fail a mission (and this will happen sometimes cause the game is random and sometimes chaos is unleashed), you dont lose all progress for death. You don't get nearly as much XP or loot but you never walk away from a mission feeling like you wasted your time.

The tagline on the OST says it best:

"The richest mine ever discovered just happens to be on the deadliest planet in the galaxy. It's also where you work."

- Z

Hey boy and girls.

Do you like squandered potential? Do you like frustrating puzzles that take place way off-screen that you cant see due to the fixed camera? Do you like getting lost without a map or a minimap? Do you like having the game crash during long battles and puzzles causing you to lose lots of progress? Do you like games that require constantly pressing 3 buttons in the lower-left of your keyboard to the point where your fingers ache from doing even the most simple menial task? Do you like games trying to pull of platforming mechanics that clearly were not designed for such things? Do you like NPCs that give you the barest hint of where to go next and wont repeat themselves? Do you like having a wikipedia page open to constantly cross-reference so you dont wander into the wrong area and get your ass kicked? Do you like running in circles in the middle of nowhere? Do you like really obtuse vague tasks that require an obscene amount of trial and error?

Then boy oh boy oh BOY do I have the game for YOU!
Bug Fables!
A janky unholy confusing mess that wishes it was Paper Mario and comes very close at times but is ultimately shackled by baffling topography in the worlds, lots of places to get softlocked in, and best of all, areas where the game outright freezes and you cant do anything but shut the software down!
And best of all, these problems will happen as you fall in love with the game and all its cute little characters! But dont get too attached because chances are, with the way this software runs, you wont get to see the conclusion to the story before the game vanishes up its own ass, deletes your save file due to a glitch, and dies.

With all the constant gushing about this game I was really expecting more. I was really expecting something solid and enchanting. Something that made me feel like a kid again. But that's not the devs fault.


The crashes and freezes however? Kabu getting stuck on corners of objects? Losing valuable XP and berries from the game screwing up in the middle of battle? Getting lost because the game utterly refuses to tell you where to go next, forcing you to have to rely on external sources to make progress? No that very much IS the devs fault.

Bad.
This game is a mess and I wish I didnt like the world and characters so much and decided to keep trying to plow through it. Cause it only got worse the farther I went.

The fact a game this janky and this questionable in terms of mechanics has been lauded with so many awards absolutely and utterly baffles me. I can only assume the console version of this game runs like a dream compared to the PC version. That's the only possible answer I can think of for this mystery.


For the rest of us, if you were hoping for a good MarioRPG-esque game on PC, this ain't it, chief. This genre is dead. And Bug Fables is just another corpse in the pile. Disappointing. Beyond disappointing.

- Z

as a tip to new players make sure to only use sawblade wands preferably with either a fire or gunpowder trail modifier and boomerang spells
thank me later

This game's potential is pretty squandered. Most of the characters from the original didnt make the cut to the final product. The ones who did are a mixed bag. Huntress and Acrid feel far weaker than their original versions (and have been in the game long enough to be fixed). Projectile weapons ricochet off airborn enemies, rendering half the abilities (and many of the items) in this game obsolete, making hitscan the only thing that matters. Hackers abound. Most of the lobbies you get into will be filled with hackers who open every chest in the first minute, grab all the items, then proceed to kill the team with them. There has been no word from the developers if they will fix the hacking. Or the projectiles. Or the lag. Or the underwhelming final boss and map. Or the balance between the characters.

It's a sad state of affairs when I think you can have more fun with a flaming pile of dog dookie like Overwatch then you currently can with this unloved mess of software.

If you're reading this, do yourself a favor. Don't get invested in this passionless quasi-sequel. Play the original Risk of Rain. The one with all the characters you like. The one without the bugs. The one where you cant fall through the ground when you melee an enemy. The one where you can play solo or with friends and have a jolly old time. Pretend Risk of Rain 2 doesnt exist. It's an errant thought. A fleeting whimsy. Pay it no mind. Because the developers sure dont. And until they do, don't give them your money like I did. Don't give them your time like I did. Because every time you open this game and hope its gotten better, you will regret it and wish you could get that time and money back.

This game is the biggest letdown since Godfather 3. Don't bother.

EDIT:

Many months later and the game is still a pile. I decided to turn it back on with the introduction of bandit and I am still floored at how bad and unbalanced it is. Bandit is yet another incredibly mobile character with absurd dps that makes one wonder why you would EVER play Rex or Commando or Acrid.

The power gap between these characters isnt just unreal. Its embarassing. This entire game is an embarassment of obscenely poor balance and the developers clearly just not giving a ♥♥♥♥. I hope they made plenty of money off of Google's crooked Stadia. Cause they are not getting any more of mine.

EDIT 2 MARCH 2022:

Decided to reinstall the game after a year or so of not touching it due to incredibly awful previous experiences of it. Acrid is still utterly unsalvageable. Mul-T is slightly better. Everything else is the same. But wait now we have 2 new characters that utterly wipe the map of enemies before anyone else has a chance to kill anything and earn gold: Sniper and Fiend. How marvelous. Finally Risk of Rain is the walking simulator that the developers always wanted it to be. I hope you werent planning on opening any chests on this map! Cause you wont be able to afford to.

And how do you earn these loveably overtuned new additions to the roster? Why you pay real money, of course! And how do you get to use the also equally-broken new void items? Why you pay real money, of course. Did you have trouble with MONSOON difficulty in the past? Not to worry. Just grab some plasma shrimp and needleticks and bands and watch as every enemy essentially comes to a stop and dies just from you even glancing at it. Go on, turn on all the artifacts at the same time. It won't matter. You paid real money to make the game even easier, and Hoppoo clearly need it while they sit around not fixing any of the base problems with the game.

You still spawn in walls. You still fall through floors (which leads generally to death). You still find 3d printers in the game situated at angles so that items they print are literally FLUNG off cliffs into the abyss where you will never see them again. Oh sorry you traded your teslacoil for the shattering impact hammer. But your hammer got tossed into space. Now you don't have either. So sorry. Please give us your money. Your actual real-life money.

But if all that isnt enough to make you want to eek open your wallet and throw these incompetent developers your cash, there's more! A new game mode! And it's just the VOID FIELDS! But now with a cute crab you have to follow around. Yes that's right! The moon is still a barren boring wasteland and Mithrix is still a barren boring fight, but now you have endless void fields, complete with all the loot spawning so far from the spawn that you will usually die or be incredibly crippled trying to nab it all. Hope you bought lots of goat hooves and feathers! You'll need those feathers for when you inevitably fall through the floor or clip through a wall and dont want to die as you plummet into the abyss.

Are you drooling yet? But wait, we have 1 more surprise. A new boss! And while it might look really cool don't worry, it's just the stone golem reskinned as a giant crab. Enjoy it using its 1 beam attack over and over while you patiently wait behind cover and occasionally deal with lots of smaller crabs and lobsters that pose no threat until they die in a big black ball of light that deletes anything in their vicinity. Good thing they walk at about the same speed as a geriatric snail.

The short of it is this: This game is still a broken haggard mess that makes the garbage on a mobile app store look enticing and high-quality. The very foundations of this game are broken. It took them years to finally add items that worth getting that arent just glasses/syringe/goathoof/gasoline but they are only available if you pay for the dlc or play with someone who paid for the dlc. Outside of that its still the same awful experience featuring the same awful people with the same awful devs running the show and clearly not knowing what to do with it all.

And don't worry if you want a fun solo experience, the endless clipping through walls and floors will ensure that is frustrating as well. And also don't worry if your favorite character sucks because Mercenary is still easily the most powerful free character, with Railgunner, Captain, Engineer, and Void Fiend right behind it. Sorry, fans of Rex, Commando, Acrid, Bandit, or Artificer. The devs dont care about you or item balance and they never will.

Feel free to try out Loader or Mul-T, just hope the new flying smiley-face enemies or exploding poison maggots or giant slime ball gup guys dont spawn. These enemies hit harder than most bosses and are a giant festering wound of an example of how the devs clearly dont play their own software and have absolutely no idea the state that it's in.

I regret paying money for this game and I regret that each time I come back to it, it finds new impressive ways to disappoint me from just how wildly insanely poor it is. If you want to play a game that's like Risk of Rain except not terrible, please play Noita or Spelunky or Binding of Isaac or Hades or Enter the Gungeon. You won't feel like you flushed time and money down the toilet.

EDIT UPDATE APRIL 02 2022:

This will be the fourth time I attempt to add more to this review. Maybe steam banned me from adding more to it?

So what's the state of the game now?

Well for starters theres a lovely new bug where often when you click a lobby the game will hang on a black screen then quietly return you to the title screen. And no, simpleton reading this, that doesn't mean the lobby is full. Because the lobby will still be there, waiting for players, when you go back to the server list.

Speaking of the server list, don't you just love how this NOT-FREE game with PAID-DLC cant save your server list settings? Dont you just love adjusting your filters EVERY single time you refresh the list of lobbies? Its remarkable isnt it? Gosh if only there was a file that could save settings such as these.

Ah I reached the character limit. Reminder: Dont give these predatory awful devs your money. They dont deserve it.

Do you like Super Meat Boy? Do you wish it had input delay, inaccurate hitboxes, and grinding akin to a modern mmorpg? Well here you go. Rogue Legacy manages to do all that at once. One of those games where more time was spent on the funny writing than the mechanics.

DOSH HERE. SOMEBODY TAKE IT.