First Impression – Page 32 – Please Insert CD

Serpent in the Staglands

Oh, old-school RPGs. How they hold a warm, fuzzy spot in my heart. From Pillars of Eternity to Neverwinter Nights 2 to Ultima VII, they just epitomize what I want out of a game. Serpent in the Staglands is a game in this same vein built by a couple – one makes the art, one writes the code. It definitely feels like an old cRPG in many of the right ways and only a few of the bad ones.

I feel bad putting this in Tier Two, but I think I must. Much like Avernum, it’s just a tiny bit too too rough around the edges for me to enjoy properly without putting a great deal of time into it. And even then, I don’t know that it has enough to justify that kind of time commitment.

Steam link

Magicite

by Chezni

Magicite (Completed) Review

Sometimes it’s difficult to tell if a crafting game is good or not before you buy it. Ever since the exploding popularity of a certain java-based cube mining game, there has been a splurge of copycat titles desperately trying to ride its coattails of success–whether their game was good or not. Now don’t get me wrong, crafting in video games was a thing long before Minecraft came to the scene–but Minecraft’s viral acclaim created a heavy hand that guided how many of us viewed the nature of crafting in games. After many poor imitations, eventually Terraria would enter the scene, being a strong enough game to stand on its own alongside a world where Minecraft existed–and for several years following its release, the game-designing industry had yet another crafting title that they could mimic, much to the disappointment of many gamers who would go on to purchase these equally cheap knockoffs. Now, it’s not fair to say that Minecraft and Terraria have exclusive rights to 3-D and 2-D crafting games exclusively. After all, certain things about each game naturally lend themselves to logical conclusions that result from the design of a realistic way to obtain the most basic of crafting materials–wood and stone. To say that any other game that has you gathering both these resources is a knockoff of Minecraft or Terraria would be untrue. The problem lies in the simple question of game design: “Are you gathering wood and stones because that is the most logical and satisfying method that the designers structured their game around, or are you gathering wood and stones because that’s the way Minecraft and Terraria did it?” Thus the trial today, is finding a way to sort out the good from the bad–the wheat from the chaff–in a genre where so much refuse is readily available. Magicite, mercifully, genially, is actually good.

To say that this game is unlike Terraria, would be false. You have an axe. You cut down trees to make more axes. You craft a sword. You kill things and hit rocks with pickaxes to get better swords. This is where many of the similarities depart however, as Magicite is actually a scored roguelike, whereupon all your actions are graded and rewarded at the inevitable end of your life, accordingly. The game is incredibly easy to learn but rewards increased player skill. My first life lasted 17 seconds. I got trampled by a boar. Now I can make it about 10 minutes in, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but makes me feel like a damn hero. Even though the game is difficult, it’s the good kind of difficult. Each time you die you understand that it was a consequence of your own actions. It’s easy to understand why you died, and what you could have probably done to avoid it. With each death, you can dive right back in better prepared–not because your character is a higher level, but because you as a player are wiser to the world that you encounter.

In spite of being a roguelike, crafting is a staple of the gameplay–and much to my awe, Magicite handles crafting in a manner that is sweet and simple like Terraria while still remaining distinct. Simply by mushing two items together, you can check to see if they create a new item. It sounds too simple at first, but it works really well–it makes crafting quick (which you’ll want since every time you die you’ll need to re-craft all your items) but contains enough possibilities that the excitement of discovering a new recipe is always around the corner. I still have no idea what a “Tribal Drum” does, but my curiosity compels me even now to find out. I suppose I could just look up the recipes, but I haven’t felt a need to yet; I feel it would ruin my fun.

So far the mechanics have been as simple as just swinging a stick or a sword or if I’m lucky shooting a bow, but there’s enough customization to allow different approaches to your adventure. For starters, your core 4 stats are randomized and can be pushed into your favor if you’re willing to reroll them a few times. You also start off with the ability to choose 2 traits–they aren’t profound, but can give you an edge in one area or another. Later on as you level up, you can choose one of three skill paths to travel down–and if you are deemed to be worthy by the achievement gods, you might just get a piece of equipment, a race or companion after you die that you can take with you the next time you set out. All these simple customization options create enough of a choice that it’s fun to tailor your character to your wishes but they aren’t so complicated that they drag you down.

I look forward to getting deeper into the world of Magicite. So far, the farthest I’ve managed to get is a town with NPCs willing to trade with me. I should have taken a leaf out of Link’s book though and left the chickens alone. Killing a few of the town fowl summoned a Giant chicken that ended my day. Regrettably I wasn’t able to quite get a screenshot of that one. Oh well; your imagination may suit you better than a picture would. All in all, Magicite goes in Tier 1 resolutely; it’s a great pickup for those who love quick character creation, crafting, side-scrolling and roguelikes.

Steam Link

Sid Meier’s Ace Patrol: Pacific Skies

by Chezni

Nope. Noope. Nooooope.

I’ve played this game already. I’ve written this review already.

Please see: Sid Meier’s Ace Patrol (the original)

Seriously. It’s the same game.

It’s just as bad.

… Why are you still here? You desire something more convincing?

You still fly planes around by clicking blue arrows until you get the green arrows that let you do damage to the bad planes.

All the pilots still make you want to punch them in the face. Repeatedly.

It still doesn’t matter which skills you pick, and you’ll just end up clicking through on random ones.

The only thing resembling an improvement is the ability to choose a nation. Don’t be fooled though–there’s only two to choose from. They’re just listed twice with a Navy/Army variant of each.

Tier 3 all the way.

Steam Link

Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes

by Chezni

MM:CoH is puzzling… in more ways than one. On the one hand, it is strategy-based game involving mythical creatures, magical beings and so on–par for the course for the MM series. On the other hand… it is also literally a puzzle game, which leaves me sitting here bewilderingly playing a goofy “match 3 colors” game from a franchise that under normal circumstances, I tend to respect as being one of the anchors in PC fantasy gaming history. At a first glance, there is something extremely appealing about this game. I’m not sure if it’s the design, the neatly organized and brightly colored units, or polished UI, but I feel that a gamer would just be naturally compelled to see what this game is all about. That being said, something about this game is… wrong. Terribly wrong. It’s difficult to explain, so let’s take it piece-by-piece.

For starters, the game’s story sucks. It’s basically along the lines of “something-something, big magical world, something-something, giant kingdoms, something–oh yeah, and then demons attack.” It’s lazy, cliche and even without playing more than an hour of the game, I already know what kind of plot I’m in store for: bland and generic heroes fight off demons and win. Riveting. To be fair though, it’s got the same plot as almost every single Fire Emblem game and those games are pretty good–admittedly for numerous reasons outside their plot though. Even so, my biggest problem when a game opens up like this is that I’m always screaming in my head at the lethargic narrator, describing these supposedly mighty kingdoms, “Why should I care? What does it mean to me? For all I know, these kingdoms deserve to get overrun by demons!” Narrations like this anger me, because the presupposition is that the player will immediately identify the kingdoms as valuable, simply because they are mighty. It presupposes that the player wants these nations to survive, simply because they contain magical creatures and races that are generically appealing to the conformist norms of a fantasy universe. It presupposes that things are simply black and white; that good will always be good and deserve to kill, plunder and pillage as much as they want, as long as it is in the name of their people group. It’s aggravating.

The plot boringly moves along this route and we are exposed to several young heroes whose families are attacked an murdered by demons. It’s not really exciting in the slightest, and just feels like it drags. The characters are generic and lack any kind of personality beyond the shallow stereotypes that they’ve been built around. You take control of a young elf girl and manage her escape and later investigation into the matters of why demons have attacked. I get the feeling that eventually you would get to choose to play as the other heroes and control their race’s units, but even that carrot wasn’t enough to motivate my progression through the game.

However, sometimes plot and setting are merely a vehicle to transport the player to a very fun game–some of the best games out there have crappy stories. I’m not sure if I can say that this is the case with CoH. The game has a lot of little pieces for you to learn, which is a good part of any healthy game. Combat consists of building armies through units that are available to you, and each unit is noticeably distinct from one another. There’s a lot of little twists and techniques you can use in combat to sway the tide of battle to your favor–you can synchronize your units by “Linking” them, build walls to play defensively, and plan out your moves in a chess-like manner. The problem is, that even though the rules are decent and possess enough strategic options for the player that they feel like they can make a difference in the battle’s outcome, it’s still just a match 3 game. The concept just feels childish in a world that I’m supposed to take (I assume) seriously. Battles have a lot going on in them, but they feel sluggish. It’s impossible to know what an enemy unit does until you meet it, so new units sort of broad-side you until you figure them out. Inherently from a gaming perspective this is not bad, but it is in this kind of game. Because the game plays out in a chess-like manner, it would be akin to your opponent pulling out random made-up pieces in the middle of a chess match and then not telling you what they do. Additionally, the tutorial of the game drags on and on, and is an annoying series of pop-up windows that is about as exciting as reading a pictureless instruction manual.

The best part of the game by far is the art. For the most part, it is clean, bright and very appealing. All of the army units have a slew of animations that are smooth and fun to watch. One that made me laugh was the skeletons–when they attack, they pull off their head and use it as a bludgeoning weapon as they charge. Character portraits have a range of stances and emotions, and they look smooth and appealing. Don’t get me wrong–they aren’t hyper-realistic or ultra-detailed, but they don’t have to be. They’re fun to look at and watch move around.

Ultimately though, I can’t personally support the game. It is clear that time and effort were put into the game’s visuals, and even though it is a low-octane puzzle game, the designers did add as many rules as they could to spice up gameplay to the best of their abilities. In the end though, I’m still just matching 3 colors together in a manner that feels off. At times the game feels like a Flash game on Kongregate–or at worst a micro-transaction army-based game on the Android Market. In my mind, it teeters on the edge of T3 and T2, but I do think that this would be a great game for casual gamers looking for a lot of time to waste, and so I submit that this game belongs to Tier 2. For me though, I desire something a bit more challenging.

Steam Link

Sonic CD (Completed)

by Chezni

When I was little, it took a few weeks of effort to finally crush Sonic CD into the dust. Robotnik defeated, Amy Rose saved, Metal Sonic destroyed–it was a moment of triumph. Put to the wayside, memories of Sonic CD warped and twisted with countless other Sonic titles, to the point where I began to think that my memories of time traveling and racing Metal Sonic were simply a fabrication I had created. When I happened to see “Sonic CD” available on Steam, it finally clicked. This was the Sonic game, my first Sonic game, that I had played 20 years ago. I hadn’t made it up after all. Today, I loaded it up to see just how much my “adult skill” matched up to my 2nd grade form. What took me weeks as a child took me 70 minutes in my living room with an X-Box controller. It was still fun though.

Sonic CD is much like any other game in the series. You run through loops, collect rings, move too fast to know where the heck you are going; the normal stuff. Being no stranger to the 2D Sonic platformers, I think this one is nearer to the top than others. As far as the staple principles of a Sonic platformer, it moves quickly, the levels are relatively interesting and open, and the pace of the game is, well, fast which is good. There are some interesting facets that set it apart though, the biggest of which is time travel. Scattered throughout the levels are signs that point to the future or past. Running by one and picking up enough speed will shoot you through time in the respective direction indicated. This means that each and every level in the game was designed both graphically and mechanically 3 different times, and at many places in the level you can swap between all three (past, present and future). Unfortunately, I’m not sure exactly what my motive for doing so is. Maybe if I was very familiar with the game I would have a preference for which time-period I enjoyed traveling through in a particular level, but because I have no idea what any of the time periods have in store, I just swapped them at random so I could see the different graphics and listen to the changed music.

The music, oddly, is worth mentioning. Sonic has always had pretty decent music, but Sonic CD stands apart in that its music is of a higher quality. Probably having something to do with the fact that it was on a CD and not a cartridge, the music widely ranges from calming to techno to funky. It doesn’t quite have that retro charm that say Sonics 1-3 have, but considering that each of the 3 time periods for each stage have their own music, it’s really interesting to hear how it is remixed to fit the new settings.

Collectively, Sonic CD is a good game and I would recommend it to any Sonic fan. It doesn’t take too long to beat, and even if the game doesn’t click entirely with you, the music is fun to listen to and there are even some nostalgic 90’s Sonic cartoon animations unique to the game that you get to watch. That being said though, the purpose of the time-traveling is a little confusing, and like most Sonic games, if you want the “good” ending, you have to collect the Chaos Emeralds–something that is equally unclear as to how to achieve. While I may not be particularly motivated to uncover all the game’s secrets, I believe the game has merit and belongs in Tier 2.

Steam Link

Breath of Death VII

by Chezni

Breath of Death VII (Completed) Review

Stuck are we, in a never-ending world in which we are attuned to needing, nay, desiring the next earth-shattering cataclysmic story that we can hop into the hot-seat for and become the heroic fulcrum of universal dependence. We long to be the badass hero, wildly large sword in hand clashing blade-to-blade with our equally met adversary–the cosmos spinning, fluctuating and exploding around us as the whole world watches and points at our every move. We want the innocent, well-endowed child-hood sweetheart to have nothing more than her hero’s arms wrapped tight around her after the colossal apocalypse of all existence is narrowly avoided. In the face of all this–in the face of one grasping gaming company after another, desperately trying to deliver this narrative bigger, better and badder over and over again–I have only one thing to say…

SCREW THAT.

Breath of Death VII is an amazing game, and it has nothing in common with what so many mainstream RPGs have become today.

BoDVII is a tongue-in-cheek parody of RPGs from the NES/SNES era. It features numerous throwbacks to old game concepts, references to many older RPGs and overall captures a whimsical parallel of what it was like to play console games back in the 90’s. Play just a little while and you’ll immediately start picking up the connections. The world was blown up in the year 20XX, a reference to Megaman. The first town in the game has the same layout as the first town in Dragon Warrior–right down to the locked doors requiring the special keys sold in Rimuldar. The game’s world is even divided into sections named after a combination of iconic RPGs’ American and Japanes names. Motherbound references Earthbound/Mother, Lufestopolis references Lufia/Estopolis and very close to the heart of your dear old author Chezni, Palad-Lennus is a reference to Paladin’s Quest/Lennus.

That being said though, let me be clear–this game is not simply a wank-fest that kids from the 90’s can brainlessly herald claiming things like, “This game hearkens back to a time when video games were good,” or “Get off my gaming lawn you casuals, back in my day our games meant something.” BoDVII is actually a lot of fun, even in the modern day era of gaming. It throws just enough of what 90’s RGPs were to put a good taste in your mouth, but knows when to cut back into the modern day of convenience before the taste grows dull or sour.

For instance–random battles are plentiful and filled with a variety of sprite-based enemies; this is a necessary feature of a game referencing 90’s RPGs. But lets be real here, eventually old RPGs at some point became an exercise of running around aimlessly, grinding through battle after battle against enemies that were far weaker than you, all the while you hoped to pick up on the next plot point so you could move on with the story. BoDVII avoids this with a simple mechanic. After a certain number of battles are won in each area, the game simply ceases random battles altogether, instead offering you the option to seek combat in the menu, should you wish to fill up your EXP further. Traditional to old tile-based RPGs, you move relatively slowly, one tile at a time. BoDVII mercifully gives you a run button that makes the party book it at quite a fast pace. Most of the time in NES/SNES RPGs, you didn’t have much control over the way a character leveled up–they just filled up their EXP meter and got a set type of stats for it. While this created simplicity and straight-forwardness, sometimes it left you wishing you could tailor your characters a bit more. BoDVII keeps things simple, yet customizable–after every level, you get a choice between two bonuses (two sets of stat boosts or two skills) that can greatly alter the way your characters fight over the course of the game as all the decisions add up. It’s not a complicated skill tree, so it doesn’t take more than 30 seconds to make the choice, but it gives enough customization that you feel like you own the characters.

These modern-day conveniences mixed with old-school style creates a really fun game–and I haven’t even touched on the story or characters yet. For the sake of limiting my rant-ability, let me just sum it up like this: characters can be awesome without super HD 40,000 polygonal models, angsty backstories and constant character-built-in drama. The main character of BoDVII is a skeleton. His name is DEM. He can’t talk, because he’s a skeleton. He’s funny, because we can hear his thoughts, but no one else can. He considers himself a hero. I like DEM. It’s that simple, and it doesn’t have to be more complicated than that. Your second party member is Sara. She’s an energetic mage who can read DEM’s thoughts. She often “translates” for DEM, completely changing what DEM is thinking in his head when she relays it to other people. She’s a ghost. That’s awesome. Lita is a freaking techno-vampire with a pension for sunglasses and shotguns. Do I even need to keep going?

Sometimes a thing can be great, simply because it’s great. It doesn’t need over-complicated drama. It doesn’t need earth-shattering consequences. It doesn’t need another two damn star-crossed lovers who are perfect in every way and fall in love with each other at the end. Sometimes, a thing can be great because it just is–whether it’s made of polygons or pixels. BoDVII is a reminder of this, in addition to being a great parody. I will definitely be finishing this one and as such it belongs in Tier 1.

Steam Link

A Bird Story (Completed)

by Chezni

Caw Caw. A Bird Story took me by surprise in that… it is literally a story about a bird. To help you understand, consider this: To the Moon (made by the same guy) was much more than just “going to the moon.” It was a rather emotional ride that made the player face the issue of loss–loss of memories, loss of self, loss of a lifelong love–it was heartbreaking, but it created a real feeling in the player that is not really found or explored that much in the gaming genre. In short, the moon ended up being a much deeper symbol that represented something real. Looking once more back to A Bird Story, it’s a bit of a let down that there was no deeper meaning. You can just take the title at face value–there’s nothing deep or profound here.

The entire story of the game is not completely awful (it helps that the game is only about an hour and a half long) and its told entirely without words, which is interesting. A boy, whose parents are never home lives a lonely sad life–his schoolwork is failing, no one plays with him on the playground–it’s a bit depressing. One day after school, he saves a bird from being attacked by an animal (giant badger?) and nurses it back to health. The bird sort of solves all the boy’s problems–he’s popular on the playground because suddenly he’s “the kid with the bird,” the boy isn’t lonely at home, and he’s motivated in his schoolwork by using the bird as the focus of his studies… but nothing really comes from any of this.

There’s a heavy motif of imagination where you’re not entirely sure if everything you see is real or in the boy’s head. He jumps off a building with an umbrella and floats safely to the ground. He builds a giant paper airplane and sails around the world to floating islands. He’s struck by lightning and crashes. The game never offers the barest hint of an explanation concerning any of these things; you have to make of it what you will through a sheer imagination of your own. I imagined that the bird was a representation of zest for life–a symbol of the boy’s choice to live on in the face of depression in spite of the gloomy circumstances around him. The game deserves non of my theories or explanations though, since it makes no effort on its own to throw any hints or clues to the player.

In a point of strange conflict, a school teacher and veterinarian try to take the bird away from the boy (presumably to nurse it back to health properly) and the boy escapes from them on a giant paper airplane into a storm, where he is struck down by lightning and the bird disappears. Then, with no substantial tension, the bird just reappears. There’s a bit more, but after that the game sort of ends, teasing at the sequel for To the Moon. It’s almost as if the developer was like “Yeah, sorry, I know this kind of had no point… uh, I’ll make the sequel to To The Moon at… some… point.”

In the end, the game had good music, and even though it was kind of a waste of time, it was pleasant enough to not be a total failure, and so I put it in Tier 2. Is it a game? No, not really. It feels more like it should be one of those shorts at the beginning of a Pixar film. You never really play the game; about 80% of the game is just watching sprite-art cutscenes. However, if you’re someone who is very low-key, and just sort of wants to watch a slightly interactive short-story about a boy and his pet, then go for it–in regards to that criteria, even though it’s a bit bland, it’s certainly well done.

Steam Link

StarCrawlers

by LepcisMagna

If you took bits of the Shadowrun universe, combined it with the Privateer setting, then threw in Legend of Grimrock movement, you’d end up with something a lot like StarCrawlers. Oooh….now I want to go play Legend of Grimrock II again. My God, I could listen to that theme all day – it stacks up against the likes of Halo (I’m not linking that. If you don’t know Halo, I can’t help you) and Trine in terms of soundtrack.

If you haven’t played Legend of Grimrock or its sequel, the astonishingly cleverly named Legend of Grimrock II, stop reading. Go to Steam. Play both. Wonder why the sequel is named after Grimrock at all. Revel in two of the best dungeon crawlers of the last decade and possibly of all time. Wonder why these puzzles are so hard. Come to the conclusion that Legend of Grimrock II is one of few “perfect” games anyway (along with FTL) – simple in concept, sublime in its execution, and utter ecstasy to play. Return.

Oh! Right. StarCrawlers. Yeah, it’s okay. I mean, it didn’t do itself any favors by making me think of Legend of Grimrock: in a fairly bizarre design decision, you can freely look around a 3D environment, but only move in four directions. It doesn’t work well, but you definitely need to keep in enabled to see things in corners. Still, it has a certain charm, and I can appreciate the unique blend of space RPG and dungeon crawl. You are given a series of missions by the local barkeep that require you to travel (well, be ferried by your partner) to wrecked starliners and retrieve information for megacorporations to earn money and level up. At least in my playtime, each level had at least a couple unique-but-not-unsolvable puzzles to solve – like finding the name of a cat to use as a computer password or a suspicious arrangement of empty cans for a combination lock. It’s still in Early Access, but I’m definitely interested in playing more once I have the time – and because of that, it goes to Tier One.

Steam link

Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast

by LepcisMagna

Strangely enough, I’ve never played Jedi Outcast even though one of my favorite games growing up was Jedi Academy. Jedi Academy was one of those games that just felt like a classic game set in the Star Wars universe. Easter eggs, custom maps, cheat codes, lightsabers…everything. But for some reason, I never got around to playing Jedi Outcast. Now that I have, I’m a little disappointed. Everything about Jedi Outcast just reminds me of how Jedi Academy did it better. The level layouts were cleaner, the mission objectives were clearer, and the interface was more understandable. Granted, you have to play through about two levels of walkthrough at the beginning of Jedi Academy, but everything after that is just classic, lightsaber-y fun. In my opinion, Jedi Academy has the exact “feel” of what makes Star Wars games fun – even if it is a bit cliche. In my hour of Jedi Outcast, I spent most of that time wandering about, trying to figure out where I was supposed to go and what I was supposed to do. I’m sure the story is good, but all the little nitpicks force this into Tier Three when I could just play Jedi Academy instead.

Steam link

Two Worlds: Epic Edition

by Chezni

Sometimes you can play a game that’s garbage, but it ends up being one of your favorite games that you’ve ever played. Aidyn Chronicles for the N64 has horrible graphics, awkward dialogue, a confusing interface and awful controls–but I can’t get enough of it. This is because hidden beneath the aforementioned rubbish is a world riddled with secrets, extensive game mechanics, freedom of tactics and a compelling storyline that asks the question “what if the universe forgot to name someone?” It’s these treasures deep beneath the game’s surface that will bring me back to this game again and again, willing to completely overlook the game’s other faults. There are many games out there like this–you probably have a few of these kinds of games in your personal favorites list as well. Two Worlds pretends to be one of these games. Two worlds is pure utter excrement.

In some ways, I am edging over the line of cheating. When Lepcis and I set out to work out our Steam libraries, we agreed to give most games about an hour–as a general rule. We admitted that some games would need more than that (even in a good RPG you might still be in the tutorial after an hour) and some games deserved far less (see Lepcis’s Plankton Review). The idea was to give the game “a fair shake.” Now, I’ll admit that 5 minutes of a Two Worlds cutscene followed by 5 minutes of Two World’s gameplay is hardly a “fair shake.” I don’t care. I can’t stomach another minute playing the game because I know what’s coming. I’ve played Two Worlds II–a sesspool of a game that I devoted 20 hours to before I finally broke down and admitted that it was a lost-cause-piece-of-garbage that I would pay money to not have to play. It is (if I may coin a phrase) an Antigame. A game that is not just bad–it’s offensively bad. It does the exact opposite of what a game is supposed to do. Instead of providing relief, enjoyment, fun or satisfaction, it creates anger, frustration, a sense of loss and stress. The latter is exactly how I would describe Two Worlds II, and I gave 20 damn hours to that game that I’ll never get back. Two Worlds: Epic Edition is somehow, miraculously worse than its sequel. It’s fascinating. It should be studied if it weren’t for the fact that you would have to actually play the game to do so. The only shred of thankfulness that I can muster from the experience is that because I played the sequel first, it only took me the 10 aforementioned minutes to recognize the all too familiar ruts that the original shared with it.

And frankly, that is where the complexity of my review will end. The game is not worth being clever, creative or funny with. It’s simply not worth anything. In line with this, the rest of the review will simply be a pro’s and cons list–for if I were to truly break down the cons, this review would be several paragraphs long and what little time I’ve devoted to the origin game of this franchise is already far more than it deserves. The Two Words games are well beyond an insult to gamers and move right down into being an insult to the history of human invention itself. Never waste your time with this series.

Pros

The world is big.

Cons

The graphics are an eyesore.
The voice acting is some of the worst I’ve ever heard. The game is full of it. 50% of the game is listening to people talk.
Melee combat consists of you hitting one button.
Hit detection is atrocious, requiring repetitive swinging, sacrificing a goat to Juniper and sleeping with the game producer in order to get any of your attacks to land, even when enemies are standing directly in front of you.
There is no substantial reward for exploration, and the world is huge.
There are more random pointless NPC sidequests in this game than in a lot of MMORPGS.
In spite of clearly being dressed as a Fighter or a Ranger at best, your character is every fantasy class mashed together.
Questing involves going from point A to point B over and over and over again.
The storyline is absolute trash.
The main character is annoying and comments stupidly on the most mundane things.
The character creator might as well not exist. Non of the sliders change the character in a meaningful way. There are 9 skin tones and all of them are a different shade of white. You will always have facial hair, look rugged and appear as the stereotypical meat-headed crotch-grabbing male-power fantasy hero. What’s even funnier is that it says “Male Body” on one of the creator tabs. You cannot play as a female character. Did they assume their audience was comprised of paint sniffing football hucking pinheads who were in need of a reminder of what gender they were playing as?
NPCs in the game only exist to make you do things. There are no developed or important characters in the game. Not even the game’s villain is that meaningful, in spite of the fact that the entire game’s plot revolves around foiling his plans.
The game is called “Two Worlds.” There is only one world.
There’s more. I’m done though.

Steam Link