Category: Tier Three

More like Kingdoms Fall, AMIRITE?

I’m not going to waste your time on this one. Kingdoms Rise is unfinished and generally abandoned. It once held the potential to be an exciting PvP Sword/Magicplay combat game with an emphasis on melee combat. It has a slew of weapons, spells and skills and enough depth to be regarded with some interest by PvP enthusiasts. While the graphics are unpolished, they’re quite pretty in their raw form and feel big. Character creation is fun and you are able to customize a lot of pieces of your character’s outfit–including things like right and left shoulder pads individually and even the codpiece.

So why the bum review? Well, there’s a couple different ways to approach it, but here’s the list: 1. Early Access. 2. Nature of PvP. 3. Microtransactions.

1. Early Access: at this point we’ve probably all been burned by Early Access games on Steam. We’ve all felt like we’ve been scammed, tricked or generally had our money taken and not given something that was promised by a game. Kingdoms Rise is one of those games. It’s been in “Early Access” for 4+ years, but the devs have been largely inattentive of the product for the last 2. While it should be on the buyer’s shoulders to understand that if if they pay money for an early access game that they are not guaranteed to have anything more than what is present in the game when it is purchased–but it still sucks that the product seems to have no intention of being finished.
2. Nature of PvP: Player vs. Player games are tricky business for both the player and the creator. In my opinion, they are the hardest games for the devs to make and the most risky games for the players to invest in. If a dev makes a PvP game, they must be willing to constantly upkeep the game essentially until the end of time–if they don’t the game will die. Likewise, the player base must be willing to play the game and invest in it (both time and money) continually, or the game will die. Kingdoms Rise seems to be a mix of both–a stagnant player based combined with devs who have left the game. As it stands, there are no available games being hosted for Kingdoms Rise, essentially making the game completely unplayable.
3. Microtransactions: the most sure-fire way to tell if a PvP game is failing is the introduction of heavy microtransactions and “Pay to Win” bonuses. It’s a sign that the game owner is trying to squeeze the last cash (and life) out of a product when they are willing to accept bribes to let another player win. As I read up on the game,  I came across the somewhat frequent comment that “pay to win microtransactions are ruining the game.” It’s hard to determine the accuracy of these kinds of statements since oftentimes they are made by an ignorant player who is just upset that someone beat them with a tool that they don’t understand. What I can tell however, is that there is a DLC section for this game. DLC. For a game that is unfinished. That feels icky just saying it.

Also, I don’t know what “Event Begins” in 6 days and at this point I’m afraid to ask. Maybe it’s like the Midnight Channel in Persona 4?

Sometimes good PvP games fall flat and it’s not really anyone’s fault. Sometimes there just isn’t a big enough player base to support the game. In the case of Kingdoms Rise however, records seem to point to a large part of the blame being on the shoulders of the devs. This disregard for the spirit of gaming as well as the player base itself angers me, and would normally lead me to relegate the game to Tier 4 except… I just can’t. What’s present in the game is really cool. The customization (both visual and combative) seems like it had a lot of potential. At some point in this games development, someone must have been putting their heart into the content. I’m not sure why they stopped. Motivation is a hard thing to maintain; that I understand. I lose passion for many of my hobbies and it becomes difficult to continue them. However, when a product is being sold, it must be treated completely different than a hobby–it becomes a job. It was the dev’s job to keep up with this game. It was their job to ensure the game’s success, for better or for worse. In light of this, Kingdoms Rise barely escapes Tier 4 by the skin of its teeth and nestles in the dredges of the Tier 3 category.

Steam Link

Ugh… would like a heaping serving of pointless game design matched with a bigger scoop of nonstop 80’s references? Well then you must have a hankering for…

Okay, so when I bought this game, I expected it to be a little shallow. I expected it to not be the most revolutionary mechanical masterpiece of the century filled with surprising twist after twist. Gameplay is something like a 2-D GTA, involving the theft of vehicles and the squishing of many civilians and cops under said vehicle’s wheels. What I didn’t expect it to be though was a consequence-less coagulation of never, ending, ceaseless, REFERENCES supported by weak gameplay.

The game seems to start off well, in perfect parody to any NES game from the 80’s. It’s all here, from the music, to the graphics to the menu progressions–it matches 80’s gaming perfectly. At first it seemed to promise a good return on investment of time… until you get to the actual game itself. Games from the 80’s were more than just a look and feel; they were about brutal mechanics and difficult enemies. While I certainly understand that in the name of player accessibility you would not wish to create something quite as brutal as your average 80’s NES game, I also didn’t expect to play a near challenge-less, near infinite-health adventure that feels so spastic that it would be guaranteed to grab the attention of even the most inattentive tree-dwelling park-rodent. That’s not even the worst though. The worst, as you might have gathered, are the constant bombardment of 80’s references. After I got through the first “level,” was when they swarmed in.

A Megaman II reference.

A Duck Hun Reference.

A Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles NES game reference combined with a Mario reference…

A Duck Tales reference.

It doesn’t stop there either. There’s a Frogger reference, a Sonic reference, another Sonic reference, a Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure reference, a Back to the Future reference,  a Ghost Busters reference, an A-Team reference with the obligatory Mr. T reference and a Mario 2 reference. All of this happens within the span of about 10 minutes, and those were just the references that I noticed. I’m sure there were plenty that I didn’t catch or just didn’t know about. Look, references are funny from time to time and can be clever if done correctly. They’re a great way for the developer to bring attention to something that they love and presumably what their audience loves. It can be used for a quick laugh or if done subtly can make the player feel like they’re “in” on a secret joke. When they’re just shoved in the player’s face one right after another like this, it feels much less like references and much more like some mook from the 80’s waving his metaphorical genitalia in your face whilst giving you a history lesson of 80’s pop-culture.

I gave the game about 20 minutes after this to change its ways, but it just doesn’t. There’s really not much of a game here and what is present is spastic at best. It doesn’t deserve to try to make these references solely on the fact that you need to have an entertaining form of media (in this case the game itself) before you can start making them in the first place. Make sure your cake is good before you start piling on a massive amount of icing and sprinkles. Even though it does visually and audibly nail an 80’s gaming, it relies on cheap references and gimmicky subtexts that just aren’t worth a true gamer’s time–just give this one a pass.

Steam Link

There’s a difference between a game that is needed to satisfy an idea, and an idea that is made to satisfy the need for a game. Deadly Sin 2, is the latter.

It’s always a bit hard to critique a RPG Maker game. My gut impulse is to reject the game as being a recycled collection of frankensprites, visual effects and coded plugins scavenged from the deepest ends of the internet. This opinion is not entirely non-subjective either, as many poorly made RPG Maker games that I’ve played fit this bill. In the spirit of fairness however, I always try to remind myself that reused assets and codes should not stop me from discovering a game that might really enjoy. Even with this mindset I can say that Deadly Sin 2 isn’t worth playing.

You can forgive a lot from an indie game, but there has to something–some spark or unique shine–that makes pushing past the game’s roughness worth it. The problem is that Deadly Sin 2 just doesn’t have anything like that. The opening is generic, the party members are super generic, quests are generic, story is unbearably generic–on top of being made up of a mishmash of sprites and tilesets. Now, I do feel a tad bad saying this because there are some parts of the game that are worth pointing out as being moderately decent. For instance:

All your characters in combat are animated with some pretty sweet pixel-work. They ready their weapons and attack, or do a special animation for their skills or magic. It’s tight, looks nice and flows really well–and is completely unique to this game. The combat is a little more advanced than your typical take-turn combat as well, with the addition of a threat mechanic which influnces who an enemy will attack. I also appreciate the way that you can increase character’s skills through the use of skill points that you find throughout the world. It’s nice to have customization over your characters and reading up on the skills is fun.

These things alone though aren’t strong enough to create anything worth trying. The Threat mechanic is nice but isn’t that profound. The animations are nice, but since the combat is weak, they’re just something flashy and distracting instead of being the icing on the cake. Combat feels imbalanced in more ways than just the stats themselves (although that is part of the issue)–the pacing feels wrong. Having access to all the skills right off the bat leaves little to work towards. Enemies feel random and aren’t really introduced in a way that allows the player to understand the world that they exist in–the monsters don’t tell a story or fit in, they’re just “there.” Treasure is littered everywhere, making its discovery a chore instead of something exciting. Seriously; after the game’s introduction, I played about 10 minutes and found this…

This…

And this…

And that’s not even all of them. When there’s treasure everywhere, it’s stops being treasure and just becomes junk. Add to this that I’m not being facetious when I say that everything about the world, story and characters are so uninspiring. The mage in the party refers to enemies as “scrubs.” “Scrub” is a word that was invented by the online gaming community somewhat recently to refer to someone is is of a “lower tier” than them. A “scrub” is someone of such a lower skill level than you, that they aren’t worth your time. To hear one of my party members uses this word breaks all immersion of what I assume is supposed to be a high fantasy world. Add to this that the two “main character’s” introductions both generically involve their sweethearts, both look like generic warriors, both have no personality whatsoever, the hero’s castle at the beginning is burned down, there’s some vague and super boring political “intrigue” involving invading kingdoms and political tension that after a short-while I was ready to quietly pack this one away for good. I wasn’t really insulted by this one, but it still belongs in Tier 3, since I would never recommend it to anyone.

Steam Link

Oh mah goodnyess. What is this.

Nostolgia is not a factor for me when I look at the Might & Magic series since I played my first MM only a year ago. Therefore, I would posit that my review of games from the franchise may be less biased than a die-hard fan’s. For the record, I’ve played in its entirety MMVI, which was a whopping 108 hour adventure that while I can’t say was even close to being a perfect game, it was at least a game that I could find certain aspects which held value. MMX on the other hand is a perplexing mess–a failed growth of the franchise that comprises a stagnation of poor choices that pile up on top of each other to create a pointless experience.

Now, often the opening of a game doesnt’ make total sense to the player. Dark Souls 1 and 3 (and to some extent 2) all actually do this purposefully. Watch any of these game’s openings without playing the game, and you’ll have no idea what you just saw. Watch the opening after playing the entire game (and possibly reading a few pages on a wiki) and it will make perfect sense. The thing is though, is that even without making sense, the openings are fun to watch. You don’t need to know who “Nito, First of the Dead” is to enjoy watching a giant skeleton monster with a scythe walk around spreading corruption. You don’t need to know who “Yhorm the Giant” is when he pops up and Kindles himself because he just looks awesome and the mood of the cinematic makes the scene feel exciting. The opening of MMX makes no sense… but lacks any sort of interest or excitement whatsoever. It’s a confusing malaise of a tired narrator bleating out line after line of dialogue concerning the history of a dozen characters that are all introduced and swept away so quickly that you can’t keep track of them and whatever exploit the narrator describes of them is meaningless. It got to a point where I actually started laughing at how ridiculous the opening was becoming–I kept expecting it to end but the moment they wrapped up the 20 second exploit of one character, the narrator switched gears and started talking about another. I have no idea what mood or plot or setting the developers were trying to create with this kickoff to the game but whatever it was it only created a profound sense of boredom and confusion within me.

The best part of the game was creating the characters but even that really wasn’t that great. Traditional to the old MM’s, you set up a party of 4 and stat them up for adventure. For a game where you can only use 4 party members total, there are almost too many classes–12. You can only choose 2 voices for each race’s gender as well, which makes the idea of role-playing a party kind of difficult. Honestly though, this is the least of our worries. Where the game goes South is that they seemed to have kept all the bad things from the older games and got rid of all the good. First off, you move on a grid. This was surprising to me, since one of the interesting parts of MMVI was that you in fact moved free-form. This meant that to a certain degree, platforming became a part of the game, which really made the dungeons and terrain feel open. It also allowed for some interesting puzzle solving that forced you to adapt to a 3-D environment in order to find secret levers, switches, etc. It’s not that a party-based 3-D grid-based RPG is a bad idea–far from it. It’s just that as far as I can tell, the MM games moved away from grids in order to create a more diverse and unique game. A step back to it just feels confining now. No longer can you fly, or swim, or jump up on top of buildings–you’re just stuck on your little grid, moving along at a snail’s pace.

Gone is real-time combat as well. If you didn’t know, in MMVI you had the option of playing the game in a take-turn fashion or fighting in real-time. Typically, this meant that if you were fighting enemies that you knew you could beat easily, you fought them in real-time because it was faster and in some ways a little more fun. If the enemies were strong, you played in take-turn mode so that you could carefully and precisely guide the actions of each of your characters. Back to MMX, you are restricted to take-turn combat only which is just dull. It’s exactly like Grimrock in that the enemies move around in the world on the grid with you, but unlike Grimrock you are forced to freeze in place while they move and vice verse for them.

Quests were a big part of MMVI, but oftentimes if you stumbled upon a dungeon early, you could explore it without needing to have received its quest. In contrast, in MMX I was wandering around clueless in first city where I found a well. The well looked suspicious. I tried to click on the well. I tried to move into the well. I even noticed that the mini-map was telling me that there was something interesting in the square with the well. Turns out, I wasn’t allowed to go into the well until I’d talked to the right guard who was all like, “Hey, let’s go kill spiders in the well.” That’s just stupid, coming from a franchise that previously was comfortable with letting adventurers explore to a large degree at their own will.

Part of the fun of MMVI was seeking out teachers to buff up the skills of all your party members, and eventually training your characters’ abilities up to the Master level which got you some really cool spells and abilities. Characters were limited on what skills they could learn by class but as long as you could learn it, you could achieve master level. Back once again to MMX, your characters are still limited by what skills they can learn but they can only achieve master in a few areas. This means that you’re pretty much locked into what you’ll be doing in the game right when you pick your classes. After that, there will be no free-will in skill growth, no exploratory skill combinations, and no sense of great power at the end of the game. Yes, in some ways by the time I got to the end of MMVI it was a bit silly that everyone was a Master in almost all of their useful skills–but I stress almost. For starters, my characters were level 90 dammit, so I felt justified that they had become masters in their crafts but secondly, in spite of being level 90, there were so many skills available in the game, that there were still plenty of abilities that I was only an Expert in and some still that I was just simply trained in with no title. By confining the player’s skill choice right at the beginning of the game before they’ve had a chance to understand what skills are good for their party, what skills are bad, and what skills are even interesting to them, chances are they are going to end up with skills and abilities that they don’t want or that are bad. Essentially, the only way for them to know which classes they should pick, they will either have to have played your game before, or look it up online–neither of which are an acceptable solution to the problem.

And don’t get me started on the insane number of tutorial pop-up windows that treat you like a moron. I guess it’s my fault for not clicking the “Don’t Show Hints” button earlier, but I kept expecting them to teach me something useful. I guess they thought “rest to regain your HP” was the most useful thing they could tell players.

The last roast is on the combat itself. To be fair, MMVI didn’t really have complicated combat. This would actually be one of my main complaints about the game. Sure there were a lot of spells and things to equip and skills to learn, but combat usually consisted of telling fighters to swing their weapons, and loading up the best spell your mages could cast that wouldn’t immediately drain their entire MP pool and then letting it all rip with the same button push for each character (the “s” key). So, I’ll say it again–intricacies of combat were not MMVI’s strong suite. That being said, if you encountered a stronger foe, you always had a few limited forms of counterplay (run away and shoot, run away and shoot) and unless you got teleported to a room without an exit, you could always run away to fight another day. Both of these things are severely limited in MMX. You can no longer run away from an enemy once it has engaged you in melee combat. While I understand maybe imposing some sort of penalty for leaving a melee attacker’s range makes sense thematically and mechanically (i.e. attacks of opportunity in DnD), but completely removing your ability to escape from a more powerful foe says just one thing to the player “Why didn’t you know exactly the strength of the monsters that you were going to encounter in the dungeon beforehand?” I’ll tell you why. Because I’m not freaking psychic you stupid developer. This creates an illusion of difficulty, since you can and will suddenly will die when you encounter a monster that no matter how intelligently you use your skills and healing consumables you have no chance of winning against. The reason it is an illusion is because there is no counterplay or forgiveness for this “mistake” (at which it is more the mistake of the developer for giving you the option to encounter the monster and then slapping you on the wrist for doing so). You simply have to die, hope that you saved recently and move on. Ultimately, the way that movement has been completely removed from combat makes me feel like I belong to the British army from the colonial era and I long so bad for the guerrilla warfare tactics that the Americans are using.

There’s so much more as well. Theses pictures you see may *look* nice, but don’t be fooled. The textures are of a very low resolution. While I’ve never let graphics get in the way of enjoying a good game, well, this isn’t a good game, and so when I can barely read a town sign because the words on it are all blurry I tend to be a bit cross. I mean, this game came out in 2014–these graphics are practically a generation behind where they should be. I wouldn’t be so hard on this point if the game didn’t A. Come from Ubisoft, a AAA company that is fully capable of better. B. The play-testing time saved by dumbing the game down to a grid should have freed up internal resources in the game company to make the other parts of the game better. C. Legend of Grimrock, a game made by a FOUR man team from FINLAND made a game that was better graphically (and mechanically for that matter). How is that even possible? Music is dull. NPCs are dull. The world is dull. You’re railroaded the moment you start the game by being here on some dumb quest for your master, but in spite of this the only thing you can do at  the beginning of the game is wander around, trapped in a dull city forced to take a slew of pointless side-quests simply so you can kill something in an attempt to assuage the tirade of boredom from not being allowed to explore the world you find yourself in. MMX is simply a time-wasting Tier 3 sesspool that Ubisoft crapped out in an attempt to make money off the MM crowd, while completely missing the point and soul of the original franchise, which is actually a pity.

Steam Link

I was prepared to very much dislike this game, especially after playing a bit of Risen.  And in the first few minutes, it felt like all my fears were confirmed.  The main character is cliche and unlikable.  The sidekick is cliche and unlikable.  I decided to be a jerk, since my character is supposed to be a jerk.  But then I found out that if you kill people in this game, they just become “offended” and stop fighting you.

If you’re wondering why my character is walking around with no shirt or shoes, it’s not because I didn’t have clothing.  It’s because my clothing was pirate clothing, which my character refused to wear until he was actually a pirate – as he reminded me every time I tried equipping it.  He persisted in saying this even when we were trying to enter the pirate camp so he could become a pirate, where I would have thought pirate clothing might come in handy.

And if you’re wondering why I tried to kill the fellow in the screenshot, it’s because he wouldn’t let me into the pirate camp.  And to be fair, killing him wasn’t my first choice.  First, I tried to bluff my way in.  Well, I say bluff – I was actually telling what I believe was the truth.  But my Silver Tongue skill wasn’t high enough – so even though the option was there, I was unable to use it.  When I tried, my character just told me he wasn’t good enough to do that.

Maybe it’s a lot to expect.  But when you have an RPG, you kinda expect some amount of RPG-ing to go on.  Not an open world where only very specific things are allowed.  Where Risen seemed to have at least some number of choice and decisions to be made, Risen 2 feels like every other boring open world game out there.  Where Risen had you eaten by sea monsters when you tried to swim (which, hey, was at least an effort), Risen 2 just backs up the game about three seconds every time you enter the water.  When you can entertain yourself more by repeatedly jumping into the water while NPCs continue to talk like nothing happened, it’s a little silly.  You can also attack pretty much anybody and they’ll be fine with it ten seconds later.  So maybe I just played the game in all the wrong ways in my first hour, but most good RPGs at least give you the option to be a terrible person.

This review started out by putting Risen 2 into Tier 2, since it is pretty, fixed a bunch of issues I had with Risen (except the combat), and seemed to have at least some amount of interesting story.  Those were the reasons I didn’t feel like playing more of Risen.  But the more I think about my time playing, the less I want to return.  The more I think about it, Risen 2 seems more and more aggressively mediocre.  So Tier Three it is.

Steam link

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

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

There are a lot of things to like about this game.  You’re a 60 year old policeman three months from forced retirement.  All you have to do is survive (and fight crime, presumably).  Unfortunately, the Mafia may have something to say about that.  And City Hall – and they aren’t much better.

One thing I very much liked about this game was the perfect mood it sets.  From the record player in your office to the between-day cutscenes to the choices you make, this is what a game should feel like.  After about nine days, I restarted the game because I had made choices I didn’t understand at the time and determined to play better.  My next game lasted for 10 days until I was shot and killed in my home.  I think I will prefer to think of that as the real end to my game.  Mechanically speaking, my only real complaint is that the events are not randomized – at least in the first nine days, events proceeded exactly the same as my first time through.  That’s acceptable, if unfortunate for replayability.  Other than that, it’s almost perfect (well, besides the “start your car three times every day” thing).  Except… I cheated.  I read some reviews.  And while I understand some people thought it went on too long (and yes, 180 days is actually pretty substantial  – maybe too substantial), the real thing which ruins this is the real lack of choice in the face of apparent options.

During my research, I learned that even if you succeed beyond all expectation in the game parts, you lose in the story parts.  And that’s sad.  If your narrative says that the player will never succeed, then you aren’t really making a game – you’re making a movie.  A player that does well should be given the “third way” that allows them some escape – even if it isn’t optimal or a “perfect ending”.  But it should reward a player for creative thinking or superb performance.  Let me give you an example of a game that doesn’t do this.  At the beginning of Fable III (which is apparently dead on PC now – and I can’t say I mind), you’re told by the king to make a choice of whom to kill/exile: your childhood friend or a group of peasants.  I refused to make this choice – that’s not in my moral code.  I very much – both as a player and as a character – wanted to stride up and hit the king with my sword.  This wasn’t an option.  So as I sat there (trying very hard to use my movement keys to select the king), the king decided to do away with both my friend and the peasants since I didn’t do anything (according to the game).  I think as a player, I was supposed to feel bad about this.  I didn’t, for the simple reason that when a game give you a binary choice (or, more specifically, when a game tries to create a convincing illusion of choice), it should be within your power to reject both of the choices presented.  This is the Police does not allow you this (from my understanding of the endgame).  And so it goes to Tier Three, though I do not regret the few hours I spent playing it.

Steam link