The number of RPG Maker games with “2” in the title that I’m reviewing is beginning to concern me. This time it’s…

Unlike Deadly Sin 2 Legionwood 2 is pretty damn-well made. Whereas Deadly Sin focused on unique visual assets and dropped the ball on design, Legionwood’s game design is great. The pacing is far better, the mechanics are much more exciting and the overall design of the game feels way better built. To be honest, I was a little worried at first when “GAIA STUDIOS” sat on my screen during the introduction for what felt like an eternity, followed by an equally dull and lingering “LEGIONWOOD2.” As it turns out though, the dev studio had a pretty good grasp on the fact that a lot of people aren’t going to be interested in something moving as slow as molasses, especially before they have any context for what the game is about. I greatly appreciated that they offered a clean out for people like me as shown in the bottom pic.

Hey, it might seem silly, but at least they were open about it and didn’t make me feel like I had to sit through 10 minutes of boring crap I don’t care about yet. Mechanically, it’s roughly your standard take-turn combat system with a “wait” ATB system. In other words, if your characters have a higher agility, overall they’ll take more turns than their opponents but you have as much time as you want to choose your character’s actions. What really struck gold for me though was the ability to freely select and change not just one class, but two classes for your characters. It didn’t take me long to set myself up as a Gun-Mage which made pleased me probably more than it should have. (Just saying the word “Gun Mage” makes me feel awesome for some reason.) Apparently, if the NPC I talked to is to be trusted, there are many other classes that you’ll get as you play the game, which gave me a great tug to keep playing to not only discover them but also the wacky combinations I could set my party up as. In addition to classes, there’s even a morality rating that sets the party down the “good” or “bad” path which changes certain events within the story. True, it’s binary, but it’s a lot more than most tileset RPGs give you.

A majority of Legionwood 2’s assets are taken straight from RPG Maker but given how well they are used in combination with the believably written dialogue, characters that are at least trying to be distinct from one another, decent music and aforementioned design, this game nets a high Tier 2 for me. It’s definitely something I want to check back into after I’ve cleared out my Tier 1’s–it might be the best RPG Maker game that I’ve seen yet.

Steam Link

Akin to the rating system, I think we need to put disclaimers on digital media. “WARNING. THIS DIGITAL MEDIA IS NOT A GAME.” The first game that needs this tag is…

Okay, let’s go back a bit and be a little fair. I fully expected to hate this game a lot. I’ve never played a Telltale game before, but with such a title as “Minecraft: Story Mode” under Telltale’s belt in addition to a few concerning comments made by my peers, I was preparing for an awful experience. What I got… wasn’t that bad.

In the game, you play the role of a convict, Lee, who may or may not deserve his current fate, who may or may not have caused the death of his ex-wife, who may or may not have emotional family-issue baggage–you know, the normal things associated with the main characters of shows like this. Midway through Lee’s prison transportation ride, the car crashes, he escapes and he finds himself in the world of zombies that now encompasses the world he used to know. Along the way he’ll do typical zombie-story related things like bash a teenage zombie’s brains in with a hammer, befriend a small timid girl and shuffle aimlessly from people group to people group looking for a place to settle down and make sense of the world as it is. In spite of it not really being anything new, it sets a good mood, there are a few exciting bits and it didn’t feel like it contained any filler (for the first hour that I played at least).

Mechanically speaking though, this is not a game. It’s best to think of it as a form of digital media that lies somewhere between a point-and-click adventure and a choose-your-own adventure book. Imagine it as if someone took any of the Dragon Age or Mass Effect games and removed everything from the game except the dialogue choices and a few isolated bits of walking around and clicking on a things. These kinds of games have been done before; Heavy Rain comes to mind. For whatever reason though, Heavy Rain felt better and its difficult to say why. Maybe it’s because Heavy Rain felt like a game that was entirely designed with this sort of mechanic in mind, whereas Walking Dead feels like a TV show that they had to find the best way to put in video game form, and choose-your-own-adventure-point-and-click was the best way to do it.

A big problem that exists within the game is the illusion of choice. The game starts out with the statement above. “The story is tailored by how you play,” is a pretty bold way to start the game and I’m not certain how accurate it is. Firstly, you don’t really “play” the game–you make a few dialogue choices and things just sort of unfold the way they’re predestined to. There were a couple parts where I noticed the dialogue had picked up something I had chosen earlier in the game, but “tailored” is just far too strong of a word. Technically, any game that rates your actions and gives you a different ending has “tailored” its game to you. By opening up dramatically with this statement as the first screen that the player sees, what the developers of Walking Dead seem to be insinuating is that your ability to have input into the game will be so influential that your experience in the game will be very unique. I did not really feel that this was the case.

Since we’re using the word “tailored,” let me paint a scenario for you involving the same. Let’s say you need a suit and you go to a tailor. You tell the tailor you want a black suit. He responds “ah, I see you want a black suit.” You nod and continue and tell him you want the one with three buttons, two gold cuff links and broad shoulders. The tailor responds “Ah, yes, three buttons is a lucky number. I too think that the gold would go best with the black. Broad shoulders is doable.” One last time, you point out that you are on a budget, and you can’t afford the most expensive suit. The tailor gives you an understanding look. “Ah yes, we can get something for you that looks nice but is affordable.” He takes your measurements, you leave the store and one week later your suit is delivered to you–it is a brown suit with 6 gray buttons, silver cuff links, slim shoulders and $50 more than you bargained for. Yes, you got a suit and yes, it isn’t the worst suit in the world, and yes you can technically afford it but to say that this suit was “tailored” to you would be false.

Back to the Walking Dead, Lee encountered a skeptical farmer who begrudgingly agreed to house him and Clementine (the little girl Lee found) in addition to a family that the farmer was already sheltering. During every conversation I could have with the farmer, I chose the most honest dialogue options available because I believed I owed it to be as open as I could to this man that was helping me and gaining little in return. Later on, the farmer’s son would become accidentally pinned under a tractor by “Duck,” the son of the other displaced family. Suddenly, zombies attack and you are given the choice to try to save Duck or the farmer’s son. I went to save the farmer’s son. During Lee’s rescue attempt, Duck’s father grabs Duck and runs off without helping the farmer’s son. Lee is unsuccessful and the farmer’s son is mortally wounded; the farmer kills the zombies and runs over to his dying boy. The boy’s last words were “Lee tried to rescue me.” As you can see, every single thing I could do within the game’s allowance was in support of the farmer. In spite of this, the farmer becomes enraged, screaming that everyone leaves, resulting in Lee and Clementine traveling to a new town with Duck and his father and mother. This does not feel like a tailored experience at all and in fact, I think most choose-your-own-adventure books are more reactive to the choices that you make within them. I was forced to follow the path that the game wanted me to, making me feel like all my previous actions were meaningless.

To call this media a “game” just doesn’t feel right. Games like this along with A Bird Story, however well-made they are, are just plainly more of an interactive experience. If you like watching TV and you like soap-operas with zombies and you like having a little input here and there then you’ll probably like this sort of thing. For me though, I think I’d rather just watch an actual TV show or read a book if I wanted a story. If I could, I would give this game a “Tier Null” classification, because I still don’t recognize it as an actual game. That being said, taken at face value I can see no blaring flaws in its design, and if I had to credit it as a game I would place it in Tier 2.

Steam Link

There is no up. There is no up. There is no UP. THERE IS NO UP! Thus is my descent into Descent.

Descent is a surprising title. Coming just 2 years after the original DOOM, this game takes 3-D to an entirely new level. In fact, it even takes my modern-day concept of 3-D and turns it on its head–literally. Descent is a game where you pilot a small craft through a series of complexes and fight off enemy machines. The twist? You have a front seat to the ship’s cockpit and from there it’s your job to navigate in every possible X, Y and Z axis position imaginable. It only takes me about 5 seconds of rolling twisting and turning in any level until I’m completely disoriented from head to toe. This predicament is further complicated by the numerous enemy ships that zoom around firing at you.

I think the best way I can describe the experience is that it is a first-person zero-gravity arcade-shooter game and as far as I know, this is the first of its kind that I’ve played. Considering the time this came out, this is quite a feat. A lot of the games coming out during this time period that pioneered the exploration into 3-D gaming often overstepped their bounds. Dark Forces, a game made by the already firmly established company Lucas Arts was a 3-D experience that was sluggish and laggy which took away from the fun of the game. Descent on the other hand runs smooth and crisp–the bobbing of the ship or the delay on a turn is clearly intentional to give you feeling that you really are piloting a spacecraft. I will say that it’s a bit tricky to play with a mouse though. More than once I wished that I could play the game on my old Sidewinder Joypad but as long as you move the mouse slowly it’s not so bad.

In the end, I’ve never been a big Sci-Fi fan. I’m afraid of space, I don’t like zero gravity and I never wanted to fly my own Millennium Falcon. Add to this that while Descent certainly has a challenge associated with it, it is bit too arcade-y for my tastes. In spite of this, I can certainly see great value in this game just from its allowance for your freedom of movement alone, to say nothing of the various guns and powerups you can pickup along the way. I would recommend this as a Tier 2 game to anyone with a love for shooting things in space and getting lost in a world with no up. For now though, I think I’ll keep my feet on the ground.

–note–

In 2015, due to legal reasons involving unpaid royalties since 2007, Descent was removed from the Steam market and as of today cannot be purchased anymore, so no Steam Link. Sorry! 🙁

Hang on… am I playing American Fire Emblem? Oh wait, it’s Heroes of Might & Magic.

As I said in an earlier review, I hadn’t played a single Might & magic game until about a year ago, when I marathoned Might & Magic VI. That didn’t stop me from hearing this mysterious Might & Magic franchise over and over again when I was a kid. I never could quite figure out what the games were about based on snippets of what I heard other people say. The only thing I could tell is that they had monsters and magic or something. I think I understand why–the MM series encompasses so many different kinds of games that I there doesn’t seem to be a single genre that’s outside this franchise’s reach. First-Person RPGs, First-Person Party-Based RPGs, First-Person Grid-Based RPGs, Puzzle-Matching Tactics games–and now, a Warcraft, Civilization, Fire Emblem-esque RPG adventure hybrid called “Heroes of Might & Magic III.”

HoMM III is a fantastically detailed micro-world of mythical creatures, powerful treasures and vast landscapes. The goal, as far as I can tell, is to move your heroes around the map gathering treasure and recruiting an army until you clash with the opposing kingdom that waits for you on the other side. Heck, I can’t even say that the Kingdom waits for you–I clearly saw some strange demonic creature riding around the map, investigating treasures and capturing buildings the same as me, so I guess the enemy has the same tools as you do to fight against you. I say “as far as I can tell” though, since in spite of playing the game for 2 hours I’m about halfway finished with the first level of one of the 5 campaigns. It’s clear that this game is long, and would require a pretty heavy time investment to figure out what else goes in within the game.

The game may seem confusing at first, but every single thing you can left-click on can also be right-clicked to get a description of what it does mechanically, meaning that with a bit of reading you’ll be adventuring into the unknown in no time at all. I’m impressed that a game so detailed was built so clearly that I actually could learn this quickly in spite of the myriad of facets to the game play. On the one hand, it’s like Civilization in that you build up your city, building various structures within its walls. It’s also a resource management game, as you’ll need to find or capture a variety of materials in order to produce useful buildings. On the other hand, it’s a fog-of-war exploration game, with the need to venture out into the unknown and discover spells, upgrades and artifacts. Further still, it’s a hexagonal army-based take-turn combat game, requiring tactical use of spells and, of course, the army. It’s also a party-generated RPG in that you recruit heroes from a random pool at the tavern, each with a different class and set of skills who in turn level up with each victory to acquire more talent. In spite of all these pieces, they fit together seamlessly and create a rather pleasant experience.

The game is not without faults though. It’s a bit sluggish at times so you’ll need to be patient. For example–some battles are very interesting. Other battles, you know you’ve won, but it takes another minute for the fight to play itself out. Another instance is troop recruiting; you need to wait a week before getting more soldiers in a town, which can lead to a hero just waiting around in a city for the week to end. Mechanically, these choices are sound–you’ll just need to take it slow. Another point of conention I have against the game are the powerups. While technically it would be my choice to do so, I can’t help but feel annoyed that I must have each hero visit all of the non-expendable treasures in order to get their permanent bonus. Once again, this is a mechanically sound point of the game. Maybe it’s just my own obsession, but I’m constantly worried that I forgot to have a hero visit one the powerups and I’ll have permanently missed a stat boost. Lastly, the game feels a bit like walking into a dark room at times. Since I have no knowledge of what my units do, what the map looks like or how strong an opponent may be that, to a degree, I simply just move around and click on things until something happens. I don’t really deserve to win, nor do I deserve the treasures I keep picking up–I don’t know enough about what’s going on to actually claim these victories entirely as my own. It’s possible that with time and familiarity of the game I would begin to develop a strategy or a technique but even after 2 hours I was just hoarding treasures and powerups because the game was nice enough to give them to me, not because I had earned them.

Oh. And there are boats. They’re a lot of fun.

HoMM III really shows me why I kept hearing about the MM series. For a game this old to have received a 2014 HD remake and for it to be this fun even today makes me feel like this must have been the Zenith of the MM series. I’m placing it in Tier 2 but only because it is my preference to play a game with a bit more challenge and a bit less of a time investment. HoMM is a fantastic game and I strongly recommend trying it out. It would be a perfect fit if I have a sleepy day off in the future and nothing else to do.

Steam Link

Holy crap. It’s been so long since I’ve played an FPS that wasn’t poisoned by Call of Duty that I’d forgotten that FPS’s could actually be fun. Enter Castle Wolfenstein.

Return to Castle Wolfenstein may be one of the last 3-D shooters before all the sins of modern FPS’s damned the genre to eternal suffrage in Hell. This came from an age where the single player mode of an FPS is actually fun in addition to the multiplayer. You’ll find no recharging health bars, no one-hit-KO-melee-attacks, and no self-absorbed heroics. Instead, the game features things that are, oh I don’t know, actually fun. How does it do this? Easy. 4 steps.

Eat.

Sleep.

Reload.

Repeat.

This is a magic rhythm that 9 times out of 10 makes a good FPS. It’s kind of like what they say about percussion–if the you can chant, “Makin’ money, makin’ money,” then your beat is probably good. The same goes with FPS’s.

Step 1: Eat. Grab all the powerups you can.

Step 2: Sleep. Give your enemies the eternal rest they deserve.

Step 3: Reload. Put more gun in your gun. Gun is good.

Step 4: Do it again.

Any time you are not doing this in an FPS it is generally a bad time. Running around aimlessly because the level design is confusing? Bad time. Standing around listening to NPCs talk? Bad time. Shooting a man in the face? Awesome.

“But you can soak up more bullets than a Shamwow! In realistic modern-day shooters, death happens in the blink of an eye because it’s a man’s game.”

Cool. You enjoy playing half of your game on the loading screen. I’ll enjoy twice the action.

“Where are the epic cutscenes? Where are are the heroics?”

Well, while you’re watching the game play itself trying to make you feel like a hero, I’ll be out be playing the game actually being a hero.

“It’s unrealistic how quickly you run around and kill dozens of soldiers. You can’t do that in real life.”

That’s what makes it a game. Its departure from reality is part of what makes it fun. If I wanted the experience of what it actually felt like to run around and shoot people I’d go out and do it. …Wait. What did I just say?

“But the graphics are as ugly as sin.”

*ahem* well you see, back in 2002… actually you’re right about that one.

The graphics strike uncanny valley hard; the inevitable fate of every game whose visual design tries to emulate reality. Frankly though, you’ll be moving so fast through the levels that you’ll never care. The music isn’t anything fantastic either. It’s probably best if you mute it and go with “Bad Motherfucker” from Biting Elbows, or “Bang The Drum All Day” from Todd Rundgren or something along those lines. It’ll definitely improve the experience; otherwise, tons of fun.

Don’t be fooled by me putting this in Tier 2–it only goes here because in spite of being a strong title, it is essentially nothing new, putting the priority of other more unique games above this one. However, you might just find me putting this one in again later, mix-tape blaring on a day when I just feel like gunning people down. In the streets. While they run. Wait, what did I just say again?

Steam Link

Gauntlet… just… “Gauntlet”… actually, I think it’s Gauntlet™? That’s dumb. You’re dumb WB Games/Arrowhead. Wait. WB Games made this? Why the crap is WB Games making Gauntlet?

Gauntlet™ is the newest product of the Gauntlet series assembly line, a game series dating back to 1985. The game has always been about two things–slaying hordes and hordes of monsters and grabbing tons of treasure. I guess Gauntlet™ more or less lives up to that standard. You choose one of 4 classes (5 if you’re a sucker and bought the DLC like me) and jump into a series of dungeons with monsters spawners, gold piled to the ceiling and the occasional guest appearance by death.

Apparently the game is in its “Slayer Edition” now. I gave a good 2 or 3 hours to the game with 3 other friends back when it came out. We really weren’t that impressed. The Slayer Edition is an enhancement from where I last left it, so it’s good to see that the company in charge of its creation cared enough to improve upon it. The most notable difference to me that I appreciated was the introduction of a map that not only showed you your progression through the campaign but made it easy to jump back to the old levels and even complete a few optional levels.

While this game may be more in lines with the original 1985 Gauntlet, I grew up playing Gauntlet Legends and Gauntlet Dark Legacy. I have to say that I miss so many things that were in those titles not the least of which was the booming announcer narrating simple aspects of the game.

“YOU ARE NOW ENTERING THE VALLEY OF FIRE.”

“THE THUNDER HAMMER!”

“BLUE WIZARD NEEDS FOOD BADLY.”

It was corny, but I really liked the way it blew everything you were doing over the top. In line with this, the adventure itself was very Conanic, taking you to locations that were built to feel larger than life. You fought off hordes of goblins on steep peaks, dove into volcanic mountains filled with lava, scaled massive medieval castles and fought bosses that felt like they were 100 times bigger than you were. Gauntlet™ by comparison is sort of drab and doesn’t contain the same energy. My memories of dynamic camera angles while traveling through slimy dungons, metallic armories and broken down villages are now replaced with dull temple-like square rooms in a non-changing top-down view.

Gone too are the slew of wacky treasures you could find from the older series–your only pickups are gold, food and potions (and some dumb crown that I can’t figure out). I mean, I guess there are keys but they’re just part of the dungeon; you can’t stockpile them and you don’t use them on chests like in previous titles. Where’s my phoenix? Or Light Amulet? Or Triple Shot? Rapid Fire? Thunder Hammer? Levitation Boots? Time Stop? Shrink Potion? The list went on and on in Legends/Dark Legacy. Half the fun wasn’t just leveling up and getting more stats, it was raiding the treasure stores and hoarding powerups. Loot was piled to the sky and it was fun to swim through it and pick out the ones you liked best. Speaking of leveling up, that too has been removed from Gauntlet™ replacing the usual feeling of gain from slaying a monster with a feeling of “okay, let’s move on to the next one.”

The game still has very tight controls and smooth gameplay though. As always, I chose the wizard–and I have to say that the Wizard himself is perfectly designed. He has a beautiful balance of simplicity and speed while maintaining distinct strategical elements. Basically, he has 3 runes that he can combine on the fly to create 9 spells. The spells diversify the wizard’s repertoire allowing a smart wizard to have the tool to handle any situation. It’s very well balanced to boot–clever and careful use of all the spells is rewarded much more than trying figure out which one is OP and then spamming it. Before the Slayer Edition, I think that this may have been a Tier 3 game, but with the introduction of an endless mode, a rework of the way skills are purchased and its overall decent design puts in Tier 2. It doesn’t capture what I love about the Gauntlet games I grew up playing, but it’s still a decent play.

Steam Link

Hey, I backed this on Kickstarter!  I don’t regret doing so.  It’s an interesting game based around multiple playthroughs, though it didn’t really click for me.  For one, the combat mechanics seem a little unbalanced, as ranged attacks have serious advantages – to the point that I barely got hit my second time through.  My other issue is that the maps are fairly empty and are boring to fully explore.  The worldbuilding is intriguing, but since you’re asked to replay the game multiple times to discover more of the game – you end up starting from nothing every 45 minutes.  If the world was smaller with the same amount of content, I’d feel compelled to continue playing.  As it is, 45 minutes is too much time to spend each run given the content that is there – though it avoids Tier Three because it isn’t too long.  With some free time, I might try it again sometime, but for now it goes to Tier Two.

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