Recent reviews by Paikia

I really loved Final Fantasy X when it came out for Playstation 2, so I was looking forward to the chance to play this version. As of now (22 hours of game time), I've been enjoying every second of it. As I haven't played Final Fantasy X-2 before, either the original or any other version, this review will be limited to Final Fantasy X. If and when my impressions change in the future, as I progress in Final Fantasy X and move on to Final Fantasy X-2, I'll make sure to update this review to reflect that.

So far, the game feels exactly like I remembered it, for better and worse, and by "worse", I specifically mean one issue in particular - the camera movement and control. This issue annoyed me whenever I was playing the original Playstation 2 version, and it keeps annoying me now, with this version as well. It might annoy me now even more, as I've become more spoiled, as I got used to being in near-complete control of the camera. In this game, however, unless I'm missing something, the camera movement is automatic, limited and uncomfortable. If there's a way to change that, I'm yet to figure out how.

Other than that, the game is very close to my personal, subjective idea of perfection. The story is great, combining both fantasy and science-fiction elements, alongside old-fashioned yet dark drama in a long ongoing adventure. The battle system offers a great balance - it's deep and interesting on one hand, and easy enough to learn on the other. The sphere-grid seems, even today, like a refreshing and unique twist on the standard character progression system. While at first the game feels linear and limiting, I can tell you that at a certain point, you get all the freedom you want when it comes to exploration, side quests. weapon customization and so on.

Add to that the updated graphics (Full HD at 1080p on widescreen) and soundtrack (including arranged versions) on a stable version of the game, and as far as I'm concerned, this is as good as it gets. The game looks, sounds and feels great, much better than I expected.

Whether you played Final Fantasy X before and liked it or like role playing games and never got to play it - this is your chance to play a modern version of one of the true RPG gems ever made.

Since I really loved The Banner Saga 1, I made sure to pre-order the second as soon as it became available, and started playing it on the same evening it was released. Well, it took me around 12 hours over three long evenings to beat the game, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to begin again very soon. At the time of writing this review, Steam says I've been playing for 8 hours, but it didn't take into account around 4 hours of game time in which I was offline.

For those of you not familiar with the games all, The Banner Saga is a series of Tactical Role Playing Games. While the game's environment is a fictional fantasy world, it is somewhat connected to the norse mythology. I don't know much about the norse mythology, but I did notice some connections, such as Hogun and Mogun, and I suppose there are others as well.

Anyway, just like in the first game, in The Banner Saga 2 you alternate between leading 2 different groups of adventurers (for a lack of a better term) on their continued quest. The game is a direct continuation of the first, so while you can watch a recap of what happened during the first game and start playing the second one immediately, I really suggest playing and beating the first one first, so you can carry your savegame over to the second, and continue with the exact same party you ended the first game with.

The battle-system is interesting, refreshing but simple enough to learn. I know some people have been complaining it's too simplistic, but I don't share that view. The graphics are great and so is the soundtrack, but what makes this game so much fun for me, is the story. It's refreshingly dark and interesting. Also, the choices you make have a major impact on the game, which also means you'd probably want to play through it more than once, to explore different options and see what happens when you choose different directions.

Also, it seems like the developers managed to take some of the problematic aspects of the first game and improve them. For one, The Banner Saga 2 is much more flexible than the first, when it comes to promoting your characters. You get much more freedom in choosing which ones to level-up, which in turn, gives you more tactical options in battles. Not only that, you also get a much larger veriaty of characters to choose from. In addition, this time there are training scenarios, in which you get to learn to use your characters' most important special abilities.

I really like this game, and would recommend it to anyone who likes tactical and story-driven RPGs.

I bought this game quite a while ago, but put it aside, as at the time I was still having too much fun with Port Royale 3. As both games share the same main gameplay principle, playing both simultanously didn't work for me. I recently started thinking about going back to Port Royale 3, but then I remembered I haven't given Rise Of Venice its rightful chance yet, so I started playing this instead. As evident by my play-time counter (almost 30 hours, as of writing this review), I got hooked very quickly, just like with Port Royale 3.


Simply put, Rise Of Venice is a trading simulator with some strategy and political elements. The idea is to build your business empire by building businesses in cities, and trading the goods between them by your naval fleet. Just like in the real world, there are politics involved, as your competitors have their own agendas and interests, which hardly ever align with yours.

Just like with Port Royale 3, there's a story-driven campaign, which I believe is the best way to start the game. Except in Rise Of Venice, the campaign feels much more than a mere tutorial. I've actually found myself enjoying the plot and the missions presented to me, and was disappointed to finish it. I really wanted it to go on. :)

After the campaign, the game turns into a "Free Play", where you continue to build and maintain your empire. You still get missions, but there's no deep or interesting story behind them, as there was in the campaign.

All in all, I really love this game, and I strongly recommend it to anyone who likes this type of games.

Duplicate warning: This is pretty much the same review I wrote for each of the two previous episodes of Space Pilgrim, so if you've already read either one of them, don't waste your time with this one.

Space Pilgrim is a cute and short point & click adventure game, which kind of reminded me of the old Sierra quests from the 1990s, except it took me couple of hours to beat. The graphics are nothing special, there's hardly any music or sound effects, but the story is nice and funny, just enough for this game to be worth it, considering its price.

The only aspect of the game that really got me annoyed was the user interface. It took me way too much time to figure out where and how many times I needed to click to use or combine items. Also, whenever there's a dialog box open, it seems like the mouse cursor doesn't need to actually be inside the box to choose an option. Too many times I ended up clicking somewhere outside the dialog box (for whatever reason), just to accidently choose something to do or say.

TL;DR - A nice low-budget point & click adventure. You can enjoy it as long as you don't expect too much.

Game Corp DX looks like a cute game-dev simulation game, which I suppose could be a lot of fun, if it only had some depth. Unfortunately, releasing shallow and dull games seems to have become a trend recently. Unlike Game Dev Tycoon (which I really loved), Game Corp DX feels like it was designed without any effort to make it challenging or even interesting enough to play for too long. Everything feels easy and meaningless, as if it was just another step towards an achievement. I get no satisfaction at all from publishing a good game, as it hardly requires any effort. To get to the next stage ("Relocate" to another city), all I need to do is hire all available workers in the current city, which is too easy on one hand, and unrealistic on the other.

Kk, I'll stop ranting now. I'll just tell you this - if you like the idea, get Game Dev Tycoon.

Duplicate warning: This is pretty much the same review I wrote for the first episode of Space Pilgrim, so if you've already read that, don't bother with this one.

Space Pilgrim is a cute and short point & click adventure game, which kind of reminded me of the old Sierra quests from the 1990s, except it took me just a little over an hour and a half to beat. The graphics are nothing special, there's hardly any music or sound effects, but the story is nice and funny, just enough for this game to be worth it, considering its price.

The only aspect of the game that really got me annoyed was the user interface. It took me way too much time to figure out where and how many times I needed to click to use or combine items. Also, whenever there's a dialog box open, it seems like the mouse cursor doesn't need to actually be inside the box to choose an option. Too many times I ended up clicking somewhere outside the dialog box (for whatever reason), just to accidently choose something to do or say.

TL;DR - A nice low-budget point & click adventure. You can enjoy it as long as you don't expect too much.

"Prison Architect" is a business simulation game, except in this case, the business is a prison, which brings a few more factors into the equation, in addition to the base principle of income-outcome ratio. The name "Prison Architect" might be a little misleading, though, as the game is not just about building and planning the prison, but also about running it, managing it, and keeping everything in balance. You're not just the architect, you're also the warden.

While there's nothing really fancy about the graphics or the music of the game, the gameplay mechanics are where it shines. As architect/warden, you have to find the optimal balance between the financial limitations and the needs of the prisoners. The fact that we're dealing with prisoners makes everything even more interesting, as unlike the standard business manager or city builder, your "customers" are criminals and your job is to make sure they serve their punishment, as decided by the court. Should a convicted murderer have access to a TV? Should a convicted child molester be able to play pool? Those are just some of the moral dilemmas the game brings to your door.

After clocking over 200 hours, I can say with confidence that at least according to my taste, the gameplay mechanics are very well balanced, and make this game one of my all time favorites.

Having that said, I must also mention what I consider to be the game's one major flaw, which is the lack of optimization. I have decent hardware (Quad-core i7, 16GB RAM and a Geforce GTX465), which handles much heavier and at least as complex games very well. I see no good reason for a game like Prison Architect to lag on such hardware (on prisons with 500 prisoners or more), while games like Civilization: Beyond Earth and Cities: Skylines run smoothly, aside from lack of optimization by the developers.

All in all, I consider Prison Architect to be a great game, a must for any fan of the genre.

A cute and short point & click adventure game. Kind of reminded me of the old Sierra quests from the 1990s, except it took me just a little over an hour to beat. The graphics are nothing special, there's hardly any music or sound effects, but the story is nice and funny, just enough for this game to be worth it, considering its price.

The only aspect of the game that really got me annoyed was the user interface. It took me way too much time to figure out where and how many times I needed to click to use or combine items. Also, whenever there's a dialog box open, it seems like the mouse cursor doesn't need to actually be inside the box to choose an option. Too many times I ended up clicking somewhere outside the dialog box (for whatever reason), just to accidently choose something to do or say.

TL;DR - A nice low-budget point & click adventure. You can enjoy it as long as you don't expect too much.

I'm generally a devoted fan of this genre. I really loved Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale and Game Dev Tycoon. Unfortunately, when it comes to gameplay, "Holy Potatoes" seems to pale in comparison to either one of those and others like them.

There's simply not enough interesting content, and the little content that is there, is repetitive, boring, and generally feels like doing chores. The background story is shallow and childish, as if the stupid jokes and the cute dialogues were supposed to be enough to cover that angle.

If I had to summarize what I think about this game to one sentence, it would be "Good idea, poor implementation". If you like the concept of this game, better get one of the games I mentioned on the first paragraph of the review.

Asdivine Hearts looks like a charming reincarnation of the old 2D JRPGs from the 16/32Bit era. It kind of reminds me of games like Lunar, Grandia and Phantasy Star. We've had quite a few games of this type released over the last few years, but as a true fan of the genre, I was a bit disappointed with many of them, since they felt a bit dull, as if being 2D JRPGs with turn-based battles and a semi-decent story was supposed to be enough to make them good games. I've only just begun playing Asdivine Hearts (1h+), so it might be just wishful thinking on my part, but I am getting a different, refreshing vibe from it, which I didn't get from other such recent games.

As for the game itself, there's nothing really fancy about it for me to write about. The graphics are decent (anime style) and the music is fun to listen to. No voice-acting, though. Movement control is a little limited and awkward (I'm playing with a XBox360 controller), but otherwise, everything is straight-forward and intuitive. If you've ever played a JRPG before, you'll feel right at home. The battles are classic turn-based JRPG style. There seem to be plenty of skills and abilities, using a Rubix/Jewels system, which is new to me, but seems flexible and easy enough to learn and use. More about that to come after I've played some more.

The best part, so far, seems to be the story. It feels funny and interesting just enough to carry the game, without giving you the feeling that the developers tried too hard to make you laugh (a feeling I've been getting too often for my taste, recently). Also, I'm not sure if it means anything, but at least so far, this game has no achievements and no trading cards. At first I thought it was a disadvantage (a minor one, at that), but the more I thought about it, the more it felt like this game might be good enough on its own to keep me interested, regardless.

Anyway, I've been bothering with a relatively long review, considering I've only been playing for an hour or so, because this game does feel different. I hope I can explain it better after I've played some more. If and when I do, I'll be sure to update this review.

EDIT (Feb/12/2016, 12h):
After moving farther along in the game (12 hours total), my impressions haven't changed much since my initial review.

The akward control remains the only significant negative issue I have with this game. The story and characters seem to be decent, at the very least, as they keep me curious enough to continue playing. The battle system is very well balanced, as it manages to be simple and intuitive without getting too repetitive. The Jewels system sure adds a nice twist. What I like about it the most, is that it allows you to change jewels any time. It means that if, for example, you encounter a boss that uses poison attacks often, before the battle you can equip more poison resistence jewels on the expense of other things. It's surely a useful tactical advantage for those who choose to use it.

This is a cute and simple JRPG. While not a masterpiece, it sure is fun to play!