Recent reviews by Xander77

Not the best game in what's possibly the best TD series.

Bring back the neutral recommendation option, you cowards.

Oh hey, Monkey Island with dogs! Neat.

Oh ♥♥♥♥, the writing is so cringe I couldn't bear to play more than 20 minutes. Shame.

It still holds up, even 20 years later.

Just finished a full BI campaign (updating my guide to playing the rebels to the remastered version) and had a lot of fun. It's fun to mess with the limited AI, and it's fun to see it surprise you (noob boxes, preventing flanking). It's interesting to take on the very (and not very, in BI) varied factions, which fight in different ways The game is smooth, responsive, and quick*.

* Which is an achievement, as the two biggest mods, IS and EB, are very slow and glitchy. Shame.

Number go up game.

To be sure, there's that. It's also a "player skill go up, new toys go up, and the screen goes up (in flames as it melts from the amount of effects)" game.

...

You start out worrying about kill five or six bats at a time. Desperately fleeing the first boss and the first swarm of a few dozen skulls. Being sure you'll never be able to overcome the hundred skeletons that spawn at level 10.

An hour and half a dozen attempts later, you're annihilating the first boss you used to struggle with, have unlocked 4-5 characters and new weapons, complete with their evolved super versions, but are yet to make it to the end of the stage, as the screen completely fills up with enemies at the 20+ minute mark, and moving around hunting for heals is no longer an option.

You finally make to to 30 minutes on an easier stage. You unlock more weird and interesting weapons, more secret characters, more magic spells.

You turn up the difficulty so that your screen is completely jammed full of buffed enemies the moment the game starts. Your character gets thousands of HP as they face-tank their way through the mobs. You get 23 different weapons going at once. Your character levels up every single second. The game comes to a shuddering crawl under the weight of effects and sprites.

People mention how the game designer used to make slot machines, and that "release the feel-good chemical" art is there, but so are fairly complex game mechanics that feel good to master.

My attempt to finish derailed by the game's saves (only one auto-save, of couuuuuuurse) being subject to irreversible corruption - an issue which Telltale knew about for years but never bothered to fix. As there's no way to skip or fast forward anything, replaying wasn't really an option. Yeah, I know that the choices you made in previous chapters don't actually matter, but what's even the point of playing otherwise?

Given that most of the plot developments hinge on every character being a blind and deaf moron, I wouldn't recommend this even if you were lucky enough to be able to complete the game.

It's the simplest entry the series, which is both good and bad. My mother played this for hundreds of hours, for very obvious reasons.

I'm not a huge Metrovidania fan, but I played this game almost all the way through (it helped that there was very little platforming). Then I decided to go for the best ending on my first playthrough.

Don't do that.

Do you want to read several novels worth of words describing the most generic fantasy setting imaginable?

Do you like hacking away at swarm of Wood Beetles for several minutes, for the chance to engage the coveted Stone Beetle, which is somehow even tankier?

Do you like loads and loads of unavoidable trash fights? With terrible combat rules?

Then you'll love Pillars of Eternity.

I'm not sure how well the humor aged (it's kinda early 2000's) and the dungeon delving combat is only adequate, but the shop action is addictive and fun.

Just amazingly fun, flinging orcs off cliffs, into lava, burning them, chopping them, freezing them, mindcontrolling them to turn against each other...

Two things to note:
1. This isn't a pure tower defense game , you're expect to have your avatar actively stem the tide with guns & magic.

2. There's a co-op option, which is probably really fun.