Recent reviews by bubicus

I have played through three full games of Millenia, plus several learning games. I played most of my time on a Steam Deck, where it generally plays well, except some of the text and icons are too small. It would be nice if there was a way to enlarge the UI text.

I enjoy Millenia very much, and I would definitely recommend the game, but it does have problems that can be addressed in future updates.
- Combat isn't very interesting. Update 1 has an auto-skip feature, so that's good.
- The trigger for Age of Intolerance is too opaque -- you don't get a good display of your capitals with insufficient faith, and by the time you notice, it's probably too late to build enough faith-generating buildings or improvements. Additionally, the AI civs trigger Age of Intolerance too often, so if you're not rushing knowledge so you can select a different age first, it seems like that age is too frequent.
- There isn't much to do with the different domain XP once they can be cashed in for social fabric points starting with Age V. It's generally better to buy the social fabric points instead of using the domain powers. The exceptions would be Exploration XP (for naval upgrades) and Warfare XP (for all of the different warfare powers), and maybe Diplomacy XP if you're trying to play nice.
- Combat seems to be the way to go. In Master or Grandmaster difficulty levels (and often at Adept as well), it's not really possible to play nice. if you do, the game's length stretches out much longer than when you conquer civs.
- Vassals seem overpowered. I am not sure yet whether that is a criticism or a compliment. I do like playing unbalanced builds in games. When for fun I tried playing with a single capital region and everything else a vassal, I absolutely stomped everyone.
- Performance drops a lot on a Steam Deck in later ages unless you have stomped the AI enough so it doesn't have many things to think about. There can probably be some optimization done since other games like Civ VI or Master of Magic are playable on a Steam Deck. I turned down my graphics options to the minimum and the game performance became tolerable.
- Castle town spam is a thing. I don't even see the point of the other outpost types right now. Castle towns help you get tons of culture, which is way more important than wealth or faith because of the culture powers. Monasteries are only better than castle towns if the terrain is hilly.
- The diplomacy system is currently pretty bad.
- Navies should be nerfed because a squadron of bomb vessels or battleships can basically turn any coastal town defenseless.

All that being said, I have really enjoyed my play time with Millenia. I like how it feels like a civilization RPG because of how the different domain powers and how XP is earned for each type. I like how towns can be used to optimize production but also for terrain claiming along with outposts. I like the Settlers-style resource/production chains which make you think about how to use your limited hex tiles optimally. I REALLY like how there are no worker units -- all improvements are built with improvement and/or specialist points, and remodeling is instantaneous, so it's basically like redoing a skill tree in an RPG.

I wanted to like this game, but it has so few features, so little variety in the quests and character customization, and so many issues (though none ever caused crashes) that I stopped playing after an hour and requested a refund. I'd recommend something like Battle Brothers over this game. I may consider getting this game again in the future if the developer improves it from its initial Early Access state.

The idea of the game is fun, but the actual gameplay is not. Many of the puzzles are just annoying. The combat system, including dodging and deflecting, is clumsy and tiresome, especially when waves of spawned baddies keep appearing. I am only playing it now because my daughter (7 years old at time of review) is having some fun with it, but I have to help her through some areas' puzzles. On the technical side, the controls may be difficult for a child to configure, and even when an adult helps, the labels are not friendly enough to be useful ("push button 2") and they can't be user-labeled per configuration ("push B" or "push circle"), so the occasional button prompts that appear on-screen are nearly useless.

This negative review is solely because EA is refusing to deliver CD keys to owners who are installing, and they refuse to provide tech support as well, and they aren't updating the store page or the community hub with official information about how to make the game run. "Can it run Crysis?" NO! Not the official version, at least. Owners have to download a user patch from GitHub to make the game work!

DO NOT BUY THIS VERSION.

This review of Godot 2.2 was *almost* a positive recommendation. You can read a lot of the other positive reviews to learn why it's a really good development framework. (NOTE, 31 March 2018: I have changed the review to a positive review after trying out Godot 3.0 for a few days.)

I was about to choose Godot as the engine for my next game, but then my partner noticed that there were posts dating from over a year ago reporting screen tearing and frame stuttering, and these reports continued up to the present. (Search for "godot screen tearing" to see some of the posts.)

I had not noticed the problem because the scenes we had made for our evaluation project did not have scrolling. As soon as I added some scrolling to the project, I saw the problems. Unfortunately, there seems to be no workaround. Even Godot's own Space Shooter demo has the problems. Neither turning VSync on (or off) nor enabling pixel snapping helped. It would sometimes look so bad that one could clearly see the seam flicker between two triangles of a texture.

Once Godot fixes the screen tearing and frame stuttering, I will gladly change my recommendation to "Yes", but for now, it's not good for commercial use. It's still good for personal projects, prototyping, and game jams.

UPDATE (25 Feb): As another test, I created a project with no scrolling. It was simply a 4-color Sprite node that one could drag around the screen, and the background was a solid color. If I dragged the sprite rapidly around the top 1/3 of the screen, I would see weird ripples inside the sprite. Slower movement minimized the rippling, but it was still noticeable. I don't think it's simply a hardware issue because similar behavior does not happen if I recreate the demo in GameMaker, Corona, or Unity. It seems like a renderer issue to me. I hope Godot 3's new renderer fixes the problem!

UPDATE (31 March 2018): I tested old projects ported to Godot 3.0, and they worked fine, so I think they've fixed the various problems I had observed. Therefore, I'm now changing Godot 3.0's review to a "thumbs up" because I do like Godot a lot. I also like a bunch of the new Godot 3.0 features. If there's one thing I wish they had, it would be integrated Switch development support, but they have sensible reasons why they don't have that (related to open-source status) that are explained on godotengine.org.

The name sucks, and the graphics are not great. I don't care. Zombasite is one of my favorite games of 2015/2016, just like Drox Operative (Soldak's previous game) was one of my favorite games of 2012. I like how there are so many factions that can be fighting or allying with each other. I like how party members have personality traits that affect their interaction with other party members or clan members. I like how elite monsters start sending out scouts and raiding as they get stronger (they level up, too). Basically, Zombasite has the kind of dynamic environment I enjoy experiencing.

One example: I got six NPCs to join one of my clans. Two of them started flirting and married each other, and then one of them got killed during a hunting trip (you can send out NPCs on independent missions to collect food or other resources, but you can escort them if you wish) by an elite monster. The spouse went insane and went berserk, and the surviving party members had to put her down. Her husband became a ghost and attacked the party, and we ended up running away. The survivors became unhappy, one started secretly poisoning the others, and he eventually let in a raid party of monsters that killed the remaining clan members. That was pretty sad... but also pretty cool!

Character creation can be fun to experiment with. You can select from one of several classes, or you can create a hybrid character with fewer (but more specialized) skills.

I do wish the 'intelligent zombie virus' was more of a threat. I'd like to see coordinated attacks by infected monsters and NPCs. I'd like to see zombies overrun a weak clan so they can zombify the population and eventually overwhelm stronger clans. I'd also like to see zombie squads surround and flank clan parties so they become outnumbered, rather than just trickle individually into their weapons and spells.

(reviewed version: 0.913)

Regency Solitaire is a very good game. I'm not going to bother describing the game, since its gameplay is obvious from the trailer and from other reviews. I'll just list some positives and negatives.

Its core gameplay is similar to Fairway Solitaire's (originally made by Big Fish Games, but the PC version was made by Grey Alien Games, who also developed Regency Solitaire). The addition of on-demand powers like the bow and arrow provide some strategic options lacking in Fairway Solitaire. On the other hand, some mini-games like Fairway Solitaire's would have been nice. However, I think it was a good decision by the developer to add powers instead of mini-games. Mini-games did not add to the core gameplay of Fairway Solitaire.

There's something very addictive about finding long runs and continuing them with powers and saved cards.

It has a good amount of replayability because it has multiple difficulty levels and the items you acquire can change the way you play.

I liked the wide variety of scenic backgrounds, but I do prefer shorter scenes: having to play up to 10 rounds just to see a few lines of dialogue sometimes did not feel very rewarding.

I would have liked to see a way to compare scores with other Steam members, but I understand that this game is not just for Steam users.