Recent reviews by Mashed Buddha

Modern version of Redneck Rampage

10/10

Very nice interpretation of the adult-themed comic stories featuring anthropomorphic animal characters. The graphic novels are worth checking out, and available in digital form. Their style of the environments and large array of animals represented as human personalities have been brought to life in videogame form here. The bits of nudity and sex from the comics did not make the transition however.

As for the game, it's a point-and-click adventure with strong detective elements. Often reminded me of the classic Grim Fandago, however with the scales tipped more towards gritty drama than humor.

The game requires patience, and the non skippable scenes exacerbates that further. Knowing that going in, go grab a drink while it loads or if you're subjected to the same scene from a reload, and it's allowable. Still a bad design decision.

I like the "cinematography" as you move about the areas, and the camera swings around in odd ways. Your movement control will be affected and could be off-putting to some.

At times solutions can be obtuse, and adventure games are inherently limited, but I've been drawn in by the visuals, story, and jazz soundtrack. It's a great piece of acoustic jazz, but unfortunately there's only one groove so far, and gets repetitive. Some variety would have been nice with some more of the same style of late 50s "cool" jazz; a few more tunes exploring some other key signatures and riffs.

I'm enjoying the visuals and the story so far. I don't know if it will be prove to be as good as Syberia 4 (and Syberia 1 + 2), but I would give it a thumbs up and a recommendation if you like the adventure game style.

I'm giving this a thumbs up, because there is a lot to appreciate about this game. But in short, at least for me, it's too grindy. I've started a new game twice in my 23.6 hrs of play. The second party still has only 7 members, and I didn't make it to the large city yet (well I did but I have to grind more to meet the entrance requirements). Also the "zoom" is ridiculous, especially on the overworld map. The zoom goes from extremely far to very far still. Many have requested a change to this, and even a slight increase in range would be an improvement. This on a 21:9 monitor for reference.

The good elements are the visuals are nice, even from afar (or because of it), and the open world and flexibility in combat really make things go more smoothly for the player. For example being able to select any character to make their next move within the round. The tactical combat is well though-out, and it's not often that I gravitate towards games based around that style. As you explore you'll discover fun little mysteries and surprises that are engaging, as well as useful mundane locations. The crafting is simple but effective, and the camping/food distribution/tinkering are all satisfying to manage.

If you want to play as a group of murderous vagabonds, or even commit petty theft, the wanted system really ramps up the challenge and mostly you run around the map avoiding the patrols with the red star because fighting them is not likely to go well. This loops until the wanted level gets below 50 again. I'm not saying there shouldn't be a wanted system, but really you just feel like you're getting punished for playing the game in a viable way.

And the grind is real folks. The amount of travel to make money before your party gets tired and needs rest and eats all your food is out of balance, unless you want to play for tens of hours with slow travel from quest to reward with all the resource draining rest stops on the way to get that large party.

The Good
-Visuals
-Great tactical combat
-Open world
-Nice exploration
-Camping/crafting

The Bad
-Grind, grind, more grind, keep grinding more
-Zoom is useless on overland map on a large monitor, and could be better in combat
-Wanted system is too oppressive

6.5/10

I found this game to be so mind numbingly pointless after a few hours. At first it's very addictive, and aestheticly pleasing. The pixel graphics are nice and the animations on such simple sprites are neat, but at the end of the day, they are all just little pixel blobs that reveal nothing more intricate upon zooming in. It's a bit too simple looking for my tastes.

But you may love it, seems many do. I'm not taking away from the possibility of this being enjoyable and addictive for those who like the game. But it's not for me. I am not grasping much in the way of strategy here. While this game is an RTS/Turn-Based hybrid, I find much more depth and strategy in turn-based games like Fallen Enchantress and other 4X titles. And for the RTS side, there's much more genuine strategy to hold my attention in the earlier Stronghold games for example.

In this game pretty much no decision matters. Collect resources. Claim resource mills. Spam create units. More units = more battles won. Doesn't matter what the units are, they are all just pixel blobs that are either ranged or melee, that shoot or hit enemy pixel blobs. Spam click fireball spells on enemy units. Spend resources on other things. Doesn't matter what the resources or the things are. If you have them (and you will), you can get the things. Rinse repeat. Every battle looks the same.

And finally, if you have an ultra-wide monitor, be prepared to click way outside of most buttons for them to work (any buttons that are on the left or right sides of the screen). This issue has been reported ad nauseum in the discussion group and still hasn't been fixed.

My play time was too high for a refund. I can't say I got my money's worth with this one. Uninstalled. 4/10

So here's why I had to stop playing No Man's Sky.

First off, like you've read and heard so many times, it will hook you from the start and the first few journeys through space and landing onto new planets. The isolated space exploration and sci fi feel of setting up a base on wild planets really puts you in a feeling of "being there." Not in a movie, but in an experience. It would make a rather boring movie. The updates since release have improved the game in many ways, and I jumped in for the first time well after several of these updates were in the game.

Here's the problem.
It's not so much that the exploration gets old or that the planets aren't different enough as much as the gameplay itself is beyond tedious. Grindy doesn't even explain it. Crafting is necessary to advance. I'm a fan of well though out crafting in games. But the tedium of endless mining, earning huge swaths of money in order to purchase certain highly expensive parts and in fact multiple ones at a time are required just dragged down the gameplay to complete boredom. Crafting most things requires crafting so many other little things, and it's just anti fun. And nothing about the crafting elements is relatable. Think about crafting in other games. Need to make a table? Maybe you need to craft a chair first. Okay, you need to chop wood, mine ore, create nails, whatever etc. Fine, this is in space, it can't just be so simple, but it's also impossible to understand.

I could give a convoluted example of the crafting in this game, but even that is too much work to look up. I mean there's a reddit page JUST for the crafting in this game. To say it's convoluted is an understatement.

You'll be looking at the game's Wiki more than playing the game, just to advance in any way (upgrades for suit, ship, weapons, mining tool, base building). etc

It hit me all of a sudden, and I was finished with the game. If the crafting was simplified, and the exploration and mystery made more focal, then I'd be a lot more invested in playing further.

While quite the polished experience, it's just not the RPG I'm looking for. Did I keep playing the early release content to the end? Yes, but I just found it to be disappointing in so many ways, and hoped for it to improve as I persevered.
(TLDR at bottom)

The story: Overly dark and centered around death, rotting corpses, gore, etc. It's tiring and boring. Then there's all the "mystic visions" and "gameplay" where you're wandering through some alternate dimension just trying to get out to the real map and explore. It's such a waste of resources to create these disjointed little sections of the game to jam pretentious god-story down the player's throat.

Combat: I liked the combat, but ultimately the battlefield is just a mess. Is battle supposed to be clean? No, but the combat in DOS 1 was much tighter and way more satisfying tactically. While DOS2 makes interesting use of height advantages, it's often hard to get your characters into position in time for this to be useful, with limited action points and freezing/crippling/etc spells slowing you down while you cause no damage in return, and usually the enemy is already placed in advantageous spots to attack you from. This wasn't a huge part of the combat (if at all) in DOS 1, where again, the combat was much better. For example, the rain spell in the first game was applied to a specific area of effect of your choosing; putting out the fire on your party, or applying it to your enemy only for whatever reason (like freezing chilled opponents). The rain spell in DOS2 rains over everyone, friend and foe alike, so if you want to electrify the water on the ground, you likely have to take damage along with your enemies, or take away burning from everyone on the battlefield at once.

The camera: It's mostly okay by itself, although I wish I could zoom out a bit more, and tilt down to see forward sometimes. But the main issue here is the constant barrage of Tall Things scratching you in the eyeball. Broken ruins posts, tall trees and hills, ship masts, etc. You'll be battling the environment for the right angles more than you fight the Magisters who persecute you at every turn.

Which leads me to another disappointing aspect of the game: The environments are so hard to navigate. It's "open world" but you'll struggle to find the exact right paths that you're allowed to use while moving around the island, especially while backtracking. Where are the open environments to just traverse and explore? So many people compare this to Baldur's Gate, yet this has no relation to the open locations found there, or in Fallout 1 , the Ultima games, or even this developers first release, Divine Divinity.

And finally, when Divinity Original Sin 1 was announced, it was marketed as a return to the Ultima style of gaming. And yes, while you can pick up any fork you see, it's really missing the exploration, openness, and true freedom of those games. Ultima 5, 6, and probably mostly trying to be reminiscent of 7. There's no loading screens in those games and they came out in the 80s and early 90s. No separate locations, and everything could be interacted with. Yes there was less detail and simpler graphics, but less clutter and more freedom and satisfaction.

What did I like about the game? I don't hate the combat, it's been fun at times. Some of the characters are interesting, especially the NPCs who will join you (or you can play as, likely opening other story possibilities). The challenge of getting out of Fort Joy and having multiple ways to do it, finally getting strong enough to go back and take out the enemies that needed to be avoided initially was satisfying. I'm sure the replayability in the early game is appealing to some, but I rarely replay games and that doesn't make or break a game for me. NPCs do react pretty well to the specific character you created (you have [ELF] dialog if you chose that race), and there are a decent amount of skill checks, which I like. Talking to animals is neat.

Maybe Act 2 improves. It will certainly be interesting to hear the voices I imagined get replaced by real voices.

TLDR: So if you don't mind my gripes, then all the power to ya, keep playing and replaying. But if you haven't played the game and are looking for a more open, less cluttered, exploration based game with smarter turn-based combat and a more chill story, then this isn't the game for you.