Recent reviews by VoidGrazer

How not to make a good first impression: "ambiant" (ambient), "at any times" (time), "remainging" (remaining), "quiting" (quitting), "grants" (grant). That's from the options screen and the initial tutorial text.

How not to make a good second impression: have a tutorial that explains what's on the screen, pointing occasionally to blank space instead of a UI element, but doesn't actually tell you how to move units or attack. This would be less of an issue if the mouse cursor changed to reflect which action would be performed when you click, e.g. most games change the cursor to a sword or an arrow when clicking results in a melee or ranged attack. I've played enough games like this to be able to guess what to do, but the tutorial told me about a bunch of things that aren't yet relevant (command points, complex game mode) instead of telling me how to play. (If somebody asks to do the tutorial, assume they need it.)

Rounding third: when the tutorial tells you that there's a "quit" button in the pause menu, but it's not actually there during the tutorial. (That one's actually just sort of funny.)

Bringing it on home: right-click to bring up info on a unit and get a poorly-formatted info dump that feels like debugger output. The only way I found to determine the range of the basic attack of my units is to pop that open and scan down the unevenly-spaced lines to find the number. Then I get to count hexes. Again, changing the mouse cursor could help with some of that. (I'm guessing this was a straight port from a mobile platform.)

There are other weird things. I was mouse-hovering over the skill buttons to see what they did, and moved the camera position (WASD). The mouse cursor vanished and then reappeared in the middle of the screen. Every time I shift the camera I have to find the mouse again afterward. Sometimes when I click on one of my units it doesn't change focus. The game selection screen presents a collection of 24 buttons that say "in use" or "empty" with no other information (and they're all the same color, so in-use and empty sort of blend together visually); you have to click on them to get more information. Throughout the UI, the color and framing for buttons and panel headers is nearly identical, so I found myself trying to click on things that weren't actually buttons.

Part of my problem here may be that I just finished playing King Arthur: Knight's Tale. It's not a AAA game or a contender for GotY, but the controls and UI presentation are so much cleaner than this.

I played through the tutorial and tried the first couple of missions. The UI issues annoyed me enough that I gave up on it. I may come back to it someday, but I would recommend against it unless you have a high tolerance for poorly-executed UI.

KA:KT is a "tactical RPG" with a medieval dark fantasy setting. You play as Mordred, who returns from the dead to confront a revenant King Arthur.

The game features a fixed series of main missions and semi-optional side missions. You take up to four knights on every mission. Your heroes gain experience from the missions at a rate that increases when under-leveled, so it's possible to skip some missions or rotate heroes without getting too far behind. This is important, as there's no opportunity to grind for experience, and recovery from injuries requires the passage of time... which only passes as a result of completing a mission.

The turn-based combat is straightforward but well executed, with melee, ranged, and spell attacks. RNG plays a very minor role, usually in the form of damage spread. Percentages are usually applied to the effects rather than the success rate, e.g. a "stun" effect will always work, but if you're resistant then the action point loss is proportionately reduced. Information is presented very nicely on screen.

Your home base, Camelot, can be upgraded with the gold and building supplies you receive from missions. Most of the upgrades aren't very important. There are vendors for goods, but aside from a few consumables I didn't find myself buying all that much. The gear you buy and find in missions have randomized attributes, and most of what I found was kind of useless. For example, I found a lot of stuff that boosted effectiveness in duels, which are special 1-on-1 fights you encounter very rarely (maybe half a dozen in the game).

There are some light RPG elements, in the form of a two-axis morality / religion chart. Your current position on the chart unlocks certain features, like bonuses or additional heroes, and affects hero loyalty. There are other ways to influence loyalty; I was the polar opposite from one of my heroes, but was able to keep him in positive territory through events and titles.

Events will pop up between missions. These take two forms: spend money or face a loyalty penalty, and "pick a hero". For the latter, you're given some hints as to what characteristics the hero should have, and if you make a reasonable choice you get a reward.

It took me 54 hours to play through the full game with all side missions on "normal" difficulty. There is some end-game content that I haven't tried. I had one CTD, during a fight; the game auto-saves before missions and after every combat encounter, so I didn't really lose anything.

Overall this is a well-constructed turn-based tactical RPG that I had a lot of fun playing.

TL;DR: recommended for fans of turn-based tactics games who enjoy grinding.

Dreadlands is vaguely XCOM-like, but with a vibe somewhere between Mad Max and Borderlands. It has an open-world-style map that you move around in real time, and small-map battles where all enemies and terrain features are immediately visible.

The combat is okay, following the common system with 2 AP for moving or attacking and high/low cover. They altered the basic XCOM playbook by putting an emphasis on melee combat, which is fairly vicious. When you move next to an enemy unit, both units are locked into melee. Ranged attacks can't be made by or against melee-locked units, so if something jumps on you, you have to either back off (granting a free attack) or pile on. Missed attacks cause a counter-attack (once per turn). When units reach 0 HP, they "bleed out" over 3 turns unless revived, but you can short-circuit that with a melee execution.

Ammo for ranged weapons is limited, usually to 3 or 4 shots per battle. Your units will generally come with one reload opportunity, though more can be purchased. Firing a ranged weapon twice in the same turn is very likely to cause the weapon to jam, requiring the use of a specific item to un-jam it during combat. On the other hand, hitting something with a ranged attack removes 1 AP from the target (can be resisted), making overwatch a very effective way to keep most units from charging you.

Everybody loves deck-builders these days, so at the start of combat you get 4 "tactics cards", chosen at random from your deck. These apply various buffs and debuffs, such as minor healing or AP penalties. Your enemies get these too, which can be annoying: if you knock an isolated enemy out of action, you'd like to be able to ignore that unit, but if they have a rejuvenation card they can revive it, potentially leaving you flanked unexpectedly.

There are a few different types of missions, but somehow they all feel the same. The tactical maps within a general region of the world are very similar. Your units have ability trees, but most abilities are shared across all types of units, so the various classes feel very similar. Generally there's a lot of same-ness, which could be perfectly fine if that's what you're in the mood for.

Your squad and your base are improved by spending resources, which are not supplied in large quantities. You need to poke around the map, looking for level-appropriate encounters, or just make do with what you have. This makes it feel a little grindy.

The game allows only one save file, but the consequences of units dying - or even squad-wiping - are fairly minor.

There are some minor bugs, or perhaps just things I didn't understand. There'a an "energy drain" ability that requires LOS within 16 tiles, but sometimes it wouldn't trigger even though I could target the enemy with a short-range pistol. There's a "scavenge" encounter, where you grab stuff and run for the exit, which seems to end after a set number of turns, but there's no indication of that on screen.

It's not a bad game, and the combat system feels different from most others in the genre, so it's worth a look at the right price.

Somebody finally made a Jagged Alliance sequel that actually feels like Jagged Alliance.

JA3 feels like a reboot of JA2. That doesn't seem like it should be hard, but pretty much every attempt to do that in the 24 years since JA2 shipped has fallen flat. The best JA2 sequels were the community-made mods.

The game has a very similar feel to the original, with lots of updates that improve the experience. Every system has been tweaked just a little: better representation of stealth and shadows, explicit list of factors contributing to hit/miss, expanded melee, visible cover elements, better control over in-sector operations, more gun mod options, more quest lines, etc. By and large the changes are all improvements that don't change the general feel of the game.

The quest framework is more prominent in JA3. In JA2 it was pretty easy to miss some of the stuff going on in the cities. In JA3 they're largely optional, but there are many more of them.

The only thing I'm not entirely fond of is the stealth-kill mechanic. Once you hit a certain point, most map incursions can be fought entirely with silenced sniper rifles.

On the whole, this is a solid game, worthy of the Jagged Alliance name.

Hard West 2 is a turn-based tactics game with a supernatural Western theme. Playing on the default (Hard) difficulty, I finished the game and all side-quests in about 23 hours.

Turns are played alternately. Each unit gets 3 action points, which can be spent on movement or attacks. Most of the elements are similar to games like XCOM, with a couple of exceptions. One addition is that you can ricochet shots, which is really just a way to hit units behind cover more easily. The more significant change is "Bravado", which works like the Serial or Reaper skills in XCOM 2: every time you kill something, your action action points are restored. This has no restrictions or penalties, allowing you to clear a large number of enemies in a single round.

Taking advantage of Bravado is essential, especially at higher difficulties and on maps with enemies that can negate your cover with ricochets. Figuring out how to use AoE weapons - grenades and shotguns - to set up a kill streak is a significant part of the game.

There are six units available, gradually unlocked during the initial set of story missions. Each has a particular set of skills. Up to four may be used on any given mission.

Units don't have an ability tree. A few abilities are tied to their relationship status, which can be improved with dialog choices during RPG-ish interactions, but most of what units can do is determined by their gear and by a poker hand. Cards from a deck (4 suits, 9 through ace) are found during the course of the game, and each unit can hold up to five. The value of the poker hand represented by the cards determines which abilities are available. Cards can be reassigned at will outside combat.

The UI is generally easy to navigate. Hovering the mouse over elements often shows useful information, e.g. when you have a conversation choice you can hover over names and rewards to see more details.

Fun game overall.

Finally dug this one out of my backlog.

1. Install. Run.
2. Watch disturbing cutscene.
3. Kill frozen app with Win10 task manager.
4. Continue game. Watch next disturbing cutscene.
5. Kill frozen app with Win10 task manager.
6. Research freeze-ups (long-term known issue). Switch from fullscreen to windowed borderless.
7. Watch next disturbing cutscene.
8. Finally get a chance to do something. Roll around in a wheelchair, which can traverse knee knockers but not stairs.
9. Die a bunch, restarting from checkpoint.
10. Start to remember the issues I had with gameplay in the previous installments.
11. Back on the shelf it goes.

This is a straightforward turn-based tactics game with a Jagged Alliance theme. Various characters are taken from JA2, including the half-dozen playable mercenaries, but there are few similarities beyond that point. The game features a series of fixed battles, presented as locations on a world map that is mostly linear.

The combat is generally good, but the enemy behavior is quirky. Enemy sight cones are shown but don't always seem to work the same way. For example, I had two characters next to a body, both in concealment. Killing the enemy didn't trigger an alert, nor did picking up the body with one character, but picking it up with the other did. Everything was in the same visibility "zone". Later in the same map, there were two soldiers guarding the exit. They verbally reacted when I moved near, but didn't otherwise act. I killed one with gunfire, changed position next turn, and killed the other on the turn after that. Despite standing a few feet away from a solider who was shot to death with a noisy rifle, the second soldier did nothing.

Plodding through a map after killing all enemies, playing hunt-the-pixel for containers with items, while getting a constant serenade of "always ready!" voice clips every time you select a unit, gets old quickly.

This is a well-executed open-world survival game. Lots to explore, build, harvest, and fight.

Combat is pretty straightforward, with bows and a handful of different melee weapons. (There are a fair number of weapons, but sword/spear/mace aren't significantly different outside of specific situations. It's mainly single-target melee vs. multi-target melee, with specific weapon choice determined by enemy damage resistance to slash/stab/blunt.)

While your character skills improve, and can equip better armor and weapons, the character itself doesn't become fundamentally stronger. Instead, you gain access to better ingredients, which can be used to make higher-quality food that boosts your strength and endurance. Charging off into a fight without eating something first will get you killed.

One interesting mechanic is the teleportation system. A short while into the game, you can start crafting portals that let you move near-instantly between connected locations. However, the default settings don't allow you to move raw or refined metals through the teleporter, which is notable because they're very heavy and your inventory is limited. (If you were thinking about smelting ores on-site, the refined metals are *heavier*... go figure.) This forces you to make long treks, by foot or boat, to get the metals back to your crafting sites. Fortunately, this behavior is a "world setting", which can be adjusted at any time, so if it annoys you (or you love it and want to make life even harder) you can change how it works.

The world settings also allow you to specify what happens when you die. By default you lose a chunk of your skills, which are increased by doing things (e.g. you get better at blocking by blocking attacks), and all of your stuff gets left in a pile on the ground. The penalty can be reduced significantly, which is a wise thing to do for an initial playthrough... I got killed every time I encountered something new.

Boss fights are either very challenging or very straightforward depending on your level of preparation - which is exactly what you want from an open-world game. For example, using the landscape transformation tools to prepare the battlefield by adding cover elements and removing trip hazards can be helpful.

It's still in Early Access, but it's well worth playing now.

If you ever sent up that first rocket in Factorio and thought, "I wish there was more", your wish has been granted.

Space Age adds four new planets with radically different environments that require new approaches. It's not a simple matter of doing the same thing over again in new territory. Space platforms offer a fifth new environment, in which building compact structures is rewarded.

The DLC also rearranges the technology tree a bit, making some advanced technologies harder to get, while others (like mining productivity) are easier to reach.

This is a must-have for anyone who enjoys Factorio.

This is an entertaining turn-based tactics game, where you play the role of a xenomorph whose planet has been invaded by pesky humans. Killing and eating humans provides biomass that you use to create additional units. The somewhat ghastly premise is balanced by the rather silly villains and humorous scripted events.

The game has seven maps, each of which provides a slightly different challenge. It's not a very long game (~9 hours for a careful playthrough that hit all the secondary objectives), and replayability is low unless you go achievement-hunting, but it's worth buying at the right price point.