Recent reviews by Setokaiva

While I was, and still am EXTREMELY impressed by Core Keeper's graphics, particularly its dynamic water and lighting, the gameplay is very... basic. You mine, craft, farm, fight, and repeat. I probably shouldn't have expected different, admittedly. Maybe I'm just salty about the fact my satellite internet doesn't let me play the game in multiplayer. I still haven't seen all there is to see, though, and I remain impressed by the new things I keep discovering! I'd happily recommend the game to anyone, especially to those who can play it in multiplayer. Plus, it has mod support!

I'm a Bronze tier backer of the game, playing with the Terror from the Void mod, so this review is about that taken as a whole. Phoenix Point now is, while still far from what I initially hoped it would be, now so much closer to it that I can comfortably recommend the game. Yes, it really does scratch that XCOM itch. Yes, there are a lot of different playstyles, soldiers, vehicles, and ways the campaign can go. It's always been fun using the free-aim system and the way cover works like it would realistically, which has no current equivalent I can point to today in any game. You can ally with factions or just steal their tech and aircraft for yourself. With the mod, enemies now really do evolve to counter you, and the new event and "Delirium" system puts an edge on combat and the strategic layer that makes decisions matter more. I'm still not finished with all the content in the mod, far from it, in fact.

So yeah, I think this game is something every turn-based tactics fan or fan of XCOM games should try at least once! And there's enough there to keep you going for a while!

I finally beat the game after around 70 hours (counting time Alt-Tabbed), with a win/loss ratio of 1:41. It took me a lot of experimenting, and I'm happy to say I never died to getting polymorphed. No, I died to shocking myself because I didn't realize holding a wand with lightning bolt spells made it arc through water and metal on contact and shock me. I died from oil-sliding into my own plasma drill. My own mistakes and lack of understanding caused more trouble for me than my actual enemies. Yet that only made the trial and error, the rigorous experimentation, all the more satisfying.

(Note that my game time includes idle time spent Alt-Tabbed.)
I drafted two Steady Tortoise and maxed out Orb Collector. Every time I trigger Shattered Will for bonus action points I get double those points and the cap to trigger is reduced by 20%. I skate through battles with practically infinite actions because orbs JUST. KEEP. SPAWNING like it's Christmas. "Create broken builds," indeed!

This game's got a lot of potential, but its raw simplicity (in its current state) doesn't lend itself well to replayability. The enemies get same-y real fast. Allies who build better than you can leave you feeling like a useless fifth wheel. There just isn't enough gameplay variety. It's still in early access, though, and there's enough here that I don't mind coming back to play a run now and then while I wait to see what else the devs can come up with. 9/10!

It's Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri crossed with XCOM and Sword of the Stars! And it works! If you take nothing else from this review, take this: Yes, it's worth it, with or without a sale. Terra Invicta is a MONUMENTAL achievement in the Grand Strategy genre, with limitless promise and a high degree of moddability. At the same time, it really demands a lot from you, time- and patience-wise.

To put it mechanically, the game works in increments of one to two week "mission phases," where you assign jobs to your Councilors—people of great power and importance who Get Things Done. Councilors are your primary source of agency and action economy. They get you control of Earth's nations, investigate other factions' Councilors, perform assaults, assassinations & sabotage, and conduct diplomacy—because yes, you have to physically send your Councilor to set up a meeting with a faction's leaders through one of their own Councilors, you can't just press a Diplomacy button and start talks. Councilors have a handful of stats that influence their ability to Get Things Done, all of which work on dice rolls and percentiles, and the game tells you what roll you got so you'll know by just how many points you succeeded or failed in controlling China's state security apparatus. You'll spend most of your time managing your team of up to 6 Councilors, but thankfully, you can also put them on "Permanent Assignment" to repeat certain missions (like increasing public opinion) without requiring you to assign it again.

I won't talk about all the game's mechanics, though. Suffice to say they work well and intuitively. Now I want to talk about Aliens. Not the movie, the actual alien threat. Don't think for a second that you've leveled the playing field just because you started building battlecruisers. The aliens are LEAGUES ahead of you in technology from the jump, and nowhere is this more prominent than their engines. What do I mean by that? I mean they're using Ducted Fusion Torch Drives when you're still stuck with Solid Core NERVA Fission Drives. I mean they can reach your space stations in orbit in hours when your fleets may take days. I mean they can hit you wherever and whenever they want, and until you secure technological parity, until you have a grand presence throughout the solar system, they will be able to smack you easily just by getting there first. And even when you build up, you always have to balance it and be careful, because going too fast and hard will make the aliens come at you directly. And if you're not ready for that, well... have fun waiting three months for another space station.

Terraforming towers for terrible titans to rain death from above! Launching or pulling units with Half-Life 2-esque gravity guns! Overdriving resource generators with a linked energy grid! Zero-K is so thick with unique mechanics in a saturated RTS market, endlessly meme-worthy, and undeniably worth your time. It knows what it wants to be, and pulls it off flawlessly. Come enjoy up to 32-player multiplayer lobbies, a single player campaign with about 50 missions, and fight the horrendous Alien Chicken menace on land, sea, and air. Join the fight today!

REVIEW SUBJECT TO CHANGE
Well... initially, I did leave a negative review. I do still feel that my previous concerns about the length of actual content still stand. It's less about replayability than it is straight-up content. That having been said, I find myself still coming back to it. RoR does do quite a few things right. It's properly challenging on Nightmare (the highest difficulty level), as I have to deal with natural disasters as well as nightly monster attacks. The village management is straightforward and easy to manage, plus the different spells available are about as robust and well-rounded as I would like them to be, from "aid" (i.e. healing), to offense, defense, and utility.

I've had a LOT of fun with the "essence" system for magic, which doesn't feel too weak or too overpowered. A good example is the Harvest spell, which reaps a whole bunch of resources from the land at once for a hefty essence cost. Sounds strong, except you better make sure you can actually use said resources, or they will decay into trash on the ground and then that trash might turn into monsters(!!!) that savage your base. On that note, I also enjoy how the game actually simulates trash byproduct from industry and general base activity. You need to manage it, process some for resources, and burn the rest for essence.

The game has a robust map editor, a lot of good existing maps, and honestly it feels strangely like a spinoff of "Creeper World" with the whole Corruption mechanic on each map. There's a proper sense of 'creeping doom' as every day the monsters' territory gets larger, and the points they are bound to attack from will also increase.

So yeah, actually, I would recommend the game. I'd still like more content, but I wouldn't refund the game even if I could. It's fun as it is, it's extremely strong on what it does right, and it looks like it'll only get better and better. 8 out of 10!

One of the best strategical micro-management games on the market today. Hands-down, I thoroughly recommend it. My only gripe is that it really does require alot of micro-managing, especially when you get to multiple colonies on different asteroids, but the system is robust enough and there's plenty of automation options to make sure things don't go belly-up just because you took your eyes off things for five minutes.

Simple yet sweet, epic and lovable, Minion Masters is an ideal chessmaster's strategy game -- yet at the same time, manages to keep a generous bar for entry. Don't let the apparent "pay to win" aspects fool you. No one can give themselves such a crushing advantage with a little money that can't be outdone by any other player with good tactics. Everyone can unlock any other card in the game, Minion or Spell, just by using in-game currency earned through battling. Everyone is on even terms with 10-card hands. Take the Cleaver, for instance, a heavy hitter with great damage and survivability, but can be brought down by a simple swarm of Scrats or Skeleton Warriors. The Annihilator with his range and splash damage dies in a couple hits. Towers can't move out of the way of your Fireball or Beam of Doom. Minion Masters is all about playing the right card at the right moment, rewarding good play and smart combos.

Star Renegades is a game that knows what it wants to be, and it's highly respectful of your time and attention to the details. It sells a fresh take on old-fashioned turn-based RPG's with both its battle system, and an intriguing mix-up with the roguelike mechanics that allow you to choose from over a dozen different heroes to bring along on each run. Each of them feels truly unique, rather than just being another stat-block. You can have the Saboteur who is fast and great at stunning and staggering opponents, while also being able to use explosives for AoE attacks or disrupt enemies prepared to counter-attack. The Marksman is perfect for sniping those in the back row, since Star Renegades uses a positional system where front row enemies must die first, but he can also melt through armor, provide cover fire, and assist other allies with damage multipliers on tough single foes.

All this occurs with the backdrop of the game's unique Stagger and Break system. All combat occurs on a 60 point "timer", and all actions have a time cost. Enemies' actions are always queued at the start of each round, allowing you to then choose your actions accordingly to defend, counter, or disrupt the enemy's plan. If attacks come right on or before an enemy's move, you score a Critical, and the enemy may be Staggered, which delays their move in the timeline -- and if you push them right off the edge of the bar, that triggers a Break, which prevents them from acting that turn at all! However, the enemy will re-queue that exact same action on the same target(s) in the very next round. Every stagger you inflict cuts into each enemy's Stagger Limit, and if it reaches 0, they can't be staggered at all until they take their action, which raises the limit once more. This creates a delicate tactical setup where you have to time your moves properly, and trigger Breaks smartly so that you'll be able to continue the assault in the coming rounds.

They really aren't kidding about establishing relationships between party members, either, which is done primarily through a system that feels like a mix of Darkest Dungeon's camping and Fire Emblem's support conversations -- and you had better do this, too, because life's gonna be a Bad Time™ without the game-winning combo attacks & support maneuvers you can unlock. The last two people to deal finishing damage to a Lieutenant-class or higher ranked enemy will get a special card that gives free relationship points, as well, which encourages the player to try and game their fights so that those they want to rank up in relationships get kills.

Now, I do have some critical points. The game structure is roughly static for each run, divided into 'missions' where you choose points on the map to liberate and fight enemies. Occasionally you can also find a side dungeon to delve into for extra level-ups, items & bonuses. It's neat, but it doesn't yet have enough variation or mutators that would keep me engaged for more. That said, the devs have already explicitly laid out in their roadmap that they're going to add new worlds and elements for this later on, so I hardly consider this a black mark on the game at all. I mean, I've done a hat trick, 3 runs played (and won in a row) already as of this review, in escalating difficulty levels, and I still feel like I want to come back just to try unlocking new heroes and seeing what other combos and legendary loot there is to unlock!

So yeah. Just to summarize, this game's got me hooked, and I was kind of blown away to discover it was only released like 2 months ago as of this review. Major content updates seem to come regularly, and I can tell this team knows what they're doing. The game is great even as is, and I can't wait to see more, because already I love how much it respects me as a player and truly challenges me to be at my best, while still throwing in plenty of curveballs now and then to keep things interesting. 9/10, buy it now!