Recent reviews by CyberMermaidKomette_VT

Someone in a Facebook group I'm in asked why people like Undertale so much, and if it really is as similar to Earthbound as people say it is. My answer was basically a review so I thought I'd copy it here!

Warning: I identify some themes of Undertale below. For most that isn't a spoiler, I don't go into any details about characters or events or the plot, but I do name some themes in very broad strokes. If that's too spoilery then read no further! ;-)

I adored Earthbound back in the day and I adore Undertale today. I don't know that I'd necessarily say that they're all that similar to one another, though.

Their art style is I guess in the same ballpark, but Undertale is much more minimalistic - one of the core 'feels' to Earthbound to me was at times walking around a sprawling town or city, and that doesn't happen in the same way in Undertale.
Similarly I'd say that the humor is only in the same ballpark - they both rely heavily on humor, however, it seems to me that Earthbound's serious moments are largely there to support the setting and the humor, but in Undertale I'd say that the humor and serious moments are about equally important, and the serious moments may even be a little more important. It may be that Earthbound was trying tor an even balance and the serious bits just didn't resonate with me as well, but Undertale's does. That being said, some of the jokes in Undertale do feel like they would fit in with Earthbound so I can see how they're at least in the same ballpark there.

Plot-wise, they are very different. Different ballparks. Different sports - Undertale tries to leave us questioning many of our assumptions about video games, consequences and violence, and the very nature of gameplay. Earthbound does have a brief moment where I was questioning the nature of gameplay but it was very different, and it was a brief moment in Earthbound as opposed to an overall theme.

Mechanics-wise, they're...maybe in adjacent ballparks? They both have turn-based, menu-driven RPG systems and take the patterns of this system that was frankly already a little tired by the time Earthbound came out. But Earthbound feels like it still is a turn-based RPG at its mechanical core, despite features like the "Auto-Fight" command and the exciting ticking up and down of health and easy battles resolving automatically. This all felt to me like it was there to support the turn-based menu-driven RPG mechanics. In Undertale, however, although combat is done through a turn-based menu-driven RPG system as well, the meat of the combat is a combination of bullet-hell game and (optionally, depending on some things) a kind of a puzzle system. It feels like the menu-based RPG mechanics in Undertale are there to support the innovations, whereas in Earthbound, the innovations feel like they're there to support the menu-based RPG mechanics.

Now, why are people obsessed with Undertale?

The characters are fantastic. A few feel a little childish, but for me, when I started thinking, "this character is childish" instead of "this game is childish," it stopped detracting from the experience and frankly added to it when the game got more serious later. But they feel very alive and vibrant, with so much personality packed into each of them, and we get a pretty realistic depiction of the fears, strengths, weaknesses, and goals of many of them.

The ways that it turns the genre on its head and asks us to ask what we're really doing and why are incredibly thought-provoking. The commentary on humanity as a whole is a fresh and insightful take. I cannot recommend it enough for these twists and lampoons alone but I'm not going to spoil any of them.

The graphics, IMO, are decent if you like pixel art, but nothing to write home about. There are a few moments where I'm squeeing over how adorable they are, but those moments aren't exactly the norm for me. Still, I think that the art style is very effective at what it does, and is especially good at helping an ancient gamer like myself feel right at home.

The music is also often only 'good' but is also often absolutely phenomenal. There are very effective musical themes, with characters' recurring audio themes developing as our understanding of that character develops, into something more complicated and even more beautiful, and it's an effect that I adore. The audio really helps to maintain the feel of progress throughout the game in a way that I haven't noticed in very many other games.

The plot is wonderful and very responsive to player decisions. It's also very replayable, there are at least three majorly distinct narrative paths through the game, one of which involves relatively dissimilar gameplay than the other two. There are also numerous other less-dramatically distinct narrative paths that together comprise one of those three major ones. I'd describe this game's plot as more responsive to player decisions than the other greats in this category, like Telltale games or Life Is Strange or Mass Effect. There are a few twists that I for one didn't see coming.

The gameplay is really fun. I only casually enjoy bullet-hell games, but the bullet-hell-ness was really clever and cute and enjoyable and didn't significantly frustrate me except for during my* playthrough of the most difficult path, which also happens to be the path that I would never have taken if I weren't playing a third time for the sake of completion.

All in all I *heartily* recommend Undertale!

* - This was actually my now-ex-girlfriend's kid's playthrough, for those who are familiar with the game. I couldn't actually bring myself to go down that path by my own decisions, haha, but I could help him with his!

I'm sure that if I had played this before I played Subnautica, I would have been blown away. It's a similar style of survival game, but the presentation, the size of the world, the engagement of your tools, are all much less. It's also very short, although it does include a sandbox mode.

The combat is better than I expected. Survival can be challenging but not onerous. The crafting and base-building systems *almost* interesting enough to be a real draw; they're enjoyable enough for what they are but what they are is a means to an ends. If the bases were more aesthetically pleasing - and it *almost* gets there! - or if there was a greater variety of things to craft or furniture to build, then they might have been more exciting to engage with.

Frankly, it feels like this game might have been able to come into its own, if it didn't stop its development process where it did. The game has systems that would be enthralling if there was more content and more polish. It feels like Subnautica is what this could have been.

Still - for the low price of $5, granting about 2-3 hours of decently enjoyable play, it might be worthwhile. If it was much more I probably would have given it a thumbs-down.

So, I'd like to start off by introducing my bias for the survival-crafting genre. This is my favorite genre - your Minecrafts, Empyrions, Space Engineers, even your Don't Starves and Terrarias. This is a genre that I love and adore. The below is an in-depth, but spoiler-free, review.

And this is by far the best example of strong single-player content that I've ever seen in the genre. It's also, in my book, the single prettiest example of the genre, including stand-out titles like ARK: Survival Evolved. However, be warned: there are bugs, and the bugs can yank you out of the experience and, if you're not willing to use the debug console to recover from a bug, they might cost you hours of progress. But if you can overcome that, you're in for a breathtaking experience that's sculpted without feeling directed, experimental and exploratory yet - mostly - polished, and ultimately an amazing journey of discovery, building, and mastery of one's environment;

Subnautica is set in the far future - we're talking space travel, building-construction guns, and PDA that can perform advanced assesment of the properties of a geome as soon as it reaches it. The game opens with you, a silent protagonist, jumping into a life pod as your starship is crashing onto a water planet, and it tells the tale of your escape from this planet - including learning about the history of this planet and overcoming some major, unexpected obstacles and solving mysteries aged from an hour to a decade to a millenium.

95% of the game takes place under water, and over the course of the game, you'll build aquatic bases, handheld propulsion devices, and vehicles both small and large. Construction entails finding and collecting nodes of resources, bringing them to the appropriate crafting station - usually but not always either the handheld, portable building-construction gun, or an item crafitng station attached to a base - and watching as the doohickeys work their magic.

But first, you'll need to find the appropriate crafting recipe, which involves either reading a data disc found in a piece of ship wreckage, or scanning an intact or damaged example of that item, also generally in a ship wreckage. Some wreckages are easier to explore than others, as they might require no more than your hands and eyes to find everything but they may also pose additional challenges that may require additional tools to overcome. And you always have to keep an eye on your oxygen, food, and water!

And after you've found the recipes, you will then need to find the materials to construct them. Materials are usually found in small nodes concentrated in a localized area - and for most materials there are many, many such areas scattered in the rougly-2km-by-2km area. At its deepest the game also reaches a depth of around 2km, but most of it is much shallower than that. At first you'll find yourself constrained to the first hundred meters or so, but as you progress you'll overcome the obstacles that stop you from going deeper.

And these areas that you're exploring are gorgeous! Beautfiully-rendered, mysterious and alien undersea-scapes, some of which are lit up only by whatever lights you bring to them, and some of which are lightened by spectularly bioluminescent flora and fauna. The sea life variety is in the dozens, and everything looks very original and comes with an encyclopedia entry. And you'll want to interact with quite a bit of it before your adventure is complete.

There is a distinct sense of progression in the game. As you unlock technologies, you'll gain access to new sources of materials or technologies, which can be used to create tools to overcome obstacles, opening the path to more technologies or materials. All the way, you'll be learning about some of the mysteries that this world hides. Eventually you'll have better tools for gathering resources, able to access richer nodes, and your life in general will be much less of a struggle to survive and much more of a strident drive toward prosperity - of a sort, at least as long as you remain marooned on this planet.

Incidentally, at times, the PDA personality reminds me of a less-evil GladOS. Snarky and sarcastic, but never rooting against you or actively disrespecting you, and certainly never sabotaging you.

It's also worth mentioning that this isn't a very violent game. There are enemies, but they're generally predators, not evil beings. Everything that attacks you has a primal motivation for attacking you. And you never get an offensive gun. The best weapon by the end of the game - spoiler alert here - is a knife. Your encounters with hostile creatures are usually more about avoiding them or driving them off than killing them. You do kill creatures - our survivor has to eat after all! - but you never wind up feeling like a grizzled war veteran, and the violence is never cheapened.

There are bugs, though. I've fallen through the geometry several times - a few times while driving a vehicle, which means the loss of the vehicle if I'm not able to clip back through the geomery or load a recent save. And since there's only one save slot per campaign, I'm less likely than I might otherwise be to save as frequently as I might need. The debug commands cannot be underestimated; while they can't move your vehicle, they can give you a new one and replace the resources you spent on it or had sitting in its inventory.

I will also say that this game can be trying on the patience if you're not a very good explorer and just want to go from one objective to the next. If that's the kind of player that you are - and I'm closer to that description than I sometimes care to admit - then I'd heartily recommend having the wiki open the entire time. There were definitely moments where I would probably have quit in frustration for not being able to find something if it weren't for the wiki.

If those doesn't sound like deal-breaking problems to you, I'd heartily recommend this game to anyone who wants something different - a survival-crafting game with sculpted single-player content and a satifying sense of progression, a beautiful experience under the waves, an experience that is truly like none other, or if you are just looking for a great way to kill 90 or so hours. Subnautica is worth your time and money,

The price point on this game was exactly perfect! Not too high, and not too low. Maybe it could have done with a $1 price bump. But regardless, it was 20 minutes of adorable hilarity, and the English was broken in a way that I suspect was intentional.

A+, will probably play again!

This is a great example of a strong Early Access game! It's a great simulation of various space engineering problems and a wonderful sandbox. Construction feels like a vehicle-oriented Minecraft, only it looks a TON better thanks to sloped blocks. It is, however, not a game of exploration - it's a game of technology, and of engineering amazing designs! So far, updates have consistently been every week (aside from hotfixes). I heartily recommend it!

I'm proud to say that I contributed to this game's initial Kickstarter campaign. It delivers a solid turn-based-tactical-RPG experience, and it paints a beautiful-if-grim-and-gritty image of the Shadowrun setting, and it tells a solid story in the process.

For the uninitiated, the setting of Shadowrun is a dystopian future in which corporations rule the world and governments are beholden to the whim of these international corportations. Magic, and all the fantastic creatures that come with it, reentered the world in the early 2000s. And in all of this, a 'shadowrunner' is a mercenary who is hired to use their guns, magic, muscle, computer hacking, or remote-controlled drones on a job-by-job basis.

One of the neat tricks that this game pulls is that different types of character literally see the world differently. A mage can see ley lines on the ground that can bolster their magic (or that of their enemies!) if they stand on them. A shaman can see spirits lingering in the world, ready to be called into battle. A decker (read: hacker, who have neural interfaces in this world) can see hackable computers. Okay, I think that anyone can see hackable computers, but you need a decker to get into them.

Without revealing any spolers, I'd like to say that the story in the original game is solid. It's nothing to write home about, but it makes for a great introduction to the setting, and fans of Shadowrun video games will see a familiar face. The story in the expansion - which, by the way, was at least as long as the original campaign, and I've sunk 82 hours between the two of them - is, on the other hand, phenomenal. Both games have great characters, although be warned that there's no voice-acting - if you demand that from your stories you should be aware of its absence. The dialogue is similar to Baldur's Gate or Neverwinter Nights - style, although if your character doesn't have the skills needed to engage in a particular line of dialogue, that line and its requirement show up, greyed out, so you know how to build your character next time.

Of course, the game also comes with a level editor, and Steam Workshop support. This was one of the big features touted during its Kickstarter. I'm not immediately seeing a link to the editor from Steam but it's in the same folder as the game files. I have not put this to the test but I'm told that it's a very powerful toolset.

The combat system is interesting. The greatest depth can be found in building your main character and selecting a squad for each mission as there is quite a bit of variety available in a character's skill-set. Once you're on the ground there's still quite a few decisions to make, from where to take cover, to how tightly to pack your squad, to when and where to expend your consumable resources. Personally, I found the game to be a smidge too easy on Normal difficulty, even when I realized that my character concept wasn't a particularly strong one in this universe. There were two harder (and one easier) difficulties that I didn't try.

Visually, the game performs solidly. It's a nice, clean (well, grimy) - looking game, but it won't turn any heads for reasons other than the unusual setting. The developers had other priorities, and they're priorities that I happen to agree with.

Shadowrun Returns delivers a passable audio experience. The game sounds great, all of the effects sound like I imagine they should...but there could really, really be more variety in background music. What is there sounds wonderful, but I for one was tired of hearing the same music for every battle by the end of it. Again, if you can't stand reading text, pass this one up, because it has no voice-overs whatsoever.

All in all, I would heartily recommend this game to RPG fans, turn-based strategy fans, and Shadowrun fans alike.

I wanted very, very badly to like Disciples 3. The art is as stunning as Disciples 2, perhaps even more so. However, the balance is all off - XP gain is not proportional to threats, combat is a slow and frustrating affair (unless you're losing, at which point it will end in two rounds), and even after battles that I've won I had to make a trip back to my capital every single time to resurrect people. And then, if I'm unlucky, sit and mash "END TURN" until I have the money to afford them.

The fact that I can only claim land in specific points also adds to the tedium, as I have to watch my territory ponderously expand toward resource cites that I've cleared out for dozens of turns before they are claimed.

Of course, the quest dialogue and voice-overs are terrible. Fortunately there's an easy way to turn unit voices off.

There were plenty of improvements between Disciples 2 and Disciples 3, by the way. Combat is now on a tactical grid a la Heroes of Might & Magic. Each grid has randomly-determined sites that can increase the effectiveness of one unit type, and leveraging these effectively can make a moderate battle into an easy one (although they still don't make difficult battles into reasonable threats). Some overworld spells can be cast into runes, which can then be used to cast a scaled-down version of the spell during a battle. Heroes have something not unlike a very toned-down version of the Sphere Grid from Final Fantasy X, or the leveling system in Final Fantasy 12 - basically a grid in which each square has some sort of bonus, and you can claim any square adjacent to an already-claimed square when leveling up.

But ultimately I'd give this one a skip, even as a fan of the genre.

Like old-school RPGs? Like Lovecraftian mythology? Love games that don't take themselves remotely seriously? Love supporting indie developers? Buy this, it's cheap!