Recent reviews by IndieBob

Meh frustrating.

Buggy:

- interacted with a merchant and they had one item in stock. Exited from their store screen and came back, dozens of items.

- just equipped an item which increased DEX but the higher DEX bonus that game me did not affect AC.

Ludicrously terrible writing, had to kick the female barbarian in my party as they were such an annoying, ludicrous, stroppy caricature.

Nonsensical rules which don't quite work in application. E.g. 'spider swarms' which apparently you can't just stamp on and no weapon hit will ever damage ... apparently torches are the way forwards, because obviously, setting fire to a spider too fast to stamp on with a flickering flame makes perfect sense - but no worry, not an issue for me as my torches seem to have magically disappeared from my inventory!

On the verge of giving up from boredom ...

Solasta: Crown of the Magister may be linear, but at least it works, mostly, as intended, and carries you along, rather than trying to trip you up all the time.

Oh, and Solasta reminds me about another thing - in Kingmaker you cannot rotate the camera. Well, you can and there are times when it's definitely needed (certain battles) but it's not implemented in the game. The graphics are in there and you can download a mod to rotate the camera[www.nexusmods.com] but ... it's just not there in the game as sold.

At best, this is one for the rules lawyers, but only if you're the sort of rules lawyer who wants those rules to be applied inconsistently, awkwardly with an emphasis on it not being fun.

I love this game. To those who say it's too short: you've seen about half the game at most. There are 40 bosses in total, if you include the DLC.

It's procedural so each play-through includes different map layouts, special events, locations, bosses and enemies. Higher difficulties reveal special enemies and events you don't get at easier settings.

If you don't fancy replaying the whole game - adventure mode is for you, which allows you to run through on area, with associated bosses and dungeons, meaning you can see most of the game barring certain inter-map bosses/encounters. Very roguelike, plenty to do way beyond a single story playthrough. There's at least one boss which spawns only in adventure mode. Excellent, bold move in the dev's part. After that there's also Survival Mode, where you start with very few items and play until you die ...

My main complaint: like many (RPG) games, it gets the difficulty curve wrong. It's at its hardest at the start, when you have no perks or special weapons and haven't quite worked out the skills. Dark Souls gets this right and the game remains a real challenge to the end. Remnant doesn't get super easy but it definitely gets easier. I started on "Normal" difficulty and it seemed like Normal difficulty would be enough... but by halfway through, with the weapons and mods I had, i realised it was getting too easy and had to restart - that being the only way to reset difficulty.

Secondly: the level of each area is based on your weapon/armour levels when you enter the area, with a heavy bias towards your single highest level item, so levelling one or two items quickly really works against you as other bits of gear lag behind. Tip: level everything just one level at a time (to keep them all at the same level).

In general, it's better not to level gear unless you absolutely have to and want a bonus against the current area/boss, but you'll pay for it in the next when difficulty ramps up, since fighting higher level enemies makes them slightly harder and once you get to level 20, that's it. No more out-levelling the game by upgrading equipment - though new traits/skills will continue to make the game easier.

I finished the main game + DLC with gear at level 16 (Hard difficulty) where in my first playthroughs I'd levelled one weapon to 20 in just by half way through. Not that this made the game excessively hard, barring a couple of bosses, but it does make the game experience inconsistent. Boss weapons which require special resources to upgrade only level to 10 and count double for difficulty purposes. So a level 8 boss weapon counts as if it's level 16 when calculating dificulty.

If you are playing in a party, playing coops, it uses the levels of the weapons carried by all players, so if someone has something super upgraded the others might find themselves having issues...even if that party member leaves, the area remains at the higher level once generated.

Players need to have all this explained to them so they definitely get it and there's no way they can miss it. Over and over. e.g. have a popup appear when they level a weapon which changes their effective level saying "Levelling this weapon to level 12 will increase your effective level from 11 to 12, which will increase the strength/difficulty of enemies in any new areas you enter, for your whole party. It will not affect enemies in locations you have already visited. Do you want to proceed?". At the moment I think the only place you can see your weapon level is on the opening character selection screen.

The game takes no account of player level, traits/skills gained etc when setting difficulty, which seems odd. Even if it's just +1 level per 50,75 or even 100 trait points, some account should be taken.

Like Dark Souls, Remnant makes use of iframes - but never explicitly mentions or explains this and both games fall foul on this one. If you're new to the genre - iframes are grames of various animations during which a player usually will not take damage. Most obviously in rolls/dodges, so even if an enemy hits you and you're mid roll, you won't take damage. You're vulnerable at the start and finish of each roll, so it's not a get out of jail free card, and timing rolls is key, depending on the enemy attack, but it's an intended feature and not knowing about it is a hinderance. I don't know if Remnant does this but certainly in Dark Souls, the lighter your encumbrance, the further you roll and the less time you spend in the vulnerable 'getting up' and 'starting roll' animation phases ... but since Remnant does talk about armour encumbrance quite a bit, I assume that the heavier you armour the less effective your rolls, as a trade off...


There are weapons of different types, e.g. radiation, bleed, freeze, but apparently different enemies don't have different resistances. So, once I got my super bleed crossbow and a ring which transferred bleed damage to healing for me, I mostly stuck with it. TBH the crossbow as OPAF long before that, but the fact that I could, for example, cause bleed damage on a black hole seemed nonsense. Apparently this was a conscious decision by the devs who wanted all builds to work on all enemies, which to me seems like a really bad decision. It trivialises weapon choice, levelling, depth and reduces the longevity of the game. I mean, i had to grind up a fast firing weapon for the Ixillis boss fight one fight, as I didn't have one, and that's not too different to grinding up a weapon with say poison damage because you know it's particularly effective against certain enemies i'm having issues with.

Also: let me reset difficulty mid-way through a playthrough, instead of having to restart, so that all new areas generated are created with the new difficulty and I don't have to go back to the beginning. OK, so only credit me for having completed it at the lowest difficulty I set during any one playthrough but as long as you give me PLENTY of warning about this, that's fine. I am playing because I enjoy the gameplay. At most make me replay the area/zone I am in.

Also: make difficulty selection more apparent at the start of the game. There's a reason most games have it separate from the character designer: it's out of place and isn't part of the character creation process. Players don't expect to see it there, they're likely to miss it.

Some very good and braintwisty puzzles but also a few which relied on pixel hunting, clicking twice to zoom in on an object in order to interact with it. Overall positive!

Short but well constructed puzzler. Well worth a few quid.

If Sudoku was implemented on the C64 as a 3d adventure game where you play a time travelling insurance agent, with facts instead of numbers, this would be it. Sweet Game.

IMO probably the most complete Dark Souls out there, if not the best. Before you play, though, do yourself a favour and watch this video. It explains "i-frames" a concept you NEED to understand if you are to make it past that first boss. It's not my video but it explains them pretty well, at least for beginners https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOewOih1NyU

Great conversion of the board game.

Zany 60s british comedy bioshock, set during the decline of a society rather than after it. What's not to like ... other than the bugs, though there aren't that many any more! All rond great stuff and worth a buy!

Janky, a few bugs, a few bad translations, a definite 7/10. But a 7/10 I enjoyed more than some 8/10s I've played.

OK so this is a roguealike. It's not Elite Dangerous, it's not Freelancer, it's not Star Citizen, it's more like FTL crossed with a space shooter with exceptional graphics. You pass throuigh a series of 7 sectors each containing different zones (the final one being set on a planet). Arrive at a zone, explore, loot, then when the pursuing Okkar forces arrive (just like FTL's Rebels) depart before you get shot out of the sky until you get to the final sector for a big encounter/showdown with the end boss.

This isn't a game I can sit down and play for a solid 20 hours [though I've definitely done 6 or 7 before] but is currently my goto game when I have hour or two to kill and just want some action. I played from Early Access and so have seen it grow from very sparsely populated game to something with a lot of variety, with a fully voiced story which reveals itself over successive runs.

The DLC adds plenty of sidequests, new equipment, enemy types and more story lines and is also definitely recommended.

The main cons for me are that when you do die a) it can be a real downer, especially if you die to a momentary lapse in concentration after an hour or two and b) not sure I agree with the fact that you get to upgrade your ship after you die, making the game progressively easier over time [though this has been fixed to some extent with hardcore mode, in which you upgrade your ship during a run and all upgrades are lost when you die].

I wasn't the greatest fan of the default Freelancer style 3rd person view, either, but then I discovered first person, with fully functioning cockpit (so there's no reason to have much of an HUD at all, which I disable) and it has freelook.

Good fun and recommended. I love it when things get really hectic, some spectacular battles and very cinematic. Beautiful scenery.