Recent reviews by Ritzgit

Pros:

• The most gorgeous Cyan game to date including remasters (though Riven remaster comes close).
  
• Fantastic sound design.
  
• New take on environmental puzzles that is fresh (at least for a Cyan game.
  
• A new type of story that deviates from the Cyan standard.

Cons:

• The actual events of the story are harder to comprehend due to how it is delivered.
  
• Some of the puzzles seem to be more tedious than difficult.
  
• The dialogue can at some times be hard to understand as it is heavily accented.
  
• This is arguably the loneliest of the Cyan games (which I personally have considered a con since the original Myst).

Mid:

• The puzzles are easier than Obduction.
  
• Some of the new puzzle concepts needed more time in the oven.

7.5/10

Recommend at a 12.99 price point. Do wait for a sale.

---{ Graphics }---
☐ You forget what reality is
☐ Beautiful
☑ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS

---{ Gameplay }---
☐ Very good
☑ Good
☐ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't

---{ Audio }---
☐ Eargasm
☑ Very good
☐ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf

---{ Audience }---
☐ Kids
☑ Teens
☑ Adults
☐ Grandma

---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☐ Decent
☑ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer

---{ Game Size }---
☐ Floppy Disk
☐ Old Fashioned
☑ Workable
☐ Big
☐ Will eat 10% of your 1TB hard drive
☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it
☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data

---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☐ Easy
☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☑ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls

---{ Grind }---
☑ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Isn't necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You'll need a second life for grinding

---{ Story }---
☐ No Story
☐ Some lore
☐ Average
☐ Good
☑ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life

---{ Game Time }---
15-30 hours. Average 22.

---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☐ Worth the price
☑ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money

---{ Bugs }---
☐ Never heard of
☑ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs

8/10

This game scratched that Myst itch. Delivering an interesting setting, difficult but not impossible puzzles, and a fantastic ambiance. This game is easily worth a purchase at a $14.99 price point. Not sure the playtime/$ proposition is worth it above $21.99 unless you absolutely love this genre.

As someone that bought JGR/JSR and JSRF this the sequel everyone has been waiting all this time for. To say that I already want another one is not an understatement.

The Cel Shading graphics are flawless, the stages are designed fantastically, and the moves and graffiti mechanics are smooth and enjoyable. The music is a solid 8.5/10 (only had an issue with one track that i felt was distracting).

I do not say this almost ever, but I am glad I didn't wait for a sale.

Edit (9/1/23): I'm pleasantly surprised by the challenge of the game as it is a bit tougher than I remember JSR/F being. Still enjoying it a lot.

A great time. Many lovely revolts by the proletariat. Looking forward to the sequel.

I recommend this game.

It brings a lot new to the genre and can be a very thrilling experience. I do want this game to succeed, so I will spend most of this review going over all the things I would like them to add (because the biggest weakness this game has is that it released too soon with not enough content). This list is in descending order of importance.

1. Rejoin/Requeue Matchmaking while you are still spectating the previous match you just died in. It takes too long to get from one match to another (consider yourself lucky if you get in another one in less than a minute). Down time in a game like this is bad and there needs to be something to do even while you are loading in to another match.

2. While we are talking about requeue, how about a loading screen minigame? or a World of Darkness Lore Dump so people who don't know anything about the universe can learn and become more interested and invested in it. Right now, if all you have ever played of WoD is this game, all you know is that Nosferatu are the ugly ones and who knows about the other two. Maybe give the game a chance to fill people in a bit more.

3. Tremere, Gangrel, Tzimisce, and La Sombra options need to be in this game yesterday. Tremere can be made balanced no matter what anyone says. While you're adding Tremere, Put down a ley line or two on the maps that they can manipulate to hilarious effect.

4. Diablerie should expand the player's health pool. Even 10 hp per would be fair. Also diablerie in general is too detached in this game. How about a minigame where you can opt to empower/mutate the person who diablerized you. Don't like that the Nosferatu pinged you again for the billionth time? Maybe you fight them from the inside once they've diablerized you so the pinging skill becomes the Teleporting skill you had instead. Think their kill was masterful? Increase their toughness so they take 5% less damage from that point on.

5. An Assymetric Methuselah mode, where 20 players team up to hunt one hangry ancient vampire.

6. A werewolf pack mode/event where you have to either hunt them down before they get you, or avoid them while hunting the others in BR Mode. They can also randomly get into fights with the Entity/Second Inquisition NPCs.

7. A mode where the Red Gas is replaced by a sunrise and you have a limited amount of time to get the other vampires and escape into the sewers. The rooftops and open parks would of course be hazardous. Winner would be decided by score, not by being the last one standing.

8. Dementation/Insanity Zones projected by NPC Malkavians that you have to avoid or be forced into trippy screen effects or potentially lose agency of your character.

9. Like in the TTRPG, a well positioned player should be able to give away the position of another player to the Entity/SI which would then summon an avoidable but dangerous NPC Squad to that location.

10. A few emotes that are voiced would be nice, and depending on how awesome they are, might even be a welcome cash shop option.

11. More maps. I get that there are limitations with what kind of locations make sense (In order to keep verticality useful instead of cumbersome) but there are some other cities where this could be done right. Seattle. Chicago, Pittsburgh, Boston, Mexico City, Madrid, Barcelona, Paris, Stockholm, Istanbul, Cairo, New Delhi, Hanoi, Osaka. They all have neighborhoods that are the right scale and would bring an interesting flavor to the game. Hell, London already has established canon plot that you could work with that would fit the game perfectly (and maybe even utilize idea #5).

12, Do something with Thinbloods. I think it would be pretty interesting if you thought someone was a safe snack and then they pull out Thinblood Alchemy on you.

I thought it would be a bit lame, but at the price I paid for it (about $2), why not?

I laughed. I laughed a lot.

This is the game to play when you want to play EVE but don't want to PLEX or want to carebear in (mostly) peace. The Horizons expansion has just been rolled into the base game for free and Odyssey looks to make the FPS portion of the game a reality over the next year.

Getting up to speed with higher tiered ships is relatively straightforward and there are ships for almost every playstyle (though nowhere close to as many as EVE).

There is a steep learning curve so I do recommend watching some youtube videos on various parts of the game as the game itself doesn't provide tutorials for some deeper game concepts.

Recommend?: Yes, at the current sale price of $7.49 it is a no brainer. Anyone who managed to catch the EGS giveaway can't do any better than free. I paid 25$ (a few years ago) and still think it was a reasonable price.

Graphics: 7.5/10

My Vega 56 had no problem keeping up with everything on the Highest Settings while staying at the second lowest clock setting (800mhz). SSAO has a few issues in spots, particularly on handrails. The effects and texture quality are good if you keep in mind that this is a 7 year old game.

Sound: I had no issues of any kind.

Gameplay: 8.3/10 Apart from the voice command controls being a bit awkward, everything else was straightforward. Enemies were engaging and sometimes difficult at normal difficulty (as one can expect). Fighting was somewhat intuitive and the control scheme didn't hinder the fighting much if at all. Engaging in cover and switching playstyles was easier than in similar games (like GoW).

Story: 7.8/10 While the story can be seen as somewhat cliche, it had just enough interesting developments to keep it from falling flat. The characters do get some development to keep you interested in their survival but not much more with a few exceptions. Something happens to two characters and they effectively disappear. I would have liked a conclusion or comment about it

Replayability: 7.5/10 While the game can be replayed both entirely and in chapter mode, I only had a slight inclination to replay and only to see if certain story elements would have repeated if the team arrangement had been different. As such I would have only replayed a chapter or two.

Note: One of the game's main selling features is voice commands. You can speak into a microphone and order your team around. I did not have one available so I opted for the button controlled version. It was somewhat awkward at first but I got used to it.

This game can be had pretty cheaply at times. I recommend it at a $9.99 or lower price point.

If you like an older game whose graphics still hold up well, this is your game.
If you like your action games with territorial gameplay, this is your game.
If you have power fantasies about toppling nasty governments, this is your game.
If you just like feeling bad ass, this is your game.

Still pretty great.

I've been playing this series since Supreme Ruler 2020. Since that time I have had 5 aggravating problems with these games.

1. The difficulty of moving infantry to other continents or islands.
2. An inability to decide how to generally tweak the AI behavior.
3. An inability to change the name of my country.
4. Performance issues affecting the late game (like queueing military builds or the whole map slowing down when there are more than 2-3k total units in the map).
5. Engagement behavior (usually resulting on England being at war with everyone but being untouchable by everyone but the player).

Now after all the series releases and now all of the patches applied here's what they did with each one.

1. Move the troops to a port and give them the sea transport command and they will turn into merchant marine ships and go where you want them to go. If the troops are amphibious, they will land wherever you want. Problem Fixed!

2. One of the most recent patches allows you to choose AI behaviors such as "Unpredictable", "Aggressive", and "Defensive". Aggressive mode exactly what I always wanted. Problem Fixed

3. You can do this now. Problem Fixed

4. While this problem isn't fixed, it may be unrealistic to expect anything but a faster CPU to solve this. That being said, running a lean and mean military is usually the best way to go economically speaking.

5. Engagement behavior is now improved enough that I generally trust the AI to run my military for me in most situations. It's also advanced enough that the AI countries fighting among themselves is interesting to watch. While the England issue is still somewhat the case, I do see that sometimes the right conditions are met for an aggressor to "chase" across the chunnel. I do think that AI sea invasions could be improved, but they work a considerable amount better than they used to. The only flaw I'm still seeing, is that in aggression a neighboring island is not considered a neighbor enough to trigger a war declaration. Problem mostly fixed

As for the game in general, the main selling feature of this title is its Dynamic Border/Supply System. Borders fluctuate in war based on who is providing the stronger supply to a specific hex in the game. Supply being fed by transportation routes and supply spouts (air fields, supply depots, industry, cities, ports). Troops may capture territory but it is lost if there is no supply to it. The troops themselves rely on supplies and will become immobile without it.

It doesn't sound like much but this concept is what has attracted me to this series for years and its only real downside is that it sometimes results in border gore (whose only fix is to declare war on the country in the other side of the border gore).

The Economic system is not simple, but also not particularly hard to get used to. Certain goods are for industrial demand, certain others are for domestic (some for both). The tax system and the societal spending system affect all of the economy in several different ways (this is the part of the economic system that can be difficult to grasp). Though the game, manual, and website try to explain how these factors affect things, some of the explanations are lacking. So some guess work is in order.

The game has an Espionage system, though I honestly rarely use it. When I do use it, it is simple and straightforward. You give the spies a mission and priority and place them on the enemy hex you want them to do their stuff. They will either succeed or get captured.

The military system is simple on the surface. You fill your production slots with whatever you want built, and it gets built when it's production run ends. However, there are a lot of specific details which are good to learn quickly. For example, which infantry are amphibious, what the fuel range is on a transport plane, and whether one tank type is likelier to survive anti-tank than another. The game can be forgiving in this respect. There's also a manpower mechanic in the way of "reserve troops" that puts both a foundation and a cap on the maximum war power you can field.

There's also a weather system, but I never quite got what the deal is with that.

Overall, I highly recommend this game to strategy/grand strategy fans with decently powerful CPUs (Sandy Bridge and later on Intel side and the new Ryzen chips on the AMD side).