Recent reviews by TheoreticalString

I LOVE this game. I've played so many turn based games, from XCOM WOTC to Chaos Gate to Templar Battleforce to Showgunners.

This is in the top tier. Missions are wonderfully varied, challenging, and force you to think. It has a great mix of stealth and combat - the best I've ever seen. The interface is flexible and NOT tile based, which is really cool. The classes are great, the weapons make you think about what you want, the cyberimplants are fun.

The dev is constantly releasing new content post-launch too. We've already gotten a bevy of new items and a brand new class. It's amazing.

Only thing that would make it better is a city map, but fingers crossed devs will implement one. They've said they'll support this with new content for at least two years.

Worth every penny.

This has to be the most divisive game I've ever tried to recommend. Does it deserve its rating on Steam? Uh... kind of. First of all, let me say there are MUCH worse games with better ratings. There are mediocre games rated "mostly positive" that don't have a tenth of the heart, passion, imagination, and love that went into this game. This game is beautiful.

The heart was also in the right place. The new mechanics are stellar. The new Barbarian system is going to be the gold standard for all Civilization games moving forward, Generals are an inspired addition that are fantastic, and I love the mid-game conditions that actually reward you for colonizing and going out into the world (rather than the midgame turtle of previous titles). I am a huge fan of the Age system, which gives more of a flow and goals to gameplay, increases strategic depth, and makes choices far more interesting. Now you have to consider civ unlocks in settles and actions, different civs feel different, choices have impact. It is a deeper and more complex game than Civ 6, in all the right ways.

So um, is it better. Uhhhhhh... well...

The UI is terrible. Just utter dogwater. They've been trying to fix it, but it still is awful. There are mechanics that literally no one currently understands. Like we don't know if they're bugged or not, no one knows how they work. The interface is appallingly uncommunicative.

Icons are not visually distinct, and information is communicated excessively poorly. They've been improving the UI in multiple patches, so it is now in a state where we can say it's one step backwards from Civ 4/5 and two steps backwards from Civ 6. That's a huge improvement over launch, but that's still bad.

The game feels half complete. Things like religion are just half baked. Practically quarter baked. The AI is dumb as toast, and breaks on simple things like game speed being adjusted (why). Sometimes ages will flip over and everyone will just decide to mass declare war on you when they were friendly with you last age. Sometimes the AI will trek halfway across the world to settle a city directly between two of your cities for no apparent reason. Sometimes a city of yours will just not be on a trade network, and you have no idea why. They are still fiddling with the modern age win conditions, which are obviously insufficiently playtested. The entire game is insufficiently tested.

I love this game, so I'm giving this a very lukewarm thumbs up. I've played dozens of hours with my friends - oh, multiplayer still has massive issues. Good golly it's a turn based game, how can I be having lag and synchronization issues? This is not a fighting game where we need frame perfect inputs, how can we have synchronization issues?

Anyway, I've played a bunch, and will play a bunch more, and therefore I recommend this, but if you wait a year you're probably smarter than I am.

It's an evolution of Dungeons 3, but fixed most of the things that I had an issue with in that game. There's now four core creatures for each faction (up from three) and each faction is viable as a solo faction. Research has been reorganized into more sensible sections - you no longer have to go horde for traps, or undead to upgrade horde creatures, etc. Instead of the boring +damage/health research, research is now individual to creatures and a lot more interesting.

Most of all, it's just more of the fun of Dungeons 3. An over the top plotline, self-aware 4th wall breaking, etc. The gameplay is still tight - enough time that you can build a dungeon and get things going, but with enough pressure you have to go out on the map.

Overall I highly recommend it, and they've already added two new skirmish maps (with new abilities attached!). Hopefully this is supported just as long as Dungeons 3 was, and I see no reason it wouldn't be. Great developer, great game.

This feels like an Early Access title, which I'm kind of hoping it is. There's the bones of a good game here - it's got good placement mechanics, it's fun, there's good graphics and I like the narrator. But... oh boy, the mechanics. The AI idiots will just give up and... not fill their needs. There's like 25 empty toilets and they want a toilet. Payday is a disaster and a half. You learn you're just supposed to replace people constantly, which fit with the evil overlord I suppose, but it sucks that it's pure RNG if you can level someone up.

It's also got a lot of glitches that will hang the game, and a few crashes. These should all eventually be solved, but right now they're not.

I'll update this if the game updates to fixes this, because there's the boens of a decent dungeon management game here, but right now.. this ain't it.

This has quickly become one of my favorite games. What the game page will tell you is that it's an XCOM-inspired evolution of the Tactical RPG. What it won't tell you is that it's one of the best tactical RPGs I've ever played, with great balance, powerful characters, and truly challenging missions that manage to push your "OP" builds to their limits.

Many games offer you "lots of choices on how to build things", but the content is so trivial, or one build is so obviously better there's no real choices. In this game, it feels like every build choice is meaningful. You can go back, swap around masteries, build something completely different. Because there's so many options, you end up mixing and matching, truly making something personal.

What this game has:
9 Characters (all unique!)
Items, skills, and passives (masteries) that really change the gameplay up
Deep tactical decisions
Pets
Mechanical pets!
Interesting maps
Multiple enemy types that really feel different (Bicrons/Beasts/Criminals)
Cool minibosses


Oh and characters you get invested in. There's no "save the world" plot (at least not in Season 1), instead you get a bunch of characters who are all doing things for their own reasons. Whether it's to help a friend, to follow a friend, for "justice", or just because they want to be paid, they all have unique personalities.

And for fun, the major enemies don't really care about our heroes too much until our heroes start taking them down because they're criminals. They're caught up in a gang war between their criminal empire, a criminal quasi-governmental organization (the Black Tigers), and a group of religious extremists.

PROs:
- Tons of content
- Tons of replayability
- Lots of builds
- Good graphics
- Great gameplay
- Fun story with good characters.

CONs:
- Long game. This won't be done in 10 hours
- Complex game. You will feel lost at times with the number of things you can do (it's fine to just focus on a few of them)
- Missions are great. Sidequests are just "do the mission". They're not even really content. There's effectively no sidequests (this may change - another chapter is planned)
- In-game cutscenes and talking heads. There's no CGI here. This is a $25 title (and worth every penny).

Do you like the idea of Chimera Squad, but wish there was actual options for character builds and 10x the content? Do you like tactical RPGs? Do you like XCOM but wish the soldiers had a bit more personality at times? This is the perfect game for you.

Are you just inbetween XCOMs? Well, get this! It'll definitely hold you over, and entertain you.