Recent reviews by Mikefield Salviae

The game looks nice. The basic mechanics are fine. The economy is OK. That's about it, sadly.

Three simple units per race just does not cut it. When I say simple I mean they only autoattack and do not have any special skills. The game's economical aspect is way too poor to be enough and the military customisation just isn't there at all.

The idea itself is pretty cool - majesty with floating islands - but the game feels just empty and shallow. It needs way more content to be worth playing. Hopefully the devs can grow the game from here but it looks like there is a ton of work ahead of them.

It is a fun, though a bit simplistic. Excellent casual game.

The game is extremely fun and challenging (in the Tactician mode anyway). It holds up to my expectations.

The world of Divinity is huge. The very first act took me about 20h to complete, and allegedly this comprises about 20% of the full game. As you walk around, you encounter countless caverns, events, NPCs and scripted fights. No fight feels generic (as they often did in DOS1); every enemy has a purpose, every encoutner requires good strategy to beat.

As far as the options and the freedom DOS2 gives to players, it's actually very impressive, especially for a party-based RPG. You can teleport your characters through locked doors, access areas you's 'not supposed to be accessing' by flying down the cliffs etc. None of this is an exploit, it's all planned and accounted for. So my tip: take Aerotheurge to level 1 as soon as possible on at least two characters and teleport your team around the map. You will be surprised with the sheer amount of possibilities Larian have given un.

Tactician mode itself makes the game's very beginning (up to lvl 5) insanely difficult. You just don't match the enemies' damage or abilities or defences in any way and you need to cheese a lot. Again, teleport helps out as you can teleport that very annoying enemy down the cliff or to a locked room and deal with their companions. When you get some decent gear and scale up with levels, the fights are mostly winnable without reloading though (so the other two modes are most likely going to feel too easy).


The bugs (savegame loading times/crashes and Fort Joy market crashes) in the game itself have been fixed within 2 days of the release, over the weekend (kudos to Larian for that) so I have nothing to complain about anymore. The game is great and worth the coin!

Extremely smooth, quick, rewarding and entertaining.

I was very excited to play Stormguard but my first hour of gameplay made me regret the purchase, leading to a refund.

Here is the TL;DR of the review, pinpointing my main issues with the game:
- Clunky interfaces (ugly and slow city screen, plain and boring dungeon map screen)
- Buggy, easily explotable AI which tends to make unacceptable decisions for a 20$ game
- Slow, plain, unrewarding combat with very little variety and no flavour
- Almost non-existent itemization: no loot, bad design of items
- Horrible stat system which removes anticipation from evolving your characters and unlocking new gear (what gear?)
- Hideous visuals; the game should have been done in 2D as 3D just makes the overall experience even worse

Storm Guard welcomes you with a very clunky and unfinished interface; everything feels slow and delayed (and I played the game on a high-end rig). Just pressing the buttons makes you feel like the game is an unfinished early access product. And it gets worse.

The city screen welcomes you with a few customisation options and unveils that the game is a Darkest Dungeon clone with some key features taken out (item-based character customisation reduced to oversimplified upgrades purchased at the forge, poor spell leveling system and a lot more of clunkyness accompanying whatever you do). Since the game has nothing to offer but combat, it was quite a bummer to find out that the loot is basically non-existent and was replaced with some basic character-bound (and locked) items which do not add any additional depth to the game.

Then you get to combat part and this is where it gets VERY disappointing. Fights are buggy and very basic to say the least. The bugs are numerous: monsters just pass their turn for no particular reason, freeze and do nothing for 20s and then pass their turn, walk around and do nothing etc. while the game sometimes fails to remove AP from the player after they use abilities and autoattacks in quick succession. Starting positions never vary, AI is poor and easily tricked on the hardest difficulty while the monsters feel like they're just not balanced well enough. You would expect some depth in combat, some interesting ability combinations you can utilize, complexity introduced by the terrain, anything really but it's just not there. Animations are slow and clunky once again, even on the 'fastest' combat speed the game just feels extremely 'off'.The stat system is poorly designed, leaving much more than to be desired to RNG and since combat is much slower-paced than Darkest Dungeon it is not that favourable to leave everything to blind luck. The player is left with very few informed choices and quite a lot of luck to rely on. When the fights finish the rewards are very little for the effort and time spent in combat (also there is no real loot due to horrible itemization).

Then you just realize that this is everything the game has to offer: horrible, unresponsive UI and plain, buggy boring combat which feels like a chore. This game is nothing like Darkest Dungeon, it is not thrilling, it's poorly designed and just really underdeveloped for a 20$ product.

1/10 game, sadly

I thought this game was nice. Decent-looking MOBA with TPP view. We started playing with friends and the game soon turned out to be an unplayable joke. There are smurfs everywhere in low levels and matchmaking system does nothing with it, unlike in other respectable MOBA games.

We played as a team of 3 in Joust. Every game we were up against people with extremely high winrates (90%+) and AVERAGE KDAs of 20.0. We played 30 games, lost 28. Often there would be players with high hero mastery level (e.g. mastery level 9 and 10 were our common matches). We got stomped every time and we had no way to even learn the basics of this game. What kind of matchmaking is this to make complete newcomers below level 10 play versus experienced players?

We all uninstalled and moved back to League.

This game is not newcomer-friendly, I highly recommend trying out other MOBAs instead of this one.

10/10
This is hands down the best RPG I have ever played in my life. It has everything.

Story is deep and engaging, with all the interesting twists and turns, exciting NPC stories, darkness, magic, difficult choices you have to make on every step you make, exciting places to explore... The world of Pillars is vibrant, magical and complete. The background: lore (gods, monsters, cities, woods, villages), huge green crystals of Adra growing everywhere in the world, it all creates a unique fantasy experience.

Music is just great, visuals are top-notch and I'm really glad they went with hand-drawn environments instead of going for clunky 3D style of of contemporary RPGs go with. The game is extremely pleasant to watch and experience on the sensual level.

Now to the meta side of the game. Character creation is excellent (the game also allows you to create a full party of your own!) with plenty of classes, races, skills and traits to choose from. Combat is really difficult on Path of the Damned level if someone likes challenging encounters (I do!), there is also a 15-level megadungeon with plenty of loot and gold to be found (and many dangerous foes). Character progression is great and rewarding. Itemization is another huge thing in PoE. There are countless items you can find granting you stats, special traits, passive bonuses, on-hit effects and so on. It's really great!

It's a must-play for every RPG fan.

This isn't a next Baldur's Gate title. It's as far from IE or even NWN games as a game can be. The plot is not engaging at all, visuals are mediocre at best, so you end up cutting through endless hordes of enemies. Is it such a bad thing though?

If you are looking for challenging combat and engaging plot, go for Pillars of Eternity. It's all there, PoE is a fully-fledged RPG which will bring back all the best memories you have of both Baldur's Gates, Icewind Dale 2 and Neverwinter Nights titles.

If you want to just enjoy a dungeon crawl, I'd say this game isn't any worse than Pillars. Graphically PoE wins, but then the boss fights are much more engaging in Sword Coast Legends. I wouldn't call this game a RPG, it's like a Dunegon Siege 2 set in Forgotten Realms. Which is totally fine.

Music is good, combat is nice and dynamic, items to collect are many and foes are evil, bloodthirsty and die in hundreds of ridiculous ways. You also have an option to venture deep into a procedurally generated dungeons (which you can customize, including rewards and bosses!) whenever you want to, with a party of your own or with some other players in online co-op.

Gear provides you with meaningful choices, the character development is very decent and generally speaking the game is a solid Hack n'Slash experience.

7/10.

Looking for out-of-the box game that has features of a Hack n'Slash, MMORPG and Tower Defense? This is the game for you! It is casual (but rewards those who put their time into playing it), it has excellent equipment system with amazing variety, decent hero progression and a lot of tactical planning. You can play it solo (it allows you to create your own "party" of heroes), with friends or with some random people.

Despite it being an alpha version, the game is perfectly playable and offers hours and hours (and hours) of content. Constant updates keep the game balanced and add lots of content. It's very intuitive (apart from map selection but well, it's an alpha after all), the engine is solid and the game as-such is quite nicely balanced. It's definitely worth supporting. The only comparably good Tower Defense game I have ever played is its predecessor, Dungeon Defenders 1.