Recent reviews by Macdallan

I haven't even made it to 30 minutes and I've decided to refund this game because it's very basic, not much fun, and nothing in it seems to be well designed or executed which surprised me a bit given its current review scores...

The noise they went with for characters "speaking" with one another sounds like a nearly broken horn honking quickly and at different pitches and it's simply nothing but annoying and it is 100% unnecessary. The dialogue boxes are huge, they zoom in and out in a very strange way when characters are talking, and they look really bad. The bulk of the dialogue I saw so far isn't engaging at all, and there are some pretty bad choices made with it right out of the gate such as the "bet" related conversation in the "tavern."

The graphics are a mixed bag. The bulk of the character portraits look wrong, something is off about them, but the combat graphics for the character are okay given the style they chose, however a lot of the background looks blurry or smudged.

The UI is a clunky, block mess and the default shortcuts are very strange. Space bar to move to the next character instead of TAB. Ctrl-e or something like that instead of space bar or enter to end turn. Makes no sense. Rotating characters in combat is also very clunky because you can only rotate them 90 degrees in a clockwise direction so if you want them to turn 90 degrees counter clockwise then you have to rotate them 3 times clockwise... not sure why they didn't put in a system to allow us to easily select direction with a single key press to orient the facing toward the mouse. It's super annoying because facing is VERY important so you will be adjusting this often since being backstabbed is a good way to take extra damage or get killed.

Combat is rudimentary at best, not well designed, and pretty dull. I did a couple fights and it just wasn't good enough to make me want to keep playing. There don't seem to be any zones of control or attacks of opportunity so you can just walk behind enemies with no penalty for prancing around in combat and get "backstabs" on them and they can do the same to you. Archers can only attack in straight lines along the four cardinal directions only, there are no diagonal shots allowed for some reason. Seems the same for some magic attacks and for melee as well. You can't rotate characters after they attack either, they just stand there with their back toward enemies. This forces you to play in a very, very specific way and it's not fun.

This game also does something I loathe - loot pickups in combat. These are only fine if there's a good in game reason why the characters can't take 30 seconds to stop and pick up whatever the enemies drop. It's not like I can't pick that stuff up after the fight when I win, and it's not like I need to pick anything up if I lose because I'm dead. The enemies in the early game also drop only a bit of money, no gear at all even when they're obviously carrying weapons and wearing armour, and it doesn't seem like I can equip anything either but I didn't bother to look into that any further because there was really nothing to make me want to keep playing after the first 20-ish minutes anyway...

I found the gameplay extremely repetitive and boring. There's not much beyond pick piece, rotate piece, place piece.

Win conditions are often unclear such as "Be the last one left." In that case the game doesn't actually want me to be the last one left, it wants me to be the last one that is able to place a piece on the board and that should be made clear before the match starts because that would make it much easier to build toward that goal.

The poor dialogue and near-constant laughing when characters were talking to one another was annoying.

There's a bit too much RNG involved in the gameplay and not enough actual strategy, for example in the early matches I played I felt like I was being punished for trying to make use of room placement and completion bonuses and rewarded for simply picking high value rooms to place no matter how I slapped them down on the board.

This could have been a brilliant puzzle game but it's not. 3/10 at most. Refunding now...

TL:DR - I finally installed it and played it... for about 20 minutes. I have already uninstalled it and wish I had tried it sooner so I could have refunded it.

First mission? A stereotypical "kill rats in the basement" mission. That was my first clue that I might not be happy with this game.

The combat feels boring, clunky, and very slow. Movement is one square at a time unless you use an ability. The whole card ability system is just... dull, and none of the abilities felt interesting, or impactful, or fun. Too many of them were too similar.

Every fight just felt the same, too. Didn't matter what the enemy looked like or what they were. I would just slowly move toward the enemy - no cover mechanics or anything like overwatch seemed to exist and then I would use a ranged attack when I was close enough. Half the time it would just outright kill the enemy in one hit, sometimes it would take two hits. Melee? Same thing once in range - I would click to attack and the enemy would instantly die, or I would click to use an ability like the circular attack and the enemies I hit would just die... no strategy needed, no effort required. Very rarely would an enemy survive the first hit, only one of the "boss" characters I fought took more than a couple hits to kill but even that fight was super easy. Don't think I ever took enough damage to be concerned about losing a fight, didn't really try to avoid hits or use any "strategy."

The graphics aren't too bad for the style they chose but you can't zoom in and the combat effects are pretty hard to see because it's all so small. Since you can't zoom in and everything is pretty small you can't even tell what half the characters and enemies are supposed to be.

Apparently you can eventually build up a town, add more characters to your roster, but... I just couldn't force myself to keep playing long enough to do that.

Not one thing about it made me want to keep playing after about 20 minutes so I really can't rate this higher than a 3/10.

This game is... well, it's pretty terrible. I really wish I had played it sooner so I could have refunded it.

The graphics are mediocre and I don't really like the art style they went with, not a fan of how clunky movement and combat feel either. You aren't able to choose which routes you take on the map, you have to go between pre-determined points so you can't just go exploring. Gameplay is tedious at best, painful and dull at worst.

There are way too many low quality effects in combat, so many you can't see what's really going on. Combat just isn't much fun and you end up sitting and waiting for NPCs to finish their turns, just watching things play out on screen. See, in the early game you will get into fights where there are multiple factions involved, eight or more other people taking actions, but you're alone so you take your actions then sit and wait. And wait. And... wait some more. Not what I would call fun. Also not much fun getting into that first "tutorial" fight and having the guards do 90% of the work.

There are a lot of pointless game mechanics like "investigating" people you meet to see information about them that is useless, and also mostly information that isn't exactly hard to figure out. After an "investigation" you can learn that the absolutely huge and heavily muscled guy over there looks strong? Really? You don't say... You also "investigate" things at different locations such as the initial crime scene you go look at but pretty much everything you need to look at is indicated with an icon so all you do is click on each thing to learn about them. You don't actually have to look around or figure out what to click on, just click the door, then click the icons, then click the other door to leave. You aren't actually doing anything. The writing isn't great either.

This feels like a first attempt at a strategy RPG with an investigative twist and it just falls flat in almost every way. A good try, but not a game I want to keep playing.

Played it for about 30 minutes. Combat was not fun, combat systems are clunky. I didn't like the way they implemented anything. UI was tolerable but not great. Most enemies died in a single hit, occasionally it took two hits, and the animations for combat weren't great. Didn't feel like there was much strategy to the combat even though they implemented half cover, full cover, overwatch mechanics for melee and ranged attacks. Some skills didn't seem to make sense like one skill that allowed an instant reload if you hit your target and also used no ammo for some unexplained reason. Not keen on the story, not impressed with the graphics, voice acting is mostly pretty rough and some of it is just plain bad.

I kind of wish I hadn't waited so long to try this because I can't refund it now...

Edit: Appreciate a reply from the developer but there's nothing you folks can help me with, this isn't a case of me needing assistance with anything. To improve the overall experience there will have to be significant changes to the core combat systems at the very least. This has absolutely nothing to do with getting to know the game better. I could easily recognise the issues after just 30-ish minutes of play so spending more time will do nothing but make the problems the game has even more obvious than they already are. I may try the game again when it hits version 1.0 because you folks might end up making the necessary adjustments to make this game fun to play. Early access is all about getting feedback from players and since you responded to my review that means you folks are at least paying attention to what is being said about your game. Good luck with the rest of development.

TL:DR? Got one word for ya. Disappointment.

The first game in the series is decent but sadly this one takes more than a few steps in the wrong directions. The graphics just don't look right, the gameplay doesn't feel right especially compared to the first game, the camera movements during combat and all the little noises when you "roll" for your skill use are frustratingly annoying, the new movement system in combat doesn't really add anything to the game, the strategic depth of the first game feels like it's completely gone, and it's just unpleasant to play.

Even character creation is clunky and annoying. No idea why they set it up the way they did, it's not user friendly at all. You can't even click the random button twice in a row for a random character design without moving the mouse off the random button and then hovering over it again. It's so bad, and that's such a rookie mistake that should have been caught and fixed ages ago, that it makes you wonder if the developers actually tested the entire character creation system for more than a few minutes.

I waited for a long time before giving this one a try and I only had to play one single dungeon to know that this game isn't for me. I've already requested a refund. Score? Maybe a 3/10. Maybe. Would have given it a solid 4 if they did something other than going with the silly item cost inflation system from the first game. There are other ways to balance your game that make more sense and are more FUN than that, folks.

This game is very good and deserves the very high positive review score that it has on Steam. It is easily a solid 9/10, maybe even slightly higher. A few systems and mechanics are set up to be a bit more clunky than they really need to be but it's a work in progress and I have a feeling the team behind this is going to sort everything out. Absolutely worth the full price and I should have picked this gem up sooner than I did.

Edit: I'm nearing the end of the current content, game's still solid.

I wasn't impressed with this at all. Feels like they put a lot of time into the cutscenes and combat animation cutscenes but not into making the combat fun and interesting. The overall gameplay and controls scream "mobile game" quite loudly.

The combat animations are just miniature cutscenes and seem to include a bunch of people fighting in the background of the scene that aren't there when you're in between combat animations, this is a turn based game and they just... disappear after the combat animations play. It's jarring and unwelcome.

You can shut these off, and I did because they're annoying and only slow down the game (you can also speed them up but then the look silly), but then characters just kind of move toward each other when they attack and... well, that's about it. A few numbers fly up on screen and their health changes, and that's really all you see. It's too bad combat animations weren't done properly from the same camera view as the rest of combat. That would be a big step in the right direction but I don't think that would be enough on its own.

The graphics really fell flat and I didn't like the writing (story and dialogue), and some of the voice acting wasn't very good. At one point your main character says an enemy character's name like they are surprised to see them but they called that same character by name during the dialog in the previous combat turn so they already knew that person was there. Things like this show a lack of attention to detail, and a lack of care.

I highly recommend you look into this one very carefully before making a purchase, I'll be refunding - it's not for me.

The demo that I played of this game quite a while ago seemed like a good start. Unfortunately the full version seems like they didn't get very far past the demo, and it lacks the substance and balance it needs to be a good game. I played for about an hour and the promise that the game seemed to have in the demo just wasn't there anymore, and it wasn't really any fun to play.

A big issue is that the game mechanics are pretty rudimentary and are not balanced well. One of the best examples of this is how poorly balanced the three character races are and how useless some of the class abilities are compared to others. It's like they had no time for testing, and did no balancing at all.

The area for each turn based fight is just too small, it's often the same every time you get info a fight, and it is too frequently littered with "environmental hazards." The fights don't feel very tactical and the overall gameplay is repetitive - very repetitive.

For some reason you can craft items but you cannot repair items you have crafted at the bench where you craft those items. Instead you have to pay someone to fix the items for you. This makes zero sense because if you know how to make something out of a pile of scrap you should be able to make repairs using more scrap.

The writing isn't terrible but isn't very good either, not really engaging. The daily time limit, which limits the number of "nodes" you can travel, simply isn't long enough. It takes way too long to go to places that you should be able to easily visit 3 or 4 times in a day. For example you will waste almost an entire day going to the cafeteria ONCE and doing a few short encounters along the way.

Based on the demo I expected a lot more from the full release and it did not deliver. I am refunding the game. It's about a 3/10 for me.

Hate to do this to a SteamWorld game but I simply can't recommend this one. City building is dull, uninspired, boring, dull, a time waster, too easy, and dull. No idea how they managed to make it so tedious, repetitive, and dull. I'm refunding this one and I suggest you avoid it unless you love boring, uninspired gameplay that's duller than a marshmallow. Oh, and the whole train station resources thing is poorly designed and poorly explained, it basically works backwards to how you think it works.

Did I mention that the city building is dull? All you do is spam residential buildings because you need a ridiculous number of workers to get anything done, and then slap down a few support buildings within close proximity to make sure you meet their needs. You do get a chance to upgrade/modify some buildings but that's about as complex as it gets, and it's still dulls-ville.

I couldn't stick with it beyond the city building stage of my very first game. The other stage might be brilliant but it doesn't really matter because I was falling asleep while playing the city building stage.