Recent reviews by Sphinx

If you are tired of PS2 era graphics and lazy game design from the actual Pokemon games, and are bored to tears of the slow, rock-paper scissors turn based combat, Palworld isn't the actual answer. It's a completely different game, much more like ARK or Valheim. The difference being, you command pets for your survival and building tasks.

The only real similarity to Pokemon is the catching of cute monsters with balls and battling them against things. In this area it is a massive breath of fresh air. Combat is quick and fluid, with you joining in from the background with various long-ranged weaponry or up close and personal with a few different types of melee weapons. Don't expect a ton of depth out of what you can hit things with, it's still focused on your pets, but the gunplay is still satisfying enough as a 3rd person shooter.

The catching mechanic feels amazing. You really can run into 10 pals in a cluster, aoe them all with your mount, then throw a bunch a balls and catch them all in a few seconds. You don't even need to stick around to watch the timer. As someone burnt out on how slow Pokemon is, this is amazing.

It's also nice how well designed the pals are. It's almost like they took a list of the top 100 most popular Pokemon, created pals inspired by them, and threw them in the game. They definitely knew their audience making this. There are only a handful of pals I didn't like.

There are some negatives to Palworld though. While it's much more complete than most Early Access titles, there are plenty of bugs to deal with, from falling through the world to the dedicated servers being kind of a mess. The grind in endgame is pretty wild too. Expect to have 2 full ore mining bases just to fund your ball crafting, which doesn't even touch adding gun ammo on top of that. I ended up using melee for most of the game since bullets were just so ridiculous to craft. We're talking thousands of ore required to really hit level 50 and catch em' all, and way more if you want to use guns while you do it.

The building mechanics are also incredibly basic. You only have a few blocks, and what you can do with them is severely limited. Ironically this is probably for the best right now, because complex buildings and bases will ruin your pals pathing more than anything. As someone who usually spends stupid amounts of time building beautiful castles and houses in games like Valheim, my endgame in Palworld was basically just a bunch of flat stone slabs to avoid pathing bugs. I'm sure this will all be fixed eventually though.

The final endgame bossfights and legendary pals are really fun to catch and fight. Breeding is a lot more streamlined than Pokemon so it's not hard at all to min-max a full team of badasses. And you probably will need to, since the 10 minute timer on the "final" boss is pretty rough without some good pals. Or a jet dragon and rocket launcher is fine too.

Marequest has many mares. This is good, as mares are superior to everything. Befriend mares and play mini games with a good feelsy soundtrack. Extremely comfort in mare.

Very cute mares. Very cute mare interactions. Very cute mare accessories. Very cute mare story. Mares are friendship. Marequest is friendship.

If you like Baldur's Gate 2 and find Pillars of Eternity and Dragon Age to be way too simplified, this is the best game out there. It's everything a successor to the BG series should be. A straight upgrade to the formula with so many amazing builds and items to play around with that you will probably never have time to try them all.

The mythic paths take it to the next level. I've never gone back and immediately replayed a game right after beating one before. Usually I'll give it a few years. This wasn't the case for WOTR. The second I finished my angel game, I went back and redid it with a brand new party aiming for Trickster and the ascension ending, and I wasn't disappointed at all. There are just so many choices and paths to take, and while the main overall progression through the game is similar, the amount of variability makes it so much different.


Some just key good points:


Loot is amazing and fun to get. Lots of build defining pieces. I respecced A LOT.

Tons of enemy types and things you need to actively counter. It's something games like Pillars of Eternity don't do much at all. Luckily lots of classes have access to said counters, and scrolls are plentiful if you just want to use magic device it instead.

Party members are really entertaining. I actually had a custom merc party on my first run but loved the few interactions I had so much that I went back and used all the companions for the second run.

The setting and story is unique. It's high fantasy, but it shifts it to another level with the worldwound.

The main baddie reminds me of Irenicus from BG2, who is still one of my favorite villains in games. They even talk similiar.

Angel makes you feel glorious, Trickster makes you feel like chaos. The mythic paths are amazing. I heard Gold Dragon and Devil are kinda lacking, but if you pick either of the former two, they will give you that fantasy.

COMPLEXITY. This is good! There are so many feats, items, classes, and interactions between everything that you really can create absolutely insane builds.

Crusade mode is pretty neat. It's pretty stupidly easy once you figure out the trick to it, but still a neat little management thing kinda like a ghetto Heroes of Might and Magic. And Trickster gets fun units.



Some negative points:


Characters move really slow, especially on the overworld map. Moving armies around is a pain. Luckily there are mods for that.

You can't respec in core/hard mode, which seems pretty dumb in a game where half the fun is playing with wild builds and swapping around when you find neat items. Luckily again, there is a mod for that. It even lets you respec companions as mercenaries so you can swap their portaits, names, and completely redo their build.

Buffing can get super tedious. There are a LOT of buffs, and on hard/core you are 100% going to want as many as possible. Luckily again, there is an AMAZING mod for this that lets you one click cast every single buff your party can possibly cast before resting on whatever target you want with minimal setup instantly. My first Hard run was such a chore with buffs, but with the mod on my core run it was a lot of fun to chase down obscure ones from obscure classes for max power.

Crusade mode could have used a lot more fleshing out or harder enemies to defeat. Like I mentioned above in pros, your "hero" is way too strong, to the point of units being completely worthless outside of damage sponges. Once you figure out the trick, you can basically complete the crusade in a week or two then ignore it.


Anyway, I 100% recommend WOTR. I can't wait to see what Owlcat comes up with for a 3rd game. I'm just sad I took so long to get to this one.

Art style of Monster Train, similiar to Slay the Spire. It's a good game. The final challenge addons are a lot more difficult to play around than the other two's leveling systems, so that might be an issue later as it kinda railroads you into specific decks, but it's still fun.

If you like roguelike deckbuilding games, this is definitely one of the best. It's Slay the Spire with an actual story and loads more extra stuff, from more classes to way more abilities and monster types. Definitely one of the best in this genre out there. It starts a little easy if you have played this type of game before, but the difficulty ramps up as you get further in.

This is what Pokemon in 2020 should be. With an actual good story.

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Pros:

--Ever feel like it was weird that no one in Pokemon was acknowledging your badassery? This one strokes your hero boner harder than any game. You will constantly be praised for saving things, advancing your rank, and a host of other things as you progress through the game, a lot of times by NPC's you have already talked to who have updated dialogue every time you advance.
--Lots of awesome Nexomon to choose from with designs that honestly are better than Pokemon in a lot of cases. I find myself wanting to swap mons out way more in this since I run into so many cool ones.
--Gearing up Nexomon is fun
--TONS of boss fights
--The catching system is much more involved.
--Collecting in general. There are so many ways to advance your ability to catch, buy, get money, and other things.
--Scaling wilderness areas removes the need to level up super low level nexomon if you want to switch. You can just go back later and catch a higher level one.
--Scaling trainers makes for a fun challenge later. Refighting any trainer after a short cooldown,
--Challenge in general. It's so much better than Pokemon on that front. Instead of fighting 30 people in a row with 1 pidgey each, you fight 2 with 5 fully evolved beasts each. 100% improvement. Items are actually useful, and you will be restocking constantly to keep your mons healthy. They are also really cheap, so can use them freely and wild encounters drop gold.
--Grinding is stupidly easy with EXP items. 2-4 kills a level.
--The story is actually neat. Much more involved and epic than any of the recent Pokemon games.
--Freedom. You can go pretty much anywhere early on, with tons of side areas to explore. More unlocks as you get abilities.
--HM's don't need an HM slave. They are just part of your character.
--Tons of side stuff throughout the game. Feels like Zelda almost with how often you get distracted with another side quest or path.
--It's cheap
--Coco. Coco is hilarious and best companion.

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Neutral:

--No EXP share. Some like it. You don't really need it though with scaling mons.
--No PVP. Honestly I never enjoyed rock-paper-scizzors pokemon PVP, but lots do.
--Only one ATK stat, no special ATK. I don't really miss it, but the complexity is nice in Pokemon
--No EV/IV/Natures. Every Loki is the same as every other Loki. Personally I've always hated the grind that was EV/IV/Natures, so I'm good with it. I know a lot of people love them though.

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Cons:

--No online trading
--Nexomon only have a single type (though some of them get a lot of abilities from another type, so your normal might get tons of rock abilities)
--Not a ton of side game things like Safari Zone or game corner in Pokemon
--Less systems in general than Pokemon. Nexomon can wear 4 pieces of gear, but the gear is basic stat stuff. No evolution stones. No special evolution. Just level based.
--No TM system
--No genders and breeding, but without IV/EV its kinda pointless anyway.
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All in all, it's a great game. Character designs are top notch. The art is beautiful. I really hope it does well so we can get more. Expanding on this formula will only do it well. If you are tired of easier and easier Pokemon every generation, this is the answer. You can't beat it for 20 bucks.

If you like tactics games, this is one of the best out there. If you've played Final Fantasy Tactics, you know what to expect. It does everything there and more with a much better difficulty level. There were many maps I had to repeat due to getting wrecked and having to re-evaluate my strategy.

What really sets this one apart is the customization. Stuff that would usually be DLC packs in any other game or just impossible to do is completely available here. Custom portraits, loads of costumes, and the really smart idea to let you use any classes look on any character.

Highly recommend, especially for the price point. I'd pay double what I paid for it.

A super well polished shooter for the most part with some interesting darksouls style mechanics and awesome boss fights. Definitely recommended. The only negative was the lack of levels, but they are jam-packed with different enemy types to make it a lot more interesting, something many modern games don't really do much of. Everything just feels good.

I don't usually have the patience for stealth games, but this one keeps the momentum going really well somehow. Neat main character, interesting twist, and worth the hours put into it. It's a bit short for the full $50 price tag though and the ending is super abrupt, I'd wait for a sale