Đánh giá gần đây bởi Dimitri Cosmos

Strategy and Tactics: Dark Ages is a casual, pseudohistoric, turn-based strategy game that consists of 9 unlockable scenarios, which reward you with points that you can spend for permanently upgrading your units and hiring better generals. Different units have different strengths, weaknesses, and abilities. Different generals have different passive and active abilities, as well as stats that can be leveled up (up to 7 levels for legendary generals). This means some RPG elements: as generals level up their positive traits improve and negative traits minimise (if they have any in the first place). Likewise, as units progress from rookies to elites (up to 9 levels), they unlock different skills that become better with each level. The pseudohistoric aspect is that the different factions are based on Vikings, Mongols, Persians/Babylonians, Holy Roman Empire, Carolingian Empire, the Hansa, England, France and Ireland — and all of them in the same timeline and geographical area. Additionally, some of the generals are based on real historical figures, such as Genghis Khan and Jean d'Arc.

If you have played CK2, you'll be familiar with the battle system. It's pretty much the same but visualised with cards. The battles are just a numbers game; the strategy part is that you have to take into account the army formations, flank positions, unit composition and numbers, their skills and levels, general traits, as well as terrain and weather effects. The actual battle is autoresolved. You can only watch and replay the rounds.

Weirdly, the units have no maintenance costs, you only pay for recruiting and reinforcing.
Since the AI is not capable of managing economy and, in general, is quite dumb, the gameplay is very easy. The AI opponents don't even declare wars against weaker opponents, unless that's written in the scenario.

Additionally, there are ways to exploit the game: (1) you can incite riots in enemy provinces and then just add them to your territory without declaring a war; (2) you can hire powerful mercenaries and spawn them anywhere in your territory; (3) you can take advantage of the fact that alliances don't mean open borders — you can use that to save on garrisons, when fighting multiple enemies at once; unfortunately, this also plays against you, because your allies are equally useless and you can’t enter their territory without declaring a war.

And, after you have replayed all scenarios, you DO wish to cheese from time to time, since the scenarios are quite long and gameplay involves a lot of grinding and waiting, especially, before you have upgraded your units.

What makes the waiting even longer is that the generals can perform only one of three actions per turn (a special skill, moving and recruiting; only adding, removing or replacing squads does not cost an action point). I really don't see why this was necessary.

Another weird thing is that you can't hire or disband garrison squads in the settlements without having a general in the position. It's a chore, especially, because there's a limit of how many squads per turn a general can hire and switching between recruiting, splitting and battle formation screens more than two times crashes the game.

Speaking of which, the game crashes a lot, even randomly.

Oh, and the tutorial and hints don’t cover all minor rules and details of the game. A few things you have to learn by trial and error.

On the bright side, the artworks are pretty, the units are cool, the scenarios are interesting. And I really liked upgrading the units and then testing them against different troops.

This game had a lot of potential and with more polish, it could have been really great. Unfortunately, its development has been abandoned. You can't even play all factions featured in the game.

However, as a cheap, casual strategy game it might be worth your time. I certainly don't regret purchasing it and had quite a lot of fun. And so can you… if you have patience for grinding and frequent crashing.

My overall rating: 7/10.

Vampire Fall: Origins is a story of how vampires came into existence. One of its main antagonists is a character from Serbian folklore. In addition, there are several other pop culture and folklore references in the game. The main plot and side quests are bare-bones, but interesting enough to keep you going until the end. It's all spiced up with some humour. Albeit that humour might not be to everyone's taste. It's very "meta" and often trolls the player. The fourth wall is broken often.

The core of the game is looting for better equipment and upgrading your character. This is accomplished through finishing quests, random encounters and hunting for special boss-level enemies, called Brutals. Some grinding is involved, but it didn't feel tedious, because the game does a pretty good job at stimulating dopamine release in your "reward system". There's always another quest to complete, another item to collect gold for, another skill to unlock, another Brutal to defeat. Unlike in another RPGs, the items don't have level or stat restrictions. You can acquire pretty much any item available on your difficulty ("rebirth") level at any time, as long as you can afford it.

The game features two large maps that you can explore at your own pace, while doing the quests or whenever. Some say that the travelling is too slow, but with the fast-travelling potions it's not that bad. At least you get some random encounters for additional XP and loot along the way. It would have been nice though, if one could fast-travel to any location, not just the main cities/villages. It's no Skyrim or Witcher 3, but there are enough interesting nooks and crannies in the game world anyway. The only thing I didn't like about the game world was the colour palette: cold blue and green along with some muddy earth tones. Melting snow, mud, and swamps everywhere. I live in a country that looks like that 2/3 of the year. It would have been nice to see something different from the real life in a game world. On the other hand, I can't complain too much. It's a game about vampires, it HAS to be dark and gritty.

The best aspect of the game is the combat. I like that it's turn-based and some strategy is involved. There's room for various character builds. It matters what kind of weapons and abilities you use and in what order. Additionally, there are combat rounds, which provide energy rush and allow you to unleash a sequence of buffs, debuffs and attacks. This aspect of the combat makes you think, when to save your "focus" (mana) and when to invest it. Unfortunately, not all abilities are equally useful at all points of the game and against all enemies. So, against standard enemies you would be using the same one to three abilities all the time. I believe this changes on higher difficulties when you really need to put effort into manoeuvring around attacks and defences of your enemies.

As far as the character customisation is concerned, you can choose your gender, clan (various insignificant perma-bonuses), and appearance. You can change your hairstyle, tattoos, and facial hair at any point from the menu (these options need to be purchased though). You can also purchase and change helmets and wing sets. These provide bonuses and you can toggle their display on and off. Additionally, you can reset your clan and skills for gold in one of the towns in the game. There are also things called bloodstones that allow you to improve your equipment. It's possible to transfer them from one equipment to another, however, the success chance of forging bloodstones into your items drops with each successful enhancement. Later in the game, on higher difficulties, especially when fighting Brutals, you might need to switch between character builds. There are a few locations in the game (called lairs) for that purpose where you can store your items. You can also have companions in this game, called familiars, that provide you with bonuses and back-up in combat. But I am not sure, if they are available in the Steam version of the game or only in the mobile version. I know that they are acquired after completing certain end-game challenges, but I didn't progress far enough into my next rebirth, to unlock them.

So, to sum up, VFO is really what it presents itself as: an old school RPG with a twist. The twist is the turn-based combat with a combo round. It's also a port of a mobile game. The mobile version has more features, but those features do not concern the story or core gameplay. The Steam version includes the same expansion as the mobile version. You get about 20 hours of gameplay with the base game "Origins", and, additionally, 20 more hours with the expansion "The Hunt for Sava". I think the only significant difference is that the mobile version has PvP and some additional dungeons for XP and loot farming. But I don't care for PvP, and I didn't feel underpowered due to lack of dungeons. So, it's ok with me. Supposedly, the Steam version has better textures and sound.

VFO is also a labour of love of a dedicated small indie dev team of three people. And as such it's really an accomplishment.

My overall rating: 8/10.

An interesting story that is faithful to the spirit of Camarilla and Vampire the Masquerade.
Impressive level of branching, which means some replayability.
Unlike in the Night Road, the protagonist does not become powerful enough to take on elder vampires (except for a few specific scenarios). Instead, he/she has to carefully forge and/or maintain alliances and decide what information reveal and to whom and which questions to ask.

Also, the stats do not mean as much, the focus is on the reputation and relationships.

My only complaints about this game are following: (1) in some instances, it didn't really matter which dialogue option I chose, the outcome was pretty much the same, and (2) I could only reveal partial information to people that I've had decided to trust.

Of all the three Vampire the Masquerade that Choice of Games has released so far, Night Road is my favourite, but Parliament of Knives comes close. Out for Blood was not bad, but it didn't really fit the usual VtM frame. I wish Paradox Interactive would extend their licence, so that Choice of Games can keep releasing VtM games.
I've read/played another game by Jeffrey Dean, Werewolves: Haven Rising, and I recommend it, too.

As to Parliament of Knives, my overall rating is: 9/10.

Short verdict HARDCORE TO THE MEGA!! YEAGH!!!

Disco Elysium, as admitted by the devs, was inspired by Planescape: Torment, which is considered the best cRPG of all time. But, frankly, I think that this honour belongs to Disco Elysium. At least, as far as the story goes. This masterpiece has proven that you can create a deeply engaging RPG without any combat at all. It was something I was waiting for a long time. A game that you can get completely immersed into, forgetting about the real world. It touches your emotional strings in a way that is comparable to the final mission in Mass Effect 2 or the death of Vesemir in Witcher 3. Disco Elysium is now my third most favourite game of all time. Since the experience was fresh, there were moments when it even felt like number one.

DE takes place in a fictional world of Elysium that is a somewhat surreal representation of our current world, a mishmash of different ages and ideologies. To name a few elements, it includes steampunk, disco, rave, anarchism, communism, fascism, liberalism, corruption, corporate capitalism, perversion, apocalypse, war, racism, drug use, cryptozoology, mysticism, and madness. More specifically, it takes place in Martinaise, a decrepit poor neighbourhood in the once proud city of Revachol in a post-war era.

The main protagonist is a flamboyant, suicidal alcoholic/drug addict/ superdetective with amnesia who wakes up in a trashed up hotel room with no recollection of prior events or who he is and even without any grasp of basic concepts like money.

The story is centered around a murder investigation. When it comes to the actual detective work, it's the most detailed that I've seen in any video game. There are a lot of them; people will lie and conceal information from you; different conclusions can be drawn, based on the number of clues discovered and skills available.

However, above all, it's a story of self-discovery, re-evaluation of personal values and (potentially) of self-redemption. It is accomplished by a complex narrative, extremely flexible and detailed dialogue system and a unique skill system, in which each skill acts as an inner voice that shapes your personality and determine the available dialogue options. Additionally, there's a perk system called the "thought cabinet", that allows to process and internalize protagonist's memories, shaping his personality and skillset further.

This, along with the rough artstyle, dream-like landscapes and music, create a deeply immersive and emotional experience. Even somewhat psychedelic, I would say. The game map is small (you can run from the furthest point to the furthest point in 2 minutes), but it's saturated with content. After playing long enough, you internalize the world around you. The world map starts to feel like the map of the protagonist's mind and, by proxy, your mind, because you — the player — are shaping the protagonist's personality. It's like magical realism in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's books. The outter world is a reflection of the inner world and everything is mixed in a surreal composition. The real becomes unreal and the unreal becomes real. The dialogues and the atmosphere resonated with me deeply, stirring weird feelings that bordered on altered states of mind. I even had dreams about this game.

Yet, at the same time this game can be goofy and funny. You can fool around, wear outlandish clothes, go on crazy side quests. Nothing in this game is repetitive or boring. Everything is multi-faceted. And almost everything is flexible in terms of choices.

DE doesn't shy away from controversial topics either. It's pretty much free of any censorship. Punching children, selling drugs to children, racial supremacy, black humour about dead people, sexism, sexual harassment, rape, curse words that would probably get my review banned by Steam - these are just few of the elements and options that you can encounter in the game.

The story is the most important aspect of a game to me. The narrative in DE is like no other. It's strong, deep, complex, saturated, and uninhibited. And that's why I think DE is the best cRPG of all time.

It's not perfect though. There were some minor faults and things that I didn't like.

I understand that this game is largely about failure and, perhaps, also about being caught up in events that you can't change. But I'm not sure I liked the fact that your skills are capped by your attributes and your attributes are quite limited. So you can either start as a completely average character or a character who is good in one thing, but a loser in another. The attributes are intellect, psyche, physique and motorics. My first impulse was to create a character that is somewhat similar to me, but with the attribute points available I couldn't do even that. A partial loser or a complete mediocrity were the only two options available to me. Maybe I'm too used to playing with the "chosen ones", but it felt weird to start as a partially handicapped character. Fortunately, it's possible to change some things with thoughts (perks) and items, but not by much. I'm not saying that the character has to be godlike, but I was not expecting severe limitations either.

Additionally, the attribute caps severely limit the dialogue options and even the encounters available to you. After about 20 hours of gameplay, I realised that I'm not ok with that. I'm not ok on missing content and replaying a game with this much dialogue and basically with one major outcome just for a few extra encounters and side missions. Therefore, I modified my attributes in the save file. Ironically, I missed some of the tasks anyway. I don't feel like I ruined the gameplay for myself, but you might feel otherwise, if you are a true role-player. As I've said, failure is a big part of this game, and failed skill checks actually might offer you unique outcomes and options that you wouldn't see otherwise. I just wanted to see as much as possible in one playthrough. And I think that workarounds or alternative skill checks would have been better game design choices than locking content behind specific dice roll outcomes.

It also means that DE has limited replayability. If you cheat, you experience pretty much everything there is to experience. If you don't cheat, you can re-play different archetypes and catch-up on some of the side quests. However, considering that the main story line pretty much goes down the same way no matter what, is it even enough for a re-play? I see myself re-playing this game after a long while, when I've forgotten enough about the story to enjoy it again. Maybe I'll try to be an apocalyptic supercop next time instead of a moralist sorrycop. But I really, really would have preferred more than one possible ending and an option to choose sides. All you could choose were your copotype (personality type) and the preferred ideology. So, I guess, the game was more about how and not about what.

Speaking of ideologies, I think they were not presented in a meaningful way. They didn't affect anything, apart from some dialogue choices, and there was no strong incentive to choose any of them. They were not even explained in a good way.

I was also disappointed with the outcome of the investigation. The murderer's motive seemed weak to me and the additional factor contributing to his decision even more so. It's as if everything that happened in the game was just a bad coincidence. It kind of makes sense and fits the overall theme well enough, but I was expecting something more grand and pre-mediated.

In overall, the outcome of the investigation, the abrupt ending and the fact that the ending was basically a mere re-cap of your actions soured the aftertaste for me a bit.

Nonetheless, 9.5/10.

Arkham Horror: Mother's Embrace, despite sharing a name with another boardgame, is an attempt to bring the Mansions of Madness boardgame to the virtual environment. Even the main game folder is named "Mansions of Madness". If you are familiar with the board games by Fantasy Flight Games/Chaosium, you will be familiar with the setting. And, if you have previously played games like X-Com or Shadowrun, you will be familiar with the turn-based combat.

If I had to describe AH:ME in one word it would be "clumsy". It's inventory management is clumsy. And it's combat interface is clumsy. It also has a lot of useless clues that serve no purpose (just like in the Chthulhu Mythos board games, but still).

To move objects, you have to left click them, choose a right click context action "move" and select a destination slot. If you are moving stacked object, you also have to select how many of them you want to move. I think a simple drag and drop approach would have been better and Shift + left click could serve for dividing stacks.

Inventory is severely limited, and you can't stack more than 5 items in a slot. It's annoying, but understandable, given that the Cthulhu Mythos board games are also extremely punishing towards the players and the playable characters with the right equipment are much more powerful than the monsters.

After each chapter, the equipment is transferred to the party chest; which is comfortable, if you want to choose different investigators, not so much, if you want to continue with the same team.

True to the original material, there are a lot of sanity checks, and sanity is the most important stat. You check sanity/lose sanity, whenever the Mythos clock advances full cycle, whenever you encounter a monster or even when you examine a mildly disturbing clue. I would argue that the investigators would adapt to certain things with time and should not get scared every time they see blood or a dead body, but I guess, without the sanity checks and traumas, there wouldn't be any challenge at all. The sanity system serves as an approximation of the cosmic scale otherworldly horrors that the characters encountered in H. P. Lovecraft's stories, so that's the thing with these games. It's a rough approach, but I can live with it.

Whereas the skill checks are on a whole different level of absurdity. You're lucky, if you have a character on your team with the right skill to tell which choice to make. However, if you don't, you have to make an educated guess, based on the key words. The problem is that not always those keywords are present, or several choices are equally logical or even the correct choice is not logical at all. So, on your first playthrough, you lose a lot of sanity points simply because of arbitrary skill checks.

When it comes to combat, it's the same clunky interface as for inventory. You have to choose an action, then the target, then confirm it. If you are choosing to attack, you have to select a weapon to equip it and then you have to select it AGAIN to attack. Why one click was not enough is beyond my comprehension. A few chapters in the game, you also discover that, when it comes to weapons: firearms > melee weapons > spell books. Also, since attacking is usually the optimal action, in most of the situations, I didn't find spell casting or condition removal (Radithor) worth the action points.

There are also some puzzles in the game linked to the investigation. The hints don't always make sense, but, at some point, I stopped caring.

AH:ME has many flaws. Another one that I haven't mentioned are the painted textures that really don't look good on a full HD monitor. And the first impressions are really bad. Oh, and the narration. The game is narrated by an old lady, who represents the Keeper. The comic nature of her remarks breaks the immersion and strongly contrasts with the overall atmosphere of gloom and mystery.

However, despite all of that, I do like this game. Because it succeeds in two things that matter to me the most: the story and the atmosphere. When I didn't have to listen to the narrator's remarks, I felt immersed in the spooky atmosphere. It was a similar level of immersion, as when playing the original boardgame with my buddies. And the overall story, pulp fiction that it is, is good. It's your typical Lovecraftian horror against the background of prohibition era New England and New Orleans.


And, if that's something you're looking for, this game is worth a shot. Just be warned that the first two chapters are pretty bad. If you can get past the first impressions, there is some enjoyment to have. The gameplay is very linear, though. So there’s barely any replay value.

My overall rating: 6.5/10.

Let's be honest. The real reason to buy Tabletop Simulator is to play the board games from the Steam Workshop. So, the real question is: is the experience comparable?

And the answer is: it definitely is, and, in some ways, it's even better.

With the digital environment, you don't have to waste time to sort the components, there are scripts to automate the actions, there's no risk of losing any component and you can even clone them.

Custom figurines, environments, music, and animations help the immersion.

Additionally, with the multiplayer you can always find other people to play with. There's a hotseat mode, too.

On the downside, you lose the face-to-face interaction with other people, and, since you have to zoom in and zoom out from the table and move the components with a mouse, some of the actions take more time than in real life. It also takes some time to get used to the key bindings and the interface, which is not the most intuitive one, so I had to watch some tutorials; however, if you can learn rules of a board game, you can get a grasp of the interface, too.

Finally, there are some official DLCs for some board games, as well as in-built classic games, like poker or chess. So, if you're into that, that's an option. However, I wouldn't recommend a Tabletop Simulator/Workshop version over official stand-alone adaptation of games, such as, Ticket to Ride or Witcher: the Adventure Game or Scythe.

Nevertheless, Tabletop Simulator has, probably, the best price-for-value of any product on Steam, and I highly recommend it for any person who likes board games. Especially, during the pandemics when the gathering options are restricted.

My overall rating: 9/10

Town of Salem is a SOCIAL deduction game. The emphasis is on SOCIAL, because, if you are not ready to socialize, this game is not for you. There is some strategy to this game, but to become an expert you need to wrap your head around numerous roles, their actions and counteractions. The game pace is quite fast, you have to juggle a lot of information at the same time and you have only 30 s to make a decision.

It's easy to learn, but hard to master, but no matter of your skill level, there's always room for some casual fun.

To juice things up, the game offers plenty of customisation options, different game modes and hell-of-a-lot achievements.

I haven't reached the ranked mode yet. Judging from the other reviews there are a lot toxic players. However, so far I haven't encountered any in the casual games. I had quite a lot of fun in the classic mode, even though I didn't know what I was doing half of the time.

There's also a free version of this game on other platforms, so you don't neccessarily need to buy it here. The free versions have ads, though. And you can refer your friends to them for additional in-game bonuses.

I wish there was also a mode without any random roles to learn the ropes for beginners, as well as some pre-made answers for specific roles to save time for communication and to guide the decision making.

But for what it is, Town of Salem is a nice, little, casual game to have fun in with your friends or solo.

My overall rating: 7/10

This game is 2 in 1: Hunter: the Reckoning (minus the Imbued part) + Vampire: the Masquerade. There are several possible endings, and you can choose sides and to decide either to stay mortal or become a vampire. The first half is promising and well-paced, but the ending is kind of abrupt and everything leading to it felt rushed. I also spotted a few inconsistencies in the story along the way. The whole picture is not revealed in one playthrough, so, I guess, there's some replay value in this, but I feel little incentive to do it, because I didn't really connect with any of the characters and the story in general; therefore, I don't really care what could have happened, had I taken different choices. You can pretty much guess it from the story and the achievements page anyway.

The quality of this game is much lower than in the Night Road, so I feel disappointed after finishing it. But I don't feel disappointed enough to give it a thumb down. And I appreciate the attempt to write a VtM story from a human's perspective.

My overall rating: 6/10

You know how people say that, if you had played one Ubisoft game, you have played all of them? It's kind of the same thing with Paradox games. They are glorified Excel spreadsheets with random events and dice throwing mechanics to compensate for the deficiencies in AI and game balance, and, frankly, lack of things to do.

EU4 is the second Paradox game that I have played after CK2. Although, EU4 is objectively better, I enjoyed it less. Partially, because of my gaming fatigue, partially because of the reasons mentioned before.

Eventually, the same thing happened to me as in CK2: I progressed far into the game, to realise that basically it's going to be about watching some numbers grow and waiting for time to pass. It's not as boring as in CK2, because EU4 actually provides you some set pathways in the form of reform progress, ideas, regions, trade nodes and, my favourite part, the mission trees, but still.

It's fun, while you're learning stuff and expanding, but sooner or later it gets dull. So, you have to set up some goals for yourself. You know, like in a sandbox. But I really don't think that a strategy game should be like a sandbox, it should be about strategy, about an intellectual challenge, where you are being rewarded for making the right decisions and punished for making the wrong decisions. It is like that in EU4 to some extent, but it's also largely about luck, especially, if you're starting as a small nation. Many people who have thousands of hours in this game start achievement hunting. Is it because there's lack of things to do and the replay value is small? I don't know, decide for yourself.

Anyhow, here's a list of GOOD and BAD things about EU4:

[+] Historical accuracy to some extent;
[+] Mods;
[+] Various aspects of state governance (stability, army, navy, diplomacy, trade, economy, science, ideas, colonisation, religion, exploration, resources), albeit some of these aspects are very rudimentary;
[+] A good amount of diplomatic actions, albeit the usefulness of them is lessened by the stupidity of AI and randomness of the game;
[+] Mission trees and national ideas;

[-] Random events (because, God forbid, you're doing too well) and random outcomes;
[-] Lack of unified frontlines during the war and inability of the AI to effectively control its army;
[-] The difficulty of the game doesn't really depend on the chosen difficulty level, but on the size and location of the chosen country.

Usually, at the end of my reviews, I give a numerical rating to a game. It represents my satisfaction with the game. I would give 6/10 to EU4, but I gave 8 to CK2, which is more primitive from strategical perspective. Therefore, to account for my gaming fatigue, and to be fair to the scope of its content,

My final verdict for EU4: 8/10.

p.s. I really hope that someone finally nudges "Paradox" a bit in their niche of historical grand strategy games. They have got too comfortable without any considerable competition.

There's not much to say about this game. It's a shooter on rails with humour and style ala "Pulp Fiction" or "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels". It's short, fun, pretty and with a difficulty level for everyone. Just chill and shoot some goons.


My overall rating: 8/10