Recent reviews by AreYouSmarterThanACheeseGrater?

An interesting blend of Netstorm: Islands at War’s island hopping gameplay loop (the maps contain many small islands that can be connected to your territory by way of bridges, which both give you more resources to gather and more land to build on) coupled with Majesty: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim’s indirect hero control and magic systems (your units cannot be directly controlled. Instead, you place order flags to tell your units what you want them to do).

If you’re look for an RTS that’s a little different from the stock standard “mass all the units and throw them at the enemy lolololol” then check out Driftlands.

1670 Shots made, over 620 holes and 5 hours and I have zero idea of why this is still so entertaining.

While Heat Signature's premise is pretty simple (Complete missions to liberate stations to take over the sector), the game itself is not. Missions range from killing a specific target, to stealing a specific item, to hijacking ships and rescuing prisoners.

The thing that really really impresses me, though is the tools the game gives you to get the job done. There are leathal and non-leathal ways to deal with pretty much any situation. With the right gear you can even pretty much ignore enemies entirely. From tools that let you copy security keys from a distance to tools that subvert or knock out enemy turrets and shielding to three different flavours of teleporters (Intantly move from one place to another [but not through doors], swapping places with someone else or teleporting anywhere within range for a few seconds).

All in all, I'm having a blast with this... Even when I'm not paying attention to the fact I'm firing a shotgun at an enemy standing next to a window and I'm just about to send him (and me) hurtling out of the ship and into space.

I came into NieR:Automata with the expectations of a game with a great concept, but basic core gameplay and plenty of little niggling issues that would lessen the experience. What I got was a game that could very well be one of my favourite games of all. Yes, there are some technical issues (I had some lag issues in some areas, although following the tweak guide helpped with that a lot), but overall, I had a blast.

A simple, but very well executed game. Well worth the price of admission.

I would like to preface this by saying there are a number of optimisation issues that are causing some users to experience low framerates (below 30 FPS) and some graphical glitching. NISA are aware of the problem and are trying to fix the issues, but please be aware that until it is fixed, you may experience some issues. EDIT 06/03/2016 - NISA have released a number of patches that seemed to have fixed most of the issues. There may be a few remaining minor issues, but the major ones have been fixed.

The Good:

Its Disgaea on PC! While the story is pretty basic, the writing is very self-aware. The main story will take about 20 - 30 hours to complete the first time around, but the meat of the game lies within the Item World and the bonus bosses. The Item World is a series of random maps that are used to strengthen items. As you progress through the Item World of your chosen item, it will gain levels equal to the number of floors you have cleared, which will improve its stats. Something to keep in mind: the more powerful the item, the stronger the enemies are.

The Bad:

Its Disgaea 1 on PC! This is a port of the original Disgaea game, with the addons from the PSP port "Afternoon of Darkness", so the complaints are the same: Many bills in the Dark Assembly are locked until you reach a specific rank in the Dark Assembly. Some Item World maps can be unwinnable because the game creates sections of land too far apart. If you execute a series of actions, any unused actions cannot be undone (ie, if you attack an enemy with 5 characters and the third one kills that enemy, the last two characters will still be counted as having taken their action for that turn). Also keep in mind that when using a controller, the game will only offer prompts for generic buttons (ie Button 1 is accept, Button 2 is cancel)