Recent reviews by Pupset

Deserves the high praise, it's just an enjoyable game. Brings elements of traditional roguelikes with a Poker spin allowing many strategies and paths to win.

Surprisingly good game. I was not a fan of the visual style, and it was unfortunately I judged the game based on it. I still don't think it's the prettiest game, but it works just enough to let you enjoy the game in the areas that do shine.
The writing is surprisingly witting and profound at times. This is surprising because a lot of it is wacky millennial humor, but it is written so well that there are more hits than misses.
The gameplay feels crisp and satisfying. Allowing infinite retries on a turn is actually smart and gets rid of any RNG. It encourages the player to get creative and try unique strategies and combos that they may be afraid to try in another game.
The setting and worldbuilding, despite being very light is very cute. Recommended to any fans of xcom-like games.

Very enjoyable combat gameplay. The story is nothing amazing and the characters are pretty flat, but the gameplay itself makes up for it. The overmap boat sequences are not the most satisfying, but they're a good break between combat scenes as they can indeed get stressful. Well paced game in terms of unlocks

Game so good, my main complaint is how short it is. The game seems like it was set up to be a bigger game, but just like the first game, there's 3 small maps to 'explore'. I went and did every side mission possible and the game kept feeling like I was just starting to get the game rolling and it was already ending. Like many games in this genre, the game spikes in difficulty in the beginning but get much easier as you unlock better weapons and skills.
The game's bravado mechanic makes this game much more aggressive than similar games in the genre. It emphasizes setting up puzzle-like set pieces rather than having it feel like a realistic battle. A battle might be complete your first single turn if you set everything up properly. Again, this is highly satisfying to do as it makes every single turn significant, it pulls away from the battles from feeling like battles.
The plot unfortunately was much weaker than Hard West 1. Hard West 1 had an absolutely memorable story with how dark it was and this game did not go in that direction. Instead, it follows the trend of modern games of wacky side characters that become pretty one dimensional. With how short this game is, it's hard to get really invested into the side characters.

I'd like to mention one of the most important features in this game is the 4x speed. There's absolutely no reason for me to wait for horses to move slowly in the open world and for animations to take forever during battles. The fact that I cannot select or look at other characters while my character is moving, I am forced to watch the entire animation play out. This was excruciating and made me quit the game first time around before I discovered this.

What I expected was a simple surface level Rome Xcom, which would've been good enough on its own. Instead this game went way above my expectations.

I will first talk about what makes this game much more than it seems. Two reasons would be the depth of story and characters and the second would be the depth of setting.

This game is a story game and it definitely shines with well written characters from both fictional to real historical figures. Each character is complex and grows throughout as there are many twists and turns. The story kept me immersed the entire time and the choices definitely matter. I found myself carefully reading each dialogue option as every single thing I say can have an impact. I found myself really growing onto my friends in the game and I was deeply emotionally invested and my choices reflected my attachment rather than minmaxing best outcomes.

The second high commendation would be their attention to historical detail. It's clear they had a dedicated historic team as I learned so much about not only Roman history, but from Europe, Asia, and African history and culture as it related to Roman interactions. I learned about how each culture followed their traditions and religions, what Romans enjoy doing in their free time, how a legion works, how the senate is conducted, various foods and drinks consumed at the time, how servitude worked, etc. I have never seen a game imbue so much historical storytelling (outside Assassin's Creed series) in simply how the locations are set up and random dialogue from NPCs without needing to rely on encyclopedia reading. I absolutely felt like I was in Rome as it was.

One thing that I did not expect to commend this game highly on is how they treated the female player character. In every modern game where you can choose between a female and male character, there is basically no difference other than a few lines of dialogue. Take Assassin's Creed: Odyssey for example, another game that takes historical accuracy seriously when it comes to worldbuilding, except in the case of the main character, where a male or female leader basically feel the same. I suppose it comes from a place of inclusion, to say they're not so different and everything can be accomplished by both. It may be more true in current society and it was absolutely not the case in Rome. Expeditions: Rome is the only game I've ever seen that was not afraid to show how different life was for a woman and a man in that time period. Constantly I was blocked in important story moments because I am a woman. Men don't trust me, I cannot own land or hold political office, I need to be married to be taken seriously. This doesn't come from a place of making the game sexist for the sake of it, it comes bringing awareness of how unjust life was for the woman in the period. That is to say, the game also doesn't limit what you are capable of because of your gender. You can still accomplish many things a man can accomplish, but you need to work harder and outstrength and outwit the men to get there, and overcoming that hurdle becomes even more satisfying when you come out on top. I think it can be seen as inspirational to see how capable women are in this game despite their society trying to push them down as much as possible, and doesn't sugarcoat the injustice. The story changes based on gender, just as how your life would be different in Roman society based on your gender.

The XCOM like combat is there, and fairly satisfying, most characters being melee means you don't have to deal with accuracy like XCOM and allows you to plan out your moves better. I played this game on hard difficulty and it absolutely was difficult, there were moments I was ready to give up playing missions over and over again, but I managed in the end in a satisfying way. The skill progression trees are interesting and the game rewards you for experimenting with different skills early so in late game you know exactly the best build for each class (each class basically becomes the same when leveled up enough since the skill tree is limited) It's absolutely satisfying when you finally beat a mission that feels unbeatable and does a great job of making things feel hopeless to make victory sweeter.

There is a overworld legion command and camp logistics and this is easily the worst part of this game. You command legions in battles in a much shallower way than it seems at first. Later on you just end up clicking, more green = good and it became a hassle after just a few battles. Having to load to enter camp very frequently to do logistics tasks severely breaks the flow of the game. I did appreciate there were just enough varied roles for tasks for your followers, though I do wish there was more. I wish this part was more fleshed out as I can see why these logistic elements need to be in the game, much of the rest of the game choices (managing your resources and logistics) relate to these.

Overall, if you like XCOM like combat, history, and decision making branching stories with several companions and well written stories I strongly recommend this game.

This game somehow made me a Czechoslovakian patriot and I knew very little them beforehand.

What an experience. The faults in gameplay is made up by its story and characters and overall ambiance which brings it up to an overall enjoyable experience.
This game borrows a lot of mechanics from games I enjoy; though many of them are not fully fleshed out, there was still plenty to enjoy. Being someone into history, this game taught me lot about a real historic event that happened that I did not know about beforehand and I'm so glad I got to learn about it through this game.
The combat is a pretty familiar real time strategy game, feeling like Iron Harvest, but greatly watered down.
The logistics is very reminiscent of Frostpunk.

To get into the details, the game is divided into these two parts, the combat missions and the train logistics.

The combat missions are easily the game's weakpoint, mainly because of enemy AI. The enemy AI are completely braindead and leads to a lot of cheesable moments. Stealth mechanics end up making the game feel a little silly, rather than the serious tone they were going for. The map designs were overall pretty good and definitely rewarded the player for exploring every single nook and cranny and felt like looking for little easter eggs hidden around. The main criticism of the map design is how predictable most missions are. Almost all missions play like this. There is this hard mission to accomplish, but there's this side mission you can do that makes your main mission much easier. (Finding weapons or allies or a secret path) It kind of took me out of the immersion just knowing that I'm mindlessly beating the missions exactly as the mapmaker intended, rather than really figuring things out on my own. The missions can get repetitive, but most missions to have a slight twist to make them a little bit unique to keep me interested enough to beat them.

The logistics part of the game definitely had potential as it had a lot of what made Frostpunk great, in fact there's a very similar cold element as you need to keep your soldiers warm. There was also just something so badass about the overall premise of maintaining your little train as you make a run towards the finish line. This premise is what really sucked me into the game and I wish this part was more fleshed out as well. Locations that you visit on the map become quickly repetitive. Although there are some unique encounters you can come across, most of the time it's just boring resource collection.
A lot of the upgrades on the trains are boring and don't really make much sense. They're just not exciting. The choices of train cars also feel very limited. There are only 3 engines to choose from for the entire game, which really surprised me. Many roles and cars were just straight useless like the kitchen with chefs, which I though would be essential in a game like this, but turned out to be completely useless.

The character upgrades and getting to know them, I had a bit of feeling of Valkyria Chronicles, and had similar progression trees for each character. Many of the higher level abilities indeed felt pretty fun to play with and I loved the mechanic of rewarding special soldiers after battles, definitely made battles feel more personalized. Each single soldier has unique traits and even their own bio making each of them unique in a way. My only wish would be for them to be more fleshed out like Valkyria Chronicles with at the very least an epilogue on what happened to each soldier, which we never get.

The story and characters are what really drive this game. The relationship between you and your associate Captain Langer is interesting especially with live action scenes where you can actually see him. As a fan of history, knowing that this is based on actual events is very interesting as I not only learn about the Czech legion, but also the Russian civil war.

Overall this game attempts a lot of things. They're not very fleshed out on any of them, but the combination of its parts along with the overall premise bring this game into a much more enjoyable sum.

While I can agree with everyone that this is not worth the money, it's a fine DLC. It doesn't add a whole lot, it adds 3 (and 2 mini) Focus trees and I actually had fun with them. They're not anything crazy, but they're enjoyable enough. It adds some much more flavor to the South American continent. If they were able to make trees for the entire South American continent, plus perhaps Central America, I think it would make it worth the money and get the reviews that it deserves.

Just too slow for me. I get that this game has a lot of charm and I'm sorry to bail before I see everything this game has to offer. This game has amazing reviews and I had to give it a try. It's an overall enjoyable game. The story and characters are cute. The sushi restaurant mechanics are fun. Fishing and gathering is fun for the first few minutes, and then it just drags. You need to constantly go down to collect a few fish and missions and go up to make progress. I want to just progress the story while I'm down there, but no, I have to go up and down and get lost in a sea that's easy to get lost in over and over again. I just don't have the patience for this.
The mechanics were there, but I'm not going to be grinding out materials and fish just to progress a small amount towards a silly story (that I honestly did not really care for)
If you're ok with slow grindy games, I can see why this game can be enjoyable, but it's not the type of game I was expecting here. It feels terrible when you reach a cool spot you know you will eventually be able to unlock, but you're not able to progress until you slowly swim your way across the entire ocean to find a seashell so you can progress the mission before continuing, so that you can try to find your way back here from memory.
Want to gather a couple of fish you like? Well you're gonna have to go through a harpooning animation and do the same QTE over and over and over again so you can earn a few coins when you sell it at the shop.
It's a shame because the game was so close. I was even going to praise how good the pacing was, and it really was for most of the game until it just dragged on and became a slog.

I'm so glad I gave this game a second chance with mods. My biggest problem with the game is there's no hit chance with shots, so I'm going in blindly shooting shots that have no chance to land, and over aiming shots that are guaranteed to hit, and the only thing you have to guide you is some vague hits of +++ and --- that tell you there are some positive or negative chances of hitting, but they don't tell you really how good the chances really are. This makes combat extremely frustrating and unfair as the AI certainly know what their chances really are. Thankfully, the community has already come up with two mods that change this. One just directly tells you the percentage chance to hit, which I love. The other, is more vague, but tells you like 'good chance to hit, 'nearly impossible to hit' etc. This aligns a lot more with I think the devs wanted. Their excuse of they want chaos in the battlefield really doesn't hold up in the rest of the gameplay that show numbers. Stats, money, time, resources, etc. Those are all numbers, so why is the most important number being hidden? It makes no sense.

Now with your chance to hit mod and combat not being absolutely frustrating, you can enjoy your game. I've never really played much Jagged Alliance before, and I'm surprised at how fresh a lot of it feels. You can control multiple squads in the world map and have them move back and forth doing quests and carrying loot between each other. Plus, the enemies regularly launch attacks on strategic locations that you can intercept. The world feels absolutely alive as compared to similar games that feel like the world stops when you, the player, are not doing anything. The quests are interesting and fun and there are plenty of goofy, fun references. This is not a game that takes itself seriously, but I'm glad it doesn't go too far with it and go overboard. There are serious missions and serious moments in the game, which makes for an overall emotional experience as you get so much custom dialogue depending on who is in your squad. Your squad makes different quips and remarks to every quest dialogue and makes them feel very real. Knowing that I would get very different dialogue lines with a different squad, makes my squad choice feel so unique.
The mercs themselves are charming.
However, in the end, I'm left with craving just a little bit more.
A little bit more map, a little bit more choice of mercs, a shopping / selling system.
I would love additional voice lines as they quickly get very repetitive, especially if you stick to the same mercs most of the game.
Ammo is definitely a challenge in the early game as you're relying on RNG to give you some ammo, but it also forces you to be smart in choosing what guns to bring to the fight. There's no reason to use a weaker gun when you have all the ammo you need right? This game smartly gives you as much ammo as you want for weaker guns and rarely for the stronger guns, and I understand the overall lack of ammo can turn people off, and having a shop to make that option available would make the game better. I'm also constantly forever lacking meds and I just accepted I'll go into fights with my injured squad until I bring them to a hospital.

Oh, the overall story is actually pretty good, predictable, but that's what they're going for and it keeps things interesting enough.

Overall, I can only recommend this game with mods, but once you try it, it becomes an amazing game in its genre and stands out.

As good as they say. I've been looking for a game like Curse of Obra Dinn and it definitely scratched that itch. Solving a mystery with very uniquely fleshed out characters keeps me engaged and caring about the people of this city. As a fan of ancient history, this game also tries to teach ancient culture and beliefs if you'd care to learn and is surprisingly accurate in doing so.
The time loop aspect is just the icing on the cake and brings this storytelling to the next level. It feels like Deathloop without the combat but rather focusing on the story and mystery.
This game was an absolute joy and I do hope they continue to make similar games.

It keeps the gameplay fresh by introducing a few puzzle elements and even a tiny horror element, but nothing that overstays its welcome. It also has a point and click mystery game feel as it makes you want to just click and look at everything in case it may be a clue. If not, it at least comes with some history tidbits to learn.

The only negative comment I'd make about the game are the character models. They just look a little odd? Cheap? Like they were generated from some character creator. They tried to have the characters look somewhat realistic but crosses into the uncanny valley a little bit. I think I would've enjoyed it more if the characters were more cartoonish instead of going for a realistic look that ends up looking a little akward. The character models were the only thing preventing me from being fully immersed, but overall it's not a big deal. Also, the character choice at the start really doesn't matter. It's clear they had an interesting idea at the start, perhaps a leftover from the Skyrim mod (I've never played it), but it ultimately doesn't really do much nor adds any replay value, so I feel like they could've taken that out.