Recent reviews by Skully

I absolutely love this game. I have over a thousand games on steam and have been playing games since Wizardry I on the Apple IIe in 1982. Mind over Magic is now one of my all time favourites and I'll keep coming back to it.

It's strategic with just enough randomness to make it fun when replaying. It has a learning curve but once you're over that it's superb.

I highly recommend it to anyone who likes management and building games. It's way different to most in that genre, but that's what makes it special.

One request to the developer - Can we have some more character models please? This would help the replay-ability even more.

It's early days but I love where this game is going. Gameplay and story are refreshingly good and I've never put graphics above them nor depth - this game has insane amounts of depth. The current narrative is this game is like single player runescape but for me it reminds me of the original massive single player rpg - Daggerfall.

I love the skill system which is my preferred method of skilling up by doing rather than killing something, getting points and putting those points in any skill you want.

I'll come back and update this when I'm 100 hours in.

At the time of writing this review this game is broken, despite being an upgrade from the previous version with similar code.

Game breaking issues
1. Once a player bottoms out on form I am unable to lift them out of their slump. No matter the training nor dropping down in grade to win some games. I can't get their form to budge after persevering for 6 months - I give up. (This is better since the patch but still is an issue for me.)
2. Players who are 2 out of 4 stars gain 0.02% after a week's training. While others gain 25% under the same training regime. While peaking and this makes some sense to a degree, it makes no sense with a young player yet to reach maturity. (This is better since the patch but still is an issue for me.)

3. While Main game plan is easy to master, the third game plan doesn't budge after training it weekly for a year.

4. Players with "Attacking or Offensive" tactics Win disproportionately more than other players with "On the Body or Deviation" as their main game plan.

5. I like to micro manage training. The game makes this incredibly frustrating. It reverts the training I set to some AI script ALL the time and doesn't allow me to customize training between matches.

Minor annoyances
There are entire sections of academy upgrades which do nothing other than enhance your academy's prestige.

In the profit and loss section of finances the game mixes in capital improvements with operational costs. These should be separated out so you can easily see the profitability of your academy and in any organization they would not be included in operational costs.

While I buy and play all of the games in this series I really dislike having to pay full price each year when its at best a DLC worth of upgrade. This is my last purchase in this series. Not enough progress, not enough innovation between releases and still the same old bugs exist.

The price is right for this game and while I was tempted to give it a thumbs down the price saved it. The game lacks balance and falls short on its mechanics. It has some great ideas, and okay game loop but it could be better with simple improvements.

1) The way stats improve is too fast.
2) For some reason VIP subs were making 1m a stream in chapter 3 and then back to a realistic 4k in chapter 4.
3) stream awards should be pushed onto the player. You shouldnt get to decide when they are. There should be dates which roll around consistently, giving you a few shots at them.
4) lacks depth. You should be able to choose your own home, furniture and layout. the town you choose should affect internet speed and food availability.

I've played most of Raptor Claw Games and this one falls short of its potential. The idle tower game is by far their best.

Highly recommended game. For someone who loves strategy, manager and tycoon games this game was quite enjoyable. The scenarios were more enjoyable than the sandbox which is unusual. It isn't perfect but the solo developer has done an exceptional job.

I've paid 10X as much and not had as much fun.

It's simple on the surface but there are so many ways to succeed or fail. Endgame is missing something which is probably why I was enjoying the scenarios more than the sandbox.

I'm really disappointed that this simulation is still fundamentally broken. I gave it time and waited for the patches, but still its throws out unrealistic results.

I wanted nothing more than for it to work, but when a 76 rated fighter loses to a 25 rated fighter, it's just insane. What's the point of training my fighters up. May as well roll the dice with them when they're all 24 rated.

Released in 2016 and still a better game than F1 Manager 2022 and 2023.

I love this game. I was surprised how fun and deep it is. The stuff that happens on earth is only the first phase, Then comes building stations, ships and bases - this is what excites me the most about this game.

Get it while it's on sale this weekend. If not - it's still good value at full price. If you have any doubts - I recommend watching PerunGamingAU series on youtube to see if it's the game for you.

It may look simple but it's a complex game. There's not much RNG and as a fan of Football Manager I think this game is awesome with lots of potential.

The gameplay loop is a lot of fun. Once you learn the ropes its fun to challenge yourself with low prestige teams and recruit strategically to slowly improve their standing and results.

I would love to see some achievements or challenge, similar to motorsport manager where you take on the worst team and win the national championship within 15 or 20 years.

While there is so much taken from Motorsport Manager I'm still loving it and there's enough new and different mechanics and aspects to make it worthwhile.

But I do feel like the game design team played Motorsport Manager and took everything they liked from it.