Recent reviews by KHOVANSKI BOOTS

IT'S LIKE APEX LEGENDS BUT SOCCER. I DON'T EVEN LIKE SOCCER AND THIS IS STILL FUN AF. THE RULES ARE EASY TO PICK UP IF YOU SUCK AT SPORTS.

8-bit Lords of Magic/Might and Magic/Age of Wonders type game with a bunch of modern mechanics thrown in. There are a bunch of different races that definitely feel unique and different to play, and the AI will kick your ass until you start catching up with the 'meta' of the game.

Balance between races is definitely a little inconsistent. I started out the game maining Arcane, and after losing dozens of times, finally came out as the victor in a 1v1v1v1 game. The next game, I played the cultist race and absolutely steamrolled the next highest difficulty opponents on the same map. After experimenting with both the openers and late games of all of the races, it seems like there's a decent amount of counterplay that you can do if your scouting is good.

Combat can be as involved or as AFK as wanted. Mages will definitely require a lot more APM, but it gives you a lot more direct control of how a fight can go (with AOE cc's or powerful single target nukes for high-value targets, for example). I've seen some crazy dudes on Youtube that do a bunch of microing for each one of their units, and I can't say I have gotten to that point or have any desire to. It does seem like there is a big difference in fight outcomes when the super sweaty mechanics are utilized though.

Great game, tons of replay value. Really wish there was online multiplayer (perhaps with 20 second turn timer limits or something).

Close-your-eyes-at-night-and-see-conveyor-belts simulator

AWESOME GAME. FLOOR IS LAVA ROCKS

AWESOME GAME.

Much like the first, but a bit more refined in just about every way, incomprehensible/goofy plot and all.

It seems these days there are two schools of thought with CRPGs: 1) real time with pause, and 2) turned based.

In this reviewer's opinion, real-time is a superior experience when compared against the turn-based scheme that Larian seems to be going for with their titles, especially in the co-op context. It's very much a split between a more MOBA-like game in which a team fluidly and naturally learns each others' strengths and weaknesses as players, and a min-maxxed DND-style grindfest where every decision is made with tons of thought and perfection, and most of the drama comes from failing saves/dicerolls.

In real-time-with-pause gameplay, the fundamentals of hero-control, animation management, cast-times and positioning all come into play constantly because there isn't the time to decide what pinpoint-perfect action your character will make; and this is with an incredibly deep RPG backdrop to boot. Real time with pause has your party making tons of mistakes every fight, but as a result, it fosters a sense of individual responsibility and coordination/communication with the team to achieve the goal. And when a fight does go perfectly, it feels like an accomplishment, not just a string of lucky dice rolls.

If you have played other CRPGs to death, make sure you have a similar goal as your co-op partners. In Divinity Original Sin co-op (both 1 and 2), if your partners aren't crisp with their turns, you may find yourself often bored/frustrated, checking your phone during long decisions, etc., since the individual characters themselves aren't necessarily too complex, even at endgame (although I do think that an endgame experience where your party doesn't just steamroll everything is a genre-wide weakness for CRPGs).

Both this game and DOS1 struck me as more engaging experiences when each player, controls more than one character. An individual character build just doesn't have enough meaningful decision making to warrant an conscious, living, breathing person controlling each of the 4 party characters. A team of 2 each controlling 2 seems to be much more reasonable, which I believe is the extent of the co-op that DOS1 offered. I remember doing a duo lone wolf run with a friend after we had finished a 4 party game (each controlling 2) afterwards, and immediately got so bored because of how snoresville it was just managing 1 single character in that game.

Although DOS2 & DOS1 are undoubtedly titans of the genre, Pillars of Eternity (1 & 2), Tyranny, and some of the older ADND 2.0 sims like Icewind Dale and Baldur's Gate still strike a devoted portion of the fanbase as more engaging, both in terms of story and gameplay. Especially in the older CRPGs, once the co-op team is comfortable playing without pausing at all, it's very reminiscent of playing a MOBA insofar as how your team's plays start naturally coming together as synergies and attack animations/backswings become second nature to them. This also enhances replay-ability, as the different classes actually feel different from a movement/animation management perspective (MOBA players will know what I'm talking about here...)

But do not get me wrong, Larian RPGs are a great introduction to the genre for a modern audience (check out the old-school Divinity games too if you're into the goofy tongue-in-cheek type dialogue; I personally cringe every time it comes up). I just hope they expand their mechanics a bit to capture a bit more of the harder-core CRPG fanbase with a future game.

ITS LIKE AN RPG WHERE YOU CONTROL 40 CHARACTERS

With all of the garbage triple-A FPS games coming out each year, it's refreshing to see one take a few chances, and not take itself too seriously. However, Shadow Warrior does have its flaws that make it almost unplayable.

The melee combat is, in my opinion, the centerpiece of Shadow Warrior. Although it feels a bit "squishy" before you unlock any karma powers, once you have some actual tools at your disposal, it's actually a blast. For a bit.

Cutting through endless waves of relatively stupid demons is enough to entertain the player for a while, but there's a certain viscerality and tension-building that is very clearly missing. The maps are boring, and encounters are done on very level playing fields. Lo Wang has the ability to dash and sprint short distances, but that's about it as far as movement goes. In short, you will never find yourself jumping in this game. It's useless. After playing for a while, many fights against the greater demons become a repetitive cycle of kiting and slashing.

And by repetitive, I mean it. The only insane thing about the Insane difficulty was the amount of health some of the demons had. With every enemy attack being relatively easy to dodge (and on the off chance you DO get hit, you have an ability to heal with a channeling spell) the hardest part of the game is killing off the smaller mobs just so they don't block you to death. And after the hard part is over, you're tasked with slashing at the big dumb demon for 5 minutes with your butterknife. Boss fights take a literal (no joke) hour of constant shooting to down. It's almost comical how incorrect the pacing is. However, I can't speak for the easier difficulties.

Now, I would have actually been fine with the ridiculously tanky bosses, if the game actually let you use your sword on them. Because as it stands, it is impossible to kill any of the bosses using the sword (the most fun part of the game). There is a rather encompassing array of standard FPS weapons (including a crossbow, rocket launcher, whatever), but each of the weapons feels so ineffectual you are compelled to use the sword to have any fun. In fact, at the beginning of the game when you do pick up a pistol, it deals so little damage and feels so inaccurate that I thought it was an intentional design choice to convey the message: "USE THE SWORD INSTEAD, IDIOT," kind of like in Mirror's Edge. But alas, you're lost at sea with a broken paddle (or in this case, a BB gun) and your only way home, so you can play the REAL game, is to hold down LMB for 55 minutes.

The story is better than most.

The humor is cringey at times, and hilarious at others. Hoji, a clever and quipping spirit that you befriend, by and far carries the game's dialogue and makes it endurable.

All in all, Shadow Warrior seems to try to do what DOOM 2016 succeeded at: be a kickass, lightspeed, demonslaying simulator. It's just a shame that in this game, everybody that lives in Hell has adamantium flesh and blood.

It's playable, but your right index finger might be sore for a bit afterwards.

An incredibly deep pioneering sandbox truly gives you a vast multitude of choices. The crafting system is very complex, and the number of things you can build (from ships, to carts, to houses, to forges, to blacksmithing tools, to woodcutting tools, to looms, to horse equipment, to bows, etc.) give you absolute freedom over what you want your character to specialize in. Because of how complex it is to make a "simple" item, such as a crate, everything you accomplish truly feels like an accomplishment, and the objects that you create have a great deal of permanence and pride associated with them.

On many servers, there are no pre-set "quests" to go out and do. Your level of enjoyment is purely dictated by goals that you set for YOURSELF, not goals set by NPCs.

In addition to this, there is a solid system set in place to start a village with your friends, and on certain servers, expand that to a kingdom if you have enough followers. Because of the length of time it takes to accomplish certain tasks alone, it is an enormous advantage to team up with people, and cooperate to achieve a greater, overarching goal.

It's impossible for me to give a comprehensive overview of the game, since I have only played around 30 hours at the time of writing this, but from what I've read, my small party has not even scratched the surface of what's possible in this game.

Triple-A action game with no depth. Eight hours of exactly what you would expect.