Recent reviews by Sparkle

Pros

Great Gameplay - It is an MMO that plays like an ARPG with somewhat slower, more methodical pace compared to Diablo. There is no holy trinity(Tank, DPS, healer). Everyone is a DPS except the supports, and even they are expected to deal some damage. There is limited healing with the more serious content and the bosses can one shot you. In this regard, you should play it more like a top down Monster Hunter than either WoW or Diablo.

Great PVP - High degree of balance, with some pretty wide variety. There is the core PVP in town arenas where your skill points, gear, and stats all get normalized. And there is unbalanced casual PVP on certain islands that usually have some sort of gimmick or alternate gamemode that makes them quite varied.

There are some great & memorable set piece missions throughout the main story campaign.

Lots of stuff do - There are loads of bosses to hunt and islands to explore. I've barely scratched the surface.

Its free. Its not P2W, at least in the core PVP modes. You pay for better cosmetics and things that can accelerate your progression and eliminate some of the tedium that gets put into F2P games so people will pay for accelerators.

The game is alternate character friendly. For each character that you level and progress the normal way, you can rapid progress 2 alternate characters for free.

No external launcher. Boots right from steam.


Cons

Feel bad for the E U R O B O I S who didn't get enough servers at launch and couldn't log in so they spammed negative reviews. As MMO launches go, this has been one of the smoothest. I've encountered zero problems in my region.

LOTS of different currencies and character mechanics. Its difficult to keep track of them all.

The early game is very easy.

The story is not great. Its often bad, but delivered well in the aforementioned set pieces.

The voice acting ranges from quite good to quite bad.

The game is ridiculous at hiding collectible mokoko seeds.

Many of the sidequests in this game make you scratch your head at why they were included. Lots of them are super simple tasks that just involve you talking to 3 or so people. On one hand, they are convenient ways to score big chunks of experience since the normal mobs give virtually zero and these sidequests are usually directly on the path you would take for the main quest anyway. On the other hand, they are so simple you wonder why they were included at all.

Amazon game services. Some of the starting outfits for have been made more conservative (yet this is an M-rated game), and they've forced changes to some of the NPCs for the sake of diversity. The name restrictions are the strictest I've encountered (1 word with only the first letter capitalized and no spaces or anything other than a letter). And its a wonder with Amazon having invested so much into machine learning to sell you more stuff and make sure their warehouse workers aren't spending 1 extra minute in the bathroom, yet they can't seem to stop gold spammers in the starting areas.

As a fan of the original X-Com, I'll go so far as to say XCOM is decent but I don't recommend it. Two things in particular kill the gameplay for me. 1st, the way enemies spawn into the map. As soon as one of your characters gets close enough to a pod point, the pod spawns and a group of enemies pops into the map. The effect this has on the gameplay is to slow it down. When fighting a pod, the last thing you want to do is to do a big flanking maneuver with a fast character because there is a huge risk of triggering another pod and doubling or more the number of aliens you are fighting, plus letting them surround your flanker. So the smart play is to creep forward bit by bit under overwatch, trigging only 1 pod at a time. Which to me, is a pretty boring way to play tactical strategy games.

The second thing is the mismatch when combining high RNG with the risk of permadeath and having a small squad of high developed characters. The OG X-com had a high risk of death for your characters, but it was balanced by letting you bring a lot of them. You could bring about 2x as many troops into UFO Defense, which meant you could bring some good troops along with some trainees and cannon fodder to do the risky reconnaissance. Enemy Unknown replaces the big squad of troops with a small degree of upgrades with a small squad of troops that can be upgraded with a host of abilities and cyberware. Which would be okay except they kept the high risk of RNG induced permadeath. Dropping from 6 soldiers to 5 is serious, and from 4 to 3 is crippling, especially considering the amount of investment in time it takes to make a top notch soldier. When you combine this with the first flaw, you get a game that heavily penalizes aggressive moves and plays slowly.

I was motivated to write this review many years after XCOM was released because I recently played Gears:Tactics. I was expecting a cheap cash in title, but got a game with substantially better fundamentals than what is considered to be the standard for the genre. If you want a combat focused tactical RPG with guns, play Gears:Tactics instead. Also, if you'd like a stealth based tactics game, play Invisible Inc. If you'd like something that does some of both, try Phantom Doctrine. Or play Battletech. Or the Fire Emblem series on Nintendo platforms.

Very funny game, although not quite as humorous as The Stick of Truth. The actual gameplay has been much improved, although its still fairly simple turn-based tactics. The new gameplay is deep enough to keep you engaged for one playthrough, but not deep to warrant a second. Neither is it worth playing a second time for the story/humor, while TSOT could merit one for that. Requires Ubisoft's game launcher, which is annoying, but not a deal breaker for me.

tl;dr: The core gameplay is awesome and I highly recommend the game, but I have several minor gripes.

Fast and fluid movement has come back to SoulCalibur. GI battles have come back to SoulCalibur. Almost all of the favorite old characters have returned. Gameplay is fast and furious. Expansive singleplayer (by fighting game standards) has returned. When it comes to the core gameplay mechanics, Namco has nailed it with this iteration. If you were a fan of the old SoulCals, this should sound like music to your ears. If you are new to 3d fighters or the SoulCalibur series, this is a good place to start.

That said, it isn't perfect. This game was supposedly made on a tight budget because of the relative flops of the previous entries, and it shows in places. There are a couple of design decisions I don't particularly like. But they don't detract much from the core gameplay.

Minor gripe #1 - The slowdowns. We don't need to zoom in on characters activating soul charge and the slow effect from lethal hits and Critical Edge(metered ulimates) could be cut in half.

Minor gripe #2 - Critical Edges are a bit too strong, especially considering they are safe, and there is no counterplay to a GI CE combo. I wouldn't mind if they disappeared entirely to tell the truth.

Minor gripe #3 - Casual lobbies are terrible. Why only King of the Hill and why can't I type?

Minor gripe #4 - While the character creation system is pretty powerful, the included pieces are pretty barebones. Creative people have made some amazing things in spite of it however.

Minor gripe #5 - No team battle

Minor gripe #6 - The main story mode missions (not to be confused with the Libra of Souls, which is where most of the single player content is) are too easy and kind of a lost opportunity in terms of trying to tell the main story through gameplay.

Minor gripe #7 - Reversal Edge (new mechanic for SoulCalibur) is a bit too spammable. I don't particularly like this mechanic overall, although it does have some good moments, but I hate it when I run into a spammer. They aren't too hard to deal with, its just not fun.

The gameplay is great. The grind is there, but its not too bad. After 40 hours, I have 6 ships, but I've been spending more than half my currency on crew and implants to let me ideally customize the ones I do have. I'm not a big fan of the way the primary gamemode works. Its a bit like a moba, in that you want to control the mines and the mining ships so your team levels up before the other team, but in practice it doesn't seem to matter. Thats both a good and bad thing. Bad because strategy doesn't matter as much as it could, good because even bad games aren't terribly frustrating like they can be in DotA. Winning the game usually comes down to winning teamfights when the respawn timer gets long. But the great thing is those teamfights are a blast.

Trigger Warning : Wall of Text, Blizzard fanboys

Paladins is a class-based team arena shooter. Like TF2, but with more abilities and classes. It is similar to Overwatch. Despite much gnashing of teeth, Paladins is NOT a clone. It has been in development long before Overwatch was revealed, and most of its characters have been shown in public before their Overwatch counterparts were seen. But the games are similar, so the comparisons are inevitable.

Blizzard is a large and fantastic company. They have some of the best artists and massive budgets. They also have a strong committment to quality, and its one of the reasons Blizzard games always sell well at full price. If you expect the same level of detail and polish in a free-to-play game from a smallish studio as Blizzard, you are bound to be disappointed. Despite that, Paladins is actually the better game.

Blizzard succeeds at art and polish, but often fails at game design and patching. Take the Diablo 3 auction house. In a game fundamentally about killing things to get better loot so you can kill harder things, they put in a mechanic that just encouraged you to skip all that and buy the best loot directly. Then the game had to be balanced around that failed mechanic. Overwatch's problems are nearly that bad, but they are fundamental and can't just be patched away like the auction house was.

Reason #1 Ultimates are weaker
Overwatch ultimates are extremely strong. So strong, the gameplay generally revolves around them. Mercy for example can rez the entire team. If you want to win a teamfight, you have to take out the enemy Mercy first or you will lose. TF2 had a similiar issue in that the Medic's Uber was very strong. The difference was only the Medic had an ultimate ability and TF2 gameplay ends up being centered on that ability. Being the first to get uber, coordinating uber uses, countering uber, and picking off the enemy medic before they could uber. And many if not most overwatch ultimates are stronger than the ubercharge. So naturally, the game revolves around using ultimates every 90-120 seconds.

Compare the flying rocket launcher archetype characters. Pharah's ultimate lets her spam rapid fire rockets. She does so much damage, she can easily wipe out the enemy team (as long as she isn't sniped down). Drago's ultimate allows him to charge at high speed and insta-kill 1 player at melee range. Pharah's is obviously much more powerful, only balanced by the vulnerability she places herself in. When that vulnerability is mitigated by a little bit of teamwork, you can see the flaw. If Zarya just shields Pharah, then she can't be sniped down quickly. Its worse when they combine ultimates. Zarya can drop an essentially unavoidable Black Hole, pulling most(if not all) of the team together and locking them down for 4 seconds while Pharah's ult blows them all up. An Overwatch team that can coordinate ultimates will beat a team that can't, almost regardless of individual skill. It might be okay if the ultimates were challenging to use, but frequently its just a single button press at the right time.

Paladins's ultimate abilities are much more reasonable. OW's Mercy rezzes the whole team, while Paladins's Delgado just prevents them from going below 1500 health for 4 seconds. Cassie gives x-ray vision for 8 seconds while OW's Widowmaker gives vision for 16 seconds. OW's Junkrat rolling bomb is launched remotely and from safety(and up and over walls) while Bomb King rolls himself, exposing him to enemy fire in order to get close. Both OW's Mei and Paladins's Evie ultimates damage and slow in a wide area, but Mei's usually freezes them at the end for easy headshots.

Reason #2 - Healing is weaker
In Teamfortress Classic, the medic healed at melee range with a medkit. Its short range meant it was difficult to heal teammates while they were fighting. It was a helpful ability, but it wasn't so strong that the medic couldn't also be a decent fighter, and arguably the best flag capper. In TF2, they changed that to a autoaiming healing beam. Terrible mistake imo. Now the medic can effectively heal while their target is fighting. As a result, healing became massively more important, while also being much more passive. Instead of having to melee your teammates while in battle, you just follow them. You don't even have to aim. In order to make this passive (and IMO boring) play worthwhile, it needs to be very strong. And then it needs to have the game balanced around it. Mercy needs to have enough healing power to justify having a passive healbot follow a damage dealer, and all other supports need to have enough healing power to justify picking them instead of always picking Mercy. This also means the game requires someone to play support, if not 2 people, or you essentially auto-lose.

In Paladins, healing is not as strong. Its more of an added bonus and something you do while your fighting rather than instead of fighting. Pip heals with a 1000 +HP grenade that is on a 8 second cooldown. That isn't going to save anyone from focus fire, but it can, when used wisely, tip a teamfight in your favor. Its also much more challenging to use. Compare Grover to OW's Lucio. Both give passive health regen to nearby teammates. Grover heals about 1/25 - 1/30th of a teammates healthpool per second. Lucio heals about 1/16th ever second in a wider area. Both characters have roughly equivalent extra healing abilities on a 12 second cooldown. But a much bigger deal is that top of that, the champs in Paladins have passive health regen after they've been out of combat for awhile. In Overwatch, healing is required so you don't go into the next battle at half health. In Paladins, they are a nice but optional way to win a teamfight.

Even better, the side effect of this is that support can be significant damage dealers. For example, Grover's axes do about 600-700 from midrange. Cassie (a main damage dealer) does 700 per arrow. The difference is she fires slightly faster, the projectiles travel quicker, and she can boost up the damage in combinations. She also doesn't get weaker at close range like Grover does. The end result is that it is typical for supports in Paladins to do more damage than healing, and support is never a chore.

Reason #3 - Better balance between individual effort and teamplay
Most teamplay games don't have abilities designed to directly synergize, yet teamwork is still hugely important. It revolves around basics, like target selection, focus fire, postitioning, and spreading out damage throughout the team. They don't need abilities that are only useful when combined with other teammates. As such, an individual with good judgement and good mechanics has a chance against two mediocre players working together. There is an ideal balance point where teamwork is just one important aspect rather than being leaps and bounds above all other skills. That point differs for each person, but for me, Paladins hits it and Overwatch does not. Going up against premade groups in Overwatch is frustrating. There is virtually nothing an individual can do against coordinated OW ultimates. But that isn't the only problem. Something as simple as a Reinhart, Bastion, Mercy combo is hell for the solo queing pub player. It takes much more teamwork and skill to defeat than it does to put together. If you've got a group, great. Enjoy your pub stomp. If not...

Reason #4 - The Card System
I'm out of space, so this will be brief. Its great. This is a feature exclusive to Paladins and consists of two separate systems, which allow a surprising amount of customization and counterplay. The same character with different card loudouts can play very differently, despite having the same weapon and DPS.