Recent reviews by Jerick

Phantom Brigade is a great game. The combat despite being turn-based is fairly fast-paced. It's great when you get the timing down and pull off a really great turn and have your mechs dance through the incoming fire without taking a hit. I love the freeform nature of the campaign.

But after a little while the battles start to feel the same. You stop making new choices and the latter end of the game begins to bog down. I'd still reccomend phantom brigade. But there should be more to do in the mid-late game. More interesting events, more interesting and more diverse battles. That'd make this game really sing. Still, it's worth your time.

I loved the first game and came into this one with high hopes. It's immediately clear the devs did genuinely care about this game. The game nails that retro-futurism Saturday cartoon feel. They added a whole bunch of fixes and improvements over the original.

I loved that you could replace dirt blocks. It was something the first one didn't have and it made planning out your base so much simpler. If you make a mistake or just decide to redo your base you can just do it fairly easily. You no longer have to think much about how you set out your base.

I liked that your evil genius was powerful and tanky. It's great that the one target you can't afford to lose is so hard to take down. You can pretty easily get a number of henchmen to back them up long before anything that is remotely a threat shows up. You no longer have to think much about combat.

I didn't like the changes to the world stage much. In the first one the different minion types all had different effects on the world stage. Combat minions made your minions less likely to die on the world stage, influence minions reduced heat, science and worker minions increased gold gain. You needed manned consoles to reveal possible plots and more complicated plots were more dangerous. But in this new one minions never return they are spent like currency. The already simple system is made even simpler. I've found I can pretty much completely ignore the world stage unless there is a button on it that I need to spend minions on to progress. You no longer have to think about the world stage.

I rather dislike how they've changed the cover operation. In the first game you could build anywhere on the exterior of the island and the island itself would get swarmed with tourists. I would frequently find that tourists had somehow managed to slip past all my secured doors and traps and somehow be taking selfies with my nuclear reactor. But in this game you slap down some gambling tables in the pre-existing cover operation, train some influence minions and then you never have to think about tourists again.

I wanted to like this game and it's clear the developers of this game were fans of the first one. They invested a lot of time to polish and streamline and it shows. But tragically they streamlined away most of the challenge and what should have been a fun management game feels a little hollow instead. For a game about an evil genius it is worringly easy to go through it without thinking.

This game. How the hell to explain this game?

Don't expect a polished game here. It's incredibly janky. It was made by devs who's previous projects were just mods. They got an investor for this and ended up with a deadline that they couldn't meet. It feels unfinished (because it is). Understanding the game and all it's systems is like trying to punch your way through a wall with your bare hands. And the game offers little help in that regard.

So why is a game like this so positively reviewed? Because it's insane.
The story is insane. The game mechanics are insane. The number of different ways you can kill guys is insane. The levels are insane in size. The combat is solid and satisfying but it gets so much better as you unlock and figure out ever crazier things you can do. For instance you get a jump ability pretty early on. At first it'll barely clear obstacles higher than your knees. By late game it'll take you into the stratosphere. The whole game is insane and that's what makes it great.

I'm someone who can normally resist the one more turn aspect of many games but Stardew Valley however drew me in and had me whispering "just one more day" Seeing your farm grow and improve due to your efforts is surprisingly satisfying as you go from a handful of crops to a large farm set up to your needs. I thourghly enjoyed the game and would recomend it to anyone who would like a relaxing time.

Factorio can't possibly be as good as so many people are saying can it? Turns out it can. It draws you in as slowly conveyor belt by conveyor belt, inserter by inserter your factorio grows into a laberinthe sprawl that only you can understand. There is this strange pride you feel as you gaze at the mass of motion you've created all of it serving some purpose.

This game is not very good. Granted some of the ideas the devs tried implmenting where new and interesting at the time but the implmentation was poor. This game's economy is very basic. There is no joy or challenge in trading in this game, once you figure out how to make money you can pretty much keep doing the same thing forever. The FPS portions are lack luster, they look and feel like they where ripped straight for the 90's back when we where figuing out what worked with FPS games and what didn't.

This game has one of the worst UIs I have ever seen, the sound design is amuterish and the graphics are bad to middling at best and I think you should go play it. The thing is CoE 3 doesn't care about any of the stuff I just mentioned. Because the mechanics are rock solid it doesn't need flashy graphics to be a deep and engaing strategy game. It has a surprisingly large array of different armies all of which are asymetrical and distinct. If you're a fan of intellegent strategy games and miss the days when mechanics where front and center CoE 3 is for you.

One of my favourite games Mount and blade warband delivers a ture sandbox expierence. There is no main story line only your progress through the land of Calradia which I find a refreshing change. Despite the lack of story there is much to do; you can trade, pillage, befriend the lords or people as you grow your little band of mercanaires into an army that can challenge the warring nations. The combat system is surprisingly well done as well, player skill plays a big part in how well you do in any fight and means a skilled player can punch well above their weight. It's not without it's flaws though the; in seiges there is always only one entry point which turns a fight from a battle where tactics matter to a meat grinder regardless how you order your troops. Mount and Blade Warband is a very mod friendly game and I recomend you play with diplomacy as it adds a number of small quality of life improvements. If you want to play a warlord asipiring to the throne, an honourable warrior just looking to help or a rampaging menace Mount and Blade warband is