Recent reviews by Gloomy

The game is very fun, very spooky, and very re-playable. The sound design and art style really immerse you in this dreary, haunting WWI bunker. The environmental story telling is wonderful. If you like survival horror games, this is undoubtedly a game you will want to pick up.

Yes, it is pay-to-win, just like MTG often is in real life due to physical card scarcity. There are, however, many free ways to play where money would not help you. I love the draft, sealed, and Jump Start limited formats as they are great ways to practice for real drafts and sealed events, plus you cannot buy yourself a good deck in these formats, it's all RNG what cards you will get. If you're playing this because you really want to try playing standard, you'll probably be disappointed as these formats are dominated by people with the best cards and deck compositions possible. The good news is that by playing the limited format games, you can progressively unlock more cards for free to play in standard by winning and even just by playing in the case of drafts and sealed events. Commander format missing from the game is a huge downside for this game, as that is simply the most popular MTG format by a mile. Players have set amounts of time to play cards. This is great because someone cannot infinitely lock up a game, forcing their opponent to quit. This is not a perfect solution though, many people will run these timers to their max, especially while losing, in an attempt to force their opponent to quit. The best strategy I've found for dealing with these people is to bust out a YouTube video on my phone and start running the timer out back at them, this usually gets them to stop or straight up quit the game as they should do since they're clearly aware they have lost the game.

This is an art work of a game. The history and story are beautiful. Its cast of characters are so fun to meet and learn about, and potentially have executed for crimes they may or may not have committed. If you like murder mysteries, medieval/renaissance/early-modern history, I think you'll love this game. Its attention to detail is just incredible.

I missed out on playing these when they were new games and I was excited to have this opportunity to try them out again. The remake is overall pretty good from what I can tell, but there is one fatal flaw: the controls. The controls are a nightmare for this game. Xbox controller is so annoying it borders on unplayable for me and the controls for PC are about as unnatural as controls can get. I would recommend this if you don't mind dealing with awful control and have a special place in your heart for the originals.

This game is unique, and I really enjoyed playing it. There were a few points where I was greatly struggling to figure out how to progress, and with the way the game works, I was redoing many tasks repeatedly to buy myself more time to figure out what I was missing. The graphics are fun and unique, the world is small yet large with plenty to discover, and the story is fun to uncover.

This is probably the best DLC released to date. I have always enjoyed the game, but it was beginning to feel a bit stale to me without a lot of mods. This breaths so much more life into the game and adds 2 brand new ways to play with administration and landless gameplay. The flavor events are fun and the new ways to play and interact with the Byzantines plus the quality of life updates from the free patch are amazing and so needed. I highly recommend this if you're looking at getting any DLC for CK3.

Possible light spoilers.

If you enjoyed Dredge, you'll enjoy this DLC. I recommend playing it on a fresh save, as it is not really end game content and will be rather easy for you to complete on an end game save. It's also fits neatly with the main story which also lends itself to playing it in the middle of a fresh save. It adds plenty of new fish to catch and lots of new equipment that really feels like it mostly completes the boat experience. My one complaint with this DLC is that it ends abruptly and doesn't really give many answers to the questions its story opens, not even really hints. Right as the story started to get really exciting, it ended, like immediately. I would have loved a little more story content where we find out what the Iron Haven Corps really wanted with this station, what happened to the scientist, what the scientist really wanted, and I also would have loved to see some retribution for the executive. I do recommend this DLC for Dredge which is already a fantastic game, but the story for this DLC came up lacking for me compared to the main story line and the story line of The Pale Reach.

I've greatly enjoyed playing this game, but nearing the end now, I find myself begging the game to just end. I have experienced a number of bugs and crashes playing this game. Many of the systems in-game are not intuitive or fun to use, such as the crafting system. There is no quest tracker, more of a story tracker meaning that you never really know which quests are done and which still need done, nor are they sorted into any particularly helpful order. The coop has been extremely fun and this unique feature is the reason I have continued playing. The game is fun, but its age shows and many things just do not flow how they should. If the game is on a significant sale, you like RPGs, maybe even have a friend to split screen play with, its worth picking up. It is not however worth $40 anymore in my opinion. It definitely was in 2015, but not in 2024. I am greatly looking forward to beginning the sequel.

If you've made it this far, you know what the game is. It's seriously very good and I have had a great time with it. An absolute 10/10 that is simultaneously my favorite city-building and "total war" style game (Do better CA). If the game looks interesting to you, you will love it hands down. This being said, it is absolutely an early access game. Do not be surprised if you feel you need/genuinely need to start a new game because your current one is just too f*cked to save. It is possible to lock yourself out of essential resources such as lumber, meaning you cannot build or really even progress any further in your save, period. Some mechanics are initially somewhat confusing and a lack of accessible information within the game can make this frustrating. I spent hours not understanding how to create ale. I had acquired barley, processed it into malt, and built a tavern. The tavern was not producing ale and I could not figure out why. It turns the tavern does not produce ale nor is there a unique building for the creation of ale. The brewery is a home-industry meaning I needed to level up a home and convert it to a brewery. This is a great mechanic meant to represent real history, but having somewhere in game to figure that out more easily would have been a huge help to me. Commanding troops has some problems. When dragging multiple units into rank and file they do not distribute evenly (i.e. 2 groups of 36 spearmen militia each when jointly dragged into formation distribute unevenly: 1 group forms 3 lines with a few men in the back while another group forms 2 lines with not enough men in the back line). I tried to give a custom command route across the map to my troops, but upon issuing the command the game immediately CTD'ed. They are still working on balancing units and in the current patch, archers are useless. Everytime I have used archers, they have taken literal in-game days to kill one other unit. All other units can dispatch each other much faster. I haven't had a ton of time to mess around with troop commanding, but it doesn't seem like there are many options in current build. Hammer and anvil is almost certainly always the answer from what I can tell.

I held off on buying this game for years. If you like roguelites or card building games this is a game you will like. If you like both of these kinds of games, you'll love this. I really can't think of another game quite like Slay the Spire. I have very little interest in playing any other card building or roguelite games anytime soon and when I eventually do, they won't be as good as this game. I'm excited for the newly announced sequel!