Recent reviews by Harmless

I played with three other friends and nearly lost my sanity, 10/10

it's ok i guess

Got to play the game before its most recent patch, and I have good news for all you Dr. Kero mains: He got buffed!

The game is absolutely wonderful, charming, and most importantly: Fun.

also


W O U L D Y O U L I K E A T A S T E ? ?

As a huge Advanced Wars player back in the days of Dual Strike, I highly, highly recommend what Chucklefish has done here. While a lot of the AW-stylized games can become a bit campy and heavily centered around a few SS-tier commanders, Wargroove finds a very good balance between offense and defense with crit attack conditions, healing/fortification mechanics, and Commander abilities.

It's also quite easy to get into. I highly recommend buying it.

11/10 would lasaga again

MMMM. Love this game! The soundtrack, visuals, and gameplay are all very crisp and well executed. Somehow, the developers have achieved simple, yet fancy and full of depth, all while being a very worthy spiritual successor of the Megaman X games.

The only thing that could make this better is if the game was really replayable- OH WAIT

Definitely recommend.

Big rockets? Check.
Clutch out of nowhere victories? Yup.
Chickens? They're everywhere.
Pudding? Plenty.
Losing friends over a few rounds of this game? Just like Mario Party!

Jokes aside, definitely worth a buy. Very accessible, games feel like they take the perfect amount of time to play without dragging on, and the roster is (surprisingly) balanced without strictly limiting creativity.

Edit 3/15/17: Turns out the two factions that come with 8-Bit Armies (Renegades and Guardians) are fairly underpowered compared to the other factions in the two differentiating games, which is a shame. I still recommend the core game, and the upside to starting off on Armies is that the Renegades and Guardians are the simplest/easiest factions to play.

For all of the people in the reviews saying that this is a knock-off of the old Red Alert/Tiberian Sun games that Westwood worked on, do remember that Petroglyph worked alongside Westwood for a long time during the development of these games. 8-bit Armies was developed in part by a large majority of the ex-Westwood members.

As for the core game(s) itself, there's been some talk about how strategy doesn't really seem to play all that much of a role in the game. Much to the disbelief of people who have only played for half an hour (and then proceeded to leave a negative review), there's actually a good amount of strategy and micro management involved in the game.

While superior numbers do make a difference in controlling space and winning skirmishes, a battle can still turn out very differently depending on the positioning and advancements of enemy units. For example, your enemy could very easily surround you and/or pelt you with splash damage if you were to charge straight ahead into a fray.

Although I wouldn't argue that making three games made very little sense from a practicality standpoint, the core game(s) itself isn't necessarily "lazy" or "bad" by any means. I can see the approach Petroglyph took similar to how Tiberian sun and Red Alert had GDI/NOD discs and Soviets/Allied discs. Unfortunately it didn't work out well due to a lackluster campaign and the rest of the games being more like faction DLC's than content worth a full other game. But Petroglyph is good at learning from mistakes and fixing them. I haven't lost faith in them, I've seen their work, and there's always a next time if 8-bit truly doesn't work out in the end.

What happened, Robocraft? I'm legitimately upset at what has been all of my hopes and dreams for this game getting shot down constantly, update after update. As a player who's been playing the game ever since the very early alpha stages (and before Valve started helping with the development of this game), I can't bear myself any longer to try and come back into this game.

Now do note that this review will be primarily focused on how Robocraft has progressed up to this point, the major changes and updates made to the game, and its core development overall. I might skimp out on some details when it comes to the core mechanics of the game, as this review is moreso geared towards the inner depths of it - What made those core mechanics great in the past, and what updates ruined that.

But if you have never played Robocraft before, it is basically a 3D virtual-reality world of tinkertoys and transformers mashed up into one - Not only do you have the giant mechs, vehicles, and planes at your disposal, you can create them and shape them however you want! You can edit the blocks, attach new engines, swap out weapons, and get very nifty with what you create. And with every battle, you can keep adding onto that bot, or take the time to make a new one and show off your diversity in creating! As you might have imagined, creativity is king in robocraft...

... well, it used to be.

Back then, people used to be far more diverse in what they sent onto the field. You never really could be prepared for anything - Whoa, is that an experimental from Supreme Commander heading my way?! Or is that an M1 Abrams tank customly built with Robocraft's design tools?! Wow, that's impressive! I want to build that kind of thing one day, or maybe take inspiration from elsewhere (or even just get creative and create impractical, yet hilarious vehicles capable of creating memories)! Remember that time people got really silly and just added one block, one thruster, and one submachinegun to a pilot seat? It was hilariously ineffective, but it created for some good times.

Then, the removal of Tier 1 Helium came, effectively crippling over half of the player's designs, and reducing the amount of creativity one could make. One of my friends even just went up and quit because of that. The 'compensation'? Some in-game cash. That doesn't replace all the hard work spent just to create those bots.

The worst part was the next level of Helium was Tier 4, which actually had drastically different properties than the T1 version. It was also much harder for newer players to have access to that T4 Helium since you had to be much farther in level to achieve it, which gave a feeling of needless grinding just to be able to have some fun.

Needless to say, I can't stress enough how terrible the updates have been so far. They've done nothing but effectively play into a 'metagame' that does nothing but frustrate people. Remember all those plasma-grenade launcher bombers that filled 90% of the games? Or heck, when the Plasma Launcher was even first introduced? I remember when it was, and although I was stoked at first, I was sorely disappointed after.

Probably one of the worst offenders was how they handled the Sniper Rifle, ironically enough. Back then when it was first introduced, the developers were given complaints about how strong the Sniper Rifle was - Its damage and armor piercing capabilities were hard to come close to, even despite the damage potential on the Plasma Launcher. Players would often get one shotted by a sniper, who then casually proceeds to reload quickly and take out their next target.

So instead of fixing the problem and just lowering the armor piercing (and damage by a tiny bit), all they did was increase the damage and armor piercing (what??), and cause the gun to be 'less stable' and have a longer reload time.

... If that doesn't speak 'poor game design' to you, then maybe this amazing tale will next.

Now this might've been just me, but Armor was heavily outclassed by Shields in terms of raw defense, and not even large bots with lots of armor packed could stand up to the overwhelming amounts of damage that came from enemy bots. As a person who loves strong armor and defense, I was not very impressed. I had to fall back on shields to create tanks, and it was kind of a pain, really.

But then this recent update completely removes tiers, and even lowers the amount of average health that armor should have. Tier 10 armor back in the day easily had 8K+ HP. The standard armor block nowadays? Only 2K HP. Even the most basic laser cannon can one shot an armor block. And with the increased scaling damage that rarer weapons allow, armor just effectively became useless.

I'm not kidding. Just compare the numbers yourself. You will find that a "legendary" weapon is downright overkill, and it shows in game. Only a few shots takes out even a well armored tank (which, thanks to the very odd changes in the physics, also now made every single one of my vehicles complete garbage in cornering and braking, making them unable to function at all).

Probably the worst part is every single update I've seen so far has been handled so terribly that the changes in the designs I see on the field greatly differ from what I saw back in the alpha stages of the game. What used to be a great game that offered many ways to design your vehicle now falls into a 'meta' category of building a mech, attaching an ion shotgun and maybe some plasma launchers, building an exact square body and getting the toughest legs. What happened to making a mech similar to the GDI Titan from Tiberian Sun? What happened to having fun, making creative yet practical robos?

Apparently all they want now is cash out of Robocraft, not player satisfaction. And the changes in Premium have shown that. You can very easily count me out of this game.

Definitely one of the best RTS's I've played. There is a small bug where armies assigned to teams will have to be re-assigned if one of the units dies (which can get annoying). But otherwise, very good mechanics, well balanced gameplay (although the Radar tower is a little op with its final tech upgrade).