We Need To Go Deeper

It's kind of cute, but there are so many good games to play with friends, this is not anywhere near the top of the list.

This War of Mine

A grim survival game that highlights the tragedy of war.

Overview

Due to slow gameplay, I only spent 8 hours on this game.

Edit: I went back and gave it another 16 hours. It didn't change my mind very much.

Theme

Solid, if you enjoy a depressing tale of survival in a war torn city.

Innovation

 Medium. The survival genre is overdone. This is still a game of building defense during the day and scavenging at night. 

What sets This War of Mine apart is how it humanizes the NPCs. Do you steal from your elderly neighbors to feed yourself for another day? The dialog, reinforced by negative consequences, do a good job at bringing out your emotion.

Gameplay

Meh. The day phase is almost interesting, but I spent most days with little to do, and the survivors were often too tired or wounded to do anything anyway. The night phase is fairly fun exploration. I didn't experience much combat. My scavengers were rarely armed, and even the easiest combat left them lethally wounded.

Permadeath

Or rogue-lite. The permadeath aspect is pretty good. Like any good survival game, there are many problems happening at once. As long as the player can keep them all in check, everything is fine. Once one thing gets out of hand, it is likely another will soon follow until the catastrophes snowball and everyone is dead. This War of Mine handles this well. 

My big complaint is that many systems have to be discovered through trial and error. If I could reload a save game, that wouldn't be a big deal. But with permadeath, it's a hassle to have to start over just because I didn't understand one simple mechanic. More on this later.

Polish

Bad. Well, the visual and story polish are well done, but many things could be done to improve the fun factor. Some examples:

• During the day, don't blur out the screen during pause. It's already awkward to give out orders, at least let me do it when the game is paused.
• Once you research the axe, all of your furniture is granted a new "destroy" icon. It is easy to accidentally click, and for most built furniture you rarely want to do it. I would vastly prefer to spend 10 seconds clicking through obscure menus to destroy an object once per game than to constantly fear demolishing my beds.
• Unforgiving for stupid crap. It's easy to accidentally build the wrong object and you can't cancel it. If I put a chair in the wrong location, let me move it.

Transparency

This War of Mine hits on a pet peeve. I dislike when a game has a simple mechanic that is obscure. For example, bandages will heal one level of damage (like from "severely wounded" to "wounded"). This healing happens at the end of the night phase. However, this isn't described anywhere. Also, wounds more severe than "lightly wounded" cannot be healed through bed rest, even though when it bed it says you are "recovering". I believe "recovering" means "the wound won't get worse".

I understand when a game hides the underlying mechanics so that the player can figure them out. However, simple mechanics should be clearly disclosed. 

Recommendation

I don't recommend This War of Mine. Perhaps if there was a fast-forward button and a better manual I would enjoy it more. 

Deep Sky Derelicts

Dereliction of Gameplay

Turn based Final Fantasy style combat with RPG elements and unique style.

Overview

At it's core, Deep Sky Derelicts is the classic game we have seen over and over. You have a 3-person squad that takes turns doing damage to the enemies. Usually you attack but sometimes you might heal, defend, or buff. It has been compared to Darkest Dungeon and Slay the Spire. While it shares much with Darkest Dungeon (my review) , it is nothing like Slay the Spire.

Combat

Most of the game is spent on the combat screen. I find this genre of combat old and tired but Derelicts keeps it fresh through the use of randomly drawn cards. All in all, for this genre, the combat is satisfying.

RPG

There are a few classes, and each class has a few choices for subclasses. You have four gear slots and each slot has two mod, for a total of twelve equipment choices. This gives a lot of choices for customization. Finding new items was fun and leveling was fun.

Exploration

The energy system and map exploration is pretty weak. It doesn't detract much, but doesn't add much either. Still, it helps bring together the fiction searching ancient abandoned ships.  Furthermore, the energy system is fairly unobtrusive and far less annoying than the sanity mechanic in Darkest Dungeon. 

Story

It is often difficult for a tactical game to get me engaged in the story, and Deep Sky Derelicts doesn't come close. It doesn't take itself seriously, the side quests are few and would be bland if they weren't ridiculous. Instead of the tired "kill three enemies" it's "kill three enemies who are robots who think they are ancient heroes and are named after the three musketeers".

The art is unique. If you like that comic book futuristic horror style, this game is worth it for that alone.

This music is fine but repetitive -- almost intrusive but not quite.

Bug and Annoyances

Equipment is a bit of a chore. You find a whole lot of gear. Much of it is obviously junk or not for your class. The rest has to be compared to what you already have equipped. The interface isn't great for this. Modern games tooltip your current item to compare. 

Side quests aren't tracked well. I found the mcguffin, who was I supposed to give it to?

In my game, I twice encountered an enemy with 0 health. If he went before me, the game crashed. If I went before him, I could kill him. This cost me a few restarts.

In the end, the game seemed unwinnable. On the final mission, I could not find a way to unlock the doors. At this point I was very bored with the game so I only spent five minutes trying to google a solution. 

Deeper than the Darkest Dungeon

This game is very similar to Darkest Dungeon, which is quite popular. Personally, I enjoyed Deep Sky Derelicts more than Darkest Dungeon. While Darkest Dungeon had a far superior environment and felt grittier, I disliked the combat. Darkest Dungeon felt grindy, but Deep Sky Derelicts feels repetitive, a subtle distinction.

Recommendation

I don't recommend Deep Sky Derelicts. Even though it fixed two complaints I have about Darkest Dungeon, it is still not engaging enough. However, if you are a fan of that Final Fantasy style combat, perhaps Deep Sky Derelicts is for you.

Into the Breach

A medium-weight tactical game.

Into the Breach

From the makers of FTL, Into the Breach delivers decent tactical play packaged with a system of unlocks intended to enhance replayability. For me, this was an obvious purchase. I loved FTL and generally like turn-based tactical combat.

Tactical Combat

Combat is the focus of Into the Breach and other systems are secondary. The game has been designed to provide a fun tactical experience. While there are other fun decisions to make, they represent a vast minority of gameplay.

The tactical rules are fun. While they aren't especially innovative, they aren't stale either. Every turn is like a puzzle which you must solve by spending the fewest resources. One type of resource is ammo and health. These are replenished after each missions so can be used liberally. Another resource is pilots. If the health of a mech is reduced to zero, the pilot is lost. The mech will be available in future missions, but will not have any pilot bonus. The other resource is grid power. As the enemy destroys buildings, it reduced the amount of power you have available. This is a sort of campaign hit points. If you run out, your current campaign is lost.

Unlocks

Although combat is fairly simple, there are many different types of weapons, pilots, and mech loadouts which can be unlocked.

Different loadouts give each campaign a different feel. This keeps the game fresh after multiple playthroughs. They are unlocked by spending a currency you get from beating campaigns and getting achievements.

Pilots are unlocked through more obscure means. However, after reading a list of different pilot traits, I didn't feel like there was much differentiation. As such, I didn't care much about unlocking them.

Gain XP

In a mission, pilots can gain XP and level up. This is a pretty simple system. At the end, you can choose one pilot to use for next campaign. This basically means you always have one veteran and two rookies to start. In general, I didn't care very much about XP and I wouldn't have missed this system if it wasn't present. With a little more design, this could have been very fun. However, it's just an unobtrusive features that add little and costs little. 

Grinding

Gaining currency and new pilots requires getting achievements. These are most easily gained from playing the game on Easy and completing missions perfectly. That sounds like a horrible grind to me. Instead I chose to mostly ignore achievements and I still had enough currency to unlock a new loadout for each scenario. 

This is perhaps where the game falls flat the most. What makes FTL so much fun to replay is how different the starting ships are, and trying to unlock new ships. But in Into the Breach, I didn't feel like any loadout was that much different from any other loadout. Because you spend currency to unlock a loadout, it doesn't have the same personal touch that FTL has. Like, in FTL, if I want to play as the Mantis, I have to go rescue a Mantis ship (or something like that). In Into the Breach you do funky things to get currency, and then use that currency to buy whatever you feel like.

Conclusion

I reluctantly give Into the Breach a thumbs-up. Panzer General popularized tactical turn-based combat over a campaign. Since then, there has been a surprising lack of good innovation in that genre despite many attempts. Into the Breach is decently tactical with some replayability and nice short missions. There are better games out there, but Into the Breach deserves mention. Other similar games I would recommend are: XCom 2, Neuroshima Hex, and Battle for Wesnoth.

Gunpoint

A short stealthy puzzle platformer.

Gunpoint

I'm not sure why I bought Gunpoint. Something in the reviews must have made me think it was a hidden gem. Actually it combines some of my least favorite genres.

Stealth

Gunpoint is barely a stealth game. Most of the missions give you plenty of time to think, and guards are more of a puzzle element than a stealthy focus. You don't watch patterns to time. You don't disguise yourself. You don't hide bodies.

Platformer

Some reviews call Gunpoint a platformer. I don't agree with this. A platformer has a lot of action and dexterity controls. Gunpoint has some of this but not very much. 

Puzzler

Gunpoint is best described as a puzzle game. You must determine which switches unlock what gizmos and how to trigger other whatsits. As a puzzler, Gunpoint is acceptable. Not great, but for a simple game, it does the job.

Should You Buy It?

Probably not. It's cheap, so you won't waste money. However, I don't feel it's worth the time. For a good turn-based stealth game, I'd recommend Invisible Inc. For a good action/stealth/puzzle game, you might try Heat Signature.

Oxygen Not Included

A sandbox game with survival, resource management, and sim elements.

Oxygen Not Included

This game was made for me. Ever since playing Serf City I've loved games where you order minions to build things inside a complicated economy. Oxygen Not Included  is the best offering of that type to date. It is clearly inspired by Don't Starve, Terraria, Sim City, Dwarf Fortress, and Factorio. 

The Good

Flexibility

A fan of sims can build amazing, beautiful, and elegant houses. You can customize your "dupes" (sims) to some extent. An engineer might be more interested in designing optimal systems. A survivalist might crank up the difficulty and spend the game with ugly, jury-rigged buildings just trying to stay alive. An economist might build an infinitely self-sustaining biosphere.

Scaling Complexity

You can play with just a few dupes and very simple systems. Once you have mastered those systems, you can expand to more complex systems. For example, basic bathroom needs can be met with an outhouse and wash basin. However, this uses up some resources and requires a lot of dupe labor to keep the buildings clean. Once you are ready to tackle indoor plumbing, you can design a bathroom that is completely self contained and requires no maintenance.

Interleaved Systems

There are so many unique systems that must be balanced. Oxygen, water, heat, food, electricity, morale, stress, decoration, and map resources all compete for dupe labor. 

For example, let's say you want to add more dupes to your colony. That creates more carbon dioxide. To deal with that, you build a carbon skimmer. This requires electricity and turns fresh water into polluted water. It also generates some heat. You can build a water sieve to clean the polluted water, but that requires electricity and sand. It also makes a bit of heat. Now that you are using a lot of electricity you make a coal generator. It makes electricity but uses coal. It also generates heat and carbon dioxide. So you have gotten your carbon dioxide and electricity balanced but you are using sand and coal, and making heat. There is plenty of sand in the game so that isn't a problem. Coal will last a long time but you might have to make more. To do that you need to raise Hatchlings. But they need a ranch, dupe labor, and you have to feed them. 

Often, the game is about balancing short-term solutions and long-term solutions. Food is a good example. You start with some nutrient bars, but they run out quickly. There are also bits of food spread around the map. That's all fine for the short term, but you will eventually starve. Some edible plants grow and can be harvested every few turns. This is fine if you only have a few dupes, although it often prevents efficient building because you have an ear of corn in the middle of your bathroom. To solve this, you need to build farms or ranches, but that takes time and resources.

Emergent Play

One of the best aspects of Oxygen Not Included is coming up with clever solutions to problems. My friends never have problems with pipes, but my pipes break all the time, flooding my base with water. As a result, I design my base such that leaks are easily contained and cleaned.

Sometimes you come across a naturally generated resource. Say your base is both low on water and starting to get too hot. Then you stumble on a steam geyser. You could solve your water shortage by pumping hot water into your base, but that would exacerbate the heat problem. Instead, you come up with a clever building that uses a steam turbine and a water cooler to bring cold water into the base at the cost of much electricity.

Emergent Catastrophes

While not nearly as amusing as Dwarf Fortress, there are plenty of entertaining disasters in Oxygen Not Included. There are no real random events, so all disasters are completely the fault of the player. That makes it so much worse to realize that if you had just been a bit smarter, your dupes would still be alive. In one of my games, I thought I had it made. The basics were on autopilot while I build advanced systems. I didn't realize a heat buildup was slowly overtaking my base. Eventually the crops were too hot to grow and most of my dupes starved. A few survived but they spent weeks too stressed to do anything except sit in the corner and puke. Fortunately, the game gives you a new dupe every few days. Since these dupes are not hungry or stressed, I was able to have them eventually fix my problems.

The Bad

Although it seems like a I have many bad things to say, really I am being nitpicky. I love this game but I personally prefer critical reviews to gushing ones.

Too Much Sandbox

If you only plan to play for a couple hundred hours, there is plenty of game to keep you satisfied. However, the "survival" aspect of Oxygen Not Included isn't very strong. Once you learn how to turn water into food and oxygen, you just need to make sure there is always plenty of water. Even the worst catastrophe usual allows a few dupes to survive. You can combat this by turning up the difficulty or playing on a more difficult map, but it's not the best solution.

Lack of Polish

Most of the UI and gameplay, is great but the first time I launched the game I thought it wasn't finished. A few screens, menus, and buttons look bad.

Bugs

The bugs aren't terrible but there are a few. Sometimes things just don't seem to work right, but if you save and load the game it is fixed. Also, the game isn't always in the same state when you load it as when you saved it. It's minor things, but if you have a really complicated system depending on the wrong "minor thing" you could be in trouble. One annoying bug happens when the game autosaves. The game pauses, but it can pause between a mouse or key press. This can lead to accidental orders. I've had a few nasty orders show up this way. One person reports that he ended up ordering all of his buildings to be destroyed and had to load a save game.

Too Much CPU

Mostly this wasn't a big problem for my system, but when I played one game with a lot of dupes, it showed up quickly. The game starts to slow down. Even worse, it feels like the dupes are personally affected. I mean, when the game is running smoothly dupes will quickly switch from task to task. When the game is running slow, the dupe will sit there for a few seconds while the world is running before deciding what to do. On the forums, some people specifically talk about avoiding certain strategies because they can bog down your CPU.

Conclusion

For me, this was a must-buy. It was a rare full-price purchase and I have no regrets. I'm finally about to call it quits after 750 hours of play. Still, I don't recommend it to anybody. It combines three of my favorite genres, and I personally played it with permadeath / no save scumming to make it feel more roguelike. The minor complaints would prevent me from giving it 10/10 but it's still an enthusiastic thumbs-up. 

Slay the Spire

Slay the Spire

A roguelike card game.

Overview

Slay the Spire has game mechanics similar to collectible card games. You collect cards to build a deck. You play cards to do damage or block damage. That sort of thing. On top of that, you have different classes to play, and there is a strategic map to travel with boss fights.

Features

Card Play

The basic card play is fine. Normally it's not all that deep and choices are obvious. However, sometimes you will have to make tough decisions, especially considering that damage you take persists to the next fight. I would say the play itself is about as engaging as Hearthstone. 

Deckbuilding

With most card games, I find the deckbuilding to be the fun part. Playing cards is fine, but it's just the realization of the effort I put into making the deck. The deckbuilding in Slay the Spire isn't like traditional deckbuilders. Cards are offered randomly so it's difficult to set on a strategy from the start. When you think your deck is going in one direction, you still have to be adaptable because one amazing relic can change everything. The way you acquire cards feels a bit like a Magic: The Gathering booster draft, but slowly over the course of many battles.

There are many obvious strategies to aim for when building your deck. Even experienced players continue to find new combinations for success.

Update: After revisiting Slay the Spire, I have found the deckbuilding aspect to be very deep. The obvious and shallow strategies will succeed on easy difficulty levels, but success on harder modes requires a lot of knowledge about the synergies with the different cards and relics, and how they related to various encounters.

Roguelike

Permadeath adds an interesting element to Slay the Spire. It means that even in easy fights you are looking to minimize how much damage you take. Loot is very random and a single relic can make or break a run.

Who Should Buy It?

Anyone who tends to like roguelites and deck builders will enjoy Slay the Spire. 

Similar Games

Hearthstone is free and certainly worth trying.
Magic: The Gathering uses a pricing model that I dislike so I can't recommend it.
Dreamquest for IOS is a fantastic game very similar to Slay the Spire.

Darkest Dungeon

Darkest Dungeon

Impressive for a free browser game, boring for a paid Steam game.

Overview

Darkest Dungeon is an evolution of the old-style "tactics" genre. The kind of game where you have a party of three or four facing a small group of enemies. Each character makes a quick combat decision, usually "attack" or "defend". You might have items to buff or heal. Generally those games are extremely simple and only interesting as a tense mini-game telling a larger story. The Final Fantasy line is a good example.

While Darkest Dungeon has made this simple combat more interesting, at it's core the game is still very basic. Most of the time you will take the obvious action. 

The RPG elements of Darkest Dungeon are strong. There is a lot of character differentiation. Levels matter but aren't overwhelming. You don't find much exciting loot, like Diablo, but that's fine -- finding a big gem worth a lot of gold is plenty satisfying. 

Why Are All the Reviews So Positive?

If you like the "simple tactics" genre with a lot of grinding, this is a great game. Here is my take on features that other people enjoy about Darkest Dungeon:

The Ambience is Great (true)

This is true. The music, visuals, and narration expertly convey a desperate grim/dark world. That isn't one of my favorite genres, and I still enjoyed it. It approaches over-the-top without being campy. 

The Game is Difficult (false)

This isn't true. You can't actually lose the game unless playing on the highest difficulty setting. People say it's difficult because you lose a lot of missions and some of your characters will die. That doesn't make the game difficult, it just requires a shift of perspective. We are trained to expect missions to be easy and characters to be permanent. Characters are a resource. You can think of a high level character as a powerful potion of healing. You get free low level characters, or wimpy potions of healing. If you run out of powerful potions, you have to do easy missions with wimpy potions until you can gather enough big potions to fight the boss.

It's a Roguelike (false)

No. Only in the broadest sense of the word. From your roster of 20 people, one might die from time to time. Rarely, where you are really unlucky, four will die at once. If you keep your entire roster at the same level, even the most devastating party wipe doesn't reset your game. You can't lose your town upgrades no matter what you do. Even if you wipe your entire roster and start with newbies, you have a big advantage over starting a fresh game. I suppose roguelike has started to take on the meaning of starting over with global buffs. Darkest Dungeon doesn't even really do that.

Tactical Depth (false)

I didn't get far into the game, but after reading forums, I doubt there is much depth. For the ten hours I played, most "decisions" were obvious non-decisions. There is a lot of complexity, but that is different from depth. For example, a single character can have 5 positive and 5 negative traits. A trait might be like +15% damage to beasts. If you have 25 people on your roster, that's 250 traits to keep track of. In theory you could put together a Beast Slaying Team, but in practice that's a lot of work for something that only rarely comes up.

The RNG is punishing (true)

It's pretty easy for bad luck to really mess up your mission and get some people dead. I think Darkest Dungeon has just the right amount of luck but if you hate having people die from bad luck, stay away.

What do the Other Review Not Tell You?

Lots of Grinding

When reviews say, "this game is hard" they really mean, "you have to grind a lot". There is no way to lose the game. You just have to grind out levels.

Unholy Trinity

The game uses the tired combination of tank-healer-dps. I realize that's just my pet peeve, but it leads to the same types of gameplay we have seen for decades. It would be forgivable, except for my next point.

No Healing Outside Combat

Talk about pet peeves! I hate when your healer can spam as much healing as they want during combat, but once it's over they can't heal anymore. Darkest Dungeon doesn't just trigger this pet peeve, it has forced the dominant strategy to be built around it. Every encounter consists of burning down all but one enemies as fast as possible, then leaving the last one alive while the healer tops everyone off. The developers have tried to dissuade this strategy with a few systems, but that just highlights how odious this situation is. For example, skipping your turn causes stress. So a fighter who doesn't want to land the final blow has to pay a penalty. Forcing me to do all my healing while the enemies are alive already seriously breaks the fiction. Throwing systems on top of that to dissuade me just breaks the fiction even more. All in all, this makes the combat design feel very amateurish.

Who Should Buy This Game?

Fans of the Final Fantasy combat system who don't mind grinding and like a punishing rng. 

What are Some Similar Games That Are Better?

Mordheim (my review) offers turn-based squad combat with permadeath in a grim world with rpg elements. The story is far better and it's overall a much meatier game. Darkest Dungeon could almost be a super-light version of Mordheim.

Any Roguelike (my review of Dungeon Crawl) offers turn-based rpg with permadeath. They are free and you can find light ones or heavy ones.

X-Com (my review of X-COM 2) is still the best squad based permadeath tactical combat with strong story. It's not medieval grim/dark, but future alien/dark isn't far off. Like Mordheim, XCom is far meatier than Darkest Dungeon.

For the King (my review) is lighter than my other suggestions but still perhaps heavier than Darkest Dungeon. Ultimately, I didn't enjoy For the King very much, but I would recommend it before Darkest Dungeon.

Deep Sky Derelicts (my review) is very similar but does not suffer from the specific complaints I have of Darkest Dungeon.

For the King

A simple tactical roguelite game.

This might not be a fair review since I got bored halfway through the storyline on my first playthrough.

Overview

For the King is a strategic RPG with roguelike elements. You have three characters in your party and you explore the world to solve quests and fight monsters to gain items and experience. There is a strategic map to explore, and encounters are handled on a simple tactical screen.

The Good

The interface is pretty simple and the game is easy to get into. It's fun to kill stuff. There is a slight innovation over the typical 2-tier strategic/tactical maps mechanics in that your characters can explore independently but still participate in fights if they are close enough. This lets you do things like give all your gold to a fast character to run to town while the other two explore the area.

There seems to be a lot of replayability. Perhaps not as much as a true rogue-like, but you can unlock classes and items to be used in future playthroughs. 

The Bad

Combat is not challenging. Most of the decisions are obvious. Map exploration is fun to some extent, but not enough to hold interest. 

My Bias

I'm a long-term roguelike player. I've spent countless hours on Nethack and still play Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup more than any other game. I find roguelite games to often be shallow. Sometimes one will hold my interest, like FTL, but mostly I find them too simple and clunky. For example, in a 20 hour game of Dungeon Crawl I might make 10,000 decisions. Most of those decisions are obvious, but there are still hundreds of fun and meaningful choices to make. In a game like For the King I will only make hundreds of decisions and there might only be a dozen of actually interesting choices.

Recommendation

For the King wasn't for me, but it might work for you. I think the tactical roguelike itch is better scratched by actual roguelike games, but if you prefer an accessible game with intuitive interface and decent graphics, feel free to give this a try.

Islanders

A simple city planning strategy game.

Overview

Islanders is a little bit of a city building game, but has little in common with games like Simcity. It is more of a strategy game where you plan good placements for future buildings. It's fun, but not especially deep. 

Leaderboard

There is certainly opportunity to really try to maximize score and compete on the leaderboard. However, there are not good tools for satisfying detailed planning. Some criticisms:

• There is no grid to help extreme accurate placement
• Some buildings have random shapes, making planning more difficult
• You cannot easily "mark off" an area for a future building
• You don't know what future buildings will be available to you

All of this isn't really a bad thing. I think the game has far more potential as a relaxing time-waster with some strategy. 

Recommendation

I was finished with this game after like three hours. For a PC game, that's not worth it. However, I could see this game having a lot of replayability on a mobile device. I'd skip the PC version and get the mobile version.

Thea: The Awakening

Lack of polish prevents this clever game from being truly great.

Overview

Thea combines choose-your-own-adventure storytelling, exploration, crafting, research, rpg advancement, and card-style tactical combat. The merger of these different elements would work well, but none of them are engaging and the interface is cumbersome.

Storytelling

The story is narrated by a pleasant British voice. Frequently, the player must make decisions. Some of these decisions are story-fluff, others determine a short-term outcome, and others can have long-reaching effects. This successfully engaged me in what was otherwise a relatively generic story with a variety of generic side-quests. 

The shortcomings of the storytelling system reflect the failings of the game as a whole. New players and repeat players experience frustration for different reasons. 

For a new player, the story is generally quite good. However, encounters can randomly happen. If they happen on your primary team, that's great, but if you have a weak secondary team gathering supplies, any encounter can wipe you out. You fear the encounters and will always pick the "don't explore" option. 

An repeat player doesn't mind missing stories of a few side quests, but he gets nothing out of watching the main story repeat itself.

Exploration

The exploration is satisfying in Thea. There are points of interest and random encounters on a fog-of-war map. You can search for enemy cities to destroy so that your gatherers can work in safety. If you need a certain resource you can explore the map to look for it. 

Exploration implementation has a few failings. There is incentive to carry around a variety of different foods. This is a neat idea, but in practice there is a lot of annoying micro-management. Also, setting up expeditions and managing them is a little cumbersome. All of these problems could be fixed by a cleaning user interface, or perhaps some automation. Finally, there is a huge benefit to send gatherers with your war party and order them to gather at the end of every turn. However, this is extremely cumbersome and doesn't feel "in the spirit" of the game. I chose to limit myself to only gathering at the start of the turn. This "handicap" is a huge benefit to quality-of-life but in a strategy game it really bothers me to make sub-optimal decisions like this.

Crafting and Research

The crafting system is pretty good. There is some "fun" frustration in trying to gather rare materials. Research points are very limited and must be spent to unlock recipes as well as allow mining of rare materials. For example, if you want to mass produce heavy steel armor, you must spend a lot of research on steel and a lot of research on heavy armor. That's fine if also want to make steel jewelry (you don't) and steel buildings (doubtful). Generally it's a clever system that lets you try different research paths in different games. 

The downside of the crafting system is the clunky user interface. When you want to make something you select two or more materials from a big list. The combination of those materials provides different bonuses. It is not easy to understand what material provides which bonus. It's just cumbersome.

RPG Advancement

There seem to be at least 10 different classes of villagers, although there are only three main ones (warrior, crafter, gatherer). Some "classes" are received as story rewards, like perhaps an orc wrestler will choose to join your group. Going up in level is completely automated. What the player has control of is equipment. There are the typical RPG slot items (armor, weapon, shield, two rings, necklace, etc). 

There are a staggering number of different benefits you can get from items. There are perhaps 10 different methods of conflict resolution (with combat being the most common). These 10 methods are all affected by different types of bonuses. For example, dexterity will help with combat, sneaking, and hunting. Intelligence will help with tactics and social and hunting. Backstab will help with sneak and social. In all, there must be dozens of different bonuses.

This complicated system ends up being neither good nor bad. It might seem like the player is given a lot of freedom to customize his strategy for dealing with different scenarios. That's true, but the systems are quite complicated and "get the biggest bonuses" works very well. The benefit to a crafted strategy seems marginal over randomly spreading the bonuses around. What you can do is notice when you are weak in certain types of challenges and make a general effort to compensate.

Tactical Combat

The tactical combat is acceptable. There are enough options available to be interesting. This is another area where a player could go to a lot of effort to get a minor advantage, but the game works well enough without having to do that.

Recommendation

In the end, I can't think of anyone to recommend Thea to. My first playthrough felt like a slog because I had to learn the different systems and compensate for the clunky interface. I enjoyed the story enough to complete it, but I wouldn't recommend it. On my second playthough, I understood the systems better and enjoyed the strategy more, but the story was no longer interesting. In the end, I didn't even finish my second playthrough.

Despite not being able to recommend Thea: The Awakening, I am looking forward to the sequel (currently in early access). 

XCOM 2: War of the Chosen

XCom remains the gold standard for tactical turn-based squad combat with a compelling story campaign.

Overview

XCom has a lot going on: tactical combat, rpg elements, permadeath, strong story, quality cutscenes, great art, and voice acting. The four difficulty levels are well tuned. The AI is good. You become invested in your soldiers. My first game took around 100 hours to complete, but I think 50 is more common.

The Good

Tactical Combat

The heart of XCom is tactical combat. That's where you spend most of the game, and it's fun. There are plenty of great decisions to make, and it's satisfying. If you really want pure tactics and nothing else, you might be frustrated at everything else going on in the game, but then why are you looking at XCom?

Story

The story is good but the presentation is amazing. The head chief, engineer, and scientist are well written and well acted. On my first playthrough, once I got so strong that I couldn't lose missions, the campaign story kept me coming back.

Campaign

The strong campaign is what really sets XCom apart from other mission-based games. The buildings and technology decisions have dramatic effects on the missions. While you have to mostly succeed, you can fail missions from time to time and still win. 

Levelup

You might have 30 active soldiers at a time and they will all be different. There are 5 skill trees (8 with expansion) and like 6 ranks. There is a variety of equipment that can be passed around. Losing a high-level soldier feels bad, and if you want to keep his valuable equipment you need to carry his body out.

The Bad

Scaling Difficulty

The game does a good job at increasing difficulty as the campaign goes on, but it eventually hits a cap that is too easy. If you can survive to the endgame, the missions go from tense to easy. This is a serious problem. After my first 10 missions, I'm thinking, "what a great game! I can't wait to try other strategies". After 40 missions I'm thinking, "ugh, what a slog. I'm bored with these easy missions. I'll just let the aliens kill civilians until I can do the final mission."

Pod Activation

Tactical encounters are handled with "pods". They are small groups of aliens that don't do much until they notice you. Once they see you, they activate and try to kill you. Generally speaking, if you can do a mission with only activating one pod at a time you will do well. Activating two pods can be very difficult and activating three could force you to immediately abandon the mission. 

This pod system means that stealth is king and carefully moving around the map is critical. I don't enjoy that aspect of the game. I like the fighting. I don't like sneaking around to make sure I only fight one pod at a time. This is by far my biggest complaint about the game. It makes missions take twice as long to complete. I won't mind the occasional stealth mission, but this mechanic forces me to keep at least one stealther in every squad.

Story Pacing

There is not much reason to do the research that advances the story. In order to get powerful, you should research tech to help you win missions. By the time you are free to do research for the plot, the game is easy. There is a doomsday clock that forces you to do the occasional plot mission, but once you pass the midgame, this isn't an issue.

Clunky UI

OK, "clunky" isn't fair but there are some screens that could be snappier. Those animations are cool but after I have seen them 300 times, I'd rather just get in and out of the menu quickly. At the squad select screen there is a ton of information to consider but it isn't easy to find that information. I have to go through a lot of menus to give my soldier the same loadout that he always has.

Should You Buy It?

Yes. It's A+ quality. The story, the strategic play, the levelup aspect, and the tactical game are all strong. It's the king of the genre. If you are unsure if you like that genre, it's a fine game to explore that.

War of the Chosen Expansion

Should you get it? Probably not. It's a great expansion and does what an expansion should -- it offers more content for people who have played out the main game. But if you are only going to play the game once, I don't know if the expansion adds much. It might make the plot seem a little random and unfocused. So basically I'd get the base game and play it once or twice. Then get the expansion. Honestly I'm not sure if the gameplay is better with or without it.

The Witness

The Witness is a game of maze puzzles in a pleasant atmosphere.

Overview

The Witness is a long series of little mazes to solve. The environment hints at a deeper story, although I didn't play long enough to figure it out. The mazes themselves are fun, but after doing dozens of them I would need a break. 

Recommendation

It's hard to recommend The Witness. For me, it was too repetitive. I really liked The Talos Principle and I can't quite put my finger on the difference. While slow, The Talos Principle had a plot to figure out. Also, the puzzles felt more clever. The Witness feels like doing a whole bunch of Sudoku puzzles. I like the occasional Sudoku, but I don't want to do them back to back for hours.

Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords

KOTOR 2

Kotor2 is a popular Star Wars game, expanding on the lore of the Old Republic in the wake of Revan.

Overview

The game itself is a real-time over-the-shoulder team-based RPG. The game mechanics are heavily influenced by the d20 Star Wars game. You follow a mostly linear plot, gain levels, acquire companions, and get better gear.

Assessment

Graphics

This game is over ten years old and hasn't aged all that well. The graphics aren't distractingly bad, but people watching me play commented, "wow, how old is that game?"

The movement scripts are pretty good, though. It's fun watching lightsabers flash and deflect blasters.

Gameplay/Combat

I specialized in melee, and all encounters were far too easy. In general combat didn't feel very good. When you start to attack, you get to queue up your actions. That's great, but for some reason you can't queue up buffs unless there is an attack. Very annoying. Also, one of the companions would often do a melee attack when I queued up a spell. Also annoying. Between the annoyances and the ease of fights, combat was tedious.

On the other hand, some of the force powers are pretty cool. At the end, Force Lightning was decimating everything.

Puzzles/Bonus Quests

Ugh, so bad. I should have skipped more of these. Too much running around doing nothing, punctuated with boring combat. Puzzles were generally too obvious, with the occasional "what do I do now?"

Main Story

The actual story was decent. This is the only reason I can think to play this game. The dialogue is very well done.

Level Up

Good. Leveling up is pretty fun. There are a lot of choices. You have enough variety of companions to cover any weaknesses in case you make a mistake. You eventually gain enough levels that you start down one path and change your mind. At the end, I was gaining powers I never planned to use (melee skills on a mage, force powers on a fighter).

Items

Poor. Getting new items is pretty comparable to other RPGs. However, there is to convenient way to compare item. "Cool. I found a Mandalorian Shield. Uh... what does it do?" Instead of a quick tooltip of the abilities, you have to dig through menus and scroll through an unsorted list of items to find the new thing. For the most part, I didn't bother. Every few levels I would see if I had somehow acquired a better items.

Crafting

Mediocre. The crafting system is almost cool, but it has a few problems. The biggest problem is that it is not clear what item upgrades fit into which items. Is "Energy Absorption 3" underlayer or overlayer?

Companions

Mixed bag. There is a lot of variety in your companions and their stories develop. However, none of them are very deep, and it's not easy to extract the story. Every so often you have to talk to them and go through the same dialog choices you have seen a dozen times before you know if there is anything new. The different companions are great, though. Something for everyone.

Voice Acting/Dialogue

The voice acting is always good and often outstanding. It pairs with good writing to make you look forward to talking with NPCs. 

The Sith Restored Content Mod

Also known as M4-78 mod, this comes highly recommended, but I disagree. It adds another planet, but the puzzles and voice acting are done by fans. The quality of the puzzles are about the same as the rest of the game, except the running around is even worse. While the voice acting is very good for a fan mod, it is far inferior to the excellent work done in the game. Since I consider the voice acting the best part of the game, this Mod is worse than pointless.

Overall

Kotor2 is generally boring with dated graphics. The highlights are the voice acting. It took me 78 hours to play but 20 would have been more tolerable. Overall, I don't recommend.

Fallout 76

Fallout 76

A massively single player RPG.

I'm a fan of the Fallout genre. I've played Fallouts 1,2,3,4 and Fallout Shelter. Fallout 4 is my favorite, and I like MMORPGs, so Fallout 76 should have been a slam dunk. 

Single or Multiplayer

Unfortunately, Fallout 76 incorporates the worst features of a single and multiplayer games. The world doesn't have many other players in it and doesn't really encourage grouping. There is no player economy. For the most part it feels like a single player game. 

As a single player game, Fallout 76 falls short. You can't pause, you can't save the game easily. There are no actual NPCs. Quest lines are shallow. Playing Fallout 76 made me want to replay Fallout 4 to explore areas I missed.

Team Play

Where Fallout 76 shines is playing with a group of friends. It has built-in voice communication and squad combat is fun. You can teleport to people in your group and use each other's bases. You can trade blueprints, weapons, ammo, or whatever. Difference in levels is handled fairly well.

Recommendation

Buy Fallout 76 if you want to play with friends. As a single player or mmo, it is lackluster.