Zoological Era II

Zoological Era II

I don’t make reviews.

But this fucking game had me on the verge of depression and full melancholy at times and then smiling ear to ear, happy to realise how hopeful and humble life really is.

This game manages to make a masterful and deeply personal story about going through a downward spiral in your life, full of gut-wrenching sorrow and pain. While that’s an achievement on it’s own, I truly appreciate that this game also encapsulates finding light at the end of the tunnel, getting back on your own feet and finding hope in even the smallest victories.

Real player with 0.1 hrs in game


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Zoological Era II on Steam

Earth 2160

Earth 2160

Earth 2160 is a somewhat unappreciated RTS with a number of nice features mixed in with a truckload of bland. It will provide some decent entertainment in the here and now but it will never be remembered for anything.

Earth 2160 sets you in the future, corporations fight for control over the Solar System’s dwindling resources as a new discovery rocks the power structure and sets the game’s events in motion. As you start out you get to play as either a generic male dominated corporation or the curiously female dominated Mars corporation. They both, not surprisingly, turn out to be evil rather quickly into the campaign and you eventually get to play as the “good” faction, a generic robot corporation that really has no personality and eventually, a menacing alien horde.

Real player with 67.0 hrs in game


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I finally got down and finished the game all the way through, after nearly completing it some 12 years ago, and then not-even-close to finishing it some 5 years ago, so I’m naturally biased with nostalgia, but I think it’s an overall great rts, but sadly with a few shortcomings that can ruin the experience if you can’t or can’t be arsed to learn to avoid them.

The graphics in the game are often complimented, and at times they’re really amazing for 2005, but it kinda depends where you look. What I’m most impressed with though, is that each of the four factions has a COMPLETELY different gameplay. Literally every mechanic is altered: completely different vehicles with completely different types weapons, different ways to harvest resources (which require very different planning and sometimes microcontrol), different ways to set up bases and interconnect buildings, different defence systems (which require completely different base layout), etc. It’s literally a different game depending on what faction you play with, which is incredibly enjoyable. Crucially, the factions are all really well balanced, so that every faction has a fair chance against every other. Together with expansive unit customisation and cool base expansion options, it makes for tremendously fun gameplay once you get a hold of the basic faction mechanics. On top of that, the soundtrack is wicked!

Real player with 39.6 hrs in game

Earth 2160 on Steam

Nevergrind Online

Nevergrind Online

Nevergrind Online is a real-time cooperative multiplayer online RPG where you and a group of adventurers join forces to protect the Kingdom of Edenburg from the sinister forces of darkness. Up to five players can form a party and venture forth to help restore peace and order to the Kingdom.

Your adventure starts in the peaceful Kingdom of Edenburg, the trading capital of Vandamor, which has recently been under siege by agents of chaos outside of its castle walls. Supplies are running low in the Kingdom due to recent disruptions in major trade routes to the Kingdom. Your first orders from the King are to investigate who is blocking the trade routes, and to what end? Your adventure will lead you on a perilous journey across the furthest reaches of Vandamor, to creepy crypts, forgotten fortresses, and ravaged ruins!

Choose to fight alone or join forces with up to four other players in a party! Before you embark you must prepare and organize in the Kingdom of Edenburg. There are seven buildings that offer various services.

Kingdom of Edenburg

  • Tavern: Choose from a list of quests, get tips from the innkeeper, or check out the leaderboard.

  • Academy: Seek class-specific training for all of your skills—for a price of course!

  • Merchant: Buy and sell goods from the merchant, who offers the widest variety of items in Edenburg.

  • Bank: Store valued items in the bank which can be shared with your other characters.

  • Apothecary: Buy and sell potions, scrolls, cloth armor, jewelry, and staves.

  • Guild Hall: Create a guild to help organize and communicate with a group of friends.

  • Blacksmith: Buy and sell weapons and armor, including mail and plate!

Features

  • Create a character from 12 races and 14 classes! Allocate attributes that favor your playing style!

  • Level up 12 different skills for each class! Will you train them evenly or decide to specialize?

  • Discover thousands of different items including magical, rare, set, and unique items, which feature a wide variety of useful properties!

  • Crawl through procedurally generated dungeons which offer a new layout with each quest!

  • Complete dozens of quests through 14 different zones in the world of Vandamor!

  • Communicate with allies and forge friendships using a robust chat system!

  • Encounter more than 40 different types of mobs which appear in various types including rare, champion, and bosses, each with their own unique traits!

  • For the fearless—hardcore mode offers the ultimate adrenaline rush! One death brings your illustrious journey to an abrupt end!


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Nevergrind Online on Steam

Shadows: Awakening

Shadows: Awakening

Thou art already dead…

Shadows: Awakening may look like a Diablo-like on its face. But it has its own thing going on. Let me qualify that, as far as it being an isometric hack and slash with loot and levels — that’s exactly what it is, however you play as a demon with other people inside of them — a devourer of souls.

Shadows is a bit more story driven than its contemporaries. And while you will be picking up loot and leveling, the game places significant importance on dialogue decisions as well as quests taken and completed. Some areas will have lite puzzle solving as well, additionally, many side dungeon/caves are available. — Now, enemies to do not respawn should you decide to travel back to a completed area stay for a few enemies that pop out of jars or some other environmental object. So, there isn’t much reason to return unless you want to satiate the completionist in you that missed a side quest. You won’t need — or even be able to grind levels or gear out of those areas once you’ve moved on.

Real player with 45.9 hrs in game

You’ve been summoned from death, pulled back into life by a demon. As a puppet of his goodwill you fight side by side to prevent the world from total destruction.

Shadows Awakening is an action roll playing game. It’s hack and slay in an isometric perspective with beautiful graphics, satisfying combat, an extremely deep story, very well balanced difficulty, tons of collectables, great puzzles, many different heroes with unique upgrade possibilities and highly enjoyable boss fights. The game does an awful lot very well but sucks when it comes to quest design and story telling.

Real player with 40.7 hrs in game

Shadows: Awakening on Steam

Moonstone Tavern - A Fantasy Tavern Sim!

Moonstone Tavern - A Fantasy Tavern Sim!

Where to start… Well, first off, I got this game for free to play, enjoy and do Let’s Plays of. When I first started, I started with out a class, which in all honesty, was funny. Other than that, starting out, things worked great! Tutorial was pretty straight forward, (im just an idiot at times XD ), Things start off easy, getting customers and making food and all that. I like how you have to manage things, like making sure you have money to pay any employees you hire, cleaning up sick guests messes, the diversity of the races you have in your Tavern, etc.

Real player with 36.4 hrs in game

Moonstone Tavern is a combination of a city builder (or tavern in this case) and an ARPG, similar to Pokemon Mystery Dungeon type games, but in real time and focused on the development of the tavern, which then adds stat bonuses to your character and extra party members. It has both a main quest line and repeatable quests of various difficulty that strengthen the main character in different ways.

Pros -

Lots of depth to developing the tavern

Enemies are fairly difficult to start

Marriage, familiar system, and hired heroes for a fairly large party (main character + 7 others that I know of)

Real player with 16.2 hrs in game

Moonstone Tavern - A Fantasy Tavern Sim! on Steam

Din’s Legacy

Din’s Legacy

Been enjoying this game, I’m glad it isn’t like the others its more rogue like and a bit more strict on your class building.

Dev(s) seem much more active on this project then the previous ones.

They actually added and edits things My self and others posted were wrong or seemed to be missing.

an for that i have to say this game is a must.

Now before i get into comparing this with other titles from Soldak the multi player no longer requires a port forwarding method or hamachi based connection. Which is a nice upgrade.

Real player with 2468.7 hrs in game

I played Din’s Curse (19 hours) and Zombasite (73 hours).

Both games was fun to play. Zombasite was really nice step forward.

I decided to buy Din’s Legacy.

I see Developer is making alot updates and i hope it will be great game in future but now game is called “Alpha” and sadly it’s truth.

In current state game is abit worse than Zombasite and i can’t recommend it to any DIn’s universe fans. Ofcourse i will check game updates and if things will work in future i will change my review.

Real player with 178.9 hrs in game

Din's Legacy on Steam

Zombasite

Zombasite

This game reminds me of a mesh of some of my favorite games of all time. Part ARPG (Din’s Curse in this instance), but has a similar feel and depth that old-school games like Seven Kingdoms, Majesty, Civ, Dwarf Fortress and various roguelike style of games. Let me first get to the Graphics and Sound, and also let me clear up why this isn’t quite like a regular “Zombie” based game, if you can even call it one.. If you want to skip to the gameplay review, skip down to where the review says “Finally, on to the game….”

Real player with 549.1 hrs in game

EDIT2: Now I have played a character to level 100 and it’s not finished, I want see what world level this character and his clan can manage, world level can be up to 200, character level maximum is 100 not sure for the clan. I have started in parallel a second character that is now close to level 60. This is about 400H played, about 320H recorded. It’s still a very partial vision of the classes and skills, both are close range characters (Warrior, Demon Hunter).

EDIT1: On Mac I started have serious performance problems late game with my first character and clan, not sure if the cause was to have too many summoners with too many summons in the clan, the higher the level the more each sommoners have summons and some other clans have summoners too. So the higher the level the more there’s summons. Because of that I’m hesitant to the game for playing it on Mac, despite I played the game a lot on Mac, and for Linux I didn’t tried. I clearly advise the game for Windows, not sure for Mac and Linux.

Real player with 381.5 hrs in game

Zombasite on Steam

WARTILE

WARTILE

Edit: I’ve won the game and it is pretty fun. The key factor to realize is that the archer is the most important character using the volley card. Once you get used to the game I really like the concept but it was challenging to mentally adjust to the different style of game (cool down vs turn based) coming from the turn based world. Using the slow down feature is essential until you get up to speed. On the higher levels it is absolutely critical to use the slow down feature to dodge tough opponents as them attack.

Real player with 322.1 hrs in game

Tabletop quest for the Sagas

Wartile is a strategy game allowing the player to take command of a Norse warband on a quest to save their land from a mysterious plague. Developed by a very aptly named danish studio PlaywoodProject, the game plays as a miniature wargame. Each character in Wartile is represented by a wooden figurine, battling their way across adorably detailed dioramas. While the game had visibly limited resources to work with, the developers have fully committed what they had towards an idea of tabletop game brought to life. An idea, in my book, they firmly delivered upon.

Real player with 17.5 hrs in game

WARTILE on Steam

Drox Operative 2

Drox Operative 2

Drox Operative 2 is an Action-RPG on top of a background of AI-controlled 4X sectors.

You can influence, beg, threaten and bribe endless races into situations, trades and treaties more beneficial for your guild (and most importantly yourself) but never have to worry about actually running things as you tend to your own business as the captain of your own ship.

A game loop (or “Sector”) consist of completing quests, killing monsters, hunting, destroying or rescuing various targets while exploring your sector which is made up of many solar systems. Said solar systems are joined together by jump gates and wormholes. Sectors make up galaxies whose main elements persist between your adventures. Your galaxies can be visited by any of your characters. Winning a sector consist of reaching one of many win conditions; a new sector is then created to your specifications, such as size.

Real player with 416.6 hrs in game

  • TL;DR: As with every Soldak game review i posted before i would strongly advice anyone reading this to at least give the demo a try. Soldak titles lack the triple-a quality graphics other titles have, but this is entirely offset by offering great gameplay experience.

Soldak Entertainment is a bit of an anomaly in my game collection.

I have been buying Soldak games for nearly a decade now, and during that time i purchased virtually every game and expansion pack made. What makes these games anomalous is that each and every single one of them ended up in my “100+ hours played” list. And to add some context to this: Less than 10% of the 600 or so games in library meet that criteria. That of course isn’t exactly an objective metric that clearly proves the quality of these games, but if nothing else it should at least hint they are fun for some people.

Real player with 187.8 hrs in game

Drox Operative 2 on Steam

Sector Six

Sector Six

Note: If you don’t like Diablo-like games please read the last paragraph of this review.

This is like a Diablo game but it is also unique in its way, it is a side scroller, shooter and you build a ship instead of an armored warrior. If you know Diablo-like games you already know this game too is all about loot, grinding and mindlessly destroying, highly addictive stuff. It starts with a story and you shoot various enemies such as spacecrafts, repair drones, bombardment towers, a mini boss enemy you occasionally fight called Apex, and a variety of bosses which are cleverly designed, while dodging projectiles in a bullet-hell like style and stuff, but, after collecting enough compartments to make a build, whether making it through relic items or set items (just like the set items in Diablo), dodging stops, and spamming various abilities and destroying everything in your path begins, and then you go on to grind loot to destroy them more efficiently. So yeah, you get the idea, it is a Diablo game.

Real player with 85.4 hrs in game

Before I start, let me note that since the game is in early access I’m giving it a bit more leeway than usual, but my recommendation is already for the game in its current state.

I’d bought the game through an external website without realising it was in early access, so I was a little anxious to discover it later. I don’t have many good experiences with unfinished games. But I’m glad to report that, despite not being able to finish the full story and the game having some issues, I already got enough fun out of it to be worth the price.

Real player with 58.1 hrs in game

Sector Six on Steam