Actraiser Renaissance
First of all, this is a QUINTET remaster. The mere fact that this game exists is a tremendous blessing for a certain cult fanbase.
The obvious bias aside, is the game good?
Short answer: Yes. Long answer: IT COULD HAVE BEEN SO MUCH MORE
It’s obvious that a lot of faithful effort was put into remastering this game. From including Yuzo Koshiro’s amazing soundtrack and accompaniment to the astounding artwork given to the many characters, menus and intro cutscene. People put their sweat and tears into this, and it shows in that regard.
– Real player with 54.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best City Builder 2D Platformer Games.
A great example on how to make a remake. Renaissance does an excellent job of bring the original SNES games action and town sim into a modern era with new graphics, classic and remixed soundtrack, and expanded story that makes you feel more immersed in what was a somewhat bare-bones world before.
The new artwork is great and the story telling is actually quite deep. Everything reads like a positive psalm with the writing really showing some great character development and overall storytelling. Which is good as all the new characters do little gameplay wise. The story is the only way you will interact and learn about the characters and their backstories.
– Real player with 40.9 hrs in game
Crystarise
The player becomes a guardian god apprentice girl,
We aim to rise up a sky island while going back and forth between the extremely vast field that continues to be automatically generated and the island that serves as the base.
First, let’s get down to the field to collect resources.
In an isometric 2D world, monsters, items, dungeons … various things are reflected on one screen.
Combine shooting and slashing actions to defeat monsters and get resources.
Once you have the resources, produce a variety of things and customize the island to your liking.
Read More: Best City Builder Open World Games.
Crescent Hollow
I think that the game itself is has a lot of replayability in that there are a bunch of characters to play as with their own backstories. The graphics are good as you see in the trailer. Playing the game on keyboard and mouse is fine but it feels way more fluid with a controller and I do like the character design. The game needs work like all games on early access but the game isn’t as bad as some people make it seem. It’s a pretty fun game. The most interesting character at the moment in my opinion is Druid. I also think that the Ninja is cool as well. I have the feel that a lot of hard work went into this. Yeah the game can be tricky at times but that is what makes it enjoyable. I will update my review when I play more of the game.
– Real player with 4.5 hrs in game
Read More: Best City Builder RPG Games.
If I didn’t know any better, I would say this game is vapor-ware. This seems to have the absolute minimum amount of playability to be on Steam Early Access. Nearly no key does anything, and everything is put together by 4 toddlers. It takes literal seconds for the game to process that all of 5 words have appeared on screen, and until it is done processing such a heavy load, the player is asked to sit and look at all the visuals on screen. All that eye candy bouncing about, giving us players a visual experience like no other.
– Real player with 0.1 hrs in game
Reignfall
It is a buggy mess (late game), it crashes a lot and feels like tons of missed opportunities, it looks like… well… but as a concept it is really good fun.
So this game is a mix between tower defense, real time strategy, city building and 3rd person fighting game. You start a game on a procedurally generated map and you have to survive 15 waves of attackers to win. There are rogue-like elements in the sense that everytime you defeat 3 waves you get reward items which you can carry on in your next game (making it easier, obviously) providing a variety of bonuses from extra ressources to extra troops or bonuses and abilities for your lord like damage resistance, bodyguards and a variety of skills and spells.
– Real player with 43.5 hrs in game
Reignfall I think is an underrated gem that I wish a lot of people would discover and get into more. If your a big fan of strategy games like Total War, Age of Empires and also action RPG games like Dynasty Warriors, this is a pretty fine mix of those elements along with roguelite and city builders!
In Reignfall your objective is to defend against an onslaught of random enemies every couple minutes, in between this time frame you must build and manage your town to produce resources and gold to get defenses, soldiers, and heroes to fight on your behalf. Some buildings require chains in order to be used effectively, for example if you want to make a lot of food you’ll need to first get a wheat farm, where do you build farms? On fertile ground (dark green tiles) and you must build the farm plots on said fertile ground. After that you need to construct a mill to have that grain be turned into flour, and a bakery to turn it into food. These chains and production buildings all take gold which you will need to counter balance by building homes to increase gold flow and also purchase units. The game finely balances out and stresses that you can’t just be spend gold happy to get what you need and strategic placement of your buildings to get the most use out of them.
– Real player with 37.2 hrs in game
Dungeons and Kingdoms
The Dwarven Sons of Ivaldi have reclaimed the mountain and begun their quest to forge masterpieces for the Gods.
When you learned of this, you struck out with your family, leaving the safety of the human kingdom to venture into the wilds to settle and establish trade with the Dwarves.
There you begin to grow your community from a tiny village into your own mighty Kingdom.
Assemble a party of heroes and begin your adventure into the unknown seeking treasure, fortune, and fame.
Dungeons and Kingdoms is a combination of city building and small party questing adventures.
Build
-
Modular building - Hundreds of modular building pieces available, build entirely custom structures and layouts piece by piece
-
Build Plans - You act as the build planner by placing all the pieces and build up modular buildings, then begin construction. Those build plans pass to the job system to be constructed by your workers. You can have many build plans in construction at the same time.
-
Full Preview - Build plans allow you to see what your buildings will look like fully connected and rendered in game. Your workers will only act on them when you start construction. You can cancel construction at no cost, so you can attempt endless Build Plans until you like what you see.
-
Edit buildings - Once placed and built, all building pieces can be removed or added allowing no end to how you customize and evolve your world
-
Assign Builder - Assign anyone for basic construction (fire pits, wood fencing etc) up to master builders for epic monuments and castles
-
Decorate - Hundreds of items available to decorate and furnish your kingdom
Blueprints
-
Save Build Plan as Blueprint - Start placing items as a build plan. When you have a collection of pieces you want to re-use (like a small house, or a smith) you can save the current build plan as a Blueprint. This allows you to place the entire Blueprint as a single building piece later, over and over.
-
Everything with Blueprints - You can use the Build Plan feature simply as a way to make many different Blueprints. Make a Build Plan, save as a new Blueprint, then Cancel the original Build Plan.
Tera forming
-
Excavate - Dig trenches and moats
-
Tunnel - Mine deep underground, building networks of mining cart tracks setting up functional production lines
-
Landscaping - Lower, raise or flatten the ground to customize the terrain for your kingdom
Grow Your Kingdom
-
Attract People - Either through increased wealth and prosperity, or great deeds by your heroes
-
Hire Specialists - Send word back to the neighboring kingdoms about specialty positions you need to hire
-
Trading - Negotiate trade with the local Dwarven city. Focus your early growth on what they need, trade for what you need, or what you can trade with other Kingdoms.
Manage Your Kingdom
-
Production - From peasants gathering mushrooms and berries to master masons sculpting great statues, assign your population to jobs to increase their skill.
-
Training - People will learn and improve at whatever job you assign them to, or send them off to other Kingdoms to learn special skills to bring back to your city.
-
Smart AI - While some of your people may not be geniuses, they are smart enough to go to work when something needs to be done. In other words, you don’t have to worry about getting bogged down micro managing everyone. You can be as involved as you want to be, but the more work you put in to managing your Kingdom, the more effective your population will be.
Survive
-
Risk - Outside the safety of city walls, the world is dangerous. From wild animals and other creatures, to bandits, and tribes of Orcs… or worse!
-
Economy and Production - Starting small, balance your growth with the available resources and trading partners to ensure your people survive
-
Defend - The more you have, the more others will want to take it. Building and maintaining defenses may make the difference between life and death.
Questing
-
Heroes - While most of your population will be regular people with jobs, you may attract, hire, or train up legendary heroes. Take your party of heroes on adventures and quests while leaving your kingdom to be run by the local council, or send your heroes out on their own.
-
Encounter Areas - The main map is for building your sprawling kingdom. Learn through rumors about quests where you assemble a party of heroes to adventure out into the wild including dungeons, over-world swamps and forests, crypts and other deadly lairs.
Play as Anyone
-
Perspective - All play modes are in either First or Third person
-
Variety - Your main character is the leader of your town, with the goal of eventually becoming a great ruler. You can also switch between any character in your Kingdom. Each character has their own unique skills and traits, training level, and inventory.
-
Skill - When you directly control a character, you may be able to increase that character’s production beyond their automated skill level by doing jobs manually
-
Automation - Perhaps you leave control of your city to your people and focus on adventures as one of your Kingdoms great heroes.
Combat
-
Weapons - Many different weapons to craft, buy, or loot, including swords, maces, hammers, axes, bows, crossbows, and several specialized weapons with many custom animations and sounds.
-
Custom Smithing - Either attract or train a smith of high enough skill, and build your own custom weapons with unique stats
-
Enemies - From neighboring enemy tribes of Orcs, to many different creatures and monsters ensures a diverse range of combat tactics and experience.
Sandbox Mode
Sandbox mode available - build anything you want without restriction or having to worry about resources, money, or dangers.
COINS BATTLE
I give a qualified thumbs up. If you can get this game for $0.99 or less, it’s worth playing just for the concept. I wouldn’t pay more than that. There is no tutorial and no explanation of the rules. I sort of get it and it’s interesting up to a point.
– Real player with 0.3 hrs in game
Looks like I get to write the first review for COINS BATTLE. Lucky me.
COINS BATTLE is a very low quality mobile-tier clicker game where you tap on various coins to make them “fight” other coins by running into them, just like the screenshots show. Exciting, isn’t it? Yeah, I know.
Usually I’d go into why this game is so insultingly bad no PC gamer should buy it, but I’ve lately gone through so many asset flips and game construction kit garbage, it’s really refreshing that at least there’s an original concept here. It’s not a good concept, and it’s badly implemented, but at least it’s original, as far as I know.
– Real player with 0.2 hrs in game
Monkey vs Dino
Fighting games are one of the oldest pillars of video games that have been published for many years in various forms and shapes. From violent and bloody Mortal Kombat to Tekken and Street Fighter. But the issue in all fighting games is they are very slow to progress. Yes, the main thing in fighting games is to choose two characters and fight with each other. But the content of all these games would soon be boring for players who did not follow the game professionally. Another area that most fighting games didn’t take seriously was the story or single section, which in most games was not so strong that it could be considered a strong point…
– Real player with 5.2 hrs in game
Stars received: 0.2/10 _ Note: v.5 [0.0 to 1] = personal impressions
[0.1] Controls & Training & Help
[0] Menu & Settings
[0] Sound & Music
[0.1] Graphics
[0] Game Design
[0] Game Story
[0] Game Content
[0] Completion time (level/game)?
[0] is it Enjoyable & Fun?
[0] Could it hold a spot in Favorites? (& if the Game can be repeatedly played again)
[0] BONUS point: Multi-Player related
[0] BONUS point: Review for VR
[N] - if Registration is required with providing PII
Game description key-points: game from a prankster kid
– Real player with 1.0 hrs in game
Eden: New Dawn
I would recommend you wait for major patches/updates to release for the game seems to be at an odd state where the servers lag with your position quite a bit and the only thing you can do is build in creative.
Not much really to it yet but I can’t wait to see if they add things like paint explosive and portals like in World Builder, I still play that game its so nostalgic to me.
Also to send messages in chat longer than one word you cant space it out you need to use underscores.
Needless to say glad I got to see its current build since it just released in Early Access and that I get to support the devs with my purchase.
– Real player with 1.9 hrs in game
This review represents the game’s state on September 29, 2021. If lots of time time has passed since this review, then the game may have received major updates and this review may no longer be relevant.
I purchased Eden World Builder many years ago in the earlier days of the iPhone/iPod Touch and it was one of my favorite mobile games of that era (the game still runs on modern iOS hardware btw!). Some of the updates later in its life seemed interesting, but eventually it ended up being an abandoned project. So of course when I heard they were working on a new Eden game, I had to wishlist it on Steam and buy it on launch. From viewing this page I had already figured this wasn’t exactly going to be a Eden World Builder type game, but I always wanted a proper survival mode so why not.
– Real player with 0.6 hrs in game
Regions of Ruin 2
Enter a vibrant open world as a Dwarven hero to take on the task of reclaiming forgotten lands and ruins. Conquer the over-world of its rich resources and delve into the depths to uncover the secrets behind your ancient past.
In this sequel you’ll find a vast improvement to the landscapes and ambience of the game’s environments as well as a more versatile combat and skills system. Regions of Ruin offers a unique side scroller experience in that you have the freedom to roam an open world similar to Elder Scrolls' classics Oblivion or Skyrim. Explore, loot and discover hundreds of unique areas and quests at your pace.
Ni no Kuni™ II: Revenant Kingdom
TL;DR
A nice JRPG with a lot of charm, but lacking polish and a coherent narrative. Every good thing is half-baked, but the longer you play, the more the bad stuff catches up.
The Elephant in the Room
Ni No Kuni 2 Revenant Kingdom is still being made by Level 5, but Ghibli was not involved in any kind of way anymore. This means that a lot of the magic was lost in comparison and if I had to compare this game with something I already knew:
The Tales of series comes really close, even the battle system is somewhat similar. This makes Ni No Kuni 2 a lot more generic and takes away from the identity that the first game had. Despite sounding harsh I want to stress that Ni No Kuni 2 is still really presentable and feels more like a Dragon Quest game that captures you with it’s vibrant world, goofy characters and stories , making it a lot more traditional.
– Real player with 98.8 hrs in game
In life, as in tennis, there are forced and unforced errors. Some mistakes we can’t help because the situation we were put in was too complex to begin with, others are soley the result of our bad judgement. In a game that does something truly unique or ambitious, forced errors can be forgiven readily, unforced ones not so much. Ni No Kuni 2 is a game of a lot of (minor) forced errors and few (but noticeable) unforced ones.
Games are hard to make. They take a lot of time and money, and sometimes smaller studios, willing or not, take on projects that are a bit bigger than they can handle. To Level 5’s credit, they chose to allocate their resources correctly. I’ve seen a lot of people complaining about the low number of unique monsters and the repetitive content of some of the sidequests, but what I think is important is that all
! 100 of the recruitable citizens have two unique models (one for towns, one for the overworld map), a wonderful hand-drawn portrait for menu screens, their own descriptions, personalities, and attributes for what they are best at in the kingdom development simulation. A large number of the citizens you recruit pull double duty as unit commanders for the skirmish game mode, in which they all have a unique passive skill, active skills which they only share with a couple other units, and voice lines for defeating enemy officers. Would I prefer more enemy types? Yes. But if resouces had to be allocated unevenly in this game about making friends and building communities, better they be weighted towards friends than enemies.
– Real player with 91.1 hrs in game