Crashlands
My playtime: 73.8h (based on steam, 100% achievement)
Grindy Achievement(s): Yes (~3 achievements).
Optional Achievement(s): Yes (~29 achievements).
Difficult Achievement(s): Yes (~2 achievements).
Intro
Crashlands is a game where you have to gather resources, kill enemies, and craft items to defeat bosses.
Pros:
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4 difficulties
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3 game modes
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Unique bosses
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You can finish quests in any order that you want
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A lot of craftable items, including the ones used for decoration purposes
– Real player with 73.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Crafting Singleplayer Games.
It’s one of those games that make you wish that Steam had a more complex grading system rather than the binary one. Crashlands is a game that reminds many (including myself) of Don’t Starve. In my opinion it is to Don’t Starve, what American remakes are to European original films. It’s goofier and more flashy, but in the process loses the idea of what makes the original so genius.
Gameplay
Crashlands drops you into an alien world, where you need to craft and help the locals to retrieve the packages lost during the crash landing. You have to scavenge and hunt mobs for materials that allow you to craft better gear and challenge harder mobs. It’s actually fun for the first few hours, until you notice, this is it, that’s basically the whole game. Just grind to craft another workstation, another weapon, another armour. It might have been okay as one of the possible activities, but it gets really old when it’s the only activity available. And you have to do it a lot. There are 35 levels of equipment and they increment in twos. This means, the same gameplay loop has to be repeated around 17 times, that’s at least 10 times too many. It’s also possible to ‘domesticate’ pets, until you notice, that it’s basically another part of the crafting system as the domesticated pets create materials which you’ll need to create your weapons and armours with. It doesn’t really help that the design of most of the gear is rather uninspiring. You can have the same sword/axe/helmet/etc. every 2 levels. I mean, it looks different, but the only actual difference is that it deals a bit more damage than the same item of the lower tier and a bit less damage than the item of the next tier. Only the gadgets and devices are a small breath of fresh air, at least some of them offer interesting, new mechanics.
– Real player with 38.7 hrs in game
Small World
I don’t own the boardgame of this yet but a couple of my friends and I spent several hours playing last night and well play many more in the future. A charming game that is much deeper than its whimsical appearance may suggest with a lot of replayability despite the (at least currently) singular map.
I would love to see more expansions for it, especially the modular map, to come to the PC version and more races and powers means more options and crazy combos. Some of these combinations were laugh out loud funny (flying ghouls, peace-loving barbarians, etc.) so even more of these would enhance the game immensely.
– Real player with 408.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best Crafting Multiplayer Games.
TL;DR: It’s broken
You don’t have 165 hours in this, all single player. Nobody does. Why would you?
So here’s a review from a person who is deep in this game.
The boardgame is amazing, this is it.
Until a month ago, it worked great. It had a few glitches (Leprechauns would get slowdown issues while fast forwarding through their gold collection, etc.) that weren’t game breaking. Maybe every twentieth hour there’d be a game-breaking non-reproduceable bug that you’d never see again.
Not anymore. After purchasing the Royal Bonus DLC, I had 6 drops tonight. Reloaded, dropped from the game again. No error message, nothing. There’s a race that when selected… the game just stopped. Twice for me, tonight. Crazy.
– Real player with 170.2 hrs in game