The Age of Decadence
–-{Graphics}—
☐ You forget what reality is
☐ Beautiful
☐ Good
☑ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS
The game portrays an aesthetic I have a massive soft spot for - Post-apocalyptic colonial Roman Empire. The environment art is well polished and beautiful, and the art style is self-consistent and immersive. I really feel like I’m somewhere in Carthage. The cities feel appropriate for their size – Maadoran feels like a dirty, bustling metropolis down on its luck. The design of the armours and weapons are all era-appropriate, with proper, real-life names (e.g. Lorica Segmentata).
– Real player with 391.5 hrs in game
Read More: Best Difficult Tactical RPG Games.
In brief: AoD ditches many of the genre long established staples to focus on the roleplaying, and this it does amazingly well; there really is nothing quite like it out there. The EA version is very much playable (there are less bugs than in many releases). The combat, which has been much the focus of attention due to its difficulty, is not awesome, but it gets the job done and it is optional.
***Since for some reason Steam has decided to implement a character limit to user reviews (what’s up with that Gabe?), you can read my whole review here: http://steamcommunity.com/app/230070/discussions/0/666827315713399977/ , but below is a very long extract:
– Real player with 214.3 hrs in game
The Battles of Spwak
Did not like the gameplay. Very boring.
– Real player with 0.4 hrs in game
Read More: Best Difficult RPGMaker Games.
Bonfire
It’s good! Already worth playing in its current state early access state, if you’re fine with no ending.
Gets a great amount of mileage out of just reducing RPG combat down to essentials and making sure you have to weigh each option available in combat. Kinda like Into the Breach in that regard, both very elegant designs that are more interesting than the majority of their larger competitors.
– Real player with 42.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best Difficult Tactical RPG Games.
Game is fun, fully playable even with some endgame stuff (although more content to come) and the devs are great and responsive. If you like hard games, the hard mode seems pretty reasonable about very hard but not unfair. the easier difficulty felt right too, not effortless and boring but much less likely to lose a fight. (I recommend the hard difficulty the game is not possible to game over, and failures are always a learning situation but its nice when that you can swap between them if you are feeling particularly demoralized). I highly suggest checking this one out if you like some party based turn based rpg goodness on the harder side.
– Real player with 30.9 hrs in game
Dungeon Rushers
So here is my review. I just pulled it straight from the discussions page where i wrote it. Sadly its all true, and none of it is subjective. These issues all exist. So if you can justify playing 20$$ to put up with all the below issues, have at er.
Glitches/ bugs . update the game
Hello,
I purchased game and have played about 5 hours. I already have discovered some major glitches.
- When you win a fight, and collect reward, you are often ripped off out of your loot. For example almost any time the game tells you recieve more than 1 of any given crafting item, you only actually recieve 1!!!! 3 iron and 3 skulls as reward it says on screen, nope you get one of each. This happens almost every time, especially with iron, the ONE resource you seem to need for everything.
– Real player with 59.9 hrs in game
Dungeon Rushers is fun turn-based rpg focused adapting to different enemies and situations as you progress. While I have been playing I have seen several updates to fix what the game currently offered, was well as new content added in that has made the game even more enjoyable.
While the gameplay can be seen as repetative at first, it does become more interesting as you progress. The gradual addition of enemies as you progress as well as new team members positioned throughout the campaign add a level of fluidity to the combat system so it does not get too dull.
– Real player with 49.4 hrs in game
Legend of Keepers: Career of a Dungeon Manager
Legend of Keepers is a great rogue-lite game in which you manage a dungeon as part of a monster corporation. This corporation employs powerful dungeon keepers that set up traps, cast spells, and train monsters to protect the treasure at the end of the dungeon from heroes,, which are seeking to enrich themselves while destroying monsters and reversing all your hard work.
Gameplay:
The game is played over weeks, each week having one or more options for you to choose from. It plays a bit like slay the spire in that you can’t backtrack to any nodes you skipped, but it being framed as a schedule makes a lot more sense than the more abstract way a lot of rogue-lite games do this.
– Real player with 46.2 hrs in game
I REALLY tried to like this game, and overall would say I had a fun time, but there are enough factors that in accumulation makes Legend of Keepers feel very disappointing.
Before getting into the long list of bad, there are some good aspects:
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The game has a fair amount of content, taking around 30-50 hours for 100% completion and 100 total hours if you wanted to do all that and max the skill tree of all characters including DLC.
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The pixel art style for the game works great.
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It is an interesting twist on being the antagonist in a game.
– Real player with 46.2 hrs in game
Blacken Slash
Blacken Slash fuses tactical turn-based combat and fast-paced hack, slash and loot gameplay – and takes only the best out of both genres to create a simple, but endlessly rewarding gameplay experience where you fight, loot and repeat until you die. Play on your own and perfect your gear across dozens of runs and see which difficulty you can master – or compete with other players in an online leaderboard where you start from scratch each week.
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Minimalist – easy to learn
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Difficult – hard to master
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Short levels – short play sessions
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An abundance of items
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Various playstyles and builds
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Challenging achievements
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Weekly online leaderboard
Darkest Dungeon®
Darkest Dungeon is a game, no an Experience that stays with those who play it.
It sucks to lose your beloved hero that you spent hours upon hours building to a occultist 0 heal bleed deathblow But yknow what, you can always make another, right?
This game draws you in with its simple yet diverse combat with every enemy bringing its own deck to the table, be it stressing out your heroes or making them close to useless in a prolonged fight, every enemy has its weakness and to see one on the field and immediately say: “Oh Shit time to employ the plan” only for it to fail spectacularly and leave you scrambling and exposed as that swine skiver crit 40s your main healer and they die of a follow up attack, only to come up at the top with 2 HP on most of your dudes or dudettes can only be described as Cathartic.
– Real player with 1042.8 hrs in game
If you’re like me (I pity you) then you’ve tried to play Darkest Dungeon several times only to be rebuffed by its repetitive nature and yet you can’t let it sit because you’ve sunk the cost and want to know what all the fuss is about. After poking around a bit I made a discovery, it’s not really the repetitive nature of the game that’s the problem. It’s the hideously slow speed at which the game plays.
Once you grasp the basics of Darkest Dungeon’s gameplay loop you don’t need —or want— to sit though every camera zoom or every slow hallway creep. And thanks to the power of modding magic you don’t have to. Walking speeds, combat, and even the tallies at the end of each dungeon can be sped up with a mod, thus making the game a far more tolerable experience. There’s also a mod to kill the camera zooms, though it does make combat look a bit silly.
– Real player with 276.8 hrs in game
Hopeless Dregs
Good balance, no bugs, becomes more interesting after several attempts. I hope, the art side will be improved in future updates
– Real player with 4.6 hrs in game
Pretty good turn based game. There were a lot of intense moments of saving team members that could be played out well due to unique abilities that can help in different situations.
It would be great to have possibility to return to the town and compare equipped items.
Waiting for more content.
– Real player with 2.1 hrs in game
Vagrus - The Riven Realms: Prologue
When I read some of the negative reviews about Vagrus on the store page for the full game, I was hesitant about buying it and so I decided to try out this demo. One thing I’ve gotta say is that you HAVE to be in the mood for reading if you want to fully experience and enjoy this game. The first time I launched, I was not in that mood, and boy, I was really having my doubts. After getting bored during the first few dialogues, I decided to put it down and try again another day. Second time launching, I got ready to embrace the adventure ahead of me, no distractions, and it was FANTASTIC!
– Real player with 13.5 hrs in game
KENSHI in heavy text mode and turn by turn battles?
A book where you are the hero/leader as a video-game?
Conclusion in comments!
Demo offers 2 game modes:
-A tutorial campaign titled “Pilgrims of the Wasteland” which is in fact the first part of a story-driven campaign.
I completed it in 3 hours or so, taking my time to read tutorial hints and lore texts.
-5 turns in a free campaign, open-world setting.
I didn’t try it, 5 turns (days) seems too low for me to enjoy, also the tutorial has been enough of a test for me, i’m hooked.
– Real player with 5.3 hrs in game
Crown Uncrown: 1D Tactics
Win a run and your party gets Crowned, becoming the BOSSFIGHT for your next run while keeping all its items!
Crown Uncrown is an approachable turn-based tactics roguelike with minimal complexity and lots of unique items which interact in interesting ways.
Defeat enemies in a series of highly tactical and positional combat to seize the Crowns.
Each run is short and unique—perfect for sneaking in a run or two even when you’re busy!
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Adapt on the fly by tossing an item to an ally!
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(Sometimes it’s also useful to just lob a bomb toward your enemies.)
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Enemies are equipped randomly from the same item pool as you, and their loot is a great source for equipping your party.
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Beware though, enemies grow stronger too as you unlock more powerful items!
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Because the enemy AI adapts dynamically to its random items, it often makes surprising moves!
Features
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1-dimensional battlefields
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Cute 1-bit pixel art
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100+ unique items
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Unlimited undos if you’ve made a mistake
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No character classes or stats (Everything is item-based!)
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Alternate color palettes