Equilibrium Of Divinity
Well I like it so far. To me its like a Tales of Ma’Jahael with a group and crafting and tactical combat rather than just bumping your sprite into the enemy sprite. Don’t get me wrong, ToME is a great game with plenty of depth, but..I HATE the sprite thing. Is this game fancy or flashy? Not at all, but the basic tactical combat makes it feel more like a pen and paper rpg than the aforementioned game.
Will edit review with more in-game time
Learned how to edit my own portraits and avatars, which is easily doable with gimp skills.
– Real player with 77.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Great Soundtrack Difficult Games.
I must say this game kinda snuck under my skin as I slowly realized it had more to it than I thought at first. You party is build as you want, 6 in a group and no classes. now it gets even better.
You are lost in a maze of connecting portals to different maps, (lands) and with each layer or portal you enter thru, you will get points to add to your characters build.
As in;
Weapons - mace, dagger, etc.
Professions - alchemy, tailor, 8 types.
Skills - lockpicking, linguistic, perception, 3more.
– Real player with 57.4 hrs in game
Xanadu Next
Balance elevates and limits this game. More than any of Falcom’s projects from their late Windows PC period, systems, aesthetics, and non-linearity counterbalance to create a sprawling action adventure that, even with its shortcomings and missed opportunities, seems fully conceived and replete with potential. If anything, this game rewards you for experiencing as much of it as possible, and of Falcom games and outside influences it took from.
I’m already near the end of my third Xanadu Next playthrough, storming my way through Castle Strangerock with every skill, technique, and trick in my book. Every time I know I’m playing one of the easier, often more accessible Falcom games from this period, but it never gets old. Even Gurumin has difficulty options this game sorely could use, not that it’s bad or merely good w/o them. Ys: The Oath in Felghana, released the same year as Xananext, has that and more detailed NPCs to entertain you, not to forget Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim which is heavy on both world-building and character. The soundtrack, as textured, baroque and diverse in genre (including hard rock for two tracks later on), isn’t as large and full as Gurumin’s or Trails in the Sky FC’s. And you don’t get interesting mechanics those games feature, like rhythmic critical hits or attack/experience multipliers based on how many monsters you rend and how quickly. After some thinking I get how unusual Xanadu Next seems to fans of the company’s games, mostly because it blends bits and pieces and then provides a number of seemingly less significant but unique systems.
– Real player with 58.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Great Soundtrack Singleplayer Games.
Great game to pick up if you like the Ys series, and a great value as well. This game will keep you busy for a while, and manages to remain fresh throughout. This game could be described as a slower, more methodical, puzzle-heavy Ys. I would also argue that it is more difficult than the Ys games (at least the ones available on Steam). The puzzles are hard and the combat has been slowed down and made much more punishing, forcing you to be deliberate in your actions, a noticeable departure from the super fast hack and slash style of Ys.
– Real player with 44.6 hrs in game
Ys Origin
The Ys series is quite a mixed bag. I played Ys Origin after playing Ys 1 & 2 (since that is the order they were released in, though obviously “Origin” is a prequel). I wasn’t hugely impressed by Ys 1 & 2 - they were kind of ok, but had lots of issues; the lore was uninteresting and the story didn’t really resonate and the gameplay itself was … tepid.
Ys Origin, however, breaks free from the earlier games by radically changing the gameplay, and this is a good thing. Rather than an Ultima-style open world framework that the earlier games used, Origin simplifies all that to become effectively a linear dungeon crawler threaded through a series of highly structured narratives. The gameplay itself is distilled down to much more enjoyable and consistent core combat mechanics, while retaining the structure of building up to periodic challenging boss fights.
– Real player with 63.5 hrs in game
Read More: Best Great Soundtrack Anime Games.
Isometric, Action, RPG, Multiple Characters
In Ys you play as one of three selectable characters and go through their journey in order to help the goddesses fight off evil that dwells within the tower. Each character has their own dialogue and conflicts most notably the secret third character has a lot more bosses than the other two.
Progression
Traveling from floor to floor can take some time, luckily you have goddess statues that teleport you instantly to other statues you have unlocked along your travels in the giant tower. This allows the player to be able to teleport to any floor he thinks requires more exploring weather its to grab a item he missed or simply to teleport back to floor 1 for upgrades. Not only that but you are fully healed when in range of the goddess statue, you can also save.
– Real player with 60.0 hrs in game
Dungeon Kingdom: Sign of the Moon
This one is my favourite in the genre realtime dungeon crawlers. I’m an old skool gamer and play video games since the 80’s, Dungeon Kingdom comes close to old skool Dungeon Master and the early 90’s series Eye of the Beholder. My favorite of the serie was EOB II, I was hooked to the game, addicted, I played a few houndred hours to finish the game on the commodore amiga 1200 :-)
DK also comes close to the grimrock serie but I prefer this game much more, it gives you that creepy dungeon crawler feeling and most important the game stays close to the original gameplay as the old skool crawlers from the 80’s and 90’s but with much better graphics and sound effects, eerie, creepy sounds/music is a must for this genre DK has it and much more.. my opinion.
– Real player with 59.7 hrs in game
just stay away from this crap… one of the graves in the cemetery at the beginning of the game has very arrogant “RIP Legend of Grimrock"inscription, which is just hilarious… LoG is finished (2 installments even) while this game is being promised to be completed “very soon” for last 7 or so years, surprisingly it still isnt and the production quality reflects that… i gave it one more try after several years to see how the development is going and im going to uninstall it and never look back again.
– Real player with 28.1 hrs in game
Magic Potion Explorer
As someone who has become extremely jaded and cynical and pessimistic in their years on this earth, this game was a spot of sunshine in an otherwise dreary existence.
There’s not a lot of active playing to be had, it’s mostly just clicking the odd thing here and there and watching your numbers go up. Mostly it’s about strategizing which upgrades to pick at what time, to maximize efficiency. It’s not really a clicker, it’s more of an idle game like some others have pointed out.
Even if you suck sh*t at the game like I do you can beat it simply through patience, since upgrades carry over between runs, unless you are playing on hard, which will only reward you with a set amount of upgrade points everytime you die up to a maximum, after which you won’t get anymore.
– Real player with 19.7 hrs in game
A really simple game to spend some time with
The goal of the game is simple, Reach B99
During your desent downwards you’ll fight monsters and collect items for RP, which are used to make potions/buffs for your person, the collecting and battles are all auto so you only need to manage the potion aspect of things.
Should you fail and die, you are sent back to B1 and have to wander back downwards again, however there are difficulty settings for this, on Normal should you fall you will keep all your upgrades so you can nuke your way back down to where you were, on Hard however should you fall, you lose all your upgrades but are given a small amount of RP in exchange, continue to fall and the RP rises more.
– Real player with 14.2 hrs in game
The Enchanted Cave 2
TL;DR: An Eastern-styled rogue-like, simple in design but engaging. Good for a playthrough, but late game and NG+ are heavily unbalanced.
The first thing to note about the Enchanted Cave is it is available for free as a flash game. That version of the game stops at level 80. The version on steam is the equivalent of the ‘Premium’ flash version, with steam achieves and trading cards added. The second thing to note is this is not what most modern people would consider a ‘rogue-like’ in the traditional sense. I would call this an Eastern rogue-like, closer to Shiren the Wanderer or Azure Dreams. Each run is not separate from the others, you play the same character, with certain things getting reset on the run while keeping others.
– Real player with 109.1 hrs in game
Within the first 5 minutes of playing The Enchanted Cave 2 crashed and exited out of the game (during the first player selection). I thought, “Damn, I bought a crappy game that was rated very well, has pretty primitive graphics, and probably wasn’t even worth buying on sale.” 3 hours later I was still playing, with no crashes after.
Most of the game is really straightforward, but what is it with Indie devs and crafting??? Crafting wasn’t intuitive, but once I watched a couple of videos online I got the hang of crafting. I played a couple of different characters in those 3 hours, made it to (and killed the level with the solo big spider). To this point it looks like items without any crafting (some you find already have an ability) can be crafted up to 2 times. I’m still early (cave level 20ish) game so this might not be correct.
– Real player with 96.9 hrs in game
Ys: The Oath in Felghana
Oath in Felghana is a phenomenal action RPG. It is the third game in the Ys series, and a remake of the original Ys III. While the original Ys III was a good game in its own right, it was also a flawed game in many ways (don’t take that to mean it wasn’t a heck of a lot of fun). Oath in Felghana not only rectifies every flaw of the original, it also improves upon Ys III in every way, all while remaining faithful to the core essence of what made Ys III such a fun and memorable game.
Pros:
- Phenomenal soundtrack
– Real player with 159.9 hrs in game
A fantastic entry in the Ys series, simply brilliant. If I had to recommend a Ys game from this generation, it would have to be this one. Ys Oath (3) takes what was created in Ys Ark (6) and refines it into high quality material. Nearly everything in this game is an improvement over the previous, which was already reasonably decent. The following is a list of great positives present in Ys Oath, with some comparisons to the previous game, Ys Ark:
– Real player with 102.7 hrs in game
Instant Dungeon!
Instant Dungeon is a crossing between rogue-like and platform with random generated levels.
It’s the kind of game easy to learn hard to master, and it gives u that feeling “Try it one more time”, because u know why u died and how to fix it
The pros:
It’s fun, addictive, is as hard as u want it to be.. later levels will show U if u think u are good:)
The cons:
At some point u want more.. because u like it, Is this really a bad thing? Well yes because i wold like my character to advance in some other way then a consumable item from the ground
– Real player with 15.0 hrs in game
Nice little time waster just as it basically advertises itself to be. Want to go spelunking and see how far you can get and what score you can get with no real need to worry about story and real progression then give this a boot up! There’s definitely an interesting variety of weapons/items you can grab and use as you get further into the “dungeon”.
Achievements were kind of a pain, especially the last few (the wraiths in particular). If you can get far enough in the normal mode (level 40 I think) then you unlock a mode that definitely helps with that particular type of grinding. Some of the modes are just…a huge difficulty skip as it puts you practically into the further levels (with respective monsters and lightning conditions). The “quest” and “retrieve a friend” modes were amusing to tinker with. And if you want to compete with a leaderboard there’s that too.
– Real player with 14.5 hrs in game
Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk
I don’t normally write reviews, since I don’t normally find a game that compels me to do so. But Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk is such an unique experience that I had to write about it.
In short: please give this game a try. It’s one of my favourite dungeon crawlers with a rich and dark story to accompany it.
Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk is a dungeon crawler game where the player controls several teams of puppets to explore the hidden secrets of the Labyrinth hidden under the town named Refrain. The player assumes the role of a soul-possessed book, The Tractatus de Monstrum, and aids the travelling crippled witch Dronya and her apprentice Luca in uncovering the secrets behind Refrain and the Labyrinth.
– Real player with 226.9 hrs in game
The game itself is fun and interesting, but this version in particular is broken and no one is providing support. I’d recommend trying a different platform.
The game crashes frequently and does not let you save while in the labyrinth, only suspend data. If you crash after loading suspended data, you will not be able to load it again and will continue from before you entered the labyrinth. This is extremely annoying and if I hadn’t been able to find a workaround I’d have quit the game for sure. At the very least 5+ hours from my playtime were me replaying sections because of crashes.
– Real player with 123.3 hrs in game
Stranger of Sword City
********** 2nd & Final Update after taking a 3 years break **********
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED Ratings 10/10
This is a game that I have played and reviewed 3 years ago. At that time I spend about 100+ hours, but did not really finished the game. I reach a part where the game became too hard for me, so I stopped sometime in Jul 2016.
Now 3 years later, I felt a strong urge to replay old classics and replayed this game from the start (cos I forgot how to play this game after 3 years break). I felt in love with this game, and played it non stop for many many hours. This time I went slowly and changed classes many times so that I can get the best abilities of each class.
– Real player with 397.5 hrs in game
It was my first Dungeon Crawler and if I am asked if I feel remorse for buying it the answer is a clearly :NO. I love and hate this game at the same time.
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Story: I just love it. It starts mysertious and keeps this feeling/vibe up till the end.
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Characters: I love them and it broke my heart a few times trough the story. But you can understand why they act most of the time while you play trough the story.
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Music I love the music. It fits the battles, overworld and the base.
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Graphic/Design Just gorgeous. The game is just beautiful. I love the style of the Characters, base and the world. The Monsters look really diffrent than every other game I have played before. Nothing is the same and the style reminded me of “Dark Tormentum” (great game try it)
– Real player with 277.6 hrs in game