The Dwarves
The Dwarves (also known as “Die Zwerge”) is a tactical-based RPG based on the novel series written by German author, Markus Heitz.
Story and plot premise:
The series takes place in the fictional fantasy realm of Girdlegard. The humans, whose primary deity is the goddess Palandiell, have seven kingdoms in the land, some of which house enclaves of magi who train famuli apprentices. The elves, who revere Sitalia, hide their kingdom of Alandur between the borders of two human kingdoms, Gauragar and Tabain. The dwarves, however, built their kingdoms around the mountain barriers of Girdlegard. Vraccas, their deity, ordered the dwarves to defend Girdlegard from orcs, ogres, and alfar (dark elves), all of which worship the dark god, Tion.
– Real player with 20.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best Kickstarter Real-Time with Pause Games.
I’ll give this a thumbs-up, but only under the following conditions:
a) do not buy it at full price. 40€ after 5 years is overpriced! I bought at full price - I regret.
b) you should love~ 3 Games based around Dwarves
c) you should not be afraid of a lot of text - and if you are not afraid of a lot of text you should not expect a deep CRPG.
Why I love the Game:
Gameplay
It is a bunch of fun to guide the Dwarves (not those other dudes!) through combat. Build a line, crush the Orcs with Hammers and Axes. Even when they run and when enemies are close the Dwarves auto-attack, which is a bunch of to just push through the Hordes.
– Real player with 12.9 hrs in game
Dreamland Prison
Dreamland Prison is an action RPG slasher game with dynamic combat. You play as Ares the young man who get’s involved in demons game. Your main goal is to destroy Leviathan’s strongest servant Archdemon, only by doing it you can save hundreds of people in white sleep.
Story
A mysterious disease - white sleep takes place in the Arai city. People suffering from it fall into a deep coma and a mysterious birthmark appears on their hands. Several days after the first case of the disease, hundreds of sick people die simultaneously in one evening. After this event, more people get sick the very next day, including mother of our main character - Ares. During a visit to his mother in the hospital, Ares falls asleep. He awakens in front of a powerful being - Beliar. The demon explains to Ares that he became his player in the game against the second gamemaster Leviathan. To save his mother and hundreds of people in white sleep Ares must win the demonic game.
Combat
We chose a combat system in which all attacks are area of effect, thanks to which we can simultaneously slaughter hordes of enemies. As you play you need to avoiding monsters area attacks as well. The fight will become more and more spectacular and interesting as our character grow. Stronger enemies will have more and more deadly skills.
Key features
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Fictionalized quests and captivating story
Play as Ares and sink in an immersive world full of dozens of different tasks.
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Get into a conflict of interest
Two demons are playing with your world - are you able to survive their demonic game?
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Takeover the power of Ezares
Explore a beautiful handcrafted world!
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Deep character development
Strengthen your character with attribute points, choose from a wide range of skills and face hordes of enemies.
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Hundreds of items ready to be equipped
Equip your character with legendary item sets and take on Leviathan’s most powerful creation.
Read More: Best Kickstarter Action-Adventure Games.
Lords of Xulima
Polished, entertaining game. Played through it straight twice, and I can see myself playing through it again in the future.
I could list some pro’s and con’s or repeat what others have already said, but instead I will highlight a few points which may clarify some of the mixed points you will see in other reviews. The purpose, I hope, is to help potential buyers in figuring out the perspective from which other reviewers are coming from.
1. The game is “linear” in that you are expected to go a certain path on the game world, but the path is not in a straight line. This will throw off some players who are used to the typical themepark RPG set-up where the game holds your hand on how to get to the next area.
– Real player with 606.1 hrs in game
Read More: Best Kickstarter Isometric Games.
Lords of Xulima is the game I have invested the most time into on Steam, so I kind of have to recommend it. But that recommendation come withs a lot of caveats.
I’ll start with the reasons why my playtime is so large. One simple reason is that this is a pretty long game. Depending on difficulty, dying and how much you save-scum, I’d estimate 50 to 100 hours to beat the game. The fact that I suffered a number of crashes, losing progress, extended that further. If you want to try out all the character classes available, you’ll need to play at least twice; I actually ended up finishing the game three times to 100% it.
– Real player with 398.9 hrs in game
Pillars of Eternity
I’ve always consider the progress of graphics and telling stories with well made CG instead of words are good things for game industry, I thought the stunning graphics could bring the game world closer to us than the classic literature did.
Yet I found myself totally immersed by Eroa ,in this game than I’ve ever been in other games before, the astunning details I read from these words,just makes me questioning if the game industry is on the right path consider all those games with great power of graphics but turn out to be a total nightmare.
– Real player with 94.0 hrs in game
The game is just inredibly boring for me, never played it more than couple of hours from the start. Comparing to old BG/IWD series and Planescape:Tormet the only advantage of PoI is the graphic.
Game mechanics like allowing to sleep only when you have camp wood or some enemy beetles opening a door you close a moment earlier to hide from it is just lame.
– Real player with 87.4 hrs in game
Dragon Fin Soup
DRAGON FIN SOUP
“A world of murders” - (2015)
Review is based on the Story Mode.
Game type: Tactical RPG with some roguelike elements (if you play in Hard Mode).
Newbies may consider the game as a hack’n’slash turn based. (trust me: don’t do this mistake, you will be frustated).
1st :issue which could potentialy ruin your experience
I absolutly discourage to play in hard mode (ie : you die once & it’s over) : If the game crashes (and it could) , savegame is potentialy corrupted and you will encounter crashes over crashes at random interval . As a result the game become unplayable (the game saves your progress NOT separatly, so you coudn’t choose a prior save point : that’s pretty stupid). Ohter reason the game is challenging.
– Real player with 243.4 hrs in game
To sum up: It looks good but feels wrong. It feels like a casual game and a bad port and something that could be fun.
I hope the devs polish this a lot. The PC release needs to play well on a PC.
Let’s start with some basic things, controls. Though the devs have stated that the pc is their primary platform, they don’t play by longstanding pc conventions. What do you expect ‘esc’ to do in a game for pc? Nothing? Oh, wait, it exits menus, but does not bring up an options menu with load and save and most importantly - quit?! How about “alt-tab'? In full screen, nothing, nada, zilch. That’s not right. In a roguelike, dungeon crawler, rpg, etc, pushing the “i” key should bring you to your inventory. And it should be customisable. These are only a few of the issues. All in all it feels like a bad port made primarily for gamepads or touchscreens. I play with mouse and keyboard and have the option of a touchscreen. Touchscreen is too tedious and not precise enough for the action. Mouse and keyboard are awkward. Moving by mouse click will have you fined your hard earned gold when you accidentally cut down city trees (Protip: some things are worth smashing in town once you have some money to pay for it). Moving by WASD and QEZC for diagonals is much better, with enter for attacking the selected target, though that requires the occasional mouse use to point your character in the right direction. For a game that require precision to survive, the controls don’t always allow it. Then there’s the camera…
– Real player with 30.2 hrs in game
fault - milestone one
Fault: Milestone one is the first VN game of the Publisher ALICE IN DISSONANCE and is the start of an evolving series.
We start the Visual Novel in a dark night where the country of Rughzenaide and its capital is being attacked by an unknown paramilitary assailant. Suffering heavy losses, this unknown force is invading the Kings Palace, where they intend to kill Selphine the princess because she possesses a greater power that could put every military force to falter.
Being cornered and unable to escape, the Princess’s life guardian resort to a last hopeful escape through a special mana current, but for some reason this mode of escape did not go the way it was intended too. They were able to escape, but not to the actual destination they planned. Instead, they were sent to the other end of the world. To make matters worse, all of this is in a zone where is no mana to be found in the surrounding area, which is necessary for them to be able to use their manakravte.
– Real player with 41.5 hrs in game
I wasn’t sure what to expect from this kinetic novel. I bought it solely because of the first minute of the trailer.
It was one of the best decisions I’ve made.
Looking at it now, from a critical standpoint, I can freely admit that Fault Milestone One has quite a few flaws. Much of the story is told through flashbacks and, as with any VN, there is quite a bit of exposition.
But for the fifteen hours it took me to devour this, purchase the sequel on the spot, and devour that too, I was utterly entranced.
– Real player with 27.4 hrs in game
MASSIVE CHALICE
Massive Chalice is a turn-based strategy game that has the player rule over a land that is under attack. The defense force consists of heroes, which battle in short, turn-based skirmishes against invading forces. Heroes live for 70 years on average, but the player has to defend the land for 300 years. Therefore the player has to marry off heroes so that they produce children, which get some of their genes and personality traits from their parents. This way, the player attempts to breed heroes of good stock, so that future generations are better able to defend the land against the invaders who get stronger all the time. Sometimes a hero may leave behind his weapon upon death, which then becomes a family relic, that gains better properties over time when it is used in combat.
– Real player with 93.8 hrs in game
XCOM (2012) meets Crusader Kings II with a eurogame design aesthetic.
If you are a fan of those games (or even one of them), Massive Chalice is worth a playthrough. XCOM was already a streamlined remake of X-COM, so you might wonder how it could be further simplified. The solution is reducing resources that need to be managed to just bloodlines, territory and “Research”. The later can be used to get new technology, build out infrastructure and aquire new heros. Instead of the slightly complicated system of engineers, scientists and money, you can build one project at a time and speed it up by dedicating heroes to become lifetime “Sagewrights”. They can’t fight for you anymore, which is always the tradeoff when assigning heroes to special positions.
– Real player with 63.6 hrs in game
Paper Sorcerer
If you’re a fan of turn-based RPGs at all, you owe it to yourself to give this game a try.
The most obivous difference between this game and most others is the quite unusual art style. The team making this game is obviously on a budget, and you can see some oddball errors (like inky shadows that are actually 2d planes you can see behind if you jump into the corner) but they decided to use their limited resources to make the most visually striking game they could, regardless.
The same can be said of combat, which is the real meat of the game. The game uses pre-generated character archetypes that you add to your party in a team of your choosing. The array of choices are unfortunately not overwhelming, and you don’t get a very clear sense of who can do what until after you get them in your party, but if you save before the choice, and experiment a little, you can figure things out.
– Real player with 114.9 hrs in game
I was interested in this game for a while, though I didn’t pick it up right away because though the artwork was beautiful, I’m also a sucker for colorful games, and I wasn’t sure I’d get along well with Paper Sorcerer’s mostly black and white atmosphere. I finally picked up the game in a bundle, and when I felt like some dungeoning, I started playing this.
First of all, without even getting into gameplay, the music is awesome. This is easily a game I could see myself opening up just to listen to the music when I felt like hearing something upbeat, somewhat retro, and just…unique. From the battle music to simple background music, this game has some serious tunes, and that is not to be underestimated. The music keeps you pumped up through hours of playtime, easily.
– Real player with 29.5 hrs in game
Chaos Reborn
TL;DR: I enjoy this game immensely. This review summarizes some reasons why.
THE THEME: At the end of the 14th century, Earth shattered into innumerable fragments in a magic-instigated apocalypse. Powerful magic allows fragments of Earth to endure as habitable, island realms scattered between planes of existence. From a planet called Limbo, wizards and gods engage in eternal conflict over who controls the many, surviving realms of old Earth. Each realm holds the promise of ancient artifacts, lore, and power to fuel the ambitions of wizards and gods alike. It is a feudal, dystopic society of magic users.
– Real player with 2074.1 hrs in game
Note: I deleted my old review because with so many updates since last Octobers release, it was simply too out of date to warrant an edit. So here is a new one, reviewing the game as of V1.10, released today!
Chaos Reborn is a hex based, turn based, card based strategy game where you are a wizard and you have to kill the other wizards. This is done by casting spells which can either summon creatures to attack other creatures and wizards, cast magic attack spells to kill almost anything, or create growth spells that hinders mobility. You’ll soon learn that different creatures have different strengths and weaknesses, far too many to list here but you’ll learn them.
– Real player with 1186.0 hrs in game
Unrest
When I first got Unrest I was expecting it to be just another point and click adventure game based around storytelling, I was wrong. Unrest is not just “another one”, I’ll even go as far as to compare this to the Walking Dead game from Telltale. If you’re looking for a real RPG that focus on narrative instead of combat you should just get this one right away.
Unlike most RPGs Unrest doesn’t let you create a character to your liking, instead it lets you play as multiple ones such as a peasant girl, a priest, a slum inhabitant, an ambassador from a mighty empire and a mercenary captain. You play all these characters in Bimhra, which to my understanding is a city located in a fictional ancient India.
– Real player with 10.8 hrs in game
Unrest is an interesting interactive piece of fiction, and it has some really solid ideas regarding the issues it addresses (even if in a fantasy setting) and the way the narrative is told.
The most interesting to me, and a point that should be stressed in video-game storytelling, in my opinion, is not to always give the game a defined plot. Plots aren’t very interesting to me. What is interesting, however, is giving you a setting, with questions and different approaches. Then, you can make choices and see how the world reacts.
– Real player with 8.8 hrs in game