Recent reviews by Cantrips

This is the best digital zen garden I've ever played with. When I need to deeply decompress, I spend twenty minutes just ... tinkering.

I've literally only used this game for destressing, but I could see myself messing around in it just for the entertainment value, too. It's gorgeous. It's calming. It's fun to build in.

I hope this review helps you make your decision on Tiny Glade.

Without bots this game is awesome. You should get it. You know... after Valve takes care of this a little ... better...

Loved having the collection, including the Sonic games.

Then, Sega decided that the license they sold me no longer included those games.

Which were the driving force behind the original decision to obtain this collection.

Don't trust Sega, and sure as hell don't buy this compilation.

If you don't know this game is worth it yet, you live under a Gamer Rock. Get it. Why're you still here reading reviews? Buy the damn game, yo!

Let's be clear - I love playing this game. I've played it since beta and was part of the migration to Steam (which means you're not seeing a few to several hundred hours of game time reflected in my play time, here.) There are lots of things that make it worthwhile. I've purchased it for friends. I might do so, again. You might enjoy this game even more than I have, which is a considerable amount.

However, I can't in good conscience recommend the purchase of this game to anybody.

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- This game cares foremost about profits over the player (that's you, remember!) experience. The developers may not sit in that same seat, but whoever's in charge has the Atom Shop­® thrust into your face first and foremost, every time that you log in. This would be tolerable, but the effort the software has to go through to pop up this aggressive advertising (instead of just loading directly into the main menu) is apparently enough that there's a widespread recurring issue where people can't get past the "Signing In..." screen that shows up prior to the pimping of their predatory (albeit often fairly cool) Atom Shop® items. Since the most recent patch, I've personally had to restart my computer just to successfully sign in on the third or fourth try afterwards. Each failure, you have to close the software (often through Task Manager) and re-launch it. This is you completely unnecessarily burning as much as ten or fifteen minutes just to try to get the game to successfully get to the main menu.

- As mentioned above, this game is a very efficient predator. If you play it and like it enough, you will want to sign up for Fallout 1st™. This is because of a few key, nefariously plotted things. Obviously, the fantasy world you live, fight, and build within is full of rusty tetanus-threatening objects that look fairly gross or uninspiring. But, wait! For the low, low price of 1800 ATOMS©, you can buy a new, shiny version of that stuff to build, craft, or otherwise use to enhance the dreary wastes of Appalachia! And you get Free* ATOMS© each month when you are a Fallout 1st™ Subscriber! (Full disclosure: I have been, but am also currently a Fallout 1st™ Subscriber. Cool, huh?)
"Bah!", you say. "I pretend not to give a crap about the aesthetics of things. I probably won't even build a base! It's the adventure and shooting that does it for me, so it's fine!" Nice try, bud. Did you know that you can only store up to 1200 pounds of stuff in the storage you need to have that base to keep? Did you know that the only way to get your gear into a state that you're going to be comfortable with is by scavenging? Turns out you can fill 1200 pounds up faster than you'd think, but when you are a Fallout 1st™ Subscriber, you get a handy scrapbox that has no weight limit and will autoscrap then store your scavved junk for you! How cool!

- Despite being five years old at the time of writing, this game is still classically Bethesda-Buggy™, but this time (because it's multiplayer,) there are no modders able to fix the problems within the ToS. Bethesda's reliance on free labor to cut and set their proverbial gemstones doesn't work here. What does that mean? Well, it means sometimes you spawn in the air when you load into the game or a new area, and break both your legs. (That's okay, you can just use some of your healing items to stim it away.) It means that when you fast travel to someone's base, you may spawn under it on a tiny ledge hundreds of feet/meters up a cliffside. (Shoutout to Jessica in The Man From Snowy River!) It means that enemies will now and again just randomly spawn on top of you for no good reason. It means that some of the textures and objects in the game will occasionally have psychedelic visual bugs. While it hasn't happened to me since they upgraded the engine of the game a year or two ago, you used to be able to fall through the map to your horrible death (often with irretrievable dropped items as a result) when you least expected it.
The bugginess isn't restricted to these things. Imagine building a base for four and a half hours, only to find that parts of the roof simply... won't build as intended, leaving forced gaps open to the sky at the top of your hours-long attempt at an architectural masterpiece. I could go on, but you get the idea. The bugs are manageable, but still annoying.

Okay, then why do I like this game? Well...


- The developers have been working to improve the game and keep it relatively fresh ever since their disastrous launch around five years ago. Now, you can see if you know a recipe before you spend your hard-earned caps on it! (At launch, you had no way to know if you already knew "Hardened Assault Rifle Receiver" until you bought the plan/recipe and tried to learn it. Now, it shows "{Already Learned}" or something in front of the recipe if you know it.)

- This is Fallout you can play with your friends. It sure as hell ain't perfect, but roaming the wastelands with your friends is still a good time.

- The base-building is (again, not perfect, but...) SUPER. FUN. If that's your jam, you're probably gonna love it in this game. One of those ongoing improvements to Quality of Life/User Experience that the devs make was to add a multiple-base layout. You can still only have one base active at a time, but you can switch which ones are active! You get two, and of course can spend real money to buy ATOMS© (or become a Fallout First™ Subscriber to receive a hefty compliment of "free" ATOMS©) that can then be spent buying additional "base slots".

- I feel that the story and world concept of this game are undersung heroes. The initial vision for this game was that the players would be (one of?) the only living entities in Appalachia. While it ultimately didn't make for very engaging gameplay as far as the story was concerned, it was also clear that a lot of effort was put into creating a world you unwrapped one layer at a time, like Pass-The-Parcel or something. Most of that story was left alive even after the Wastelanders update, much to the credit of decision-makers.

In short long, this game is a very fun, very imperfect game. With the majillions of dollars it seems to have made for Bethesda, it's not really excusable to be in the state that it's in, but it's nowhere near the level of clunkiness the early days of the game displayed. They continue to improve it, and in fact I'd say it's almost ready for release!

Thanks for reading!

This is a charming little heist simulator that has a surprising level of depth... I've loved playing it with people of all ages and skill levels. I'd recommend it, for sure! I'll be pre-ordering the second one!

Update as of October 2024:

Well, they sold out. I no longer recommend this game. They managed to take all of the immersion and worldbuilding and wipe their butt with it by violating their crossover policy and introducing Ghost Face® Rampage. (Yes, the registered trademark is part of the title. Of course it is.)

Maybe they'll realize the error of their ways. Doubt it. I haven't been this mad since Microsoft unceremoniously shut down the Freelancer servers. I love(d) this game. Ugh.

Original Review:

Hunt...

Wow, I slept on this game, hard. I had it wishlisted and never got it since its release. That was absolutely my mistake. This game is a unique experience that can technically be classified as a Battle Royale, but with none of the problematic game design elements that I loathe about Battle Royale games.

I received Hunt as a gift over the holidays in December 2022, finally playing it for the first time around the turn of the year. I now have more than 250 hours put into it, and anticipate that I'll likely put five times that many into it before I even start to slow down. I would've gladly bought it at full price on release if I'd known what I was missing out on.

The setting takes place in a late 1800's alternate-reality post-apocalyptic Louisiana Bayou. You have access to an absolute myriad of firearms that are faithful to the time period, in addition to wacky traps and tools that don't break immersion but may not have been quite so commonly available. The enemies are stereotypical (though still creative) takes on zombies, and the three huge maps each have around 7 atmospheric conditions, such as dense fog, nighttime, and broad daylight, among others.

The game's advancement is comprised of weapon/equipment tech trees that unlock tool or weapon variants and ammunition types based on experience gained from use, as well as two separate tiers of "leveling", the Hunter and the Bloodline. Unlocking an equipment, consumable, or weapon via advancement will make that available to you for "Hunt Dollars" (easily earned in-game currency) moving forward up to the point when/if you choose to Prestige your Bloodline.

You can bring four equipment items (such as a knife, healing kit, trip mines, holdout Derringer gun, throwing axes, etc.) with you into a match. While they have a number of usable charges before being exhausted, these are not "used up" in the match, so if your Hunter survives they will still have these equipment items for their next foray into the Bayou.
You also bring four consumables into the match. These can be throwable items like molotov cocktails, dynamite, poison bombs, or flash bombs. This gear category also includes hypodermic shots (sorry, trypanophobes!) that provide buffs or rapid application of instantaneous healing. You can buff your stamina, regenerate your health bar, or provide yourself with immunity to poison for ten or even twenty minutes at a time. Using these items "uses them up", meaning they will no longer be in your inventory once used, even if you survive your foray into the Bayou.

The equipment and consumable items unlock in categories, so to unlock Poison Trip Mines, you need to use a poison item (by default a 10-minute poison immunity buff booster shot) in-game enough times to unlock the next tier of that equipment and/or consumable. Concertina (razor wire) bomb throwables are unlocked by using Concertina Trip Mines. Regeneration shots are unlocked through the use of healing items. Flare guns are unlocked by extracting with the electric lamp or "Fusees" (road flare type items) a few times.

You get to carry a total of four weapon slots worth of weaponry into each Hunt. A typical rifle or shotgun will be a 3-slot weapon, though variants such as "shorties" will be unlocked through use. Shorties are 2-slot sawed-off versions of the guns. Pistols and hand crossbows take one slot to use one of, though you can dual-wield any pistol with a matched pair as a two-slot weapon choice. The bow takes two slots, the full-size crossbow takes three.

Guns, bows, and crossbows start with a base form, and as they're used on monsters and rival Hunters in-game, they unlock variant types of the gun and/or ammunition to use for it. Silencers, up to three different scope types, (four if you count the horrendous Aperture sight,) bayoneted versions, utility ammunition, and more will unlock for your favorite rifle, revolver, shotgun, or handgun.

After your first 10 or so Bloodline levels are achieved, (at least 5 successful matches, by my casual reckoning) your Hunters suffer permadeath. If your Hunter dies on a mission, they're dead. Traits earned are gone, the equipment they carried is lost forever. This is just inconvenient enough that it's an undesirable outcome, without being so troublesome that it's going to piss you off. I've been far more frustrated at my poor positioning or unlucky trap triggers in-game than at the death of my level-capped (level 50) Hunter.

The balance of this game is pretty divine. There's one major point of contention for folks, and let's just say if you know Necromancy you know what I'm saying... but even if you fall on the hater side of that fence, you're still gonna love this game overall.

"Premium" currency and DLCs get a lot of hate and discontent, but there's very little pay-to-win aspect here. The only P2W you see is that when a new Legendary (cosmetic, not statistical changes to the weapons, Hunters start with three random traits which has pros and cons) is purchased, one copy of it (remember, permadeath = loss of hunter and gear!) is added to your inventory, regardless of capacity, advancement, and/or unlock status. Of course, if you survive several Hunts with your skinned Mosin-Nagant Avtomat rifle, you probably earned it.

While the game is fun enough solo, it really shines when played with a team of one or two of your friends. I can't recommend it enough! Thanks for reading.
If you have questions about the game or my take on something in it, please feel free to comment them here!

This is silly.

These are cosmetic options that are purely for supporting the devs and "dressing up" your gameplay. That's all. There are plenty of cool in-game totally obtainable Legendary skins you can choose from without spending another dime on the game.

In serving those purposes, this DLC is absolutely what it should be. People upset about the "less skins than others" should just ... you know, not buy it? I hate the Romero shotgun variants, so half the DLCs contain a "useless" skin for me, anyway. You buy this for the throwing knives, or the bow, or both.

If you want the badass ninja girl skin, or the bow skin, or the throwing knives skin, and you wanna drop $$$ to get it... do it. They function. They're cool.

That's it.

I've played a lot of ARPGs. Diablo in all of its iterations except the one we don't acknowledge because it's a mobile moneypit. Grim Dawn. Path of Exile. Torchlight. etc.

This game probably has the best skill system of any game I've played. It's most certainly the best one I've seen in an ARPG. Each of the five classes has three designated subclasses (though a few are still in development, it's still not released) and around 25-30 total accessible skills, though around 15 are locked (five each) to the three class specializations, so it's more likely that you'll have a total of 15-20 to choose from in your first character's run. Here's the great part, though: each skill you choose to use corresponds to the MOBA keyset: Q, W, E, R, and right-click. As you level up, you unlock the ability to "specialize" in a skill, which allows you to designate one of your skills (up to 5 at character level 50) as a specialized skill, which unlocks skill-trees for those skills. Example: the Acolyte (which can class-specialize as a Necromancer or Lich) has Summon Skeleton. You specialize in it, and it allows you to spend points to unlock skeleton skill and class variations (defaults to warriors and archers, allows you to add rogues, unlocks "class skills" for the three) in addition to increasing damage, summon limits (MOAR SKELLIES!!!11!oneone!!1!) and more. This is just one skill - you'll have the opportunity to develop and customize five! Each class also has their own tech tree, skills aside.

Despite the deep customization, it's all very natural-feeling. There are other games I've quite enjoyed that nevertheless had an uncomfortably complex skill system. This one feels awesome.

I recommend this game. Highly.

Please bear in mind that this game is in early access. (NOT released!) This is important, because we seem to have gotten to a point as consumers where we treat games like they all should be perfect, but this game is still in development. We're here to provide feedback on how the game should evolve as it is developed.

I'm a big fan of games like Final Fantasy Tactics, XCom, Phantom Doctrine, and Tactics Ogre. This game scratches the itch nicely, but it has a much more intense connection to the world you're in. While FFT has a more involved storyline, (which it gets an edge on due to the static characters,) this game manages to make you feel connected despite having fully randomized/customized party members.

Unlike the cartoony feel of XCom/FFT/Tactics Ogre, this game feels more "realistic", with gritty battle sequences, "unfair" scenarios (there are unfair scenarios, we'll get to that) and a decidedly refreshing focus on out-of-combat world interactions. The game has a management angle that increases the depth of play. Feeding your troop. Paying them. Should you acquire/hire more members? Should you turn over the troop member that is wanted in another country? Will you allow the person you took prisoner in a previous fight to fight alongside your group? Keep your hands clean, or steal? What professions should be taken up by your party members?

This decision-making extends heavily into combat. Is it time to let Gerald the plague-ridden meat-eating criminal die, or will you have to reload again? Due to poor luck or more than likely poorer choices, you'll be seeing this kind of issue come up now and again. Who can take a beating, and will you be able to position them to absorb most of the initial blows without an untimely demise? How many tanky folks do you need? Archers? Rogues ("Rangers")? Should you position your archer in that mud to make them harder to get to, or will it bog your fire support down too badly, unintentionally keeping them from the fray? Do you shoot into the fracas, knowing your archer may hit a teammate? If they do, will that teammate hate them afterwards? Will you rest only to find that in the morning, your archer lies dead, throat slit over one too many friendly fire incidents?

This game is incredible, and I think it's quite worth the money.

• The tactical combat in this game is intensely rewarding.
  
• The combat is fairly visceral, down to brutal critical finisher cutscenes.
  
• This is the most in-tune with a game world I've felt playing a "Tactics" genre game.
  
• Progression feels earned, rather than a foregone conclusion. There are a few different notable forms of progression, too, including professions and overall troop achievements.
  
• The game is intuitive in most interactions.

• Game balance is a bit harsh. I'm playing on "Normal" difficulty, and ~10 hours in (around 2 hours of menu idle time while I take care of IRL stuff) I feel that this snowball is one I cannot keep going. I haven't lost a party member, I'm running around with 8-10 (somewhere in there) mercenaries, but the enemies are getting stronger while I'm struggling to pay and feed my "army" by now.
  
• The party gets stuck pretty easy on terrain sometimes. It'd probably be nice to have a little more definition on whether terrain is passable or not.
  
• Healing wounds and repairing armor is not very accessible (at least in the first zone) - you have to have armor kits that are really only available through (expensive) trade to repair armor (which is like shield HP that doesn't replenish) or visit the blacksmith to spend a good chunk of change (~20% of my average earnings per pay cycle) to repair the party's armor. Similarly, you need an accomplished alchemist, empty vials, and some fairly rare ingredients (coupled with super common ones, at least) to make healing potions that cure wounds you're damn near guaranteed to get each battle. Of course, you can pay 80 to a hundred or more gold to an alchemist to cure the whole party of their wounds at once... if you can afford it. As far as gold for effect, the alchemist being paid to mass cure everyone is far more viable than trying to cure people with potions. I'd say it'd be fine to leave potions for traveling "emergencies", but as I mentioned you'll get (sometimes multiple) wounds each battle, and one potion cures one wound... but they weigh...
  
• ...Which brings us to encumbrance. While it feels fairly realistic for what it is, you need to buy a (second) horse right away. (I didn't.) You can snag a few iron ores from the overworld, and you'll be over-encumbered. Carrying more than a weapon or two? Encumbered. Want more than a couple days' food on you? Encumbered.