Recent reviews by A Swarm of Savage Lefroms

Oh jeez, this game. What a complicated relationship I have with this game. Some time ago, I played this game nonstop. Finished the original Main Story of A Realm Reborn straight. Didn't deviate from the main story at all. After I was done, I was like "Wow, so why is everyone saying the story was good? That was mid at best." and then I stopped playing.

Fast Forward a few years later, I decided to make a new character and start fresh. I did all of A Realm Reborn AGAIN. And it wasn't a cakewalk the second time around either. But I was determined to try again as all my friends said "Just get through ARR, it's a bit of a slog but it'll be worth it. Trust me." And as I subjected myself to what felt like literary torture, I finished it. Then, there was the patch content that comes with every expansion. And that was ALSO a slog. To the point where I was telling all my friends "Look, I know a good game. A game that says 'Wait it gets good' isn't good. Just flat out." But I did it anyway.

Now, almost a year later, after finishing Dawntrail and having done ARR a Third Time on a fourth character. I am now telling you, prospected buyer, to just get through ARR, it's a bit of a slog...but it'll be worth it. FFXIV has it's low points, don't get me wrong. But it is /THE/ MMO right now for a reason. There's so much content to lose yourself in, and so much to do, the Story of Final Fantasy 14 is nothing short of absolutely amazing. And the community of FFXIV is as welcoming as can be. A Realm Reborn and it's Post Patch Content is almost like a trial, and the reward for beating it is a massive world for you to decide how you enjoy.

My advice? If you're not sure, if you think it's a slog...if you were like me and think "If it takes this long to get good, it isn't good." Just...try. Immerse yourself in the world, don't rush it, and maybe read the dialogue and understand the stakes. Make it your own, make it your adventure, and make it fun for yourself. And whatever you do, don't stop. FFXIV is free to Stormblood, and if you're not interested in the story after the last quest of A Realm Reborn's Patch Content. THEN you can throw in a towel and say it's garbage without my judgment.

FFXIV is a STORY game with an incredible MMO mixed in, not the other way around. Now for an actual review, the gameplay loop is that of most MMO's, it's got your abilities your OGCD's, your GCD's. Yadda yadda yadda. It's not going to be extremely fast-paced content and more in-line with other MMO's. Every Class has its gimmick and you get to try every single one, if you want. Dungeons, Raids, and most PvE content are fairly simple...up until you get to Shadowbringers and beyond where they now expect you to understand the mechanics. Then the game gets fairly more difficult. Overall, FFXIV manages to do what every other MMO in a fairly interesting and engaging way. But if you've played other MMO's and don't find yourself into how they do combat...then this one isn't going to impress you all that much either, I imagine.

But there is honestly just so much to do in this game. You get the joy of making your outfits and designs through glamouring. You've got your hard and elite content of Savage Raiding and the cool loot you can get from them. You've got the classic MMO feel of Eureka and the importance of working together. You've got the intense PvP modes where teamwork and moving together is truly the only way to reliably win. You've got crafting, gathering, housing, the rogue-like modes and even the joy of trying on the limited jobs. There is just SO MUCH to do in this game that it's really up to you what you do next.

In my opinion, the only bad part of FFXIV is just...getting through the first slow bits of the game as it tries to ease you in. And I'm so sure of this promise that I will 100% HAPPILY Taxi and help new players get through that first hump of ARR and what have you. If you're reading this and unsure about going through the story for the first time or even your second or third time, you have my express permission to add me as a friend and I will help you through the MSQ.

TL;DR: Good Game, Tons of Content and Things to Do, The First quest line and story may be a bit of a slog but getting through it is worth it.

Hey, I'm not with these sickos. I just use it for character creation and art renders. I swear. Why are you looking at me like that?

It's just abominable now, truly abominable. There's so much about this game that is just unforgivably bad that there's very little reason to recommend this game to anyone.

Let's get what's good about the game out of the way first. The gameplay is rather fun, the character have interesting abilities and ringing out and playing it feels fun and satisfying. It's a smash clone so it has the same dopamine a smash game has but with interesting spins on characters. The overall style of it and how they executed said characters is unique and the characters they add are surprising and welcomed even if it's a mish-mash of genres. The dodge mechanic takes advantage of player awareness and allows for a simple and easy way to adapt to a fight even if you're getting slammed.

Now, for the bad. First things first, there are some characters that feel awkwardly balanced and weird to play with or against. Sure, there's a strat. Sure, there's a counter to it. And sure, you can come up with some excuse as to why it's okay. But generally, some characters are not fun to play and some are even less fun to play against. But that's a small gripe overall. But bottom line is, when you launch a match you roll a die that determines if you'll have fun or not.

Next we have the PvE Mode. It's not anything to write home about, really. It's not satisfying, it's not engaging, and it most certainly isn't unique. There's some long dialogue boxes nobody cares about, there's a short soulless fight and you move to the next one. Every once in awhile there'll be an incredibly uninteresting mini-game challenge that either 'whack the balloon', 'shoot the balloon', 'Go through this optical course and hit balloons', or 'Defend a balloon from an onslaught of evil balloons'. At no point in time did I find myself standing and enjoying myself just a "get this over with so I can get a piddly-wink of progress on my mission roster". So PvE isn't any fun, but you have to do it for the rewards, right? Are the rewards any good? Well, yes. If you're enjoying the game and want other characters, skins, or currency to buy gems, skins, and characters? Yeah, you may as well. But I'm going to have to stop you right there before you get excited. The PvE Mode will require you to have certain 'character tags' to do the quest. So you want to play Harley? Sorry, but you need to be a Non-human to get all the points for this mission! Which is incredibly lame, there's no point to adding this stupid 'tag' mechanic for missions when role requirement missions were fine in beta.

Oh but honey, that isn't the worst part of this 'tag' mechanic. Some missions require you to have a tag you only get from skins you pay money for. That's right! And I don't mean just 'you'll lose some points'. You actually CAN NOT progress through the PvE mode UNLESS you have a Premium Skin that costs you MONEY. A skin you may not even want. If that isn't the greediest poorly thought decision they could've made, I don't know what is.

And the train doesn't stop there folks, there's another glaring problem with the game! It barely works! That same die you rolled earlier to decide if you have fun? Well, you get to roll it again and decide if you, or a random member, don't just crash instantaneously and close the lobby. The functionality and service of this game alone is worth an uninstall, but that paired with unfun gameplay, boring repetitive mission grind, and horrible greedy choices? Not even worth consideration.

It's a Free Game, however. Should you try it? It's a small game disc space wise so sure, you'll get some fun from just trying it out. You probably won't be able to play the characters you want for a grind but you may get some enjoyment.

TL;DR: Hardlocks PvE through Skins you may not even like, Boring and Repetitive PvE Gameplay, Odd PvP Balancing, Horrible Connection Issues.

We won, boys.

You get more than you'd expect from an Early Access game but it still has some of the Early Access jank.

For starters, the visuals are AMAZING. The void looks amazing, and each section sounds amazing, and makes the whole game feel great. Building up your train and decorating it is like crack. The inclusion of automation does take away from the grind, which is nice. Only so much joy one can have floating around space tethered to a train before they get bored, and collecting Refleemo's (your crew) does provide some nice benefits that makes managing them interesting.

Now for the bad, the gunplay is nothing to write home about. You point, you shoot. The baddies point, and will 9/10 times hit. Without armor, health packs, and usually some extra ammo packs. You will die, over and over. Which currently comes with 0 consequences but still doesn't feel great. The game appears to be built around 50% research, crafting, and building and 50% shooting, pillaging, and looting. And that 50% is really, REALLY not great. The gunplay is the part of the game that definitely feels Early Access.

Now, the gun-crafting! Now that is somewhat interesting, you can either find a gun off a badie or build a gun with parts. The guns are entirely customizable feeling somewhat like Fallout 4 gun crafting mixed with a little of Borderlands(???). Each piece makes your weapon different, the frame changes the overall weapon stats, magazine effects your fire rate and clip size, barrel changes the ammo you use (don't ask). It has some charm to it when you make a weapon you like. And some frames can be equipped with a special core part that lets you have like an under-barrel flamethrower or zappy orb flinger? It's pretty cool.
--But it would've been AWESOME if each weapon module TOLD you what it did instead of having to take it out, and see what part of the description changed. Slap it on another gun, see what changed...yadda yadda yadda. At least highlighting the affected text would've helped.

The overall combat between Void Sharks, Wolfenstein-esque enforcers, and the one time you get attacked by angler fishes is repetitive and lackluster. And the grabbing resources to build stuff doesn't get much more interesting, it's just the raft gimmick of grabbing things. There are some cool random events while you're on the rails between an area in the void you can go to, occasional outposts and The Arena.

So, The Arena...also not great. It's fun in concept but without engaging gun-play it's just run around...shoot...don't die...run around...shoot. Oop, you died to the one bullet sponge guy that spawns in. You get nothing.

And the last gripe is the Research and Story, it's an Early Access game so it's not surprising that it sort of stops abruptly, but I mean ABRUPTLY like in the MIDDLE OF A GROOVE kind of abruptly. You'd still have to play for a good long time to reach that point but I'd love some sort of reward for reaching that point in the game or at least a cool fight instead of a sort of a deflated cliffhanger.

Now, all of that aside. This game is still a lot of fun, and I happily spent my time building my train up, it's worth a try and much better with friends. You may encounter some bugs, and you may find yourself frustrated with a fight. But Void Train encapsulates the mysterious wonder of the incomprehensible, as you wander a strange world between worlds. If the $30 is going anywhere for me, it's the hours spent staring at each world's zany landscape and trying to piece together an untold puzzle.

TLDR: Unremarkable Gunplay, Repetitive Gameplay, Incomplete Story and Research. Breathtaking Visuals and Design, Building and Expanding your train feels great, Already in an amazing direction for an Early Access Game.

Should you buy it? Up to preference really, I wouldn't recommend this game to everyone in it's current state. But when it's fully released I imagine it will be up there as one of my favorite games of all time.

Ohohohoho. This game. Mwuah. Chef's kiss.

It is, in my opinion, one of the best visual novels out there. It's got a nice medium between laid back relaxed story telling and actual game play. Some would argue that the game play isn't engaging but this is REALLY not that sort of game. If you want a game where you smash brains in, shoot 5 year-olds on their Christmas Gift Xbox, and beat the Evil King on Drexia this is NOT your game.

VA-11 Hall-A is a simple game where you sit back and read and try your best not to screw up a fairly simple puzzle...at it's base. But it's got an incredibly engaging story and at some point you'll have to rely on how much you were invested in it's characters to make the right decisions. The wrong decisions only change your ending and don't lock you out though.

With a story you can experience over and over, characters that are all incredibly deep with stories you can only fit together from what you hear, and humorous dialogue in a rather dark setting.

TL;DR - Great game, lovely story, and relaxing atmosphere. Not a lot of action (obviously) and best played without distractions.

When Darktide came out from Open Beta, me and everyone I knew barely touched it. There was little fun to have anymore, as the 'official release' barely added anything. I decided to pick it back up with my friends after the class overhaul and wowie.

The game is great now, they finally opened up more of the shops around the hub area including a cosmetic store for in-game currency. Nice. Nothing game-breaking but nice to see work was done. However, the class overhaul is AMAZING. It makes playing the game feel good again.

With the inclusion of the skill tree every class has their own three little subclasses that you can mix and match as you seem fit but for the most part you won't be deviating from your path TOO much, and with the nodes in the tree you also passively increase your damage and survivability so you may find harder levels easier for you with a filled out tree.

The overhaul added different options for your blitz (grenades and psyker powers), ultimate, and passive coherency bonus. And every option has its place in a mission that really supports the team, how they did it was masterful to the point where there's a whole new level of fun in figuring out how to make builds for the classes that work the best for you.

I was really disappointed with the "official" release. But coming back to it, Darktide is everything I wanted it to be now.

Personally, I think it's too early to give this game a negative review but I also can't justify paying $16 for the small amount of joy you may get from it.

The game, by itself, is good. The art style is cute, the music is nice, the atmosphere is relaxing! The game is similar to Stardew Valley, as many have mentioned but like the kiddie pool version of it. There's no where near as much world and nowhere near as much to do, which can be expected from an early access game.

However for the most part, all you're going to be doing in this game is tickling a few creatures and whacking a few plants to get materials to make potions that either advance the story or get you coins. Day in, day out. You unlock a new area, in the story, you get a new ingredient, you make a new kind of potion that either advances the story line or can be made for daily quests for coin. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

The only break from that, is that you have a few areas and 'secrets' that require certain potions to make to explore. Which returns you to that grind to get the parts to make it. It was fun for maybe the first hour or three but soon it becomes a daily chore that has no purpose. The easiest way to put it for you Stardew Players is, it's the game if you buy a Member Ship card and have to farm corn over and over to pay for the village upgrades. The monotony hits quick and the game instantly loses any appeal it had.

Another thing many players complain about is the dialogue, I personally had no problem with it as for awhile I was invested in the story but there is no skip option and there is a LOT of dialogue that you cannot avoid. I would recommend if the developers either A, added a skip option for the players who aren't interested or B, added a some of the dialogue in little gab windows that pop up near the top of the window so they can still move and play while the main character is yapping to her hat as 9/10 times, they're saying something that doesn't really NEED to be up in the players face.

TLDR; The game has potential, it's cute and fun but at the present it's lackluster and monotonous after a while with slow grindy progression and a very small amount of gameplay.

The game will probably improve drastically when it's finished and has more interesting content to take part in, but for $16 it's little more than a flash game where you interact with creatures and plants to make keys that advance the plot or give you money.

I've been pretty nervous of Early Access Games for awhile now after a few poor choices, but my best friend bought it for me and I forget this game is 'Early Access'. The graphics and art are amazing, the progression feels good, and building your expanding you castle and making it look as nice as you can feels akin to doing crack.

For the most part, it's a little like Conan Exiles where each area has gear and enemies to your level and you'll need to hang there before you can reliably progress to the next area. There is no 'Level' System, instead you raise your 'gear level' and gain new abilities by beating certain bosses. It also takes from Valheim in the sense that to reliably progress to advancement in gear you'd have to beat a boss. This turned me away at first, however there are so many bosses to fight that are fun, unique, and unlike Valheim, you don't need to gather the whole posse and a thousand magical pies to beat them.

Other mechanics that some players may not enjoy is how the Day and Night Cycle work. In V-Rising, Day is actually your Night in most survival games. At Daytime there are usually more people around the roads and, as a vampire, you don't absorb UV Rays as well as most people. When you're in broad daylight there's a small timer before you engulf into flames and take huge amounts of damage overtime. However, just touching a shadow for a milisecond resets this timer. And because of all the trees, rocks, or mountains on a trail you can rely on the fact you'll be touching a shadow often enough that you won't roast. It sounds tedious but believe me, the sun will ONLY be a threat to you if you're trying to whack something out in the open. Otherwise you'll be fine.

One thing that does bring the game down though that doesn't have a real easy work around, evolves around the aforementioned 'Areas and Progression'. Although advancing to a new area is fun as each place feels unique to be in. You'll have to choose between lugging all your loot back to your first castle, or building a second one. No problem, really, building a new castle feels nice. But you CANNOT have a third, you're limited to two castles and once you advance past THAT area you'll have to lug your loot farther now. You can elect to destroy one castle and build a new one but bringing your items back and forth IS tedious and like in Valheim, a lot of items cannot be teleported through the waygates. The easiest solution for this, is making a clan with friends and relying on their two castles to teleport between along with your own.

Another things is horses, early in the game you can shapeshift into a wolf that runs faster however a horse allows you to traverse the map so much faster. To get a horse though you'll need find a spot in the Farmlands, which is the second area, and jump on a horse. That's it. It's fairly simple, the horses have three stats 'Rotation Speed, Acceleration, and Top Speed. These stats are RANDOM though, and some horses are adherently better than others. Finding a good horse isn't TOO hard. But you'll have to keep your horse watered like a plant to keep it alive. Which is again, not really a chore. The real chore is not getting your ass knocked off the horse. While riding your horse if you aggro a patrol of nitwits on the road they'll begin attacking you. There's not chance on God's Green Earth they're going to melee hit you but if one of those guys nicks you with a crossbolt that you failed to dodge or walked into. You're knocked of your horse. Yes, you, a supernatural creature of the night of unmatched fortitude and speed...get knocked off by any a single piddly wink arrow. And there's a timer before you can get back on your horse that is magically the same amount of time it takes for the rest of the group to catch up to you. To which point you're forced into a fight.

TLDR; Games a ton of fun, progressing is fun and combat feels good! Progressions revolves around beating bosses and advancing to new areas. Getting knocked off your horse is no fun, and Being limited to two castles hurts later in the game.

Some people may not enjoy the twist V Rising gives to the Survival Craft genre, and a lot of people aren't a huge fan of isometric games and their combat. However, V Rising is a game with few flaws. However it's not a game to be playing alone either, it's possible...but having friends to fight bosses with and pooling resources makes the game a lot more enjoyable.

It's just good, for a $12 early access game I'd already pay twice as much. And they just keep making it better and better