Recent reviews by wroot

So, i was joking that this game is now worth buying for 19 cents. And it IS a very short game (completed in 75 minutes, not even enough for trading cards to start dropping). Maybe i would pay like 1,99 for it gladly. It was interesting (sometimes frustrating, but still). A nice play on physics, speed, timing, etc. Graphics are nice two (hand drawn). Can't not recommend it with 96% discount :)

P.S. and if you want to go completely insane you can play it controlling the balloon with your voice :D I haven't tried it, my arm was already hurting by the end after clicking a mouse button constantly. But it is innovative and.. interesting :)

Another year. Another flawed MtG product from Stainless Steel. I've already skipped 2015 version. Would have skipped this one too. But now it's free to play, so i've tried it.

* Boring story campaigns (5 fights with the same underpowered generic deck in every campaign).
* Quests not working (or they only work with the decks that are created with a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ wizard).
* Achievements sometimes doesn't register with Steam and you have to redo them.
* Network part again falling apart no matter how many patches they release. Still no propper lobby, just a random search for players. Too often not finding anything.
* Many visual annoyances (though they've got rid of that awful menu system of 2015 version, at least), like Block or Combat icons obstructing view. Little pointing arrows telling you what to play. Glow around a playable card nearly invisible when you hover over it. When you play online you see same glitches when you attack like 5 years ago. It's the same engine with a few tweaks over and over again.
* Same flawed RNG which stacks same cards together (whether lands or multiple copies of one card)
* Stupid automatic land tapping (yeah, yeah, you can press that button, wait, which is it? to manually alter it, but com'on, so many years and they can't tackle that)
* 2HG is back, but there is no CHAT..
* The game will occasionally crash (almost two months after a release, forums are filled with reports)
* Will be not surprised if this game has the same bug with disappearing steam cloud saves as with all games in the series (so i have disabled steam cloud for this game right away).

I'm still playing through campaign to find out all the Origins story line and trying to entertain myself by completing few achievements. Have built one deck, but the pool of cards seems limited. Will probably try opening few boosters with the coins i have earned in the campaign (not spending any real money on this). So, after the campaign it is only MP. MP is fun occasionally (with some sort of communication), but i prefer playing offline against AI, completing lenghty campaign with some deck and seeing how it compares to other decks. With only MP i will uninstall it soon.

Missing 2012-2014 versions, with lots of decks to unlock, huge campaigns, some sort of a unique game mode.

P.S. latest patch introduced automatic skipping of phases when you have no creature or sorcery to play. Makes it pain in the ass to play with instants and some intricate abilities as you have to constantly hit pause all the time. They say this should speed up games. Yeah, at the cost of losing battles because of that.

P.S.2 automatic skipping fixed in the latest expansion (fixing bugs in expansions and not a quick patch is so lame..). Of course, more bugs introduced. And.. i'm sick of seeing Eldrazi, Eldrazi, Eldrazi all the time. It's like there is no other lore in the Magic..

P.S.3 funny as they ask to review this game and i just want to add more an more negative stuff :D Have already discovered 3 annoying bugs in the new expansion. A few of them causing you to lose actually. They've manage to break what was working before the expansion...

This is what i was expecting from Blood Dragon atmospheric wise (and didn't get enough).

The story is beautiful and unique. The art style, well, it is a pixel art, which i'm not a big fan of, but it was fine and they've managed to even get some subtle emotions with this technique. The gameplay.. well, it just proves, that i won't be playing any of these "telltale" "games". You are hunting some pixels (and usually you don't even know what exactly, you have to just stumble upon it) and you solve a simple puzzle many times (though it doesn't matter how well or fast you do it). And you have a lot of dialogues without options. That's it. This is just some interactive stoty and as it is it deserves 10 out of 10, but as a game.. there is not much. Still giving it a positive review for all the work and a story and the music.

I've bought and started playing this game like 3-4 years ago and then abandoned it until recently. It was something new and fresh in the field of "match 3 gems" games. It had story, fantasy background, skills, spells. And then it got even overwhelming. Too many stuff to know, handle. Too many side quests, too many spells, skills, items, town management, mounts, followers, etc. Yeah, you didn't have to do all, but if you wanted to be good and fight even more powerful foes, you had to improve on all fields. So i've got tired and didn't want to launch it again. Even more annoying thing was, that while traveling through a huge map of a world you didn't only had to confront creatures tied to the quests, but on those paths between towns and towers there were same creatures and they were constantly randomly respawning. So if you wanted to go across the map to solve some quest, you had to fight them over and over again and then on your way back.. It became boring and frustrating very fast.

But after completing Gyromancer and not liking it much i've decided to give this another try and finish a story. So i did. Though the last boss was haaaard. And i had to go to the map and grind for more experience, doing every side quest i could and improving skills, getting better items, etc. And finally i've beat him!

The story was fine. Mechanics are interesting. So i give it a Yes, but i won't be getting back to it, and i hear that sequel is even more boredom and grinding without a decent story, so i'll probably pass.

Wasn't expecting much after receiving this game (as well a DRM-free copy and print and play pdf version) along with other stuff on recent Humble Bundle sale. But it captured my attention. A cute little card game with a unique twist and simple gameplay, but still having some brain crunching in deck building. At first it was a bit awkward to get used to this spacial placement of cards in a grid and connections between them. Especially when trying to figure out which cards with how many connections and what directions do you need while building a deck. Btw, don't make too many decks as you will have 25 cards wasted per deck, if you don't really want some of them anymore. No way to delete a deck and get back those 25 cards. I needed just one to complete the game and it stayed 70% unaltered for second half of the game. Either i'm so good at deck building or i was lucky to strike the attack/defence/trick balance early. Only in the end i faced an intended roadblock and was forced to switch to a secondary all attack deck and then wiped that last foe easily. You might need a second deck to complete some achievements. I wasn't so lucky (if possible at all) to receive a card with 8 connections, so doing 9 cards combo and 10 attack combo would be easy. But i had fun completing them with just a 5 connections card. That was tough, luck involved, but satisfying after all.

Now i'm sitting and looking at print and play pdf and thinking that i would rather pay for published game. But maybe i will print it to play with my friends.

Not sure why i've decided to buy this game after i have tried a demo many years ago. Maybe i thought it would have more things later in the game. But the game is more of the same stuff and it gets too repetitive and boring fast. Also the vague story telling doesn't help to improve impressions. Dialogs are often weird, story twists are silly and confusing. Hero controls on the global map are annoying. Connecting 3 items (or more) in a row by rotating a square of 4 items clockwise is a bit of too much. One has to have a very good spacial imagination to quickly see combinations. Enemies don't have to do that, so this is a bit unfare. They use your combinations for resources for their attacks. Also you don't just have to make your attacks, but proactively remove enemies attacks from the board. It quickly becomes very frustrating as game starts to introduce more blocks (locking certain items, making enemies' attacks to trigger faster, punishing for idle rotating of items, etc.). And the attacks your monsters have don't matter much. Yes, some trigger faster and do less damage, but you still just connect lines of items all the time without keeping much attention to them and the attacks trigger automatically. Puzzle Quest is way better in this regard, where you have to select what attacks to equip, when to trigger them and it actually matters what colors you connect. This game also has steep difficulty curve. You run easily through one stage and then stumble on another because monsters are much harder. Some challenges are based on simple luck (you have to make a cascade of 7 subsequent combinations, and you can't really prepare the board for that, because the board is too small and you have to rotate 4 items at a time, so you just sit their and mindlessly rotate them hoping to get that challenge..).

There are better and more interesting games in that genre (both mechanically and story wise). Gyromancer is a bland and boring clone, which can't offer much strategy. You have to repeat samish battles over and over again, slowly grinding levels to beat stronger monsters. And the story told is boring and not rewarding.

I have already posted a negative review on this game because of the horrible controls. And i have deleted it. Don't really like that updated review will still be somewhere on the bottom of the list. Also i want to do it justice. Developers of this game are super cool for supporting their game long after the release and trying to find a way to please all the gamers. Controls are now WAY better than they were (now it actually selects tiles, not the objects on the tiles and there is a visual cue what object will be selected if you click your mouse button, also they've added more alternate controls options). For such great support only they deserve a Yes.

The game itself is a mix of puzzle and speed. I don't really like the speed element, especially when the puzzle element itself can be mind boggling alone, and then you have to do all very fast. But that's just me. And you can still do just puzzles, if you don't want to earn every star (sorry, light bulb) on a level. Artistic style is cartoonish and pleasant. There is also a shop in the game to spend your dollars earned for completing the levels and doing extra bonus things on some levels. You can buy outfits for your characters :) It's a bit silly, but still, you are using those points you are collecting, not just playing for the highscore and if you are a completionist it may be fun to buy all the outfits and complete some achievements along. All in all a little pretty puzzle game with a nice support. But if you don't like the speed element, maybe you should skip it or play just the puzzle parts, though many of them still require to move objects in time.

If Steam would have a points score system, i would give it 5 or 6 maybe. So i should give it a negative review. It's an ok game, but after playing this i know i don't want to play any of the other Far Cries (and i haven't). It is bland and repetitive. Story missions and the theme is ok, but nothing really engaging, spectacular, at times stupid even. I get that this was an intention to beat on trash movies cliches, but it was too much some times. Outside of the main story it is an open world which is pretty empty. Yeah with some fights between scientists and commandos going on here and there. It was fun to roam in a jeep, but not for long. Side quest are all similar (go and kill someone and maybe save some scientist jerk). I hated missions requiring you to do stealth in an open field surrounded by 20+ enemies. "Cutscenes" were often too long and, i don't know, i just didn't liked how they sounded and looked. I didn't get the leveling thing as you couldn't choose a skill, it was just a linear progression which happened automatically. I hated some animations like pilfering cyberhearts (which you needed sometimes to distract dragons) or shotgun reloading cycle which took to long to start shooting again.

Then the general design. Saves somethimes weren't working. So i ended up only using checkpoints. And once i had to listen to some story dialog like 10 times while dying on some side quest and loading again. Stupid system of repeating everything when you load a save. After a recent uPlay update it started to mess with Blood Dragon launch and jumped in front of it making BD starting in a windowed state, so i had to restart it every time (that' because uPlay wasn't already running, yeah, i don't want some program to run all the time when i only need it for one game occasionally). That's another point why i won't play Far Cry or other Ubisoft game.

All in all, it was fun to shoot enemies and ride the jeep at times, but it was also a bland, sometimes boring game with an overdone humour. Can't call it a good game.

I've waited to buy this game for quite some time after i have seen it on some video. I like "connecting three items in a row" games (7 wonders, puzzle quest, etc.). And in this one you connect 3 and create something new. Cool. It is. And it is very addicting, nice cartoony looking game, with funny, anime-ish bears roaming wild :) But, it has no end game. So, after completing a few of sane achievements (some are just way out of average player league) you have nothing to do and you have no campaign or challenges to complete. You can just play the same game over and over again. Though it is addictive and you start to feel an itch to play one more time (maybe this time i will be able to reach some advanced buildings or even castles.. no, same sh*t, cornered by ninja bears, no items you need, etc.). But after playing for 15-20 minutes you just start to feel you are wasting your time. It is just another time killing junky from the mobile world. Nice looking. But it doesn't give you some sort of achievement or completion feeling, which i usually want from a game.