Celtia 最近的评测

Heist-Chess! A brilliant concept for a game that's immediately engaging and quickly inspires creative decisions for outfitting/improving your heist team to maximize the interaction between their movement abilities, loot-affecting abilities, and passives, and then tests your ability to assess risk and think multiple steps ahead for the actual encounters. It feels very comparable to Into the Breach, despite the very simplistic aesthetic and core gameplay loop.

The game leaves an excellent first impression, my only early concerns is whether there is enough meta-progression to leave each run feeling sufficiently new and different after the first few hours.

Falling somewhere between Battle Brothers and Our Adventurer's Guild - Veterum hits most of the right notes for a fairly ambitious game from a tiny developer. Unlike Battle Brothers, however, Veterum is built atop you fielding a diverse army of individual units who play by different rules (different ranges, damage types, passive and active skills), more like a Might and Magic or classic Age of Wonders game (or, to a lesser degree, the aforementioned Our Adventurer's Guild). The diversity is pretty impressive, ranging from spearmen to necromancers to ents to pigman-style shamans.

This diversity is backed up by some decent broader warband strategies, like trying to emphasize fighting at night (something that you often get to pick to do, and can use spells to guarantee) to take advantage of low-light vision, or trying to fight in the rain, or similar.

It shares a good chunk of the tactical-layer depth of Battle Brothers; notably, having enemy compositions in which you are strongly incentivized to outfit and select units to counteract, and where you need to be wary of balancing morale, fatigue and injuries along with health. For instance (playing on Hard), you can fairly early on come across Trolls who can throw rocks with enough damage output to instantly kill some starting units if you haven't improved their health or similar - but they're inaccurate and smokescreen grenades are extremely cheap. As an added bonus, the Trolls, though full of health, aren't remotely evasive and can be dealt with by archers alone in many cases.

Unlike Battle Brothers, however, this game does have an express storyline. And with that comes story-specific encounters that tend to provide more curated combat scenarios, such as besieging forts with siege ladders (or defending them!) and overcoming or taking advantage of the plethora of bonuses units on wall tiles receive.

The weaknesses of the game is the writing and (at this stage of early access) its unpolished corners. The writing style of overly-formal, archaic english prose does not read well and there's occasionally some bugs (I had a quest where a Hydra spawned off-screen at the beginning of the fight, I've been able to deploy units who were resting in cities by letting the game automatically cycle between units when I place them before a battle, [fixed within a day of my initial review] and shrines that supposedly reset after 25 days appear to never count down). Finally, I'd love it if you could field a larger fighting force at a time (even if it was a story unlock or item to buy), or semi-permanently shelve units out of your army (freeing up space) and retrieve/replace them later so you had a bit more opportunity to fully engage in multiple playstyles and racial synergies over time.

I also think that the game could use quite a lot of quality of life features. For instance, a button to immediately send your whole army to the Tavern for half-wages, in case you want to wait a few days at a city for the mercenaries to replenish or for wounds to heal. Other examples could include a button to retrieve your units from the current tavern. I'd also like some kind of way of saving and loading loadouts, and ideally a way to implement them before combat (unless ambushed or similar) - for instance, selectively equipping lanterns on two or three of my units because I'm about to be fighting undead is a fair number of clicks and menu handling (which I'll un-do later) for something that comes up fairly frequently.

A hidden gem in its genre, and an easy recommendation for those not too averse to its frenetic (but clearly intentional) visual design.

Hyperspace Deck Command is loosely analogous to Wildfrost, mechanically, featuring a countdown system where playing cards slowly triggers units (and, more importantly, enemies) at different rates. Like Wildfrost, you can refresh your hand either on-demand (pushing the timer forward) or for free by playing enough of your hand first.

Also, like Wildfrost, it loosely is based on a 'lane' system where you have quite a lot of freedom to move your units up and down to manipulate what incoming and outgoing attacks are occurring. Also, like Wildfrost, it features a pretty in-depth system of modifying and improving your cards.

And, to be clear, Wildfrost was pretty great.

This game definitely has its own identity beyond sharing a similar underlying set of mechanics. Besides its theming, music, and visuals, this game leans heavily into leveraging buffs/debuffs into your deck plan - with the same 'effect' generally serving as either buff or debuff at the same time, based on whether it's put on an enemy or an ally. The game appears well-balanced, reasonably content-rich, and stylistically coherent. At first glance, it rather appears like MORE effort has been put into balancing the various options, cards, and mechanics than Wildfrost did (in part because Wildfrost mechanics often served as narrow counters to specific enemies, rather than broadly-useful strategies).

Its biggest drawback is that the UI elements don't scale nicely to extra-large (TV-size) monitors (I had to drop the resolution just to meaningfully read the statlines of my own units), and its visually... noisy. Whether its prevalent, fuzzy, bright colors are a good or a bad thing is definitely subjective, but it doesn't scream 'relaxing' to me, unlike Wildfrost (despite this game possibly being an actually easier game on average).

It's fun, it's inventive, and if you like the look of the gameplay from the Steam page then you probably won't be disappointed.

With that said, the game suffers from giving inadequate information to the player, in several ways that limit your strategic options. Most notably, there appears to be no way to know which enemies are going to attack in what order, limiting your ability to intentionally set up chain reactions of enemies hitting each other. In addition, enemies have unique gimmicks and mechanics, but these don't appear to be presented to the player or otherwise documented - a design choice that rewards learning the game, I suppose, but makes the first couple of runs feel rather blind and random.

On a similar vein, there's some event decisions you can make that will significantly color how favorable future events are. In some cases, you want to go to the same event type as many times as possible - and sometimes, you never want to return to a certain event type again. This can, again, penalize you for not knowing certain game mechanics in advance (a mixed bag), but when you DO know the game mechanics it can rob you of meaningful choice in the pathing you take during a run. For instance, if you steal an item from a 'stone' event early, you will probably just automatically want to take paths without 'stone' events in the future, which may easily render some worlds a completely linear experience with no overworld strategy at all. In general, the overworld pathing is pretty bare-bones, but that's not uncommon for roguelites in this style (for better or worse).

That all said, the base gameplay loop is excellent and well-made.

Putting aside a history of communication and business model issues, the Bazaar is a - if not THE - top-tier player in its specific subgenre. The underlying mechanics are relatively familiar to players of Hearthstone's Battlegrounds, or Super Auto Pets, or various other games, but The Bazaar sports an extremely fine-tuned experience with huge, huge amounts of variety in a well-presented aesthetic. The game is full of wit, full of character, and has kept me engaged (including on its separate non-Steam launcher) for over 500 hours and it still instills excitement, thought, and engagement with most runs I do.

Just keep in mind that, despite the game having existed in some form or another for a while (pre-dating the Steam release), it is rife with constant business model changes and was free to play for most of its lifespan. Don't be surprised if its content release model and buy-in mechanisms change from underneath you in the future.

Rogue Trader is both the most I've enjoyed playing a CRPG in the best part of a decade, and a thorough disappointment.

PROS

On the one hand, it is awash in (near-)flawlessly executed themes and writings that perfectly embed themselves within the Warhammer 40k setting, telling dozens (hundreds?) of compelling stories, threats, triumphs and tragedies enmeshed in one of the largest narrative universes in gaming. It's combat, though not necessarily completely intuitive, is rich in mechanical depth and backed up by vast stores of equipment and build diversity.

CONS

On the other hand...

The balance to the combat completely peters out around Chapter II (of 5). Those without a decent sense of the game's mechanics and options will comment on the apparent difficulty spikes, while those with a decent sense of the game's mechanics will trivialize nearly each and every combat until the remainder of the game. By Chapter IV, my main character often instantly-ended combats before any enemy got to move, by forcibly being put at the top of the initiative order (due to a class feature), being able to make as many Psyker attacks in one turn as I had AP for (due to a piece of equipment), and a ludicrously large AoE damage output and AP-generation (due to the remainder of my build). As a result, any actual challenge in the game can completely dry up for some players somewhere around the middle of the story.

More biting, however, is that the game starts to fall apart narratively around Chapter IV as well, or even Chapter III. Companions may undergo massive changes, trauma, or other decision points, and simply fail to ever speak about or reference such events again. Companions will cease commenting on the world and stories around them outside of the core main quests, leading to sometimes-absurd scenarios when going through late-game side-content. Side-content itself becomes more and more bare-boned with every chapter, shrinking from multi-stage areas to single combats in a single arena with a piece of loot at the end. Even companion quests - important, character-defining quests - can fall completely flat in the lategame, with Sister Argenta probably getting the shortest end of the stick with her only quest being a single, simple battle with almost no reaction from her and absolutely no reaction from the other party members of the consequences of her quest.

Finally, frustratingly for some, quite a number of the quests in the late-game are bugged. Achievements may not track that you've finished a romance, or discovered some fact, or defeated an enemy in a specific way. In a CRPG that can take 100+ hours to finish, this can be a great let down. Various ability and item tooltips are bugged or misleading, as well, especially in the late-game.

SO WHY RECOMMEND IT?

My review should be a scathing dismissal of an underbaked, disappointing, unbalanced and buggy game. But, for one thing, a lot of these problems are nearly ubiquitous in the late-game of CRPGs (Neverwinter Knights, Knights of the Old Republic, Planescape Torment, Dragon Age Origins, etc...), where the vast quantity of decision-points and the sheer length of the games presumably lead to less and less nuance, overlap, reactivity and QA in the parts of the late game that only a minute fraction of players would ever see with a similar set of decisions.

And for another... when the writing is there, it is just so damn compelling. The combat, when it works as expected, is fun and backed by excellent sound design and broad options. And finally, the scale and scope of the game is just truly, staggeringly impressive, like no other Warhammer 40K game has ever been.

A messy recommendation, but a strong recommendation nonetheless.

A high-quality riff on the "dicebuilder" sub-genre, largely comparable to Slash & Dice in core mechanics, boasting a good, cohesive aesthetic and a good challenge.

My biggest initial issues with the game are that: (1) the actual amount of content feels very low, even for a game that's only $8, in comparison to its genre peers, and (2) the game commits the cardinal sin of dice and deckbuilder games (and, arguably, roguelites in general) and encouraging endless, un-fun grinding mid-run.

To elaborate on my second point; there are various heal and armor skills (including those you start with) which may be used over and over in a given battle. Thus, if you leave only one enemy alive with low damage potential (which you can also enforce with debuffs like Weak) you can just choose not to make attacks and take turn after turn after turn rerolling and using your heal and armor skills to fully heal after every fight (which the game evidently does not expect/assume you to do, based on how many events and merchant effects allow you to spend resources to heal).

This becomes worse in light of an early-game, common skill available to the first character, which lets you permanently increase your maximum armor (which carries between combats) if you use it at full armor. Again, with the aforementioned "leave a weak enemy alive" strategy, this can be grinded for as long as you have pateince, as long as you have adequate defensive skills. There's a very rare skill that can also increase your max HP in a similar way.

The developers appear to have tried to mitigate this by having a penalty for staying in battles too long - a system employed by various games (including Darkest Dungeon and Across the Obelisk) to prevent players from optimising the fun out of their own game. But the penalty takes a long while to ramp up - for multiple turns you get a tiny debuff or a point of damage every turn, both of which can be adequately mitigated by sufficiently defensive builds. The result is a game with a challenge seemingly based around damage-rushing and damage-optimizing against enemies, but the optimum strategy appears to be a glacially slow clicker to slowly heal and permanently-buff your character at the end of every combat for turn after turn after turn after turn.

There's not much I can say that hasn't already been said about this game. In brief, it's an above-average card game mechanically (though a bit easy and limited in enemy/boss variety), with the greatest story, character, and heart of ANY card game on Steam, as well as one of the finest soundtracks of any Steam card game. In many ways, this is to roguelite card games what Hades is to roguelite action games.

I implore anyone who buys, plays, and enjoys this game to stick it through to the true ending (all 18 memories unlocked). The true ending is heartfelt, satisfying, and has left a lasting impression on me and many others.

An ambitious game incorporating a myriad of layers of gameplay and management elements that all interconnect and play off each other exceptionally well, all built around a core gameplay loop of XCOM-style 'heist' missions which are paced precisely well to usually end in a mad scramble to escape as security escalates over time.

The game is, admittedly, rough around the edges - expect to encounter re-used dialogue and mission or legwork narrative frameworks, as well as familiar (re-used) level layouts and the occasional instance of clipping, texture issues or minor spelling errors or oversights. But that only slightly detracts from what is an excellent and well-realized package that is even now getting a constant stream of fixes and updates.

Though I would not call StarVaders an "Into the Breach" clone, I will say that if you liked Into the Breach, you will like or love StarVaders.

StarVaders is a beautifully designed game that plays more like a puzzle game, even though it wears the skin of a tactics/roguelite-deckbuilder blend, much like how Into the Breach plays like a puzzle game wearing the skin of a tactics game. StarVaders gives you EXCELLENT music, great art, great UI design and feedback in a game that is conceptually simple, but mechanically rich. Every single design choice, difficulty element, or gameplay concept is well-considered, well-implemented, and each run is filled with satisfying moments where you just pull together a combination of actions that clear the board in a dramatic fashion.

Of particular note I have to mention that, for the most part, there's no real "HP" system for either enemies or your character, and it's implemented flawlessly. Any enemy takes one hit to die (unless they have special passives or shields), and by extension attacks merely "hit" (sometimes multiple times) and don't have individual damage values. Your main character can take as many hits as you want, but doing so fills up your deck with junk cards and similar penalties to represent the wear and tear you take. It's an unusual and creative design decision that makes you rethink how to design and balance attacking options in a tactics-style game, but it's implemented flawlessly.