Super Robot Wars 30 (Going Back)

Source: Birthday prezzie
Price: £39.99 base game, shedloads of DLC ranging from £3.99 to £24.99, season pass, blah blah BLARGH.
Where to Get It: Steam

Important note: This was reviewing the base game, no DLC. Still boodles of content. PSA over.

Ahhhh, I’ve been waiting for this day. Y’see, Super Robot Wars is a series that doesn’t come to the West as easily as you’d think, mainly because, well…

Your protag mech for this game, the Huckebein XXX. See what they did there? Ohohohoho… 😛

It’s a series with a lot of giant robots from a lot of franchises (Although, y’know, you’ve always got a high chance of getting some Gundam in there, along with “Voiced by the VA of Ray Amuro”), and so, it’s a copyright nightmare, usually requiring region locking fuckery to play.

But 30? 30’s available in my region. And so, I get to gush about the series via its installment.

Don’t worry, we’ll be getting the flaws out of the way first: Namely, oh, it’s my old friend, red on background that mostly hides red, hi! Choosing where to move is, as a consequence… Kiiind of a pain in the ass on a fair few maps. It’s also a game that completionists will love or hate, but probably tend toward the latter, as the game takes a while to play, and about 4 playthroughs are required to unlock everything in the game.

But, for the rest of us, it’s a fun turn based Strategy RPG, in which you enjoy a weird, multiple franchise story about a world racked by war, with our Protagonist (male or female) getting involved in Yet Another Giant Robot War in a World Where Giant Robot Wars Are Common. Macross pilots are on first name bases with the Mazinger crew. But, conversely, folks like Neo-Zeon can get hold of Zonder Metal, and ally themselves with all sorts of bastards and beasties.

Never change, you glorious fucking nerd. <3

It’s essentially either a gateway drug for Giant Robot Nerds to be, or a haven for the ones already caught like myself. Which makes it highly amusing to note that one of the franchises represented in 30 is… Knight’s and Magic, where the protagonist is, drumroll!… A Giant Robot Nerd.

God fucking bless you, Ernie.

Otherwise, there’s a lot to unpack here. Musically, it varies from alright to pretty dang good, as the vast majority of the soundtrack is various Giant Robot theme tunes, the visuals are solid, and the Live2D animations for the attacks are fun, although you’ll turn them off for each unit after a while, being a “see, enjoy, oh wait, if I let this play every time, I’ll be here for four times as long.” The story, similarly, is pulling its weight, making each robot franchise added to the mix… Mostly understandable in context?

Trust me, considering how varied some of these series are, it can definitely be considered “pulling its weight.” It’ll still be a case of Weird Dimensional Shenanigans a lot of the time, but it’s fun, the characters are fun, and their interactions make for this light fanfiction experience.

…Why not, you kind of are?

Which is basically what it is, isn’t it? Fun, SRPG fanfic of giant robots beating the shit out of other giant robots. Apart from the issue mentioned, it’s pretty accessible, as many turn based games often are, and even the whiniest of “Content per Buck” assholes can’t complain about the amount of gameplay and content. It is a heavy time investment, since missions can take anything up to 2 hours for the later, more fraught missions (mostly taking about 15-30 minutes per mission), but, for those who like turn based strategy with stat raising and buffs and skills and things (It does explain and tutorialise pretty well), and for those who like their big ol’ robutts, this is a very solid purchase indeed.

“But Mr. Welshman, you didn’t show us any of the other giant robots!”

You’re right. I didn’t. UGH, FINE…

There, Combattler. That’s about as Super (and Super Ridiculous) as you can get.

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Hell Architect (Review)

Source: Review Copy
Price: £19.49
Where To Get It: Steam

Much like describing my issues with demons/Lucifer as tempters, knowing where the hell (ha) to start with this review has been difficult for me. But what I can say is that I felt… An odd sense of disappointment with it. Maybe I’m just being picky. Maybe. But nonetheless, let’s start there.

Hahaha, clothes? Why would you need clothes in hell?… I bet you’re all 1%ers too, how does it feel to lose your underwear, let alone your shirt?

There is, on the surface, nothing wrong with Hell Architect. It’s one of those pauseable real time management and building deals, in which you take care of your sinners while torturing them (sinners, apparently, still need food, drink, and proper toilet breaks (to make drinks) in Hell), building various things to look good to your boss (Lucifer, naturally), set underground (again, this is natural and common imagery of Hell), coming with a sandbox (the most commonly played), a solid tutorial, and scenarios to play with. All well and good.

Except… I can’t help but compare it to an earlier game, not only because of the (very) similar gameplay, but because it’s precisely why I feel so dissatisfied. The game being Oxygen Not Included (review here.)

Always fond of a wee cutscene, and I do like the painted aesthetic on display…

Aesthetically, it’s alright. UX is a little small, even on max scaling (upside: It has UX scaling. No congratulations, devs, this really should be normal across the games industry), but the cutscenes are visually appealing, what’s what is pretty clear, the music’s fitting, and the voice acting’s solid.

But it’s lacking the same character I saw in Oxygen Not Included, except with the torture devices. It… Feels blander, if that makes sense. And this is the thing… If I didn’t have this comparison, it would be an alright game in my book. Hell, it still is, perfectly serviceable, lots of playtime ahead, things to look forward to, tortures, etcetera.

Wh-whoah-whoah-whoah-whoah-whoah… They actually do have needs? Well, shit…

Even so, this is one of those times where, despite my heavy dislike of doing this, I can’t help but compare it to another game, and find it wanting in comparison. Maybe, if you like strategy/management/building type deals, you’ll find pleasure in this. For me, however, it just didn’t gel, even if that feels unfair to say, even to me.

I can’t ignore the emotional component of playing a game, however. That, as well, wouldn’t be fair.

The Mad Welshman doesn’t mind visiting Hell. They’re all pretty chill down there. Very big on responsibility for one’s actions…

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Banners of Ruin (Review)

Source: Review Copy
Price: £15.49 (£21.28 for bundle with Supporter stuff, Supporter Bundle on its own £5.79)
Where to Get It: Steam

I do love me some anthro dark fantasy. A tale of revenge, the last members of a clan of animals making their way through the enemy’s city to claim their head… Yes, this is very much my jam.

And, despite some qualifications, Banners of Ruin is also my jam.

Who are the bad guys? Well, they’re the ones on the side of ri- on the right hand side. This is dark fantasy, there is no right side…

So, in case you hadn’t guessed, this is one of those games where you pick cards for events (out of three each time, although you won’t always get a choice), level up your characters, build up a deck of combat cards with which to beat down the enemy, and weapons and armour to help screw them up, recruit more characters (potentially), fight a variety of enemies, and… Well, most likely die on your run until you really get to know the game.

Just roguelike things, y’know?

Honestly, though, while this isn’t anything new, per se, it’s solidly built. Choices are relatively simple, and everything is clear… Well… See, this is where one of the qualifications comes in.

See those tiny squares on the bottom? That’s where you drop your stuff.

Accessibility wise, it’s fuckawful. Serif fonts, often tiny. Colourblindness unfriendly symbols which are also tiny… Would a white outline, or, y’know, a high contrast colour kill you, folks? I can tell it’s bleeding from the drops, I can tell it’s a wound from… I know what the symbols mean because of your tooltips… It does have some of the basic stuff, like windowed mode, removing motion blur or screen shake, so on so forth, but… Something this ubiquitous is something that really needs looking at.

So there’s that. I did, however, like the fact that fights that seemed extremely deadly at first were actually manageable… Well, until the first boss, who utterly ruined me… But that’s generally the case with this sort of roguelike. I liked the fact that moving a party member from their position flummoxes the direct attack enemies, but doesn’t work at all on archers, and has only limited use with pikemen. However, be warned, keeping weapons in your stash also means they’re cards in your deck. Cards you can’t use, or, more accurately, I couldn’t quite use. Similarly, switching equipment from the looting screen is… Awkward. Tiny icons again, folks… Tiny icons.

I couldn’t exactly turn down a ferret with a polearm, could I?

And visually, I love it. I’m a sucker for painted art, and the art is good. Soundwise, I don’t feel particularly strongly either way.

If the accessibility issues were fixed, I’d whole-heartedly recommend this one to folks more experienced with card-based roguelikes, but as it is, it comes with that heavy accessibility qualification.

The Mad Welshman wants all dark animal fantasy to be as accessible as possible. The only thing I’d say we need more than dark fantasy anthro games is lesbian otome villainess isekai games.

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Swarm The City (Demo Review)

Source: Review Copy (?)
Price: The actual game isn’t out yet.
Where to Wishlist It: Steam

I don’t normally review demos. Early Access, I’m comfortable with, because it’s an ongoing process. It’s fascinating to see how a game evolves (or devolves) as time goes on. But a demo is generally part of a finished product, even if it’s not the whole thing, and even if it’s sometimes different. But I did accept a key, and it’s not a public demo, so…

From relatively small beginnings…

…Take this as a review of the demo, and if any similarities exist between it and the game itself, well, those critiques apply. Otherwise… Well, this is for the demo of a real time strategy game about being an unseen dark overlord released in the modern day, unleashing your undead hordes to once again cover the world in darkness. Solid concept.

That said, it’s a rocky start when you have a slow loading time, and the quit, join the discord, and version number all blurred out by your filter. It loses that fuzziness once you hit that “start the game” (get to the main menu) button, and you get to make the game windowed from that point on, but… First impressions matter.

After that? Well, it was only the first chapter, but I can say it was… Okay. The UI is minimalist, although it could maybe do with some tooltipping, but this works. The (unskippable) text crawl at the beginning was sans-serif, which is a solid accessibility choice, as is the rest of the text, some of the icons are small, and it’s unclear at first that you have to go to the side of the skill button to level something up, but the basic concept is solid, and the visual aesthetic overall is the low poly good shit that I enjoy, animated fairly well. Musically, it was a bit sparse, and I’m genuinely uncertain how much playtime the other two chapters in the main game would offer, but…

To a full blown crisis thanks to a slow response from… Wait, shit, pretend I didn’t say that…

It’s okay. I have as many “hrm…” moments as I had “Ah!” moments, such as how you can play pretty tactically, but also the “move here” command doesn’t scroll along at the edge of the screen, which fixes you to a relatively short range in the larger maps… The demo, at least, seems solid for fans of relatively simple real time strategy that nonetheless has some layers to it, but, as I mentioned, I can’t speak for the rest of the game.

The Mad Welshman would like to pick your brains on this one…

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Before We Leave (Review)

Source: Review Copy
Price: £15.99 (Soundtrack £6.99
Where To Get It: Steam

An interesting title, that. Has a kind of Ray Bradbury feel to it. In any case, the apocalypse has happened, the world has returned to some semblance of normality, and people have decided to rebuild. On sea. On land. In space.

I mean, they’re humans, of course they- OHHHH, YOU MEAN DEHYDRATED! D’OH!

Honestly, it’s somewhat nice to have a chill exploration and resource management game like this, and the aesthetic quite pleases me. After all, sea shanties are definitely my jam, and any music that reminds me of them is OK In My Book.

Of course, it’s not all fun and games. After all, pollution is one of those things that screwed people over in the Before-Time, not that they remember, but they quickly learn that yes, smog from power plants, iron dust, and other “fun” stuff bad. Especially this useful, but awful black stuff, god, we’ve gotta get away from using that pronto!

However, sometimes it slows down a whole bunch. Once you’ve got a ship, for example, and colonised a second island, your previously quick pace up to that point slows down for a while until you get everything ready for fabric making, because wow, who thought the heat of a desert would make people super tired, meaning that unless your home to workplace route is short (ha, good luck with that), they’re going to spend long periods resting, also low on resources until you gun quickly for your new researches that can only be done with desert resources, and clothing, in that order.

You have discovered… Really Big Houses. But yes, those resources aren’t going to be helped by the fecund planet you just left for a while

Oh, and set up a trade route. Trade is pretty important in Before We Leave for new colonies. Once again, once you hit new planets, things slow down again… If you’re okay with these slow periods, in which you don’t really need to do anything with previous islands. In fact, once the research tree on an island is done, there’s nothing that needs doing, although increasing the population generally helps with resource flow… But again, is not, strictly speaking, needed… You can keep that relatively pastoral life for quite a while on your first island, with no detriment to the others. Especially as higher populations create more work, in the form of unhappiness management. Your efforts mostly focus on one island at a time in the early game.

And then, when you get to a new planet… Oh. Whoopsie, you didn’t pass on any of those red research points, and you have to start all over again, research wise. Thus creating another roadblock.

Welcome to Island 3. Relax, we already got weather-proof clothing, they’re just sleeping because it isn’t arriving there fast enough, and we can’t grow cotton here.

Aesthetically, the game works. Low poly hexes, low poly people, characterful, good music, clear UX… But mechanically, I find myself more frustrated by the roadblocks than charmed by the simple, clear play. It may be one of those games that “gets better later”, but… While I’d say give it a go if you like colonisation and resource management games, I can’t personally say it wowed me.

Before I Leave, I’d like to remind you all to hit up the Patreon, or at least gimme a Ko-fi. That way, I’ll have some snacks for the journey through space.

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