Recent reviews by AbyssHawke

Miasma Chronicles is The Bearded Ladies' third tactical rpg after Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden. I had a lot of complaints with Mutant Year Zero's nearly unplayable gameplay and had doubts about Miasma Chronicles; but turned out it is much better.

Story-wise both games are on par on the quality and delivery department. Gameplay-wise; let's dive in
with positives then continue with negatives.

+There were some well-put, funny easter eggs to the previous games.
+Mutant Year Zero had square tiled turn-base fights but you weren't been able to see the squares until the fight starts. NPC area detection was made in circle form too. Miasma Chronicles have it all in squares now and I think it's way better. I can see the exact distance I should stay in and plan tactical approach depending on the tiles.
+New knock back mechanic feels really good. If you topple the enemy on another enemy they both get knocked down. (Although you can't decide the direction you want to knock them down even with enough Action Point)
+You can now auto-pick battle dropped items in fight when you walk over the drop.
+There are puzzles in the game and they are in the keypad/passcode format. They are mostly fun to solve. Some of them are extremely hard for non-native speakers. Example: P3N15

-There still is no quick save option.
-Still no minimap and I don't think it helps with the "exploration vibe".
-Can't register some keys like MB5~ (Side mouse buttons).
-Quest rewards go like: "Pick one: Exocharger Alpha or Ultra Charger" and doesn't show you what they do when you hover over the curser.
-Some interiors and covers are buggy. Characters stop following each other, refuse to move or attack. Shows full cover but doesn't apply etc.
-Still auto regroups and cancels sneak after an ambush. Blows the carefully put positions and even sometimes put the team in danger. Those mechanics should be toggled on or off in options menu.
-Some area designs are weird. Like there is a keypad which opens a door to a building but there is already a big hole on the wall which the characters would fit but they can't vault over it.
-Too many NPC talks at the beginning of the game and newly discovered towns. Many trivia talks are fun but some of them are like 3 paragraphs long and doesn't contribute to the game or the story in any way.
-You use "Glass Bottle" to throw and lure out an enemy in ambush mode. It's sold for 100 in game money. On par with a frag grenade or acid bottle. I think it should have been free in "throw rock" function. Buying an empty glass bottle for frag grenade price make no sense.
-Girl in town says "Get lost" then make herself join the team 5 minute later in another zone. Also she can spawn a turret which deals area damage. If you target multiple enemies AND HER, she talks to herself: "What's your problem?" - "Sorry, my bad."
-There is an enemy type that clones itself when drops below half hp. Clone starts with full hp and can also clone itself. Feels like a really bad design.

I can say that it's a really good post-apocalyptic tactical RPG. I'd recommend If you are looking for a bit of tactics and a good story. Enjoy

I decided to post it as positive since I really liked the story but it was a close call.

I know we don't get many good games like X-Com series in this genre. Many of these turn-based tactical strategy games miss the strategy part and sadly, this is one of them. As I said, I really really liked the story but the gameplay made it very difficult. Let me give you a list of why:

1) Strategy: There are 5 characters in the game (+1 in the DLC). All of them have active and passive abilities depending on their "stereotypes" and somehow they decided to force you to just pick only 1 of the said abilities at a time per character. You can't pick the invisibility if you want "Run'n Gun" ability active. YOU HAVE TO PICK AND USE ONLY 1 OF THE PASSIVES AT A TIME. Same even goes for active abilities. That completely kills the variety, strategy and stereotype.

2) Abilities: There are abilities like "Jump" or "Eat Corpse to regain missing health" and guess what? You can't use them outside of combat. You can't position yourself or regain health after the battle. Reason? I don't even know. I learned it the hard way after I spent 10 level ups worth of points in the Corpse Eater ability. +There was loot stuck on a car and I couldn't even get it even when my duck could fly.

3) Items: You can buy weapon attachments, armor, grenades etc. but you can't sell anything. Reason? I don't know. Also shop doesn't even renew much. It showed me just 3 new items in my 30+ hours of gameplay.

4) Controls: If you change your Ambush key on keyboard, many things bug out. You won't be able to exit combat (It shows the name of your newly registered key but shows space bar and doesn't work). You can't register some keys like "Y" for some reason. Sometimes you have to use Space key to close notes even though it's not space anymore.

5) Balance: Every zone is balanced considered you taking out the "wandering" solo enemies first before fighting the main guy/group. But that sucks because your damage nearly always falls short for 1 point. Enemy you suppose to kills have 16 hp and your damage total for 1 round equals to 15. So what do you do? You look for weapon parts and force yourself to upgrade one of your weapon to balance it back. How do you learn it? By dying first. You have Jump/Fly abilities but very few of the zones have the high ground structures. Ambush key bugs out and you are forced to fight sometimes. Hit chances go as: *Enemy is out of sight *25% *50% *75% and *100%. Game wants you to use the glow sticks for +25% hit chance but throwing anything just ends the round, so why would you? You lose 1 character damage which is better than having 25% hit chance. I tried many different approaches to fight and I can clearly say that in many attempts; they have much higher hit chance than yours. (Also early revive bot is just ridiculous)

6) Fear of Missing Out: THIS ONE IS THE WORST: I mentioned that we have 5 characters right? Whenever you interact with something or wander into a new area, only the character you use to "walk" reacts to it. You have to reload and use another character to learn how they feel or think about it. This even applies to some critical story points and IT MAKES NO SENSE. It really made me feel like I'm missing out of story. Another important addition to this is: Many dialogue/monologue triggers when you are really really close to enemies and when you are engaged in combat, they stop talking and doesn't continue the conversation after the fight.

Misc:
*Sometimes after an ambush your flashlight automatically enables which forces you into a combat you don't want.
*Sometimes hide button doesn't work when you are at the edge of the enemy detect circle.
*Some subtitles are different than the voice line, which is kinda irresponsible considering the game came out in 2018.
*You have to adjust your zoom level to switch between floors which is a lazy design and leads you to make mistakes here and there.
*There is no minimap and sometimes you hit a new zone entrance unwillingly and find yourself in a loading screen.
*Also some of the phone numbers in the game is actually used in Turkey, I've added them to my contacts and can see their Whatsapps, which is another irresponsible detail.

There is only one thing about this game that ruined the whole experience for us: You can't kick griefing players unless they decide to kill any one of you.

Rest of the game is really fun if you have nice teammates but I'm not going to recommend something that allows toxic piece of ***** to ruin a run whenever they want. There is nothing you can do and they can just single handedly waste your hours (also your mental well-being.)

Semi-decent game. ♥♥♥♥♥♥ developer. Stripping content off the game and sells as a DLC. Also rants about mask usage and weak men in patch notes. Here are 2 examples taken from patch notes:

1-"(* some men still wont fight. they're weak. there's no accounting for weak men. weak men lack character. strong moral fibre is hard to come by. it's earned through hard work and sacrifice and it cannot be had via onlyfans or ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. no, those ♥♥♥♥♥♥' things are demonic posessions waiting to show you a succubus tiddy in the hopes you'll waste a load on her instead of spending that energy studying how to weld or grow a potato or learning a new language or how to program a computer. listen, kids ... get off them porntubes and do something with your life becuase no one is gonna give you a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ thing and this whole mess we call civilization is only getting harder. we need solutions and we need smart men who can work hard and implement those solutions. masturbating to egirls isn't gonna solve the energy crisis is it? get to work.

.. or play video games and have a relax and then get to work, fresh, tomorrow. i can't possibly know whats best for you in your individual situation.

really... don't let strangers on the internet tell you how to live your life. if you want to be told how to live your life, read the new testament. the internet will only give you lies.)"

2-"TAKE OFF THE ♥♥♥♥ MASKS - Next time you're at the grocery store, try showing a woman your face. Be confident, unafraid of the LIES -- you might get a girlfriend. Women like confidence. Women don't like dudes who cover their faces in fear. What are you afraid of? Getting laid? Grow up."

Yeah, "Sigma male" developer.

A small yet fun little "pet project" of the developer. Jumped on it after seeing SplatterCat's video and loved it. The idea of improving into a mobile bullet hell machine doesn't just scratch the arcade itch, it also does it for my Hack'n Slash ARPG itch which I try to scratch with Path of Exile to some extend.

Managed to beat the game in 4 hours, it took like 7 runs. Runs have different event modifiers based on time to make it harder for you. There are different characters to choose from, which has different set passive improving modifiers and starting weapon. Weapons are available to every other character too and you can't use them directly, game uses your arsenal automatically based on their cooldown. So, every time you level up or find a chest, you can upgrade an "item" of yours or even get a new one. They all stack. You can improve projectile count, cooldown rate, area of effect etc. Perfect basic hack'n slash stats.

Try it out, its cheap and fun :)

I think I was a single digit year old when I had played this game for the first time. There were 3 main and +1 character which was either Lass or Ryan, I can't remember which one was released before. Since I didn't even have a basic English at the time, I had to figure out the mechanic and gameplay by just randomly pressing my keyboard. I'm not into MMORPGs and massive time sinking games (except Path of Exile) but somehow I played this game for more than 8 years. Spent less and less time each month but the game always were at the back of my mind. It's been more than 15 years and I couldn't find any game that made me feel the way Grand Chase did. The Company changed their marketing strategies more than I can remember and in my humble opinion, game got worse each time they added a new money sinking mechanic. Ultimately they decided to pull the plug around 2015.

Seeing Grand Chase on Steam with the name "Grand Chase Classic" was an emotional roller coaster. I don't know what exactly their plans are but at the first glance, they are "balancing(!)" characters and adding them one by one every 3 or 4 weeks. As of 02.Jan.2022, 11 characters are added and 9 left to go. My favourite Ronan is still fun and I am waiting for Zero to be added.

As a person who once saw it's non-PayToWin standarts, I am still not happy with the current state of the game's "reinforcing" (adding +1,+2... to items) and monetization mechanics. Once, every character had a shared storage, then they changed that to "shared items" with personalized character based items -which means every character had set storage capacity for their own equipments- then to "every character has their own storage and only few specific items can be switched via using "warehouse" storage. This leads to massive money sinking if you want to improve every character in the game since you cannot use some important items with other than the character you first acquire them. Current "Grand Chase Classic" uses the latest.

There is a lot more to say but I just want to say that I want this game to be the game I was once loved. It still does scratch the nostalgic itch that I have and I can only hope for it to get better. We will see it in time.

It didn't age well and you are forced to use "Rockstar Game Launcher".

It forces your camera on certain angles which happens on some console ported games. Locked 30 fps even though you can pick 2k 165hz on display settings. Controls are so clunky you bump into object frequently.

Interrogation mechanics suck in my humble opinion. After a short conversation with suspects and witnesses game "forces" you to pick if they are telling the "1-TRUTH", you have "2-DOUBTS" with their explanation or "3-LIES" are being told by them. If you pick the wrong answer (yeah what the ♥♥♥♥.) you fail. You are forced to replay the cut-scene by just picking the wrong answer.

Turning the camera or investigating clues gives motion sickness due to forced camera rotations. It tells you that you can look around with either mouse movement or using W A S D buttons but it always forces your camera to lock on the middle of the screen. You can't look up or down even if you have to to find clues.

Really wanted to play a good detective game but could barely tolerate it for 2 hours. Going to refund it after this review.

First of all, it's a mixed bag.

Whole concept is that you "D(y)smantle" objects that exists ingame. Grind materials; craft, upgrade so you Dysmantle and grind more. You can destroy (dismantle) nearly everything in game. Which objects you can dismantle with tools you own is determined with it's damage number and it's damage type. Slashing deals damage to cloth, leather, wood type objects and blunt damage goes for metal, rock based ones. Collected materials can be stored at chests at campsite areas. Gain xp by dismantling and storing, then unlock recipes by leveling up.

The first 10 hours passed as me grinding the materials and having so much fun. Then I got into quests and got bored fast. The reason for it is simple: There is soooo much backtracking. If you play it like 50 hours, 20 hours of it would be backtracking. Yes, there is fast travel but only from one link tower to another and their placements on world map sucks.

Required tools are gated behind location based quests which is not told in game in any way. You need to look it up on google out of boredom. Puzzles are hard and kinda bad due to character's clunky control.

Oh, also there are cutscenes! I think it's the most annoying thing in the game. You see a boss at the edge of your screen. You watch it's movements and plan your assault. Start to move aaand cutscene takes control of your player, he moves in front of the boss and starts the boss fight. Really, ♥♥♥♥ that.

Despite all that, I think the game has huge potential and can easily be a fun game. They need to tweak a lot of stuff and reduce or get rid of the backtracking. I can't recommend with it's current state though.

Where to begin... wow.

I did expect something good, but this? This is something magical. We have a lot of problems with modern games. They are bunch of good graphics with either no content, no depth or clunky gameplay. Disco Elysium felt new and old at the same time. New because it brought a new perspective to what it does try to tell, old because they did it so good that it felt like a classic.

It took me 45 hours to finish a playthrough and since it is a text-wall RPG it nearly was all reading. Every paragraph was voiced and let me tell you as a person who once translated a very big game, DE probably had tens of thousands of paragraphs (If not hundreds). And I only found 14 bugs. 8 of them was showing wrong text -but they had similar topics, they probably changed the voice but forgot the text- and only 6 of them was missing voice -also was a bug because there was a *pop* sound instead of a recording-. It is an incredible work! Even more incredible thing is that it never bores the person. Every paragraph is telling you something useful for you or for the situation. Every little detail sounds important and most of them rewards you for being cautious at the end. Which makes you feel like a detective unlike other games.

There are also very well written character progressions. I don't want to give spoilers but let me just tell you that they made a professional job with "Kim Kitsuragi" which became one of my favorite characters.

Imagine being so hooked in the story that whenever the character gets sad you also feel sad, when he feels happy, you do too. Some npc is crying over something, you want to pass through your monitor and give them a hug. This is how well written the story is.

I could go on and on on how good this masterpiece is but just get something you enjoy to drink and start playing. Be a crazy drunk cop who yells "I AM THE AUTHORITY" or be a nice amnesiac Sherlock Holmes. Try to solve everything you see even if it feels tiny or just be a ♥♥♥♥ in Martinaise. Enjoy :)

It feels like a bad attempt of "This War of Mine". For it tries to show you the civil front of a war with survival aspects but it lacks on the "emotion" side. There are nearly none moral conflicts and very limited events. After I finished the game and started with a different "Scenario" I felt like I wasted my money when I realize they just changed the location of events and they are completely same with the previous scenario.

When I say "events" please don't expect something impressive. They go like:
You saw a pace, it was X's bla bla shop. You enter inside and hear a voice, what are you going to do?
-I will search.
+You realize it was not what you expected but a simple mouse... And some critical resources! What are you going to do?
-I'll take them."

They mostly are 2 to 3 paragraphs of 2 to 3 pages with very simple choices. Allowed choices feel really bad too. There was a corpse with an axe on him, his mother tries to bury the person. You are only allowed to "Take the axe" or "Help with burying". I would take the axe because the garrison needs it and bury the corpse afterwards because I'm a good person. But game only wants you to choose between absolute good and absolute evil.
->So as someone else mentioned in the reviews, you need a better writer.

The rest of the events are a cheap versions of "recruitment". But there is also a problem with that too. You are not allowed to have more than 4 characters which is not warned by tutorials. You learn it when you already have 4 characters and interact with the possible recruitment. The game automatically blocks the recruitment choice and forces you to pick the "annoy the other person because you don't want them" choice and as a result interacting with the npc is blocked forever.
->You could add an option to convince them to join the garrison. But no, you force the player to tell the npc "You are a drunken bla bla. Get lost"

There a lot more to criticize but I want to end with a summary that the game lacks the atmosphere and feels. It failed in what it tried to do.