Recent reviews by Sentient_Toaster

Shove your opponents out of windows.

Have a lovely session casting them out
Pushing, pulling, while they panic and shout

October it is,
Truly, the season is "Fall"
Defenestration!

Visualize the future
In one-second increments
Perhaps consider another
Having seen the consequence

Everybody's a somebody, one story at a time
A witch, and detective, who's barely got a dime
A soldier, seeking redemption, from missions which he'd led
A medic, who can save you, if you're freshly dead
A druid, hounded by the law, due to a life of crime

Enjoyed this a lot, although doing so required getting over initial frustration with the often significant deviations from tabletop rules combined with the lack of first-party documentation on such. One shouldn't have to go to a third-party wiki to find a summary of rules differences, some of which are very unintuitive. (Related: if you do want a much more faithful implementation of the core ruleset, see "Solasta: Crown of the Magister". That's a much-smaller-budget entry that is extremely focused on the tactical combat aspects, though, not story and characters; and which didn't have the license to anything outside the SRD).

Mechanics-wise, it *is* based on D&D 5E, so a lot of ups and downs of that system are preserved. If you dislike the core mechanics of that system -- maybe you want more choices in character creation and leveling, maybe you dislike the balancing issues, maybe you want a lot more or a lot less crunch, whatever -- you'll probably dislike BG3 for the same reasons. Conversely, if you're completely unfamiliar with the rules you might want to look up the Basic Rules, because the in-game help is somewhat sparse.

For a game of its size and non-linearity where one has a lot of opportunity to decide when, how and even whether various bits of plot are handled, there didn't seem to be many sequence-breaking bugs. I ran into certain NPCs repeating quest-related dialogue, but things didn't /break/. Pathfinding was more of a problem, where one needs to pay attention to make sure that companions aren't accidentally left behind when they get stuck, or to immediately cancel movement rather than have them continue moving and trigger an already-detected trap, or otherwise getting into trouble. For a tactical game, having tools to check LOS/range at possible destinations before actually moving would also have been helpful. On a related note, AIs of friendly NPCs can also be subpar re: self-preservation.

Plot-wise, it's as over-the-top as one might expect for the Forgotten Realms, including following the tradition of having first-level characters with bonkers backstories -- a party full of main-character-syndrome types to varying degrees. This isn't a new thing (e.g. a "Pool of Radiance" character having been left a ring of three wishes...), but it might be annoying if you're used to rolling your eyes at such. Similarly, it inherits the common problem with the setting -- that there are lorewise-quite-powerful NPCs running around whose intervention is extremely limited if present at all, leaving it to a small band of plucky-but-inexperienced adventurers to deal with a very, very severe crisis.

Eighth game in the main series (note: of the first seven, only the first three are available on PC yet); but it stars a new protagonist who spends a lot of time in a new neighborhood, and has become a party-based game with JRPG-ish turn-based combat rather than a single-character real-time brawler. The main character is basically ignorant of the events and people in the previous games, and you don't need to have played them first. If you have, you'll recognize certain characters at various story beats...

The writing is as dramatic as ever, especially in the last third of the game where the "whys" become clearer. Story is linear but solid, IMHO (I mean, you could call it a visual novel with unusually fleshed-out gameplay and a lot of side quests...). There's less writing than, say, "Disco Elysium", but I'd put it well above e.g. "The Outer Worlds" in story quality.

As with previous iterations, a lot of the comedy is in side quests, i.e. "substories", which are pretty disconnected from the main plot and can be very tonally different. Unlike previous iterations, the protagonist's overactive imagination and videogame obsession causes him to see enemies in often fairly goofy ways, too, with odd visual art and often silly names.

Some things I didn't like -- pathing in combat was often atrocious, leading to lost chances to hit enemies while they were down; the two sewer dungeons were pretty uninspired; there's a lot of mechanics that are hidden, e.g. skill descriptions list damage vaguely like "Heavy" or "Extreme" but don't give numbers, same like heal skills don't tell you how much they heal and there's no in-game description of e.g. how attack/defense stats actually affect the math. I like to have the details of mechanics *available* even though I'm not going to come up with some spreadsheet to optimize things, haha.

I finished the main quest line, did a lot but not all the substories, did the first post-game dungeon once, mostly ignored the minigames. There's free-roam after the main quest line or I could fire it up in NG+ with a higher difficulty if I wanted.

If you'be played any of the other JRPG-like games by Zeboyd, you'll be familiar with both the mechanics (well, mostly) and the goofy, very self-aware tone. In this particular case, our "hero" Cthulhu is out to rescue Santa because the Christmas League of Evil that kidnapped Santa also sent a malicious "gift" which stole Cthulhu's powers, and he wants them back in order to destroy the world.

This particular iteration is quite short and linear. As the description notes, it's very streamlined. You rapidly accumulate a party consisting of Cthulhu and three specific NPCs, each of whom has four equipment slots for stat boosts and the assorted buff. Each develops a pool of abilities by leveling up, four of which can be selected by the player to be reliably available and which will be supplemented by a random per-battle selection of another four. Each stage has a random encounter limit; when it hits zero, randomized battles no longer happen periodically, but you may manually trigger as many as you want if you wish to grind XP. At the other end, if the random battles cease to interest you, they can be interrupted canceled shortly before they start.

If anything is irritating, it's probably that there are some stages which are a few screens of mazes, and the mazes aren't that... amazing? They don't add that much to the game, I would say.

Something that's different with this iteration vs. "Cthulhu Saves the World", "Breath of Death VII", and "Cosmic Star Heroine" is that there are interludes where you can take actions like spending some downtime with a party member to build your “R'lyehtionships" with them. You can also have Cthulhu visit the movies, work as a mall Santa, or help at the Post Office, for instance. These result in short sequences to amuse you and also reward you with an item for some party member. Another difference is that, AFAIK, there are no missable, secret bosses; certainly no achievements require them.

If you're not sure whether Zeboyd's humor will be enjoyable for you, Steam has a combo-pack of their older "Cthulhu Saves the World" and 'Breath of Death VII" whose *full* non-discounted price is $2.99, and it's $0.89 during the 2019 Winter Steam Sale.

Now, with more maps, missions, fixes, official mod support, and a 'career mode' sandbox for playing without the campaign -- this is a much more complete game than it early on.

What this is, is basically a mercenary management game where (1) you control up to four 'mechs (and only four, although you can eventually have up to 12 set up in mech bays) at once in turn-based tactical combat missions on a 2D hex grid with mechanics adapted or derived from the tabletop game; and (2) you need to manage the mercenary company's resources -- pilots, mechs, various parts, and ship. Salaries need to be paid, mech damage needs to be repaired, parts may be destroyed and need replacement. Pilots can progress in four stats (1-10), with a few possible passive or active abilities picked up along the way. They can also die, or be badly wounded and need time to recuperate. Part of the management problem is ensuring that setbacks such as losing a pilot or having a mech severely damaged do not render you unable to complete enough missions without sustaining further severe losses that may cause a spiral into bankruptcy. Even an armless enemy mech isn't really 'armless when it *might* be able to land a kick into the cockpit of one of your own mechs, killing the pilot...

The campaign has a linear set of 'priority' missions but you can generally grind randomized missions all you want between them. You can also continue to play missions afterwards, if you like.

Audiovisual-wise, it's pretty basic. There's drawn scenes for the campaigns, but the combat gameplay is... well, focused on the gameplay, not on flashiness or style.

I don't know that I would have recommended it early on, but they've improved the game quite a bit since then.

The development studio appears to have quietly shut down ca. late 2016/early 2017, with the art directory having left in July 2016. They have been silent on Twitter since late 2016, and their domain was registered (to others, I suspect, given that they're using SEO-related nameservers) in late 2017.

While the episodes that were released showed creativity, rather good (if at times horrifying) artwork, and hinted at storyline that could go places -- it is not possible to recommend purchase given that the probability of the series actually being revived and finished seems to be zero.

This was sufficiently non-memorable that I can't remember anything about this game other than it being utterly unremarkable and having a series of songs mocking Chosen Ones. For a comedy game, I can't remember a single joke from it; for a role-playing game and dungeon crawler, I can't remember a single character or interesting enemy type or location; for games in general, I don't remember a single distinctive or novel mechanic. I'd say that the "Yakuza" series (or, at least the ones that have made their way to the PC platform -- i.e. 0 and the "Kiwami" remakes of the first two games) has better and more interesting writing, and those games are *brawlers*.

For an RPG, a genre where writing quality matters more than in, say, a multiplayer-focused shooter, these all suggest staying away. I'd rather steer you towards something with more memorable flavor. There's "Age of Decadence" if you want rather hardcore difficulty combined with a *lot* of writing and emphasis on roleplay (e.g. actually playing to your character's strengths; for instance, do not expect to be able to build a grifter character and have him power his way through combat, where even a combat-focused character will quickly discover that he's only human, not some unbeatable superhuman); for something far more welcoming, there's games like "Fallout: New Vegas" or "Dragon Age: Origins".

Hmmm. I'd rate this a "maybe", if Steam would let me.

Are you looking for a coherent, well-written narrative? Do you prefer deep characterization and plausible behavior from NPCs? Are you looking for a game where you can proceed at your own pace, without the main quest suddenly intervening and demanding that you pay attention to it? Do you like long, peaceful walks through nature where animals are not constantly trying to devour your face? Do you want an unequivocal "you saved the day" ending?

If so, then walk away from this one. The story is... goofy and it *will* force yourself upon you with its now-notorious kidnapping sequences to the point that you can be kidnapped and forced into a mission despite flying far above ground in a helicopter at the time. NPCs are pretty one-dimensional, the wildlife will constantly attempt to eat your face, and planes will randomly crash for no apparent reason. The main ending is infamous at this point.

That said, the gameplay itself can be quite amusing -- if you enjoy chaos often made worse with glitchy physics. Completing outposts quietly can be satisfying, there's an OK number of weapons to try, and you can carry a silly amount of explosives with which to ruin peoples' days. You can even do things like slap proximity explosives on the hood of a car, get it going in the direction of some enemies, and jump out, if you really want to. If you don't limit yourself, gameplay will often be on the easy side after a certain point, such as when you've got a helicopter gunship you can summon at any helipad and you've got a suppressed .50 cal rifle and upgraded your ammo capacity for it.

Once you're done, there's Arcade mode (UGC levels), as well as NG+.

A negative worth specifically calling out for those interested in the game's two-player co-op support: *Only the host* gets "world progression", i.e. such things as quest completion. The guest only keeps "player progression", such as money and inventory, and perk points earned during it. This does mean that since there are certain abilities locked behind specific quests, there will be things that cannot be unlocked simply by playing as a guest, but that he must replay on his own (or hosting with a guest of his own) to meet the prerequisites. It's unfortunate and worth spelling out.

Remake of the second game in this series, although there's a prequel (Yakuza 0) so in plot order it's now actually the third game.

It's set in the same two neighborhoods, a year after the end of the previous game, and broadly similar -- a brawler with a dramatic, serious main story of plots and power struggles, combined with numerous often extremely silly substories and minigames as diversions. Mechanically, the protagonist now has only one unarmed fighting style with additional techniques unlocked via spending XP and sometimes requiring additional actions (mostly reading technique primers, but also watching videos). There's a variety of weapons and unlike YK1 it's possible to keep various weapons you find in combat rather than always losing them at the end. Gear has been simplified to three gear slots rather than one gear slot plus two accessory slots, which means that you can do silly things like wear three bulletproof vests at once if you want to. But mechanically, if you're familiar with Y0 or YK1 the gameplay is very similar. The heat actions are numerous and include some rather silly ones, such as knocking an enemy so that he lands face-first into the bosom of a passing woman... who gets enraged, headbutts him, and if that's not sufficient viciously kicks him away, too.

The Cabaret Club minigame from Y0 reappears, and once it's available fairly quickly lets you grind for as much money as you care to need. Unlike Y0, money is different from XP, but you could always turn money into XP by buying AppStim RX to reset your hunger meter so you can keep chowing down for XP. As with Y0, searches involving the names of some hostesses will often lead to NSFW results since certain ones are modeled on actual JAV actresses. Along the same lines, there's a completely optional "gravure photography" minigame that has you taking racy pictures of women... for reasons.

The other major minigame is Clan Creator, which has you recruit and level up employees to defend critical construction equipment versus waves of attackers.

There are no techniques locked behind fighting the same enemy dozens of times and I found less reason to grind than in YK1 or Y0.

Unlike YK1, there's no particular move I'd point to as so pivotal that you can divide the game into before and after it. Probably the closest thing is the acquisition of infinite-durability weapons, which unlike Y0 and YK1 can actually have very good damage per hit -- but since you can carry 15 weapons at once, and you can readily grind for money to repair them, this is more of a convenience than a true game changer.

In terms of story... the main story is as you might expect full of organized criminals and schemes, and it does go a bit overboard in the ending regarding sudden reveals and betrayals. There's one particular main story level whose setting is extremely silly, as well. The substories are, as per the previous games, frequently absurd, and have no impact on the main story beyond offering you XP and sometimes other rewards that might help. So -- stay away if you want your games to be completely serious or completely silly, because this one will switch it up. I enjoyed it, but I don't mind that combination from time to time.

A remake of the start of the series. It's fundamentally a brawler with a very serious, dramatic main plot... and a ridiculous number of distractions in the forms of various minigames and substories, some of which are much more silly than the main plot. This is a series in which you can carry a cannon built into a fish purely as a pun relating to a retired sprinter, and in which you could have a literal chicken helping you manage a real-estate company.

Some things to note:

* It's a remake of the first game, but "Yakuza 0" was a prequel made later. You may want to start there, to appreciate the story more.
* Controller highly recommended for most parts, but certain sections will be far easier with a mouse. There's an on-rails shooting section, for instance, that really benefits from this.
* The story is somewhat tweaked from the original, but it's still the oldest writing in the series.
* There's a few combat styles and quite a few moves to use, but one particular move ends up dominating and you can practically divide the game into "pre-that move" and "post-that move", because it's so ridiculously useful. Without it, various late-game fights can be truly obnoxious.
* There's a rock-paper-scissors game with stats and collectible cards, that features scantily-clad women costumed as insects... for... reasons? Must be some pretty good drugs at Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio.
* There are a *lot* of minigames and substories. If you insist on absolutely 100%ing everything, it will take a while.
* As noted above, a lot of the substories are... goofy. If tonal dissonance annoys you, stay away from the whole series.
* There will be a lot of grinding against one particular opponent if you want to really flesh out one of the combat styles (Majima, which is obvious from the store page).
* Difficulty can be tweaked during a game.
* It's open-world but with a set character and plot. Mostly, your decision-making boils down to whether you attempt to complete a substory or whether you ignore it, and there's generally exactly one way to do so. This isn't Fallout 2 or a Deus Ex game.

I personally enjoyed it, but it is what it is.