Bobbles
Recent Ratings
Check out Bobbles's...
| 5 20% | Underworld Ascendant (2018) - Nov 18, 2018
"Bad. Beneath the screwy savegame system and mountain of glitches lies a content-starved dungeon crawler with braindead AI and an extremely limited loot selection. The developers were bragging that UA was "an inch wide, but a mile deep", which is absolutely bewildering considering how shallow and repetitive the gameplay is. To be clear: I am not rating this game compared to its Kickstarter pitch or as a successor to Ultima Underworld. If I did that, I'd give it a flat zero."
|
| 80 80% | Curse of the Azure Bonds (1989) - Nov 05, 2018
"The technical enhancements over PoR are welcome, and the encounter design has greatly improved; enemy casters are a frequent and credible threat now! Sadly, CotAB is worse than its predecessor in a number of areas: 1) The game likes to close off dungeon entrances, forbidding backtracking until the next boss is killed. Hate that. 2) World exploration is more plot driven, which means it's more linear. 3) The side content is quite feeble. On balance, I think this sequel is slightly worse than PoR."
|
| 10 23% | Serpent in the Staglands (2015) - Oct 29, 2018
"Dull and content-starved with a wretched UI. Has lots of cool ideas (unique story hook, morally complex choices and consequences, big world to explore and investigate, skillbased environmental interaction, unique combat ruleset), but overwhelmingly fails in trying to implement them. The core gameplay experience is poorly balanced RTwP combat against hordes of respawning trash mobs. "
|
| 83 89% | Pool of Radiance (1988) - Oct 20, 2018
"Very good early RPG with a focus on combat and open world exploration. Most of the good loot is hand placed, which was much appreciated. Use of the Gold Box Companion mod is HIGHLY recommended; it greatly improves the UI. The biggest downside is probably the encounter design, which could have done with a bit more challenge and variety; however, the game kept me entertained from start to finish. So far this is my favourite RPG of the 80s."
|
| 60 51% | Divinity: Original Sin II (2017) - Oct 19, 2018
"The production values are impressive, but I started to become profoundly bored after Fort Joy. The battles were by far the most interesting part of the game for me, but once I had all my core skills unlocked they began to feel repetitive. There didn't seem to be enough new mechanics and challenges to the gameplay, and the boring loot didn't help. Having knowledge of the first game was another hindrance for me; I thought "I've already played ninety hours of this, how much more do I really need?""
|
| 74 68% | Swords and Sorcery - Underworld (2015) - Sep 05, 2018
"A good blobber with a tough but entertaining beginning. Rather short, perhaps 18 hours in length. Sadly the difficulty drops quite steeply during the second half of the game; the late game enemies offer little challenge, and the gameplay feels increasingly repetitive. On balance, it's a fine little game that could have done with more complexity and variety."
|
| 86 92% | Telepath Tactics (2015) - Sep 02, 2018
"A great tactical combat game with deterministic gameplay; there are no dice rolls, and you will see in advance where the enemy will move on their next turn. There are tons of tactical options available, including building bridges and obstacles on the battlefield. Picking the right party composition for each battle is important, and there's a good variety of characters to choose from. My biggest criticism is that the game is very linear - a few optional missions could have made it even better."
|
| 65 56% | Wizardry III: Legacy of Llylgamyn (1983) - Aug 30, 2018
"Compared to Wiz2, this one has a better sense of progression (you start at level 1 again), less level draining, and better area design. The new alignment restrictions are yet another time waster - you either raise up both a good and an evil set of your non-neutral characters, or you grind on friendly encounters until they've all changed alignment (this takes a long time without save scumming). XP gains are also generally low. Overall, less annoying than Wiz2, but grindier than Wiz1. [PS1]"
|
| 53 48% | Wizardry II: The Knight of Diamonds (1982) - Aug 23, 2018
"I read a comment somewhere that Wiz 2 feels like an expansion pack - I agree with that. There's not enough new stuff here; the most memorable thing is the harsh difficulty, which was probably meant to stretch out the rather content light game. I got level drained in my very first battle! XP gains are low, and my imported level 13 party only gained 1 to 2 levels over the course of the game. The level design isn't bad, but two tile types from Wiz1 are strangely absent (spinners and silence). [PS1]"
|
| 73 65% | Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord (1980) - Aug 20, 2018
"The Wizardry franchise had a huge impact on the global development of the RPG genre. Its core gameplay formula remains compelling to this day (see the Elminage series and various other DRPGs), which is a great achivement for a 38 year old game. Wiz 1 has two specific downsides: the level design is relatively basic, and the punishing RNG based difficulty can lead to a lot of frustration. Thankfully modern players can use save states to alleviate that. [played on emulated PS1]"
|
