Video game reviews

Great, very much like old Impressions Games / Sierra historical city builder games (Pharaoh, Caesar, Zeus etc.) but not exactly like them, it is more like a modern restart, if you enjoyed the overall mood, art style, overall polish, city building / production gameplay, music of these games then Nebuchadnezzar is for you. It is fairly similar to the old Sierra games with some things of its own like monument building which allow a bit more customization than before and some game mechanisms like you can add/remove different type of workers in building, the game also rely heavily on fixing production issues and transport / import / export / optimization of supply chain / roads. It is refreshing to see yet another game like this in a different time period, the time period is well chosen. The UX could be better i guess but it also has some quick shortcut that make it ok.

Great card game and somehow worth the price if you agree with the rules. My first tries were all doomed to fail because i was just taking all cards (and relics) that were offered so i was a bit lazy at it but this game is balanced toward strong deck building so you have to take care of the direction you want to go with your cards (poisons, 0 cost cards, debuff etc.) and pay attention, it serve as a good intro if you never played by these rules and were just doing brute force in those games, it force you to build a good deck by default and caring about the path you chose etc.

The game is very fast to play, fun and challenging, combining rogue like with cards game, the runs are short, it has diversity with three to four classes with different cards to play and nicely finetuned gameplay.

Surprised by how fun this game is with somewhat simple gameplay (basically dodge attacks in a small tiled zone and use cards to attack with different effects / bonus / malus), once you understand the rules / ennemies pattern and what each cards does it is absolutely massive fun and has very dynamic fight, it is also very quick to play and has many different gameplay style by choosing / unlocking different characters. After each battle you will be prompted to choose some cards or bonus, you can also buy them. There is bosses at the end of each level. Chip music is very cool and graphics are well done with polished oldschool style.

Great arcade driving / drift game in top down view, works great on steamdeck, same joy and vibe as playing early gran turismo and sega rally (and perhaps early top down car games !) for me but in a top down view and without real cars name, many nods to these games (map, sfx, cars, features, gameplay etc.), gameplay is great as well and the top down view works incredibly well, it looks nice with most features you could ask for (progression, modes, car upgrade, car paint etc.), it perhaps lack a complete multiplayer feature but apart from that it is a polished racing game for such low price and even nicer for 90s nostalgia ! The one thing i don't like is how the race / cars menu switch is done (feels slow) but it is a minor UI thing.

Super fun and witty game to be played with a controller, it is a fast paced top down action RPG with a huge humorous Zelda likes world, gameplay has innovative elements (mixing up several mechanics such as roguelike) and core mechanics is centered around switching between characters (classes) in real time each with noticeably different play style that you can mix around, it offers a lot of versatility, you unlock them by doing quests and leveling up.

Some may find the game grindy and it is somehow but it is not the typical repetitive grind as the world is huge with many quests and huge amount of dungeons so the grind feels distilled into the progression, the progression is a bit non linear as well, you also have to level up your characters which provide different play style and unlock more characters so it does not feel boring at all if you like that, the game does not seem to enforce a play style, overall difficulty is high.

Gameplay may become repetitive after some hours even though new forms and abilities provide variations, i was still hooked due to the world content and overall feeling on the steamdeck, high end dungeons may seem generic after a while also.

The game world is witty with several references, has ok graphics with good amount of content and is polished overall.

Although i didn't test it i can see it being a blast in COOP !

Great game ! Well worth the price for the content alone. A bit like Vampire Survivors if it was on 80s game console (although you control minions and it has smaller maps), it has a cute dark lofi style, just avoid things around with your minions and cast spells, add more minions, upgrade, accumulate relics etc. lots of fun and also lots of things to do and to unlock plus a card minigame, i also love the background and very lofi aesthetics, a nicely polished fun game.

The only meh thing would be that sometimes action on screen is way too messy but there is options to reduce the issue, anyway the design (colors etc) probably doesn't help there so perhaps peoples may find it troublesome, i am okay with it since it depends on what is on screen for me and it is okay with the options.

Awesome roguelike with good graphics, fun pop references, lots of humors and huge HUGE amount of content, especially like the huge number of specializations (you can chose up to 7 skills) and items. Nothing ground breaking on the gameplay, hard but not too punishing if you don't enable permadeath, it is a standard roguelike (old school) with modernized bits but it works. Only meh things are those very random monsters spawning such as evil clones which are... way overpowered... there is also balance issues i guess, i started with a ranged (crossbow) / dagger combination but this is harder than regular warriors (maybe the initial specializations were the issues ?), there is still issues with ammo if you are not lucky (and it will require wandering for a good amount of time if you didn't mark the ammo vendors) so i don't recommend starting with a ranged class, it is not really fun. Lack of inventory space may be an issue but the pocket dimension is easily accessible so it is okay, for ranged however... it is tedious to manage because you may have to hold your ammos. I didn't like having to remember the portal spells (from wall tags) also for one the extension. There is minor UI / accessibility issues (elements too close to each other) and few bugs such as ennemies spawning in inaccessible areas, nothing game breaking though but still meh. It is still a very fun and featured game that i enjoyed pretty much, it does not require huge amount of times due to the "less grind" mode which shrink the dungeons and make it fast to progress.

Nice game but not that deep in term of content (no planes but zeppelins, explainable by the fixed year settings but well... not much depth) if you compare to other games of this type which handle multiple eras but i love the graphics style and it does the job pretty well for the business / production / logistic management side which is good and fun without being too tedious, the depth is at least okay on this part, it is way simpler than games of this type but it still works and is fun for me, micro managing your production chain to become perfectly optimized and resilient to events as well as improving the cities, fulfilling the demands, the game is a bit free form / open ended although there is scenarios, it adapt to the player level with not so much punitive aspects, hardcore players may not like this though as it makes the game very easy once you get it (competitors are weak) but there is still some fun to have on the business optimization side and it is customizable, the extension is also fun but one of the main issue is that most of the new mechanisms isn't explained. I also had two bugs so far, one of which doesn't allow to finish the tutorial because i can't select competitors HQ to buy stocks. The other bug was a big one since the game crashed on save. I didn't see much bugs other than that.

Good game but kinda repetitive and with a rather badly designed UX (more than 4 click with wait times to scavenge & loot a tile, come on! way too slow), the dark science fiction theme and narrative is great and i enjoyed the gameplay (explore derelicts, loot stuff and cards fight) and graphics but some events and the final boss are ridiculously hard (or easy) to beat and require specific configuration otherwise you are stuck in a state where the boss replenish its shield at a rate you can't keep up so the game state become locked into an absurd loop unless you change your team configuration. This just shouldn't happen roguelike or not. Still, it is a solid roguelike with a nice background and ok gameplay.

Cool, decent medieval fantasy roguelike for the price, it works on steamdeck although there is some small bugs (battle map kept scrolling down), was somewhat easy for me (perhaps luck) in normal mode and took about three to four game to beat it. It has standard gameplay elements for this sort of game so a map with path choices and events, you are free to go anywhere although time give bonus to enemies so you must be quick. You can have a small party and level your characters up, level up weapons, armor and rings so you can add runes to add various bonus, loot items that add various bonus (some items are rare and provide huge bonus), sleep to add bonus, do quests, unlock characters and characters abilities, buy/sell stuff, fight is turn based and is decent, simple gameplay but still fun and diverse due to the characters in your party and their abilities, if you have some items (shovel etc) you can increase your luck of finding good loots or avoid events. Map style change every two map, there is not much diversity in enemies but still enough to not feel bored. Good UX, good sounds and music, simple but polished graphics. It does not have huge depth but it is relaxing and do the job.

Played and finished it on the Steamdeck and it works great, an excellent remake which goes very far (farther than the Secret of Mana remake) with a full recreation of the classic SNES game in 3D. It is a solid and very diverse action RPG with excellent gameplay, nice 3D and great sounds. I didn't play the original much but it seems to be a faithful recreation although totally revamped around 3D with some additions like the cactus seeking minigame which reward exploration, there is also many revamped stuff and additional content. There is also a surprising side platform gameplay at some point in the game (although very short).

The difficulty is alright, didn't had to grind much on medium difficulty, some bosses were a bit challenging but nothing impossible. Replayability is meh, i anyway don't like the fact you have to redo the game to enjoy the different characters ending.

The overall game design is mana class so diverse, wonderful (and colorful) although i still prefer the world of SOM (which is quite similar) because it does not go into the world details too much. (the world building is more abstracted so less subject to flaws)

Is it worth 50€ ? Perhaps, it is maybe more worth than SOM at this price for all it does (and even more than Legends of Mana) but i would still grab it at half the price if possible. It is a great game overall.

I don't think i can recommend this game at 20€ (even less at 25), it has great style and is an enjoyable evil style hard rogue like but it has shiny paint all over it to justify the price, most of the visual stuff could be removed and it would still work great and probably be more enjoyable (like, why lose time walking by clicking on a pretty much static mostly linear map ? all animations also have high delay, transitions are too long / often), it is solid as a rogue like with many cool and unforgiving rules / features to be happy with like cheating with the devil (basically the game allow you to cheat by redistributing HP / SP / dots), it has great art style in all areas and cool voices, after a short while it is getting repetitive and don't offer much than its aesthetic / lore evil aspect (and unlocking characters). Pretty much ok, great at low price.

Interesting blend of genres such as Heroes of Might and Magic, King's bounty and early 2000 2.5D RPGs but not at full price... there is way too much fights which are unavoidable and animations are way too slow to my liking even though you can speed up the game to 300%, the game also drain the steam deck battery likes crazy but it works fine. Difficulty is alright.I love the background of disciples which is mature dark fantasy type, it has beautiful sceneries akin to what you can find in HoMM 3 but in full 3D, fun races, fun mature dialogs with choices (a bit dumb sometimes but still okay), the game has a good vibe with good turn-based combats. The blending of genre really shine here and i think it is good although not perfect.Maps are small but there is many fights here and there that makes you feel maps are bigger. If you enjoy the fights then it is alright but it is very repetitive after a while.The game has a RPG vibe with an alright feeling of exploration, the story is long, pretty much likes if you played a single hero in Heroes of Might and Magic on a single big scenario albeit a bit more simplified (without the map strategy level), you level up, add points to a three branch skills tree, equip stuff with various degrees of rarity, upgrade stuff, discover other heroes, manage a city, upgrade buildings with resources to unlock more units and train them, find scrolls so that you can get more magics, you can even trade resources, equipment and units. You can go back to your city almost anytime if you are on the map.There is some annoying bugs on the inventory UI and i also had a blocked turn bug (which freezed a fight) but overall it works ok on the steamdeck, just draining the battery likes crazy. There is some amount of backtracking where you unlock skills for your characters that are useful to unlock stuff on earlier maps.So yes i enjoyed this slightly "innovative" game although it gets very repetitive after a while (it is just fights, a bit of exploration and some events / choices here and there), slow fights doesn't help, it is still alright to discover the cool maps, gain power and equipment and continue the story since there is many choices on events which will determine your allies and stuff.Great at low price (let's say ~20$ ?) and if you have time ahead!

Backtracking : the game, a mixed review, maybe worth if you get it cheap although be prepared that it is repetitive in some ways, the game concept is nice and would have potential in a different settings (alternate history ?) instead of its light / fun settings although it is ok, it is at least funny sometimes but i have a mixed feeling about the game especially at 20$, the implementation of the base idea lacks polish and ambition so the game is a bit rough, user experience is not so great with many redundancy, extra steps, grinding and backtracking (revisiting places) BUT the core idea and the way the story unfold is well done and kinda addictive, you don't know much about you or the world at first and it unfold very slowly in some secretive ways by unlocking characters after days through quests / exploration, this was my main drive to finish the game, i wanted to know where the main character was going at the end with his rocket and what would happen.

The gameplay is rather typical of this sort of game with crafting, light survival (food, rest, fuel), building your secret shelter with food sources which require water sources etc., the content is not so bad, it is varied with some mini games, weekly inspection, fighting... the story unfold by finishing quests or stages of your rocket and unlocking places, the game feels more like an adventure game sometimes, fighting is kinda dull and rough with few enemies (or waves of enemies) nothing that pose much challenge to experienced players, the weekly inspection is fun but again don't pose much troubles, i thought it would be way more ambitious... there is some trading aspect as well which was kinda nice, the backtracking after few hours of game (not at the beginning) is horrendous though, youll revisit places alot and the game doesn't help the player enjoy this at all because it is rather slow at it (scroll is slow, too much steps needed to go somewhere etc.)

I don't know if the DLC is worth but considering the amount of repetitive stuff already, i wouldn't get it unless it adds interesting content.

Graphics are ok but the design is meh, the game isn't that well optimized but i didn't encounter much bugs.

Tales of Berseria (2017) - RPG

Mixed, guess it is an okay JRPG for people's looking for fun characters and storytelling anime style, the game is slow to start with quite dull looking starting environments (especially dungeons, very empty), dull fights and dumb puzzles, it become a bit better after some hours though.

The strongest point of this game for me is the fun characters and their interactions, there is lots of dialogs and cutscenes (all skippables btw) which are very well done with either the game engine or anime style, the characters are all different and show a quite large spectrum of emotions, all of this is very well voiced and animated with good attention to details regarding the story, if someone likes this I guess the game will be appreciated even with all its quirks.

Another strong point : there is no loading screen, loading a game or switching zone is instant.

Graphics and overall design is quite lazy / generic with some very large empty areas sometimes although some areas and characters design are very nice but still a bit generic, lore is okay. Sounds and music are okay.

Combat gameplay is okay, it is somewhat stylish, somewhat fast and complex with lots of possibilities but in the end it's just pretty basics stuff such as combo chains (although you can customize them to adapt to the monster type / resistances or for bonuses), dodging and stuff affecting your stats, if you play with Velvet you can just go on with her special attack anyway making the gameplay dull and irrelevant, it is also too easy except some specific fights or unless you switch difficulty level, it became a bit better mid game with some challenging fights and okay puzzle, nothing too tedious though so so... I guess the idea was to compel to most people's so one can just bump up the difficulty, play different characters etc. basically customize it's experience.

You have the ability to improve equipment with stuff you collect around in chest or in the environment.

The world design is quite uninspired and restrictive, it's mostly a set of corridors like areas, exploration is a bit limited although the game does reward you for doing it in the form of mini boss fights, objects that could sell at high price or special items or clothes (they are quite dull in the base game btw although some of them are very wtf / fun and some of them denude the females ofc...), most monster fights can be skipped, this is also a strong point (with the skippable dialogs) in the sens that you can pretty much go at your speed without much grinding ALTHOUGH the game has some backtracking which is partially solved with location teleport items.

After some times the game offer you a sort of hoverboard to go fast but you have to unlock it in each zones by finding a green stuff, I guess this was added as some sort of exploration thingy, not sure I like this unlocking system though because the design play on this in some areas so you must still walk a bit before unlocking the fast travel for each zones...

I liked all the optional minigame (especially the family style card game) even if they are quite simple, they don't add a lot but they offer breaks, the game also reward you in doing them. The special chest collecting stuff is also cool to gain characters style items plus if you collect enough you can unlock a quite cool area.

In the end I somewhat enjoyed it in parts, it is very slow to start but when it start it is okay with good content, it is very uneven though and often a bit cheap which does not reflect in the selling price at all.

Mediocre at best, very generic JRPG with few innovative features.

The action RPG gameplay isn't bad per se with ok fights and lots of typical bonus features which apply to characters but it is totally broken by the fact i finished half the game by spamming the dragon which is available at the start of the game (just needs enough mana potions), this provided me some advantages likes not having to grind the mid / end game at all after the discovery, i don't know if it was intended but this makes the gameplay so easy that it makes all the fight features absolutely worthless. Only had a hard time once with a dragon boss but it was easy after a few tries.

Also, just needed to grind once because the game force you to use some characters at some times and if you didn't level them up then... you will have to grind levels a bit, grind is not time consuming though if you do quick dungeons, they are just corridors filled with monsters that you customize from collections gathered around.

So i basically enjoyed the first few hours of the game where the action JRPG gameplay alone was okay. (until the OP dragon discovery) There is some backtracking (going back to town often) but there is items to soften that aspect, it is still a bit irritating at times.

Story is dull and was seen a million times already, i didn't care much about it.

As for the graphics they are colorful but very uninspired and quite awful by today standard (even few years before) and for this price, they are also totally very generic looking (especially monsters), the lore is very meh, the only good stuff may be from the characters art which isn't bad (and was done by a well known artist), audio is ok.

There is some 'deep' dating sim aspect in the game but i didn't care at all, i'd guess it is supposedly the main focus of this game though since characters are heavily sexualized (there is outfit items which are solely made to remove as much clothes as possible...) so it is like a dating sim with JRPG elements...

Not worth that price imho, maybe 5$ or in a bundle but only if you are in needs of a dull generic light JRPG with dating elements.

Sceptique au début au vu des commentaires mais au final c'est très bien. Pour résumer : Plus petit, plus simple, moins cher tout en gardant l'essentiel XCOM. Limite je préfère aux autres XCOM pour son coté plus light, c'est plus rapide à charger, ça demande moins de ressources, les parties peuvent être moins longue vu que les cartes sont moins grande, le coté très urbain change aussi. Sinon ça garde le gameplay / style XCOM mais avec une seule squad (recherche, boutique, choix, personnalisation squad, améliorations, tour par tour stratégique, entrainement), il y à un peu moins de gestion et justement c'est un choix sympathique vu que la gestion peut prendre beaucoup de temps. C'est une alternative plus light que les autres XCOM, un entre deux. J'aime le style BD de la narration aussi, l'histoire est correct. Il y à quelque changements, notamment un système de phases avec des choix selon les personnages, ça change un peu la dynamique. C'est globalement une bonne surprise. Pas vu de bugs pour l'instant.

Génial ! Gameplay rapide et direct, jeu fluide et réactif, armes variés avec double mode, système d'améliorations d'arme / perso, level design sympa, metal à l'ancienne, un jeu nerveux très bien réalisé de l’ère des quake, globalement pas très original mais vu que c'est bien réalisé et que le tout est cohérent ça donne un bon jeu. J'ai rien à dire sur les sfx / graphs, c'est good !