Savior Gaming

When I first saw this game by Thunderful Group and The Station,it had my interest. A trailer or two later and it definitely had my attention. Then came the fateful day I got an email saying they would be happy to supply me with a review code, and that made me very happy and grateful. It also made my girlfriend very unhappy.

See Steamworld Build seems like a simple and straightforward game. You pull up on a wagon with your little robo people and a mysterious ball talking on the back of the wagon, get a short bit comprehensive tutorial and find all the pieces to a rocket to launch yourselves into space.

And honestly, the game is technically that simple. On the surface you will build basic buildings, a warehouse, farms, charcoal kilns etc. These will keep your robo people happy and functional. It is also quite in depth with how it is done, but not so in depth that it drags. Simply build a wood cutter near trees and they will chop them down and move them to the warehouse. From there they will go to a kiln or logger etc and they will become charcoal or planks.

From there you move onto the underground section. This is where all the mining takes place where you can find different materials and even locate the rocket parts.

Down in the mines you will create different places for different robots to live, whether they be minors, guards or other things you need. There are multiple levels or biomes down here and each time you find 2 rocket parts you can move down to the next level. Each level gradually gets harder and it never feels unfair. Even the enemies on each level grow stronger,with the first level not even seeming to have any just to ease you into the experience.

Each new material underground will help you build new things and robots above ground,these will help you get further down into the mines. The whole thing is very well done and interconnected in a way that is a master class in how it should be done.

My only real complaint is that as you get new robots above ground is that you don’t build new ones, you upgrade old ones. Workers become engineers, engineers become aristocrats and those become scientists. Each new class has new requirements of things they want to live near and have access to. This made me feel like I was constantly rebuilding and rearranging my town. This wasn’t game breaking or killing my fun at all, it was just kind of annoying when I really wanted to be in the mines.

Now I haven’t really touched in the sound or graphics, and that’s because nobody expects a game like this to break new ground in these departments. The game looks good and the sound is great. I never got sick of hearing the train come in and each level of the mine had its own sights and sounds to enjoy.

The controls however will make it break this type of game traditionally on consoles,but in recent years companies have been nailing them. Steamworld Build is no exception,the controls won’t please mouse and keyboard purist, but nothing on console will. They felt great to me however,and if that’s a concern of yours this felt like one of the best to ever do it.

This game is just fantastic,9/10. I spent hours ignoring my family just to play it. Ok maybe that’s a bit of a stretch, but it wasn’t because I didn’t want to, they simply wouldn’t let me. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Whisper Games was kind enough to toss me a review copy of this one, and damn am I glad they did. It has gotten great reviews over on Steam and many other places, but I had never really heard of this action RPG with gameplay that reminded me a lot of Act Raiser.

It’s side scrolling with pretty simple button commands. Move left or right, a button to jump another to swing your sword or dodge it block and use magic is as simple as hold this button and tap a direction a few times.

These easy controls make the game far from easy easy,in fact I ended up turning the difficulty down from hard to normal. Still I don’t recommend simply running around trying to stab things with no strategy.

Another fun addition to the game is creating weapons and items from the enemies you kill. This will let you create a variety of things instead of buying them exclusively from shops. Unfortunately on the flip side, you need both money and materials to get new weapons and such from shops and that always bothers me.

All of that aside though the story is where this game really shines. It starts off with you waking up with no real memory in a cabin with a talking bird. Eventually you will leave to search for people, it will take 8 years before you finally find people. This will set off a chain of events that will send you through time itself to discover more about yourself and the other characters.

I won’t say more than that because the story is stellar, but these graphics are spectacular and the sound serves its purpose well. While it isn’t perfect by any means the setting is helped when in caves or a forest.

My biggest complaint,if you can truly call it that, was I don’t feel the level up system was explained very well. Sure you go from level one to two etc, but you also collect bonus items to increase different stats but how you get them and why just felt tacked on. It’s simple enough to figure out but some sort of deeper explanation would have been nice.

The game however is a must play for fans of the genre, 8/10 easily. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Crymachina is an action RPG from NIS America that they were kind enough to send me, so a huge shout out to them for that one.

The story is where this game really shines so I don’t want to ruin that on you. Suffice it to say I absolutely enjoyed my time playing it BECAUSE of the story. The character conversation between the ladies and the different personalities was always interesting and the different twist and turns was enough to keep me coming back for more in the around 20 hours of gameplay.

Thankfully the story is great because the combat, while smooth and easy to get into does get repetitive quite quickly. The gameplay loop itself leaves much to be desired. You will take on missions,many of which are simply on a very linear path leading to some sort of boss battle. Then you simply see some story and rinse and repeat.

Thankfully the story is worth the trip. The game is also beautiful and has the sound and music to really set the tone.

This unfortunately is one of those games you are going to want to pick up on sale. It’s a decent 6/10 and worth a play through for RPG fans, but I can’t recommend it at full price.

Disgaea 7 is the newest in the series and once again I was able to get a review copy from NIS America,so a huge shout out to them for hooking me up.

I won’t waste too much time explaining the gameplay for this one, if you are reading this you are probably familiar with the Disgaea series. The general things haven’t changed. You will dispatch your units from the usual starting point, and on a grid map turn based series of moves you will do things like toss Prinnys that explode, take out or move geo blocks to buff or debuff units and of course over the course of time hopefully deal insane amounts of damage.

The story this time around was quite fun, you start out as a rich business person obsessed with what is essentially Japanese Shogun culture a world was known for. That however has fallen to pieces much to the dismay of Pirilika. She hires a warrior named Fuji who is in massive debt to help recover sacred weapons and revive this world’s culture.

These sacred weapons allow a new form of attack for some characters called “hell mode” which allows for special skills to decimate enemies with. Think of them sort of like Limit Breaks for the final fantasy series.

There is also a new thing called Jumbofication, which essentially makes your unit (or an enemy unit) huge. This makes some battles a bit harder or easier,but really just feels like a gimmick. It’s a fun one tho, but still a gimmick.

They have changed a few things from the 6th instalment, for example maps feel better mostly, and I enjoy the cut scenes. That being said I rather hate the new way the auto battle system works. It can still be done,but now you need to beat a battle first,and have a special item to do it. The auto battle however made some of the grind feel less grindy and let me enjoy the rest of the game more. Others however will love the new system as many didn’t like the last one.

All and all tho, the reason you are here is to know if this is worth buying and the answer is yes. The game is an 8/10 and for fans of the series or just the genre in general, it’s worth picking up. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

The legend of Nayuta is another NIS america RPG they were kind enough to toss me,and was originally released on the PSP.

The story itself is pretty much the greatest hits from days of RPG past,and is the definition of basic. You have your main character with dead parents, your best friend and also rival. And a mysterious girl with no memory who also happens to be your love interest. The game doesn’t break any new ground here,even when it was released on the PSP.

The gameplay itself is what we all came here to find out about anyway since stories are completely subjective. The game is a nice mix of platformer and RPG, with the RPG portion being just typical leveling and getting bigger and better weapons. You will do the typical hack and slash with some magic and dodging. Again no new ground is broken but it is fun.

Graphically,the game is solid. It’s a nice update from those PSP says and it runs smooth. I wasn’t a fan of the smaller maps and the mission format of kill X amount of enemies or the platforms that sometimes felt unnecessary, but others will enjoy them just fine.

At the end of the day tho,the game is good. Not great,but it’s worth playing. Many will be disappointed to discover it doesn’t seem to be connected to the rest of the series but there is some fan service in there anyway. It is a solid 7/10,and fans will want to pick it up. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

As always I like to start these off with a big thank you to NIS America for tossing me a copy of this one. It’s always great to be working with them. Now onto the show.

Mobius is a turn based RPG with an interesting battle mechanic to me. It’s turn based as normal, but there are multiple rings you can be on at any given time. These rings get smaller as you move towards the center and they determine turn order.

Everyone starts on the outermost and biggest ring, as you battle there are various things you and the enemy can do to move further in or push each other out of these rings and make your turn come faster.

This makes the battles a bit more tactical than normal because many times the difference between winning and losing is simply using your abilities in just the right way to get more turns than a stronger opponent.

The story itself isn’t bad either and involves a young man who lost is father discovering he may have a sister, or at least someone that claims to be. She shows up with a Raven bracelet asking for help to find their father that he knows to be dead long ago.

From here the usual set of adventures will come and go as you gather party members, go on quest and even get a mentor that loves drinking probably a little more than he should.

The games graphics are what you would expect, solid but far from outstanding,but anime fans will be happy. There aren’t any English voices unfortunately but there are busty anime women so that will make many anime fans happy. Most of the men can’t seem to keep clothes on at some point either.

The game itself was fun and turn based fans and NIS America fans will enjoy it,but I don’t think it will be changing the minds of other people either. It is a solid 7/10 tho. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.