Going solo in the first run is a bad idea

It's actualy not.


I failed to do levelup (ye, me and my worries. That stupid thief kicked the bucket), so checked the wiki for it, and seen on the screen, if you advance solo, you get stronger recruits.
So at least you should try to advance solo as long as possible.


Also, maybe did not mention, but I play on the offered settings, what is EASY. That should work for a while.



My worry is, monsters do now respawn maybe, so the loot, and everything might be limited. What a bugger.

Playing solo at easy and using recruits makes zero sense, doing so you just lose all the quest and dialogues of the companions for nothing

recruits = companions, non?


Also, I play blindly. I have no idea what I miss on.
Either way, I can always go back and pick everyone up if I have to.

Anger Force: Reloaded
 

It's a top-down bullet-hell shot'em-up.
It lacks story, and stuff, and I'm not sure about some details (how to do individual upgrades instead of general, how the characters remain different with all the buffs), but it's fine, you can spend 5 minutes casualy playing letting out some steam.


So if you don't need story, just some traditional arcade shoot-em-up, I can suggest this.
If you got used to having a story, and things having meaning, then though you should give it a pass.


But for me, I like these games, and this is a decent one, and it came with a discunt even, so I like it. Won't go super deep with it, but it's good to have something to be able to fall back when you just want to do something but have no idea what actualy.

Grim Fandango
 

Ok, so the Remaster demands an unsubstantiated hardware, and there are a couple of visual glitches, and the character runs instead of screen-teleports.

My main issue is though, I have zero idea what to do.
I know my main goal is to get some prime client, that's fine.
I also know I'd somehow start fire at the festivel. I have no means though.
I should probably hack the pipe delivery, but can't get through its door, or other way reach the handle, which camera spot was just a lucky pixel-hunt for me.

I dunno why I have a deck of cards, why I have access to infinite baloon-animals (or how to blow an unused baloon), what to do with the sacrifical bread (I suspect it could be used to attract the birds on the boss' level, but no means how or why - also no idea what these mean in the real world, so no clue from there either), probably should find a way to climb to the roof of the working building but no idea how.

The game also has obvious stolen elements from Day of the Tentacle, and Discworld Noir.


I don't see the appeal, and I don't think the game is good. I think Lucastarts payed heavy money, and lent on its existing remaining fame to spread this rumor for better longterm sales.

Game is very good as for me.

And initially it had "tractor" controls, where you must go with left/right for turn and forward for movement. I think, you still can enable this in settings.

Just as many games with the same scheme, since Alone in the Dark and Resident Evil, hero usually "spot" the things, turning the head to them, if they are close enough. Very helpful with pixel hunting.

I think, standard double click worked for exits there... But maybe it must be enabled in the settings? (Or I simply forgot, and it's really only running).

Bread is for the roof. But I forgot what other items do, unfortunately. Did you try windows?

Dark Quest 1&2
 

Ye, these are practicaly mobile-games. With that out of the way, let's look at them!


The 2nd is by the look a prequel, and got a handful of upgrades from the first, which was so simple, it lacked replay-value because of that. But it was also pretty nice, and handy, without bugs (after a while).


The second looks like a dumbed down version of Darkest Dungeon, who knows what Sanity does in this one, and as I couldn't figure out DD, I stick with DQ.
Unfortunately it has some features which doesn't work as intended, like:
- you can any time quit the dungeon, and re-play it without consequences, hoarding resources. how it SHOULD work is, the resources should not respawn.
- you should be able to re-play after conpletion any dungeons - with incrised difficulty. This doesn't work for the 1st dungeon.
- you should enter the new dungeon (even if it's the same - you know what I mean) with the HP you got out of the last one, unless you pay in the Tavern. Instead, you start fully healed every time.
- you can softlock yourself if you either loose in the first dungeon, or if you loose all your party in Hardcore. A proper Game Over screen would have been welcomed.
- the ingame texts are "not perfect" so to say.



That's pretty much all the problems of the game, aside that, they are pretty good combo if you ask me, especialyfor retro-gamers, for 50% discount (around 5$).
And I live in a poor country, where 30-60$ full price games are unimaginable aside the select few.


On GoG I made a handy guide, finished with DQ1, expanding on DQ2. I always get frustrated if I have to choose my party blindly.

I WANT MANUALS!

Iratus: Lord of the Dead
 

I've noticed this game'll just get it's Diablo 2's expansion, meaning the True Ending is Behind Paywall.
At least it won't change the whole game to something unrecognisable for the fans of the original (like for Diablo 2 the "1.07 patch", or the patch for Fallout: Tactics etc. - this doesn't mean theye were bad patches, just that they were game-altering patches).


Now this game would be in need of a demo, so you don't have to pay full price in a crowded market. Because superficialy yes, there's the Evil Necromancer gimmick, but what are its distinguishing factors compared to other party-building, minion-managing games?


--


Well, as far as I can see, this is waaay better than Darkes Dungeon, the most famous in the genre today.


For DD I had a lot of management-problems, like everytrhing cost too much, the resources vary too much, minions can be made unfit to battle further by too many factors, units change place too frequently while they defiitely created taking a certain place (thus gets annihilated too easily), abilities are too stiuational - in general I've found the game too confusing and way too slow for my taste (or anyone sane in particular).


Iratus on the other hand handles this whole thing pretty well if you ask me.
Your team's most determining factor is not confusing place-swapping, buffing bullshit, but primaly wether you wanna do physical damage, or cause insanity (insanity kills people too, although less reliable to a minor degree, but it definitely a working solution).
I'm not sure though if insanity is the way to go, or not. At a random bubble it was implied, physical damage makes you harvest less body-parts, but this might not be true. (Yes, we'd need a manual.)


Aside that, yes, there are buildings to make, abilities to learn, and all the usual stuff.


My only question is though, what happens, if you loose a couple of times, or even once?
YOUR team can only suffer physical harm, so that's a good thing. The problem is obviously healing. You'll obviously carry around a primary, and a temporary team, and while one gets healed, the other continues.
But what happens if you loose a unit, or even a whole party? What if both parties get seriously injured?


DD had the solution to keep your ability and town progress, and just hire a new crew, and start at an earlier phase. Yes, it hurt, but you didn't loose the whole game because of the loss.
Here in Iratus you can't go back grinding. So I have no real idea what happens then.
If you have the answer, please fill me up. I'll ask around on other platforms too.

Book of Demons
 

This is an excelent re-imagining of Diablo 1, and the production company has nothing to do with Blizzard the Greedy.

So, it's a clickfest by nature, though more casual, as the protagonist can only move around on fixed pathes - which Works well with the enemy difficulty.
So if you want a Diablo-clone (at least the first one, though this has good walk/run speed instead of the crawling of the original), I'df say, try it.

But here comes my problem.
In theory, this game is part of a 7 game series, which run under the umbrella-program (meaning you choose your actualy game from the main menu).
The pre-payed, bargain-price option is unfortunately restricted to Steam.
My question is: why? Other services don't deserve the same treatment? Other sites' customers don't deserve the same price, fair, chance, equal treatment? Why should I pay, considering inflation, 500$ for something others pay 140$?
Why is Steam so racist of a site?
Even worse, the description of the offer of the company does NOT say, the offer is Steam-exclusive, but "platforms, Steam is present on", eg. PC. So that's like a legal issue even.

So the thing ends up as a mixed bag :sick: And not for the fault of the game.