Fun, pulpy AD&D nonsense. It's pretty hard going, the rules are a bit obscure to say the least

3 hour playtime review:

Man, this is good. Fast-paced, engaging combat, challenging encounters, meaningful level progression/upgrade choices, all backed up some truly spectacular artwork, excellent music and superb voice acting.
The difficulty curve is pretty much pitch-perfect, with encounters never being unreasonably busted, but even the least challenging ones demanding attention lest they inflict damage that will be hard to claw back. The resource accumulation/management is intriguing, with a good mix of temporary resources acquired for the duration of the run, and permanent acquisitons used to buff all runs moving forward.

The setting is superb. I grew up on the Greek myths, and the detail, attention and respect the writers have put into their version of this is truly impressive. The art is excellent, the levels evocative and fascinating, and the dialogue is very enjoyable.

My only critiques thus far are very minor: the decision to use the redded-out screen whilst low on health, while very cinematic, only adds an element of additional difficulty to playing with low health that I don't think is conducive to good balance; and that the modes of attack (Special, Cast and Call) aren't explained quite as well as they could be. Overall though, these are minor flaws that don't even warrant knocking it down from 10/10.

I will update later when I have played more hours.

It's a fun, intuitive little puzzler that works your spatial awareness nicely without being too frustrating.

An unfathomably un-fun piece of content. Tip for the devs: if you're going to do a stealth/survival piece, don't invisible wall off routes, that's bad design.

An absolute ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of poor game design.

Mechanically, this game should have been a winner. It's got the mostly-ok Pathfinder RPG rules behind it, it's got a pretty, charming art style and quite a compelling story. As a game, however, it's a prime example of the hubris of developers and why they need a good slap on the head at times.

Half of the encounters you will fight in this game - including some of the plot-critical ones - are dysfunctionally hard, resulting in a multitude of party wipes due to your characters being physically incapable of hitting the enemies they're fighting. Enemy armour class, strength and attack is massively bloated compared to the actual PF rules, whilst player attacks and abilities are not. The result is a series of painfully frustrating encounters where you find yourself logging off, frustrated by the sheer ineptitude of a dev team who decided to make an encounter for a poorly optimised level 3 party which featured a treant with an AC of 26.

In short, don't play it. If you want a DnD game, play Baldur's Gate; if you want a modern CRPG, play Tyranny.

Update: I returned to this game a few years later. The story is charming as ever as I progress through it. Credit to the writers, they know their craft. But the later-game kingdom management, my god. You wind up stuck in Kobiyashu Maru scenarios where it's impossible to win because the devs decided to introduce random degeneration of your kingdom because...it's not clear. You can kill all the marauders, kill the propagandists and kill the monster summoners and yet your kingdom will still disintegrate around you whilst your advisors try to succeed at quests with a fixed time limit.

It's appallingly badly designed, and the dev team desperately needs a slap across the head.

Not a particularly good CRPG, sadly. An excellent aesthetic and setting that's let down by game design so bad it feels like I'm playing the famously poor Baldur's Gate: Throne of Bhaal expansion. Areas with random, empty spaces that have nothing in them to find or locate. Stilted combat. A plot that verges into the grimderp at times. A difficulty setting resulting in multiple restarts just trying to progress the basic storyline on normal difficulty. Arcane, poorly explained combat mechanics.

Lovely voice acting and visuals though.

A thoroughly missed opportunity from Eugen. Rather than take improvements that were incorporated in across the SD and Wargame series, they have succumbed to the siren's lure of making a janky, weird mess of old mistakes. Pretty much every quality of life improvement made throughout either series has been abandoned.

Tanks now roll into fortified towns and kill infantry with relative impunity. Helicopters still move in the jankiest, weirdest way possible.

Tanks can not move through heavy woods, and, again, roll over infantry formations with relative impunity.

Recce units still spot dug-in infantry from well outside of range, allowing tanks to merrily blap them.

The retreat function from the Steel Division series has been removed.

Autoloader-equipped tanks still experience RoF drop from morale effects.

When infantry do fight, battles are decided by whoever brought the most absurdly obsolete weapons (flamethrowers and satchel charges) possible. Additionally, the devs have once again given in to their fairly blatant anglophobia, and deliberately crippled the British divisions on addition.

If you loved the old PS2 game Second Sight, you'll love this. The gameplay mechanics are solid, though the controls for launching objects can be a little janky and a few of the environments need to be better optimised for levitation. The plot is a relatively straightforward conspiracy/paranormal story, told well, with lots of little side-details squirrelled off in reports, audio logs and videos. Aesthetically, the setting feels timeless, with elements of old, modern and paranormal blending together really well. Voice acting is good, with the supporting cast all being well fleshed-out and distinctive without descending into caraciture.

The only real issue is stability. For a game that's been through multiple patch cycles since it's launch in 2019, it's still incredibly unstable, averaging a crash every 45 minutes: usually at the worst moment, when players are immersing themselves in one of the many written reports or plot points that the developers have left scattered around. Guys, not cool.

Generic twitch shooter cosplaying as tactical game. Nice GUI effects, about as much thought needed as COD.

Obsolete on Launch

I've desperately tried to enjoy Deserts of Kharak as a single-player experience, but it's impossible. It's interface and control system is tragically obsolete - no pause orders, insufficient zoom out and insufficient information as to when and where enemy attacks are coming from. Compared even to games like Wargame: European Escalation, which was released four years prior, it's entire UI is just tragically, maddeningly obsolete.

The campaign is fun but too short, held together by the compelling Homeworld storyline, but ye gads I can not imagine the nightmare this would be in multiplayer