Shadow Gambit: The Cursed crew is a good game which had the potential to be an excellent game if it wasn’t for Sweet Baby inc. involvement dragging it down into the depths of cultural wars.


Story – Poor
The story is the weakest part of the game. Although the setting has great potential it is not a historical setting like in the two previous games based on historical Japan and Wild West. It’s a fictional setting in the Caribbean where certain people cannot die and become undead instead. Sound cool, isn’t it? Sadly, there are close to zero lore explained why this happened or when. I had hoped that the end of the game will reveal some more information but I was disappointed. Apart from scraps and bit and certain events mentioned during dialogs you are left in the dark about the nature of an otherwise cool setting.

And speaking about dialogs – they are absolutely abysmal sometimes borderline pointless. There are some attempts at humor but they are very sterile because it is very hard to be funny without offending someone.

The only good thing is how they had implemented the QuickSave/QuickLoad feature into the game making in both part of a story and in gameplay.
I can’t go into more details without spoiling but although the story had potential the imposed limitations by the consulting agency manage to ruin it.

Gameplay – Great
The tactical stealth genre is a very “static” genre sort to say. You can’t really invent much with the core mechanics of the game so many games feel very similar to each other. This was the case with the previous MiMiMi games – Shadow Tactics and Desperados 3. To the point that Desperados felt like Shadow Tactics but with guns. Almost the same skillsets but on different characters. Shadow gambit breaks the paradigm. Because it is a “magical” setting MiMiMi have managed to implement a lot of things which and amazingly made them work together regardless on who you chose. Each character is unique and offer unique ways to solve the situations – From instant body hiding to repositioning behind enemies to vison blocking and so on.

Gameplaywise this is the best game in the genre I have played and finding different combination between the 8 (10 with DLC’s) characters is extremely rewarding.


Wokeness – High
I don’t think that there is a single aspect of the story which isn’t affected by the DEI enforced by Sweet Baby inc.
As I have mentioned the story is mired from that but the characters and their design are like a diversity checklist.
Main characters is of course a black female orphan who had survived despite the odds. Second female character is another black woman – only student of a special entity super smart and capable healer. Third character is the mandatory super strong poetess lesbian who can beat any man in terms of strength, Forth is a super wise old disabled (blind) investigator sniper.
And here come the male ones: An outright crazy dude talking to a fish, a treasure seeker obsessed with money and trading with a British accent, a self-absorbed aristocrat expecting everyone to work for him, not capable of doing anything by himself and not realizing how he is hurting his poor servant, a mad scientist obsessed with power who doesn’t care who hurt along the way.


Technical – Excellent.
Good. No crashes, good voice over. Sometimes character move stupidly when you send them somewhere but this is almost mandatory for the genre

Price and DLC’s –
There are two DLC’s each adding a character and a quest chain which aren’t terribly expensive and I’ve had fun with both characters. So I recommend buying them.

Star Wars: Jedi Survivor is a decent successor of the previous game. It feels like more of the same but slightly different.


Story –Average
The story is the weakest part of the game. It didn’t manage get me involved the way the first game managed. Once again you are searching for McGuffin but while in the first game it made some sense to do so in the second it feels absolutely forced. The twist is also very ridiculous makes zero sense and it is another pathetic attempt to insert morality and gray choice which every game nowadays tries and fails to do.
The side dialogues feel sterile and pointless. None of them had managed to engage me to care about this NPC and its story.

Gameplay – Good
The gameplay is the redeeming part of the game. Basically, because it is more of the same. Slightly worse but still good. Somehow the first game felt like a Jedi Combat. You had to use combos vs different enemies, different stances helped vs different bosses and so on. Here you can hack and smash most everyone with the Sigle Saber and although you have 4 other stances, they feel unneeded with few exceptions. The questionable decision to only allow you to change stance at meditation circles also beat their purpose as you have no idea what you will need for the next boss.
The game is also filled with a lot of collectables most of them useless. You probably have over a hundred different paints for the little droids dozens of different saber hits emitters etc etc each with a hundred paint itself.
Hunting those is fun to a point and luckily they have improved the map compared to the first game so finding those after the game is much easier but still it feels like a pointless extension of game.


Wokeness – Average
According to a Curator Sweet Baby inc. was involved in this game and I’m inclined to believe it. Although the wokeness is not pushed like in Dragon age and it is much subtle it is there. Uglifications of female characters. All the badies are males. The useful NPC’s in the settlement are females. The useless or unmoral NPC’s are male. Several dialogues exist just so there should be an interspecies gay couple. Luckily the main story was spared most of those and it was contained to side stories and lore.

Technical – Excellent.
Good. No crashes, Good controller support, excellent sound, almost seamless loadings.

Price and DLC’s – Expensive.
Good game but the price still holds to 70 dollars which is quite expensive for a two years old game. You can probably get it on discount on some star wars sale though. No DLC’s if you don’t count the deluxe edition which is a money grab for some cosmetics.

Good game. Gets grindy at some point but if you play for the lewd part it is spot on

Miasma Chronicle is a decent game with many quirks and could have been polished a bit more but ultimately it was fun to play and offered a somewhat unique take on the turn based tactical RPG’s relying more on stealth and ambush mechanics.


Story – Below Average
The story is perhaps the weakest part of the game. The world itself is interesting and have a lot of potential but the story is like taken from an young adult post apocalypse novel. Wouldn’t surprise me if there is one out there. The dialog is comparable. You can clearly understand what the character wants and what the motivations are but the execution is awful but the whole team it feels like a comic book with some dialog between character and a lot of KABOOM around it. That makes certain character choices very weird and leaving you with the “wtf why would I do that”.
The character itself are likable but unfortunately suffer from the same ailment – the bad writing making them shallow and incomplete.

Gameplay – Good
The gameplay is the fun part of the game. You roam around real time on the map exploring it until you run into a pod of enemies. If they notice you, they all jump and regular turn-based combat starts. You will probably lose if you get straight on on higher difficulties. The game expects you to roam and ambush enemies until you weaken the pod enough to be able to take it.
The game also has a unique take on the skill system – you can basically change skill at any time apart from when in combat. That gives you flexibility for different fights but it is also a bit annoying. The same is also true for weapons.


Wokeness – None.
Absolutely nothing triggered my DEI sense in this game which is something nowadays.

Technical – OK
The game is very unoptimized and cause a lot of stress on the video card. Many moving swirling particles, lightning and so on. Everything is voiced over.

Price and DLC’s – On Sale
Definitely do not buy this at full price. IT is not worth it. Wait for a sale.

I got dragged by the initial hype for this game and bought it despite that kind of games not being my thing.
I hope it will be something different with all the people praising it.
It was not. It's a repetitive grind and the only thing thing about it were the community posts which could only kept it going for so long.

The Sunrider series were the first virtual novels that I tried playing and they set such a high bar for that genre of games for me that I’ve been unable to enjoy other novels because of that. Mostly because the games is not simply a visual novel but have quite of bit of actual strategic combat in it.
The Sunrider 4 is actually the third separate game in the series and continues to deliver the same amazing feel as the previous games with a bit more mature storytelling and much better technical execution. If you like Anime and Tactical RPG’s this is the right game for you. The downside is that you have to have played the previous games which are somehow old at this point but the first 2 instalments are complete free.



Story - Good
Many visual novels have absolutely generic story which serves mostly to somehow let you pick your favorite girl. Sunrider is not one of those. Although you shouldn’t expect an Oscar worthy storytelling the story is very good and much more mature than in previous games. On the downside though you have to have played the previous installments or you will understand nothing. Also, it lacks the twists from the previous games which I enjoyed, as well as the decision points from the previous games (not that those decisions mattered a lot)

Gameplay – Great
The combat has gotten a complete overhaul and from a tactical hexagonal grid have become more fluid. If I have to do a comparation previously the game was similar to a Dungeons and Dragons combat but with hexes while now it is more like Warhammer 40k combat where you have to use proper positioning and unit facing as well as predict movement of units and so on. It may sound more complicated but I found it way easier than before. In the previous games even with save scumming I had troubles with some battles on hard difficulty. Here I breezed through the game with close to zero issues on the hardest possible difficulty.
There is also an RPG element as each of your units can be upgraded increasing its efficiency. They have even tried to include alternative loadouts but in my point of view one of the options were significantly better than the other.

Wokeness – None.
It’s a game where your crew consist of 7 girl’s which uniforms are tight latex space suites. There are even a few boobs thrown around.

Technical - Good
The game is much much better than its previous instalments in that department. It’s a virtual novel we can’t really talk about graphics but the art is drawn in a classic anime style, the music is again a classic anime sound and the game does not crash at all (I’ve had a lot of issues with previous games especially after I upgraded my PC). The menus feel a little clunky but I guess this is because the game now have the option to be played with a controller.

Price and DLC’s – OK
It’s an OK price for what the game offers. There are plenty of games offering much less for much higher price. No DLC’s so far and I don’t think there will be one unless they release some kind of alternative spinoff like in Sunrider : Liberation Day which was purely visual novel focused on lewd things.

Nier:Automata is a great game and if you are fan of JRPG’s you will enjoy it immensely. Unfortunately, those are not my kind of beer which have prevented me from fully enjoying this otherwise awesome game


Story - Great
One of the many features of JRPGS is the amazing main story usually filled with plot twists and secret ending. Nier:Automata is no exception of that rule. The story is great and the more you play the more you learn about the world. Unfortunately, the other feature of JRPGS are the borings side quests quite often without any meaning or real reason or motivation for the characters to do so. And again, Nier is no exception.
I also had to go to Wikipedia to understand parts of the world. Which is both a good and a bad thing. The story was interesting enough to make me do so and not described enough to figure out in game.

Gameplay – Good
The gameplay of Nier switch between typical third person RPG where you will spend most of your time and a side scroll platformer for some parts of the map. It is very neatly done. The RPG system is also great. Unless of learning skills you find different mods which you socket into your android memory basically replacing skills whenever you want. The downside here is the grind – each mod only drops from certain enemies on certain zones. The zones itself aren’t that big but the variety of enemies isn’t that great either and the grind gets a bit boring with time. Luckily you don’t need to overdo it to be able to overcome most enemies.
One other thing worth mentioning here – JRPGS usually have some very very grindy achievements which usually take as much time as completing the game itself. As a completionist this has always been a turn off for me but Nier has included the option for you to buy any achievement you have missed for in game currency if you don’t want to bother grinding. You will probably have enough to buy several of them without grinding too much when you finish.

Wokeness – Non-Existent
The game will make the non-existing “modern audience” scream their lungs out. There is achievement to look 10 times under your character skirt. And an item which allows you to remove said skirt.

Technical - OK
The graphics are not amazing and many of the dialogs especially during side quests are not voiced. The music is fantastic and quite fitting for each zone/fight.

Price and DLC’s – Bad
There is only one DLC which includes 3 arenas to fight under different rules. It adds nothing to the story honestly and the last battles requires you to be very high level in order to attempt them. Grind again. Not really worth to buy separately to be honest. The Game or the YorHA edition though comes with it. The game still keeps quite a high price for a 7 years old game. Even on sales it rarely drops under 20 euros.

If games had a definition for mediocre and average Outer Worlds would have been used as an example. The game manages to do everything right while being complete devout of spirit. It’s a soulless Fallout clone in space. If you like that type of games – perhaps you may enjoy it. I didn’t.

Story - Average
Like the rest of the game the story is as generic as you can imagine. It is set in Halycon – an Earth colony far in the future where corporations rule and profit is everything. The theme is not that bad but the execution is. The “we are fighting the corporate patriarchy” can be felt throughout the whole story. I don’t want to spoil the story but as I said absolutely nothing is worth remembering from it. If you expect it will happen it will happen.
Companions are worth mentioning. Mostly with the fact that you will not remember any of them 3 days after you have stopped playing the game.

Gameplay - Average
Outer Worlds is a first person RPG similar to Fallout 4. You have your main stats which contribute to you secondary skills to which you assign skill points (10 per level). And you have perks. Did I mention it is a Fallout clone? I think I did. Than you go around killing stuff and looting everything which is not nailed down only to realize the inventory menu is awful and it will take you ages to sell and that you will not need almost any of that stuff. There isn’t much variety of enemies, there isnt’t much variety of weapons, there is a huge variety of armors (mostly useless). The game also have it’s own alternative to V.A.T.S where you slow down time and hit critical spots. Again absolutely nothing original.

Wokeness - Very High
The whole theme of the game is “Lets fight the corporate patriarchy” and it shows. About 95% of the “leaders” in the game are females – whether they will be a Faction leader, a warehouse foreman, a security chief or a head doctor. There will also be an underling around whose whole dialog will be to point you towards “The BOSS”. The other 5% of who are males the game strongly encourage you to displace for the “good” endings.
The game also deliberately doesn’t have different hairstyles for males and female models. And for some reason the most common generic long hair is missing as an option.

Technical - Good
No problems here. Games runs smoothly, everything is voiced over. The game is ugly as hell though and many of the colors are deliberately muted. When they have copied Fallout they also copied the awful Bethesda character models and facial animations I guess…

Price and DLC’s – Great Deal
There are two DLC’s for the game which both come with the Spacer’s Choice edition of the game. Both DLC’s are long enough and worth playing. Game was on Humble Bundle and even Free on Epic so it will goes on regular sales from now on if you want to buy it. Definitely not worth full price.

Marvel: Midnight Suns is an amazing game who is one of those strange cases where the whole is much better than the sum of its parts. The game doesn’t offer anything super unique in any department but somehow manages to provide long hours of pure fun.


Story
The story features the first customizable Marvel Hero (quote by Deadpool) and his/her quest to save the Earth from next apocalypse which is going to happen. You are going to meet a lot of known Marvel heroes like the Avengers and X-men and some of the new and not so popular. The story mixes those well and each character is very well represented in the game with its flaws and insecurities as throughout the course of the game you end up getting to know each of them. This is implemented very well into the story and have honestly done more to get me interested in the next generation of Marvel heroes than anything else so far. Alongside the hero stories you get to follow your own of course and unlike many other superhero stories it is not as predictable as you may think but I won’t spoil.


ESG - None
Apart from Captain Marvel narrative how men are afraid of strong women, nothing else in that category.

Gameplay
The gameplay is nothing spectacular but somehow manages to be very enjoyable. You mostly do one of the 3 things – Run around and gather stuff, play friendship simulator with the other heroes and listen to their stories or play a tactical combat with 3 heroes which is honestly more suitable for a mobile game than a console/PC title. And yet somehow it is fun and it will keep you up for hours after hour and you will want to do “one more battle”.
Each hero have a different set of cards and you can upgrade and tailor those in various ways, figure out hero combinations which work good with each other, gain new cards and so on. It is very similar to online games but 2K have managed to find the perfect grinding spot without overdoing it. Maybe that’s part of the charm of the game.


Technical
I have encountered several minor but annoying bugs like non-working costumes, non-obtainable perks or sometimes just annoying way to handle things (which are mostly due to console interface). Like no way to sort your gifts. Or having to redo changes on your headpiece every time you equip a different costume to preview a new color.

Price and DLC’s The game have 4 DLC’s which can be combined in one season pass and from what I know this will be the first and last pass. There is also a legendary edition which includes it. Each DLC gives you a new playable character – Storm, Venom, Deadpool and Mobius. Each of them includes a set of researches which boost some aspect of the game – Deadpool gives you more shoves, Venom – the ability to modify missions, Mobius – a way to boost your character secondary stats like crit and shield and Storm gives you customizable training room (not that useful). The DLC’s also include a set of achievements for the new heroes and also several hours of story (all DLC’s are tied together. I’m almost sure you can’t complete the bonus story without completing all DLC’s first).