Recent reviews by Azure Falcon

Gets to be the ship princess for a round
Lands on sandy planet
Group bringing back all the loot
Sees giant red dot on the map approaching
Dies laughing as we all get swallowed whole one by one

Honestly, really fun.
Jump in with some friends, see how long you last, die, jump in again.
Easy loop with rewarding gameplay once you've figured things out.

Played the tutorial and really thought I would enjoy the game, I didn't see a problem with any of the mechanics as I have played R6 and CS:GO.
Cut to matchmaking. Instead of set gear or an economy system, the defenders are stuck with a small rack of weapons and gear, and once someone takes an item it is no longer selectable for the remaining rounds on defense. This is extremely tedious considering there is only one or two of each main weapon (SMG, Rifle, Shotgun). Switch to the attacking team and you realize they have an obscene amount of weapons and gear to fool around with, allowing everyone to grab all the same gear if they wanted and not have the detriment of gear being taken away be a problem.
I get wanting to have things imbalanced for lore reasons (swat vs rag tag thugs) but FPS games need to be balanced in these aspects for competitive gameplay. Me and the four people I played with all returned this game.

This is one of those games that we have fallen in love with not necessarily for the gameplay, but the interactions it creates amongst friends.
If that’s not what you’re looking for, this game probably isn’t for you. If you’re looking for a more complete/polished experience then I would recommend waiting on the game to be further into early access/complete.

Got no friends to play tabletop games IRL with? 20$ and BAM you got some friends online.
Got some cheap friends who don't want to buy the game themselves? 60$ and BAM now you're all playing card and board games online.
Want to support the publishers who made the board games you've been enjoying for "free"? BAM there's DLC.

If you're having a bad time with tabletop sim you're probably playing with the wrong people.
If you don't like board games and you bought the game and didn't like it....well...what the hell are you doing?

Review

I bought Kenshi back around it's release on steam. Back then I was just getting out of high school and had all the time in the world to put into this game, and I remember having a whole lot of fun playing it. I just recently tried to get back into it and couldn't find that joy I once had with the game, mainly because I don't have a lot of time for video games.

The thing that makes this game enjoyable is having the time to play it and deal with the endless grind. Though time was the only issue for me, I also believe that if you:

• Have a limited amount of time to play games/want to spend your time playing multiple games
  
• Don't enjoy games with a lot of grinding
  
• Don't enjoy games without clear objectives
  
• Don't enjoy games that are overly aggrevating

You will not enjoy this game and I would not suggest investing your time or money in it.

Pros/Cons

+ Vast open world with varrying biomes.
+ Free to play how you want. Build an army, build a town, become wandering raiders, whatever!
+ There are settings to disable certain mechanics of the game, like bandits robbing you after KO, if you get annoyed enough.

+- Very difficult game. You have different starting scenarios which are ranked in difficulty, but the underly harshness of the world is a constant.
+- You are allowed to play how you want and determine your own goals. This means there are no quests or clear objectives. There are bandits and NPCs that bring up certain world lore if you want to follow that, but this is not your standard RPG. You will not have a quest line you need to follow

- Some of these scenarios allow you to start with multiple characters. These are ranked easy. However, if you create a roving band of different races prepare to be attacked without warning. (The Holy Nation is annoying)
- Lots of time needs to be sunk into the game to get your characters stats comparable to even the weakest bandits.
- Certain stats cannot be raised without fighting NPCs, however NPCs are always in groups and always kick you to the curb.
- Though the world is vast, some objects and areas aren't very insteresting and repetetive.
- Character creation and models need work. When starting with multiple characters I felt like everyone really ended up looking them same.

I had gotten to the point in the game where I just couldn't stop playing, too much time put into the game... but upon finishing the game I can say one thing. The ending...is kind of a let down. In fact, the whole story is kind of a let down. Without trying to spoil anything, one of the characters your character is "close to" dies and then you find out a big secret about the man in black.

1)Here's my problem...the main problem. The game gives us NO reason to feel upset about our friend dying. There is barely any dialouge in this game, and I get that it's a tycoon game, but seriously? If one of the main driving points for the whole second part of the plot is your friend dying, I SHOULD FEEL SOMETHING FOR HIM! Not just like, "Oh, yeah, he's dead..."

For the finale there is really no way to not do spoilers...but seriously time travel? Out of all the nonsensical ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ you chose time travel? I get it, this game is meant to be kind of funny, but when we have ABSOLUTLEY NO BUILD UP and NO CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT how am I supposed to react to this? Oh that's cute, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ time travel, well I guess that's one way to end the damn story. And then on top of that they pull some Luke, I am your father ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. For those who don't believe me or didn't understand the ending themselves I watched the end dialouge three freakin' times (Because it moved too fast the first time for me to catch it and actually believe what I was reading.)

...I hope you're all intised to look at the spoilered information.

2)Gameplay wise once you beat the tourney and become pro the game goes downhill and just feels like a grind. This is because everything is handed to you. Food, daily income, a private gym...I guess it kind of reflects reality accuratley about once a person comes into money but gameplay wise it is an absolute bore.

...the one thing I liked about the ending was the nod to the stupid 80/90's? mortal kombat movie.

1a) Enjoy fight club glory and get revenge on your fathers murder! I like how quests are introduced in this game, it isn't straight forward and forces you to explore and there's a hint of randomness to it.

1b) Because of the story and randomness of events, it helps the tycoon parts not feel repetitive

1c) TMNT reference. There's turtle shells in the masters dojo (Too bad his name ain't Splinter) BUT! Did anyone notice that the PIZZA delivery man is named Casey? CASEY JOOOONNNNESSSS...or does no one like him? And the alligators but that's a give away.

2) Difficulty curve......due to things I would consider CONS...but once you get over it there's a tiny treasure chest filled with blood, sweat, tears, maybe money if you've truly mastered it, and accomplishment at the end of the rainbow.

3) Getting your ass pummeled in the first round? Don't worry! Change up your fighting style and show 'em who's boss!

4) Multiple ways to tackle your schedule: Either earn cash and work at the gym or earn cash aaaaaaaaaaannnnn-----

1a) ....honestly, screw trying to earn cash until later: So you earn enough cash to build a gym or buy food or do anything OTHER than train and you get robbed. Sure, hold it off until later, but you need food to get through the day.

1b) Think you can escape the robbers on bus? WRONG!!! Apparently bus takes a wrong turn or it's a set-up because all of a sudden your fighting robbers and in the bottom right of the map

2a) Happiness though...seriously. In my first play around this meter sucks. There are a few things you can spend money on to increase happiness at the start, but otherwise you have to sit on your ass in front of the TV the entire day (Seriously, this bar goes up way too slow, you think I could find something to watch that would make the damn guy happy. Put some damn porn in your VHS player or something you sad ♥♥♥♥)

2b) BTW earning cash at any of the jobs sucks too for the same reason. Welcome to the biggest waste of your hunger, energy, and good ol' happiness meter!

3) Meat is the only food to go with at the start of the game (Fills half your hunger meter). Everything else is a waste of money, especially gym food, don't do it unless you really need to finish up in the gym...

4) The beginning fights take way too long. It takes maybe 10 seconds for you to realise who's going to win the round (I've only had a handful of upsets). The multiple rounds are nice, but there's no KOing...even if you're both just staring at each others damn faces waiting for enough lighting bolts to ping off your head for the next attack...and even if you have seventy energy still left. Once you get over the NPCs strength curve the fights tend to go by pretty quickly.

5a) The skill tree was cool at first, but then it boils down to stacking skills > unique skills.

5b) It's a kinda joke nostalgic tycoon fight club game. If you're going to throw in a TMNT reference why not any throwbacks to classic fighting game moves just to be silly? Some sort of mid game (For balance reasons?) special dojo or something.

5c) Stats, which will be sadly ranted about in a second, are another thing that hold you back from truly exploring the skill tree fully too (BUT THAT'S WHAT THE THREE SAVE FILES ARE FOR!!! DUHHHHHH!!!) because you can't unlock certain skills without a certain level in the stat, which you can level up later once your main is leveled higher. Shouldn't be too har-- BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE!!!

6a) I saved everyone's biggest grievance for last! At the end of EVERY DAY you lose points in all stats.
~From a developer needing to balance the game standpoint I see how this makes sense. Players could quickly and easilly get their stats to the max and just buzz through the fights
~From a player standpoint I can see that this is annoying and needs to be worked with
~From a runners standpoint it makes no ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sense! When you train, your body doesn't ♥♥♥♥ out on you the day after. I'm never like, "I'm going to run 8 miles today!" and then tomorrow comes around and all, "♥♥♥♥ HOW DO LEGS MOVE".
I get it, if you could train all your stats and they'd stay you'd be AWP but this doesn't happen in real life, people do that damn crossfit crap. Personally, I knew people on Track/XC who could run a 1:58 800m and kickass in a 3k AND bench near 300 lbs.

6b) So, maybe there could have been a different way of balancing stats. Multiple days passing with not training a stat enough points based on your level, doing nothing for 2 or more days straight, just eating ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ PIZZA! (The character even says that it'd be bad for him!) Or, maybe just have put stat caps on equipment. Or, make it so after a certain amount of days pass you fail a certain quest...


I didn't know where I stood on this game honestly at first. I was really excited for it and was waiting for this to come out. This wasn't just some "ooooo, what's this game?" purchase. Because of that, I sat here overjoyed playing it for a good hour...and then it just kinda sunk in and that faded. What it honestly boils down to is that even though there's all this stuff to react with in the world, everyone's forced down the same set of paths at the beginning...the easiest being deal with the gym and try not to get robbed and MAYBE buy one or two things of equipment for your garage.

To say this game HAD potential is too harsh, but to say its FANTASTIC isn't really sitting well with me either...
If I had to rate this game, I'd give it a Piston Honda out a' Mr. Sandman...........
.......................like a C-