petermichaelk
2024
Ultimately just way too repetitive - it hooked me initially with a great style and interesting squad building & balancing mechanics, but the combat and overworld cycles are locked in rhythms that are just way too predictable to engage with regularly. A higher level of difficulty and more RNG in combat would have made the whole thing more interesting - the game wants you to solve the problems of each encounter by finding the correct configuration of units to counter the enemy squad, and ultimately this just becomes too simple and rote to be compelling.
2024
The most dangerous type of game: quick to pick up and start a round, very addicting once you get going, enough challenges inside it to keep you coming back.
2023
The combat is engaging and difficult enough, but the setting becomes pretty dull and repetitive after some time. A grimy space horror is a fantastic idea for a videogame, but as a genre it works better on film because there's no backtracking and room checking cycles - the faceless monotony of the setting can remain menacing on film, where it becomes boring while exploring it in a game.
Had an almost identical experience to my first time with these games in high school: an insanely good time, extremely replayable, then I just stopped wanting to play it on a dime. Can't hold that against them tho cus its just wild how much fun they produced out of such a simple system. Real masterpiece stuff here. Only knock is that I wish there were even more maps/scenarios in vs CPU mode.
Mario owns