Recent reviews by Witty King Penguin

A fantastically atmospheric game that effectively merges city building with roguelike mechanics. Good progression and stays fun for a long time. Worth a play if you like both genres.

Monster Sanctuary is a charming and joyful monster collection and battling game that hits the right mixture of fresh and nostalgic. Since launch the devs have put out several updates that have added nothing but improvements. I thoroughly recommend if you are looking for a monster collection game or a tactical turn-based RPG.

One thing you should be aware of: combat in this game is highly tactical and requires sound build and strategy, and a thorough understanding and utilization of tactics, to beat even on normal difficulty. I greatly enjoyed this aspect, but it seems to be a major stumbling block for many players who would prefer a more casual game. A post-launch update added an easier difficulty, although since I never personally struggled with the game, I am unsure how helpful it is to players who did. Whatever difficulty you play at, it is extremely important that you do not skip room battles or constantly switch out your teams, as this will eventually create insurmountable level scaling. The flip side of this is that if you fight every battle the first time you encounter it, and rarely swap out monsters, you will never have to grind to complete a standard playthrough.

However, if you put in the time to really learn the mechanics and create good builds and teams, this is an extremely rewarding game with wonderful balance. You can't simply throw together a team of your 6 favorite monsters and win - but you can pick one favorite monster and always be able to build a successful team around it. There are no weak or gimmick monsters here, and many monsters have two or more builds or playstyles they can perform. The depth of mechanics - as well as the hard mode and new game plus - add substantial replayability even if you never touch multiplayer battling.

I should also add that the music in this game is simply delightful. Often in RPGs like this, with a single battle theme for mundane encounters, I get tired of the music midway through and start listening to my own. This is the first game in a long time where I left the volume on for an entire playthrough.

If I have one criticism of Monster Sanctuary, it's that the plot is nothing to write home about. It is pretty much exactly what you would expect from a game like this. Serviceable, but not amazing, and none of the characters were particularly memorable either. The lorebook entries for the monsters are much more interesting, and I recommend giving them a read-through. If you want an extremely deep, story-driven game, you will be better off looking elsewhere.

The final thing to say about this game is the development team is one of the best out there. They are highly involved with the community, responsive to feedback, had a great early access and plenty of post-launch updates, and are planning an expansion to be released for free. If any developer deserves your money, it's moi rai, and the current sale is an absolute steal.

Of all the isometric crpg revival games that have been released in the past few years, Tyranny is by far the most compelling. It actually delivers on a promise so many other rpgs have failed at, by letting you play a genuinely evil character. Not just a character who gets branded as evil because they chose the dialogue option that said (evil) next to it, or goes out of their way to kill more than their allotment of nonhostile npcs; but a character that can make deliberately cruel, self-serving, or compassionless choices. Evil in Tyranny is as complex and nuanced as it is in the real world; there are no clear-cut heroes or villains. Just people who are only out for themselves, or cling to an evil ideology, or are simply trying to survive in a world that doesn't tolerate good to exist.

This game has some well-merited complaints. The difficulty curve is...odd, peaking at the end of Act I and then getting progressively easier as you approach endgame, though this can arguably be justified by the plot. There is some imbalance with certain abilities and party companions, which are non-issues on lower difficulties but force you to adopt specific strategies and party compositions on higher ones. The ending is abrupt and feels somewhat unsatisfying, as if it was intended to be left open for a sequel hook that we might not ever get. The individual story paths you can take through the game - there are four distinct ones, based on your Act I decisions - are on the shorter side compared to the main story of most rpgs and deliberately lock you out of certain areas and content. This is off-putting to players who prefer to do everything in a single, long playthrough, and if you can't stand the idea of replaying to experience the full game, this is not the game for you. However, I consider this to be one of the game's strengths.

But the good far outweighs the bad. The way backstory is handled in this game is excellent, presenting you with thought-provoking questions and scenarios beginning with character creation and immediately making you feel like your character is a part of the world by continuing to acknowledge these choices throughout the game. More rpgs should take notes from this. Each of the four paths through the game still presents you with a variety of choices, small and major, that affect how you progress through the game. The magic system is a perfect marriage of in-game lore and actual mechanics, and allows you to customize your every spell. Party members and non-party NPCs alike are compelling and have a decent amount of dialogue options to explore. Every zone in the game has a distinct look and lore. The music is excellent, haunting, and suits the game perfectly, never getting in the way of the story and always building atmosphere.

It's a shame that this game hasn't received nearly the level of renown or acknowledgement that Pillars of Eternity did, because I consider it to be the superior game in many respects. This is the rpg to play if you want to be faced with difficult moral quandaries, explore the psyche of fascinatingly twisted characters, and feel that all of your choices have weight.

Well, I finally got around to playing one of the most acclaimed and infuential games of all time.

It still holds up really well and was a thoroughly enjoyable experience. I probably killed myself on ladders and grenades alone more than melon died during all of penumbra.

However, I am removing 2 stars from my review because that one guy never bought me a beer.

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Great casual puzzle game. Simple, sleek, easy to pick up yet challenging in the later levels. Daily puzzle content keeps me playing forever.

And yes, I did in fact quit TF2 for this.