Crashlands 27/30 Achievements (90%)

2017 Backlog Kill #2

Ever since I saw gameplay footage of Crashlands, I wanted to play it. But it was one of those games that looked good enough to entice me, but not good enough to immediately buy. It was on sale this time during the Humble Winter sale, and I had that 10% Humble Bundle Monthly subscription discount so I thought, hey why the hell not. And wow, was this a time sink for me (in college). And I'm glad to say that this game was worthwhile, super fun, and I highly recommend it. For those of you who hate micromanagement in (A)RPGs and whatnot, Crashlands pretty much removes inventory management for you. I can be quite impatient and if I have to travel a lot in a game - I don't care that much if the exploration and surroundings are actually interesting, but more often than not, top-down RPGs can be repetitive. In Crashlands, you discover these things called Telepads while exploring the region so you can teleport back to the telepads via the map when you want. Also, this is weird for me to say, but I feel like Crashlands has the right amount of grind. Throughout much of the story, as long as you collect materials as you go and do a little bit of farming, you'll be good to go - only near the very end of the game (and I do mean the very end) does it feel like a grind to get some materials. With a relatively recent update, the developers even made it so you could upgrade your gear to a higher rarity-level through the use of crystals (before, you had to rely on crafting RNG). Moreover, the side quests and main quests are interconnected exceptionally well. In Crashlands you can't breeze through the main storyline without doing any side quests; more often than not, side quests provide important recipes you need for your main quests. Give or take 1-2 hours idle, it took be around 34 hours to finish the main storyline and side quests (with the exception of 2 side quests) at a laid-back pace. It took around 40 hours total to complete the reasonably-attainable achievements and the rest of the side quests.

Overall, the game was really enticing. The other definitely had a sense of humor that appealed to me (see screenshots below) and it got rid of a lot of features that made RPGs tedious to play for me. The combat might have been one of the few downers for me. I'm just not a fan of the whole click-to-attack and move-to-avoid concept, just not my cup of tea. This is a unique game in that if you own this game across multiple devices, it allows for cloud saving via a BScotch account - it works pretty seamlessly. One of my few complaints was that the display settings when played on mac is glitchy; it's not hard to fix, just toggle it a few times and click the green expand window on Mac to play in fullscreen again - but it's just extremely annoying when you have to do it every time. I played on the game on normal mode, and it felt great to complete it - I probably won't be going back and replaying the game in Challenge or Insane modes for the last few achievements, but if there are any major updates or if I just feel nostalgic...who knows ¯\_(ツ)_/¯