• Summary : It's old school fire emblem with a bit of modernity. So it's good if you like that.
• Lore / Story : Generic medieval fantasy bad guys wants to do evil thing and you will stop him.
• Game mechanics : Turn based tactics à la Fire Emblem really. Everybody in your team moves/hits, same thing for the adversary. There is a complex advantage/disadvantage mechanics with like 8 damage types and 4 armor types. No specials tho.
• Character progression : Character level up is random stat gain and each character has different chances for each stats.
  Each character also has 2 class change (at level 10 and 30) and you get different weapon types/armor/movement/perks depending on the class choice.
  Gear progression is a bit dull. You basically have access to 4 type of weapon on each character (crit, power, accuracy, jack of all trades) and you spend token to improve each type independently.
  Team wise, you start with a few character and you end up with like 25. However you can only field 14.
• Difficulty : Played the game in hardest difficulty. It your familiar with this kind of game, it's not that difficult. There were some spikes however as I had to play a few maps 3/4 times. But most were smooth one shots.
  Weirdest part are dodge tanks. Take a bit to get a few character there, then they are untouchable for some chapters, then they can't dodge anymore.
• Length : Took me 35 hours to 100% the game. But of that, a good 10ish hours were for the last achievement.
• Remarks : Additional characters you get along the way are actually good. So you will end up dropping some of the early characters. And there is no way to grind for XP, so a dropped character for a few scenarii is dropped forever.
  UI is a mess in some places. Inventory management (for consumables) is hellish.
  And fuck that one achievement. It requires you to get a character get every stats on level up. So it is entirely RNG. I had to restart the game in easy and put inflated growths to get it...

• Lore / Story : Well you know John Wick? You play him.
• Game mechanics : I would describe it as a sort of real time with pause gunfight.
  • You control only Mr Wick
  • You guide him through a bunch of scenes which overall constitute a level
  • There are no reset of guns/health between scenes
  • You move him on an hexagonal grid
  • Game pauses automatically when you end your current action/when you see a new opponent
  • You can see on the timeline at the top when your action/bad guys actions will be done
  • You have different way of killing bad guys (guns, melee, throwing your gun, more guns)
  • Whenever you kill a bad guy you can take its gun from the ground and keep firing
• Character progression : There is no real progression here. You just unlock more level to play.
• Difficulty : Game is not that hard when you grasp what you ought to do. I started wanting to use a stealth approach. It actually makes the game harder. And you have incentive to actually use a lot of different guns. Games became easier when I just blasted.
• Length : Took me 9 hours to finish.
• Remarks : Two very minor ones
  John is unable to unload a gun and takes its magazine with him. If you kill 5 bad guys that have the same fully loaded gun, you can only end up with one of them and no spare magazine
  Weapons are single target. It's mainly a shame for automatic weapon. When you fire some it will fire 3 to 5 bullets automatically. If there are lined up bad guys, you'll only hit the one you targeted, even if he dies in one bullet, making you waste a lot of time.
• Conclusion : It's a pretty good game if you just want to shoot people in third person.

• Lore / Story : Your sister who study in a magic school has disappeared. Also you have new found magic power (before the game you were powerless). Plot is decent, but not gonna spoil it here. It's also very LGBTQIA+ themed.
• Game mechanics : Classical JRPG style where you move your party on the map and encounter mobs in a "fight screen".
  Fight occurs in a square grid. You starting on one side, the opponent on the other one.
  It's a fairly classical combat system (everybody has one move + one action when it's is turn).
  One difference is that you have QTE for your attack/defenses. But you can turn it off entirely (thank god).
• Character progression : Fairly standard. Characters gets new skill/better stats with levels. You find new items with better stats to equip.
• Difficulty : Once the QTE are removed (if I wanted QTE I'd play a rhythm game :D ) and you've managed to find a good group comp, game is a breeze.
• Length : Took me around 22 hours to fully finish the game. Out of that, around 3 hours where for achievement hunting.
• Remarks : UI/UX of combat is freaking bad. You don't see opponents hp naturally (you have to go in a sub menu when its one of your character turn). Buff/Debuff effect are really hard to follow (no exact number of what they do/for how long they last).
  Gear progression is pretty useless. Just go for more power/speed and you're set.
  Out of all the characters, I found that the 3 I used where just way to powerful compared to the other 3.
• Conclusion : It's a pretty decent JRPG. Not going to revolutionize the genre tho.

• Lore / Story : You're playing as an assassin going for the king of a small realm. You're accompanied by an orphan that you save at the beginning of the game.
• Game mechanics : It's a stealth game. The goal is always to make you + the orphan go from scene to scene. The orphan goes from one hiding spot to another when ordered or when she feels like it.
  You control yourself. You have a grapple that can be used to interact with some stuff. A pretty neat thing is that time only flows when you move. So for example you can stop mid swing to aim your grapple somewhere else.
  If you check the achievements, there are two ways to plays the game. It's either full stealth (no kill and just distract the guards to have the orphan advance). Or stealthy killer where you go out of your way to kill everyone.
• Character progression : There isn't much in term of progression. You find some components that can be used to craft consumables. But I used none of them during all my play-through.
• Length : It's about 7 hours for one play-through, but more of that would start to feel really repetitive.
• Difficulty / Length : The game is fairly easy. I only experienced some difficulty at times because of janky controls/physics, but not really because of the level design.
• Conclusion : It's a neat stealth game. Not going to revolutionize the genre, but if you like them, I'd advise to get it on sale.

• Lore / Story : Very classical medieval fantastic setting. The world was plunged into darkness for plot reasons and is slowly waking up, you have to manage and make survive your village in this period.
  You'll end up doing some quests related to that darkness thing, but it's not the main part of the game.
• Game mechanics : You start off by choosing a god. That has little bearing on the game. Then there are three main aspect to the game-play.
  • Managing your town: You get only one town. It has some citizens. You have to defend it and you can use it to construct building, craft advanced food/equipment, gather the resources around it.
    One big consequence of having only one and not being able to move it is that your starting point is very important for the game. So start scumming can be a thing when playing with some difficulty.
  • Moving expeditions on the map: Be it for quests or to find specific resources, you have a world map in which you can move your expeditions. They consist of a bunch of villager with stuff.
    Important point is that they need food to survive. And if they have more type of food they can do more (hence the importance of crafting food in town).
    There are also a bunch of monster roaming the map (you can see their level above them), monster lairs to explore, ruins to explore and random events to complete.
    All that to find more resources/stuff and to get some xp.
    The monsters act in between your turn (so they can attack you on their own). And there is a day/night cycle that affect the visibility on the map.
  • Challenges: This is a little card game that handles every type of interaction with the outer world, be it fight or other aspects. Depending on the type of challenge you take on, different stats will act as your hp/offense/special capacities/shield. The goal is always to have your card survive and to kill the opponent cards.
    You can skip the challenge and have the AI auto resolve it for you if you think there is no risk.
• Character progression : The main evolution is done by changing the stuff equipped on your villagers. They gain a level every now and then, but it's a stat boost and you have no choice in that matter. You can either craft some stuff or find it during the world map encounters.
  There is also some tech tree, where you unlock the right to gather some resources/craft some type of object/unlock new buildings. The main way to advance in it is to either craft/construct stuff or to do events on the map.
• Difficulty / Length : Using the basic difficulty settings, the game is super easy. If you start using some more advanced difficulty (it's entirely customizable and the score will reflect that) it can start to get tricky at the start. Although it will be easy at the end. In my "difficult play-through", in the mid and late game, I did only one challenge, the final boss. All the rest was auto battled.
  A bit of difficulty can be faced against certain early events, because if you don't know them, you have no idea what difficulty you're going against and you might end up against a challenge that's not doable with your current party.
• Length : A complete game will take about 15hours. The start seems to always be a bit exciting/challenging, but it gets very repetitive by the end.
• Conclusion : I didn't expect much, but it was a really good experience. It lacks some polish here and there (most notably the starting place of your village and the weird save system), but it was very good at giving me that "one more turn" feeling.
  One weird thing was that you can unlock gods by doing a lot of play-through (it's supposed to be a rogue-like), but I don't see the value in doing more than 2 or 3 play-through. Especially when the play-through is 15+ hours.
  I'll see if they managed to improve in the second installment

• Lore / Story : Story wise it's a bit later. Gods / opponents are different
• Game mechanics : The start of the game is a bit different. You have a god to chose that'll give you a special trait + plenty of traits to chose from to complete the slot you have. Most traits are locked though.
  Town management is about the same. Big difference is that you can chose to not have one or you could have multiple and you can plant them wherever.
  Now you can research/craft outside of town. It's better, but it makes the whole camping thing way more tedious to use (every time you camp you gotta put back whatever cooking you want to do and such)
  World map is the same kind of stuff. They added some way to move over water and a faction system, but the difference is minimal.
  Challenges are different. This one has more strategy/depth to it (for me) it's a turn based battle where you can chose matchups/the kind of attack you're going to use and require a bit mor thinking.
  Stat wise it's also a bit easier to understand compared to the 1.
  The auto resolve is also way better. You can launch it, and if the result doesn't suits you, you're free to do it manually.
• Character progression : Equipment evolution is the same kind of stuff. Level up are actually better! Every level alternate between you picking one skill to upgrade (among 2) or 1 stat (among 3)
• Difficulty / Length : I'd say it's about the same experience for difficulty and a little bit longer.
• Conclusion : It's an improvement over the 1 (most notably for the challenges/village placement). But I still feel like it really lacks any sort of replay value despite having plenty of unlocks. (same as the 1, 15+ hours rogue-like is a weird idea).
  Choosing a different god/starting traits is going to make the early game a bit different. But you'll still end up with the same challenges / resources gathering loop

• Lore / Story : It's somewhere in the future. Not sure there is a lot more than that. No story to speak of
• Game mechanics/Character progression : You see slay the spire? Well same thing, but in the future and the combat scene is 3d instead of 2d.There are some differences:
  Only 3 characters (all fairly different play-style wise)
  There is no map. At the end of each combat, you can shop/upgrade. And you chose one of the three next combat.
  Each combat gives you a mission that you can complete in this combat or one of the followings. Each mission gives some reward.
  There are skill to buy with skill points. You get an assortment of skills at the start of the run. They are arranged in a 4+1 by 4+1 table. Getting 4 in a row/column unlocks the possibility to buy the 5th in that line.
• Length : A full run last between 1 and 2 hours.
• Difficulty : I found it easier compared to slay the spire (or maybe I was better at it?).
• Conclusion : It's an alright card battler. Not much more to say about it

• Lore / Story : You're going into a space station to discover why it malfunctioned. The rest is what you see in the game, so not gonna spoil it.
• Difficulty / Length : It's a walking simulator. So really not hard. And this one's also really short (2h30 to complete it with every achievement, needed to stay a bit more for the cards...)
• Conclusion : It's an alright game. The story is decent. But it's really short and the characters being represented by wire-frames really doesn't help with the immersion.

• Lore / Story : A human corporation lands on a new planet and start exploiting it. You're playing the aliens (human eating aliens, mind you), the corporation has all the cliché you can have about evil corporations.
• Game mechanics : Basically, a turn based game, kindda like XCom.
  Every level starts with you controlling the matriarch (and only her). You can kill humans, transform them in biomass and create your own grunts.
  They can be evolved in 3 different kind of aliens (each with different strengths).
• Character progression : After each level, you gain a bit of mutagen. It can be used to improve the different aliens or the matriarch
• Difficulty / Length : It's really short (less than 6h to beat the campaign) and rather easy. There is close to no replay value outside of achievement hunting (because you can't get the one you missed without restarting the campaign anyway)
• Conclusion : It's a nice game if you like the genre, although a bit short. I'd say only get it on sale and if you like the genre.

• Lore / Story : Not much to be said. It's a swat team.
• Game mechanics : On each map you control somewhere between 1 to 8 swat members. The goal may vary a bit, but basically it can always be solved by killing everyone.
  The game is in real time with pause. You can program some order to be executed only after a certain trigger is pressed.
  There is a weird sneak thing going on, when you kill people with a silencer and aren't seen, criminals don't always realize you're here.
• Character progression : Your character gain level over time. And this is mostly useless.
  But completing mission / campaign, give you stars that you can use to unlock new classes and new gear! They have a great impact on the way you can play.
• Difficulty / Length : The mission difficulty vary by a lot. Some are a walk in the park, others are a real pain in the ass (especially the ones with hostages).
  Made all the campaigns + a good third of the stand alone missions in about 20hours. It starts to feel samey after ~15hours and not worthwhile to do all the missions.
• Conclusion : It's an alright game, nothing spectacular. Might be worth grabbing on sale if you like this kind of game.

• Game mechanics : Like Unlock the king from the same dev, it's a puzzle game based upon chess pieces.
• Difficulty / Length : It's a bit harder than unlock the king, because some of the pieces you have to move will "kill" the tiles they leave, so back and forth is not always possible.
  Still, it's going to be relatively easy (some puzzles are tricky tho) if you know how to move knights. Took me about 3 hours to finish it.
• Conclusion : Good puzzle game. Knights are always good to wrack your mind.

So I'm not going to explain to anyone what the witcher is. If you don't know, I guess you've been living under a rock.
The game is good in terms of story. Every secondary quest is the same core (hunt monster, kill monster), but I still didn't find them repetitive because of the different wrappings.
It's a pretty good game. I mean I did sink almost 100 hours in it. But it as some big flaw and I'm going to list them here:

• Over leveling: If you go exploring a bit, you become over leveled way to fast. I did most of the 1st and second zone. And once I reached the 3rd/4th, I had to hurry up along the quests in order to avoid having too many quests that were way below my level. As a result, I almost didn't explore the 4th zone outside of what's needed.
• Leveling: So the leveling system is pretty underwhelming. You end up having to put a bunch of points in skills you don't need to unlock skills that interest you. And the most important part about leveling is that it's needed for some gear, the skill are mostly passives
• Crafting: It's almost useless. You can just craft your witcher gear sets, improve them when you reach the needed level and call it a day.
• (Not so)Fast travel: Crafting stations and stash are often not located really close to a travel point, so you have to fast travel close by, waste 1/2 minutes walking there, 1/2 minutes walking back then fast travel again.
  Oh and also Roach is freaking dumb and sometimes stops in the middle of a road. Also he can't jump.

A quick 3 game series (the bundle had the 1, 2 and 3) puzzle game that uses chess pieces. It gets a bit complicated when you have to start thinking with portals.
A thing that annoyed me a bit, were the part where they added height that just made the puzzle more complicated because it hampered your vision, not because the logic became harder.

• Lore / Story : Classic med fan world. You are the humans against a troll army.
• Game mechanics : As the name would suggest, it's a Tower Defense game. It has all the classical aspect of TD (build tower, upgrade towers, unlock more powerful towers when progressing in the campaign, cast some spells here and there).
  One interesting thing is that it does include all the kind of TD maps. You have some where you put your tower wherever and create your own maze, others with limited place where you can put them. And among those, you even have some where you have to handle attacking and defending at the same time.
  You also level up as time goes on, and you have plenty of choice in term of skill tree. You can focus on towers, spell, economy and anything in between.
• Difficulty / Length : the game is not overly difficult. I made all the missions in the 3rd difficulty mode out of 4. It tends to be a bit grindy toward the end
• Conclusion : As far as TD game goes, it's really good. Just the right level of difficulty and not too overbearing in term of tower type while still offering a lot of viable game-play alternatives (either in term of towers or skill build). Warning for achievment hunters, getting all of them seems to be really a grind (not going to try to get them all personally). Also you need DLC to get them all

• WoTC: The big one. Adds a lot of good content (soldier bonds, chosen, covert ops, 3 new soldier classes, fatigue mechanism...). Makes the early game a bit harder and the late game easier.
• Alien Hunter: Adds 3 new unique enemy that are totally OP. Also adds a lot of OP equipment. I think I'll disable it if I ever replay the campaign. The enemy are not fun to play against. And the OP equipment is too good (while it makes you dispatch resources on it, it's still way better)
• Shen's last gift: Adds the spark unit. Interesting new class that allow for a bit more variety in team comp. Strong, but not overly so.
• WoTC Tactical legacy: Add some content that's mainly outside of the campaign. Operations that are 7 maps, in iron man. Perfect for me because I can't bring myself to do a real campaign in iron man

• Lore / Story : The story is pretty run of the mill medfan story, with a cult intent on destroying the world and a bunch of people (you) brought together at random that will stop them.
  Notable point: one of the characters you play is a dog with magic powers (she can't speak tho).
  There are almost no side quests to speak of (just some basic kill/fetch).
• Game mechanics :
  • Overword So you can either be in the world at large or in an instance. But it's basically the same thing, you run around with one of your characters on the screen.
    Each character has a different ability, some of them being more or less useful.
    Monsters are roaming the world, and you can encounter them or try to run from them. If you start the combat, you have an advantage.
    The game pretends to be an open world, but in reality you're quite railroaded. For example at the start there are two instances. One for the story. And the other for the story, but later. If you go in it early, you'll get trounced.
  • Combat Out of your 6 characters, 4 are in combat. They are split into two pairs, each pair having specific perks/a common special bar.
    It's turn based (à la JRPG), and each character has a speed to get its turns faster. But it's not that relevant, given that most fight last for 3 or 4 round max (except boss battles).
    Most of your abilities have a cost in energy and you get one energy per turn. And also there are specials. Damage type and weakness to them. All in all pretty standard stuff.
    Notable point is that for some reasons AoE skills seem to have an overall damage and it's split among targets. Making it that they're also OP against solo target.
    And some status are close to impossible to counter (only counter is an item that you can craft in the last part of the game, when you don't face said status).
    Because of that, some fight take ages (looking at you phantoms) to finish for no other reason than that one status you can't counter.
  • Crafting This one is a bit of a bore. You can get ingredients by gardening. Each plant has 3 levels, but for some reason the next level of a plant unlocks at random and only if you have a recipe that uses the next tier of ingredient. So it gets kinda tedious when you want to get the achievement and that one plant doesn't mutate.
    And what you craft from them ain't that important. Ammo that are usable by only 2 characters. Potions that you rarely use.
• Character progression : There are 2 main ways of progressing
  • Bonds : Each pair of character has a bond that can go up to 5 star. Each star unlocks a new perks. It's good to vary the pairs in order to unlock interesting perks
  • Talents : Whenever you gain a level (or at some bond progress) you gain a talent point. You can then use them in a talent board to either gain more stats, unlock new capacity or unlock new passives. They're never set in stone, so you can try to change what each character does at your own liking.
  Outside of that, levels are capped to 20. There are small item change, but really not much, it's more side-grade than real upgrade (like each character has at most 3 weapons).
• Difficulty / Length : Took me a bit less than 30 hours to complete so it wasn't that long. The difficulty is alright. Some passage are a bit harder but nothing impossible (if you stay on the path).
  The last two big bosses (story/optional) are kind of hard if you go unprepared. Because they just launch a bunch of AoE at you non stop. Not really interesting skill wise, just "can you handle that amount of damage". And because the level is capped, you can't just grind to get stronger.
• UX : For a game released in 2018, god the UX is quite lacking.
  Abilities are never put into numbers. You have no clue if that one new ability does more damage than the other except by trial and error.
  Monsters stats are never put into numbers either. You can just see in the bestiary (not available in combat) if they have a weakness / resistance to some element, but that's about it.
  Also no way to check what a given status does. Like a monster will inflict you with something, you have to figure out exactly what it does on your own (what abilities it forbids to use, what damage it does...)
  For some reason when you're in an instance, the camera is locked. Good luck guessing where you have to go if its somewhere way out of your field of view (and it happens at least once).
• Conclusion : It's an average game. Nothing really good, nothing really bad (outside of the UX). I'd find it hard to recommend if not on sale.

• Lore / Story : Pretty basic med fan setting with ogres, skellies, barbarians, goblins and the like. Overall story is not that important (empire bad, go kill emperor). But each scenario has decent story telling.
• Game mechanics
  • Scenario preparation: A very interesting aspect of the game is that you have 3 deck to prepare before each scenario. One for potential events that you'll encounter, one for equipment you can get, and the last one for your starting supplies.
    Once you've met a card once, you can easily filter to get the needed info about a card (type of encounter, potential rewards) and create a deck that'll help you have an easier time in the scenario.
  • Scenario action: The cards you've prepared are shuffled with cards specific to the scenario. And all of them are laid face down in a specific pattern among one or multiple floors.
    You have to accomplish the scenario goal (each scenario of the campaign is quite different) while moving through the cards and resolving each card encounter (and not dying).
    There are 4 main resources in the scenario. Life (if you reach 0, you die), Food (1 food is needed to explore a new card, otherwise you lose 5 life), Gold (needed to buy stuff and food and some card effects), Fame (that allows you to equip the more powerful stuff)
  • Card resolution: Each card has a lot of fluff text and often starts with some dialogue where you have to make some choice. It'll be interspersed with either:
    • Gambits: One of 4 mini game. Some luck based, other skill based. You can have stuff that help for each kind of gambit
    • Combats: Combat in 3d in a little arena, with Arkham style combo/parry system.
    • Dungeon: A 3d dungeon with traps to avoid and chests to loot
• Rogue-like progression : The main way you'll be progressing in between scenario is by unlocking new cards. Either because you finished a scenario. Or you met the criteria of one of the encounter during a scenario. More cards means more option for each scenario. So you could go back to a previous scenario to get the "best" result (scenario often have two possible endings). Or come back to a scenario that you skipped because you found it a bit to hard at the time.
• Difficulty / Length : Took me about 30 hours to finish the game. It's sometimes a bit tedious.
  The difficulty is a bit all over the place. Some scenario you'll need a specific kind of deck to get the best outcome. For others you'll just bring a random deck with whatever cards you need to discover/unlock and manage it in gold on the first try.
  Bonus point, you can lower the combat difficulty (if, like me, you don't find that style of combat interesting).
• UX: A small gripe for me was that the camera is locked. For combats/dungeon, it can be a bit of a bore.
  A good point is the card filtering system + scenario presentation. You don't need to go to a wiki to know what you'll want/need for a scenario (looking at you darkest dungeon).
• Conclusion : All in all a real upgrade over the 1 and a really good game. Thanks for the gift!

• Lore / Story : You play inside the mind of iris. A little girl that seems really fearful of a lot of things. You learn a bit more about her during the story.
• Game mechanics : It's a turn based rogue-like. You have a hand of cards, each turn you play one and then the enemies act. Rinse and repeat until the end of each level appears.
  What's pretty neat is that most of your cards have only one use. So you have to manage your life and new cards you add in your deck.
  During the levels you kill opponents (that give you XP to get some skills), you find crystals (giving you new cards every now and then) as well as chests (giving you new card when you open them).
  There are also some bosses that give you a permanent effect for the run.
• Rogue-like progression : There are 3 main ways of progressing:
  • Whenever you finish a run, you gain some stuff that's just for the next run.
  • During a run, you'll find "memories". Each of them gives you one point you can spend on perks that are useful for every run
  • Imaginary friends are unlocked at the end of a run. You then need to meet a certain criteria in a run to unlock them for future runs. You can only bring a limited number of imaginary friends with you.
• UII haven't seen a way to highlight which path you've already followed, so it's a bit frustrating to keep track of that
• Difficulty / Length : That game is really really short (even by rogue-like standards). I neat the game in about 5 or 6 runs. And that took me around 3.5 hours. You can play more than that if you like it, because there are plenty of "hidden" paths.
• Conclusion : It's a really neat game. The mechanism of having cards that are one off is a great variation compared to other game of the genre. Also the visuals are nice. The game is definitely a bit to short for me.

• Lore / Story : Classic sci fi setting. This takes place in the endless universe (like every other endless game) so you find the usual suspects (food, industry, dust, science). Not much of a story in this one (there are some bits here and there, but it's meaningless).
• Game mechanics : It's a classic turn based 4X game. So nothing special for the most part.
  The mechanism that stand out from other 4X is the politics system. With your tech research/actions in game/choice during events, you influence the political parties within your realm. If you have a system that allow for multi party system, every round of election can change the composition of your senate and that can change the different law you can have in effect.
• Difficulty / Length : The game ain't that hard in solo. The AI is quite dumb in regards to victory conditions. The early middle game can be a bit challenging, but once you muster an alliance, it's smooth sailing. From the two games I've done, you have to expect something like 10 to 15 hours a game.
• Conclusion : It's a really good 4X game. Basics are solid, the extra stuff brings some variations. The different species play-style seems different enough

Not going to do a long review here because this is an old game. This is one of the first commando style game (well afaik, the second one after commando).
It holds up pretty well for its age. There are some UI/UX thing that are a bit finicky and it's not as beautiful as say Shadow Tactics, but I still enjoyed it.