Explore the mysterious town of Pang! A quiet man has arrived in time to see the town being seized by a dangerous plague!
Overall rating
5/ 5
5 of 5 found this review helpful
Surprised Once More
PostedApril 18, 2018
Kaliarii
fromDenver, CO
Skill Level:Expert
Favorite Genre(s):Adventure, Arcade & Action, Brain Teaser, Card & Board, Family, Hidden Object, Large File, Mahjong, Marble Popper, Match 3, Puzzle, Strategy, Time Management, Word
Fun Factor
4/ 5
Visual/Sound Quality
5/ 5
Level of Challenge
5/ 5
Storyline
4/ 5
So, having recently returned to BFG after about 9 years' hiatus, I am surprised to see that the way games are reviewed and discussed has changed dramatically. For example, I reviewed this game in 2010 and my review seems to have disappeared. Sigh.
Well.... I love Rainblood. It's certainly ranked among the more violent casual RPG's I've played, but the artwork is stunning, the writing and story intriguing and oh, the battle system!
First, to put kindly, if you are finding yourself doing what feels like an excessive amount of fighting random battles just to level up, you're probably going into whatever fight you're training for with the wrong strategy. This game gives all bad guys different strengths and weaknesses, and it's up to you the player to discern those and fight accordingly. Grinding should not be necessary.
While the story section of this game is moderately short for an adult (Took me about an hour and 15 mins to finish the first time, one hint, no skips), Anka's true value lie in the multiple, customizable mini-games, and the fact that the story is geared to appeal to a wide age range.
I love that the theme is adult enough that I don't get bored, but it's not so dark or graphic that my 8 year old niece can't play and enjoy as well. Because the mini-games get progressively harder until you lose, she can still "win" without getting frustrated, and I can keep going through more levels, without getting bored.
I'd say this is a steal as a Daily Deal, and an entry on the "to try" list, even at full price.
Quest of Fate is the second Alabama Smith game I've played. The first impressed me with the variety of different things the game had me doing, it was definitely designed to appeal to multiple genre lovers. QoF is similar, to a lesser degree. There are way more traditional HOG scenes, and less of a variety of mini-games along the way. The characters didn't really grow as far as I can tell, from the first game to the second - they're still incredibly naive and trusting, something I'd think they'd be more careful about by now. I'd have liked to see some growth, either in how they approach problems, or at least in how they interact with new characters. Finally, the game gets a gold star for replay-ability. Once you've beaten the game the first time around, a second side-story is introduced, and you can replay the game while finding pieces of this side story to complete. Since the main game is a decent length, this really does manage to stretch the $6.99 I paid for it. Overall, QoF had its ups and its downs for me. It's not going on my favorites list, but I don't have any major criticisms either. I'd recommend it for a "dry spell" on new releases, and definitely as a Daily or Weekly Deal. :)
I thoroughly enjoyed Escape from Pompeii. It was moderately challenging, with a great deal of variety, from hidden objects that you actually use within the scene, to finding the difference between two similar scenes, to logic puzzles. The soundtrack didn't get on my nerves - a fairly rare occurrence with most casual games for me.
This game warrants a solid 4, if not 5 stars. So why only 3? Two reasons, actually. One, from what I can tell, this game leaves on a cliffhanger that never really gets explained in the sequel, though this detail I could have lived with. The real issue for me was my saved game. It was non-existent. There wasn't any way to save manually, and upon further "research" through the forum, I discovered my problem: I'm running Windows 7.
It would seem that anything more recent than Windows XP will not hold the saved game. There doesn't seem to be a fix for this, at least not one I could find; hence, the 3 star rating. I got around this by simply minimizing the game whenever I needed a break, and just re-maximizing the window when I was ready to play again, but it would've been nice to be able to actually close out the game.
That being said, I'd highly recommend taking this one for a spin, particularly if you don't mind sitting all the way through a game (this one's a perfect length - you probably won't beat it in an hour or even two, particularly if you are solving puzzles on your own and watching the cutscenes, but it won't take weeks of playing for hours and hours straight either), or if you are running XP or earlier.
I really enjoyed Dragon Keeper. While it was a tad short if you only played to attain "expert" on all the levels, and while the goals were fairly simple to attain, my second time playing I tried to get all the available upgrades for each section (including the "shop" items from defeating raiders), while still getting expert ratings. This wasn't nearly as easy, and really lengthened the game for me, and absolutely made the standard edition price worth it.
The only real criticism I'd have with DK was the fact that often the jewelry I could build would fill with the same piece, and all would either have pieces I didn't have gems for, or they'd be pieces that required gems I was hanging on to for goals. If the developers had allowed for more variety of options, I'd say this game was perfect.