Realms of Ancient War

5.5/10

Realms of Ancient War is a pure hack & slash action RPG. It is functional but does not offer the same level of engagement as other popular titles (Diablo, Torchlight, Path of Exile, Titan Quest ...).

Skill upgrades are pretty straightforward. For example for the wizzard there is only one spamable  spell, you start with 1 point in it and can upgrade it 3 times, so 10 minutes in at level 4 you are set: 90 % of the damage you will do for the rest of the game will come from that spell. The other skills all have cooldowns.

On PC, There is only 4 keys for skills: 1,2, left-click and right-click. You can swap to a second hotbar with tab. The limitation in the number of hotkeys was probably imposed to facilitate publishing this game to consoles.

Gear upgrades straightforward but irrelevant until the last chapters of the game. For the most parts, they would provide a few percents (1 % to 5 %) difference from the character's base stats. The best gear upgrades were available at a merchants seen one time in the campaign and then remained unchallenged by drops until the end of the game.

The main character has the ability to take control of some enemies, this is advertised as one of the main feature of the game in trailers, but for some reason for me it only worked once after many tries. It required my character to be pretty close to the monster in question which was unlikely to happen often with my wizard anyways.

Overall I would not recommend this game unless you feel like hacking/slashing through thousands of monsters without having to think about gear / skills or other character customization that other games in the genre provide.

As a side note I would add the game immediately made me think of Silverfall. I think Silverfall offers a bit more complexity and a more involved story, but I felt that the games were similar when started playing ... Maybe my opinion was set from the beginning since I knew both games were published by Focus Home Interactive. I looked on mobby games and could not find any more links between the two games: Both games were made in France by now dead developers but otherwise I could not find anything linking the two games together.

Medal of Honor (2010)

4.5/10

The first thing I noticed was that my character was slow, I double checked the controls, but that was it. The fastest way to move around is to slide, by sprinting and pressing the crouch button. With some semi-automatic guns and shotguns I noticed the game would not allow me to shoot as fast as I want. Its the same toggle button to crouch, prone or get up, so sometimes I would go from crouching to standing up by accident. The controls are not horrific, but the object of the game is running around and shooting people so the controls for that should be spot on.

At some point in the game (on PC), you have to press and hold the key "4" to launch a missile to complete an objective. I had to look online.

The game bugged on one of the checkpoints at the end of the game, my character would die in an infinite loop.

Now a few war FPS games do that: infinite spawns of bad guys until you advance to the objective. This encourages the player to ignore enemy fire, advance (in a suicidal manner) and then kill the enemy. And I think that's stupid. There only a few of those in the game but then a again, the whole campaign is super short ...

The story is not amazing. The whole campaign is linear, the only freedom you have is shoot even if your team told you to wait (at least its not game over if you do manage to kill all the enemies anyways. The whole thing lasts between 4 and 5 hours. It could have been faster if the protagonists knew how to run and without the infinite spawns.

World of Goo

7.5/10

One of the best physics / puzzle game I've played. Usually you have to build some kind of goo contraption which allows you to reach an objective.

Borderlands

7/10

This apocalyptic first person shooter with RPG elements showers you with randomly generated and often over top guns. The story and the world are engaging, there's coop multiplayer, bosses and lots of fun to be had.

I tried the sequel also but found it was not as good.

Doom (2016)

8.5/10

Doom is back! How will you react when demons start spawning non stop around you? Where will you run? How will you explode them?

The single player campaign features, suit and gun upgrades as well some kind of perk system.

Also:

• Boss fights
• Amazing graphics and polished environments
• A story which does not get in the way.
• Lots of demons
• Many secrets

There's a demo here:  http://doom.com/en-us/demo

My only complains are that multiplayer DLCs are sold separately and that the game often encourages using melee attacks which I think slows down the run and gun gameplay.

I felt quite satisfied after the single player campaign and did not try the multiplayer part of the game yet. I would say the single player campaign is worth it on its own.

Final Fantasy 6

7.5/10

A classic JRPG. I did borrow the original on the SNES a long time ago but could no finish the game before I had to return it. Forward many years later and I'm bored, browsing the Apple store for something that's not crap and I stumble on some classic final fantasy titles. I was not disappointed.

There is not much to say. Its a good classic JRPG.

Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions

8/10

This game is a turned based strategy game and tactical RPG. Its pretty good. I played a little bit on the playstation a longtime ago and it has definitely been on my TODO list for a long time.

I bought IOS version and was mostly not disappointed. I remember there is a few issues with the port but otherwise the game was very very good. The worst was some glitches in the UI and save system. Notably sometimes I would lose my progress if I would switch to an other application. So I would save every time before switching applications.

People might complain that Square's old games are expensive on IOS but some of them are worth it I think.

To me it feels these ported AAA titles of their own time were made with more care and love than many of the newer little games that plague the app store. They are truly work of art that come with their own spirit, their own worlds. They took themselves seriously back in the day and it still shows, even through the port to newer systems.