izigame.me

NOTE: The dialog is awful and the story is just as bad to include heavy use of AI for character portrait animation and voice work. I will remove this when the developer ditches these add-ons. I almost did not buy it because of it, but I enjoyed the core game play. Still conflicted about this and wouldn't be surprised if they turned away customers because of it. I'd rather no voice work and still portraits than any AI inclusion. AI sucks.
Additionally, the game requires you to opt-out of data analytics versus asking to opt-in. Data collection should be off by default. The game can request to collect data, that's fine, but do not make it the default. This was not fixed as of January 21, 2025. This was confirmed fixed as of January 25, 2025.
This review will stay Not Recommended, as a product you can buy, until this addressed. Otherwise, read on.
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I enjoyed both the Demo and Prologue for this game, so I figured I would try being a day one buyer for once.
I had a good time with this game. It's waves of hordes of enemies, a pretty flexible tower placement system, heroes with light upgrades, and plenty of mission types mixed with what appears to be procedural maps.
And it gets plenty hard. Starting off the bat, you could select unwinnable missions unless you figure some micro-heavy strategy I have not. As you progress through obtaining (many) types of resources, you will power up your units into standout pieces all their own.
Lots of good splits, splats, and squish noises, to boot. The only thing I wish there was more of was dynamic lighting for the explosions, gunfire, and other special effects. It has that early '00s flatness to it, but otherwise looks great. You're likely to mute the music and listen to a podcast while playing before too long, though.
It looks nice, no stutters with tons of enemies on screen, and loads of features to tweak, to include fully remappable keys, UI scaling, ability to turn off bloom or camera shake, and many others. It's pretty good about that for an indie title. I specifically played the longest missions with multiple ways to generate my own units along with scores of the enemies on screen, and the game never missed a beat. For what it's worth, the stability of the game with so much going on, plus no crashes, means its a solidly built piece of programming.
Seems like there is a ton of stuff to do. The dev claims you can get 10+ hours out of the main content IIRC, but there are 100s of additional maps to include hard mode for them. I think if this clicks for you, you'll enjoy it.
The game is missing a "survive as long as you can" mode so far. I am kind of bummed there isn't something like that. There is a sort-of solution to this as there are certain map types with survive 5/10/15 minutes in length, which only end when you choose for them to end, after meeting the time requirement, or your base is destroyed. I played a 3.5 hours long mission (shorter, in reality, from speeding up the game).
The skill tree and base mechanics are the weakest. There's too many currencies to balance out, the amount you get is tedious, even with "Hard" level rewards. And its just not engaging nor strategic. It's just a grind for grind's sake. This is the weakest element of the game, more so when the upgrades are all "more" upgrades (more damage, more health, more towers) instead of doing unique things. There are better upgrades you can get while playing from the drops you accrue, but those are psuedo-random to drop.
The developer did add the ability to ban and reroll in-game drops, which aids a bit, but I never found I lost due to anything not going my way except for the earliest of time with the game when learning.
Lastly, some of the achievements are either broken or are just insane levels of grind. With 30 hours of gameplay, I'm about 25% complete with the 1,000 mission achievement. If I ground out the easiest levels at a brisk 2 minute pace, I'd have to play around another 27 hours to get that last achievement. There are a few other achievements that are just time sinks, like one where you kill X amount of monsters that only spawn on the last level (at least for me), and another where you have to kill 100 of one type of monster, but they spawn once per level. And the don't spawn on every map. So if you want to get 100% achievements, either grind away or give up. There's no real "achieving" anything, IMO.
As a game, overall, I recommend it. At my time of last update, it was "Mostly Positive" and that's how I feel about the title. It does a bit too much, wants too much of the players time, and uses AI. I do, however, look forward to a sequel that hopefully fixes some of these issues and adds more to a solid foundation. |
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Edit1: Added more background as I play further. Added statement about forced data collection.
Edit2: The developer has issued the first patch fixing several bugs, adding some light visual additions, and importantly, set data analytics to opt-in versus opt-out. Thank you.
Edit3: Data Analytics still defaults to On and will reset itself to On everytime you start the game.
Edit4: Data Analytics is now fixed. The developer is, so far, very active with the community and providing meaningful updates within the small amount of time since the game released.
Edit5: Final thoughts added.