Tag: Review

Game Review: Ankora Lost Days (Switch)

writ­ten 6/03/2023

Released on Sep­tem­ber 15, 2022 for Steam and Nin­ten­do Switch, then lat­er on March 30, 2023 for PS4 and Xbox, Anko­ra Lost Days is the 3rd game released by CHIBIG. It stays in the same world as Sum­mer in Mara (2020) and Dei­land: Pock­et Plan­et (2021), fol­low­ing the exploits of Junior Ranger Mûn who man­aged to crash her ship on Anko­ra, the home world of the Anks. Sim­i­lar to its pre­de­ces­sors, Anko­ra Lost Days is an adven­ture game with craft­ing, lev­el­ing, cook­ing, and fight­ing ele­ments along with ter­raform­ing. Mûn works to not only find the miss­ing pieces of her ship to send a dis­tress sig­nal to her Inter­stel­lar Patrol com­rades, but to help the Anks save their world.

Rat­ing: 3 out of 5

Price: Paid $7.49 out of MSRP $14.99

Rec­om­mend­ed: Eh…yes if you’re a series fan. No, oth­er­wise

One Word Descrip­tion: Repet­i­tive

  • Pros: Part of the Mara world, Mûn is a recur­ring char­ac­ter, gar­den­ing, craft­ing, no item lim­its on bag, decent game graph­ics, many quests, caters to com­ple­tion­ists
  • Cons: Fetch quests, ran­dom drops, dif­fi­cult to find the one item nec­es­sary for every room, slow, fish­ing, annoy­ing music, hunger, sta­mi­na, and drink bars, mind-numb­ing

Game Review

The game starts with Mûn, hav­ing crash land­ed, explor­ing the world, which is grid-based both in each room and on the map. She makes her way over to the tuto­r­i­al sec­tion where a nice Ank mer­chant directs her through craft­ing some basic tools. After that, the sto­ry­line starts, and Mûn is tasked with some tasks before Koda, the Chief Ank dies. Then it’s Harvir who is her main taskmas­ter. Each room has ter­raform­ing or build­ing obsta­cles that must be over­come in order to access new rooms. Fight­ing through ene­mies, open­ing up new rooms, restor­ing Ank “vil­lages,” and ful­fill­ing every­one’s quests unlock new recipes for food, items, tools, and weapons. Find­ing and restor­ing quick jump pedestals as well as fish­ing boats all help to tra­verse the map. Now, there is NO option­al quest in this game. Every quest needs to be done in order to unlock craftable recipes. If you get stuck, it’s like­ly you need to ful­fill some­one’s task to move for­ward. The end of the game cul­mi­nates in a big 2‑boss fight that was laugh­ably easy. 100% com­ple­tion!

For a com­ple­tion­ist, this game is great. You pret­ty much can’t beat it with­out get­ting 100%! There’s no need to go back and get or do any­thing more.

Game Goods

Flow: The begin­ning is crazy frus­trat­ing with­out the nec­es­sary items and tools to tra­verse the map. How­ev­er, it flows well, and soon, mon­ey is easy to come by and every­thing can just be bought. By the mid-end of the game, bridges are a wor­ry of the past and it’s smooth sail­ing from there. Each room holds onto the revi­sions you’ve estab­lished nice­ly. Increased stats real­ly help.

Text: If you’re one to pay atten­tion, there’s a lot of read. Each Ank has its own sto­ry, prob­lems, and per­son­al­i­ty. Sad­ly, I found myself not car­ing in the least about the text even though some­one clear­ly spent a lot of time flesh­ing it out, and just but­ton mashed my way through them to get on with the game.

Addict­ing: Inex­plic­a­bly addict­ing. I spent most of the game cussing at it, but I kept want­i­ng to play. Why? I don’t know! I would have giv­en it a 2 out of 5, but I bumped it to 3 because for what­ev­er rea­son, I just could­n’t get it out of my mind when I was­n’t play­ing it!

Game Gripes

Ran­dom: Ugh. Again with the ran­dom­ness being a prob­lem with these games! Every herb, every drop, every mon­ster spawn is ran­dom! Will you get that flax you so des­per­ate­ly need for the damn bridges that are required in basi­cal­ly every room? Maybe, maybe not!

Frus­trat­ing: Oh man. Frus­trat­ing is the key word for much of this game. From not being able to find that one sin­gle item that’s need­ed for rope build­ing, to end­less back and forth fetch quests, to those 2 GODDAMN rooms (most­ly that one stu­pid room) that look tra­vers­a­ble only to find that you actu­al­ly can’t go through them, but you for­get every sin­gle time you look at the map, to Mûn’s insane­ly slow walk­ing speed, to her ini­tial­ly, crim­i­nal­ly low sta­mi­na bar…this game is just a bar­rel of laughs. No. It’s full of tears. TEARS. Halfway through the game, I almost quit sev­er­al times, and kept mut­ter­ing curse words under my breath as I con­tin­ued to play because I’m a com­ple­tion­ist, dammit.

Lost: Yep. True to its name­sake and plot, you’re just lost most of the time. Every room looks the same, every Ank looks the same.

Bug­gy: I fell off a few ledges when run­ning on the sides. Thank­ful­ly the game resets after a while.

Bad Menu/Interface: Switch­ing among tools was clunky even though it should have been straight for­ward. Some­times it would switch twice instead of once with one but­ton push. The menu cur­sor was very lag­gy. Giv­en how much map reliance there is in the game, there is no ded­i­cat­ed map but­ton. Instead, you have to open the menu and tab then over to the map, which would work and some­times would­n’t. Mûn should also have been giv­en a per­pet­u­al run­ning fea­ture or at least a tog­gle.

Art: It’s like sev­er­al dif­fer­ent peo­ple cre­at­ed art for this game. The Start menu art is great! Mûn is like she is por­trayed in the oth­er games. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the ani­mat­ed scene Mûn, the game­play Mûn, the sta­tus gauge Mûn, and the text char­ac­ter art Mûn are com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent from each oth­er. I, myself, par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­liked the por­tray­al you see most often: the text char­ac­ter art. The exces­sive emo­tions were hon­est­ly off-putting. Both that and the sta­tus gauge face make her look like a lit­tle girl and not the young woman she’s sup­posed to be. I found myself skip­ping through all the text so I would­n’t have to look at her ugly mug. Why cre­ate a char­ac­ter and then change it 2 games in?

Repetitive/Boring: When it comes down to it, the biggest bar­ri­er for this game is the game at its core: fetch quests. That’s all there is to it. The entire game is about fetch quests. I’m all for side quests, but dang, all the back­track­ing and try­ing to remem­ber the best paths…To be fair, I should have known bet­ter because all 3 games by CHIBIG so far have been fetch quest games. The sto­ry is super flim­sy. You only hear of the main bad­die towards the end, and he does­n’t real­ly seem all that bad giv­en the oth­er Anks just sit on their butts and tell Mûn what to do.

In Conclusion

I can­not, in good con­science, rec­om­mend this game to the aver­age gamer. It’s way too repet­i­tive, and the main plot is as thin as cheap toi­let paper. The only peo­ple I’d rec­om­mend it to are those who have played the oth­er 2 games and are ensconced in the lore. With that said, the pecu­liar addic­tive­ness of the game influ­enced me to fin­ish it all the way despite sev­er­al attempts to just quit. There’s just some­thing about it… You know what I find inter­est­ing is that Sum­mer in Mara came out first in 2020, and yet, of the three games, it is the most sol­id and most fun one of them all. It runs the smoothest and is much more intrigu­ing. I was appalled to see that Anko­ra Lost Days came out in 2022. I would have bet mon­ey on it going Dei­land then Anko­ra then Sum­mer in Mara. I hope that CHIBIG’s next games (their web­site shows 3 new games com­ing out this year) are bet­ter because these last two have been rather dis­ap­point­ing in my opin­ion.

Game Review: Banished (Steam/PC)

7/10/2022

Ban­ished is a city-build­ing game released Feb­ru­ary 18, 2014 by Shin­ing Rock Soft­ware for PC. You direct a group of exiled peo­ples as they strive to sur­vive by gath­er­ing resources, build­ing dwellings, farms, and oth­er struc­tures.

Rat­ing: 3 out of 5

Price: Paid $6.79 out of MSRP $19.99

Rec­om­mend­ed: No

One Word Descrip­tion: Stag­nant

  • Pros: Good bones, good tuto­ri­als, intu­itive, ini­tial­ly fun, many mods to sig­nif­i­cant­ly help
  • Cons: Frus­trat­ing build­ing sys­tem, dif­fi­cul­ty, slow game speed, sound effects

Game Review

Before I start, I need to admit that it was not clear to me until I start­ed writ­ing this that the game was released back in 2014.

OKAY, so, after about an hour of game­play, I found myself need­ing to com­plete all of the tuto­ri­als. That did the trick and the game flowed smoothly…at least for the next hour or two. For the record, I played on the eas­i­est mode. My first city was going swim­ming­ly until I real­ized I was miss­ing some very impor­tant build­ings and then every­one died, and I was left with no work­ers, doom­ing me. I then tried a sec­ond game/city which I restart­ed a few times to get a more favor­able map. For that playthrough I was para­noid and would save con­stant­ly in case cat­a­stro­phe struck. I did have to load the save once. There is a flow you have to fig­ure out time­wise to avoid wide­spread death. First, estab­lish­ing sev­er­al (real­ly, all of them) food sources is nec­es­sary, then make sure you don’t clear-cut too much because the work­ers just do what­ev­er, noth­ing in a par­tic­u­lar order as far as I could tell. Then, a trad­ing post is nec­es­sary for emer­gency low-food times (which is often), and then quick­ly estab­lish­ing a black­smith before every­one’s tools are bro­ken and things go even more slow­ly. And then as the resources start to dwin­dle, you have to quick­ly build a quar­ry and a mine. How­ev­er, the return on that isn’t too much and not only that but the death rate is high and mys­te­ri­ous if it was­n’t from star­va­tion. Even­tu­al­ly, things go smooth­ly, though, and some­times nomads will appear at the Town Cen­ter (if you’re able to afford build­ing one) that you can allow to join the set­tle­ment or not. They pro­vide much need­ed labor until they ran­dom­ly dis­ap­pear or demand hous­ing even though there are already hous­es.

Just like any city-build­ing/­sur­vival game, you need the basics: shel­ter and food. Ban­ished suc­cess­ful­ly illus­trates the sig­nif­i­cance of these two ele­ments to sur­vival. Every­thing else is just a side thought until those are tak­en care of. Graph­ics are fine, not the best or the worst. The music starts out good until it–and espe­cial­ly the sound effects, damn cows–grate upon the ears. In fact, that about sums up the game in a nut­shell: Enjoy­able ini­tial­ly before becom­ing aggra­vat­ing.

My gripes are many.

  • Build­ing any­thing is supreme­ly frus­trat­ing. Build­ings are best built one by one because it is unnec­es­sary to have all of the resources before set­ting the build­ing plots. This in and of itself is not the prob­lem. The major issue is that there’s no way to pri­or­i­tize any par­tic­u­lar build­ing. For exam­ple, if you set the plots for 2 hous­es and a farm and in total you’d need 40 wood amongst the 3 build­ings, the builders will allo­cate the wood slow­ly amongst the 3. They will still build the first house you set first, but not until the resources are spread apart. Apart from remov­ing the plots, you can’t tell them to go build that farm first. And then, when they are final­ly build­ing the house, it takes sooooo loooong for them to fin­ish because they have to go get food or rest or get more items? Even though they already have the items there?
  • That brings me to anoth­er gripe: it’s con­fus­ing how the vil­lagers oper­ate. Say that Jack­ie is the black­smith and there’s an option to fol­low a par­tic­u­lar vil­lager around the map. Well, then lat­er, Jack­ie is a min­er and Lem­my is the black­smith. Why? As I men­tioned pri­or, the builder will ran­dom­ly trav­el around the map instead of final­ly build­ing that bridge that’s been in the works for the past 3 years.
  • Hous­ing is a prob­lem, too. Each house as sev­er­al slots in them for inhab­i­tants. So, say that each house has 8 slots and there are 8 hous­es for a total of 64 open­ings. Even if there are 55 peo­ple, sev­er­al peo­ple will com­plain of no hous­ing despite there being 9 avail­able slots.
  • Mys­te­ri­ous dying. If there is a “low food” alert that’s been going on for too long, or “too cold” com­plaints, then peo­ple will die. You are alert­ed to their deaths. How­ev­er, some­times, peo­ple will dis­ap­pear, but you get no noti­fi­ca­tions except that a farm plot has no work­er all of the sud­den. Do they leave? Do they die? UFO body snatch­ers?
  • Unex­plained ele­ments. I guess the mys­te­ri­ous dying goes under this head­ing, too, but there are oth­ers like a pas­ture will get an infec­tion. The game tells you absolute­ly noth­ing about how to fix it. The work­er there will just dis­ap­pear and then appear and then dis­ap­pear. It nev­er explains how to get more vil­lagers. They have chil­dren, but it is not a con­trol­lable ele­ment. I can’t encour­age or dis­cour­age growth. When there’s an excess of sup­plies, there seem to be no chil­dren born, but when there’s hard times, there seems to be way too many babies who end up dying.
  • Mines and Quar­ries vs. Gath­er­ing resources with labor­ers. Both the quar­ries (stone) and mines (coal and iron) are both expen­sive to build but seem to not be worth the effort. The pro­duc­tion from either one is by far slow­er than gath­er­ing in the wild with labor­ers and seem to yield much less, too. Per­haps they are last ditch efforts after exhaust­ing the map.

Max play­time before quit­ting and unin­stall: 5 hours.

Over­all, it feels like a frac­tion of a game. The bones are sol­id, and the core mechan­ics are good. How­ev­er, by the time all build­ings are built, it just…stag­nates. There’s noth­ing left aside from watch­ing the vil­lagers scur­ry about com­plain­ing of bro­ken tools, the tem­per­a­ture, and hunger. I found myself wish­ing I could build a mil­i­tary or have some ene­my come so that I could fight them. It need­ed an upgrade ele­ment to keep it going. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it does­n’t have that. The replay val­ue is extreme­ly low. I under­stand that it is now an 8‑year-old game, but games like Age of Empires have been around for 25 years and offer much more! There­fore, I can­not rec­om­mend this game. I’m glad I bought it on sale because it is def­i­nite­ly not worth $20 MSRP to me. The ini­tial allure quick­ly fades into frus­tra­tion and soon into dis­sat­is­fac­tion.