Train Valley 2

I've always been a fan of trains, so making many little train networks in Train Valley 2 seemed right up my alley. I thought it would be like many other train games, about making a neat system that allows trains to efficiently run back-and-forth. Something like a simulation or automation kind of game. But oh boy, I was so wrong and disappointed.

Train Valley is instead a sort of action puzzle game, which is a combination of words I still never want to hear. You start with a limited amount of money, and your goal is to lay enough track with that money to get your trains running. There are different stations, each producing something, and most also consuming something, meaning resources need to be delivered there before they can produce anything. You gain extra money for each desired shipment delivered, and then use that to connect more places with trains, or buy more or better trains. You're graded on how fast you can satisfy all requirements, and how much money you have left over (plus some bonus tasks each level).
It sounds reasonable so far, but these train systems are terrible. Each station has a single point of entry, meaning only one train can come or go at a time. Further, with budget limitations as they are, and room being tight, there shall be no tracks which are traversed in only one direction. You are limited on trains and each is individually tracked, but they can freely teleport between stations. This really removed the illusion of any sort of travel being simulated.
Trains have no mind of their own, happily heading towards wrong stations and collisions. In fact, most of the game is not about what I described, but rather about the action part, which is managing these trains en-route. You have to keep an eye on every moving train as they approach each junction, and make sure the rails are going in the correct direction. The challenge is not solving a logistics puzzle, it's not being too slow at sending out trains while keeping an eye on all of them.

Needless to say, I hate it. I can't fault it for not being a simulation game, because that's my own oversight. But it's really bad for a puzzle game. The puzzle aspects are far too easy, and all the difficulty is concentrated in micromanaging trains. You can't even queue up actions, but sometimes have to intensely watch as a train reaches a station or crosses a junction to then send a new train or toggle the junction as soon as possible. I don't believe puzzle and action mix, and I wouldn't recommend this game to anyone.

Disco Elysium

Oh Disco Elysium, where do I begin with you. It won many awards and was even deemed game of the year by some places. I think it was in the top 100 of Steam's games for a while, before the drama between the owners and makers of the game happened. And it's by far the most well known game made by people in my country (well, the core team, at least). This is definitely one of the games I wanted to like before I even got into it, but none of the screenshots and nothing I'd heard about it had really gripped me.

Disco Elysium is a narrative-driven adventure game with quite a lot of player freedom. You could even call it a point-and-click game, with how much walking around, interacting with things, and trying every dialogue or interaction option there is. But there are also RPG elements, with skill points and equipment to enhance various skills, as well as a random element that determines many successes or failures. It is often through these skills that you are forced to take certain paths through the story, as others are locked by your inabilities. This adds quite a bit of replay value to what is already a 30+ hour game.
I'm not good at history, but the game seems to take place in the second half of the 20th century. There's a big focus on politics, and on the lives of people who are not doing so well for one reason or another. It also focuses on you, and trying to regain your memories after drinking far too much one night, all the while trying to solve a murder.

I have only good things to say about how this game is made. The atmosphere is excellent. The voice acting is great. The art is unique. The music is fitting. The writing really manages to portray different characters distinctly, and the voices in your head add a lovely touch of comedy. I can really understand why this game is so highly praised, and indeed, I can think of no other story-based game that does a better job as far as the game elements are concerned. And what I mean by that is that there are many story-based games which have gameplay between story segments, but that generally only detracts from the story. Here, all the gameplay is part of the story, and only serves to enhance it. And it does a stellar job.

Despite all that, I just don't care for the subject matter, and that is very sad for me. Maybe it was too slow? Too many side quests? But I'm not confident in those claims, as this is just my retrospective analysis. I think I ultimately dropped it a bit less than halfway through.
As it goes, I can't give a full recommendation for a game I myself didn't enjoy, but I will give it a partial one. I would recommend it for fans of interactive stories, if the historical and political themes are not a turnoff, and the slower pacing is not an issue.

Tails of Iron

Tails of Iron looks like it would be a bit like a side-scrolling Souls-like. But, really, it's more of a Metroidvania. Or perhaps not even that, and it's just a side-scrolling action RPG.
There is clearly some inspiration taken from these genres, with the game having a weight system, dodge rolling, blocking and parrying, and a slower, more calculated pace of combat. But I would say this is more general action RPG stuff, and it doesn't really have the core Souls-like features. The map is a series of interconnected rooms, but you don't really have that much platforming, or unlock that many new abilities and ways to progress to call it a Metroidvania. In fact, many systems are heavily simplified. There's no stamina, no level up system, fewer stats, differences in equipment are rather minor, and a few other such things.

At first, the game really looks great. The characters and environments fit very well stylistically. The narrator feels good to listen to. (Apparently it's Geralt from The Witcher, but I've never played it.) Combat does not devolve into spamming, but the lack of stamina is actually a welcome surprise. As a tradeoff, your dodge roll no longer makes you invincible, and enemies in general have 3 different types of attacks with different ways to not take damage from them. Yellow attacks can't be dodged through, as they will just hit you if you dodge into them, forcing you to either block or parry them. Red attacks can't be blocked (or parried), forcing you to dodge away from them. And other attacks don't have a color indicator, making them less telegraphed, but they can be both blocked or dodged. This sounded a lot worse to me at first, but it felt really good once I got into it. Infinite stamina meant I was never frustrated by it, and every time I got hit, I really felt like it was my immediate fault that could have been avoided with better reflexes or not spamming my own attacks.

But I feel like the biggest problem came with the bossfights. You see, they got a fourth type of attack, which was just "don't be near the place where I attack". It couldn't be blocked, and it wasn't as simple as just dodging through it. It required you to really know the bossfight, and where it was going to attack, which wasn't indicated. You just had to know. This made the fights really annoying, as the first several deaths no longer felt like your fault.
I would say that was the main reason I dropped the game, but looking back at it, it also just didn't have as much to offer as many similar games. It was pretty linear, there was little sense of progression, much less customization or specialization, and apparently the whole game was only about 8 hours, which is on the shorter side for games like this.

To sum it up, if you're looking for a simpler sort of side-scrolling action RPG, Tails of Iron might not be a bad choice. There are some fresh ideas here, it's rather polished and well-made, and I think that if re-doing bosses several times isn't going to be a problem for you, then the rest of the game is quite nice. There are no deep mechanics or character customization here, but it's a nice short RPG. Personally, I dropped it a bit too fast to feel comfortable recommending it, but it's far from bad.

Raft

I think Raft might be the last "survival craft" focused game I'll play for a while. It's undoubtedly a very popular game genre with a game released almost every year that gets a huge number of players and positive ratings. While I'm okay with games that only have some survival elements, and more focus on other game systems like combat or automation, I still don't get the fun in essentially doing unskilled labor. I suppose this also applies to some other game genres, like many "simulator" games.

Raft is a game where you start on a floating piece of wood, grabbing pieces of wood, plastic, and other scrap materials out of the ocean. You use these materials to expand your floating raft, adding steering possibilities, facilities to filter water and prepare food, crafting benches, and eventually even electronics like a radio, radar, and engines. You go from island to island, initially just gathering resources, but eventually finding remnants of civilization and progressing the game's storyline by completing small puzzles on the islands you find. Repeat this for... a lot of times, until you finish the game.

I do like the spin of having a mobile base that you expand over time. It's an idea that sounds very nice, but as you play, you realize it doesn't really change anything fundamentally. If you care about customization, there's a fair amount of different building options, floor and wall shapes, as well as decoratives to place. Far from the most expressive of survival games I've seen, but it's decent. I failed to find the story interesting in the slightest, but then again, I was never expecting to.

For all I can tell, it's a fine game in the genre. I don't really have any faults to point out with it, other than my personal preferences I've already mentioned. I just really don't care for manual labor simulators that don't require much thought, and so I can't personally recommend it. You probably won't be seeing another review in this genre from me, unless the game has significant additional features that I think I could enjoy.