Category: Bird view / Isometric

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Path of Exile 2 early access review-in-progress – coming for Diablo 4’s lunch in style

As much as Path of Exile 1 was lauded for its seemingly bottomless character customisation and its ability to keep voracious action role-playing game players fed, mentally, for months on end, there was no denying it could be a pain to get into. Playing it could feel like giving someone made entirely of elbows a hug. You’d get used to it in time – you’d even come to find the feeling comforting – but there’s no question the series could use an update. Path of Exile 1 is over a decade old; it’s time for something new.

That something – Path of Exile 2 – is finally here, at least in early access, and understandably there’s tremendous excitement for it. A decade of success has turned its predecessor from being a nobody to a title contender. But where there’s increased excitement, there’s also increased expectations, and the sequel will be measured by a different yardstick – a Diablo 4 yardstick, perhaps. Say what you will about Diablo’s merits, but its production values and new player onboarding are second to none. Will Path of Exile 2 compete?

Spoiler, yes, but a quick caveat: this is an early access release so Path of Exile 2 isn’t finished, and Grinding Gear Games has said it will take at least six more months of development to finish it, if not more (these things usually end up taking longer than expected). Nevertheless, this is far from a sketchy early access release. The experience I’ve had, albeit on quiet, press-intended pre-release servers – which have now been wiped as Grinding Gear prepares for the public early access stampede – has been rock solid. There were a couple of inexplicable quits-to-desktop, but they were tiny hiccups in what has otherwise been a smooth and sturdy experience (though we’ll have to wait and see how the public servers fare over the weekend to see if this sentiment holds true).

The early access release trailer for Path of Exile 2. There’s an understated beauty to it. Watch on YouTube

Those elbows of Path of Exile 1 are broadly gone – or they’re so soft now it’s more like hugging a lumpy duvet than an elbowy… goblin. The game plays much more like you’d expect a modern game to: you move with WASD keys and mouse-around to aim, and there’s full controller support, though it’s still not seamless switching between the two – you still need to quit out to the main menu to alternate. Similarly, the game’s more unusual systems remain, such as the way abilities belong to equipment rather than the character. But they’re much better organised now so it’s clearer how they work and what you’ve got to do. The onboarding is smoother, too, and while I’m sure there’s another onboarding pass to do before the game’s full release, it’s already welcoming enough should you be intrigued to give it a go (we have some Path of Exile 2 tips to help you if you do).

It helps that the game looks very smart now, of course – you can really feel the additional money and time and people Grinding Gear Games has had available while making the sequel. Environments and characters are rich with detail, and the animation is superb. It’s in little touches that you feel it, like freezing someone and seeing spokes of ice form behind them – as if underlining the momentum of the blast, a bit like seeing a wave frozen in extreme weather. Or it’s in moments of well-observed movement, such as when my monk dashes forwards, palm outstretched, to steal living essence from floundering foes – smack! There’s heft behind each blow, crunch and connection, and I love that as a player – the moment to moment feel of Path of Exile 2 is great. Luxurious. Expensive.

Look, it’s hard to take screenshots and play the game, OK? | Image credit: Eurogamer / Grinding Gear Games

It’s this framework that provides the ideal platform for the game’s best stuff – the series’ best stuff – to come through. Path of Exile is known for challenging players – it’s not unlike the Souls series in that regard – and the sequel revels in this. Even in the game’s opening areas, packs of enemies are quick to surround you and take you down if you underestimate them – or if you overestimate yourself. Similarly, bosses are tough and uncompromising. Again, even as soon as the first boss you meet, you’ll be given a tough lesson in dodge-rolling and attack-pattern recognition – a lesson in ‘this is how the game does bosses’. But there’s more to it than just unflinching difficulty: there’s a sense of pleasure in the challenge, both on your side and the developer’s. Enemy composition probes your composition, looking for weaknesses and gaps, and bosses are the game’s centrepieces, chock full of imagination and personality.

One boss ran away from me, which I didn’t expect and it made me laugh. Then when I chased them down, they transformed, we fought, and they ran away again! This time though, they ripped a huge bell from some scenery to mash me with during the third and final phase of the battle – brilliant, unexpected stuff. Another boss housed in a mausoleum unexpectedly summoned the spirit of their lover from a different mausoleum to help them, then when I went to the other mausoleum, the boss there did the same thing in reverse. Connection, story – something to help the encounters stick in the memory rather than drift by in the endless flow of combat.

Look at that skill tree! | Image credit: Eurogamer / Grinding Gear Games

There’s charm even in the rote enemies who shamble around the in-between parts of the game. I’m currently very fond of a gangly enemy in the graveyard area who lugs around a huge stone plinth, or tombstone, to whack me with. I can feel the effort involved as they drag it across the grassy lawn, churning up the earth. Elsewhere, there are cultists and hags and rabid dogs and spiny burrowing creatures – it’s a varied menagerie you’re confronted with and I like how they all fit with the dark tone of the game. And while I have absolutely no idea what’s going on in the story – I’m not ashamed to admit it! – I’ve grown genuinely intrigued by the characters I’ve met in the game. They’re unassuming and gently handled so as not to interrupt you or grandstand you with exposition. Instead, it’s bit by bit – they inch into view, with an elegance and sorrow I really admire, which feels like a strange thing to say. It all speaks to an expertise and confidence I think you can feel pulsing through the experience, even early on.

The depth is still dizzying – you need only tab through the active-ability lists to see how many are available to you. As a monk, I’m not bound only to quarterstaff abilities – I can venture into spells just as easily, or other kinds of weaponry, doubling or tripling (or more) my possibilities. And the passive skill list is as outrageously extravagant as it ever was in the first game; it will make your eyes pop the first time you see it. It’s so large it doesn’t fit onto one screen, even zoomed right out – there must be several hundred passive skills there. For a theorycrafter such as I like to think I am, it’s heaven.

Image credit: Eurogamer / Grinding Gear Games

What impresses me more about the approach to abilities in the game is the way Path of Exile 2 wants me to use all of them in overlapping ways. There’s no waste, so to speak, no superfluous thing. I was just adding abilities willy-nilly to begin with, only to realise later they all work, in some small way, together. A palm-strike attack will kill an enemy who is glowing blue, for instance, but it will also steal essence that will power up another ability elsewhere. They’re little things to keep you active, keep you leant forwards, and stop you drifting away – to stop this becoming a kind of Cookie Clicker experience.

This is a long way of saying that initially, I’m very impressed. Path of Exile 2 is flexing its blockbuster chops here, and showing it’s worthy of all the expectation heaped upon it, and capable of confronting the biggest action RPG titans head-on. Of course, there’s much more to unpack here, and much more to see – which I’ll be digging into next week with a more fully-formed early access review. But I already feel confident in saying that if you’ve ever been on the fence about Path of Exile, umming and ahhing about whether to jump in, then your opportunity has come.

A copy of Path of Exile 2 was provided for review by developer Grinding Gear Games.

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Fantasian Neo Dimension review – Final Fantasy father gets a deserved homecoming

The cult classic mobile RPG finally gets its due, for lovers of mechanics over story who can rise to the demands of its extreme challenge.

It’s a bit surreal playing Fantasian with randomised Final Fantasy battle music. But it’s not unfitting. At one point I was in a fraught battle against a giant fiery salamander as the unmistakable piercing strings of One Winged Angel distracted me, as if Sephiroth himself was about to swoop down from the sky. To help or hinder, who can say.

Fantasian feels like a lost Final Fantasy game emerging from the 90s and that’s only reaffirmed by the inclusion of actual Final Fantasy battle music, which has been added to this re-release of the game. And for a time it really was lost. Developed by Mistwalker, itself a studio founded by the father of Final Fantasy Hironobu Sakaguchi, and with music from long-time Final Fantasy series composer Nobuo Uematsu, Fantasian was originally released – and subsequently trapped – exclusively on Apple Arcade back in 2021.

Now Mistwalker has reunited with Final Fantasy custodians Square Enix to publish this PC and console re-release as Fantasian Neo Dimension, with a little help from Final Fantasy 14 and 16’s Naoki Yoshida. This is a homecoming, then, the gang back together to share with the world a curio intended to be Sakaguchi’s final, final fantasy.

Watch on YouTube

What characterises Fantasian most of all is its blend of old school genre trappings and modern sensibilities. Sakaguchi is uncompromising in his vision – for better or worse – resulting in a game aimed squarely at longtime RPG players and demanding a great degree of expertise. Yet this re-release is undoubtedly a more approachable version, if still not quite definitive.

That blend of old and new is exemplified by the game’s visuals – it’s what initially impresses most and lends the game its unique identity. In a callback to the past, the detailed backgrounds are static with 3D character models; but they’re formed from actual hand-made dioramas that have been built, photographed, and digitalised. Environments are tangible, real places with something of the clean futuristic look of Final Fantasy 8 making way for dusty town streets, lush forests with tiny, bushy flora, and alien-like landscapes of pustules and mushrooms and a soft fuzzy textured ground that looks like it would make you sneeze. All of this is presented through contrasting angles as the camera swoops and soars, revitalising the lost art of fixed perspectives. It’s a beautiful game.

Another example of old-meets-new is the turn-based battle system and the unique targeting mechanic for its characters. Attacks and skills must be carefully aimed at enemies: some in a piercing straight line, some in wide AoE circles, and some curving behind to the back line. Along with an explicit turn order, there are enough tactical options to satisfyingly clear a screen of enemies without taking a single hit. Bosses, too, make use of this system, with hidden weak points requiring not just meticulous aiming, but attentive understanding of mid-battle animations to specifically time critical attacks. Landing a death-from-above strike right when a boss yawns upwards makes me feel like Sephiroth, just as his iconic music reaches a crescendo.

Fantasian screenshot showing character running through colourful verdant environment with wooden walkways
Fantasian screenshot showing characters stood in the central square of a dusty town
Fantasian screenshot showing character stood by a beautiful creek in a forest
Fantasian screenshot showing rocky, mountainous landscape with two male characters and speech bubble "That's...one big mountain"
The dioramas have been meticulously crafted and the results are beautiful | Image credit: Square Enix / Eurogamer

Fantasian’s most innovative feature, though, is the Dimengeon system. It’s genius, essentially allowing you to collect random encounters into a single pot to then battle all at once at your discretion. This allows for exploration without interruption, and a switch to battling when the opportunity suits. No more running to a save point at low health praying an enemy doesn’t randomly strike! What’s more, Dimengeon battles take place in a void where players are aided by various buffs: aim carefully and you’ll do extra damage, cure afflictions, and steal turns. It’s wonderfully strategic and the sort of obvious solution to a genre frustration I hope gets copied elsewhere.

Outside of its underlying systems, however, Fantasian’s firm roots in the past also risk becoming its undoing, as its characters and plot fail to innovate in the same way its gameplay does. That’s partly due to an overreliance on parallels with Sakaguchi’s earlier games, and genre stereotypes that have themselves been popularised by Final Fantasy. Once again, Fantasian sits at the convergence of science, technology, magic and religion, grappling with typical sci-fi questions of what it means to be human, and scheming godlike figures. But it never quite offers a novel viewpoint on these timeless themes. Similarly, while poetic moments of storytelling accompanied by gorgeous hand-drawn artwork are a highlight, elsewhere there are awkward womanising moments that already felt awkward in 2021, and feel doubly so now three years later. Despite occasional charm, the main narrative is bogged down by cringeworthy dialogue and tired characterisation we’ve seen countless times before.

Yes, this is another fantasy game with an amnesiac, spiky-haired protagonist: Leo. There’s Kina, the wispy, ethereal ingénue who’s at one with nature and (obviously) the healer of the group. She’s Aerith-coded and, along with the forthright, Tifa-esque Cheryl, forms a tedious love triangle with Leo. Admittedly, spotting Final Fantasy references can be a fun distraction for long-time fans – here’s Ez, a male blend of Yuffie and Rikku! – but it only serves to highlight Fantasian’s status as a Final Fantasy ‘best of’ that lacks its own originality, so I never felt fully endeared to them. There’s even a character called Sid (even if it is spelled differently).

Fantasian screenshot showing characters battling monsters in a dark void with straight aiming line of attack
Fantasian screenshot showing battle in a sandy environment and a curved aiming line for attack
The aiming system adds enjoyable strategy, especially in the void of the Dimengeon | Image credit: Square Enix / Eurogamer

Yet there’s one reference I especially enjoyed: Fantasian’s two-part structure is directly borrowed from Final Fantasy 6, with a linear story-driven first half and a character-driven, open-ended second half. Fantasian itself was released in two parts, which Neo Dimension converges into a singular experience, though you still feel the tension of that divide as everything shifts gears halfway through and improves considerably.

The game’s first half, of course, establishes its world and tone, steering you from place-to-place as the story progresses and adding new party members to diversify combat. It’s fun, with the strength of combat just about outweighing those disappointing, aforementioned stereotypes. But often my favourite part of any RPG is the moment it bursts open – when you invariably receive an airship of some sort, and you take a step backwards to see the world as a giant puzzle of interactions, questlines, ultimate weapons, and super bosses. It’s then that the best kinds of RPGs can truly test your knowledge, and you gain full mastery of its systems.

That’s something both genre greats Final Fantasy 6 and Chrono Trigger achieve in abundance, and Fantasian follows suit with a transformative second half I ultimately grew to love. In part that’s because its story finally gets a little weird and its multiple pieces click into place, the overarching plot somewhat sidelined for a focus on shorter character-led episodes. Yet even then, it feels like the story is there to serve the gameplay as these episodes ultimately expand each character’s combat repertoire. Fantasian’s second half cements itself as an RPG for lovers of gameplay over story, and for those who revel in tweaking character builds to get the most out of its strategic battles.

Fantasian screenshot showing extreme close up of purple-haired female character
Fantasian screenshot showing white-haired male character and brown-haired female looking shocked in close up
These three form a love triangle, though I’ll admit I’m not the biggest lover of the angular, exaggerated anime features | Image credit: Square Enix / Eurogamer

The addition of a much-welcome skill tree in the second half is a prime reason for this, providing newfound freedom and further complexity to character customisation. I wish this had been introduced earlier to give the first half of the game a bit more direction, though again there are story reasons for this change. Still, its introduction dramatically opens up Fantasian’s combat as the game’s previously fixed characters can evolve in multiple directions. What’s more, unlocking new branches is directly tied to both the story and as a reward for exploration, together with discovering materials for the newly-introduced weapon upgrade system. And that’s on top of extensive accessory options providing buffs, as well as an expanding cast of playable characters to freely swap between in battle. By its second half, Fantasian has layers of strategy and complexity that all neatly interlock, giving enough depth to appease even the most hardened of RPG nerds.

What I particularly appreciate in the second half is Fantasian’s trust in the player. While there is a quest log to keep track of everything, it’s mostly up to you to find quests through exploration and chatting with NPCs. It’s as if the first half is an extended tutorial, while the second half is a real test of your understanding of the world: your memory of locations, navigating its environments, and the intricacies of combat. I found this kind of challenge immensely satisfying to overcome and it made me appreciate the construction of the game on a mechanical level. More questlines had me peeling back the layers to explore unforeseen areas of the world, spurred on by a melodic score that’s unmistakably Uematsu’s work. The music adds to the nostalgia, but with a dash of Vangelis-esque electronica in a nod to the game’s Blade Runner-inspired themes and world. This is Fantasian at its best, a collision of old and new.

Boss battles, by extension, feel like something of an exam, though sometimes that challenge can lead to frustration. As character development leans more on abilities acquired through the skill tree than traditional levelling, boss battles act like puzzles to test your knowledge of those skills and often require specific moves and strategy to best. This is great! It tests your mind more than your propensity to grind for sheer power. Yet some bosses really do test your patience, with gimmicks resulting in complete failure after a lengthy struggle. Perhaps that’s an overwhelming number of minions, strategies requiring one specific move by one specific character (tucked away on the skill tree), or shimmering clones that make the true boss impossible to spot. Many of these bosses are technically optional, but they feel mandatory to reach the higher levels required for later quests. At times Fantasian isn’t just punishing, it tips firmly into unfair.

Fantasian screenshot showing characters battling a giant mechanical boss with gaping blue jaws
Fantasian screenshot showing characters battling against a giant dragon beast in a sandstorm
The bosses are challenging and often spectacular, though sometimes feature unfair gimmicks | Image credit: Square Enix / Eurogamer

And that’s on Normal difficulty. The initial release of Fantasian was notorious for its challenge, so much so a new easier difficulty level has been introduced here. Sadists can still opt for the original difficulty level, now dubbed Hard, but the new Normal ensures the game is (mostly) approachable, despite major spikes in later areas. Beyond its wider release on PC and consoles, these new difficulty options are the primary reasons to recommend this particular version of Fantasian.

It’s still not quite definitive, though. It’s clear Fantasian was designed for smaller touchscreens – all those curved aiming lines had fingers in mind – and blown up to a larger scale those beautiful backgrounds feel stretched and blurred. I played on Switch and even in handheld mode the visuals lacked the sharpness of a smaller mobile screen, while performance stutters were frequent if not totally distracting. The exploration controls are most awkward of all: rather than tapping to auto-run, characters are now directly controlled but, as the camera flips angles, the direction of control must be constantly re-aligned to match the new perspective. No, sadly the old touch controls haven’t been transferred to Switch. It’s something I got used to over time, but it’s a quirk that causes this re-release to fall short.

I’m glad Fantasian Neo Dimension exists for bringing this cult classic to a wider audience. I love its modern innovations, its tactical combat, and the depth of its world, which all ensure the game thrills on a mechanical level. Yet a reliance on genre conventions sees Sakaguchi clinging to his Final Fantasy past, resulting in some outdated storytelling. And while this new version is more approachable, it’s not quite the smoothest transition to bigger screens. Fantasian is a game that demands much of its players, to rise to its extreme challenge and overlook flaws. Persevere, though, and there’s satisfaction and nostalgic highs to be found akin to the very best of the genre.

A copy of Fantasian Neo Dimension was provided for review by publisher Square Enix.

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Citizen Sleeper, Two Point Campus, Frostpunk and more up for grabs in Jingle Jam’s stellar 2024 charity bundle

With the season of giving now officially upon us, Jingle Jam has unveiled its latest PC charity bundle – this year featuring the stellar likes of Citizen Sleeper, Shadows of Doubt, and Frostpunk, which can all be snapped up in support of a bunch of good causes. In total, the Jingle Jam 2024 Games Collection feature 18 titles (all supplied as Steam codes), and there’s a lot of good stuff to be found. For the most part we’re in the realm of indies, although Sega and Two Point Studios’ enormously enjoyable Two Point Campus sneaks in too. Also up for grabs are ColePowered Games’ wildly ambitious procedurally generated detective noir Shadows of Doubt (which we gave three stars back in October), superb sci-fi narrative adventure Citizen Sleeper (Recommended), survival city builder Frostpunk (also Recommended), and minimalist puzzler Patrick’s Parabox (four stars!). The Jingle Jam 2024 Games Collection official trailer.Watch on YouTube But there’s more: roguelike card battler Widlfrost is in there (this one made Bertie’s Games of 2023 list), as is wonderfully engaging sci-fi construction sim Mars First Logistics, sticker store management game Sticky Business, crustacean-themed Souls-like Another Crab’s Treasure, and the sequel to acclaimed 2018 tabletop-style RPG adventure, For the King 2. Also included is the well-received blackjack roguelike adventure Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers, Geiger-esque horror Scorn, action-tower defense game Orcs Must Die 3, dystopian racer Death Sprint 66, dating sim action-RPG Eternights, card-battling rogue-like Hadean Tactics, hand-drawn puzzle adventure Submachine: Legacy, and Fight in Tight Spaces – a “stylish blend of deck-building, turn-based tactics, and thrilling animated fight sequences in classic action-movie settings”. And if you prefer you lists in bullet point form: Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers Wildfrost Two Point Camps Shadows of Doubt Patrick’s Parabox For the King 2 Citizen Sleeper Another Crab’s Treasure Mars First Logistics Sticky Business Hadean Tactics Submachine: Legacy Scorn Orcs Must Die! 3 Fights in Tight Spaces Death Sprint 66 Eternights Frostpunk The Jingle Jam 2024 Games Collection is a bit of corker, then, and if you’re sufficiently swayed, all the above can be acquired for a very reasonable donation of £35. Or rather, for a minimum donation of £35 – with more appreciated if you’re able, seeing as organisers are hoping to raise as much money as possible for this year’s eight selected charities. More specifically, money accrued though Jingle Jam 2024’s charity bundle will go to Autistica, Campaign Against Living Miserably, Cool Earth, Sarcoma UK, The Trevor Project, Wallace & Gromit’s Grand Appeal, Whale and Dolphin Conservation, and War Child. You can read more about each charity – and purchase this year’s games bundle – over on the Jingle Jam website. At the time of writing, it’s successfully raised £1,277,979.

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What we’ve been playing – sequel prep, nostalgic horror, and birds

30th November

Hello! Welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we’ve been playing over the past few days. This week, we cram ahead of what could be one of this year’s biggest sequel releases, we draw attention to an excellent nostalgia-drenched horror game, and, um, birds – lots of birds.

Catch up with the older editions of this column in our What We’ve Been Playing archive.

Path of Exile, PC

I’ve been doing a bit of Path of Exile swatting ahead of the imminent early access arrival of the sequel, Path of Exile 2, and it’s striking how old the first game feels. I don’t say that to throw any kind of shade: POE1 has done tremendous things in the action RPG genre, and it was a small project that grew and grew – it didn’t arrive with the fanfare or production values POE2 does. But playing it after playing something like Diablo 4, which has extraordinary production values of its own, definitely highlights how much time has passed. POE1 is so awkward by comparison.

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You can’t, for instance, seamlessly swap between mouse and keyboard controls and a controller, which I think you can do in almost any game now as standard. You have to quit to the main menu and then specify the control method you want to use instead. You can’t independently move a character around with WASD keys while you use the mouse to click and attack, either, which feels really restrictive and weird. And look, I get it, these are elbowy bits that fade into insignificance as you embrace the eccentricities dozens of hours in, but they still contribute to a feeling of how timely a sequel now is.

It’s a fascinating prospect, POE2, it’s got everything going for it – a developer in red-hot form and with resources, and with enormous good will from its playerbase. And it’s got interesting ideas like having POE1 and POE2 live side by side and share a cosmetics store, so one doesn’t override or cannibalise the other. Will this mean POE2 will feel more secure in being different, or will it still be beholden in design to POE1?

Perhaps more importantly, will a newer Path of Exile game do a better job of onboarding a 2024 audience than Path of Exile 1 currently does? It has to, right – how can it not? And if it does, what will that mean for the millions of Diablo 4 players kicking around looking for something new to do? POE has been chomping at Diablo’s heels for years now, will POE2 be the moment it gobbles it up?

-Bertie

Tormenture, PC

Ian plays Tormenture.Watch on YouTube

I love nostalgia. If I could, I’d grind nostalgia into a fine powder and snort it from the top of my ZX Spectrum +3’s disk drive. Unfortunately, nostalgia lacks a physical form so I can’t actually do that. Instead I consume my nostalgia like normal people do, by reading things like Retro Gamer or watching episodes of Bad Influence on YouTube.

Or. Orrr… I’ll get my fix by playing games like Tormenture, a sadly underappreciated gem from Spanish developers Croxel Studios, that combines retro gaming memories and 80s nostalgia and then mixes them with a modern and excitingly fresh take on the horror genre.

Simply put, Tormenture is a game within a game. When you load it up, you’re met with gameplay that’s a direct homage to Adventure on the Atari 2600 – a yellow castle, a small square to control, and little to no clue as to how to proceed. This is all covered by a lovely layer of simulated CRT scanlines because, after you work out the first few puzzles you’re confronted with, the camera pulls out of the TV to reveal you’re actually playing (in first-person) as a child sat crossed legged on the floor, in a small 80’s bedroom.

That room is full of nostalgia, too. There’s a Speak and Spell, a Guess Who, a tape player, and all of these things play into the game in surprisingly creepy ways. To say more about the events that unfold would risk spoiling the game for you but, vibe-wise, think Stranger Things meets Zelda, with a delightful dose of Tunic-style “oh shit! I get it now!” discovery sprinkled liberally on top.

What I really like about Tormenture is how its puzzles, and their solutions, keep on surprising throughout the six hours or so it takes to finish it. It’s genuinely unsettling at times, too, using the dual-layers of game-within-a-game and game-outside-a-game to create an atmosphere that captures perfectly the feeling of being up past your bedtime and playing a terrifying horror in full knowledge your parents could walk in at any time and give you a bollocking – although in the world of Tormenture, your parents would be the last of your worries…

Tormenture is on sale on Steam right now too, by the way – 25 percent off until December the 4th – so if you’re a fan of horror and nostalgia, go treat yourself, because this looks like it might otherwise slip under the radar.

-Ian ‘jorts’ Higton

30 Birds, PC

Gawgeous.Watch on YouTube

I’ve been playing lots of short indie games this week, but my favourite has hands down been the gorgeous 30 Birds. Steeped in Persian culture and mythology, it’s a window into a world we don’t often get to see very much in games these days (Prince of Persia aside, of course), but more than that, it’s just so bloomin’ gorgeous to look at, too. Set on a world of actual paper lanterns where characters curl and peel round the edges of each panel, every scene is sumptuously realised, and there are splashes of colour absolutely everywhere. It’s one of the most evocative worlds I’ve had the pleasure to be in all year, and the plot of the game is equally charming as well.

After the godlike phoenix Simurgh gets captured by a man known only as The Scientist, this gentle mystery adventure sees a young detective called Zig become embroiled on a quest to find the 30 birds of the game’s title so they can prepare a ritual to bring Simurgh back to safety. It’s a wonderfully freeform kind of story, letting you loose to visit its four main lantern districts however you see fit. There are some light puzzles to engage in before you can win over the bird in question once you find them, but most of these little mini-episodes are just brilliantly daft and idiosyncratic in their own right. They’re not so much puzzles as strange little interludes that add just a bit more texture to the world’s wider canvas.

It’s a real little treat of a game, and at just five or so hours, it’s also something you can easily polish off in a weekend and say, ‘Cor (or should that be ‘Caw’?), that was really quite lovely, wasn’t it?’ So I implore you go and play 30 Birds. I promise you won’t regret it.

–Katharine

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Brighter Shores feels an awful lot like RuneScape, but its promising start is still missing some key ingredients

I never want to discover exactly how much of my life has been spent grinding for experience points. Even discounting all the hours spent training Pokémon, it’s still going to be an uncomfortably large number thanks to my 18-year investment in RuneScape. Technically, I could find out at least how much time, down to the minute, I’ve spent in Gielinor by talking to an NPC called Hans. I don’t talk to Hans. I’ve long accepted that RuneScape is more of a life choice rather than a video game.

It’s thanks to this life choice (and a genuine love of the game, too) that I’m so excited about Brighter Shores, another MMORPG that’s currently in early access. Why? Well, its developer Fen Research was founded by Andrew Gower, who also co-created RuneScape with his two brothers. At a passing glance, Brighter Shores looks awfully similar to RuneScape. It has a high fantasy setting, a lot of the game is focused on grinding for XP, and even the graphics have an RS3 touch to them. So I was curious to see exactly how reminiscent this new MMO was.

The first thing that caught my attention was the portrayal of its world – and I’m not talking about the graphics. Rather than having an open landscape for you to traverse, the world of Brighter Shores is divided into a series of main locations, which are then constructed out of a collection of individual spaces, be it a town square, thief-infested alleyway or forest meadow. You travel through them one-by-one, and while this may sound restrictive, it actually feels like you’re exploring vignettes of this world, and filling in the map piece by piece, room by room. There’s always an element of mystery when you reach a new location, as it’s impossible to say what size the next area will be, or what it could hold. Will it be a collection of useful resources or a bloodthirsty creature?

Watch on YouTube

Luckily, the map keeps track of both these possibilities as you’re able to record any enemy and resource, including their required level, every time you enter a new vignette through the power of ‘Discover’. This can become a little tedious after a while, especially when you’re ‘Discovering’ the same tree for the third time. But it pays off in usefulness, as even this kind of basic information is listed alongside where each enemy or resource sits within the menu for its dedicated Profession (Brighter Shores’ term for skills) – and that includes the ability to pull that location up on your map. Combined, it ensures you never get lost in the woods trying to remember where you saw those leeks for the pie recipe you just unlocked. Instead, it can be an XP grind all the way down.

Looking at a starfish in Brighter Shores.
Discovering a starfish. Again. | Image credit: Eurogamer/Fen Research

Brighter Shores’ locations are also tightly intertwined with its main storyline, which opens with you becoming a guard in the town of Hopeport. The main plot is told through a series of episodes, with each one taking place in a specific location. You also need to complete an episode before you can venture further into the world, meaning you can’t, for example, visit Hopeforest before you’ve completed Hopeport’s episode. Having played through the first two episodes so far, I can’t say I’ve been wholly won over by the story of Brighter Shores so far. It’s very much the standard fantasy affair of ‘Someone’s doing something with magic they shouldn’t be touching.’ I’m still very much in the opening act, though, so I’m hopeful there will be juicier elements waiting around the corner in future updates.

What’s more interesting (and maybe also slightly flawed about Brighter Shores) is how the locations affect your Professions, which is the real meat of the game, after all. These are also tied to specific locations, so if you fancy going fishing, for example, you must be in Hopeport since that’s currently the only place where this Profession can be conducted. I get that this was probably designed to encourage players to train up the new Professions they get when starting a new episode, but I found it steals some of the world’s grandeur. Instead of seeking out new training spots across the globe, you’re simply rotating between the same areas over and over again. Just unlocked a new eel breed? Well, it’s time to visit Eel Street Bridge again. (Yes, that is its name. Hopeport citizens say it like it is.)

Fishing at Eel Street Bridge in Brighter Shores.
Image credit: Eurogamer/Fen Research

Thankfully, some Professions do add more breadth to the world – while they may be tied to certain episodes, the resources required to get the most out of them don’t always follow the same rule. The Alchemist Profession, for example, can only be trained in one specific Hopeport shop, but certain ingredients can only be found in Hopeforest so, if you want to make those potions, you need to venture further afield and train an additional Profession to acquire them. Likewise with the Woodcutter, which provides the resources you need to train as a Carpenter. This interconnectivity prevents each skill from feeling like a standalone activity. If you’re training one, then you’re most likely going to end up training another. It’s an act which doesn’t quite fix the absence of feeling like you’ve embarked on a grand quest, but it does lay the foundations for what’s (hopefully) to come, and that’s a good achievement for an early access MMO to fulfil.

Of course, take one look at the Professions themselves, and anyone who’s played an inch of RuneScape is going to get déjà vu at first. Several traditional skills are here, but they’ve just been renamed – Chef (Cooking), Fisher (Fishing), Woodcutter (Woodcutting), Alchemist (Herblore), Miner (Mining) and Leatherwork (Crafting). Really, we’re just missing Firemaking and then we’d have the complete set. Mechanically, these Professions are quite similar to their RuneScape counterparts, too, though there is one notable exception in the form of Alchemist, which I’ve found to be a vast improvement over RuneScape’s fiddly Herblore skill thanks to the way it streamlines a lot of that skill’s busywork and general item management.

Using the Alchemist Professions in Brighter Shores.
Using the Woodcutter Profession in Brighter Shores.
Left: Alchemist. | Right: Woodcutter.Image credit: Eurogamer/Fen Research

That’s not to say that every Profession in Brighter Shores is simply a reworked RuneScape skill. There are new creations here, too. Forager and Gatherer may literally be the same Profession wearing a different hat, but they’re fundamental to progressing other Professions, especially if you don’t want to spend your in-game money on resources. The Detective Profession, meanwhile, challenges you to fight crime on the mean streets of Crenopolis by raiding crime dens and protecting merchant stalls (though it does also require a Brighter Shores membership in order to unlock it at the moment).

What truly differentiates Brighter Shores from RuneScape in the Professions department, though, is how each episode and, therefore location, has its own combat skills where you always begin at level one. It’s a decision that may sound strange on the surface, but in practice ensures combat is always challenging whenever you begin a new episode, as it’s impossible to enter over-levelled. Just because you’re a Level 30 Guard in Hopeport doesn’t mean your prowess will transfer over to the Scout combat Profession in Hopeforest, for example. If you truly want to become a dangerous combatant there, you’ll need to start defeating as many enemies as you can once again. It certainly keeps things lively, though the need to gather a whole new set of equipment and weapons in the process (as your current equipment will always be weaker outside of their dedicated episodes) means I’ve also been drowning in weapons and armour so far. Instead, I have to resort to the ‘Auto-Equip’ function in my equipment / weapons bank, which you can thankfully access anywhere, simply to avoid wasting any more goblin-killing-time.

Combat itself is your standard point-and-click affair, with the ability to switch between three equipped weapons mid-fight (two melee, one ranged typically). Ostensibly this is to make it slightly more interactive, but I still spent most of my battles sitting back while watching my avatar hit foes with a truncheon until they died. Instead, the main thing Brighter Shores uses to try liven up its combat is its Faction system. There are three to choose from – Cryoknight, Guardian and Hammermage – and you must pick one, with that choice being permanent (handy, then, that there are three character slots, so you can have one character per Faction if you so choose). Essentially, though, this is the ‘RuneScape combat triangle in disguise’, and on the whole, it never felt like my choice of Guardian was ever that meaningful. This Faction is meant to be focused around range combat, but there I was, bashing enemies to death with a heavy piece of wood. Hopefully, the Factions will develop alongside future updates, especially when its planned PvP comes along with its 1.0 release.

Combat in Brighter Shores.
This fight isn’t going as planned… | Image credit: Eurogamer/Fen Research

Right now, I’m longing for something a little more in-depth, though Brighter Shores’ Knowledge Points do go some way to adding some welcome complexity to its current system. These are unlocked when you reach Level 20 in a Profession for the first time, and from that point onwards, any time you earn any XP, you’ll also gain progress towards your next Knowledge Point. These can then be exchanged for money, more XP in any skill you’re Level 20 or above in, or the option to unlock a passive training method if you’re at the right level. The latter are incredibly useful, as they allow you to earn XP when logged out of Brighter Shores. Now I can hear you saying, ‘Lottie, how is it good that this MMO has an option where you can get away with not playing?’ Let me explain.

The Knowledge Point menu in Brighter Shores.
The Knowledge Point menu. | Image credit: Eurogamer/Fen Research

Firstly, many of the passive training methods require a specific item before you can use them, which can either be purchased or earned by using a Profession. How many of these items you have in your inventory determines how long the passive training will last while you’re logged off; fishing, for example, requires bait with each bucket equalling roughly an hour of training. This gives the system a nice balance, since you need the coin or the required Profession level, often quite high, to get the item for free. And let’s not forget about your inventory limit either. Thanks to this, you can’t just log off for two weeks and return to find yourself a Level 100 Fisher.

Secondly, the moment you hit Level 20, the amount of XP required to reach Level 21 rises considerably compared to the ones before it. To be exact, you need 3,462 XP to go from Level 19 to 20 in any Profession, but 17,818 XP to go from Level 20 to 21. Yes, that’s an increase of over 9,000. Since the maximum level for any Profession is 500, you can imagine what the required XP starts to look like in those upper tiers. For this reason, passive training methods are perfect for casual players who still want to enjoy Brighter Shores, but lack the proper time to dedicate to it. Maybe they want to enjoy the side quests, which offer good rewards but have high level requirements, or maybe they’re married to another MMO… (it could happen to anyone). Either way, passive training is a brilliant addition in my books. It feels very fair in its current form, as you still have to put in the work before you can fully utilise it.

Passive fishing in Brighter Shores.
Passive fishing the hours away. | Image credit: Eurogamer/Fen Research

That said, as much as I’ve been enjoying Brighter Shores, my wider feelings on it are more conflicted. It’s had a promising start in early access – a great accomplishment for a small development team – but its RuneScape roots break through the soil a little too strongly at times. Effort has certainly been made to fix some of the issues RuneScape continues to have, but some solutions only cause more problems. Having separate banks for each of your resources, for example, is a great idea on paper, but unless you’ve completed a certain side quest, you’ll have to visit their individual locations scattered across the maps to access them. The high XP requirements for the later levels also means you either need to make sure you’ve set up a passive training method every time you log out or are prepared to invest an awful lot of time into it. For me, it’s the storylines that push much of my XP grind, and in that area Brighter Shores is a little lacking right now. Whereas RuneScape is an active life choice, I fear Brighter Shores will only ever be a very casual video game for me.

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30 Birds review – a magical, kaleidoscopic adventure through Persian myth

Instantly captivating and perpetually playful, this whimsical romp across a world of paper lanterns is utterly enchanting.

The Night Train to Lantern City. Just saying these words out loud immediately conjures an image of a place with warm, hushed lighting spooling out of glazed windows, with billows of steam and smoke misting over the landscape. It’s certainly an evocative kind of opening, but 30 Birds goes one better, placing its detective heroine Zig on a train careering through space on tracks made of clouds, heading toward a city made of actual paper lanterns. It’s a dreamy and impossible kind of architecture, its inhabitants shifting up and down each lantern’s colourful panels and wrapping their 2D bodies around the edges of a very real, 3D space, with doorways transporting them to other miniature lamp spaces hanging around its periphery. The locals themselves are a little impossible, too, as you’ll clock sentient aubergines and disco-loving djinn glyphs, and, of course, a heck of a lot of birds as you saunter through the city’s various districts.

Persian mythology sits at the heart of 30 Birds, and the reason Zig’s been called here in the first place is to witness the awakening of Simurgh, an enormous phoenix-like creature whose god-like status in both real-world legend and in the game forms the backbone of this fantastical tale. Here, Simurgh is the creator of Lantern City, and has been asleep for the past fifty years, dreaming of what to do next with her magical creation. But when the awakening ceremony goes awry and Simurgh gets captured by a mysterious being known only as ‘The Scientist’, Zig sets off on a quest to free her by bringing together the titular avian individuals who can help save her (as Simurgh itself can also be translated as ‘thirty birds’).

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But 30 Birds isn’t just some linear A to B hero’s quest adventure. After that initial inciting event sees Zig paired with her first feathered collaborator – a sassy hoopoe called Hoop – you’re more or less free to wander the city however you wish, peeling back its layers and generally noodling through at your own pace. Locals will occasionally give you clues and hints about where you can find certain birds, but after that you’ll need to follow your nose and sense of curiosity – which isn’t exactly hard when Lantern City is so immediately enticing to look at.

The Central lantern is a hive of activity, with people spilling out of shops and baths onto the streets, while the Park feels wild, untamed and teeming with life, a complete contrast from the towering buildings of the College district, but even these warren-like avenues hold some surprising secrets inside them. Then there’s the Grand Bazaar, which is a throng of competing speech bubbles as everyone goes about their business. They all have such distinct characters and a strong sense of place, and they’re wonderful spaces to poke around in.

Two sides of a paper lantern city are visible as a woman turns a corner in 30 Birds.
The transition between different sides of each lantern panel is always a delight. A beautiful blend of 2D and 3D visuals. | Image credit: Eurogamer/Arte France

That said, navigation can feel a little stodgy at times, as remembering which landmarks live on which panels (and how to get back to them) could be smoother if the map in Zig’s phone wasn’t quite so abstract. Each panel is surprisingly spacious, always stretching up and down further than you’re expecting, which can make it hard to get a grasp on where you are at times. A simple zoom out feature could have done wonders to help orient you within these dense and vivid spaces, but you’ll have to make do with just being thorough and meticulous in your exploration. Still, when feathers, paintings and other collectibles gleaming in seemingly locked off windows and obstructed doorways are always drawing your eye toward some hidden nook and cranny, tempting you back behind its layered, picture book diorama, a little bit of backtracking rarely feels like much of a chore.

A woman stands in a paper lantern cafe in 30 Birds.
A woman stands in a room full of cats in 30 Birds.
Interior spaces transport Zig to another smaller lantern on the district’s periphery. | Image credit: Eurogamer/Arte France

Befriending its 30 birds is also a delight. All of them are surprisingly funny and well-written, for starters – shout out to cult leader Gurubird and the Frasier-esque radio host Lovebird in particular here – and seeking them out forms the main thrust of the game’s story. Some can be spotted in plain sight across each city district, while others require more thorough investigation and some very light puzzling before they’ll reveal themselves. Finding one is often its own reward, as many will instantly give you their contact details as soon as you’ve had a chat with them.

The best ones, though, are the birds that have a little minigame mixed in – though even calling them minigames doesn’t quite do them justice. These aren’t minigames that you can fail, or are forced to try again if you don’t get them right. They’re more like daft, miniature episodes of pure playfulness – whether that’s navigating a Rubix Cube-like prison, diving inside a crocodile’s mouth to find a matchbox inside a vase inside a briefcase inside its stomach, inflicting terrible tattoos on unsuspecting underground market customers, or giving romance advice to Lovebird’s radio listeners.

A woman talks to a cult leader bird in 30 Birds.
A woman does her best Frasier Crane impression while talking to a radio host bird in 30 Birds.
Two police officers stand next to a dancing bird while onlookers shout at them in 30 Birds.
Each bird you meet is an utter delight. | Image credit: Eurogamer/Arte France

If anything, failure and simply having a go is often encouraged in 30 Birds, and nowhere is this more evident than in its tactile musical puzzles. These are all about twiddling dials, sliding buttons and tuning all manner of doodads to get a particular sound or match shapes to create certain patterns, but there’s nothing pressuring you to hurry things along. Instead, you can just luxuriate in the act of play, which permeates 30 Birds from top to bottom.

Indeed, it’s the kind of adventure that you wish could last forever, or at least a little longer than its tight five or so hour run-time allows for. There’s just enough here to give it a sense of life beyond what you’re able to see and explore as part of the main story, such as distant special lanterns that can only be travelled to via magic carpet, living constellations that impart stories when their fallen stars are returned to them, and an entire Snap-like card game played in its cafes and coffee houses where picture tiles are smashed violently together for gleeful victories. But even if 30 Birds feels like a dream you’ve woken up from earlier than you’d like, what a thing to say you’ve experienced all the same. It’s a game I’ll be thinking about for many months to come, and I only hope we get to see more stops along the Night Train to Lantern City in the future.

A copy of 30 Birds was provided for review by publisher Arte France.

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If you like chess and robots, you need to play Mechabellum

I look at my robots, and I mull. I’ve got tanky Steel Balls serving as a mobile frontline, buffered through hordes of little Crawlers carefully positioned to soak up sniper fire. Behind those loom my Fortresses, dishing out rockets that delete any medium unit, helped out by Fire Badgers to incinerate anything small. I’m lacking big target damage, though, so I pop down a Melting Point with the last of my cash and end my turn.

WASPS! I forgot about wasps! The curtain drops and I see my opponent has pivoted to swarms of the buggers, forcing me to watch as they tear through my carefully balanced army with zero practical air-defence. Mustangs are the obvious counter next round, but that’s exactly what they’ll expect…

Welcome to Mechabellum, an autobattler that plays a bit like (simultaneous) turn-based Supreme Commander. It’s also one of the most chess-like games I’ve ever encountered, which is high-praise coming from someone who’s played a chess match or two pretty much every day for the past four years. Yes, Mechabellum is a video game about building armies of robots using imperfect information, rather than a board game whose roots stretch back to sixth century India – but I get the same kick out of both.

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They really are remarkably similar in a surprisingly varied number of ways. Consequences ripple out from early board states, where predicting your opponent’s moves is key. Players even use the same term, “lines”, to refer to how openings can play out, based on initial board conditions and the standard responses to them. It’s easy for me to imagine a tournament commentator remarking on when a Mechabellum game goes “out of book”.

Just like chess, matches can turn on sharp plays, demanding knowledge of tactics that initially seem inscrutable, then remain difficult to scrute even after dozens upon dozens of hours. There’s this deep world of hidden intricacies that builds into an eerily familiar feeling that leaves me scratching my head as to why I’ve lost, but itching to pinpoint where it all went wrong.

An overhead shot of a battlefield full of mechs stomping over grass in Mechabellum
Image credit: Paradox Arc

Well. Sometimes. Sometimes I throw my hands up and walk away in a huff, just like after the chess games where I do a cross Alt-F4 rather than click through to an engine analysis that can tell me exactly where I blundered. Mechabellum doesn’t have an automated tool like that, but it does have something even better: a community.

The game’s official Discord has a “solve-a-replay” channel where you can pop your replay for better players to pick apart, or even take over from you and play out your turns themselves. It’s a godsend, because without that help, identifying your mistakes can feel impossible. Maybe you picked the wrong unit, or maybe you put the right unit in the wrong place. Maybe you committed to a unit too early, investing in upgrades that just let your opponent punish you by building an efficient counter. Or maybe you overlooked a vital tech that would have fixed everything. Or maybe all of the above at once.

Mechs fight each over on tarmac in Mechabellum
Image credit: Paradox Arc

That’s the magic, though. If the right move was always obvious then Mechabellum wouldn’t have ensnared me in the way it has, grinding out games most evenings – sometimes with a friend in tow, in 2v2 matches. At their best, those matches can feel like co-op puzzles, the two of you pouring over a board together. I was having trouble with a squad of elite Marksmen; my pal came to my rescue by deploying a flanky, tanky Rhino on my opponent’s backline.

I’ll leave you with a quick tip, if chess-but-robots sounds up your street: learn from your betters. I don’t mean me, I mean the Rat, a Mechabellum god who’s gone and made his own website with extensive notes on how to use and counter each unit. His video on basic rules to follow is ELO rocket fuel.

Come at me. I’ll be ready for those Wasps next time.

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The world is ending but here’s a side quest – will RPGs ever solve their urgency problem?

Why is it that in a role-playing game where the stakes are usually ‘the end of the world’, the end of the world always has to wait for us to finish our sprawling to-do list first? There’s no way you’ve never encountered this. I came across it most recently in Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which, after a thrilling end to Act One, effectively turned to me, the player, and said, hey why don’t you focus on some companion quests now instead, eh? The world was still ending, the danger hadn’t diminished or passed in any way, it’s just the game needed a pace change and for me to see some of the other cool stuff in it.

Egregious though it was, The Veilguard is far from the only BioWare game to have done it – I think, throwing my mind back across a dozen of them, they probably all have. The Reapers are going to destroy the galaxy! But don’t worry you’ve got time to go scan some planets if you want, first. BioWare games are far from the only RPGs to have done it either. In Baldur’s Gate 3, you have a tadpole in your eye for crying out loud, one that you know will turn you into a mind flayer probably pretty soon, and yet still you have time for, well, anything you want to do. In The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt, you’re racing to find your daughter-of-sorts Ciri who’s being chased by a menace of legend, yet you’ve got plenty of time to become the bareknuckle boxing champion of the continent, or Gwent champion, if you so wish. This approach is so common in RPGs it’s like dwarves with Scottish accents; a better question to ask would be whether there’s an RPG that doesn’t do it – one that hurries you up instead?

I’m thinking. It’s tricky.

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Pentiment? It doesn’t quite fit the RPG template but it’s one of the only games I can think of that has a sense of passing time, and of either-or choices associated with it – you won’t be able to do everything so you will have to choose. It’s a game in which time feels like time – time that’s as inexorable and immovable as we know it be. Couldn’t a system like that work in a more fully fledged RPG?

I wonder whether anyone else is bothered by it, or whether we’ve become so accustomed to it now we just don’t see it. Perhaps it’s even become part of what we know and expect an RPG to be. What is a role-playing game after all – how do we qualify a game as one? Do we think of them as games we play roles in, to use the purest meaning, or do we think of them in terms of mechanical trappings like side quests and character progression? For me, it’s the latter, slightly ashamed as I am to admit it. But can you imagine an RPG without side quests – would it even be an RPG? It’s a label that’s come to mean certain things, and one of them, for better or worse, is being able to take our time and have the ‘end of world’ wait for us. Some games are reluctant to release us from their grips at all – just think of all the ways live service RPGs make continual demands on our time and attention.

I think you can trace all of this back to Dungeons & Dragons, like so much in RPGs, because it is, after all, the original one. That’s a game that very much revolves around the players – that presents them with a world and tries to guide them around it, but famously usually ends up with players going wildly off course and dungeon masters trying to keep up with them. Are our video game RPGs a legacy of this behaviour – pandering to players?

Is there another way? When, I wonder, was the last time someone sat down and questioned the trappings of an RPG and thought about mixing them up? What if we weren’t given an inexhaustible amount of time to see all areas of a game so we had to more mindfully plot our course through it – wouldn’t that make for more interesting subsequent playthroughs? Wouldn’t hurrying players – because of an impending ‘end of world’ event – help us better understand the urgency of it? Why is it we’ve settled for things the way they are?

Maybe this is their ultimate evolution – that’s a possibility, as bedgrudging as I am to entertain it. After all, one of the allures of RPGs is their being places we can escape to and submerge ourselves in, soak ourselves in, like warm baths, in an effort to forget our worries elsewhere. Adding a new tension to that mix might spoil it. Similarly, I know there’s an allure in wanting to scour a world and do everything in it, and knowing you will be able to – I can’t imagine starting a game knowing I couldn’t. It would feel very weird, but then, maybe that’s because no one’s tried.

What if? That’s all I’m asking. What if we haven’t completely nailed it? Just because we’ve done things this way for a long time doesn’t mean it’s the only way forward. There might be a game being made out there that’s about to come crashing down from proverbial outer space to rewrite the rules and show us that time and urgency can be just as compelling as an endless to-do list. Maybe it already exists and I just don’t know it yet (answers on a postcard in the comments if you do!). But I do know I’m ready for change. I want my time in games to matter again.

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Planet Coaster 2 review – buckled potential

Planet Coaster 2’s flexible creation tools are as compulsive as ever, but the fun butts up against an exhausting UI, uninspired management gameplay, and conspicuous content gaps that feel like cynical spaces for DLC.

I bloody love a theme park: the sights, the smells, the gleeful screams, the sense of utter transportation. But most of all, I love the breathless clash of science and art behind these thoroughly encompassing illusions. I’m the kind of theme park nerd who still gets genuinely giddy when they see technology and creativity crash together like this, and who’s been daydreaming their perfect rides and coasters into existence since a run-in with Disney’s Haunted Mansion at the age of three became a bit of an obsession. For people like me, the original Planet Coaster was a dream. For all its flaws, it was a brilliantly implemented, beautifully presented suite of creative tools capable of turning theme park flights of fancy into digital reality, and its sequel promises the same, but more.

Like its predecessor, Planet Coaster 2 is an immediate head turner; a glorious fusion of art, animation, sound, and music that brings those creative whims to wonderfully convincing life – a world of whirling metal, blinking lights, and the delighted screams of guests, to be experienced on high or at ground level. Strip away the presentational pizzazz, of course, and Planet Coaster 2 remains indebted to Chris Sawyer’s seminal RollerCoaster Tycoon, barely straying from the template established over a quarter of a century ago. It’s a game built around the intricacies of park management; of hiring staff, constructing rides, and providing key amenities – all to please guests and make enough profit that the operational loop can continue indefinitely. But once again, Planet Coaster 2’s real strengths lie in the depth, breadth, and flexibility of its design and customisation tools.

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This is a sequel of gentle evolution rather than sweeping reinvention, which isn’t to say its refinements aren’t immediately apparent – Frontier has clearly listened to feedback from Planet Coaster 1, even if it feels like its most notable improvements are specifically catered toward the YouTube content creator contingent with days to spend fashioning their marvels of intricate design. Its new lighting engine, for instance, isn’t just pretty, it’s practical; enclosed spaces are actually dark, meaning proper dark rides are finally possible without clunky workarounds.

Then there’s the optimisation. Unlike its notoriously spluttery predecessor, Planet Coaster 2 is far more capable of keeping up with players’ creative whims without immediately turning into a slideshow. Track ride construction generally feels less fiddly; flat rides can now be stripped back and fully themed with décor pieces – invaluable for those wanting a more cohesive aesthetic flow across their parks – while seemingly minor additions such as object-scaling and scenery brushes are major game changers. Elsewhere, pools and flumes have been introduced, satisfying the endless clamour for water parks among the community.

Planet Coaster 2 screenshot showing a Career mode park viewed from above, with the focus on several swimming pools and waterslides.
Image credit: Eurogamer

Planet Coaster 2’s various play modes are more clearly defined now, too. There’s a campaign mode, for instance, that goes to some entertainingly weird places as it cheerfully turns the fundamentals of park building into objective-based challenges. That said, its tendency to prioritise dad-tier jokes over helpful explanations – and the frequency with which any attempts at creativity butt up against arbitrary limitations – make it a bit of a drag. There’s also a Franchise mode, enabling players to work together, clan-like, in a globe-spanning grasp to top the leaderboards by satisfying weekly challenges, and there’s support for asynchronous co-operative building, too. Finally, for those simply wanting to maximise their creative freedom, there’s a highly customisable sandbox mode, enabling players to shift the balance between park management and design as they say fit.

What Planet Coaster 2 lacks, though, is any meaningful strategic evolution or sophistication. It jettisons some of its predecessor’s mechanical breadth too, with the likes of restaurants, hotels, and security all now inexplicably removed. The original Planet Coaster was, of course, a desperately uneven affair, its powerful creation tools massively overshadowing an anaemic management core, and it’s disappointing – if perhaps not especially surprising – to see those weaknesses carry over to the sequel. It might feature a checklist of new management options – from water filtration to power distribution – but the implementation is uniformly superficial. Even water parks, Planet Coaster 2’s flagship new feature, just sort of exist – a couple more holes to dig, staff to employ, and rides to build – with little in the way of extended integration.

Planet Coaster 2 screenshot
Planet Coaster 2 screenshot showing a rollercoaster cart tearing along a track as it whips up from beneath a wooden bridge surrounded by trees.
Planet Coaster 2 screenshot showing park guests roaming a beachside promenade in Career mode.
Image credit: Eurogamer

For all its building refinements, Planet Coaster 2 feels like it marginalises its management side even further, its two halves co-existing, occasionally intertwining, but never in particularly interesting or convincing ways. It’s a backward step compared to Frontier’s wonderful Planet Zoo, which struck a compelling balance between park management and beautification. And it’s especially weak in comparison to Texel Raptor’s Parkitect, created with a fraction of Frontier’s resources, which despite ostensibly being a retro throwback, felt like a genuine evolution of the classic theme park sim formula. Parkitect’s canny logistical layer of goods distribution, meaningful distinctions between ‘backstage’ and ‘front of house’, not to mention its impactful weather system, all brought a genuine sense of strategic cohesion between its two halves. By comparison, the handful of elements that Planet Coaster 2 does borrow from Parkitect – weather and scenery scoring – feel dramatically underdeveloped and awkwardly siloed.

Even more so than the original, Planet Coaster 2 feels like a game for the builders and tinkerers, the look-what-I-made content creators, and that’s perfectly fine, even if it does feel like a missed opportunity. Frontier’s sequel has the same unquestionable kind of hypnotic allure as its predecessor when it comes to building and design – arguably even more so, given its multitude of toolkit refinements – hours vanishing in a happy haze of meticulous rock placement, or in getting the banking sweep of your brand-new coaster just so. The trouble is, for all it gets right, Planet Coaster 2 often feels strangely retrograde – cumbersome, counterintuitive, or just plain contradictory – with an infuriating knack of getting in its own way.

Simply navigating menus is often an exercise in fiddly frustration, with Frontier’s attempt to design an interface that works for both keyboard and mouse and controllers never quite working for anyone. Menus are unintuitively organised, key information is often missing or obscured through poor or inconsistent presentation, advanced settings frequently remain unexplained… On it goes in a similar slapdash fashion. Why, for instance, does the Workshop not have a filter for flat rides, of all things? Individually, these feel like surmountable quirks, but all together they’re just draining.

It doesn’t help either that feedback is often so poor, even contradictory, that it’s hard to tell what’s a failure on your part or a failure of the game. “Staff are trying to access a staff building which is at full capacity”, I am informed at one point, quickly followed by the message, “There is no staff building”. Encouragingly, Frontier has already started to address some of Planet Coaster 2’s more egregious issues, with more substantial tweaks coming in December, but it’s still hard to shake the sense of backward slides elsewhere.

Planet Coaster 2 screenshot showing a guests meandering around a large plaza with a swimming pool and slide at its centre.
Image credit: Eurogamer

Sure, the ride selection is genuinely great, with some wonderful titillating flourishes – tilting coaster platforms, backward flumes, oh my! But as easy and enjoyable as it is to build the ‘park’ bit of your theme park, Planet Coaster 2 seems to flounder on theme. Gone are the visually distinct archetype themes seen in the original game – pirate, sci-fi, spooky, and western. Instead, replaced by far less distinct options: aquatic, mythology, Viking, tropical resort, and cheerily corporate. It’s a mix that results in a sort of bland sludge of vaguely vacation-themed visuals – part holiday resort, part generic amusement park – that don’t exactly sizzle with creative potential. Furthermore, Planet Coaster 2’s building blocks leave a lot to be desired, pre-built decorations, animatronics, and in-house scenery blueprints all in decidedly short supply.

Planet Coaster 2 screenshot showing a power distribution heatmap in Career mode.
Image credit: Eurogamer

After a few hours in the original Planet Coaster, I’d built a surprisingly elaborate Pirates of the Caribbean knock-off, complete with sword waving buccaneers, burning ships, and cannon balls splashing in the water; by comparison, the most exotic corner of my park in Planet Coaster 2 is a sad cave with a singing eel. Yes, it’s absolutely possible to improvise something more fantastical using geometric shapes and fiddly little props, but not everyone will want to go so deep into the tools. Of course, Planet Coaster 2’s new in-game Workshop means design-minded players can upload and share their creations with anyone hoping for a more casual play experience – but it all feels a little distasteful, as if Frontier’s offloading key foundational work onto the community. And Planet Coaster 2’s more conspicuous gaps feel even more cynical when they’re accompanied by £18 launch day DLC.

At its best, Planet Coaster 2 captures much of the magic of its predecessor, where immaculate presentation and powerful tools manifest a game of endless creative potential. But its undoubted pleasures are haunted by interruptions and frustrations, missed opportunities, and just far too many conspicuous holes where it feels like something vital should be. There’s a chance things will improve as Planet Coaster 2 evolves, but right now, for all its core refinements, it often feels lesser than its predecessor in too many ways.

A copy of Planet Coaster 2 was provided for review by Frontier Developments.

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Astro Bot, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth lead this year’s The Game Awards nominations

The panel has voted and this year’s Game Awards nominations have been announced – with Astro Bot, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, Metaphor: ReFantazio, Silent Hill 2, and Balatro all looking like they could be in for a very merry Geoffmas come 12th December. Astro Bot and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth are the big pre-winners, having both been shortlisted across seven categories for this year’s Game Awards. Metaphor: ReFantazio, meanwhile, has secured nominations in six categories, with smash-hit poker roguelike Balatro and Bloober Team’s sublime Silent Hill 2 remake scoring five appearances apiece. Only four of those games feature in this year’s Game of the Year shortlist, however, with Astro Bot, Balatro, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, and Metaphor: ReFantazio all making the cut, alongside Black Myth: Wukong and Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree. As for Silent Hill 2, its nominations are primarily audio and music-related, although it’s also up for best narrative, and Luke Roberts has a well-deserved nomination for his portrayal of James Sutherland. Digital Foundry calls Astro Bot on PS5 “virtually flawless”.Watch on YouTube Away from triple-A, Animal Well, Balatro, Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, Neva, and UFO 50 are all up for best independent game, while Balatro (again!), Animal Well, Manor Lords, Pacific Drive, and The Plucky Squire have all been shortlisted for best debut indie game. Developer Odd Meter’s marvellous Indika also puts in an extremely well-deserved appearance, albeit squished slightly awkwardly into the Games for Impact category, but there’s absolutely no sign of Thank Goodness You’re Here anywhere, which feels like a crime of the highest order. You’ll find the full list of Game Awards 2024 nominees below – and if you have particularly strong opinions on who should win, the public can vote across all categories via The Game Awards website (or via local platforms in China) starting today until 6pm PT on 11th December. This year’s Game Awards are being broadcast live from Los Angeles on 12th December, and Eurogamer will be on hand to bring you the highlights, Hideo Kojima or otherwise. Game of the Year ASTRO BOT (Team Asobi/SIE) Balatro (LocalThunk/Playstack) Black Myth: Wukong (Game Science) Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree (FromSoftware/Bandai Namco) Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (Square Enix) Metaphor: ReFantazio (Studio Zero/Atlus/Sega) Best Game Direction ASTRO BOT (Team Asobi/SIE) Balatro (LocalThunk/Playstack) Black Myth: Wukong (Game Science) Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree (FromSoftware/Bandai Namco) Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (Square Enix) Metaphor: ReFantazio (Studio Zero/Atlus/Sega) Best Narrative Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (Square Enix) Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth (Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio/Sega) Metaphor: ReFantanzio (Studio Zero/Atlus/Sega) Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II (Ninja Theory/Xbox Game Studios) Silent Hill 2 (Bloober Team/Konami) Best Art Direction ASTRO BOT (Team Asobi/SIE) Black Myth: Wukong (Game Science) Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree (FromSoftware/Bandai Namco) Metaphor: ReFantazio (Studio Zero/Atlus/Sega) Neva (Nomada Studio/Devolver) Best Score and Music ASTRO BOT (Team Asobi/SIE) Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (Square Enix) Metaphor: ReFantazio (Studio Zero/Atlus/Sega) Silent Hill 2 (Bloober Team/Konami) Stellar Blade (Shift Up/SIE) Best Audio Design ASTRO BOT (Team Asobi/SIE) Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 (Treyarch/Raven/Activision/Xbox) Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (Square Enix) Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 (Ninja Theory/Xbox Game Studios) Silent Hill 2 (Bloober Team/Konami) Best Performance Briana White, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth Hannah Telle, Life is Strange: Double Exposure Humberly González, Star Wars Outlaws Luke Roberts, Silent Hill 2 Melina Juergens, Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 Innovation in Accessibility Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 (Treyarch/Raven/Activision/Xbox) Diablo IV (Blizzard/Xbox) Dragon Age: The Veilguard (BioWare/EA) Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown (Ubisoft Montpellier/Ubisoft) Star Wars Outlaws (Massive Entertainment/Ubisoft) Games for Impact Closer the Distance (Osmotic Studios/Skybound Games) Indika (Odd Meter/11 Bit Studios) Neva (Nomada Studio/Devolver) Life is Strange: Double Exposure (Deck Nine/Square Enix) Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II (Ninja Theory/Xbox Game Studios) Tales of Kenzera: Zau (Surgent Studios/EA) Best Ongoing Game Destiny 2 (Bungie/SIE) Diablo IV (Blizzard/Xbox) Final Fantasy XIV (Square Enix) Fortnite (Epic Games) Helldivers 2 (Arrowhead Game Studios/SIE) Best Community Support Baldur’s Gate 3 (Larian) Final Fantasy XIV (Square Enix) Fortnite (Epic Games) Helldivers 2 (Arrowhead Game Studios/SIE) No Man’s Sky (Hello Games) Best Independent Game Animal Well (Shared Memory/Bigmode) Balatro (LocalThunk/Playstack) Lorelei and the Laser Eyes (Simogo/Annapurna Interactive) Neva (Nomada Studio/Devolver) UFO 50 (Mossmouth) Best Debut Indie Game Animal Well (Shared Memory/Bigmode) Balatro (LocalThunk/Playstack) Manor Lords (Slavic Magic/Hooded Horse) Pacific Drive (Ironwood Studios/Kepler Interactive) The Plucky Squire (All Possible Futures/Devolver) Best Mobile Game AFK Journey (FARLIGHT/Lilith Games) Balatro (LocalThunk/Playstack) Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket (Creatures Inc/TPCI) Wuthering Waves (Kuro Games) Zenless Zone Zero (miHoYo) Best VR/AR Game Arizona Sunshine Remake (Vertigo Games) Asgard’s Wrath 2 (Sanzaru Games/Oculus Studios) Batman: Arkham Shadow (Camouflaj/Oculus Studios) Metal: Hellsinger VR (Lab 42/The Outsiders/Funcom) Metro Awakening (Vertigo Games) Best Action Game Black Myth: Wukong (Game Science) Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 (Treyarch/Raven/Activision/Xbox) Helldivers 2 (Arrowhead Game Studios/SIE) Stellar Blade (Shift Up/SIE) Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 (Saber Interactive/Focus Entertainment) Best Action/Adventure Game ASTRO BOT (Team Asobi/SIE) Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown (Ubisoft Montpellier/Ubisoft) Silent Hill 2 (Bloober Team/Konami) Star Wars Outlaws (Massive Entertainment/Ubisoft) The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom (Grezzo/Nintendo) Best RPG Dragon’s Dogma 2 (Capcom) Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree (FromSoftware/Bandai Namco) Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (Square Enix) Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth (Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio/Sega) Metaphor: ReFantazio (Studio Zero/Atlus/Sega) Best Fighting Game Dragon Ball: Sparking! ZERO (Spike Chunsoft/Bandai Namco) Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising (Arc System Works/Cygames) Marvel vs Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics (Capcom) MultiVersus (Player First Games/WB Games) Tekken 8 (Bandai Namco) Best Family Game ASTRO BOT (Team Asobi/SIE) Princess Peach: Showtime! (Good-Feel/Nintendo) Super Mario Party Jamboree (Nintendo Cube/Nintendo) The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom (Grezzo/Nintendo) The Plucky Squire (All Possible Futures/Devolver) Best Sim/Strategy Game Age of Mythology: Retold (World’s Edge/Forgotten Empires/Xbox Game Studios) Frostpunk 2 (11 Bit Studios) Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess (Capcom) Manor Lords (Slavic Magic/Hooded Horse) Unicorn Overlord (Vanillaware/Sega/Atlus) Best Sports/Racing Game F1 24 (Codemasters/EA Sports) EA Sports FC 25 (EA Vancouver/EA Romania/EA Sports) NBA 2K25 (Visual Concepts/2K) Top Spin 2K25 (Hangar 13/2K) WWE 2K24 (Visual Concepts/2K) Best Multiplayer Game Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 (Treyarch/Raven/Activision/Xbox) Helldivers 2 (Arrow Game Studios/SIE) Super Mario Party Jamboree (Nintendo Cube/Nintendo) Tekken 8 (Bandai Namco) Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 (Saber Interactive/Focus Entertainment) Best Adaptation Arcane (Riot/Fortiche/Netflix) Fallout (Bethesda/Kilter Films/Amazon MGM Studios) Knuckles (Sega/Paramount) Like a Dragon: Yakuza (Sega/Amazon MGM Studios) Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft (Crystal Dynamics/Legendary/Netflix) Most Anticipated Game Death Stranding 2: On the Beach (Kojima Productions/SIE) Ghost of Yōtei (Sucker Punch Productions/SIE) Grand Theft Auto VI (Rockstar Games) Metroid Prime 4: Beyond (Retro Studios/Nintendo) Monster Hunter Wilds (Capcom) Best Esports Game Counter-Strike 2 (Valve) DOTA 2 (Valve) League of Legends Content Creator of the Year CaseOh IlloJuan Techno Gamerz TypicalGamer Usada Pekora