This is a review of both the current Retail game, and the level 75 era private server Horizon. I will cover Horizon first, and then the Retail game. For context, I actually bought the big fat HDD and played the game on my PS2 for a bit way back when, but didn't stick with it. I played 200 hours of Horizon when it launched a couple years ago, then played Retail for a couple months. Then I came back to Horizon a few weeks ago to play with other HQers.



FF11 Horizon

Horizon is sold as a recreation of the early FF11 experience based on the Chains of Promathia expansion, which was the first expansion to launch for FF11 in the West (in the West, the game launched with the Zilart expansion already bundled with the base game). It also has some "balancing" changes. Basically it is the FF11 equivalent of a Vanilla+ WoW private server.

To get the game to work, I had to log in and log back out several times while I tried out the different controller presets in the Horizon launcher. The game was originally designed to be played on the PS2 with a controller. I also had to do some fiddling with the in-game options/config menu to adjust the aspect ratio and set my chat windows.

The first few hours of the game are pretty uninspiring to get through, as you are dropped off in a city with no overt guidance. You actually start off in a completely different section of the city than the questgiver who starts you on the nation storyline, the main storyline of the base game. You then solo to level 10, which amounts to a few boring hours of auto-attacking mobs. It is not practical to play with other people before level 10 as the party level syncing does not go down below level 10, so if you tried to party before that people would get wildly different amounts of exp. Level syncing ensures everyone is progressing at the same rate and makes sure that even players up to 10 levels higher than the synced player are getting exp equivalent for their level). Overall the introductory experience is bad, and the people I introduced to this game needed handholding to be walked through the setup and initial starter quest experience and encouragement/promises that the game does get better once you solo to 10.



Once at level 10, the fun begins. You then go to popular leveling zones, such as Valkurm Dunes or Buburimu Peninsula, to start doing what FF11 is about: the 6 man levelling party. In FF11, it is very, very difficult to solo mobs that are at the same level as you. You can run around everywhere looking for lower level mobs to zerg if you want, but that is very intensive and quickly becomes exhausting and boring. So you need to form a 6 man party (1 tank, 1 healer, rest are damage/supports) to kill higher-level mobs for more exp. To get the most exp your party wants to be fighting mobs that are labelled Very Tough (5 levels above you) or Incredibly tough (6+ levels above you). Combat is low enough APM that you can actually type and chat with your party while fighting. I have had more conversations with people in FF11 levelling parties than I have had doing "group content" in WoW, FF14, GW2, etc, where people are ostensibly doing something together but no one is really interacting.

Doing a levelling party in Horizon is a large time commitment, as mounts are limited and one way (can only be rented and ridden from a city, and then dismounted). You have to spend a lot of time travelling across several maps, dungeons, boat rides, etc, to reach a levelling camp location. You could be looking at 30 minutes to travel to a location to then grind there for a few hours. And if you die, you lose exp and can de-level and lose access to high level abilities or armor with a level requirement. So there are more stakes involved and more commitment is required to play the game, which in turn makes people more invested. It is also a private server with about 2-4k people online, and you will see the same names who are at the same point in their journey as you. There is a community feel in the game that is not present in continental megaservers like WoW or FF14 where you queue for a dungeon, get teleported to the dungeon with four other randoms, complete it in 15 minutes, and then everybody goes their separate ways and never sees each other again.

The game also gives players the tools to find other players on the same stage of their journey as you and form a levelling party with them. You can type "/sea all 30-40" to see all players online who are currently between levels 30 and 40. You can see what location they are currently at, what their job is, if they are a party leader (yellow name) or a party member (blue name) or unpartied (white name). You can also further specify what location they are at if you want people nearby, what job they are at if you want a tank or a healer, or if they are flagged specifically to join a party. You can then whisper those people and say, "Heya! Would you like to tank for my levelling party at Valkurm Dunes?" Some would say "well that's a more involved process than just queueing for LFD or duty finder!" and yes, they would be correct, but the point of this game is that it is more socially involved.

Anyway, that is pretty much the Horizon gameplay experience. 65 levels of the levelling party experience as you go from 10 to 75. You will occasionally form a party to go do story missions or an unlock quest together in which you battle enemies too strong to be soloed, or journey through a dungeon to reach a cutscene. There is a level cap "endgame", but most people won't get there quickly due to the long grind to level cap and how your friends might not be level capped and you might be syncing down to level them up.

The only other real thing of note is the job system/multiclassing, which is a little deceptive. It is not like Guild Wars 1 where you can fully be both classes. In FF11 you can equip a subjob. You would imagine that this would give you a lot of character customization, but in reality you're only really going to get one or two, maybe three notable abilities:

• If you equip warrior as your subjob, you will get provoke (taunt ability), berserk for a damage buff, occasionally auto-attack twice, defender ability which reduces incoming damage and is useful if you are tanking or you accidentally take aggro, and Warcry (group wide attack buff).
• If you equip ninja as your subjob, you can create shadow clones which will soak attacks aimed at you once (requires using stacks of expendable ninja tools, can be expensive to keep stocked if you are a new player), and stealth through areas. You can also dual wield, if you want.
• If you equip samurai as your subjob, you can regen 600 TP in 15 seconds, dodge an attack once every minute, and gain a damage buff for wielding two-handed weapons.
• Etc.
• Some jobs cannot be very effectively equipped as a subjob, namely the three pet classes of Summoner, Beastmaster, and Dragoon, as you either lose access to your pet or they become ineffective.
• (The Horizon private server made some changes for job and subjob abilities, listing them here would be getting a little too into the weeds)

This is an extremely, extremely time consuming game. When I played Horizon at launch, I sank 200 hours into the game to level up warrior to 30 and then to unlock and level up Dragoon to 35. The progression and community feel is very addictive and I would have liked to have continued, but unfortunately my time on this Earth is limited and there are other things I need and want to do, so I gave up there. I came back when RPGHQ became interested in this game and have sunk another 100+ hours into Horizon and have gotten to level 41 as a Dark Knight (also dabbled around in other jobs). I am not sure if I will make it to level 75, but I would like to at least beat the Shadowlord with the HQers which can be done at levels 50-55.

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Retail FF11

Retail differs from FF11 in that the game is not about the levelling party experience. The player base is concentrated at the level cap endgame, so before then it is a mostly lonely experience. You can acquire exp multipliers, summon NPC party members anywhere, and generally just level very fast and don't need other players' help for most things. I played a Summoner and only needed to ask other peoples' help for getting my summons (I do not recall at what level, I think maybe level 30-50ish). I wound up levelling to the high 70s/low 80s before stopping levelling to concentrate on the main story so that I did not become over-levelled and trivialize it. Retail is also different in that there are books in every zone and dungeon that you can teleport to and from. Unlike Horizon FF11 which is a simulation of inhabiting and traversing a fantasy world, Retail FF11 is pretty much teleport simulator as you travel to go get the next quest item or talk to the next NPC.

The early FF11 is a little strangely structured, in that you start by doing nation storylines but then the nation plots are forgotten as everything converges in Jeuno with the Shadowlord plotline. Apparently, the base game suffered from the same issue as Trails in the Sky FC, where the game had to be shipped out the door before the whole story was implemented. It ends half way through at the Shadowlord fight, and the other plot stuff is not resolved until the Zilart expansion, in which the central storyline and the nation stories are separated. So you have to go back to your nation to finish their stories from rank 6 to rank 10. Then you go to Norg to continue the main story from where it left off at the Shadowlord fight (and retcons in some additional events). The base game story (both the nation missions and the Shadowlord story) aren't much to write home about, but the main story does become a little more interesting in Zilart.

As for the nation stories, I overall liked Bastok's the most, since it had the most likeable cast of characters and the nation I was rooting the most for. San d'Oria's story has two twists, one at rank 6 (or 7?) that piqued my interest, but then also a twist near the end that soured me. Windurst's story is overall very boring up until the end, as you do lots of chores for different ministries that all look the same (both the buildings inside and the people you are working for), though it did get exciting towards the very end.

I got a little bit into the Zilart storyline before I got tired of Retail and unsubbed. I have heard that the story continues to get better as FF11 goes on, but I just couldn't endure the gameplay anymore. The Retail gameplay experience is fundamentally a lot of teleporting around, going to dungeons and farming mobs for a quest item or some other tediousness, and I just was not able to endure that for the sake of getting to the next cutscene. But in light of how boring the moment to moment gameplay of the latest FF14 expansion's story was (four hours of boring visual novel in which you literally never get to fight, vs lots of teleporting and running around to get quest items), I am not sure which of the two I would pick. Hopefully neither. And before anyone says, "Well they are MMOs, of course you are going to get a bad single-player RPG experience!", I would point to GW2 and WoW, which while they have dubious writing do have enjoyable moment to moment story questing-based gameplay experiences.





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The game looks aesthetically very nice. It has an overall grounded aesthetic without looking like a brown ugly game. I like how much of the game takes place not in generic green European medieval forests, but also in vast rocky landscapes (and, again, doesn't look ugly like in other games). It reminds me of places I have been hiking to like sandstone canyons. Reminds me of the Wild West.


There are more nice locations. The Japanese-y forest of Zi'Tah. The bridge city of Jeuno. The mining city of Bastok. The scenic ruins of Tavnazia. Even a few really high fantasy locations like Al'Taieu or Promvyion, but due to the cost and time to travel in this game (unlike in WoW/GW2/FF14 where I can teleport and fly and get a good shot within a couple minutes), I only posted the screenshots I had on hand.

I do have a gripe with Horizon, which is that they replaced the faces with redrawn upscaled textures. I do not think they look good, and there is no option to revert to the original faces. I have heard that there is a fix mod floating around somewhere. Apparently it does not address the custom faces that the Horizon devs implemented though, so you would have the redrawn faces next to original faces.

Another neat thing about FF11 is that you can get really big summons/pets, and they can remain on the field indefinitely unlike FF14's summons or WoW's Pitlord which just spawns in for a couple seconds and then spawns out. I do not have a screenshot from when I played a Summoner on Retail FF11, but I had a quite big Fenrir wolf summon. The only other MMO off of the top of my head that let you have large pets like this was Star Wars Galaxies.

The music is very good. Half of the base game's soundtrack was composed by Nobuo Uematsu, the other half by Naoshi Mizuta who would go on to do the expansion tracks. Overall I do not find Mizuki's tracks as likeable as Uematsu's stuff, but there are some good tracks here and there.

I like the anthem music of the Republic of Bastok.


I like the music that plays when you are on the boat to another continent:



I was going to post them all as videos, but then realized that would be a lot so here is a list:

• The cutscene music that plays when you fight the Shadowlord at the end of the base game:
• Dramatic cutscene music from Zilart
• Rendition of the Vana'diel March when you finish the nation storylines.
• Normal battle theme in the Rise of the Zilart expansion areas
• Fishing barge theme
• When you travel back to the past and fight in the war in Wings of the Goddess
• Wartime San d'Oria music in the past
• Traveling the jungles of Ulbulka
• Your private tropical island theme (FF11 did it first!)
• Iroha's theme

Beyond Galaxyland is a side-scrolling JRPG platformer adventure that invites you to embark on a quest to save Earth by exploring many extraterrestrial worlds. While the story is engaging and concludes satisfyingly, its short length limits character development and depth of its gameplay systems. However, it compensates for these shortcomings with visually great environments and an engaging story.

You play as Doug, an ordinary teenager from Earth. One night, after being pursued by a mysterious creature, you step through a portal into Galaxyland, the center of the universe largely controlled by the megacorporation DreamCore. Within minutes of your arrival, you discover that Earth has been destroyed by a force known as TheEnd. DreamCore has rescued a select number of humans and other lifeforms to preserve life far from their home planet. The game openly embraces the blatant evil intentions of DreamCore, playing with this trope rather than attempting to conceal it for a later big reveal.


The game's focus is on a blend of side-scrolling platforming, puzzle-solving, mini-games, creature collection, and combat. Platforming is generally enjoyable, particularly with the double-jump ability and sliding sections. However, they are not designed to be major obstacles, and you won’t even die if you occasionally miss a platform.


Puzzles are equally short and easy to solve. However, the game does a good job of offering a variety of challenges, ranging from pushing rock puzzles to labyrinths. You can auto-solve some puzzles as well, but at least the game does not automatically drop hints if it takes you a bit longer to solve them.

There are several mini-games scattered throughout, effectively serving as enjoyable distractions from the main gameplay. Like puzzles, these mini-games are generally not intended to be major challenges; instead, they add flavor to your overall experience. The only exception is one particular race, which suffers from an annoyingly poor camera that makes the entire experience extremely frustrating.


Another focus of this game is creature collection. You can capture most creatures you encounter in combat. Each creature provides specific skills that you can equip and release during combat to gain various bonuses or to attack enemies. Once equipped, these creatures level up, regardless of whether you use them in battle, allowing them to unlock much more powerful skills.


Combat in this game is turn-based. You control up to three characters from a pool, consisting of Doug and five companions you meet during your adventures. However, for most of the game, you do not have the option to choose all of your companions, as they are determined by the story. Some of the five companions also come into play quite late or only briefly; ultimately, you will probably spend most of your time with Doug, his transformed guinea pig Boom Boom, and one or no other character.

During combat, you can choose to attack your enemy, use a character-specific ability (such as healing or area attacks), utilize consumables, or release one of your captured creatures for a specific effect. Many of these effects are linked to six elements, each of which has a specific opposite that determines its strengths and weaknesses.


A key aspect of combat is the shared pool of ability points among characters, which can be used to unleash powerful abilities. This pool increases when you successfully hit an enemy, but it decreases twice as quickly if you miss. Additionally, if an enemy attacks, you must read their attack motion and defend in real time; failing to do so will further deplete your ability points. Effectively managing this pool is central to success in combat and is fun, as the risk of losing ability points keeps you engaged.

After successfully defeating an enemy mob, you will earn experience points. This is your only source of experience, as completing quests rewards you with money or items.


However, as you level up, your abilities (such as strength or intelligence) automatically increase without any options for customization. Character customization is determined solely by equipment and creatures.

One primary weakness of the game is its length. I completed it in about 13 hours, which feels a bit short for meaningful progression or customization of the seven characters. Roster management, which allows you to freely choose your companion, unlocks only a few hours before the end credits roll. Moreover, the game features only one difficulty setting outside of New Game+, making it quite easy overall. As a result, there's little incentive to optimize your equipment, skills, or combat strategies. For most of the game, I found that simply using standard attacks and ensuring I had enough points for healing abilities was sufficient.

Despite its length, this game features numerous optional quests and non-linear exploration. After a few hours, you are free to travel between several planets, exploring their secrets and tackling their quests. These quests are often much more substantial than typical fetch or kill quests, frequently providing powerful items as rewards. However, while these quests are optional, they’re typically gated behind specific level requirements. There are a few exceptions where the game allows you to attempt quests far beyond your current capabilities. Doing so will almost certainly result in failure.


One reason for its short length is the significant focus on presentation. While the characters may not stand out compared to many pixel games released in recent years and are generally quite bland, the environments are often beautifully designed. The diverse landscapes, biology, and architecture create a sense of adventure and exploration, despite the game's limited duration.

A significant amount of time was also devoted to the soundtrack, which features over 50 different tracks. While I appreciate the effort and some tracks nicely underscore the scene on screen, I found it to be overwhelming at times. In certain scenes, the music was so dominant that I had to lower the volume to focus on what was happening on screen. Additionally, I felt there was a lack of a cohesive theme or atmosphere among the tracks. They are well-crafted, yet each seems to be composed specifically for individual scenes rather than contributing to a unified experience.


In conclusion, Beyond Galaxyland is a fun, lighthearted sci-fi JRPG that never takes itself too seriously and consistently offers new experiences to keep players engaged. However, it does lack the length and substance found in other games. The story concludes satisfactorily and feels complete, yet it seems that the original scope may have been larger. For instance, after a few hours of gameplay, you will finish Season 1, and there is no mention of a second season. Recommended for any player who is not put off by JRPG mechanics and systems.

Old School RPG is a solo project released in 2024 with little fanfare. It is a party-based, turn-based, first-person dungeon crawler heavily influenced by classic games such as Might & Magic, Wizardry, and The Bard's Tale. While it generally delivers what it promises, it is held back by numerous bugs and a lack of content.


The game begins in Waters Edge, a small fishing town located on the Island of Three Towers. You are assigned the task of defeating an undead uprising by the arch mage. To accomplish this, you must obtain a red crystal that is located on a flying island. However, in order to reach the flying island, you must first repair a teleporter.

As the game progresses, the story takes you on a series of treasure hunts to collect items that are necessary to gain access to the next island. First, you need to explore three dungeons to find three crystals. Next, you are sent into three more dungeons on the hunt for three crafting materials. The story is not a major focus of the game and primarily serves to guide the player from one island to another.

But, before we can actually start slaying our first undead, we need to create our party of 4. The game offers three options: a default party; manually create a custom party; or a "random but balanced" party. If you chose to create your own heroes, you have choices among 14 classes and 13 races. Generally, the game itself does not offer many details about classes or races besides the skill groups each class can master. During character creation, this can be quite frustrating because you simply lack important information to make informed choices for your heroes. For instance, the Warlock has Arcane and Fire Magic at his disposal, while a Mage can also cast Divine, Air, Earth and Water spells. The downside of that increased pool of spells remain unclear. This is, until you consult the manual.

The manual contains a list of all spells unlockable for every class, allowing for a much more informed choice during character creation. The same is true for the 8 Attributes. The game does not tell you during character creation what skills are affected by what attributes; for that you will again need to read the manual which I would consider mandatory for custom party creation.


Following your first steps on land you engage in conversations with some villagers, picking up simple side quests of the fetch/kill variety, and browsing through the local merchants' stocks. However, the moment you step outside the village boundaries, the first skeletons attack.

The combat in the game is turn-based. One thing to note is that you don't have the option to position your party, but there appears to be a favored enemy system in place. This means that tanky characters are more frequently targeted by melee attacks. During your turn, you have the usual choices of attacking, defending, using consumables, or using support skills. However, the game is again lacking in terms of information provided. While you do receive some general information about each skill, it doesn't go into much detail.

For example, the skill Berzerking greatly increases attack power but comes with a small hit chance penalty. Unfortunately, no specific numbers are provided. The same is true for enemies – you only see their hitpoints without any information about resistances. This can be quite frustrating, especially when an enemy resists an attack and you're left wondering if they are immune or if you were just unlucky with your roll against their resistance.


A nice touch is the presence of a few synergies, although they are quite limited in numbers. Lightning attacks deal bonus damage to wet targets, while fire abilities can remove the wet status and few others. These synergies are mentioned in the manual and should be studied and pre-planned before character creation to ensure that your four heroes complement each other perfectly.

There are also limited items that you can use during combat - no scrolls, wands, or traps, and only a few options for potions for recovery and to increase your Strength or Quickness abilities. If your class does not come with a certain buff or debuff skill, it's unlikely that you will be able to cast it using any other means. For example, if you don't have any skill to remove burning, you will have to endure a 10% HP loss for a set number of rounds.[/color]

The turn order is primarily influenced by the Quickness ability, which has only this one use. Every round, the turn order is refreshed, but unfortunately, you cannot see the turn order of the following round in advance[/color]. Typically, my Paladin would go last, allowing me to decide whether to heal the most needy character at the end of each round. Should I heal my Necromancer or take a gamble that he will go first and heal himself via Drain Life? It's a blind decision, and I would have preferred either keeping the order consistent throughout the whole encounter or at least showing me the order for the next round so I can plan accordingly.

After achieving victory in battle, you collect every item from the enemy mob, resulting in hauling around 88 shields and 60 long swords after a few battles. With merchants who have infinite deep pockets, you'll never run out of money. Although there isn't much to buy, you'll discover the best equipment while exploring, along with plenty of potions to keep you alive.

Itemization in this game is quite lacking. New equipment items only make you stronger, and even Magic items only come with randomly generated modifications to certain abilities. However, later in the game, a few items are introduced that provide additional skills or resistances which can potentially alter your approach to combat.


Besides loot, you gain experience after victory, distributed evenly among all survivors. You can solo or create a smaller party to level up more quickly. Additionally, you can choose to dismiss a character during your playthrough. This can be advantageous if you feel you have mishandled that character or cannot find a suitable purpose for them. Unfortunately, you can only dismiss characters in the reverse order of their creation, which greatly undermines this otherwise good idea. You are even able to replace the dismissed character with a newly created one. However, the new character will always start at level 1, and gained experience is not scaled to their level. As a result, this potentially useful feature is only theoretical.

Generally you only gain experience via combat and for completing quests. Each level you have skill and attribute points to allocate. There is no skill tree or any other means of choosing skills, they are unlocked at a certain level for each particular class. You will find an overview of that in the manual. What exactly an increase in a certain skill does is mostly unclear. The game tells you that this particular skill is getting more effective but in what way remains a mystery. My Necromancer was additionally skilled in Water Magic, with at some point 24 vs. 8 levels respectively. Yet, I cannot say that spells of these certain class felt much different in power or hit rate.

In addition to level-ups, you will also come across numerous random attribute points throughout your adventures. This gives you the flexibility to redirect your character if you feel that your initial plan is not working out. This feature is particularly useful since the game does not offer any respec options.


You will explore the islands in real time, with free movement and mouse look. In total you will visit four different islands. However, it's worth noting that these islands all share a striking similarity in terms of their appearance and atmosphere. Additionally, these islands are relatively small in size. There is no need for a minimap, as you can consult your fullscreen map, follow the compass, and soon you will spot your destination. There are a few hidden things to uncover off the main path, and exploring a new island is generally enjoyable.


You will also have the opportunity to explore numerous dungeons, which become progressively more complex. These dungeons are filled with an enjoyable mix of traps, hidden doors, puzzles, and, of course, plenty of monsters. The traps are not only deadly but are often strategically placed, requiring careful exploration of the dungeon. On the other hand, the puzzles add flavor to the experience rather than being substantial challenges. Many of them are quite similar, and even if you come across a new type of puzzle, the solution is usually immediately obvious. The same holds true for "hidden" passageways - at least you won't need to go on a pixel hunt.


While it's generally fun to crawl through dungeons in search of your next quest item, these dungeons lack diversity. Most of them use the exact same presets and placables - the same walls, same decoration, they absolutely look identical - differing only in layout, monsters, and loot. It reaches a point where even finding a new bookshelf becomes exciting simply because it offers something different to look at.

One reason for this is likely the developer's ambition. The game looks fantastic for its scale. Besides the human models, monsters, dungeons, vegetation, and placables all look very detailed and, more importantly, consistent throughout the game. Everything fits convincingly together and feels like one cohesive world. The music enhances this sentiment as well. It's not overpowering, but also not memorable; it's simply there to underscore the atmosphere. However, there are some issues with certain sounds. Monsters growling from the void, sound effects on loop, and annoying party banter even while you are busy leveling up.

Furthermore, the experience is weakened by the UI. A lot of actions require too many clicks to achieve, although the developer has fixed some of these issues with recent updates. Additionally, the switch between vertical and horizontal menus is confusing. Ultimately, the UI is serviceable but certainly not convenient.


Lastly, let's address the numerous bugs present in the game. While the starter island feels fine, issues arise with mistakes in the dialogue that sends you off. The performance deteriorates, there are numerous mistakes in texts, enemies are pre-damaged, chests refill, monsters spawn on top of each other, skills do not work as advertised, and there are even game-ending bugs. However, to give credit to the developer, he has promptly addressed these bugs within hours of them being reported, either on the Steam forums or in our HQ thread. Nevertheless, in its current state, the game feels more like an Early Access title at best.

In conclusion, it's fun to browse the manual, plan your party, and see how it all plays out. The combat lacks some information, but it's satisfying when your plan works. And even if the game throws you a curveball, there's often a way to save the day. It's not the deepest system, but for a short game like this, it's enjoyable enough. It took me about 18 hours to beat the game on the recommended difficulty settings. It might take a bit longer on harder settings, but it should still be beatable within 20 hours. Even that feels stretched at times - the dungeons and islands almost seem procedurally generated because they're so similar. That's a shame because the exploration is small-scaled but fun. You're always on the lookout for traps, treasures, and unmarked adventures. This game, as it is, should have been an Early Access title with only 2 islands to iron out more bugs and gain more time and funding to create something fresh for the second half of the game.

If you enjoyed some of the often low-budget first-person dungeon crawlers from the past years, but wished there were more turn-based options available, then this game is for you. However, if you are not interested in this particular sub-genre, this game does not offer anything that will turn you into a fan.

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VLADiK Brutal is a solo-developed, indie first-person shooter game created by Vladislav Meshcheryakov over a span of 5 years. You play as Vlad, an ex-con who ends up fighting a one-man war against the iron-fisted dictator of a dystopic post-Soviet state.

THE WORLD AND LORE
In a fictional nation within Eastern Europe, a dictator of long standing holds power. The dictator, marked by paranoia, has carried out numerous purges, eliminating the opposition. Common citizens are monitored by tracking chips in their necks. Everyone wears identical clothing, each bearing a unique number, all regulated by the government. On top of all these measures, the dictator has established a 'Grand Research Facility', utilizing prisoners for nefarious purposes. The state incarcerates many for their resistance to the dictatorship, resulting in executions and exploitation as forced labor.

The game generally has a gloomy and somber atmosphere, but the interior levels, such as maintenance areas, metro stations, and the dictator's massive tower, stand out with their vibrant and colorful palettes.

CAMPAIGN
The game begins with you, Vlad, having a conversation in prison with your friend. You're discussing the new assignment you've received from the administration: you are to be escorted to the 'Innovation Center' and assist the scientists there with an experiment. Once you arrive, a scientist tells you to pull some levers ominously labeled AZ-1 to AZ-5―the latter being the label of the lever that triggered the meltdown of Chernobyl in real life. Unsurprisingly, things go wrong, and soon you're up against a bunch of monsters and military forces. Your main goal becomes taking down the dictator and freeing your country from his oppressive rule.

It's the standard post-Soviet shooter: everything is shit, dystopic, and hopeless unless you bring the hurt to those at the top.

One thing that bugged me, though, is the end of the game.
SPOILERS
The game has three difficulties: Easy, Normal, and Brutal. The menu is presented quite nicely, reminiscent of old shooters like DOOM and Wolfenstein. The details are even different for each difficulty (see: Codename, Appearance). It's funny how the Easy profile gives you a thin physique and calls you CHICKEN while the Brutal profile gives you a 'pimped' physique and calls you BRUTAL MONSTER.

ART DIRECTION
VLADiK features a highly cohesive art direction, each area feeling logically connected to the next. Metros appear authentic and the underground maintenance areas are filled with all the details you'd expect: small tunnels to crawl through, catwalks, emergency lights, sounds, etc. The atmosphere is further enhanced by the biomatter that covers most walls and floors, along with huge worms crawling everywhere. The experience is made even more immersive by the aftermath of battles between monsters, military forces, and even civilians present in each area.


The art direction is pretty consistent. Some things felt out of place, but that's probably because I'm not Russian; I assume it's authentic. The underground passages reminded me of Half-Life 1 and 2, which is pretty nice. It was also a nice touch to include corpses of both monsters and humans all over the areas. It makes the game feel lived-in, as though you aren't just running through a level with enemies placed all over.


VISUALS
The visuals are impressive, especially considering that the game was developed by a single person. It stands strong against games made by larger teams. The game offers a wide range of graphical options, including a preset optimized for the Steam Deck, allowing it to run at 60fps without any performance dips while still looking great.
I had everything on the highest settings, and the game looked very good, but when I was in areas that were dark and got my flashlight out, it was marred by a flickering noise effect all over the screen.


SOUND DESIGN
The sound design is excellent. From the satisfying gunfire to the eerie ambient audio and the cawing of ravens, the game nails the atmosphere. When you're underground, you may hear speakers repeating warnings or the distant, terrifying roars of rampaging monsters. Gunfights, the screams of men and women, and other chaotic sounds contribute to the tension. The military enemies sound similar to the Combine from Half-Life with their heavily distorted voices. After you kill a soldier, you can hear someone on the radio, likely asking for his status, followed by eerie silence.

The voice acting is serviceable, but nothing grand. The dev himself voiced the main character.

ENEMIES
The game features a variety of enemies, including mutants and military personnel, each presenting unique challenges. Mutants range from standard enemies with tentacles on their faces who rush at you when they sense your presence to invisible foes that can be detected by their distinct sounds. There are also naked mutant women who flee from you but spawn kamikaze children that explode on impact, the spawning stopping only when the 'mom' is killed. Prowlers, crawling on all fours, are known for their jumping attacks, while fat slobs move slowly but can deal significant damage if they get too close, though they can usually be taken down with two shotgun blasts.

The military faction adds another layer of difficulty with standard goons armed with pistols, baton-wielding goons who rush at you, and commandos who come in two types: green with assault rifles and blue with shotguns, both fast and aggressive. Riot shield goons are slower and try to protect their allies by walking in front of them, but they’re easy to deal with once you figure out their pattern. Heavies, heavily armored and equipped with machine guns, can absorb a lot of damage and possess significant firepower. Attack dogs track and attack you, snipers require careful navigation to avoid their long-range shots, and, in the final missions, you face two assassins equipped with jetpacks, making them elusive and difficult to handle as they dodge and get close.

It's a nice variety of enemies. I'd say the military are the more difficult to fight against since they have guns and run just as fast as you do; they also like to flank or run behind you. One nice feature is that they take advantage of their riot shields by having two ranged goons stand behind each while firing at you.

There were a few boss fights in the game. They weren't particularly noteworthy but worked well enough for situations in which you face them.

EQUIPMENT


The game offers a diverse arsenal of weapons suited for various combat scenarios. The revolver is a powerful sidearm with limited ammo, capable of one-shotting most enemies. The regulator fires electric orbs that pull in enemies and then explode, which is both effective for crowd control and very fun. You usually see a bunch of limbs and blood flying around when that happens, fun times! For close-range combat, the pump shotgun stands out as a particularly strong choice. Of all the weapons, I used it the most, as it is a fantastic close-range option that kills most enemies with 1-2 shots and remains effective even at mid-range. Because of it shigher damage output, the AS Val proves a superior alternative to the AK despite its smaller 30-bullet magazine; it's particularly effective against tougher enemies like the green and blue commandos. The AK itself, however, with its 45-bullet magazine, still remains a reliable and efficient weapon.

The Tokarev is one of the weapons I used the least. It is useful at the beginning of the game but gets replaced soon by the AK. If you have a steady supply of AK ammo, you basically don't need the Tokarev anymore. The two-barrel shotgun offers significant firepower, especially against heavily armored foes. For explosive needs, grenades detonate on impact, and Molotov cocktails are ideal for trapping enemies in confined spaces. The bolt-action sniper rifle can eliminate most foes with one hit, though it struggles with heavies. The RPG-7 is invaluable for taking down large groups and helicopters.

The gunplay was very well done overall, and each weapon feels good. The recoil is manageable; my only issue is that none of the assault rifles have a red dot sight or similar attachment, which makes aiming a bit more difficult.

NEGATIVES
Many of the game’s negatives can be easily adjusted through in-game options. Features like head bobbing, weapon sway, blur, bloom, and other post-processing effects can be turned off to improve comfort. However, you do need to reload your game manually after each death, so frequent saving is advisable. While the game does include auto-saves, they are often placed at the beginning of fights, which can be inconvenient.

CONCLUSION
Overall, VLADiK Brutal is a solid game, especially considering it was made by one person over five years. It's got that gritty, post-Soviet vibe down and has some intense action, a bunch of cool Russian guns, and a good mix of enemies trying to murder you. The atmosphere in each level feels great and the gunplay is satisfying even if some weapons are clearly better than others.

Terminus: Zombie Survivors is “a 2D turn-based survival roguelike set during a zombie apocalypse.” In brass tacks: Terminus uses an action point system, making the player budget them out and decide what’s important for each turn he takes as he attempts to stay fed, watered, and warm. All of this goes on against a day/night cycle in which the zombies get nastier at night and resources quickly begin to dwindle.


It’s a simpler, less bloated, less gay version of Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead for people looking for a zombie survival game with actual goals and an actual endgame. It’s pretty fun, but it may leave CDDA veterans pining for something a bit more complex.

The primary goal is to survive long enough to reach the Terminus, the grand safehouse, which is always somewhere far to the north. The new endings include researching a cure for the plague, escaping the city, and taking it back by establishing bases.


When you first start, you have a survivor profile of one. The higher your profile, the more points you get to spend on unique starting traits. These include things like bigger morale boosts for smoking cigarettes, more hit points, and so on. Your profile levels up from completing runs and unlocking achievements. You may also get points for finishing the game with bonuses selected―you at least get a “COMPLETED” stamp for them―but the game isn’t very clear on it.


At the beginning, you have access to three basic occupations, and more become unlocked with every finished run. All occupations have one or more special skills. For example, the soldier is the melee fighter of the group and gets a big bonus for hitting zombies with things, while the student can speed read and reread books for more bonuses. Each occupation starts with an item, some predetermined stats, and some spendable points; the student is an exception, starting with no stats and 12 spendable points.

There are six stats:

• Strength - Determines how much you can carry before it starts to affect your APs per movement. Also helps you clear debris out of paths faster.
• Health - Determines how many APs you regenerate per turn.
• Observation - Determines how much of the area is revealed as you move.
• Combat - Determines how much damage you do per attack.
• Agility - Decreases AP cost for movement and increases dodge chance.
• Dexterity - Determines how fast you craft and how durable the things you make are. I think it also improves how fast you repair things since my dex monkey student could mend his clothes really fast, but it took my sausage fingered soldier all day to stitch a sweater.

Once you’re done making a character and choosing what he looks like from the head down, you can pick how hard you want things to be and the starting scenario, of which there are only a few to choose. The default is your standard end-of-the-world situation in which you rummage through homes, stores, and other places while trying not to die. Other scenarios are things like 'Out of Stock', in which all the special places have been picked nearly clean while houses have slightly more things, or the 'Frozen Zombies' scenario, in which everything begins coated in snow and you almost always die of exposure within hours. The only occupation I could see possibly surviving this is the Park Ranger, who has a class skill that gives resistance to cold exposure. You also have the option of running a custom game, but this shuts off achievements. Last of all, you can turn off permadeath, but don’t assume that turning it off makes the game easy: instead of dying, you walk back one step or one map, so if you were already starving to death or dying of disease, it probably won’t help much unless a lucky break was waiting for you on a nearby shelf.


You always start in a house at the bottom of the map with the Terminus somewhere in the far north. You have seven values to keep track of: Health, Action Points, Satiety, Hydration, Energy, and Morale. Weather and temperature play a role as well, and, as the game goes on, the days will grow colder and the nights will get longer, but Terminus does not run on realism. Water never freezes, and you can start a fire inside a building without burning it down. Staying well fed, hydrated, and happy also grants bonus APs per turn, but that's easier said than done. Perishable food begins to rot straight away, so finding sustainable sources becomes priority one. Water doesn’t evaporate, but may start turning up less later on, and most cooking recipes require it. Morale can be increased by sleep, booze, or antidepressants. You can also come across books like novels, which start with a 2 point bonus to morale and decrease as you read them, and bibles, which give a steady 1 morale per read, or 2 morale if read in a church. Yes, the word of God brings hope in times of despair, so it’s always worth having one on hand.

Once you’re out of APs, you end your turn (or, in emergencies, inject adrenaline shots, but mostly you wait). Each turn equates to one hour of time. After your turn, next is any survivors on the map not controlled by you, and then any zombies. Sunset starts at 20:00 and gets earlier as the game moves on. Zombies aren’t too bright during the day and lose track of you if you leave their sight, but they get more aggressive at night, during which you can’t see shit without a light, so it’s best to hole up close to sundown. Getting into a place can be an adventure in itself since a lot of places are locked up. If you have a crowbar or fire axe, you can pry doors and windows open quietly. Doors and windows can also be picked with a lockpick, but otherwise you’ll need to smash them down, which makes loads of noise.


Once you’re inside, don’t go expecting to turn any places into full-blown fortresses. At best, you can reinforce doors and windows a few times with planks or metal sheets and a hammer. You can also cover up windows with rags, or, if you’re lucky, you can make a gut bucket out of zombie guts and smear the windows and doors to make them invisible to nosy brain-eaters. The problem with spending resources on fortifying an area is that you’ll always be running out of resources and thus always on the move. You can craft traps to catch small critters, fish, and even plant crops, but that means coming back to check on things later, which takes more time. There's irony in setting a trap to catch food only to be unable to check it because it would mean starving to death.


As you continue to survive, you’ll gain experience. I’m pretty certain you get XP from doing just about everything from reading books to killing zombies, but the in-game help doesn’t say. Every time you level, you get to pick from three different skills at (almost) random. If you have any occupational skills left to level up, these will take priority in the slots. Otherwise, the skills are chosen at random and provide bonuses like searching shelves faster or starving a bit slower. Most of these skills have a level cap and take more than one character level or book to reach it. Stats also require books to raise, very big books that take a long time to read. If you intend to do any deep reading, it’s in your best interest to at least find a basic desk for a 10% reading bonus or travel to a library, if possible, for a 20% bonus, but, like everything else, this will take time and resources away from something else that may be a lot more important. While we're on the subject of books, there are also two special vehicle operator skills for boats and helicopters that require an entire series of books in order to learn. Once you know how to drive the vehicle of your choice, you'll still need to track down a marina for a boat (which is at the other end of the map), and, to be quite honest, I have no idea where they hide the helicopters (but it's probably on the other, other end of the map).


Traveling to a new place is as simple as finding the pathway at the edge of the area or scouting it through other means. Sometimes a path is blocked by debris, which means you either need to go around or move it with a shovel. Terminus is not an open-world, but a bunch of small zones linked by roads. On a normal map you’ll see three dangerous places which continually spawn more zombies; you can’t visit these, but the closer you get to them, the harder things will be. There are several resources that can help you scout ahead; one such is guidebooks, which let you find all the different grocery stores, gas stations, and so on on the map, if you take the time to read them. The most valuable of all is the road map, which lets you scout a few areas next to your location at the cost of some AP, but for less than it had cost had you traveled there on foot.

There are also ways to save your precious AP when traveling. The two relevant skills can be picked up either by leveling or from books. Pathfinder knocks 10% off the AP cost per skill level; Aradine’s Thread saves you a whopping 50% when travelling to any place you’ve already visited. As resources run low, you’ll be gambling between going to places where you’ve set up traps or water gatherers or somewhere new to see if it has something else you can swipe. You can save all of your AP if you can get a working car with gas. This is easier said than done, but if you manage to get a gas station working long enough to fuel up a car and fill some cans, the game becomes much easier. Points of interest include the usual sights in the end times: grocery stores, police stations, and so on. Supposedly there are gun stores, but these never showed up for me, not even after I scouted most of the map. I found one military base, but it was too far out of the way and I was starving, so I never tried to get there. One valuable type of place is fortified houses; these are where other survivors have holed up.


They won’t let you in, but they will give you jobs you can do to build trust. These always seem to be fetch quests of some kind: getting them food, bags, etc. In exchange, they’ll lower their rates for general trade and let you ask for favors. The more trust you have, the bigger the favors you can request, like asking for food or improving your gear. Knowing where the fortified houses are can be the difference between winning and losing. According to the achievements you can join a fortified house, but, like a number of other things in Terminus, it's rather vague on how to go about it, and it's probably quite a time investment.


No zombie game is complete without crafting, but this is another point on which Terminus breaks hard from CDDA. You won’t be crafting entire warehouses full of equipment to use in your fight for survival. In most cases, you’ll only make a few basic things and then move on. The game starts you off with recipes for rudimentary versions of most tools such as stone hammers, axes, and so on. Crafting books teach you how to make the real deals and that's it. There are no extra recipes to learn, no laser guns or double necked chainsaws. The only scenario in which you might make the real McCoy is Out of Stock, but you’ll never find enough metal items to break down into scrap in that scenario because it’s all...out of stock. I spent most of my crafting time making traps to catch food and needles to repair gear, and that was about it.


While there are quite a few cooking recipes in the game, good luck getting to make anything but the most basic ones. Cooking is more for preserving a meal or squeezing a few more points of satiety out of something simple. I've never been in a situation in which I've been able to make cheese or bread. I've only been able to pick vegetables once, which was when I came across a random garden, and I ate all the vegetables right away because I was starving (of course). It's as if these only recipes exist to taunt you while you choke down a bunch of rotten food and finish it off with an antibiotic chaser to get rid of the accompanying disease. Speaking of which, the medication system is very basic. The game keeps a running tally of the drugs you take: generic medication, which restores hit points, antibiotics, which remove disease, and painkillers, which can temporarily remove negative status effects. You also get things such as vitamins, which can boost APs for a few hours, adrenaline shots, which give you more on the fly, and sleeping pills, which boost sleep quality but tank your APs. As you take more meds, you will develop a headache, which makes it impossible to read and screws with accuracy; keep going, and it will turn into a severe headache; push it too far, and you'll pass out. This keeps the player from abusing drugs for perpetual APs or unlimited health when he's dying.


Gear in Terminus is dedicated mostly to keeping you warm: a bunch of topwear ranging from cardigans to padded coats, three types of gloves, and a selection of bags to help mitigate your weight. For some reason you never need to worry about your pants. I’ve only encountered two pieces of armor: makeshift armor made from some tape and a book that will take a single hit, and some kind of survival armor that can take a few swings. Most clothing has a small armor value, but that's a consolation prize; it's far better to not get hit.

All equipment, tools, weapons, and clothing have some kind of durability score, which is random. Not all pots and pans are created equal, so it’s in your best interest to find the most durable stuff you can or make it yourself, if you have high dexterity. All gear breaks down with time and usage, and the only way to fix tools and weapons is with a repair kit or wood glue. Wearables can be fixed with a needle and thread, which you’ll be doing quite often since clothing breaks down from the mere act of walking. Be you not careful, your precious hiking backpack can turn into a pile of rags while you traverse from one side of an area to the other.


Combat is easy to understand. You can strike at one of three parts of the body: head, torso, or legs. Only a strike to the head can kill a zombie, but some weapons are better suited for other parts of the body, and some zombies have armored noggins or armored everything. Every attack degrades your weapon, and every weapon has an associated proficiency, so you will become a master in the art of frying pan if you practice. Sometimes you’re better off taking out a zombie's arms or legs than trying to break through a helmet if it can’t bite you. If all else fails, you can shoot the bastards, provided you actually manage to find a gun and some ammo. When it comes to guns, all firearms run on universal ammunition, and all guns make noise unless modified. You can find gun parts on random zombies or in places like fortified houses, police stations, and gun stores (if they ever show up for you). In my experience, ammo is really rare and best saved for rainy days.

Zombies have three modes of attack: grabs, which drop your APs and do minor damage, claws, which do more damage and can cause bleeding, and bites, which only happen if you're already bleeding and out of APs. If you get bitten, you turn into a zombie unless you have the trait that lets you shrug it off as a treatable infection.


There isn’t too much variety among the shuffling hordes―no slime spewing boomers or long tongued smokers. However, there’s enough to keep you on your toes. Hitting a decaying zombie up close will give you disease. There are tough zombies that can take a major beating and knock off half your health in a few blows. You also get fast zombies that can close with you in a hurry, but these kinds are all few and far between. The thing that usually kills you is a lack of preparation.


Misery loves company, and sometimes you’ll come across other survivors along the way. Don’t expect anything deep, or even dialogue. Interaction is limited to building trust, trading, or threatening the other person. Building trust burns APs, but the more trust you have, the better trade rate you get. If you can get his trust to ten, you can ask the poor slob to come with you. After you’ve tamed another survivor, he's yours to micromanage, with all that implies. With one other person this isn’t too bad, but I can see having several becoming a hassle. The guy I picked up was level 1, and I was already towards the end of my run, so he wasn’t that helpful.


Once you have a grip on things, the goal is to find the Terminus. You can either brute force it by heading north and hoping to stumble across it, or, if you can get a radio working, you can tune into the signal ,which will pinpoint it for you. Once you get the signal, you can tune in once per day for a helpful message, which can be about something like a supply drop or a blocked road.


And then, whether safety at last or failure, a final tally of your score and the stuff you unlocked. I only played on normal and found the base game to be pretty easy once I figured out the gameplay loop. Out of Stock was quite a bit harder and I came close to losing several times. Every attempt at Frozen Zombies ended in a matter of minutes. I enjoyed Terminus quite a bit, and, while there were points where I could have stood a bit more simulation in my survival, I still appreciate not having to fuss over a hundred little details to try and make it to the next hour. It’s also nice to play a survival game that has a real ending. All in all, I had fun and finished the game a few times with a desire to try for more endings and scenarios. Be advised that there are no real modding capabilities for Terminus right now and the dev seems to be undecided on adding any.

If you’re interested in Terminus: Zombie Survivors, the game is currently out in Early Access and goes 1.0 on August 20th.