When I decided to have a child and started imagining what it might be like, I kind of understood that it would take a lot of time from all the things I used to put a lot of time into, like gaming and writing. Interestingly enough things didn't really turn out that way when work came in and ruined most of the time I had for gaming and writing long before my son did, meaning when he turned up I didn't really have to change much or sacrifice much in my routines - my son basically replaced the time I had put into work. So everything was just fine until I slowly realized something else was suddenly missing in my life, something I hadn't really thought about but that I actually had put a whole lot of time into - in fact more time the more I worked. I am talking about reading.
I've always loved to read and started out young when my overambitious parents gave me books way beyond my age that I struggled through to make them proud. Because of them I read books of for example HP Lovecraft, Orwell and stuff about philosophy well before my teens and in all honesty I don't think I actually understood much about them (I reread most of them later though, and they were at least good books). It's not like my parents efforts turned me into some sort of literature mastermind, but I at least did find a love for reading that is with me still today.
If someone were to ask me what my favorite genres were I'd probably say sci-fi, historical and factual books (the sci-fi most likely from my mom since she's a total sci-fi nut). To me, reading has always been somewhat like doing quests and completing a book and starting a new one is something I find immense satisfaction in. For this reason there are few books I've given up on (but there are a few, probably enough for their own list eventually!). At work I was known as "the girl who always reads" as I made sure to always have a book handy to fill out those little spaces of time when you have nothing to do and most people play Candy Crush Saga on their phones (nothing wrong with that, except King are total asshats). In my line of work, psychiatric care, there are many holes like these to fill and they allowed me to do a whole lot of reading. Time and opportunity I no longer have and my reading has taken a massive plunge, which definitely saddens me a bit.
My problem at the moment is that eventhough I love reading, I love gaming just that tiny bit more, so the few times I have to do whatever I like are often turned into gaming sessions. Lately I've tried to end the day with some reading in bed however, both because reading makes me sleepy as hell and because I just want to squeeze in some reading somewhere. In the light of not reading however, I have been thinking a lot about books I love and wish I could read again. So here is my top 5 favorite books! All the books on this list are books that are my personal favorites (obviously), books I've read several times and could read a hundred times more without getting bored of because they're just that great. But first I thought I'd start with some honorable mentions, this is not something I normally do for my top-lists, but these are a couple of books that deserve to be mentioned, and if you're into reading a check out, eventhough they didn't make it onto the list.
Honorable Mentions The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco - I actually saw the movie before I read the book. I loved the movie, decided to read the book and loved that one even more. It's a low tone murder mystery, a bit in style with an episode of Murder She Wrote or Midsomer Murders. Set in a historical mileu, the atmosphere and storytelling of this book is just great. Musashi by Eiji Fushikawa - A grand story about honor, betrayal and love set in rural Japan. Obviously based on the sword master Miyamoto Musashi this book has a pretty epic feel to it. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden - I feel like the character portrayal of the main character Chiyo, and actually all the characters around her are just so good in this book. You really care and feel for them and eventhough they're entirely fictional they feel like real people you wish you could've known or met. To the Edge of the Sky by Anhua Gao - I am a huge fan of reading about Mao China, because it's such a fascinating and horrifying telling of what man is capable of under pressure and extreme circumstances (much like Nazi Germany). Biographies from people who experienced it are my favorites since they're written by people who made it (obviously) and so offer some silver lining to all the gruesome.
5. The Keeper of the Isis Light by Monica Hughes
As far as sci-fi stories go this one isn't bombastic or grand in any way. Unlike for instance the Isaac Asimov series it doesn't stretch over the entire galaxy but takes place on the planet Isis, where the orphaned girl Olwen lives alone with her guardian Guardian (yes that is his name). Olwen is basically a lightkeeper on Isis, guarding it for future settlers which arrive on her 16th birthday. The story that unfolds between Olwen and the new settlers is so greatly written, with a neat twist that I at least did not see coming when I first read it in my early teens, I just love coming back to it over and over. It is the kind of science-fiction story I wish I had written myself. This book is the first in a series of three that further explores the interaction between the settlers and Olwen and eventually as time passes also how the settlement evolves into its own society with religion and laws based on things that occur in the first and second book. It's really interesting to see how ordinary things in the first book turn into mythologies, rules and laws by the third book and how the people reason around it - it makes you think a lot about how these things might have come to be in society around us.
The first book is definitely the best in the series, although they're all well written and worth a read as they explore different aspects of human interaction and social development, subjects that really interest me.
4. The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
As far as I know, Ken Follett is mostly known for writing thrillers, but The Pillars of the Earth is nothing like that. Set in 12th century England, it's about building a cathedral and weaves in the life stories of families around it. It's extremely well written and also has some very naughty sex scenes in it which made me all blushy when I first read it around 14 or so. As with most other books on this list, the characters are well developed and it's just like a really good tv-series where you just need to know what happens next and really feel for the characters. In fact, it's a lot like Game of Thrones, but with a lot fewer people (something I think some people would welcome). In fact, this book sports a character mean enough to rival Joffrey. I just recently found out it was actually turned into a miniseries (and a board game!), that I have to watch now of course.
3. Robots & Empire by Isaac Asimov
I like basically everything written by Isaac Asimov, but I've got to say that his entire Robots, Empire and Foundation series is truly epic. There is the occasional dull book in that series (which spans 14 novels, not counting short stories!), but in total it tells of one of the best and most fascinating science fiction universes I've ever read about. Originally these three series (Robots, Empire, Foundation) weren't connected, but eventually Asimov decided to write a couple of books that would bridge them. Robots & Empire serves to bridge between the first three Robot books into the later four Empire books. It continues the story of the three novels in the Robot series which follows the detective Elijah Bailey, who in this book is long dead. This book follows two of the main robots that also appear in this series, and explains a lot of the things that are later referred to in the Empire series in a very satisfactory way, by giving us the unknown fourth robot law, which is why the book is called "The Unknown Law" in swedish. The Robot series was always my favorite in the entire Saga for characters, and reading this closing novel was actually quite emotional and without giving away too much of the story I will tell you that this book made me cry.
2. Black Holes and Time Warps by Kip S. Thorne
This book is actually not a novel, but a factual book about pretty much exactly what the title says - Black Holes and Time Warps and everything around it. The one thing I love about this book, besides the mind boggling "I am a tiny speck in the Universe" kind of mentality it manages to put me in, is that no matter how many times I read it I always seem to discover (ie understand) something new about it. Although it is written in a very understandable language, even for someone like me who only really has a big interest but no real knowledge about the kind of physics in this book, the themes are totally mind blowing in a way few novels can be. This book proves the old saying that the truth always outshines imagination.
1. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas
You've all probably heard of this one, and if you haven't read it, I couldn't recommend it more. I had something of a "read all the classics" phase a couple of years back and went through a lot of the Old Great Ones - one of which turned out to be on my top 5 most disliked books (a list that's probably coming in the future)! And then there was this one. The first time I read it I was truly glued to the pages, it was one of those page-turners I just couldn't put down. The story of how Edmond Dantes becomes set up, spends years in prison only to come back and exact his gruesome revenge is so darn good, after I had finished the book I felt I needed to see every version of the story that was out there. I watched several movie and series adaptions, all of which came nowhere close to being as good as the original book of course (the best one was actually an anime called Gankutsou, the worst one is the movie from 2002). I definitely don't want to ruin any of the story here, but Dantes doesn't just have one person to get his revenge on. The intricacies of the way he goes about it means you can't tell what's going to happen next, his plan is executed in many stages where some people are punished and some people are rewarded. It's without a doubt the best revenge-story out there because it's just not as simple as the bad guys getting what's coming for them. No matter how many times I read this book, I never ever tire of it.
The more you love something, the more it hurts when it's gone. That's something I am pretty sure all of you have experienced, hopefully not too often. I am sad to tell you that my lovely little cat girl Leia has passed away, she would've turned 17 this year. I am writing this post because I feel like she, just has her brother who passed away 5 years ago, deserves it and because everyone should know what an awesome little cat lady she was.
Leia and Luke were the only pets I ever had (yes, named after the Skywalkers!). When I moved from home, one of the hardest things to move away from were definitely these two little rascals and I knew I would even miss their pain in the ass rummaging in the middle of the night.
Leia was so very curious, she loved running up to us when we came home just to see what we might have in your bags. She climbed everything she could see and I can't even count the amount of times we had to pull (yes, pull!) her down from the roof of my dads balcony because she couldn't get down herself. Our curtains took their share of her escapades as well. She quickly learned how to open doors around her which forced us to take counter measures to make sure she didn't let her brother out. In fact she hated closed doors and always made sure we knew that she wanted us to open them when we had them locked. Leia never shied away from vocalizing her thoughts or needs, but she gave twice as much love and attention as she asked for. Countless are the times she came comforting me when I was sad, it's like she knew.
Leia loved socializing and never went out on her own, she always wanted company. Taking a walk she used to run after us, meowing along to make sure we wouldn't forget her. When something happened at home she made sure to get a spot where she could sit and observe. She hated loud noises and would meow angrily if someone sneezed or did the dishes. She was playful and loved playing fetch. Her favorites were crumpled little balls of plastic bags that she wanted us to throw so that she could run off and bring them back to us. She'd drop them at our feet, look up expectantly and meow. She'd go crazy if there was promise of mince meat or chicken.
My sweet, lovely, beautiful little girl - I love you so very much and I hope there is someone to play fetch with you, talk to you and hug you wherever you are now. I will never forget you and I will always miss you.
I've been talking a lot lately about all the games I've bought and that I am currently trying to work my way through, this got me eventually to thinking about a couple of games I've bought throughout my life that I actually regret buying. It happens a lot less frequent than you'd think. In fact, finding 5 entries for this list was difficult and I just barely scraped enough of games together. Obviously, before there was massive Steam sales, each game I bought was most often carefully scouted beforehand, to make sure that the money put down on it was going to be worth it. Not only were the games pricier, I also had less money to spend on games and if I bought a bad one that was what I had to live with until I had saved up enough money for the next one, something that normally took a couple of months. One benefit to this was that I gave each game more time and so an initally boring game could grow on me, something I miss about the fast paced flow of games that is common place now. If a game doesn't amuse me within the first 30 minutes, I have 20 other ones to take its place instantly and sometimes I find it hard to motivate myself to pain through something I'm not enjoying when I could be doing something fun instead. But I digress, and that feels like material for a different post.
My point here however is that the games on this list aren't necessarily games that I simply didn't enjoy but rather a combination of a game I really looked forward to trying, was quite disappointed with and subsequently felt like I had spent a lot more money on than I thought it was worth. If I pay a small sum for a moderately fun to boring game, I probably won't regret that buy much. A good example is Skyrim, which although I ended up not liking very much, I definitely don't regret buying it, and it was still among the most expensive games I bought that year. The difference between Skyrim for instance and the games on this list is that I wasn't expecting too much from Skyrim, although a lot more than I got, and I think I got my moneys worth out of it in the end after all. For the following games however, not so much.
5. Rayman Origin (N3DS) This game is only fifth on this list because it's actually a really good game and I can appreciate it as such eventhough I ended up not liking it. After having played a lot of Rayman on the GBA, I decided to grab this game on a whim when I was on something of a shopping spree in a Game store. It was on sale already and since it was marked up in pounds, which are worth ten times the swedish krona making the price look ridiculously cheap, I didn't really think much about it. Unfortunately it turns out that A. I really suck at platformers and B. Platformers are just not my thing (these are probably connected somehow).
Impending doom - playstationer.net
Sure, I had had a lot of fun with Rayman on the GBA, but Rayman Origin wasn't enough like it for me to enjoy it in the same way. Because of this I was quite disappointed when the gameplay wasn't exactly like I remembered it and even more so when the game kept kicking my ass way more than Rayman on the GBA ever did. To put it simply, Rayman Origin was way too difficult for me and my tendency to get easily frustrated did not help. I was hoping for some simple platforming fun, but I realize this was just not the game to choose for a newb platformer like me. In the end I don't regret buying Rayman Origin too much since it's not a game I mind owning, but it does make me sad knowing I will most likely never finish it and I really wouldn't have minded never having picked it up either.
4. Suikoden V (PS2) Two of the games on this list I've bought purely based on someone elses recommendation without much prior knowledge of it - Suikoden V is one of those games. I was up visiting my parents, walked into a game store and found that one of my old childhood friends was now working in that store. I couldn't stand the guy when we were kids, he was an arrogant prick to put it nicely, but he had turned into a really nice guy as an adult. I asked him if he could recommend some game for me and he suggested Suikoden V. Since I quite like JRPGs and was in a bit of a slump not having played any good ones for a while, I was eager to get my hands on something interesting. I had heard of the name Suikoden, but never played any of the games. The case looked interesting enough and the back description was just as vague as you'd expect from a fairly generic RPG of this style.
Nowadays I always check the internet for metascores and/or reviews before I buy anything I don't know much about, if there is a larger sum of money involved, just so I will have a rough idea of what I am looking at basically. But at that point smartphones weren't a thing yet so I had only his recommendation to go of.
I wish I was this happy playing it - decaires.wordpress.com
I've tried to play Suikoden V three times, and each time I get tired at about the same place, roughly 2 hours into the game. I'm not entirely sure why I lose interest at this point - I just don't care about the characters, the intro part is too long and too boring and I guess a lot of it is just stuff I've seen before without it being engaging enough to want to do again. I will most likely give Suikoden V yet another try in the future, maybe it's one of those games that gets a bit better if you give it some time.
3. Might & Magic Heroes VI (PC) I am a massive fan of Heroes of Might and Magic 3, and because of this I've felt compelled to at least check out all the other parts of the series. First up was HoMM 4 and initially I didn't check it out at all, I assumed it would at least be somewhat as fun as HoMM3. Even if it was only half as fun it would pretty damn fun, I decided. Oh how wrong I was. I don't remember much about HoMM4, I only remember that they had massively changed the map and I was completely confused about what anything was when running around. In HoMM3 most things are very clear whereas in HoMM4 I couldn't separate background objects from important ones, and that was just one of the problems I had with the game. It wasn't half as fun as HoMM3, it was maybe a 100th.
Pretty does not a fun game make - cdon.se
After the mistake I did with HoMM4 I decided to make sure any subsequent games looked decent before I paid for them - I didn't even buy HoMM5 because it seemed like it was too much like HoMM4 and not enough like HoMM3. When what would essentially be HoMM6 was released, although they then felt the need to rename it to MMH6 for some reason, I actually thought that they might've gotten it right this time. I didn't think it would be as fun as HoMM3, I realized that game would be pretty damn hard to beat, but maybe it could at least come pretty close. The combat system looked fun and I liked the better graphics and updated models.
So I bought it and I really, really wanted to like it. It was far from shit like HoMM4 so at first it reeled me in and got me really hopeful about being quite fun. Unfortunately it quickly turned out it wasn't, I guess I just couldn't come to terms with the changed style of town building and other changes they had made to the winning HoMM3 formula. I think my disappointment with this game is the reason it is on this list rather than HoMM4. It really got my hopes up and crushed them pretty badly, and still to this day I wonder why it's so hard to make another decent HoMM game (and do you really need to rename it?). HoMM2 was great though.
2. Bastion (PC) Another game I bought because someone recommended it to me, and not only that person but pretty much any reviewer on the internet said that this game would be so much fun and worth buying. Obviously you won't always agree with reviewers, for instance my bf thinks The Walking Dead games are shit whereas everyone else in the world seem to think they're ambrosia for the mind. To me it was just about running around shooting stuff, which can be fun - but it wasn't. I didn't get passed the first stage, I think, before I decided that clearly this game was just not for me.
Why was this so fun? - supergiantgames.com
I guess my problem with Bastion is that not only was I disappointed in how much I didn't enjoy it, but because I didn't listen to my inner self when I actually knew I wasn't going to like it. I bought it simply because it was recommended and I wish I would've given it more thought. It's not about the money, because it wasn't very expensive, it just annoys me to think that I had no reason to buy it and did it anyway because I was stupid at that particular moment. Hopefully I've learned something from that experience.
1. Unlimited Saga (PS2) This is another game on this list put here mostly because of the emotional attachment I have to it, in a negative sense (just as with Bastion). I was maybe 16 and had seen Unlimited Saga on the store shelves. I don't know if you've seen the case, but at the time I thought it looked amazing. Someone should've stepped in right then and there and told me not to judge a game by its covers, because I was completely awed by the game based on nothing but how the case looked. This was during a time when most of my games would come from my parents during birthdays/christmas, so naturally I wished for it - and got it.
It just screams "buy me!" - obsolete-tears.com
I was thrilled and overjoyed, as you are when you get a game you've really wanted to play and immediately popped it into my ps2 to give it a go. I was expecting something along the lines of Final Fantasy, at least and was completely confused and utterly disappointed when what I got was nothing like it. Not only was it nothing like Final Fantasy, it was nothing like any RPG I had seen before. I played for an hour or two, not understanding what was going on or why the game was so weird. I turned it off and haven't played it since.
That would've been all well and nice if not for the fact that I had known that I had begged my parents to buy it and they had spent a good chunk of money getting it for me in the hopes that it would make me happy. Of course my dad asked me if I liked it and I had to white lie something along the lines of "yeah it seems interesting" or whatever I might've said while silently hating myself for not loving it. If I had bought it myself I would've been the only one to suffer, but now I had fooled my parents into wasting money on that piece of crap for me, and that made me feel so awful.
Even more annoying is the fact that I've lost it since, and now I sit wanting to give it another go, thinking that I might enjoy it at this age. In the end that game will always be a bother for me, for the massive hopes I had for it, the massive let down it turned out to be, how it made me feel like I let my parents down and how it's gone now that I want to give it another chance. That game is one of those things on my mind when my brain feels like it wants to torment me about thinking about things that make me feel bad. I know it's just a game, but damn that damn game.
Woah, hold up. I aint dead, I just dug myself into another project for a while, but now I am back here again to give you a little update on what's going on!
First things first, the reason I have been a bit silent on the blog front (although not for the first and probably not the last time) is simply because I finally got around to do Let's Plays like I wanted. Not just collaboration co-op Let's Plays, but my own ones. I don't need to say much about them I think - I'm having a lot of fun doing them obviously, the quality is so-so as I am using a table top microphone and suck at editing, but just as with my blogging I do it because it's fun and if someone else has some enjoyment out of it that's a nice bonus. Go check them out if you're interested!
So now that I've nerded down into Let's Playing and got that show on the road basically, I am back with motivation to blog. My problem at the moment is that the few moments of free time I have during the day go to gaming, and Let's Playing combines itself a bit better with that than the blogging does. Both the blogging and the reading have been a bit neglected since I became a parent, apparently gaming is the top of my prio list, just after my son obviously. I am not lacking ideas for posts fortunately, at least I have that. I think about things to write about every day and scribble little notes in my note book that I always have handy. It is simply a matter of finding some time, and when I have the time it also has to coincide with motivation. But enough about that! What games have I been checking out in this new year?
I finished off Fallout and started Fallout 2. I was a bit disappointed stumped with my experience of Fallout, it seems that what I remembered of the game from watching friends play as a kid was pretty much all there was to it. In case you haven't played it there is some spoilers inc here now. I pretty much just ran around on random and managed to solve the water chip quest and then also randomly ran into the Super Mutant Military Base well before I was ready for it. I had to reload my save many, many times to manage to escape out of that area, but that also meant that once I got the quest to go there I knew exactly where it was and finished that fairly easily. I probably lucked out, but still felt like the game was extremely short. I was still eager to try out Fallout 2 however.
I see this screen a lot... - fallout.wikia.com
Turns out I've played it before, albeit not far. I recognized the initial cave and probably played a bit outside of Arroyo. I didn't like the time limit given to you in Fallout, so I am glad you're a bit more free to explore in Fallout 2. So far I absolutely love it, it feels like Fallout 2 is everything I missed in Fallout. There is just more of everything that made Fallout fun, so many quests and places to discover. At first I was very careful and barely dared talking to anyone for fear of them either killing me or me just screwing up some option or quest. As I've played on however I've decided to just play a more of a "meh screw it" style, where I just move along and if shit happens, it happens. I can't be bothered to worry too much about missing out on some content, but feel like that's where a replay will come in handy later on instead. Shortly put - I've come to terms with not getting everything on my first playthrough, and this is yet another level for me in my gaming evolution. I feel like many modern games not only spoonfeed you how, when and where to do everything, you can often feel safe that the game won't screw you over. Fallout, and most other RPGs from this time are not as nice. If you accidentally kill the guy who was part of a quest that would've given you an awesome armor, you are shit out of luck and without that armor (unless you reload obviously). But I like that, it gives me more satisfaction when I actually succeed with getting or finding something.
I'm glad, because before I probably would've just been angry that I missed out on something. I remember how angry I got that I missed a secret summon in Final Fantasy X, when my then-bf found it. I got so angry in fact that I stopped playing the game, since everything would be harder for me because I didn't have that one summon. Ridiculous, I know. Fallout 2 has proven to be the perfect teacher of "let it go" for me, because there is just no way to perfect that game without cheating. I am not beyond cheating! That is exactly what I would do normally as soon as I feel like I've missed something remotely useful. Fallout 2 doesn't even make cheating easy, as the quests are so intricate and ellaborate that even when I tried to read up on one of them I found myself more confused than before. That is when I decided to stop worrying, just do shit and see what happened. And I love it. Thank you Fallout 2 for teaching me that I don't need to find everything to have a good gaming experience.
It's so cool, they even play it in WoW! - blizzplanet.com
I've also been trying out Hearthstone, so far only very shortly however. I can not believe the hype around it, I mean it seems to be huge around the internets. My twitter feed has been going hot with talk about it, and so before the open beta I was very eager to get to give a try, especially since I am quite a big fan of card games of any kind. So far I am not wowed though. I realize that the most fun is probably in the pvp, which I haven't tried yet - I even read a review of it that pretty much summed up my thought so far of it, saying that the initial impression isn't all that great but that it quickly grows on you and then firmly sinks its claws in you. I will probably get back to you with a more proper review on it, I have already written down a pages worth in my little note book with thoughts on Hearthstone so hopefully that is a blog post that'll get written. At the moment I definitely feel like I need to give it more playtime before I can give it a just judgement however, so I'll get back to you on that.
I've started playing Chtulhu Saves the World as well, it's a cute and simple little indie RPG. It's very generic, but I don't think it's trying to be anything else and it has a lot of humour and heart. It's perfect to kill those short moments of free time and has an interesting battle system actually. It's also something I might write a little review of some day. I probably should stop half-promising all these things!
That's pretty much what I've got rolling at the moment, not counting the games I currently Let's Play - Castlevania: Circle of the Moon (which is a ton of fun!), Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (classic point & click, I love it) and Bioshock (I'm really looking forward to trying Bioshock 2 as well).
Although this was just a boring update post, I am hoping to get some other posts up in a near future (there I go with half-promises again). Like I said I have a lot of ideas so it's just about writing them down really. Maybe even within a month this time!
This is a review of the game Krater, a game I've wanted to make a review of for quite some time now. I bought it already when it was released in late 2012 and had played for quite some hours when my savefile got lost in the twisting nether that is the cloud save of Steam. I took a break from the game then simply because the idea of restarting from the beginning at that point wasn't as interesting as some other games I was busy with. I did get back to Krater however, and enjoyed it almost even more the second time around. It is very lazy in its construction, yet has something charming and engaging about its gameplay. It has a simple flavor, but if it's a flavor you enjoy there is still many hours of fun to be got from this game. So what is Krater all about?
Krater is a style of dungeon crawler game released by the swedish company Fatshark in 2012. Wikipedia calls it a squad-based real-time strategy role-playing game, which is a mouthful but quite accurate and also goes to show how many pools Krater is trying to dip its toes into. In gameplay it mostly resembles games like Fallout, it even has pretty much the exact same kind of overworld travel-map, complete with random encounters of varying difficulty and is set in an post-apocalyptic world. It also borrows elements from Diablo/Torchlight kind of games. You play with a team of three characters that bring different skills and roles to your group. The Bruiser is basically the tank and has taunting and aoe style skills, the Medikus is the healer, the Regulator the CC-character and the Slayer brings the most dps. You're free to choose your party set up yourself but as there are four roles but only three party slots you're limited in your choices. Do you bring more damage to the group or do you prefer to have a tank? Do you bring three healers or play a more balanced setup? The idea is interesting and does allow for a more personalized and varied playstyle, especially if you choose to take on missions with different setups or want to do a second playthrough a different way - this is a route I took myself for my second try.
Each character in your party has two skills based on their role, the Bruiser has two tank style skills, the Medikus two healing style skills and so on. These skills have to be actively played, the rest of the time your characters will auto-attack. You will gain experience, can equip different weapons and trinkets and most importantly; personalize each characters strengths by adding buffs and implants that increase your stats. These buffs and implants can be both found on mobs and crafted, the same goes for weapons and trinkets. Both your characters skills and their stats can be buffed this way, for instance you can add a stamina buff to a skill meaning your character will gain an increase to stamina for a short amount of time when they use that skill.
Krater sports a resource-less cooldown based combat system similar to Guld Wars 2 and WAR, a system I quite like and that also works well in this game. You also heal up automatically once you're out of combat, allowing you to go all in for each fight without having to worry about any other resource management than timing your skills. This is definitely something that could've been a really fun way of dealing with combat if the game wasn't overall so easy. Now the system mostly only allows you to steamroll through the content without much trouble. There are also some interesting gameplay elements in this type of party-setup that I find they could've done a lot more with (and also think should exist in more games). I realize they probably wanted to keep your skill set fairly simple since combat is done in real time with all three characters simultaneously. In reality that does give you six skills (two per character) and three trinkets to keep track off each battle - and in the heat of an intense fight this is also where Krater really shines. Having to keep track of and prioritize your skills and maximize your characters strengths is when it gets really challenging and fun. The amount of skills is also not the issue I have with the game, I find that two per character in a fight is a pretty good amount and any more could easily become overwhelming. I would love some more choice in skills however, maybe giving each character some ten different skills out of which you can have two active at any moment allowing for more variation between the fights. As it is now it is very easy to become a monotonous repetition of the same buttons being pressed, especially for the simpler fights (which are in majority). Eventhough you can put different buffs on your skills, it's still the same skill which means the more you play the more each fight becomes a routine thing to get through rather than requiring much thought.
Admittedly this isn't very different from the typical dungeon crawler game like Torchlight or Diablo, where hordes of mobs are meant to be dealt with swiftly and the odd boss is supposed to bring the real challenge, but Krater doesn't present encounters in the same way. Instead here we have the stationary group of mobs that you engage on your own, much like in a World of Warcraft instance. This gives you plenty of time to prep beforehand, if needed (which it isn't) and the difficulty of the game is quite low even if you choose to play on the hardest mode. The modes don't actually change the difficulty of the encounters, but rather change the way the game treats your deaths. On the easiest nothing happens when you die, on normal difficulty you're allowed three deaths before your characters is useless and has to be resurrected, and the hardest difficulty has permanent deaths. Permanent deaths is not an issue to me, but since it doesn't actually increase the difficulty of the game, just makes it more punishing when you make a mistake I don't feel like these difficulty levels add any fun value to gameplay.
As it is now, Krater is the most fun when you accidentally pull an extra group of enemies and have to deal with more than you initially planned to. This is when quick and strategic thinking is truly rewarded - where you have to make sure your weaker characters aren't being targeted, while making sure you're keeping everyone alive, tanking, healing, ccing and dpsing all at the same time. These moments are rare (unless you force them) and I would've loved to see more of it. Not even the few boss fights engage much since they're mostly just about outhealing the incoming damage, much like the Patchwerk fight in WoW (if you remember that).
This being said, Krater still offers pretty much the same addictive elements that most other dungeon-crawler style games do. You kill heaps of mobs, loot loads of items, hope for something rare - rinse and repeat. Although there really isn't much variety in the encounters or environments (if you've seen one cave you've seen them all), I still have fun and want to check just another cave or grotto to see what's at the end, much like the repetative gamestyle of Skyrim still entertained a lot of people with constant promises of gold and glory around the next corner. The caves are also randomized, meaning that each venture will be different to the next even if you go into the same one. This is a small comfort for all the repetitiveness however.
There is also a DLC out now that I haven't checked out, as far as I know it "only" adds another type of character. More DLCs like this are planned.
Handling your characters works well enough, there is some delay when choosing skill sometimes, but I wonder if it's me or the game being at wrong there. This only becomes an issue when my heals don't go off timed as I want them to, risking to kill off my characters because the keys don't respond properly. There are other bugs in the game that can be frustrating however, the loss of a save file is a major drawback for instance. I have no idea how this happened and I can't entirely blame it on the game either, it might as well have been on Steams end. Sometimes when loading up the game it doesn't full screen properly, making it impossible to navigate across the screen. At this point you simply need to restart it to solve it, but it's still annoying. Also, don't think about minimizing the game while playing as this will result in the same issue. Although not a bug I also find it annoying that there is no key to target your party, the only way to do it is to traditionally mark it with your mouse cursor. Most of the time this isn't an issue, but in the heat of battle it can be tricky to find all your characters to target and give them all a command. Sometimes they're not even all on the screen making it impossible to target all at once. Characters also have a cute knack of wandering off on their own at times, they never go very far but it's still weird when it happens, not to mention potentially dangerous.
Another thing worth mentioning are the loading times which can be very long at times - see the video for an example. Fortunately you don't come across areas that need to load that much often, so it's not something that becomes very annoying, we're not talking PSX style loading times between every scene.
Aesthetically I quite like Krater. Swedes will have extra fun with this game since so much of it refers to SWedish locations - Krater is obviously the swedish word for "crater" and Solside is swenglish for "sunny side" (Sol is the swedish word for sun). The references are many and obvious to a swede in the game, you have locations like "Elmerhult" after Älmhult where the creator of IKEA is born and "Norrmalm" which is an area in Stockholm. You kill "Vargs" and "Brölbjörns" which is swedish for wolfs and roarbears (to give you a direct translation, I have no idea what a "roarbear" is though) and the currency is in Kronor just like in Sweden, among other things.
Fatshark have also made some interesting choices to make it easy on themselves when programming the characters - they all have masks meaning they removed the need to animate any faces. As lazy as it is, I also find it a stroke of genius in all honesty because it works, the setting of a post-apocalyptic world allows for it. You won't marvel at anything you see, most things are, just as the combat elements, repeated over and over. As mentioned, each cave or basement you wander through look pretty much like the others. They're pretty but also pretty uninteresting in the long run, like that cute girl/guy you talk to in a bar just to realize after some conversation that there wasn't much more to get under that nice looking exterior. This also goes for the sound in the game, both music and sound effects get the job done without wowing you in any way. It gets the job done and never bothers you, but it also doesn't do any more than that.
I feel like that pretty much sums up my feelings with this game. I have put in some 30 hours of gameplay into it and will put in many more I am sure, I definitely feel like completing it (which I haven't yet) and I am not yet bored of it. Krater picks out some great gameplay elements from other games and collects into something that could potentially have been really good. Unfortunately I don't think Krater is using all the potential these ideas harbor and a lot can be put down to repetitiveness. The gameplay is fun but easily gets overused and I wish they would've fleshed out their ideas a bit more. Krater is a lot like a low budget action movie - it won't blow your mind or show you anything you haven't seen before, but if you go in with the right frame of mind it will provide you what you're looking for - a few hours of simple entertainment. If you like dungeon crawling Fallout/Diablo-esque games I do recommend at least checking this game out, it's perfect for when you have that odd piece of time to kill.
