Crucible Mode is the first DLC for Grim Dawn, a game I have enjoyed very much. A battle arena for this ARPG where you could - according to all documentation I've seen on it - start with a fresh level one character? That sounded like a good idea! That being said, I was sorely bummed by it, even if I gave it the time to try and see if there was any enjoyment to get out of it. Sadly, there wasn't much. Bad design decisions made the core concept fall flat for me.
Super Chibi Knight is a zelda 2 inspired game, which is interesting, but the execution is kinda lacking. The game has its charm but I really didn't have fun playing it, so I think that I gave it a fair shake, but poor controls and weird difficulty made me just stop after only a few hours.
Space Marshall is a neat action RPG on iOS where you play a space cowboy that goes after various criminals using guns and explosives. It's not entirely perfect, but I had a good time with it, especially since the mix of twin stick controls and touch screens doesn't always work. I could see this game work on other platforms as well, but it doesn't detract from the experience; A nice shooter with unlockable gear and replayability - perhaps a bit too much.
Grim Dawn is the spiritual successor to Titan Quest, an Action RPG that I've played for a great number of hours back in the days. Backed from their own website, then on kickstarter, it came out only a short while ago and I've managed to play through most of it as two different classes. It's a really neat game full of interesting mechanics that keep the genre fresh and leave the nostalgia simmering below the surface. I had a ton of fun with it, even if - as usual - some aspects did leave me a bit frustrated and could've been ironed out a little.
Victor Vran is a great game, it's the follow up to the Incredible Adventures of Van Hellsing that I always wanted, an Action RPG with tons of contents, reasons to explore the arsenal at your disposal, challenges, crafting, loot and a weird almost moba-like core mechanic. I completed the game in about 18 hours, but that's mainly because I messed around all the challenges and secrets to find before finally going to that last boss, I had a really good time with it.
Path of Exile is still a 5/5 game in my book, but this expansion by itself isn't that great. I'm not a huge fan of precise trap-dodging in action RPGs, especially in ones where lag spikes are quite frequent on my end. Luckily, dodging stuff isn't the only new mechanic added in PoE:A, with subclasses to unlock, more gear to find and more ways to find it, this adds another layer on top of an already pretty great game while bringing a few more bits of new content.
There is a really neat free to play third person action-RPG at the core of Warframe. Something that might have stuck with me for hundreds of hours in other circumstances. Almost everything was there; The mechanics were solid, the core gameplay was fun, there seemed to be enough customization/progression options and overall this grindy feel that came from the whole thing made me think this was going to be my next 'filler' game; A game that I'd play whenever I had free time with nothing else to do. Sadly, it all broke down after a while and the came couldn't keep me interested a single second more.
Devilian made me feel gross; Devilian made me feel like I had clicked on one of these stupid 'come play with us my lord' flash ads that would creep on the internet if I disabled ad-block for a few seconds; Presented as a free-to-play action mmorpg, my interest was piqued by the mix between Diablo-like gameplay and MMO systems. This game is not entirely without merit, but there are a few glaring flaws both in the way it plays and how it markets itself. I had a few good moments with it, but not much more. I'd rather play Path of Exile or Diablo 3 when the next season starts.
Gauntlet isn't half-bad, I quite enjoyed my time with it. I have never played the original arcade classic, but this version is a tough little action-rpg where you kill tons of enemies, dodge traps and solve simple puzzles in a dual joystick shooter-like style of gameplay with light character customization. The lack of real progression and the clunkiness of the controls in some spots made me put it down, but I still had a good experience and would shoot the food again.
Apotheon is a bit weird. It has the trappings of a metroidvania, but some of its elements feel more like Dark Souls-ish systems, and the basic controls didn't feel good to me at all. I gave it a fair try, but I didn't enjoy it very much. I'll take a few seconds to say that it has a cool graphical style and potentially neat concepts, however.
Does anyone remember what D3 was like when it came out? What a shame, what a bunch of wasted potential. I vividly remember not being unable to complete any kind of end-game fight since enemies overpowered me by a huge difference. There was also no good loot to find, everything 'nice' I had at that point was bought at the Auction House using gold. Also enemies regenerated when you died, so fights were terribly boring. There was nothing to do except run the story over and over... Heck, I remember when hanging around Tyrael in Act 3 and leave him kill stuff was a viable strategy! The diablo 3 expansion fixed most of these problems, and 2.3 is just another step in a path of greatness.
In this latest PoE expansion, a few things change, a few are added and much is left as-is. It's still a good occasion to come back and play some more Path of Exile and I'm having a good time with it, but PoE:A doesn't solve all my problems with this game. In the crowded realm of action RPGs, it's very hard to strike a good balance between complexity and fun and I feel that PoE is leaning too much on complexity while keeping the game a bit too obtuse and difficult to fully enjoy.
I had never played a Fable game before and this looked like a good thing to try. I had heard much about these games, how they were ambitious in some ways and failed in others, and while I didn't know what I was getting into, I thought it would be some kind of third person action RPG with farting. It was more or less that, but the action RPG part didn't feel great and I also didn't feel much involved in the farting aspect of the game. I know this game is also quite old, but there's not much I can do about it, playing it only now.
Devious Dungeon 2 is okay as an iOS platformer with RPG mechanics. It's fairly balanced, the difficulty curve goes up in a manageable way and although coins are sold, you don't really need to buy anything with real money. That's probably one of my biggest issue with the game, in a weird way, there isn't much to spend your money on in order to get an easier time with the game. But that put aside, it's a pretty fun one.
Hero Siege reminds me of a 2d top-down version of Diablo where all you do is fight wave after wave of monsters. It's a pretty enjoyable game with a few weird design decisions and a few annoying bugs here and there. I had a pretty good time with it, so if killing stuff forever to get loot to kill more stuff sounds like something appealing to you, it's probably a safe bet. Not entirely twin-stick shooter and not entirely rogue-like, there's a bit for everyone in HS.
Disregarding the risk to repeat the beginning of my TIAVH2 review, let me state that the first Van Helsing game was a pleasant surprise that came out of nowhere, a different Action RPG that had a few cool systems and all-around solid gameplay in general. Let me also state that the second game wasn't as good, bogged down with weird ideas - separate classes, almost identical systems, a dumb cliffhanger, but that I still enjoyed it when it almost came out of nowhere. I had forgotten that there would be a third one, and I wish they hadn't made it - at least, not like that. It's bad, really bad.
Much like Ragnarok Online of last week, DFO is a mess from another era, a Korean MMO that got brought back more or less into the future that I've played for quite a while. Unlike RO though, DFO is fun to play and while it's quite obtuse with it's mechanics and systems, the core beat-them-up merged with RPG and the straightforwardness of most quests made it a fun - albeit mindless - experience that I would recommend if you have some time to burn away.
DA:I is a return to form from Bioware, it's a solid game in which I've invested upwards of fifty hours - and I don't play that many games that long, to be frank - and altough I do not find it perfect in all accounts, I posit that it's an amazing game full of content, story and choices to be made that will be a perfect way to spend an absolutely insane number of hours for any RPG fan and especially people who are invested in their Dragon Age universe.
What do you get if you mix Batman, Assassin's Creed and Lord of the Rings? You get ME:SoM. It is incredibly reductive to call it only a by-product of these three things, but since one of the first thing you do is eagle-dive down a tower and then activate your bat/ghost vision to see the bad guys and then you are fighting the uruks from the mind of J.R.R. Tolkien, it's hard not to compare ME:SoM to the sum of its parts. That being said, there are a few very interesting systems in there, notably the nemesis system.
TMQFEL is a free to play action rpg with asynchronous multiplayer tower defense and base building mechanics. Although the tone of the game - trying to be humorous - is grating for no reason, I really enjoyed my time with it and would recommend it if you enjoy both base building and loot-driven action rpg dungeon delving.