Recent reviews by Marsoup

Good narrative content for an important region during this period.

Caves of Qud is confounding in a really special way. It feels like the video game equivalent of being in a foreign country where you don't speak the language. Every time you make a breakthrough, whether it's in the game's mechanics, history, or, like, sociology, it feels rewarding. It's clear this game is the product of incredible creativity and overwhelming love.

Also, it's a lot of fun. I love roguelikes, and it's cool to breathe fire on people, get in psychic combat, and talk to animals.

Both in entertainment and aesthetic value C.o.Q. is essentially perfect.

New mechanics and art are good. I anticipate playing in this region a bit more now.

As someone who bought the Grand Poobah edition at release, I'm not disappointed with this content. There's nice graphical enhancements and the events and content for France are interesting. If I had just shelled out fifteen dollars for this, I think I'd be pretty outraged. It's very thin on content. Emaciated. It doesn't make the game worse or anything, but there's nothing here to justify the price and it's really, really not what Victoria 3 needs right now. Skip it.

I think Pdox succeeded at making an expansion that really changes how the game plays. There's more to do in peacetime, the interactions with the map and the game world as a whole feel cool and make the game feel a bit more 'alive' than just staring at the map. I think there's some grumbling that Paradox hasn't been focusing on mechanical additions to the game as much as roleplaying, but there's quite a lot of interesting gameplay additions here and tweaks to major events that everyone's going to be doing anyway.

I will note that it's a little difficult to evaluate the things that came with the expansion itself vs. the recent major patch, but I think it's safe to say there's enough new content here to make it worth your while. I would be a little cautious that with all this new content, there's plenty of areas where events and so on will repeat, but I think there's enough, especially with the new event 'intents' to keep things fresh for a long time.

I couldn't stand Imperator on launch. It felt completely devoid of flavor or difficulty. Since then, the game has come a pretty long way. It isn't perfect, but Paradox has been very responsive to community feedback and there's been plenty of patches and free content that have gotten Imperator closer to the game I initially wanted it to be.

Overall, it's gone from pretty bland to rather charming in a pretty short timeframe and I'm optimistic about what Imperator will have to offer in the near future. It struck an interesting balance between features from previous pdox titles and it has a lot of potential.

My top game for 2017. Calling it now. I can't actually conceive of a game that can beat Night in the Woods for its incredible richness and timeliness. I don't think I've ever played a game that can do so much with what appears to be so little effort.

Ultimately, I think the reason Night in the Woods succeeds at being so relatable is because its working towards something at the core of the human experience (ironic for a game world populated by animals, I know). It's a call for meaning when there appears to be none. It's an existential game. It's incredible.

If anyone is still skeptical of the merit of video game as artistic medium, Night in the Woods will change their mind.