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pretzelpages · 3 years

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Nebuchadnezzar: A City Builder Released Too Soon

By AriBabble

I absolutely love city/them building games and always enjoy a well-crafted one. I grew up playing the likes of Pharaoh, Theme Hospital, Roller-coaster Tycoon, and more recently the Tropico series. When I saw Nebuchadnezzar was released in February, I immediately knew it was a game I had to try.

Pros

The game has a strong concept and art direction. The music creates a great ambiance, and the buildings are designed and animated very well. When I think of great ancient civilizations I immediately think of Greece, Rome, and Egypt, but the truth is that ancient Mesopotamia is the cradle of civilization: full of innovation and culture. It may not be as romanticized as other ancient civilizations, but the game does well to try to explain the important points of Mesopotamian civilization as the levels progress. The game is in no way educational, but you may learn something new in the process of progressing in the game which is a bonus in my opinion. I am the QUEEN of building grids!

Cons

As it stands now, Nebuchadnezzar does not feel like a full game. There are approximately 12 campaign missions which include the early tutorial missions. The game’s tutorial is awful: it is wordy, all over the place, and leaves out information about how to achieve the mission’s goals! I was stuck on the 3rd level for almost an hour because the tutorial doesn’t explain that you need to build wells and supply houses with pottery to proceed. Additionally, I found myself soft blocked on the 3rd level because the game doesn’t actually provide you with enough space to build farms to support more than 16 houses. Again, the game never mentions this, and I had to look on Steam to find the solution to a tutorial level. Beyond the 3rd level, the game still doesn’t explain how to build other buildings like temples, and it’s a complex mechanic. I admit I was so fed up with the game in just the 4 hours and 4 missions that I didn’t care to learn how to design and build monuments.

Beyond the flawed tutorial and soft blocking., there’s also just… not a lot of gameplay. You build some houses, some farms, wells, clay pits, markets, etc., and plan distribution routes and try to optimize them. This feels like the entirety of the gameplay which gets stale over time. I understand that city/theme builders require a lot of planning and micromanaging of resources to succeed but without other functions and interactions with the city you’re building the game falls very flat.

I don’t think this game should have been released yet: It doesn’t feel like a full game. To add insult to injury, there is currently no sandbox mode or custom missions in the game leaving you to either download mods or only play the campaign mode. The developers, Nepos Games, did announce an update was coming to the game to add wage options for workers, voice acting, as well as interactable NPCs roaming the map. In my opinion, these are functions that should have been in the finished game, not updates. The developers have also mentioned that they made the game mod accessible, and I am hoping that they are not going to wait for the mod community to come in and essentially finish their game through mods. My greatest hope is that Nepos Games continues to add to the game overtime to make up for how much it is currently lacking.

#nebuchadnezzar #game review #aribabble #article #review

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pretzelpages · 3 years

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Waldain Watches Kamen Rider Build

By waldangerous

All three of my friends who enjoy tokusatsu have recommended this show to me, as I had stopped watching all toku. I used to watch Kamen Rider every year until 2014, and even sooner for Super Sentai. Not that it had gotten bad, just that the adult enjoyment was diminishing. Shoutouts to the Japanese housewife demographic for all of their complaints and concerns about what their children were watching. Oddly enough, this show seems to have ignored those usual concerns as I looked up the wiki for this show and there was an advisory warning for blood, graphic violence, gun violence and murder. Those things in my kids’ show? Sign me up please!

Kamen Rider Build premiered in 2017 and follows an amnesiac physicist Sento Kiryu uncovering the mystery of a catastrophic event a decade ago that literally split Japan into three, leading to the birth of three nations. His findings lead him down a path that crosses with Ryuga Banjo, a man falsely incarcerated for murder. However, their paths have more to do with each other than they originally realize!

One thing I loved about this show was how once it picked up, the end of each episode legitimately kept me interested in what happens in the next one, which was a great feeling because I watched an episode a day to avoid the usual burnout from “marathonning”. The desire to always want the next one was due in part to Build not being held back by the 2-Part Plague. This was one of my least favorite things about Kamen Rider shows like OOO, Den-O, W and Kiva. It’s essentially when the series progresses in two-episode increments: the first episode presents a problem and it won’t be resolved until the following episode. Without this format, the show was able to go wherever it wanted or needed to to keep the story intriguing. Your time doesn’t feel wasted! Events feel significant!

Another plus for this show for me is how it attempts to still appeal to kids despite it’s more adult tone. From the middle of the show on, however, it does feel weird considering how dark it gets, but I understand that there was a story they wanted to tell and they didn’t want little Taro watching at home to get too freaked out by the massive government conspiracy and war. So they add a little bit of Ryuga being an idiot and Misora being a cute eGirl to balance it out.

This attempt at balance isn’t just for the plot content, but also for the actions scenes. I passed on watching Kamen Rider Wizard because of how much CGI it had. I acknowledge that a lot of CGI makes sense for the theme of the show, but it was still a turnoff for me personally as someone who originally watched Kamen Rider for karate bugmen superkicking aliens and robots on a weekly basis. My entry point into the world of Riders was Kamen Rider Kabuto, which was big on hand to hand fight scenes. It felt more real than huge super moves being added in post. Build, however, does both. The “wire fu” was obvious, but done in clever and interesting ways that add to the action and the CGI additions make sense where they are. Just as a physicist like Sento has to figure out how matter in this world exists in balance, the writers of this show did the same (that was a bigger stretch than downward dog, I’m sorry).

After finishing the show, I could definitely see why my friends recommended it. Especially in a time like now with the climate of world politics, this sort of thing was a nice piece of fiction to get me through the days. Highly recommended for fans of toku, and for non-fans of toku? What are you waiting for? If you’re reading this, I bet you like anime, right? Perfect, just hop on right over to tokusatsu. It’s pretty much live action anime anyway! We’d love to have you.

#article #review #kamen rider #kamen rider build #tokusatsu #waldangerous

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