Recent reviews by Malware Mal

Very cute. Love the premise and character designs.

Kind of brutal out the gate though. Outside of unlocking new cards (which you can't start with), you're out the gate deck... sucks. Even a one star fight at the start of the game can completely knock you out depending on encounter.

Healing is done by drops of 1 or 2 HP per use making it almost useless.
You're defense cards don't give enough defense.
You're attack cards are slow and hit for very little compared to your damage sponge enemies.
No way to edit deck at start to take advantage of your unlocks.
No other form of meta-progression to make things easier.

I wouldn't call it impossible, but the learning curve is pretty steep. You're very much subject to RNG at the start and it can feel like progress is matter of luck more than effort. Its going to turn a lot of people off, especially since the cute art and previews don't give any hint to just how... unjustly '♥♥♥♥ you' tough it can b, but progress can be made if you keep going.

If that progress is worth your time and effort well that's up to you. Personally, I've played a lot more ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that is way less fun and a lot more worse in how it ♥♥♥♥♥ you.

You know I've wanted to play this game for so long. Everyone and everything shows and says its really fun, but... reality is different from fiction.

The base gameplay loop, difficulty, and modes are too short, too passive, and too easy to offer any real challenge or enjoyment. The only mode that offers any real challenge is Empire mode, but again. The standard difficulty is too easy to make this enjoyable and the higher difficulties give so many AI chest that the game becomes next to impossible without exploiting the system to the point that is just not fun to play.

At this point I'm just haphazardly going through the monster hunt list to just knock out achievements without really enjoying the process.

I do hope the other installments are more... fun than the first as this has been a huge disappointment so far.

I don't know. I use to love the original Mount & Blade back in the day before almost 20 years ago. Played it a bunch. I thought I liked it but, did my mind play tricks on me?

Getting back into it with Bannerlord and I felt bored. Almost 50 hours and I felt like I was wasting my time the entire time just... walking and doing nothing. Infantry play is still boring and slow and going into calvery is just as slow with the need to manually buy horses for every soldier. Don't get me started on 'stealth missions'.

Why are stealth missions always so bad, slow, and hammered into games that are so obviously not about stealth? Such a pointless feature. Sneaking into a camp is so troublesome and long when you can just as easily just charge in there for in half the time for the same reward. Sadly its one of the only ways to rank up a skill without committing massive crimes.

*sighs* I just don't feel like I'm playing a game with almost 20 years more tech in it. Doing the same stuff and just realizing I was wasting them back than too. I'm sure the meat and potatoes are in the kingdom building part as it 'LOOKS' like there is a lot more there that didn't exist back in the day with the option to make your own kingdom. I say looks because after 50 years I couldn't get to it.

I'm sure there is a great game 60 or 70 hours in but I don't feel like doing that again for that much longer.

Edit (250 hours later): This was not fun. This was not a fun month at all. Bannerlord isn't hard... Its purposely cryptic in its systems and carries a backwards morality system for its world.

The first time I didn't know what I was doing.

The second time my skill selection sucked and yes. A lot of skills are not viable for your character. Don't even try to be well rounded. Just pick one or two things to be good and and dump all points into there.

The third time I united the empire and it was not fun. The AI can just spam more armies and soldiers than you can and it gets frustrating. A 4K army will be followed by another 4k army that same week.

Executing terrorist bandit cult leaders that have no friends ends up with everyone hating you and if everyone hates you you don't get quests and can't recruit clans and if you can't recruit clans the AI just shoves all those commanders with full stacks out again. The rep system is stupid with a moral system that only effects and hurts the player. I want to explain it but everyone is so cryptically stupid and backwards.

If you raid you lose rep and if you lose rep you can't recruit and there is no way that 6-7rep points you get for releasing will ever add up. Beating the same general like 25 times will never happen so that rep is always in the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. But if you don't raid you need to hunt down enemy generals over and over again and release them to build rep and... its very tedious. You're slower than everything so you almost never catch them to fight them. Unless you someone trick the AI into attacking you, catch and releasing generals isn't fun or efficient.

The skill system is so absurdly difficult to level up at higher levels that, whole not impossible, it becomes impractical to try to level up certain skills and you'll likely never do it.

And that is what I'd say my final thoughts are on this game.

Nothing is impossible.
Everything is just so absurdly impractical that it sucks the fun out of trying.

M&B2 is a great combat simulator though. One of the best to be honest. Its hard to flaw that outside of some janky movements or getting stuck once or twice. Most of my complaints on the game involve the systems that surround that combat sim. Those suck. The combat is great.

Sadly, the combat is also... simple once you realize what it is and how is work and? Its not enough to keep me interested for 250 hours. Personally, this was a horrible pick up for me. A huge and frustrating time.

(Update: The game's autosave doesn't work. So get ready for making manual saves likes its 2000 again. Will set you back hours. That.. is such a thing that should of been found and fixed by now.
Dog breaks too often to be useful though it is funny to watch him running on air. Still, things that should of just bee seen easily and fixed with a hotfix patch. Flipping till fix comes out.

I take back every ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ nice thing I said about this game. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ thing just deleted about 15K out of my savings. Dog glitched, AGAIN because thats all it can ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ do. Saved and reloaded. Card progress and upgrades are there. ALL THE ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ MONEY I EARNED between load and dog glitch, gone.

No ending for all that trouble, items that fall through floor, according to the comments you can't even get all the cards because of this, max upgrades and still 3 huge piles left yet nothing feels different. ♥♥♥♥ this game. The ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ glitches just doesn't make this feel good to play.)

The concept is simple and mildly fun. Its essentially the dig a hole idea but what if in a mountain of garbage instead of dirt. While it can be fun, I honestly don't feel there is enough innovation here to keep the attention of those who lack the obsessive compulsiveness to carry such a monotonous task to the end.

Even with max upgrades you don't... ever do anything different. Come hour 3, 5, or 10 you are still collection trash in the exact same way you were in the first hour. There is nothing to really improve your efficiency out side of improving your throwing aim.

-On top of that, the dog doesn't do anything you can't do on your own but faster.

-Having to constantly stack beer/energy one by one is tedious.

-The AI music is really stupid and makes no sense. I'm sure they're proud of it. I mean there is even a tutorial step to turn it on, there are only a few songs, they're really stupid and get annoying. Honestly, I'd rather just have some royalty free lo-fi music or something without lyrics. Those aren't expensive. I mean, I have a few albums of royalty free music I bought from Humble bundle for like $20 and I'm not even a game developer. I'm sure they could of mixed in some other songs like that for variety.

-The shopping cart, meant to allow you to carry items for sale, doesn't really work well. Your upgrades improve its capacity but it doesn't work like that in game. The shopping card should be more like your garbage bag that holds a certain number of items. Instead it has physics and you manually fill it. Problem with that is that some items are bigger and bulkier than other items, meaning they take up more space. This results in your 30 item capacity shopping cart holding 5 items because is a giant ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ head wearing a hat!

These issues are minor and frustrating, but don't take away from the core element of the game. They are annoying qol issues for sure. While I'd much prefer my shopping cart max upgrade to be a portal directly to my storage the devs are oddly fixated on you using a shopping cart for some reason. I don't know.

Its fun but I wouldn't really call it a 7 out 10. A solid 6 out of 10 waste of time if you like that.

Game had issues on release so I just let it sit. Come back.

Two crashes failing to load and 3 at menu just from changing languages.

You know what? ♥♥♥♥ it. I don't need this game in my life and it clearly doesn't want to be in mind from it sheer failure just to start. I'm out, ♥♥♥♥ this ♥♥♥♥.

Only started playing and got through the first chapter, but I like it.

The animation is good, the voice acting is solid, and the characters are both charming and memorable. Robert is a likeable kind even without our input and feels very relatable. Not too crazy, but also not 'white bread'. He feels the right balance where most people can see themselves in and support him.

Visuals were good, I was invested in the story from the start, character dynamic made me want to see more. I had fun so far.

Gameplay?
Oh yeah, I guess there was some gameplay. If you've played any of the Rescue Dispatch games you'll recognize the feel how the system works, but 'lite' version. Despite the name Dispatch is clearly not about Dispatch. Its more a visual novel/animated movie than a game in that respect. The dispatch elements are quick and simplified compared to other games with its style.

Its clear the focus is suppose to be on the animation and story and that's just fine with me. Maybe throw a save slot before them since the dispatch missions do have a level of RNG involved, but I'm still to early in the game to really realize what failure entails. SO whatever.

Deserves its Steam Award nomination I think.

Update 12/10/25: Despite a very rocky release the devs have already released a solid 2 weeks of updates addressing many of the concerns stated here and improving everything from performance to balance. While the game still needs work, I feel I can at least start saying that the game is worth it if you are into this niche sim style of item finding and selling. I look forward to the day where updates can shift from bug catching to actual expansion of core game play elements and qol improvements.


Original Review, kept for transparancy:
40 hours playing in early access. Was super fun, just need late game content imo.

Final version came out yesterday and... they ♥♥♥♥♥♥ it. No other way to say it. I'm sorry. There is no other way to say it nicely or politely.

THEY ♥♥♥♥♥♥ THIS GAME

Graphical tearing, stuttering, item cost balancing, items disappearing from your inventory, apparently tons of content locked behind item grinding. Its been really ♥♥♥♥♥♥.

Now I get a certain amount of jank exists in these games. Thats sort of the fun, but if you didn't play in early access you have no clue how much of a downgrade the official release was. A huge kick in the balls for those of us who were enjoying this an looking forward to the full release.

Just don't buy it till they get a update fix in it.

I want to like it, I have fun while playing, there is a lot here, but there the more I play the more I realize how still incomplete it is.

While its true, its everything you should basically want in a fantasy civ game. Fantasy civ for one which is rare enough, rpg mechanics, complex spell tree, unique tech tree, and in-depth economy. It really does seem to have everything and from what amounts to just one or two people working on it too. Or... at least they use to work on it. While its damn impressive what was accomplished here it has seemed to have been abandoned before it could fully cross the finish line.

Basic items that can't be made, resources that spawn in locations that can't be claimed or used, Prospectors that spend 100+ turns to spawn a rare mineral ON YOUR CITY which can't be used because your city doesn't count as an improvement that can harvest resources, a complex game system with little to ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ to explain it too you. Expect to play with the wiki open on another screen to just UNDERSTAND basic systems. It is just a really really grand picture that just starts to crack when you look too closely at it.

AND YES, if this is your thing you are going to enjoy it regardless of its flaws because its awesome what is here, but the more time you sink into it the more you realize this isn't finished, this is badly implemented, this is buggy, this doesn't make sense, this stopped being fun 20 hours ago.

Look, I don't want to bad month this game or to tell you you shouldn't support it if you want to try it. I just... want to cut my loses before I invest so much time into a game that will never reach its full potential. Been heartbroken too many time by that. Disciples, Fallen Enchantress, Warlock, etc. I'm out before I get attached.

You know, for looking low effort it surprising isn't. There is a lot going on here. From the numerous items, locations, and humor injected into the story. Clear effort went into this game. Does it make it amazing. Well no, but it does make it a good treasure hunt game if that is what you like. Its easy to get lost looking through the maps, but at the same time I can feel how that can frustrate others.

Core gameplay its pretty functional and I've had no problems with it, but there does need to be an option to turn off tutorials. Even after 10 hours the game has a bad habit of popping them in your face despite you having already read them multiple times.

Also... the seasonal events are kind of broken as in the only times my game has crashed was with those. I've only just started playing so I've only interacted with the Halloween guy and... that pumpkin is glitched as ♥♥♥♥♥♥! If he isn't constantly popping his tutorial every time I show up at the barn, he pops it while I'm in the middle of interacting resulting in a freeze, or just plain crashes the game when I go to talk with it.

Its there are no tricks to the game. Even the item finder tool is next to useless as it doesn't detect special items. So imagine going though a entire map, searching it from top to bottom, still missing an item, only to go back, chat with pumpkin head, and have your whole season crash. If the seasonal events are this glitched, I rather be able to turn them off and not deal with them.

So overall, the core game is fun, though somewhat stressing without ways to accurately find that one super well hidden item. They not only expand on it but the island DLC has a very eerie 'Fallout' feel. It legit felt like finding an amusement park from the 1950s int he middle of post-war California. Its both creepy and surreal to explore.

Again the only main problems with the game is lack of options to turn off events and tutorials and maybe the addition of some end game tool you get after completing the game that lets you find those items you missed. Overall, solid treasure hunting game. 8/10 easily for those who enjoy this.

Oh and maybe something that speeds up the rate of customers during shop mode? Once you have all the shelves built up I felt like I wasn't really doing anything but just waiting for people to come in and it got a bit boring. Almost like selling is the more boring part of the game.

Update: After more or less finishing it, while I still think the game is good, there is a lot of jank that is just not going to get fix ever. Items that don't spawn, items that spawn clipped into walls, items that... somehow end up on the roof of places even though you set them on the ground, crafting buttons that down work if you change the items being crafted in the DLC island. Just a lot of 'weird' jank.

Not to mention assembly items so absurdly hidden that I don't think anyone has actually found them all and if they have they're not telling. Good luck ever building that gold dragon bike.

This a great game that shows how the core concepts of a game are what sets it apart. Despite the autobattle element it never feels like you're not doing something. In fact, the its one of the few games where I felt I was doing something all the time.

From looking for treasures, setting resource priorities, planning out steps, keeping an eye out for hidden treasures. I was never bored. It never felt like I was just going through the motions and not actually playing.

I've never liked auto-battler games because of that feeling like you don't do anything, but Super Fantasy Kingdom solves that. Yes, sometimes I wish I could cast a spell or something to let my dying heroes kill that last few monsters when we're right on the edge of victory, but despite that I never feel like I'm not a useful king.

Great game, long hours, new things to find every play through, never felt like the same two game twice. Banger game, the dev team hit it out of the part here. All that and to think they're probably still going to be adding more stuff in the future. What's there not to love?