I think my biggest worry going into Death Stranding 2 was the fear that it would stray too far from the original. That fear was unfounded as Death Stranding 2 is still a weird game about making deliveries amid a world filled with beached ghosts, pod babies, and Troy Baker having an absolute blast playing one of the strangest roles ever cast.
It might be blasphemy to say, but I’ve never played Elden Ring despite the fact that I loved the Dark Souls games. Something just always got in the way of me finding the right moment to jump into it. Nightreign’s co-op focus, however, grabbed my attention. Full Co-op is the biggest thing I wanted in any Souls game, and the fact that it’s wrapped in a rogue-lite cloak made it an even better fit for me.
This is going to be a weird review because my relationships with RoadCraft and its predecessors, like SnowRunner, are a bit weird. You see, after finding my love for Death Stranding, I gave SnowRunner a try and bounced off. I couldn’t imagine anyone finding a game about being stuck in the mud fun. Then I discovered Snowrunner’s hard mode and custom campaign, and I was hooked.
With those modes, fuel, damage, and money all mattered. Getting stuck or flipping a vehicle required me to send another vehicle to rescue it to try and avoid the recovery fee, because if I mismanaged my time and money, I could actually fail the entire campaign. SnowRunner became as much a planning and strategy game as it did a driving sim, and I loved it.
Back in 2022, I reviewed a game called Telepath Tactics: Liberated. It was an excellent tactics RPG in the vein of Fire Emblem. I loved the combat to such an extent that I was able to enjoy the fact that it was a linear game, rather than a procedural sandbox in the vein of X-COM or Battle Brothers, which I prefer. Yet, I had deeply wished to have that combat system in such a setting anyway.
Together in Battle is almost exactly that. It’s set in the same world as Telepath Tactics with the same combat system, but it’s much less on rails. You engage in numerous procedural arena battles with a roster of ever-changing characters, alongside scripted story elements and random events.