I’m Kinglink and it’s after April 1st, and that means it’s time for the Humble Choice April 2024 Review. 

While a lot of people fell for the fake Humble Choice list, this list is not a fool whatever that means.  This is the actual list of games in the Humble Choice, and while it won’t match the fake list.  This one has a lot of hidden power behind it, for the right player. 

But before we get into looking at the entire bundle, Let’s talk about what each game is about, who will like them, what’s good, and what’s bad about each offering.  I’m also going to start adding a link to the stream, for people who think the clips here are not long enough, I agree, but if you want 8 hours of me looking like a goober while playing games, there you go. 

Let’s start with what’s on the screen.

Victoria 3.  Yet another Paradox game.

Victoria 3 is what Paradox is known for, games that have a large multiple-nation world where you can choose to rule any nation and try to do… anything you want.  There are no set victory conditions so it’s just a chance to simulate running a country and building it up like you want.  You set the production queue, try to get bills passed, and try to avoid civil war or upsetting too many groups in your country.

Or as someone suggested in my chat, just let the game run at top speed and get about the same result rather than pausing and trying to figure out what I wanted to do.   And I think he was right.  I’m sure there’s a way to micromanage this stuff, but also a lot of things took minutes of just waiting for actions to be taken or laws to be put in place.

Pick this up if you like Paradox games.  Their games tend to need players to watch hours of tutorials or play the game for twenty to forty hours to decide if they like the title. However, I also have heard from people who love these games say that Victoria 3 was pretty weak for Paradox, whereas Victoria 2 was better.  Overall though I don’t think this delivers anything I’d want to play again or spend tens of hours learning to realize I don’t want to play it again. 

The Callisto Protocol.  Deader Space. 

The Callisto Protocol is a horror game that doesn’t even try to hide its inspiration on its sleeve, it shows it on the collar.  Everything about this game screams Dead Space. From the life bar on the back of your player’s neck to the inventory system floating in mid-air in the game world, The Callisto Protocol tries to evoke memories of Dead Space, which is good because that’s also how it was sold.

I can sum up my problem with the Callisto Protocol in one fact.  To dodge enemy attacks you hold left or right on the thumbstick, and then if they try to attack a second time, you hold the opposite direction.  Not hit it in time with the attack but just hold a direction.  If that doesn’t sound challenging, it’s not. 

There was a point also where you changed a club for a stun baton, and the combat didn’t feel like it changed at all.   Callisto Protocol also struggles to be scary, because most of its jump scares are pre-scripted.  But if you ever are afraid something is going to jump out, hold the stick to the Left just in case.   See it’s kind of dumb.

Also just saying I think the third person made it hard to be scared during several of the horror moments because you’re watching actions being done to the player’s avatars, not experiencing those actions.

Pick this up if you were waiting for a heavy discount.  This game got a lot of popularity leading up to release and then kind of disappeared quickly. I’m not the person to ask about a horror game, but I also just found this one to be more lacking than scary. 

Humankind.  Experience the entirety of humanity.

The fastest explanation of what Humankind is would be to say it’s like a different version of Civilization. There are a lot of changes here, such as not choosing a single civilization, but rather adopting a new culture with different bonuses for each era and a far superior battle system, but at the end of the day, this has all the same computer board game type of appeal that Civilization has, as well as all the complexity.

However, a lot of people have turned on this game after a long time citing the AI isn’t that strong, or cheats.  This is the first game in this franchise, and while this is Amplitude Studio known for the Endless Space franchise, it does feel a little lacking.  At the same time, if this is seen as a first entry in a longer franchise, there’s a lot of potential.  However, that’s potential in future titles. Also, the text on the UI is frighteningly small.   I usually play all games on my 50-inch TV connected to my computer and this one was unplayable but even on a normal monitor it’s a bit smaller than I would like. 

Pick this up if you like Civilization, It’s 12 bucks, and you’ll easily get 20 hours into it and likely more.  This has a nice different feel to it and like I said, I prefer this combat system to Civilization’s combat. You will have to learn all the differences but you’ll get a unique experience here. 

Also, this is the definitive edition so all the DLC content is here.

Fashion Police Squad.  Finally, someone arrests people wearing Socks with Sandals. 

Fashion Police Squad looks like a Boomer Shooter, and it has a taste of that.  Players will end up fighting fashion crimes, whether it’s people who have been turned gray, wearing neon shirts, or ill-fitting suits.  Players will shoot them with a dye shotgun, a sewing machine gun, or sock gnomes.  It sounds insane but it’s actually quite funny with tons of great moments and it’s also well written.  I found myself laughing multiple times.

At the same time, this is a humorous take on the shooter genre, but it does have some issues.  So far every enemy is only weak to a single weapon, so if you shoot someone wearing a bad suit with the dye shotgun, it does zero damage.    In addition, the difficulty here more comes from the number of enemies than specific enemies themselves, and I’m sure the absurdity of it will wear off eventually, definitely not yet, and probably will last the full first playthrough, but it feels more like a joke that’s great the first time, but you’ve heard it the second time.  

Pick this up if you want a refreshing boomer shooter.  This is unique for what it is, and honestly, I feel compelled to play more of it just to see what else it’s going to do. 

Terraformers.  Building Mars your way. 

Terraformers start with the player building a base on Mars, creating locations for people to live, and then expanding across the surface of Mars.  Players will have to spend a lot of time resource harvesting so they can play various structures. Each structure needs specific resources and has a purpose but the goal of the game is to earn victory points.  As you proceed in the game you’ll also have to start Terraforming Mars, likely as a way to earn more Victory Points. 

This reminded me of playing Eurogames and I mean that in a high form of praise.  It also doesn’t feel too difficult but I realize I’m only playing the tutorial, there’s supposedly multiple scenarios after that point that extend the game and likely become much harder.

At the same time, it feels like there’s a significant amount of RNG in the game.  Whether it’s which the leaders you can choose from, what buildings appear, or what resources you will find, Players will have to make a lot of decisions and hope for the best.   There are probably a few ways to fail, but I imagine on harder difficulties this game becomes more brutally punishing for the wrong choices.  It also feels a little micromanagement of the resource but that’s likely because I don’t know exactly how to play the game yet. 

Pick this up if you like board games.  This isn’t exactly Civilization, but it also feels like it’s in that same family as a distant cousin.  Terraformers allows players to challenge the scenario or situation they are in rather than a specific AI. 

Symphony of War: The Nephilim Saga.  A Song of Fire Emblem and … just fire Fire Emblem.

Symphony of War starts with the main character and a friend going off to fight in a war to get a kidnapped Empress back.  During that battle, they met up with people they knew when they were cadets. This is all done in the background of a large Strategy RPG where players will move their characters tactically around a map and take out units. It’s a lot like Fire Emblem, and that’s a good thing because the battle system here is solid but adds a few new tricks. 

You can fill out your squad as you want, change your character’s classes to try out new things and build a larger army than the Fire Emblem games.  

At the same time, this is more of a pure strategy RPG with the focus more on roleplaying and tactically maneuvering troops rather than just overpowering the enemy.  The maps feel overwhelming when you first reach them but then almost feel too small once you finish them.  Also, people have pointed out this has a lot of RPG Maker assets, but if that is what enables a team to make a thirty-hour or more game with a small team, the more power to them.  This is a twenty-dollar title after all, not a big sixty-dollar one. 

Pick this up if you like the Strategy RPG genre, this is more Fire Emblem than anything, but there’s a little bit of a feel of Advance Wars, or Wargroove as well and so far it is delivering on all cylinders.  There’s an obvious turn coming but it would be worth playing more to see the story. 

Coromon.  It’s Pokemon

Coromon has such an obvious influence it even ends in Mon.  But at the same time, it also does things everyone wants to see.  This has a customizable difficulty with interesting choices like limited heals at the doctors, limits to monsters you can catch, and more.  Every character also gets a trait when it’s caught and those traits can make two similar creatures vastly different.  There’s also the ability to customize the stats of your creature and so much more.  Compared to the main genre which feels like it’s stagnating at times, Coromon feels like the breath of fresh area the fans of the genre are begging for. 

But at the same time, it’s Pokemon with most of the same negatives.  You’ve seen much of this idea before, and while there are tons of fresh moments, the majority of the game is leveling up monsters, fighting x number of bosses, this time you fight Titans or something, and while there are new abilities, you will feel like you’ve done this before.  Also, there are only 124 monsters here, and while there’s more content in other areas, having fewer characters than the first Pokemon game is a weird choice.  I know, this probably has more animations or art requirements, but It still feels odd. 

Pick this up if you like Pokemon.  This is a pure Pokemon style game, but it’s also so well done and does enough new that fans who may have been burnt out on the main series will probably find something fresh here.  At the same time, it’s not going to change most players’ minds if they aren’t already fans of Pokemon. 

The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow.  A mystery in a cozy British town.

The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow has players arriving at a little town in England with a ton of marshes and barrows. The player is trying to find the person who summoned them there and instead meets a lot of colorful characters at the local pub.  If you’ve played any of the Blackwell games, this is by the same company, Wadjet Eye Games.  The voice acting is extremely well done and elevates the game quite a bit.

However the game does try to push the envelope with its graphics at times and honestly, I think it fails to nail what it is attempting. It feels almost like it’s not going far enough but also goes too far.   The story is a bit slow so far, and while the characters are good, and there’s been a couple of simple puzzles, one of them is an item you might miss if you didn’t think to pick it up, and the other was more of a “what can I do” rather than solving an obvious puzzle. 

Pick this up if you like the Blackwell games.  I assume it’s going to be paranormal and spooky at some point, but also the writing so far has been really good though I’ve yet to get started on the main mystery.  

And that’s what we have for the games this month.  

There are a few things I feel like I have to talk about with the bundle but first Is There Any Deal  And yeah, I’m not a huge fan of this new style, but it works.  So let’s get the bad news out of the way.  Coromon and Symphony of War were both in Humble Bundles before.  Those two and Terraformers were put in deals from Fantatical as well so you might already have those games. 

However the value here is really good, though I will mention the base version of Humankind has gone for 8 dollars, this has all the DLC, so it’s worth a little more, maybe not 25.   Victoria 3 is a good price if you’re interested.  Callisto Protocol also has a lot of value and all the games are hovering around 10 dollars.  The historical low total for all the games is over 100 dollars, which is pretty good as well. 

Now as for the bundle, I don’t know if you noticed, but I did.  There’s a TON of tactical and strategy games here.  If you like the style, Symphony of War, Terraformers, Victoria 3 and Humankind will likely appeal to the same type of players.  It’s really good for fans of those types of games.  However, for other people, the remainder is a little weaker, but there are still some interesting titles. 

In addition, with Symphony of War being similar to Fire Emblem, and Coromon being similar to Pokemon, we have two Nintendo-inspired games together here.

That being said, let’s talk about where the games land on a tier list. As usual, I have four tiers, games worth the Full Bundle, Strong Contenders, Average Games, and Misses. Now this is a question of my recommendation, not necessarily price or lowest price.  Still, I try to be fair about this. 

Which is why nothing is in the Miss Tier this month.  Nothing even deserved to be considered for it.  

And so the bottom of the Average Tier is Victoria 3.  I’m not a huge fan of Paradox but when the fans of the company still think this one didn’t deliver on its promise, that’s a bad sign that I can’t ignore.  Ultimately I didn’t enjoy my time and I agree with a lot of the complaints, it feels like you have minimal agency here. 

And at the top of the Average Tier, it’s the other big headliner.  The Callisto Protocol.  I know this game had a huge build-up to its release but looking at the final product, I can only imagine it’s because of a great marketing campaign.  The game just isn’t that good or scary.  I don’t know, maybe I grew but I just don’t think this game is that amazing. Something else I haven’t mentioned, it only came out about four months ago. 

And this is how we look after the bottom two tiers, oddly we have both headliners down there, so it’s probably going to be a bad month.

Well, Strong Contenders Tier only has one title.  Yeah, One.   It’s The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow.  With good audio, average to weak graphics, an interesting story, and that typical Wadjet style of a good point-and-click adventure, this definitely will appeal to fans of the genre, and it should.  The audio is that good. 

So this is how we look going into the final tier, and no this isn’t a joke, five games do belong in this tier. 

The bottom of the Full Bundle Price Tier, Humankind. I think this game is great, but I also can understand why it might appeal to some people more than others.  It’s easily worth the bundle price, but I think there were four better games this month.  Still, I’m thrilled I own this one. 

This leads us to Coromon.  I love Pokemon and this is a long adventure. Made even longer if you want to hunt down the potents, the perfects, play with the difficulty settings and I’m sure there’s tons more to discover here. This feels like what the genre needed.

Speaking of Nintendo-inspired games, we also have Symphony of War.  I love this style of game and I’m sure ten hours in I’ll be like “Screw this” from mismanagement, but ultimately there are a lot of nice little improvements to the formula here, but also some good writing so far.  

And then of course we have Terraformers.  A board game that’s more focused on pleasing a colony than fighting some odd evil?  Perfect.  This feels like it’s going to be a lot of fun to pull apart and try to master.  Also, there seems to be a ton of content here too. 

Finally, my pick of the month, it’s Fashion Police Squad.  It’s funny, it’s unique, it’s not something you see every day, and the design is so good.  It’s probably the shortest of the games in this tier, but it’s also the one I feel strongest about that people need to check out.  Just a unique idea.

This is what the final tier list looks like and that’s what I have for the humble choice. 

Now I know not everyone is going to agree to that list, and I want to hear your opinions in the comments. But I will throw up an alternate bundle for everyone to check out if they’re interesting, tying in with my favorite of the month.  The Boomer Shooters, if you’re a fan of the genre, I’d say check this out, I’ll leave a clean link in the description. 

And with that, we once again come to the end of the program.  So what do you guys think, am I being too kind or do you at least see the value this month?

If you enjoyed the video you know what to do, subscribe, click the bell, and you’ll get one of these videos every month.   

See you next time.