"Crusader Kings III" and "BPM: Bullets per Minute": An Expanding Horizons Double Review

As both a notoriously picky eater and all around stubborn individual, I'm not the kind of person who believes you have to continuously expand your horizons in order to enjoy life. A pseudo philosophy I tend to live by is "I know what I like," and so I never really feel inclined to gamble with my time or money. However, recently two relatively cheap and relatively small games in genres that I'd normally never give the time of day came out, and they seemed like they might be something special. For the most part, the experience was surprisingly positive, and while I can't say I'm ever going to actually like these genres, these particular ambassadors for their respective ones are worthwhile. Let's get right into it!

Available for: Microsoft Windows

Reviewed for: Microsoft Windows

The first of the two genres I expanded my horizons to for this article is the empire-building strategy genre. When it comes to games like Civilization and the like, I've just never felt compelled to pick one up. While I was reading and watching reviews for Crusader Kings III, however, I found myself feeling curious about the kinds of organic storytelling I was reading and hearing about. So to start this review off, I'd like to tell all of you a story, or rather, a tale of two dynasties. 

It begins with the Jarl of Uppland in 9th or 10th century Sweden. A just and ambitious Jarl, Bjorn Ironsides of house Munso stood out from other Norse nobles in that he only went to war when he had a pressable claim on land he wanted. The leaders of lands he conquered were given places in his court as well as a voice in his policies. At the time, Sweden was simply an un-unified collection of counties, but eventually Jarl Bjorn had amassed enough of these counties under his rule to be able to declare himself the official King of Sweden. With the crown atop his head, Jarl Bjorn's ambitions now pointed inward, and his goals moved from acquisition of land to improving his new kingdom. He attended feasts as a guest of honor every year, strengthened important cities within his realm, and secured the goodwill of nearly everyone he came across. Life couldn't have been better for a more beloved king, until he learned of a terrible truth. By happenstance, King Bjorn realized that his son (and heir) and daughter, both of whom were married to other people, were involved in an incestuous affair. Bjorn elected to keep this information to himself, so as to keep his legacy and his dynasty intact. However, within a matter of years, this truth became public, and the results were devastating. Bjorn's daughter was imprisoned by her husband, the Jarl of a nearby county not under the banner of Sweden, and his son and heir was beaten to death by unknown hands. Bjorn's heir was now one of his illegitimate children, Bjorn II, the son of one of his concubines. Though this was a blow to Bjorn's mental health, he still worked tirelessly to make Sweden a better place, and so he negotiated an alliance with his daughter's husband, vowing to help him in times of war in the hopes that he might be able to negotiate his daughter's release. The years went by, Bjorn II came of age, and very little changed in the Kingdom of Sweden. As the years continued to pass, eventually King Bjorn succumbed to old age, and the throne of Sweden passed to Bjorn II, who was barely into his 20's at the time. 

This is where the second of the two dynasties comes into play. From the very beginning, Jarl Thorfinn of another neighboring county watched King Bjorn's rise to power and lusted for the throne. But alas, he had no claim on the Kingdom, and that combined with Bjorn's status as a beloved king meant that any attempt to claim that throne would be met with accusations of tyranny. But to try and take the throne from the hands of a lisping son of a concubine? That was another matter entirely. Not even a year into Bjorn II's reign, Jarl Thorfinn declared war on the Kingdom of Sweden, having amassed a military force vastly superior to that of the kingdom. Facing military defeat after military defeat, Bjorn II had no choice but to surrender his crown to Thorfinn. Bjorn II was reduced back to Jarl of Uppland, a mere vassal of the king, and under the rule of King Thorfinn, Sweden's succession law became somewhat democratic. So even if he were to have Thorfinn and all his descendants killed, there was no guarantee that Bjorn II would end up on the throne again. But Bjorn II was blinded by rage, and he knew he had to try. Coordinating with his spymaster, Bjorn II set a plot in motion to have King Thorfinn killed, a task which weighed heavily on him. Like his father before him, Bjorn II was a just man, and though he knew he needed to destroy Thorfinn's line to even have a chance of retrieving his rightful place on the throne, the guilt of taking part in such an unspeakable act of treachery ate away at him. But all plots take time, and to kill a king in a way that can't be traced back to you is no small feat, so the process was even slower. While the plot was underway, Bjorn II's son and heir, Eikir, was born, but not even this could bring joy to the defeated former king. The guilt and shame of the day-to-day operations necessary to orchestrate the assassination eventually drove him to alcoholism, and while it soothed the pain temporarily, delay-causing hiccups in the plan made it so that he eventually turned to self-flagellation. It was no longer enough to numb his guilt, he needed to atone for it somehow. But Bjorn II's spymaster was a talented individual, and when the time came to pull the trigger on the plot, King Thorfinn was disposed of cleanly, and nobody suspected Bjorn II's involvement. It had taken years of his life, his liver, and the skin on his back, but even without the throne back in his hands, Bjorn II had killed the man who took everything from him. With the passing of King Thorfinn, the Kingdom of Sweden now went to his son, Freyr, who would eventually gain a reputation for being invincible. King Freyr Thorfinnson kept the elective succession laws of his father, but had a much greater appetite for conquest, launching campaigns in neighboring Norse lands. With so many wars going on, Jarl Bjorn II thought this might be an excellent opportunity to mount another murder plot. King Freyr's son, Gunnar, was only a child, so if his father were to be taken out of the picture, securing the throne again would likely not be too difficult. So once again, Bjorn II worked with his spymaster to set a plan into motion. But the damage from the first attempt had already been done. The wounds internal and external that he suffered to sate his guilt sent Bjorn II to a relatively young grave before his second grand plan could come to fruition, and the Jarldom of Uppland passed to his son and heir, Eikir, who was only seven at the time. 

As a child Jarl, Eikir mainly had to focus on growing up while his advisors handled matters of state. Circumstance had placed Eikir in a precarious position. As far as anybody knew, he was of a just and noble bloodline. Both his father and grandfather had governed their people well, but because of the house of usurpers, House Munso had lost everything. Eikir (like his father, though nobody but the spymaster knew of his darker dealings) wanted to be a good man, but as he gradually came of age, he knew that King Freyr needed to be deposed, and it was only a matter of time before Freyr's heir, Gunnar, had an heir of his own. Eikir's story was a tragic one that only differed from that of his father in the ways things were worse. He married young and had his first son in the middle of a murder plot, but this one was unsuccessful. Perhaps King Freyr was more alert, having lost his father under mysterious circumstances. Perhaps he simply had a better spymaster who could intercept these plots. In any case, this was the first of three failed murder attempts that Eikir would launch in his lifetime, and unfortunately, the last one ended up being traced back to him. Freyr had earned a reputation as a king virtually untouchable by espionage, and when Eikir died in a way resembling his father not too long after his last murder attempt, he passed into the afterlife a disgraced and reviled man. The Jarldom of Uppland now passed to his son Ragnarr, the second child Jarl of this Jarldom. 

Ragnarr was even younger than his father was when he inherited his title, and unlike any of his descendants, Ragnarr was an inherently cruel child. He inflicted fear into the hearts of most other children, so if fate were to guide him down the same path as his father and grandfather, his spirit would not be broken by the evil required to wipe out a bloodline. But Ragnarr had a weakness that not even his cold, evil heart could resist. The child nobles and children of adult nobles would often play together as the noble families traveled the land for diplomatic reasons, and as Ragnarr grew from a boy of 4 to a boy just under 10 years old, he realized he had fallen in love with one of the girls in the court that his business brought him to frequently. A strong mutual crush grew between the two as the years progressed, and eventually, the impossible happened. 

The thing to note about King Freyr Thorfinnson of Sweden is that, despite being the son of a usurper, he, like the original King of Sweden, was a fair and just King (though the denizens of other lands he conquered would probably disagree). He was not one to hold a son accountable for the sins of the father. So when Ragnarr Eikirson of House Munso, the son of the man who had tried three times to kill him, came to beg him for his daughter Sigrid's hand in marriage, he could see the unusual sincerity in his eyes. To see a child of the recently disgraced Munso bloodline openly declaring his love for a daughter too far down the line of succession to be of any political benefit, and to see a daughter who likely would've otherwise been relegated to a last-ditch marriage alliance so happy would likely have moved the heart of any king, and Freyr accepted Ragnarr's proposal. When Ragnarr and Sigrid both came of age, the two feuding dynasties officially became one. 

This is not where the story ends. King Freyr died peacefully not long after Ragnarr and Sigrid were married. Sigrid eventually died in childbirth, causing Ragnarr to fully embrace his evil side by way of many murder plots and torturing the head of a faction formed against him. The Kingdom of Sweden was conquered by a Muslim warlord, which caused the kingdom to switch from Norse to Arabic hands every couple of years. And finally, Ragnarr's son, Erik, reclaimed the throne and brought the story to its most satisfying conclusion. But in terms of in-depth storytelling, I think the joining of the dynasties is a beautiful place to stop. Now, why did I take the time to spell this whole story out like that? Because this was one character in one Jarldom in one country on one continent in one time period. This was the story that came from my decisions, and it's unlikely that you will experience it. Depending on what choices you have your character make, the organic stories that play out can have worlds of difference between them. There have been people who have formed heretical Catholic sects that literally perform cannibalism, there have been people who have caused their entire bloodline to be made up of giants, and there are people like me who just tried to hang onto a title and had a poetic political thriller come out of it. The possibilities for organic storytelling here are endless, and that's the major draw of this game!

Now, how these wonderful organic stories end up being told is a bit complicated to explain. The gameplay in Crusader Kings III is THICK! How thick is it? So thick that even having experienced my fill, I'd guess I haven't made use of 90% of the features, and some of the twists my story took probably happened because of that. There is so much to gameplay that, while I'm going to lay it out as best I can, you're not going to get the full picture here. Essentially, when you boot up the game, you choose a starting character, and when they die, you play as their heir, with Game Over only happening if your character dies without a successor. Each character will exist somewhere on Earth, and their culture, religion, etc. will depend on where they're located. I already have to take a step back to explain how something works after just a few sentences of high level explanation, oh brother. See, cultures and religions have different rules, and the way gameplay pans out can be drastically different from place to place because of that. For example, one of the "currencies" you can gain and spend is called "piety," which is how good you are as a member of your religion. But piety for a Catholic is different than piety for an Astaru Norse Pagan. An act that would earn you piety as a Catholic might cost you piety if you're not a Catholic, in other words. In many cases religion has a direct impact on culture as well. For instance, in a Catholic setting, divorce is prohibited and women can't hold titles, which makes playing in a Catholic setting something of an enhanced difficulty mode, given how few avenues you might end up having in terms of heir production. On the other hand, if you're a Norse Pagan, you can divorce as much as you like, you're expected to take on concubines, and though the culture rules are male-centric, women can hold titles of their own. This means that in the Norse Pagan context, you can end up with more heirs than you can count, making it a kind of de-facto easy mode. Keeping in mind how many religions existed in the entire world in, say, the 10th century, it's not hard to imagine just how many different sets of gameplay rules there are. When divorced from religion, cultural rules have a tendency to impact how you're perceived by your subjects or by neighboring rulers. If you're a Norse ruler who hasn't gone raiding in a while, other Jarls might start to think you're weak, for example. Beyond cultural rules, how you're perceived also depends on your personality and how it interacts with other personality types. Every character in this game has a set of personality traits that determine how they'd naturally react to certain situations as well as how some of their skill levels play out (an impatient person would obviously take a penalty to their diplomacy skill, for instance...oh lord, I haven't even gotten into the skills yet...). So in my storytelling paragraph, when I was describing how certain key characters were like, that was based on personality. Ragnarr had specific personality traits that made him cruel, while everyone before him had personality traits leaning more towards justice and honesty. That's why two of my characters ended up dying from alcoholism or self-inflicted wounds. Personality traits determine how a character would naturally act, but since you're in charge of the character you're playing as, you can have them act in a way that conflicts with everything they stand for. If you do this, the character gains stress, and when the stress reaches a breaking point, they'll need something to alleviate that stress, usually with horrific side effects. But again, depending on the character's personality, there might be different ways of handling stress. The character I left off with, Ragnarr's son, Erik (who retook the throne)", was a good person with a strong grasp of diplomacy and deep compassion. Part of my plan to get the throne back in the hands of my dynasty (and out of the hands of the once-again-in-power muslim sect of the kingdom) was one last murder plot since Erik was next in line for the throne by way of the realm's elective succession laws. Naturally, this went against who Erik was as a person, but because he was such a people person with such well-known empathy, he had a stress relief option that the others never had: giving to charity. This meant that the coffers took a small hit, but Erik himself was able to get through the ordeal with no negative side effects on his health. Have I mentioned that this game is THICK? I honestly don't think I have the time or space to talk about this much more in-depth, so I'll leave the gameplay section on this note: the amount of systems in place that you can use and that are used against you is about ten times as expansive as everything I've already laid out, and that's before you consider that there's a literal world operating around you every millisecond. I may have mentioned that my playthrough was centered around the kingdom of Sweden? Well, while I was doing that, AI characters in Jerusalem, Ghana, Persia, France, England, Ireland, Rome, literally every other country in the Eastern half of the world as well as literally every small duchy and county within those countries were doing their own things, interacting with each other, forming alliances, waging wars, inventing new religious sects, etc. This is a game in which history is literally happening around you whether you know it or not, that's the kind of massive, deep, THICK scale Crusader Kings III operates on. 

That actually provides a decent way to get started talking about the technical side of things. Obviously the developers couldn't possibly hardcode millions of AI characters and tell them to do something after x amount of years have passed but only if kingdom y has done another thing, so everything that you don't do yourself is handled via procedural generation and RNG. Now, normally procedural generation is where good ideas go to die, but Crusader Kings III avoids most of the pitfalls that normally come with procedural generation simply through how good the organic storytelling tends to be. I wouldn't be surprised if there's logic in the system that learns what twist might make the story better and influences the randomness accordingly. You'll notice I said "most" of the pitfalls of procedural generation. That's because there is some wonkiness that occurs as a direct result of how the game was made. There'll be times when you'll hear word that, for example, "my guest, John Smith, is plotting to kill my guest, John Smith," and it'll be a dice roll to determine if you have two guests named John Smith who both look the same or if the algorithm happened to select the same NPC for both roles in this newly-uncovered murder plot. It's small things like that. Beyond the procedural generation wonkiness, there are also a couple of other problems. One thing that annoyed me constantly was the war system. The reviews I've seen have pretty much agreed that the war system has been simplified from the system in previous Crusader Kings titles, and boy does that make me not want to play any of the prior titles. Essentially, you "raise your armies" at a rally point of your choosing, then you right click (only if the last left click you did was on your army) on a stronghold in the enemy territory (meaning a point on the map that kinda looks like it might be a stronghold) and wait for your army to march there and lay siege to the stronghold. If you win, the area becomes contested and your war score goes up. Meanwhile the enemy does the same thing to you. Whoever gets to a war score of 100% first wins the war and enforces their demands. The problem is that the whole system is incredibly clunky, and that's before you start having to fight wars in other countries. In my playthrough, I helped the usurper king fight wars in places like England, Ghana, and Jerusalem. These were small wars for small duchies/counties/whatever in these countries, and there's no way to quickly jump back and forth between your territory and the territory in question. So a lot of the time, I ended up having to look up the leader of the enemy territory in order to be transported to the territory, zoom out enough so that I could see what country it was in, zoom out even more to be able to get back to Sweden as fast as possible, zoom back in until I got back to my land, click on my army, zoom all the way out again and go back to England/Ghana/Jerusalem/whatever, zoom all the way in again, fumble around for a little while trying to find whatever small territory we were slaughtering our fellow man for (being SURE not to click a single thing), and then right click on a stronghold and wait for months for my army to arrive by ship. So whether you're fighting a neighboring kingdom or an opponent on the far side of the map, waging war is clunky and unintuitive, and losing a battle puts you in a weird setback. If you lose a battle, your forces scatter in a random direction and refuse to take orders until they've found a place to stop. This is obviously meant to show that they're retreating and putting some distance between them and the superior forces, but it can be pretty frustrating when you lose a battle on the west end of Sweden and then your army marches all the way to the east side and catches a boat to Finland before you can start trying to turn the tides in your favor. Now, as I lived through the generations of House Munso, I would gradually learn how to raise rally points in other places that might be closer to the battleground and how to do things like dividing my forces to focus on different points of interest, but suffice it to say that the war part of the tutorial wasn't great, and even with these things learned, that sense of clunk never left. More rally points and more branches of troops just meant more time having to be spent making sure I was clicking on EXACTLY the right thing at all times. Perhaps with even more play time under my belt I might gain even more knowledge about how to make this system work, but all-in-all I just found the war system extremely unpleasant. Beyond that, there are also some technical hiccups to be found. I'll start with the smallest one: there's a sound effect that plays when the game finishes loading (so it happens exactly once per play session), and it's ear-piercingly loud no matter what your sound settings are. Once that sound effect ends, everything is as you set it, but this is still an issue that happens every time without fail. I'll end with the one that's slightly less small: There were frequent times where the "a" key would simply stop working for a little while, and if I wanted to move the view to the west, I'd have to do so with the mouse. So yeah, in terms of technical hiccups, I didn't experience much. There are reports of some really gnarly glitches for other folks, but I can only report on what I faced. Before I move to the conclusion, let's quickly talk about some of the technical positives. The soundtrack, though simple and lacking in variety, is quite good. This being a strategy game, the ost needed to not be distracting but still be pleasant to listen to, and it succeeds. Finally, the game runs exceptionally well. It's not much of a surprise, given that the presentation is just the world map and soldier models, but given how much is going on every second, it's still impressive. 

Folks, there's a takeaway here that I believe you've probably already picked up on, but in case you haven't, let me spell it out: I'm bad at Crusader Kings III, but I loved my time with it anyway. How many games can you say you've had that kind of experience with? I feel like I'm this game's grandfather. It's explaining what it does for a living to me, and I don't understand most of it, but I'm listening intently anyway and just enjoying spending time with it. There's really not much else to say here. You'll likely know if this kind of thing is your jam or not, but if you can appreciate a good organic story even without being particularly good at empire building, you might have a good time even if this isn't the kind of thing you'd ever consider playing.

Let us review:

Technical/design issues - 1.0

The final score for Crusader Kings III is...

9.0/10 - Exceptional

Great work, Paradox Development Studio, great work

Available for: Playstation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows

Reviewed for: Microsoft Windows

The second of the two genres in question is one that I'm not just ambivalent toward, but that I actively dislike the entire concept of: the roguelike. I cannot for the life of me understand how people think games based literally 100% on RNG and permadeath are fun. As I said in the previous review, procedural generation is where good game ideas go to die, but for whatever reason, this genre entirely based on it is inexplicably popular. But then BPM: Bullets per Minute came along with a concept that really, really, gripped me, and I had to give it a shot. Let's get into it. 

In BPM, you play as one of 5 valkyries that gradually unlock, but that along with every other bit of norse mythology in this game is nothing more than a conceptual coat of paint. There's no story to be found and the only distinction between these valkyries other than gender is starting loadouts. So, time to move on to gameplay. BPM is a Doom-inspired first-person shooter, and the central conceit is that in each of the 8 dungeons (2 Asgard levels, 2 Vanaheim levels, 2 Svartelheim levels, and 2 Helheim levels), there's an instrumental metal track playing, and you can only perform actions in time with the beat. Shooting, dashing, reloading, all of it happens either on the beat or half beat, meaning that the sound effects of combat actively contribute to the music. Furthermore, enemies all attack, move, and make noises to the beat as well. This primary gameplay loop, once you've gotten the hang of it, is immensely satisfying. There's nothing on earth quite like going through a sequence of bang-bang-bang-chik-chik-chik-CHAK-bang-bang-swoosh-bang-swoosh-swoosh-chik-CHAK exactly to the rhythm of a crunchy electric guitar. But you'll notice that I said "once you've gotten the hang on it," and that bears repeating. If you're a musician like me, you might think acting on a beat would be easy-peasy right off the bat, but there are a couple of things that throw a big learning curve in your face. The first thing is the starting pistol, which is easily the worst weapon in any game ever. The weapon that you start learning how to navigate the game with is not only weak, its aiming is wonky as all get-out, so while you're getting used to controls and everything, you'll find yourself getting killed quickly and having to start all over. Like, literally, words cannot express how awful the starting pistol is in this game. But even once you've gotten rid of the garbage starting pistol and traded it in for something that actually does damage, a lot of the time the aiming still feels wonky. It's as if there's a soft lock-on system in the background and shots only connect if it triggers. There are times where you'll definitely have the reticle on an enemy, pull the trigger, and they won't die, but there are other times where you'll be moving and you won't have the reticle entirely on the enemy, but you'll notice a little white star icon on, say, a bat enemy's wing, and when you pull the trigger, it dies. It's woefully inconsistent and lacking in any meaningful feedback. The next thing to discuss is something that can be pretty easily rectified, actually. The default key bindings make sense on paper: "R" for reload, "Right Mouse Button" to activate your second ability. However, I'd recommend that you swap those two bindings so that you're using "R" to activate your second ability and clicking the right mouse button to reload. I did this myself after seeing a review that recommended it, and do you want to know how much of a difference that made? I'd been through approximately 15-20 runs at that point, making it to the final level exactly once and making it to the second to last level exactly three times. When I made that switch to the key bindings, I beat the game on my first try after the fact. And then I went on to beat the game on "hard" mode within three tries. Something about how the default key binding works with the game's movement makes things harder, and having it so that you both turn and reload with the same computer accessory just works better. But by far the biggest thing that makes it hard to get a handle on the game is the game's very nature as a roguelike. Death at ANY point for ANY reason means starting from scratch from the beginning. All the upgrades that you randomly acquired disappear, all your stat boosts disappear, you're back to the starting pistol, and every upgrade/stat boost/new weapon you can get from there on is totally random. Early on, you're not going to make it past Asgard (the first two levels). Period. You're going to end up playing those two levels over and over again, fighting the same enemy types over and over again, hearing the same two tracks over and over again. While it's clear that this is meant to really force the player to start getting the hang of it all before they get too far in, in practice this makes the experience incredibly frustrating, and it causes these first two levels (1/4 of the game, need I remind you) to become stale quickly. And then once you finally get past the second level and move into the Vanaheim levels, you'll likely get creamed by one of the many new enemy types with new attack patterns that you haven't spent the past however many hours getting used to, and then it's right back to the Asgard levels again. It's a constant dance of gradual progress followed by going back to starting levels that had gotten old hours upon hours ago, then making gradually more progress before once again going back to those original levels. Have you ever seen the meme about playing old games back in the day? The one about losing to a boss so many times that you now have the dialogue from the unskippable cutscene that plays before the fight memorized and you're saying the dialogue back at the screen in a mocking voice? That's how I eventually felt about the guitar riffs from the Asgard levels (the first one in particular). This is because of the lack of variety in the music, but we'll get to that later. For now, we're talking about how this game's nature as a roguelike hinders it. Now, this is a strange case in that I actually do like the effect that the randomized dungeon structure has on the game. This is the rare case where randomized dungeons don't cause the game to feel uninspired, and they instead make every level exciting (as exciting as these levels can possibly get, but again, we'll get to that). The same cannot be said about the randomized loot and upgrades. The fact of the matter is that most of the gear pieces you can equip are useless (or at least they were to me). I've beaten the game a couple of times at this point (a fact to keep in mind as I continue to complain), and every time it's been because I got lucky with the stuff I got. It never felt like I beat the game thanks to my own skill as a result. My own skill was a factor, for sure, and I couldn't have done it without having gotten better at the gameplay, but at the end of the day, I only ever felt like the reason I won was because of the things I got. For instance, at the time of writing, I've only ever won with the shotgun that doesn't require individual shell reloads, the helmet that vamps health when I do damage, the midgard bracelet, and the double damage shield in the shield gear slot, as well as the skeleton key. There's been more variety in what boot gear and abilities help me succeed, but there are still patterns to be seen. For instance, even if I don't win, if I get the ability that lets me produce gold coins for spending after a certain amount of rooms cleared, I always do well. So not only do I hardly ever feel like I truly earned my victories, but thanks to the random nature of every level, I'm not even always able to use the things I get from dumb luck to the fullest. For instance, I got that aforementioned gold coin ability very frequently, and in my most successful run, I beat the game with something like 200 coins, and I had reached that wealth level approximately two or three levels before the end. But because even the things you can buy in the shops and armories are randomized, most of the time there isn't much to actually spend money on. With the help of this ability, you'll be able to get your stats up the maximum level pretty early on by way of the shrines scattered throughout the dungeons, so naturally you no longer get anything for using money on those after a while. Similarly, once you have the weapon you want, you only ever need the armory for clip or damage upgrades (even then, see the previous sentence about stats). When it comes to the store, it's just entirely random. When you've gotten the store fully upgrades, you'll typically have a choice of a couple healing items and a couple pieces of gear in any given dungeon, but what you see is what you get. If you see a "+25 health" healing item for 4 coins, for example, you can only get the one you see on the podium, so it isn't a matter of going up to an item and choosing how much you want to buy, if that makes sense. A fully upgraded shop could be bought out for something like 30-45 coins, in other words, but most of the time you'll only need one or two items. Other times, though, you'll be desperate for health and there'll just be 2 +25 health items on the podiums, and no matter how big your Scrooge McDuck coin pool is, that's all you're able to procure. The obvious answer to this problem, on paper, is the bank. The bank is one of the room types that can be randomly put in a dungeon, and the idea is that if you're having a particularly good run and have money to spare, you can put money into a pool that can be drawn from in subsequent runs. In this way, on paper, a run that isn't going as well in the future can be turned around by drawing on the wealth from previous runs. However, the bank spawns so rarely, and even when it does spawn, you can only deposit a maximum of 10 coins per dungeon. The next solution, then, is (on paper) gambling. In just about every dungeon there'll be a room that has a shrine that you insert coins into for a random outcome. Whether this is positive or negative depends on your luck stat, so given that if you're rich you can max out your stats pretty early, this seems to be what the devs really want you to do. The problem is that, again, it's random. This has largely turned into me complaining about the wealth management balancing in BPM, but as I said, I got the coin ability so frequently that I had to struggle with obtaining, not being able to properly spend, and then losing (either through victory or defeat) over 100 coins far too many times. It seems to me that if you're going to make the equipment I get random, you should structure the gameplay systems in a way that lets me use them to the fullest. If you're going to tell me "I'm giving you the ability to print basically infinite money instead of that healing ability you obviously wanted. What are you going to do with it?" then I should be faced with clear strategies on how best to utilize this gift in a randomized setting. I should be going into stores not knowing what's going to be on the podiums, then making decisions accordingly. I could walk into a store with expensive healing items but cheaper health increases and shields, and then the challenge would revolve around deciding whether I wanted to build a bigger health bar and retain my current health level with the potential to make that health back up in the next dungeon or if I wanted to keep my current health bar and simply bulk up with shields. I could also potentially look at the luck I've had with weapon selections in the armory and the gear I've been getting from chests, decide that this run probably won't be successful, and use my wealth to invest in future runs while getting as far as possible. As it stands though, everything is so random and the challenge with this ability is so artificial that most of my runs ended wastefully. All of this complaining about the roguelike nature of this game and how it ruins almost everything aside, I still find myself going back to spend 30 minutes to an hour in BPM even now, so what gives? Well, it's like I tried to emphasize earlier: the core gameplay on display here is great. This is a game that just feels excellent to play, even if the game's nature tries everything in its power to hold it back. So, that's something I want you to keep in mind as well, because when all is said and done, fun is what we're invested in this hobby for!

Now, that's not where this review ends. We still have technical stuff to discuss, and frankly, there's not a lot of good to be said. So let's get some of the good out of the way: a couple of the songs are headbang-worthy. The second Vanaheim theme utilizes its lower notes with just the right amount of buzzy bass to make it impossible not to sway with the rhythm. The second Svartelheim theme is just a good metal loop that makes perfect use of pinch harmonics and string bending. And that's it. Most of the other themes are perfectly fine metal loops at best and serviceable ones at worst, but that's really all that can be said for the music, and that's before we get into the lack of variety. This variety issue has two layers. The first is a lack of variety in the track composition. Every track uses the exact same guitar effects, has the exact same structure, and plays at the exact same tempo. This is metal music! Lack of variety in metal is the death of metal. It's why I've never been able to get into bands like Amon Amarth except when they put out something different like "Twilight of the Thunder God." The second is that the variety in the tracks doesn't match the variety in the level types. While there are only 8 levels with basically 4 aesthetics shared among them, there are sometimes little changes that get made to a level. For instance, in a run you might end up having the first Asgard level be a "Midas" or "Barren" Asgard, meaning an abundance of gold coin rewards or no rewards at all when clearing a room, respectively. These are just two of the many variations on levels that you can come across, and though they're a bit on the rare side, they ensure that not every run is exactly the same in terms of its level of challenge. There are no variations on the music. It'll be the exact same level track no matter what variation of the level you get. I'm not saying that having a potential Nightcore variation of a level where everything moves twice as fast or a silent version where you have to rely on visual cues to determine the beat would drastically improve things, but having that level of unpredictability probably would've made the slog to get used to the first couple levels a bit more tolerable. But these problems with the music aren't the end of the technical flaws on display here. I'd say the biggest thing wrong with BPM is literally everything about its visuals. This is perhaps the ugliest looking game I've played in my life, and as a hardcore fan of Dragon Age: Origins, I don't get to complain about visuals unless they're true standouts in the ugly department. Every level has this kinda-blurry-kinda-washed-out overlay filter or however the hell you'd describe it. The Asgard levels are blinding orange, the Vanaheim levels are basically shadow-destroying muted green, the Svartelheim levels are blinding red, and the Helheim levels are flat gray. I've seen some talk that the devs needed these filters because due to budget, they had to use assets from other project and these filters were the only way to tie everything together aesthetically. I sincerely hope that isn't the case, because if it is, it didn't work. Why? Because even before I saw that theory, this game felt like an asset flip. Visually there was no sense that anything I was fighting belonged where it was. Why is Asgard filled with spiders, worms, and bats that all look like they were designed by different artists? Why are scorpions, flying squids, and dudes with shields in the same rooms in Vanaheim? Furthermore...what do any of these things have to do with the Norse mythology that this game takes place in? It would be such a shame for a small dev team to make a decision to try and make things feel more cohesive and have it fail this miserably. To end this paragraph on a high note, let's finish off the rest of the good: I only experienced two bugs, both of them dealing with audio. The first was that for the longest time, I'd have to re-visit the settings when I booted up the game in order for my audio preferences to kick in. They were saved, but the game would kind of forget while it was turned off and then remember when I opened up the settings to show it. This seems to have been patched recently. The second was that one gun would play the audio cue for picking it up in every loading screen (only once), so not too big a deal. Beyond these two issues, I never experienced any crashes (hard or soft), texture pop-in (not like there's much texture to begin with, though), or glitches of any other kind. All-in-all a pretty stable package.

Folks, what I hope I've gotten across is that BPM: Bullets per Minute is a pastry with a delicious filling. However, the filling is quite small and requires chewing through tough dough with questionably-colored patches on it. I think what separates me from people who enjoy roguelikes is that I believe primary gameplay loops, while unquestionably important, cannot carry a game that has little else going for it. Games like BPM are good if you have a handful of minutes a day for this hobby or a supremely short attention span, but if you don't fall into those categories, they're less a memorable experience and more a great distraction. In that role, as I hope I've conveyed, BPM is excellent, but I do have to emphasize that it'll only be for you if you're ok with spending money on a full pastry when the value comes only from the tiny filled center. I'm not nearly as conflicted on this game as I think I've been coming off as. In my mind, it's a game worthy of a (low, like maybe 10 or 9) spot on the end of the year list for the enjoyment I've gotten just from the moment-to-moment gameplay, but being the pretentious little termite that I am, I have to emphasize that a fun distraction is all it is. If you're alright with that, then I'd definitely tell you to go out and get BPM now! If not, I'd still say it's worth experiencing, though you might want to wait for a sale.

Let us review:

Horrible starting pistol - 0.5

Inherent Roguelike problems - 1.0

Lack of variety/ugly to look at/asset flip feel - 1.0

The final score for BPM: Bullets per Minute is...

7.5/10 - Pretty Good

Decent work, Awe Interactive, decent work.