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Close Your Eyes: A Fairy Tale
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Set in early 1400s Europe, Close Your Eyes is a sincere, yet light-hearted and lustful, ode to love....
Historical Fiction
Charlie Goes to School (Adventures with Charlie #1)
8.0
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The Adventures with Charlie book series is a children's picture book about an inspirational boy who...
Special Needs Children Nonfiction Picture books
The World Turn'd Upside Down
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"The World Turned Upside Down" takes readers on an exhilarating journey through one of history's...
American Revolution United States History Founding Fathers
Purple Phoenix Games (2266 KP) rated Samurai Spirit in Tabletop Games
Jun 12, 2019
One of the best parts of the board gaming experience is finding a fun group of people with whom to play! Sometimes, though, coordinating a game night is easier said than done. We all must occasionally forego the group experience and face the world as the Lonely Only. But fear not! The world of solo-play is a vast and exciting realm! What follows is a chronicle of my journey into the solo-playing world – notes on gameplay, mechanics, rules, difficulty, and overall experience with solo variations of commonly multiplayer games! I hope this will provide some insight as you continue to grow your collection, or explore your already owned games!
As a Samurai, you spend your life traveling across the land to help those in need. Most recently, you and a handful of other Samurai have been contracted by a small village to defend them against a clan of invading raiders. Only by working together, and by using your extensive training, will you succeed in keeping this village safe!
Samurai Spirit is a cooperative game of press-your-luck. Players take on the role of a Samurai, each with a unique power, and take turns drawing cards and fighting off the invaders or offering support to your fellow Samurai. Invaders can have recurring negative effects, so strategize wisely on how best to combat them and see how far you can push your luck each round. If you are able to survive through 3 rounds (waves) of invaders with at least one surviving farmstead and family, the Samurai are victorious and the village is saved! If any of the Samurai are killed, or the village has been completely destroyed by invaders, then the game is lost. As a solo game, Samurai Spirit plays essentially the same as in group play, with only 2 main differences – the solo player controls 2 Samurai instead of 1, and the support tokens from the unused Samurai are each available for use once during the game.
For such a neat theme, this game falls short for me. It seems simple enough, but there are areas of ambiguity in the rules that lead to some confusion. For starters, the text size is so small that I am not able to find any information at a quick glance! The text itself is not always clear either – like when, at the end of a round, the rules say to collect all cards used this round, does that include cards that have been discarded due to Samurai abilities? How about the cards of the Intruder stack that are presumably discarded after being revealed? The rulebook offers no clarification, and I honestly still don’t know the right answer.
The order/layout of the rules feels mismatched too – relevant information is not always grouped together, and I find myself flipping between several pages at a time trying to figure out one single thing. For example, in the ‘Fight’ action description, it says that if you reach your Kiai value exactly, you can activate your Kiai ability. You have to turn the page to a different section to see exactly what activating that ability means, and then you have to flip an additional 2 more pages to see what each individual Kiai ability is! Why not just put them all in one place? It would certainly be easier to understand if all relevant information was grouped together.
The prominent mechanic of Samurai Spirit is press-your-luck, and I would definitely say that this game is very luck-based. When setting up the game, the initial deck of cards is randomly selected and that can impact whether or not you are able to complete certain requirements each round – if there aren’t enough hat/farm/doll cards for each Samurai, you are guaranteed to incur a penalty at the end of every round. Actual gameplay is very luck-based too, and for me it feels like there are no good ways to strategize – your choices are all dependent on the luck of the draw. You can push your luck to draw more cards and use special abilities, but since you are suffering from recurring penalties each turn, it feels futile to keep going at a certain point.
For me, Samurai Spirit is repetitive and kind of boring – suffer penalty, draw card, and repeat until you eventually pass or the deck runs out. It’s like a too-complicated version of blackjack in which the deck is stacked against you. It’s such a bummer because the theme and artwork are neat, and the gameplay (in theory, at least) should be effective. But the actual execution is too reliant on luck to be successful.
I do quite a bit of solo gaming, but this game is never one that I willingly decide to play. I honestly only broke it out recently as a refresher for this review. Perhaps it is better at higher player counts, but since that is not where most of my gaming occurs, Samurai Spirit is a dud for me.
https://purplephoenixgames.wordpress.com/2019/02/06/solo-chronicles-samurai-spirit/
As a Samurai, you spend your life traveling across the land to help those in need. Most recently, you and a handful of other Samurai have been contracted by a small village to defend them against a clan of invading raiders. Only by working together, and by using your extensive training, will you succeed in keeping this village safe!
Samurai Spirit is a cooperative game of press-your-luck. Players take on the role of a Samurai, each with a unique power, and take turns drawing cards and fighting off the invaders or offering support to your fellow Samurai. Invaders can have recurring negative effects, so strategize wisely on how best to combat them and see how far you can push your luck each round. If you are able to survive through 3 rounds (waves) of invaders with at least one surviving farmstead and family, the Samurai are victorious and the village is saved! If any of the Samurai are killed, or the village has been completely destroyed by invaders, then the game is lost. As a solo game, Samurai Spirit plays essentially the same as in group play, with only 2 main differences – the solo player controls 2 Samurai instead of 1, and the support tokens from the unused Samurai are each available for use once during the game.
For such a neat theme, this game falls short for me. It seems simple enough, but there are areas of ambiguity in the rules that lead to some confusion. For starters, the text size is so small that I am not able to find any information at a quick glance! The text itself is not always clear either – like when, at the end of a round, the rules say to collect all cards used this round, does that include cards that have been discarded due to Samurai abilities? How about the cards of the Intruder stack that are presumably discarded after being revealed? The rulebook offers no clarification, and I honestly still don’t know the right answer.
The order/layout of the rules feels mismatched too – relevant information is not always grouped together, and I find myself flipping between several pages at a time trying to figure out one single thing. For example, in the ‘Fight’ action description, it says that if you reach your Kiai value exactly, you can activate your Kiai ability. You have to turn the page to a different section to see exactly what activating that ability means, and then you have to flip an additional 2 more pages to see what each individual Kiai ability is! Why not just put them all in one place? It would certainly be easier to understand if all relevant information was grouped together.
The prominent mechanic of Samurai Spirit is press-your-luck, and I would definitely say that this game is very luck-based. When setting up the game, the initial deck of cards is randomly selected and that can impact whether or not you are able to complete certain requirements each round – if there aren’t enough hat/farm/doll cards for each Samurai, you are guaranteed to incur a penalty at the end of every round. Actual gameplay is very luck-based too, and for me it feels like there are no good ways to strategize – your choices are all dependent on the luck of the draw. You can push your luck to draw more cards and use special abilities, but since you are suffering from recurring penalties each turn, it feels futile to keep going at a certain point.
For me, Samurai Spirit is repetitive and kind of boring – suffer penalty, draw card, and repeat until you eventually pass or the deck runs out. It’s like a too-complicated version of blackjack in which the deck is stacked against you. It’s such a bummer because the theme and artwork are neat, and the gameplay (in theory, at least) should be effective. But the actual execution is too reliant on luck to be successful.
I do quite a bit of solo gaming, but this game is never one that I willingly decide to play. I honestly only broke it out recently as a refresher for this review. Perhaps it is better at higher player counts, but since that is not where most of my gaming occurs, Samurai Spirit is a dud for me.
https://purplephoenixgames.wordpress.com/2019/02/06/solo-chronicles-samurai-spirit/
Merissa (12934 KP) rated Arctic Spirit (Arctic Ice #1) in Books
Mar 30, 2018
Arctic Spirit (Arctic Ice #1) by Elena Kincaid
Arctic Spirit is the first book in a new series by Elena Kincaid. We start off with Charlotte. Her father was in the air force and one of the best moves he made was when he was stationed in Alaska. Why? Because Charlotte meets Drew and Chris, two brothers and her best friends. The day she has to leave them is the day that broke her heart. She does it though, knowing it is better this way as she would never be able to choose between them. They let her go, in pain as well, but knowing a secret that stops them from asking her to stay. As they are shifters, they have a fated mate out there, and it wouldn't be fair on Charlotte, or their mate, if they had to choose between them. The years pass by, and Charlotte agrees to meet up with them again. Things turn out differently to how she expected, and the story really gets going.
This was a brilliant way to begin. You have fated mates, a lovely ménage, jealousy, danger, humour - trust me, it's all here. The pacing of the story was smooth, and the scenes were delightfully descriptive. With no editing or grammatical errors to disrupt my reading flow, this book flew by as I was totally engrossed from start to finish. Can't wait for the next book. Absolutely recommended by me.
* A copy of this book was provided to me with no requirements for a review. I voluntarily read this book, and my comments here are my honest opinion. *
Merissa
Archaeolibrarian - I Dig Good Books!
http://erotic.theromancereviews.com/viewbooks.php?bookid=26680
This was a brilliant way to begin. You have fated mates, a lovely ménage, jealousy, danger, humour - trust me, it's all here. The pacing of the story was smooth, and the scenes were delightfully descriptive. With no editing or grammatical errors to disrupt my reading flow, this book flew by as I was totally engrossed from start to finish. Can't wait for the next book. Absolutely recommended by me.
* A copy of this book was provided to me with no requirements for a review. I voluntarily read this book, and my comments here are my honest opinion. *
Merissa
Archaeolibrarian - I Dig Good Books!
http://erotic.theromancereviews.com/viewbooks.php?bookid=26680
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Sarah (7800 KP) rated Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga (2020) in Movies
Jun 28, 2020
Full of Eurovision spirit
I am a big fan of Eurovision, it's a must see event every year and I've even been to see it in person when it was last held in Denmark. Sadly with the cancellation of pretty much everything this year including Eurovision, I've been dying for a bit of cheesy fun and this film *almost* delivers it in the truckload.
This film really knows how to channel the Eurovision spirit. There's a lot of great cheesy songs and costumes, some great over the top performances (Dan Stevens was a hoot) and a decent amount of heart. The songs are very good, from the hilariously cheesy to the impressive ballads. The acting was good although i felt Will Ferrell was a little of a letdown. It was great to see Dan Stevens camping it up though and a nice (but sadly too short) role for Natasia Demetriou from What We Do in the Shadows, and I loved the cameos from existing real life Eurovision acts.
The problem with this film is the humour is lacking when it's not cheesy Eurovision fun. And the jokes that were there fell pretty flat for me. The film is also rather longer than you'd expect and did drag a little in the middle.
I had been expecting a Eurovision spoof comedy, but instead what I got was almost a homage to everything we love about Eurovision. It's not great but definitely an enjoyable bit of fun. I've been debating whether to score this a 6 or 7 and in the end, I've decided to be rather generous as it is a lot of fun.
This film really knows how to channel the Eurovision spirit. There's a lot of great cheesy songs and costumes, some great over the top performances (Dan Stevens was a hoot) and a decent amount of heart. The songs are very good, from the hilariously cheesy to the impressive ballads. The acting was good although i felt Will Ferrell was a little of a letdown. It was great to see Dan Stevens camping it up though and a nice (but sadly too short) role for Natasia Demetriou from What We Do in the Shadows, and I loved the cameos from existing real life Eurovision acts.
The problem with this film is the humour is lacking when it's not cheesy Eurovision fun. And the jokes that were there fell pretty flat for me. The film is also rather longer than you'd expect and did drag a little in the middle.
I had been expecting a Eurovision spoof comedy, but instead what I got was almost a homage to everything we love about Eurovision. It's not great but definitely an enjoyable bit of fun. I've been debating whether to score this a 6 or 7 and in the end, I've decided to be rather generous as it is a lot of fun.
