Banished vs Griefhelm
Banished
Banished is a medieval-themed city-building simulation that can be pretty difficult to get into at first mainly due to its many nuances and lack of a comprehensive tutorial. But once you get the general idea of how things work (we'd recommend starting with easy mode), you'll start to truly appreciate the game as the challenge that it is. In some way, this game is quite similar to SimCity in many ways with the obvious difference being the themes and the lack of piping, waste management or electricity. Different maps will pose a different challenge and of course, the bigger your village is, the more stuff you'll need to manage. Although it does have some strategy elements to it - mainly in the form of village management, the game is not a war game. There is no fighting involved but your villagers will die from natural causes or disasters like illnesses or famine.However, once you've gotten the hang of the game, Banished becomes less of a punishing game and a bit more boring due to the same-y looking buildings and the soundtrack. When it comes to replayability, we'd say that the game has maybe tens of hours in it before you'll get bored and move on to the next game... and this play duration may be drastically reduced if you happen to be a pro SimCity player.
So, in short, Banished will appear to be a somewhat frustrating game at first, but once you've gotten the hang of it, the game might gradually becomes boring mainly because there is nothing else to do except to expand, expand and expand! However, we can't say that we didn't enjoy playing the game, and even for the shorter play duration it has to offer, as opposed to triple A city-building titles, the game is worth the money it costs.
Griefhelm
Griefhelm is a realistic 2D medieval sword-fighting game with a Slay the Spire-like progression and a pretty brutal difficulty level in the sense that if you let your opponent get in a couple of hits, you’re dead. Offering several game modes and perks, the game focuses a lot on timing your actions to best your opponent on the battlefield.Since timing is crucial in this game, you’d best be vigilant of the several combat cues your enemies may make a split second before the animation starts. If you do it precisely right, then you might just survive the attacks and even find a few openings of your own to strike. This game is definitely not the mindless hack-and-slash that many other games seem to offer. Every action you take in this game is deliberate and this makes every successful kill so much more satisfying.
Now, all of these fights are scattered across nodes in a progression map that’s somewhat similar to Slay the Spire. What this means is that you’ve got a choice as to which path you want to take and, in this game, you’ll usually have at least 2. Different paths offer different levels and types of challenges, and hence, different rewards so it’s important for you to decide which reward is most worthwhile for you.
To sum up, Griefhelm is truly in a class of its own. I’ve seen many players compare the game disfavorably against Nidhogg and that may be true, but for someone who has only played For Honor before, Griefhelm really brings swordplay to a different dimension… literally (Hint: 2D as opposed to 3D)!