Käyttäjän Hobbes viimeaikaiset arvostelut

Overland places specific emphasis on survival. This is probably the closest a game has hewn to the rogue roots in recent months in so much as there's no meta progression, no unlocks beyond being able to start in a later area (and that can be more hindrance than help beyond say, starting in zone two). This game actively wants you to lose, it goes out of it's way to ensure you *will* lose, eventually. The win condition is staving off losing to get to the end of the map. That's the kind of satisfaction you get from withstanding the elements not to make it to the top of say Everest, but getting through the pouring rain to get to work. Knowing that even if you make it through the hell that is torrential rain and car wash levels of wind and hail, you've got eight hours of effort awaiting you for your daily bread.

This is a very specific form of fun on offer. If fun is getting your gnads kicked in repeatedly, you'll love this game. If you go out with the intent of getting a game that rewards your time and provides something back in exchange for you mastering it, no. No such luck.


There's no choice of which car you start with, it's always the same janky three seater (seriously, three?, and it only has room for one item, what is it? A Geewizz?), you always get access to the same cars in broadly the same order, you always start with an opening character that has no traits and a backpack and one character who's trapped that is either a dog or a human with some random traits.

YOU ALWAYS START THE SAME AND THE RUNS DON'T SEEM TO VARY. WHO THOUGHT THIS WAS WISE.

Changing the zones you visit without altering the difficulty gradient would prevent visual boredom setting in, but no, you always have to visit the same ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ places in the same ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ order. The characters have funny little comments in their bio but do they reference them out on the road? Do they hell. They say the same default lines EVERY SINGLE TIME and it means the chatter on the road is DULL AS DISHWATER.

Fighting is only a last ditch option because all combat makes sound (in fact *EVERYTHING* apparently makes sound if you're outside of your car, except when all of your people are inside the car because THEN EVEN IF THE CAR IS OFF THE CAR MAKES SOUND). WHO THOUGHT THIS WAS A GOOD PLAN. NO SILENT OPTIONS FOR COMBAT EVEN IF DISPOSABLE, WHAT, THE DOG CAN'T BITE WITHOUT ALERTING THE ENTIRE NEIGHBOURHOOD?


And then there's the matter of equipment. You can equip things to the car and to people, but you cannot unequip them. So if you get a lighter and give it to someone. THAT LIGHTER IS THEIRS FOR LIFE AND THEY WILL HOLD ON TO IT EVEN IN THE GRIM CLUTCHES OF DEATH AND NEVER AGAIN SHALL THAT LIGHTER BE USED BY ANYONE ELSE.

WHO THOUGHT THIS WAS SENSIBLE. SOMETIMES YOU NEED TO CHANGE WHO HAS THE MAGICAL LIGHTER OF BURN CAPABILITY

The car upgrades are just as bad, You hook up a roof rack to your car for more storage space, once you leave the area, that's it, it's WELDED TO THE CAR LIKE IT'S BEEN PUT ON WITH GORILLA GLUE. NOT EVEN AN ANGLE GRINDER AND AN OXYACETYLENE TORCH WILL GET THE F***ING THING BACK OFF THE F***ING CAR EVEN THOUGH YOU CAN ATTACH AND DETACH IT FREELY BEFORE YOU DECIDE THAT'S THE CAR YOU WANT IT ON AT THAT POINT

... These are things that will not abide in 2019. Hats you cannot remove. Roof racks that JB-Weld themselves to the roof of your car ONCE YOU DRIVE AWAY WITH THEM ON. AMAZINGLY HOWEVER YOU CAN GET THE SODDING BULL BARS BACK OFF, ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS RAM SOMETHING AND GORILLA GLUE COMES LOOSE.


... Lots of design choices in this game make me angry to MY BOILING POINT

If it weren't for the graphics I would not only be slamming this with a hard refusal I'd be lining this one up for the "Worst game of 2019" award.

As it is. The design and sound are amazing, and there's a lot to be said for the atmosphere. But the actual mechanical details are about as well thought out as a helicopter fitted with a vertical ejector seat, or a fireguard made from the finest Belgian Chocolate. Or a condom made of manuka honey. You get the idea.

THIS GAME IS BAD FINJI AND YOU SHOULD FEEL BAD. FIX THE GAME.

Verdict : Deep sale, deep deep sale, deep deep deep deep sale. Finji need to unfsck this mess

The title does not joke. This game is very, very dedicated to the creation, customisation and tuning of your own personal mechanised suits. In most games this is about taking various pre-designated parts and assembling them to make your own burger, you can vary the parts and come up with lots of interesting builds, but ultimately, you're still building a burger.

Here the -concept- is the same (you're still building a bipedal suit which derives from the more eastern flavoured mecha backgrounds) but the level of depth is *insane*. Developing the look of your exoskeleton is done completely independently of your overall stats and only affects weight (so do you want to build a light suit or a big hulking suit).

Whilst you're still dealing with pre-set parts, because there is so many and the system is so modular (even allowing for you to run asymmetric elements on things like shoulders, legs and arms) the odds of you developing a suit like anyone else is very unlikely. They even give you a random button so you can slam that a few times until you get a look that gives you some inspiration to get started.

That's before we get into the painting system (every piece can be individually coloured, with settings for things like glow, glossiness, texturing and full H/S/L configuration) and a decal system which again, allows for maximum adjustments and layering. This is a mech builders wet dream, and whilst you don't get the full toybox to open, unlocking parts happens at a solid pace and you'll never be short of new pieces to adjust and customise your looks with.

This level of bonkers customisation extends both to weapons and to the stats setup, with weapons having a full modular configuration system where you plug parts together to create specific weapons, and the stats system using overall macro systems that set the baselines for given areas and then sub-element "plug in" modifications that can do things like enable UI elements, have semi-active proc systems, or just add and subtract from specific stats to specialise your particular build.

As a customisation suite, this thing is I think almost unbeatable. At least for what it does, other suites in other games fulfil their roles respectively, but as a builder? Yeah, this is going to be something that I think is the final word in mech customisation and painting. I expect people to spend extensive time creating and showing off the results once this thing exits early access, it's that kind of in depth capability.


The fighting part is... good. I'm not going to say great, because it's still hm, how do I put this. It's not got the kind of depth I'd -like- to see. Your mech can perform wildly differently, and the weapons are definitely interesting albeit I'm not seeing quite as many options on the projectile end of the spectrum yet - where's the shotguns or grenade launchers or really odd guns or beam weapons?

Considering how open ended the building element was I suppose I was hoping for a more "Front Mission" combined with "Panzer General" where you'd have a dynamic campaign with proc-gen missions that fed into a battlefield that could change depending on how well, or how badly you did. This game -deserves- something as bonkers on the combat end to fit the building end and as yet, I'm just not feeling that.

The moment to moment combat still feels ... flat? I think that's my issue, melee combat needs a little more fluidity, the weapons need either alt fire or something to help them stand out more, and in general it just needs a little more translation from building to combat to make the leap from something that's currently solidly good to something I could list as possible Game of the Year territory.

And to be clear, this -could- be game of the year, if the battle side of things had something more in depth than what is currently in play. This game is so very close to being an absolute must get, perhaps over the course of Early Access it will grow into one of the must haves of 2019, as it stands, it's still an easy choice at this price point, doubly so if you love mechs.


Spread the word, this game needs the exposure, it needs more light shone upon it. This could be one of the sleeper hits of the year. The customisation side alone will keep any mech artist happy for months if not years to come, if the combat side gets just that extra layer of polish, then the game will be an all time great.

Verdict: Hell to the yes

The gameplay is better, the ranged combat is much more solid, the enemies are interesting. This time however there's different problems. Where this game seems to have managed to learn the lessons in terms of mostly getting checkpoint placement right and not having default enemies that can teleport and headshot you instantly, this one decides in whatever wisdom it has to throw bosses at you that are -way- overtuned for solo play and a world generation system that resembles lucky lotto for working out what loot you might or might not get.

Loot including such fundamentals as y'know... an assault rifle. Which could require multiple world rerolls just to get the accursed thing. Not to mention even something simple as the first armour set is cleverly hidden out of sight in such a way that unless you're licking the walls and rolling into everything it's very easy to overlook the bookcase with a slight hole behind it and thus miss an actually useful set of medium encumbrance armour.

This game to begin with doesn't feel too bad, it's only when you scratch below the surface it will drive you ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ nuts...


Your loot, all of it, is predetermined by the world seed you roll as you begin the game. There are no "random" drops. Everything is pre-set once you roll your world. So things such as Bark Skin, a fairly core talent that gives you armour scaling, is not a given, and relies on your world seed setting up the dungeon with a specific quest item in and the appropriate quest line available. The aforementioned Assault Rifle occurs only in a specific dungeon. If you do not take the Ex-Cultist class, a vital trait is also gated behind that said same dungeon.

Nothing tells you this at the time, but be prepared to reroll your early game numerous times just to get all the core gear you're going to need to make serious headway into the later game (if you're solo-ing, if you're not, you can just breeze through most of the game with some solid co-ordination). The game has not been tuned for solo play, like, at all, it's possible to get the same initial boss with two different suffixes and as a result have wildly different experiences (Case in point, I fought Shroud with "Enchanted" and "Skullcracker", one took an hour because Enchanted gives him the ability to spam explosive AE clouds of rot, Skullcracker just made his attacks stronger, Skullcracker took me two attempts).

All of the proper loot is hidden away in places which are at the whims of the world seed generator, so actually getting anything interesting is often out of your hands. This is in complete contrast to most souls games where obtaining cool armour and weapons is about farming specific mobs or bosses, or hunting down specific vendors and buying up the things you need. Here it's perfectly possible to be stuck with the starter gear until the first *major* boss.

WHO THOUGHT THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA.

Vendors and key items are at the whim of RNGesus, quests are similarly at the whim of RNGesus. The whole game's inherent difficulty can be based on your world seed, meaning "Normal" in one run can be brutal and "Hard" in the next can be a cakewalk.


And then there's the bosses.

IF YOUR BOSS DESIGN REQUIRES YOU TO SPAM DANGEROUS ADDS AT A SOLO PLAYER BECAUSE YOU CAN'T PUT DOWN PROPER AMMO REGEN LOCATIONS, YOU HAVE FAILED BOSS DESIGN 101, BOSSES ARE THE PRIMARY FOCUS OF THE PLAYER. DO NOT FORCE THEM TO HAVE TO DEAL WITH BULL**** NONSENSE BECAUSE YOU LACK THE ABILITY TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO PUT DOWN RESPAWNING AMMO PICKUPS AROUND THE ARENA. ADDS SHOULD BE THE DOMAIN OF CO-OP FIGHTS, WHERE CO-ORDINATION MATTERS, SOLO PLAYERS HAVE ENOUGH TO DEAL WITH WITHOUT YOUR NONSENSE ADDS CLOGGING UP THEIR MENTAL SPACE. THIS IS PARTICULARLY TRUE FOR SINGE WHO MAKES LIFE ABSURDLY HARD AND THEN YOU THROW FIREPROOF ADDS INTO THE MIX. YOU CLOCKBENDS.

ONE OF THE FIRST BOSSES IS STILL SURROUNDED BY SUICIDAL EMO EXPLODING ADDS IN A TIGHTLY ENCLOSED ARENA. WHY IS THIS NOT FIXED?

The bosses are great and interesting, but this game desperately needs retuning for solo players as well. It should not be the default answer to "Go co-op" when running into a boss like Singe and then the adds ruin your day because you have to be in two or three places at once (That's to say nothing of the Undying King and the level of nonsense that comes out of that fight).

So like. Enough already. Make loot (especially the basic stuff) more accessible, if you get as far as the Labyrinth and things like THE ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ASSAULT RIFLE haven't appeared on that seed, make them vendor purchasable. Add more core armour sets that can be bought in Ward 13 so you don't end up waiting until the Third World until you ACTUALLY GET A DIFFERENT SET OF ARMOUR. I should not spend six hours only picking up rings and feeling like Frodo Baggins. This is not rewarding or fun.


It is, because the worldbuilding and lore is *great*. There's a lot here going for it. But dear GODS do developers need to start dogfooding their own games properly. Or get people who don't just answer with "Git gud" to provide proper, detailed feedback on tuning bosses. Right now this game is about as fun as Solo Queuing for League of Legends, if you play Solo.

I imagine it's fun in co-op, but that's not how I'm reviewing it. If you can't run this game on your own, then it deserves to die on it's own too.

Fix this.

Verdict : Wait for a sale, or for the devs to fix Solo and make it *fun*

Edit: Even after the patches basic, basic design decisions do not cater to solo players.

This game FAILS as a single-player experience. It FAILS as a souls-like, It FAILS at basic boss design.

It shouldn't. Not when the world building is so good and the core gameplay loop has so much to work with.

BUT GOOD GOD THE BOSS DESIGN NEEDS WORK.

Planetfall reminds me a lot of Evolve. That's not a good memory to have. Where the game itself is actually very good but because of idiot marketing decisions you never feel like you've quite got the complete game. Evolve had so many possible pre-order versions that it was like trying to navigate the Crystal Maze and figure out which door got you closest to the finished product, and then purchasing the rest of the bits piecemeal.

Here you had a similar problem, bits of cosmetic content locked behind a time limited newsletter, bits of cosmetic content tied to pre-orders, bits of cosmetic content tied to a deluxe version, a planetary scenario (which turns out to be one of the five "officially listed" scenarios) locked to the deluxe or top version. So like, really?. EDIT: The commanders that come as base do not use any DLC cosmetics. I'm not sure about random generated.

The game itself is good. Not great. But good. I suspect it will be great when Triumph eventually get around to finishing it some three expansions down the line. What we have here is a typical Paradox product. The core is well put together, but it's just that. The Core. This is not the complete experience. We'll get that and when we do it'll be magnificent, but you'll have to pay extra for that.


I get it. Your long term support of games is legendary. But Stellaris was a case in point. When it came out it was a mess, a buggy, confused, chaotic mess. There was a lot of promise and potential under the hood, and it had original ideas (some of which you've murdered on the altar of efficiency), It's become a much more mature and complete game as you've added to it, but once again, the cost of entry and the cost of what you need to make the damn thing what it is now are two very different things. Let's not get into Crusader Kings 2, that thing is a nightmare if you've not been fortunate enough to get the DLC on a sale.

Planetfall is slated for three expansions, by the end of which I strongly suspect we'll see how the game is supposed to feel like with everything it's supposed to have. Six factions and six secret techs is not exactly a bounty of options, and when you get into the meat of the game those secret techs just feel like different damage types as opposed to anything really ground shaking. Where's the cool tech specific buildings? I get that Age of Wonders games have been predominantly all about the units and making them unique and interesting but given there's been additional focus on making city development more significant with the advent of sectors it feels like one side got significantly more care than the other.


You end up with a lot of units that overlap each other because your racial and your tech dump a lot of units out and if you want to blend the pair to max your hero potential you'll end up with similar damage paths for both tech and race. There's precious little to really make races stand out except for these ethereal "doctrines" which are passive buffs in the main. The real issue is your Commander defines your primary damage path and you're going to want to max that since then you get all the useful benefits from following the tree (so making sure you throw out lots of pyro toting units if you're running a promethean commander).

Running different *types* of commanders sounds like a good idea until you realise it puts you at a research disadvantage for your doomsday weapon victory path, so taking on non specced commanders means you'll only invest in those at a minimal level.

This game could have stood to have learned from Endless Legend in some aspects, such as integrating minor races (as opposed to just buying units from their leaders or only being able to integrate from their leading colony), and having more, and more diverse minor races as a result. The city building side is *nearly* there but again, lessons from Endless Legend would have been really helpful.

The area where Planetfall shines is tactical combat, where once again large scale battles can result in brilliant, drawn out tactical battles, and where individual units can be ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ heroes. AoW 3 before it shined in this regard, and that element hasn't dimmed, you just wish it had learned from other games to get the other small elements right.

And you wish Paradox had learned not to make their content model so opaque and unpleasant.


It's good. It's held back from being great from a paucity of content and Paradox once again proving what you get in the box isn't the finished product, and due to the vagaries of pre-orders, various editions and time limited content campaigns, you may not even get everything even if you try.

The game marches very strongly in combat, but the stuff outside of it feels very much hollow, this was forgivable in AoW 3, it's *less* forgivable now. This is something that I had issues with previously, now it becomes a legitimate complaint. If Triumph decide to make another Age of Wonders, this is now something that -needs addressing-, because the empire management side feels perfunctory and misses elements that would make it feel more viable.

Verdict: Recommend, on discount - How much of a discount depends on you.

All I know excites me, you look like you're having fun, open up your loving arms, watch out here I come...

Let's get to work...

YOU SPIN ME RIGHT ROUND
BABY RIGHT ROUND
LIKE A RECORD BABY
RIGHT ROUND ROUND ROUND

Iratus has a lot of promise. It really does. The game actually learnt lessons from Darkest Dungeon, the map generation means there's interesting decisions to make as you work your way to the boss, there's a graveyard that provides incrementally more useful assistance (and more critically, it takes time to build up so you're never quite able to steamroll the game simply by putting more slots into the mortuary to recycle your units). The idea of "parts" providing stat benefits is good (albeit the benefits provide for the investment you need to put in is abysmal), the artifacts you can equip on Iratus offering conditional benefits is well thought out.

So there's lots of good. But then you play the game and go "Oh dear".

The developers clearly thought what makes a good Darkest Dungeon is difficulty, as opposed to challenge. Challenge is where you're tested on your knowledge of systems and your ability to come up with good strategies that counter steadily evolving enemy compositions. Difficulty tends to be stat and gear checks. In this case we have mobs with anywhere up to 70% crit chance (lolwut), mobs that will chew through your squishies regardless of position (so positional play seems to not help you out here), mobs that will stack block/ward and then AE the everliving hell out of your entire team. All of the mobs are tuned to what appears to be endgame compositions, and this is in the first floor, and that doesn't count the game tossing in "elite" versions of their normal brethren who can and will annihilate your entire team single-handed.

Mobs that crit your units for well over two thirds of your units health (if not one shotting them) before you have time to take action, and it should be noted that none of your starting units really have the defensive facilities to withstand this kind of punishment. Again, this is on the first floor. The information the game provides is not helpful in planning for what comes ahead, you get a portrait of what is possibly the lead unit in the enemy team but that doesn’t tell you if the enemy team has elites in, or if it has “specials” like the golem which require magical damage to really make a dent into. (The Golem, by the way, has low accuracy, but can very easily one shot just about everything you have).


The units level up their skills but their abilities and raw stats do not improve with them in anything more than a token sense, so the sense of power gain is limited, the parts can be upgraded similarly, but until you get to rank 3 (purple) or possibly higher, again, the gain is very limited. This makes for a game where losses are absurdly punishing and a team loss on the first floor is grounds to wipe the save and start over.

It’s a shame because the art, the sound design, everything else is right there. But with the balance so far out of whack and enemies being designed for what I can only term as “Russian” difficulty, this is a game that will only appeal to people willing to bash their heads against a wall constantly in the hope that the RNG will offer them a good set of rolls. Playing this as a game of skill is not an option because it only needs one good team comp by the AI and you’ll lose your entire team and there is *nothing* you can do to mitigate this.

Oh, and a retreat button that kills your whole team?

Who thought that was a good idea.


Difficulty is not "Make your opponents so uber that they can hulksmash the player in one go if they score a crit", that's not difficulty, that's just saying "HARR HARR I AM DEV AND I CAN CRUSH YOU", you want to make difficult, you make the game full of interesting decisions. Right up to combat, you've got that -nailed-. The player choices -in- combat are there too, but your enemies need *work* and need major retuning for this to be the game it could be.

Not the game it is right now.

Verdict: Wait.

EDIT: In response to the dev message - this is *after* the first balance patch, and no, that's not made any significant difference. By balancing, I mean you're going to have to do some major rethinking of how Iratus' forces level up, and how enemy forces are structured (right now there's very little interplay between enemy forces, instead they just tend to be stupidly powerful to make up for the lack of team comp).

EDIT 2: Further bashing my skull on this game has yielded progress. Amusingly it turns out that the tools you need to get further in the game are locked behind achievement gates. See, you only start with six classes available to you, of which I'd say three (Dark Knight, Zombie, Bride) are absolutely useful, with Banshee being useful in specific cases, and the Shade only helpful if you can set up a stress team (more on that another time). The Skeleton is a pile of toss and should be ignored at all costs.

Thing is, once you unlock the mummy or if you're going for a magic/stress build, the Lich, suddenly your options open up. This is particularly true of the mummy who can stack a debuff which decreases luck and essentially robs your opponents of the ability to crit you, whilst at the same time INCREASING your chance to crit.

Long story short. The starting classes aren't great, once you unlock a few, you can improve your starting team and the first floor isn't such a teeth clenching horror.

That does _not_ say good things about the design though.

EDIT 3 : It's been brought to my attention the game has now had a major content and balance pass, the Skeleton got *some* much needed attention but I laid out a much more thorough proposal as to how to fix old bony. This only seems to be a baby step.

I'll give the game a second blast to see if it merits a re-review.

Possibly one of the most criminally overlooked games to come out of the WH40K franchise stable, Mechanicus takes the XCOM formula and gives it a bloody good shake. Instead of cover you can now mix up your movement and action, instead of equipment you now have adaptations which based on your difficulty settings can be very much class specific, and mean that your tech-priests play out very differently (protip - set class skills to disciplined, it makes life a lot more interesting). The Necrons are slow, rumbling doom machines that will murder you if allowed to set up kill zones, so it's your responsibility to set up fast ambushes, high damage strikes which rip through their armour in a turn or two, and ensure that you minimise your exposure whilst maximising the level of pain you put out.

The core game follows two distinct beats - Adventure steps which have you work your way around a map full of rooms, being ever wary of the "awakening" timer that will steadily ratchet up the difficulty of any fights you engage in, and the fight maps themselves, bite size chunks of X-Com style brutality which demand efficient and quick fighting to prevent the overall war spiralling out of control.


The brilliance isn't in the clever application of allowing you to Move > Shoot > Move > Melee, although that does allow your tech priests to pull off some utterly hideous tricks once up to high level. The brilliance starts way before the adventure step, which cleverly balances you working out how much risk to how much reward you can get away with per room. The real evil genius in this game is the "Awakening timer", which forces you to make constant micro-decisions over how much time you can spend in a mission. Bigger missions mean bigger prizes, but eat up your most precious commodity, time.

That awakening meter has 100 pips, and that is your total time budget in order to wipe out all the big bads and stop the Necrons rendering the planet into a big robo-doom factory. As the whole game is turn based you get all the time you want to work out if a particular mission is worth it (and most are finely balanced so if they go well, the reward is great, but a bad mission will cost you, hard) but that ever present doom clock will march on, becoming more and more of a forethought as you get near the endgame. A fast, "easy" mission might only nick two pips off the clock. Big missions can eat as much as five or six. That's on top of the escalating mayhem that taking so long in a particular map can incur.

Being fast keeps you ahead of the doom march of the clock, but most importantly being efficient rewards you with new disposable units, new tech-priests for the cohort, and more components you can customise your priests with. Here it's less about "one more turn" but more "Can I afford that turn to tick over to the next alert level?"


Heretek itself adds non-time limited missions that require pre-mission decisions (that shape objectives and start positions) as well as a new tech tree (interesting and potentially useful for a unit that you want to charge at enemies), and new equipment (including stuff that ignores armour), most of it looks to be well thought out, even the Heretek+ axe that you'll get on game start is a nice addition without overpowering the existing entry axe (making it Cog2 means that whilst it gives +acid, that extra point limits it to mid game where cognition is easier to keep flowing, early game this might suffer from drought).

As a package Heretek is well priced and the "plus" edition is a good value add, giving some neat little trinkets for people into their collectors fluff, even if that doesn't appeal, it's a sound addition to what is already a very solid game, and adds just *enough* new options to push this into the *really* good category.

Verdict: The Omnissiah approves. Highly Recommended.

So let's clear up the misconceptions first. This game doesn't have nudity, it does have some fan service of sorts. But that's about as far as the flesh viewing goes. What this game is, scarily, is a remarkably solid side-on twin-sticks shooter.

The premise is probably about as terrible as most Anime set-ups go - You're a schoolgirl armed with some absolutely absurd firepower and your job is to help people who have been trapped underground reclaim the surface from zombified mutants all in the name of "Getting to school" and spreading love and happiness and all that stuff.

... Let's be honest, we're here to shoot up the zombies. The arsenal is absolutely huge, there's enough firepower in this School kit bag to level most of Japan, let alone the numerous subway stations you'll chew through on your journey. The maps are set up in a similar manner as Earth's Dawn (another rather excellent 2D game about mutants and murder I'll be getting around to reviewing soon enough) where you trundle around on a 2.5D plane, fighting zombies that come from the front, the sides and the back, there's no shortage and there's no shortage of variety either.


You'll be dealing with your basic walkers to open but the game quickly opens up and throws all kinds of interesting things your way including mutated cannons which drop fused cannon balls as a sort of rolling mine, mutated dynamite barrels that lob artillery your way, and slashers that can coat the screen with shockwaves. Each station has an end boss which serves as a cross between a level, gear and skill check, making sure you're capable before being sent off to the next station, and on to the promise of more and more interesting loot.

Speaking of which, the quantity and quality of loot is absolutely bonkers. You have one melee slot, one firearms slot, one heavy slot, and all three play host to a diverse arrangement of toys ranging from swords to warhammers, shotguns to DMR's and flamethrowers, and rocket launchers to hand cannons.

Finding a set up for your playstyle is easy, choosing from the several which may serve you well and working out which is the best for your situation may prove harder. Adding to this is the module system which allows you to add a mix of passive and semi-active abilities to your weapons, giving you the ability to negate knockdowns, add the ability to randomly toss grenades, summon drones, and increase your perfect dodge time window.

This is not a game you're prone to just finish in one sitting, sure each map might look fairly digestible, but there's plenty of them and the difficulty curve whilst not spiky remains fairly constant and will push back if you try to rush ahead too quickly.


They absolutely do. You'll likely have one to hand pretty early on, and in typical anime style, the explosions can get a bit too much for the screen to cope with.

Complaints? Yes. Some - The Camera is handled by someone who is clearly drunk. Sometimes it's a pain to see what's going on around you, sometimes it pulls back so far they need to put a green arrow which highlights where you are in relation to the screen, other times it's too close and you get whacked by things you have no time to dodge. Reinforcement gears do not drop often enough at times, and the refund on reinforced weapons is abysmal.

The weight system is clever but going from one grade of weapon to the next for all three weapon slots can require a substantial bit of grinding. That said grinding means you'll be ready for the next map so it's not all terrible. The downside is that entering a new station does mean for the first few levels your weapons may not QUITE cut it. That's going to necessitate more reinforcement or ditching modules to get better kit.

The story tries to be good, and there's elements that are genuinely touching. But the core concept, just pretend you're fighting against army hordes. If you think too hard about the school thing you're going to hurt your head.

Verdict: Recommended, just remember the camera man had too much Sake

Disclaimer: I backed this game at the Alchemist's Treasure tier. You're welcome to speculate if this affects my opinion of the game, it doesn't.


I'm about half way through my *first run* and my appreciation for this game just keeps climbing. That is not to say it's 100% bug free (I've had a couple of cases of being caught "between rooms" and needed to wiggle Miriam about for it to work out which room to render) or without the odd rough edge here and there (the animations are what they are, in some cases they're a little janky) but...

I don't care. I can forgive a little lack of polish. I can forgive a little tiny bit of jank. Because this is Castlevania. It's Castlevania in everything but name. It's got everything you could possibly want, a massive map packed so full of secrets that it's literally Turtles all the way down, it's got so many easter eggs and witty little nods that there's going to be at least one joke per hour that'll land with you. If you're into your nerd culture, the jokes will probably range from "Hrr" all the way up to full on belly laughs. Finding my first literal *bit coin* made me grin, I'm not prone to happy expressions when I'm trying to pull a game apart.


This is dyed in the wool Castlevania mechanics, side on, pseudo-2D in this case (it plays with the camera on occasion in some neat ways) with a modern coat of paint and a very well thought out art style (the two protagonists are gonna get Cosplayed something fierce), the music is something else, and if you buy the game and unlike me, are not getting a physical copy of the sound track, buy the damn thing on Steam. This is one for your collection.

You, starting off as Miriam, you get to unlock the second Protagonist later on, work your way through a -massive- set of areas in a super metroid style of unlocking bits of territory by gaining new skills and tools, most of which will serve multiple functions and help you in different ways.

You'll get access to a vast array of weaponry, swords, daggers, and maces are for those who like their combat in the missionary position. For those who like their combat kinky, feel free to explore the wide selection of boots, whips, rapiers, greatswords, and guns (with multiple ammo types). There will be a style that you gravitate to, and within each category there's enough variation that you won't get bored any time soon. That's not even counting comedy options like Toy Boots which as well as being a weapon, will squeak as you run, like, squeaky toy squeak.

Then there's the ridiculous number of equipment options (armour sadly is not updated on the model, but helms, accessories and scarves *are*) along with a customisation suite that's remarkably fleshed out, allowing you to make Miriam very much your own hero as you delve deeper.

... and then there's the shard system, which is absurdly deep, along with familiars, the book system. A cooking system which makes Cook Serve Delicious go "Waaaait a second, are you sure you're not trying to take my job?" and a crafting system which means you'll be kept busy farming for those sweet sweet bits of loot that let you smash past the next boss.


The controls are tight, there's no jank in the movement, jumping is precise, combat is exactly where it needs to be for Castlevania, the enemies are varied and come with plenty of ways to keep you on your toes, bosses are tough enough that if you're not prepared they'll send you packing, but if you _are_ ready for them, with a bit of practice they fall over nicely. The difficulty at normal is pitched just about right for new entrants and people with a bit of rust, for experts though I suspect they'll blast through Normal quickly (or even skip it, see commenters below) and then ramp up to Hard for their next run.

For people who want to take things slow and farm for shards and see everything that is available, the game will let you take your time and won't force you scurrying towards any particular boss, just enjoy the ride, and most definitely stop to enjoy the level design. This is one you won't want to miss.

To Koji Igarashi, I only have two words - Thank you.

To everyone else...

Verdict: Essential

The art is great. There's even something of a proper story to it (as opposed to DD's "Go spelunking and don't die" approach). There's definite effort in here. With the constant flow of patches the game has moved from something that needed a full set of masonry drills, a team of workmen and a fortnight of heavy duty effort to something that now needs sandpaper, a circular saw and a couple of days of cleaning up the fit and finish.

One of the biggest complaints - The lack of options in combat has been alleviated, with the removal of the utterly useless skip option and moving relic "flourishes" and rebalancing them to be used as skills which are then sprinkled among the classes, this gives each individual class much needed variety and tactical options. You're no longer doing the shadowbolt dance and waiting for your flourish to charge, now you have the ability to make active choices during the fight.

Another of the biggest issues - The ever increasing terror bar has been plastered over by simply making it climb slower. This is a bit of a spackle fix but it does at least mean you only get punished if you dawdle around the map for way too long. Personally I think the entire mechanic needs some serious examination but after discussing with the devs I can see that there's limitations on what can be done at this stage in time, so this is about as good as it'll get.


HOWEVER - This Problem still exists - From my earlier review -

Each zone is split up into discrete maps, each map has around 10 ish rooms which you'll need to clear say, 5-6, and you can expect to fight twice per zone, and then you need to clear 4-5 zones BEFORE you reach the boss. Individual fights are no biggie, but each one will chip away at your health, bit by little bit. By the time you reach the boss unless you've farmed and fled constantly to build up half an inventories worth of healing supply and as a result, used said supply as you work your way through to the boss because there's no stopping once you start, you're going to NEED a lot of supplies.

1.06 again alleviates this -a little- but it's still a messy horror of spamming healing items because camping to regain health and vigor is a *really* bad idea.

WHO THOUGHT THIS WAS SENSIBLE.

But!

The changes have overall taken a lot of the rage out of me, and have managed to save this game from the worst of my rants. It's now a game that's *worth playing* and with it's extensive narrative and interesting outside world, is worth investigating. There's still some QoL work to do around side quests, and camping needs to be made more "worth it", but broadly the game isn't quite the pain in the backside it was on release.

Good enough. Not good enough to get absolute praise. But good enough.

Verdict: Recommended. At last.