Recent reviews by D.S. al Coda

Fantastic game, for quite a while, then gets old.
Grab a buddy, fun for months, then gets old.
Wait a month or two, right back to being fun as hell.

Roguelite in the best way where randomness creates absolutely hilarious scenarios. Tons of playstyle varieties and difficulty levels. Tons of goals to go for. Runs really well. Multiplayer works VERY well for the most part. Tons of modifiers to go absolutelyBONKERS with

As an absolutely obsessed Mega Man Battle Network fan, this game is fantastic.
However, as an absolutely obsessed Mega Man Battle Network fan, I found myself disappointed a lot in the differences.

While this game has similar elements to the series, its very distinct in almost every other way. As it's a roguelike, there's a lot less overall strategy and more picking individual good pieces and rhythm for your deck. It's also very fast paced and reaction-based.

Strengths:
-Lots of fun
-roguelike brings replayability
-very challenging and good variety of enemies and situations
-beloved stage-based battle system of MMBN
-simplistic control scheme
-lots of "tribal" deck themes to make building a strat somewhat intuitive

Cons:
-many enemy attacks aren't very visually precise / recognizable, leading to a lot of visual clutter and chaos, making dodging enemy attacks feel a lot less precise
-was having bugs with rebinding my controls?
-Enemies and characters aren't very memorable, especially compared to MMBN
-gameplay can feel very spammy later on when you need to cycle through as many attacks as possible to get damage output high enough, especially once mana production is ramped up
-You need some pretty godlike reaction speed for this game, which is fine if you have it, but if youre garbo like me it doesnt feel like there's much you can do about that
-feels like DDR sometimes to move as fast as needed. which is fine tbh, more of a personal preference thing.

Overall, still a fantastic game so far, have yet to try co op and pvp but they seem promising
Farthest I've gotten is "One Leap From Eden" which I guess is ok?

Fantastic game and loads of fun. Feels great with a GameCube controller.
Online sucks though. But play offline with friends and its great.

great game. gets a little old alone but def worth $4.
instantly extra worth it if any friend comes over and y'all get bored.
feels really good once you get the hang of it. even with my boomer reaction speed i can get by with reads and reacting to some things

only downside is sometimes the inputs get weird with two people on keyboard. but that might just be an issue on my end.

Fantastic game, fantastic humor, fantastic story.

BASE GAME REVIEW
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Some flaws:
-While the story is great right off the bat, the gameplay is pretty lackluster until a bit over an hour in. The same is even more true of movement speed (bicycle unlock comes far too late when walking is slow as shiggywiggy)
-The music, while intentionally bad and grating as a joke, is STILL very bad and grating. But like, you can't just play with sound off, that's lame. (not all of the music is bad, some are real gems. But some of the most irritating music is played just in large areas, which means you'll be hearing it quite a bit)
-I've run into a few bugs here and there, and I was lucky that when they happened I was able to quit out without losing any progress. But its very possible to screw you over.
-There's an RNG factor with campfires where you can get good or bad results. This is meant to make resting and recovering a risk/reward decision. But too many campfires are next to save points. This means you can save, rest and hope for good result. If it's bad, quit out and repeat over and over. It's just tedious and far too tempting to not exploit. The "Path of Pain" difficulty avoids this by only allowing saving at each checkpoint once.
-There's so many fun and unique characters on the roster, yet you really won't get a chance to use much of them at all.
-Navigation is kinda tedious, but I'm just awful at keeping track of that stuff so maybe thats just on me.

Strengths:
-incredibly fun gameplay once it gets going. Just enough strategy, team planning and management, optimization, etc, to feel like youre not just mashing out moves. But not too much that you have to sink a crazy amount of time "getting good," and can just play through.
-a LOT of variety in team comps, and combat is pertty fun just because of all the wacky moves and styles that just REEK with character.
-Lots of little stuff to find, and hidden party members to discover, which is incredibly fun even if they don't get much use.
-somehow perfectly blends absolutely absurd zany humor with a truly heart-wrenching story of drug abuse, personal demons, good intentions twisted, and the struggle to be good
-There is a four-legged fish lawyer with a gun named Harvey and he's really the only reason to play this game tbh. He permadied in my run though RIP Harvey never forget ;n;
-The game trolls you and makes you want to die in an IRL ragequit. If you don't enjoy this then you need to grow up and accept suffering as a necessary part of life.
-While the story is mostly very linear (not one of those games where "your decisions are everything" and have a trillion endings), there are still some very tough mid-game decisions that affect the mood and difficulty. Also, there's a few minor ending differences based on some game-long choices.
-Makes you cry, unless you're a big boy I guess.
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DLC "LISA the Joyful" REVIEW
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Worth getting, because it's in the same world. Not nearly as good in any way as the base game, but like, thats still pretty good!
Combat is actually more fun in some ways, but there's very little party dynamics. This makes sense in story, and while it takes away that fun aspect, conquering the world on your own is a great experience with its own challenges.
There's not really different endings based on any choices. There's a few different dialogue snippets post-game based on what you DISCOVER, but thats more an exploration thing than tied to any meaningful choice or experience.
The story gets good in some spots, some real heartwrenchin dialogue. But overall, it only has a small fragment of the raw punch the base game had. And quite a few spots fall flat.
The humor is almost nonexistant, which is fine for trying to savage the serious mood, but... doesn't have that LISA feel.

Movement is GREAT though, absolutely blows the base game out of the water, SUPER fun just to run around and explore.

Personally, I liked the story ending of the base game without this revealing the next parts. But I can still think of it that way in my head if i feel like it, nobody can stop me. And it was cool to see more of the author's vision of the characters, their backstories, and the world.

Worth getting, but only because LISA the Painful was so good.

Not the world's greatest game, and not quite worth the price tag, but still pretty good. A lot of creativity, some fun horror tropes, and I always love a good Eldritch Abomination.
Gameplay-wise, its just a bit lacking, though there is fun with conserving resources and funds and such, but not a whole lot to it besides.

Though it is early-access, so I'm excited to see what improvements it makes

Great game, humorous and feels good. Every new gun feels like an adventure, and theres a hella lotta different guns. On the rare times you get a gun youve already gotten, feels like finding an old friend (unless its an ass gun that sucks.)

Lots of fun enemies, tough but not so tough its unenjoyable. lots of fun terrain. Great bosses, memorable boss design.

The randomness can be a little over the top, with some absurd early fights possible. Also, there's a pool of available bosses for each floor, and some are just way more difficult than others and can squash if you havent found a high-enough-damage weapon. But i guess thats part of the charm tbh.

A problem I have with this game is a large input delay making precision movement and aim impractical. But I'm pretty sure thats just because my computer is garbage, so. And even with this input delay, the game STILL just feels so nice. Very satisfying to shoot all the different guns, a true American game.

Another problem I have is the color scheme when it comes to pits. Falling into a pit costs you a good chunk of health, and every piece of health matters a lot in this game. However, pits are often hardly distinguishable from normal ground. Now to be fair, I have all the graphics settings to minimum, but i still feel like that sort of problem would be easy to fix, even just by lightening the rest of the terrain a little.

Amazing game in almost every way
Multiplayer works amazingly, get a friend to buy this and have a blast together
Balanced gameplay, very difficult (no handholding, no nonsense)
-havent tried easy mode yet, or difficult. just been playing on normal

Get that Megaman feel and a bit of a (Binding of Isaac / Crypt of the Necrodancer) item-game feel
- lots of replay value, lots of items, each run can vary quite a bit

Downsides - Character animation sucks for Nina ("Megagirl"). She looks like an ugly rag doll when she moves
- Frustration because you suck and need to git gud
- default control scheme is pretty bad, but you can rebind to get around this. however, will still sometimes
(rarely) feel
like you only "lost" because of using a keyboard (unless you have a controller)

I think it's worth the fifteen, but maye a little steep for the penny pinchers. Definitely recommend, the few hours I've put so far have been the most fun I've had in a while with a game

11/10 (may have a SLIGHT Megaman bias)

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too difficult, plz add easier difficulty pls thx