Recenzii recente de problemshed

I was initially impressed by the combat system. It's very clean and concise, it's easy to get to grips with and it feels good to master. I was thinking "Oh, this is really smart, they've stripped it down so there's a ton of room to expand and complicate things to help it stretch over 100 endings." Then it just... didn't do that? Several of the battles you faced in Route 0 will get higher-difficulty versions in the following game where the arena contains multiple bosses at once. That's about it. There's a tabletop-board-based map you can explore, but once you've used as many materials as you'll need to level the characters up, the sections where you're forced to engage with it will be a slog.

The narrative takes a bit to get started. You won't learn anything really important and the characters don't get to develop properly until Route 0 is finished. Even after that, the protagonist (Takumi) will sort of leaaaan away from discovering information that isn't "for" whatever route you're in. He won't talk to people you want to talk to, or investigate things you want to investigate, and it's very frustrating - and I'm talking about following up on connections and theories I made in Route 0, not across main routes.

Its worst sin: this story presents a lot of questions that will never get answered. I don't mean like hypothetical/philosophical questions, I mean really basic stuff like "Why do we have a magic machine that does X?", "Why is there a cliffhanger at the end of Route 0 if we're just going to pretend it never happened?", "Are we or are we not getting out of this damn time loop?"

It's very "wait for it, wait for it, waaaait for it." Well, I've been Waiting For It for almost ninety hours. I've finished like 50 routes, including the 2 to 5-ish routes that people said had the dense story content. I've unlocked all the locks. When do I get the It?

I can't recommend the game even though I enjoyed quite a few of those ninety hours - because now, having reached as far into it as I'm willing to go, I feel distinctly unsatisfied. Like my time hasn't been respected. When I think about this game, I think about the unanswered questions and the slowly-rising sense of confusion, then concern, then frustration when I realized I wasn't getting the pay-off I needed to tie the story off. I kind of wish I hadn't played it. It's like an unscratchable itch.

Wish I could do more than one good review. SUCH a good story, such memorable characters with such vivid voices. >:O

I can't believe you got me to happily putz around looking for collectibles for almost 20 hours and I'm not even done yet. Ubisoft wishes they had such a power.

Promise could very easily have had the same gameplay issues (that I personally had) with Paradise, but it just doesn't. Almost everything you can pick up is on the way to somewhere you'll want to go anyway. Travelling around Kaso-Machi is zippy thanks to the fast travel system and there being zero consequences to crashing into ♥♥♥♥ with Michi's devil truck. Faster to just do a kickflip off this sixty-foot cliff? ♥♥♥♥ it. We ball. It probably WON'T be faster to drive in a straight line up this 80-degree slope, but I'm doing it anyway. Faraway island you want to investigate? Drive into the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ocean. Soar through the air like an egret.

In another game featuring a fairly unwieldy vehicle, it would be easy to get mad when it doesn't control quite as precisely as you might like it to. But you can't get mad at Michi's truck. Truck does everything for you. Truck is everything to you. Truck can climb stairs for you. Truck can do anything.

If I have one complaint it's that I would have liked to hear a little more from the characters in the epilogue.

This game is like if Asteroids had a baby and then blew it up with a box of fireworks.

Tactical Breach Wizards makes my top 10 strategy games, easy, and I'm only being that vague because it's 5 in the morning here and I can't remember any other games that exist. (I just finished the main story. You see that "8.9 hrs at review time" up there? That's approximately the amount of time I should have spent sleeping tonight. Last night.)

Pro/con: I got so invested in the story as the pace picked up I started getting irritable when the game interrupted my reading to make me do gameplay things. But that might also be the frustration of trying to do Wizard Tactics on none hours of sleep.

Pro/con: I'm attracted to every recruitable character for reasons completely separate to each one, and it's, like, disrespectful.

Pro/con: This is one of those games where any quantity below "infinite content buffet" is upsetting to reach the end of.

The cheerful aesthetic of the GUI, art style and character designs had me thinking this game would be a full meal of wholesome with a side of romance and a sprinkle of action. I was blown away by what I actually got. Don't get me wrong - it does check all of those boxes. There's a lot of sweetness and optimism in here without it becoming saccharine. But you can FAIL in this game, and fail HARD. There are severe and irreversible consequences for playing poorly (if you're worried about that, I believe some aspects of gameplay can be turned off or at least made incredibly easy) and for ignoring deadlines. Your fave character liking you a little less is the least of your worries - you should be more concerned about getting them killed. Or getting YOU killed.

As a VN/RPG, it is, of course, highly replayable. But a lot of VN's I've played do this thing where a new route is just the same sequence of events from a slightly different perspective, depending on which characters you're interested in hanging out with, and maybe you get a 'true' or 'secret' route at the end where you get to fix everything at once. In Exocolonist, using the information you've carried over from every run after the first can be used to deliberately shape the story. Characters can be saved that otherwise would have died. Relationships can be mended instead of broken. The story itself evolves as you repeat it, over and over. And there is no 'true' ending here, only the endings that you prefer.

It's also a solid work of original sci-fi. By which I mean, it explores the tropes of the genre and the implications of advanced technologies, future cultures, evolving ways of living, what have you. Science-fiction, not just science-flavoured.

10/10, greatly enjoyed having my expectations subverted. WIsh I could forget the plot faster so I can play it again.

I'm not typically big on platformers. This one I've played for 8 hours almost straight, and I think I'll try to 100% the map. It's stunning visually and has brilliant sound design. In some ways it reminds me of exploring in Hollow Knight. I always feel like there'll be something surprising, beautiful, dangerous, or all three waiting in the next room - if I can just get to it. Every creature design is unique.

The platforming is challenging and even punishing in parts. In typical metroidvania fashion, your access to various areas of the map is limited by the tools you have to traverse with, but these tools aren't only used for movement: you'll have to play around with them to figure out what else they can do.

If you've just started the game and don't know what to do or where to go:
Wander around. Poke at everything. Pretty early on you'll find a map that you fill in as you go along, which shows you room passages you haven't used yet. If you keep going to new rooms, by process of elimination you'll eventually complete the game.

After 3 hours, having seen the whole tech tree, as far as I can tell, there's no obvious difference between this game and the previous one. The visuals are better. I think it performs slightly better. If you liked the constant "banter" in 3 where they just repeat the same things over and over, and if you liked Thalya's voice acting, there's more of that. I really don't know what else to say about it.

there's a lot to love here. it's fun! unfortunately, once you've played the tutorial level, you've pretty much finished the game.

Absolutely stunning. I was sitting there during the credits, looking at the names, going "You did a great job, and YOU did a great job, and YOU..." One of the highest-quality games I've ever played. Kept me hooked (lol. lmao.) for days. Sweet, funny, clever. Well-paced progression. Oodles of unique enemies and bosses. Tight controls.

There's one or two bugs and writing-editing issues I could nit-pick, but they're so miniscule compared to all the good stuff here I wouldn't even factor them in if you're thinking about buying this.

TL;DR. I'm not proud of it, but this is one of only a few games I've ever remembered to write a review for. It's REALLY good.

delighted and enthralled by these Digital Creatures

(if you get them to pass you between them, they'll keep following you around in a little procession)