I really, really enjoyed the game. Now that I dedicated “a few” hours to it, I can say that it’s a great driving simulator, mostly thanks to the fact that the physics of the cars feels just right. Each of them is different, and sometimes it almost seems like you’re playing a different game when you switch between them. Some are easy to drive, others are a hell to master (Audi Quattro I’m looking at you). I can’t even imagine what a blasting experience it would be to drive with a decent wheel and maybe in VR, instead of just a joypad.

There are different game modes and challenges too, in case you get tired of the usual rally stages. I must say, though, that despite the fact that for each rally location present in the game they basically created only 2 levels, it hardly happens to get the feeling of racing over and over on the same tracks. That happens because for each level you have the whole stage run, the 1st half run, the 2nd half run and their reverse counterparts. So basically from 2 levels you end up having 12 stages for each rally, and there’s a dozen of rally locations. So there are about 150 possible stages you can drive on (not counting the RallyCross ones).

The learning curve has been quite steep, especially from the moment I decided to face the Flat Out DLC challenges seriously for the hardest achievement in the game (beating them at “very hard” difficulty). The hardest part was mustering the courage to go flat out even on very narrow roads when your brain tells you nothing but to brake and slow down. I lost count of how many times I crashed the car on some rock or some pile of logs, got a tire puncture or simply lost control and got off the road. Beating these challenges was the most rewarding experience in the game for me, though.

A side note about a moment of frustration I experienced: there’s a glitch in the game that greatly affects the times of your AI opponents and it still hasn’t been fixed. In more than a game mode, if you don’t complete a whole event in one go (meaning without closing the game, or even without simply going back to the main menu), it is possible that, once you resume the event, the times registered by your AI opponents will be much, much lower than they should, even lower than the currently set world records in some cases, making them impossible to beat. I first encountered this bug during the 3rd stage of a 5-stage challenge, so I lost about a total of 4 hours of gameplay if I consider the time spent to properly beat the first two stages, the time spent on the third one before I realized it was actually frigging impossible and there had to be something wrong, plus the time needed to get back there once I restarted. Because yes, the only way to fix it is to abandon the event and start all over. I’ll leave you a link here that lists all the correct times (and some of the glitched ones) for the multi-stage challenges there with difficulty set at 91/100 (the minimum for counting as “very hard”). Maybe it will prevent you from unnecessarily wasting time.

Since I played the first one, it's impossible not to make comparisons. The first big difference you notice is that it's way better when it comes to the graphics. Another point in its favor is the level and ambient design; they really overdid themselves with some of the maps. You have some really amazing locations to explore, and the experience is further enhanced by the aforementioned improved graphics.

Gameplay-wise I feel like there's been a step back, instead. Mind that the shooting feels similar but I think there's a problem of enemy balance or maybe I should say class balance. Normal monsters, even the special ones, are too easy to kill: 2-3 shots will usually suffice. Even the boss fights are a bit underwhelming. There’s no real time to learn their pattern or even see if there is one, because they usually die without much effort on your part—if I don’t immediately die, that is. In fact, with a class like the one I chose for myself, one or two hits are enough to shoot you out of existence, while my gf’s class, which is tankier, can withstand 4-5 times the damage without breaking a sweat. It’s okay to have tanks and glass cannons classes, but the game doesn’t make any effort in warning you about it, and I wish there was a smaller gap between them. The usual boss fight goes this way: we burst damage half the boss hp in 2 seconds, I die the second after cause I get basically 1-hit killed, she slowly tanks away the other half of the boss by herself. So no real fun there, at least for me.

Another thing that I didn’t like is the change of the protagonist we play as, which means that we’re following a different story, even if closely related. This shift makes you feel more like you’re playing some kind of spin-off rather than a main game in the series.

That said, consider that everything I just said is based on a fraction of the game only. They're basically just first impressions. I hope it will get better later. For now, let’s just say I have mixed feelings about it.

I played the base game 7 years ago and the co-op campaign for the first time this month. I honestly don’t remember much of my first playthrough, but I remember enjoying it less than the first game. This time, maybe because I wasn’t alone, I felt like I could enjoy the game more. That’s mostly because the game forces you to use your brain, which isn’t granted in most puzzle games and it does so thanks to its smartly built puzzles. They become progressively harder and harder, but without making you feel overwhelmed. Trying to visualize their solution before actually solving them and seeing that solution working out was my favorite part. The fact that I could do it with another person made everything even more gratifying. You can say the game is aging welI. I had a really fun experience.

The only drawback is GLaDOS' sarcasm; it can become a bit annoying after a while and loosens its charm quite fast.

I must say I was quite unimpressed by the game and I found it an overall forgettable experience.

Neither the story, nor the gameplay-both the shooting and the platforming part-managed to make me feel engaged. Even the boss fights felt a bit too straightforward and failed to provide any kind of real challenge.

Story-wise I didn’t particularly like the dialogues either, except the humor here and there, but most of the time it felt a bit awkward. I had the same feeling with the character design, most of all when we consider the talking weapons and their voice acting.

So yeah, all things considered, it felt a bit like a waste of time.

Oh, there are real movies inside the game that you can watch in their entirety. It doesn’t happen often in a game, I guess, and it’s a fun bit to mention. I must admit I didn’t expect to see a questionably dressed young Paul Walker suddenly appearing on TV inside the game. Had a good chuckle.

I really liked the premise of the story. Imagining a world (not necessarily Earth) where the oceans disappear and grandiose sceneries are left behind is an intriguing idea to explore. In this game, they manage to give a few vivid pictures of what that world would be and I really appreciated that. I liked the graphics in that sense and how they managed to give life to a story and an entire world just with a few diary logs, chats and items that you find while climbing.

I found the gameplay interesting too. It’s not like you have much to do apart from jumping and climbing, but I really liked the originality of the movement system, with the need to alternate your fingers while pushing buttons like a climber would alternate their hands during a climb. Further to this point, I liked the level design too: the whole ascension process, alternating moments where you find yourself fighting the elements on the outside and moments where you’re swallowed in some crevice inside the earth, but instead of going down, you keep going up and up and up.

It seems like I liked the game even more than I thought. Definitely recommended.

Another game that I played a few years back. This experience was the opposite of Portal 2, though, in the sense that I played co-op first, then this month I decided to play it solo (even because we never completed the main campaign at the time).

There’s not much to say. The whole game revolves around combining magic elements and creating spells. Some may synergize well, others may not. It’s amazing how many possibilities there are. It’s also baffling how some fight that seemed impossible at first or in any case extremely hard (basically every single boss fight in the game) became quite trivial once you discovered the right spell to use in order to counter them.

The storytelling was a bit over the top for my taste and so was the humor. I realize just now while writing and thinking back to my recent playing history that a really high number of developers decide to undertake the humoristic storytelling way without considering how humor in general is one of the things that tend to age worse, since it’s primarily subjective and heavily influenced by time/different sensibilities/trends/etc.

Oh, the game must be played with a keyboard. I tried the controller first but the spell input time is really too slow in comparison, making playing unnecessarily harder.

And another thing. I don’t know what happened (it wasn’t like that the first time I played), but the game crashes. A lot. Really really a lot. There’s an unofficial patch for that out there, but it still doesn’t manage to solve the problem completely.

It’s a visual masterpiece. Different palettes of colors are skillfully used in order to match the passing of the seasons. But it’s not a mere representation of nature that you see transposed on the screen. It’s the very feelings we should feel in front of the crescent decadence of a world which is rapidly and literally falling apart. We can see through the colors how the darkness's cancerogenous grasp slowly brings death and destruction to everything that it touches. There are a lot of interpretations we can give to this darkness if we make a parallel to our own world: it’s clearly a metaphor for something and we’re free to choose what it may stand for, but It’s not like the game is shy in dishing out some possible key, from the simple ‘hate calls more hate’ concept, to pollution and disregard about nature in general, to religious fanaticism, and this is just to name some, with one being as good as any. Or it could simply be that we don’t have to choose and it represents all the evils of this world at once.

Parallel to this, in the opposite direction, we have the growth of Neva, from pup to adulthood. She’s a weapon, metaphorically but also literally. She’s hope. She’s the one with real power. We fend off some of that darkness by ourselves, but in the end she’s the one able to fight back and exorcize the masked darkness, she’s the white herald bringing the colors and making living things grow back. If we consider that and go beyond the simple appearance of a wolf pup growing up in the care of her loving companion (btw it’s really sweet how you can interact with her), the fact that she grows over time and becomes stronger and stronger assumes a more figurative meaning and so does the ending.

The ending inevitably rides along those lines and the final message is thanks to hope darkness can be beaten but requires sacrifice and that we should accept said sacrifice. I can’t avoid being a bit sad about it. Maybe I’m not mature enough for that yet.

Gameplay-wise, we have a few puzzles and a few fights, even boss fights. We're on the easy end in both frangents and I think it’s right this way. It’s not like this game wants to be that kind of game where everything must become a challenge. It would disrupt the flow of growth we’re witnessing. I really liked the winter section of the game with its mirror mechanics. The soundtrack is also very nice and enhances the overall experience.

All in all it’s probably one of the best games I played this year.

Oh, btw, the ending actually confused me at first. I didn’t completely get it right away. Only after a few days and a bit of thought (plus going back to the game to confirm a few things) I managed to dissipate any doubt and give my personal meaning to it. I don’t say that mine is necessarily the right one, it may as well be that I’m imagining things, but I’m satisfied with my interpretation. Not happy, but satisfied. I still find everything extremely sad, but that doesn’t depend on the game per se; it depends on the world that the metaphor chose to represent, which is ours, and we can’t do much about it… can we?

The game tries to make replayability one of its cornerstones. You're supposed to play missions by exploring each map, seeing what the set course of each NPC is and what opportunities may present, and then pick one to follow and kill your targets (note: “opportunities”, as they’re called in the game, are guided events that, if followed, give you a good chance to kill a target unnoticed). Once done, you can repeat the mission following different opportunities and objectives or, if you’ve learnt the whole “chess game” by then and know how all pawns move, you can wing it and go straight to the targets without wasting much time. I must say that once I completed a mission, though, I never felt the urge to replay it in a different way, not even when I didn’t manage to stay completely stealthy. There was no appeal for me in that. It’s like asking to play a tedious puzzle game not once but twice, thrice or more. Not even the presence of achievements and scores and a leaderboard helped in that sense. I found the game decent, but just as a one-playthrough experience.

The stealth part can be enjoyable enough, even if there are clear limits to the NPC’s AI that can be easily exploited. Plus some of the opportunities make killing the targets quite too easy, guiding you step by step, leaving no room for mistakes or even personal initiatives for that matter.

The maps are well built and full of details. They offer some really nice sceneries and there’s really a lot going on in most of them.

I didn’t find the main story all that enticing. There’s too little on the fire to even smell a hint of smoke (probably my fault for not having played any other game of the series in recent years; I remember trying out the first one in the early 2000s, but I hardly remember anything about that game and I think I’ve never finished it). I expected a bit more there, I must say.

Anyway, my final judgment is that it's not a bad game, but that it didn’t particularly match my taste.

We had much less fun compared to the first one.

Personally, I didn’t find any of the puzzles particularly clever apart maybe for the cube one from the stairwell section.

The game felt overall shorter, easier and a lot less rewarding. To prove the point further, we didn’t feel like replaying it with inverted roles.

I just hope the next games won’t follow the same trend.

I must admit I don’t have much experience with racing sims, so I can’t really give a proper opinion about the game on that matter (I play with a joypad).

All I can say is that each car I tried so far felt really different, that there’s a decent number of events and activities and lastly─and more importantly─that I’m having fun.

Btw, every time I play this kind of game I get tempted to buy myself a decent racing rig, but then I come back to my senses. I don’t need an expensive dust collector, I have already enough of them, right? RIGHT?!

I’m back at it again. Third time’s the charm, they say. Except, this is the fourth time I picked up this game over the years in order to reach the 500 seconds mark for the achievement (I’m not even close, I still can’t properly handle the 3 gigapedes spawn). But to be honest, it’s becoming a matter of principle, or maybe “hurt ego” if you prefer. I gave up one too many times thinking I suck at this game and that reaching that goal is an impossible feat for me. Well, I’d like to prove myself wrong for once. So yeah, here I go again.

It usually takes me 20ish hours before I give up. I’ll try to stick to it this time.

Oh btw, despite the negative feelings it may have generated, it’s probably one of my favorite games of all time. An epitome of simplicity with impeccable design in all its aspects in my opinion.

I really liked the storytelling and how they explored the characters. I knew them only from what you can see in the movies, so it felt quite refreshing to experience a different take on them. I liked Draxx the most, especially his backstory. I felt that in this game he was a lot more profound as a character and could be put on the same level as the others instead of being just some side comic relief like in the movies. The dialogues are well written and there was a nice balance between the omnipresent humor and the most tense moments of the story.

The weak part of the game is the combat. Dodging feels awkward and the auto-lock can be a hindrance while shooting. Looking at your companions during fights can be a bit disheartening, since at times you can see them standing there and doing nothing, and that’s because if they’d do actual damage on their own the fights would end in two seconds. The crowd control skills aren't as effective as you’d expect, to the point of being useless, and some boss fights (one in particular) are chaotic, without a proper indicator of what you’re supposed to do.

Oh, I had a recurring little bug. I didn’t see many people complaining about it, though. Sometimes the voice of a specific character cuts off during dialogues for just a line or two. I could see them talking and I had onscreen subtitles of what they were supposed to be saying, but the voice would just disappear, as if it hadn’t loaded for some reason. It did happen like 20 times during the whole playthrough (it’s not much considering how extensive the dialogues are) but it was there and it annoyed me when it happened.

Putting everything on a scale, though, I can still recommend it. The story and the characters’ charm by themselves are more than enough.

The game is graphically pleasant. Gameplay-wise it doesn’t pose a particular challenge and it can feel repetitive quite fast. In my entire playthrough, I think I failed my run only one time out of ten.

It has some quite overcomplicated mechanics for each of the characters, which must have required a good deal of balancing from the devs, and that’s commendable, but the base game can be beaten without taking advantage of any of them. I think they’re mostly for those who look for a challenge and are planning to replay the game at harder difficulties or with bigger handicaps (there's an incremental difficulty system similar to Slay the Spire). I personally didn’t meddle with those and I was happy with just unlocking the way to the final boss and beating it once, so I found it quite a relaxing experience.

I think it’s a solid game. It has a really linear vengeance story and a well-built combat system. That is if you understand the game properly and learn that you have to parry/dodge and counterattack in order to proceed smoothly. The game, for some reason, doesn’t put any effort in teaching you the way to play it (despite it having a tutorial). You might end up just smashing the attack button and inevitably find yourself mopping the floor against bosses if you don’t know any better. I heard many people quit the game or found it unplayable for that reason.

I liked the graphics and character design too.

It has a bit of replayability too, since you can decide to replay the game sparing the bosses instead of killing them. However, I must say, it doesn’t make any sense story-wise. I mean: I invade your turf, I kill everyone in my way and then I decide to spare you at the end of the level. And I don’t do it just once, but 5 times, once for each boss. Kinda nonsense if I think about it.

I overall enjoyed it, though.

Gameplay-wise is a bit of a drag. I didn’t particularly like neither the combat and the shooting feeling nor the whole setting. I found the NCP mushrooms hard to look at and listen to. I didn't feel involved with their stories or quests at all.

The main plot is all over the place, too. I get why the protagonist is searching for her sister, but why does she mind about those other so-called “friends”? I mean, one guy thinks he owns her, the other one tries to kill her and his girlfriend treats her like shit. Just… why? And I have to forgive them too if I want to be morally just? For real?! Nah, it doesn’t work for me. I feel like the whole premise doesn’t stand and lacks proper foundations. I liked the relationship with the Voice, instead (I love their voice actress─Megaera from Hades btw), but it ends without really explaining anything. It’s a bit too open to interpretation for my taste.

All in all, I can’t recommend it.

Whew, it’s been an interesting ride. In my opinion, there’s a lot to praise about this game.

It’s a merge of old and new. The “old” part strongly resonates with a part of me. I’m a sucker for pixel graphics that have good animation. I’m a sucker for RPGs systems that aren’t overly complicated but still versatile enough to accommodate different playstyles. I’m a sucker for puzzles in general.

I liked the combat systems in particular, from the simple hack and slashing to the boss fights.

I liked the story. The “childish” humor. It’s a good change of pace once in a while. It’s still enough to get involved with the characters. Well, some of them. I have only some hesitation about the ending and some choices the characters made, but I get that they wanted to keep relationships simple and pure, without dragging it out with unnecessary drama. So they may feel kinda forced, but I get why they’re like that considering the general vibe of the game.

I liked a lot of the puzzles too. Nothing too complicated, but they posed a good challenge. Most of all, when I had to speedrun the temples because of the achievements (heh). I realize, though, that someone who doesn’t like puzzles, considering how many of them there are, could feel like they are too pervasive and overstay their welcome. On that note, the game has a good longevity and there’s a DLC too that gives closure to the story (I felt forced to get it when I completed the base game since I needed answers!). Some of the boss fights can be very tough (the DLC’s ones in particular). I state that as a positive point. It can be a good challenge if you’re into those kinds of things.

I recommend it.

As expected from a Freebird Games’ game, you have to deal with a romantic story where you’re expected to open your heart and feel. The usual witty storytelling where light and deep moments intertwine flawlessly, plus the delicate soundtrack, manage to achieve that.

If you’ve already played and appreciated their other games, you won’t be disappointed. If you don’t know them, well, you should fix that as soon as possible.

It felt quite rough at the start. The movements and the fights did not appear fluid at all, but it grew on me. I got used to the commands over time and once I unlocked most, if not all, of the dash/movement skills, I felt like the game unlocked its full potential. Since that very moment, delving into the platforming became really pleasant and I think I’ve encountered some of the hardest platforming challenges in my gaming “career”. On that note, I must say that some of the rotating flails sections were a bit too much even for me─I gave up on a handful of them.

The fights, instead, never really took off: they remained quite dull and lacked dynamism.

Overall, I liked it, and I think any metroidvania fan could appreciate it.

Oh, side note, for the completionists: the nightmare mode achievement (=beat the game without dying) is really really hard. I gave up just at the idea and didn’t even try.

It felt quite short, but it also felt that if it was any longer it would have become repetitive fast.

Graphically, it is nothing impressive and even the gameplay doesn’t particularly shine. The fights are pretty straightforward and maybe, aside for a single boss, there’s no particular mechanic to learn.

Still, I think it is overall passable. It’s not a bad game at all. In that sense I couldn’t point out a really bad thing about it even if I wanted to. That said, though, I can’t say I had particularly fun either.

I had a slight Commandos vibe after the first few missions, but I soon realized how wrong I was. The missions get quite repetitive quite fast. Despite adding new characters with different skills as the game progresses, what you have to do is always the same thing over and over. If you wanna play stealth (which is what you’re supposed to do in this kind of game), you end up always using the same characters since they’re objectively better.

I expected a bit more. Even just one mission different from the others would have sufficed.

The ending came quite abruptly too. I understand there’s “1941” in the title, and not “WWII”, but at least some sort of closure, not just a simple line of dialogue saying something along the lines: “You did good. You are key in the liberation of your country. Well… the end.” without any sort of previously built-up climax.

Last thing. The not-get-caught achievements on Steam are bugged. And the mission names there don’t correspond with the actual ones in the game.

It gets addicting right away, which is a good thing for this kind of game. The whole setting is quite intriguing, even if it doesn’t get properly explored while progressing.

Gameplay-wise, you have a big pool of cards that gets gradually unlocked. The game is not heavily RNG dependent as you’d expect, though. In fact it’s rare to not find a strategy that lets you complete a run independently from the starting cards, even because the starting cards are almost always the same. You basically always manage to change your build as you progress a run. There are a lot of viable builds in that sense. The only flaw I can find may be the fact that once you unlock Dark Markers─a tower that lets you mark enemies enmasse (and killing marked enemies heals you)─it basically becomes impossible for you to lose on normal runs.

Oh, a side note: the game doesn’t require your 100% attention, since after you choose your cards and end your turn you have to wait for the waves of mobs to complete, which require a few seconds every time. What I’m saying is that if you have a second screen it’s an ok game to keep there while watching/doing something else on the other.

Lovely art, lovely animation, lovely music, lovely and bittersweet story.

Gameplay-wise it can be a bit clunky at times since, especially at the start, it can happen to be there staring at the screen and despite clicking everywhere nothing happens. As for the rest, I liked it. I advise you to play the included “Jack DLC” too, since it clears out any doubt you might have about the story.

I’m gonna do a proper review next month, when I’m done with it. For now I just have one question: how come this game isn’t more popular?

After completing the main story I confirm everything I said last month.

The combat system and the characters’ growth are really off balance for various reasons.

The only redeeming point of the game is the story, which becomes quite intense toward the end with all its twists (even if a pair of them were a bit forced). It may be enough to like the game if you get invested into it, but, personally, I wasn’t.

We completed the game and the DLCs.

The very boss fights remain the best part of the game for me. I liked almost all of them, apart maybe from the last boss of the base game, that felt… wrong? That second phase was a step back compared to even some mid-game bosses (i.e.: illitis). For this reason, I couldn’t believe it was the final boss and I was left a bit unsatisfied when titles started to roll after the last cutscene. Maybe it’s because we played it co-op. Soloing it would have been a different experience, I suppose.

Story-wise we lost a bit of track of what we were doing and for what reason. As said last month they decided to concentrate all the notes you can read in a few spots rather than scattering them around. That translates to 20-30 minutes of reading every time. It slows down the game flow a bit too much, so it can be a problem if you have limited time to play and you wanna just shoot things up. When we started the DLC - that’s supposed to give closure to the story - we tried to get back on track, but we faced the same problem again. To make things worse, after some exploration and a few bosses, the story went suddenly forward with little to no explanation about the characters involved and their reasons, and the game was done like that. No closure at all. A bit of a disappointment.

As a whole, the experience was positive, though, so, maybe not right away, but we’ll play the sequel too at some point in the future.

The monochrome filter of the visuals was an appreciated add-on, as it gave the feeling of being in some old samurai movie.

The story is quite full of nonsense from the premise to the possible endings. Still, it’s not invasive enough to ruin the game experience and poses as a passable contour to the gameplay.

Gameplay-wise there’s a minimal component of exploration in order to get collectibles/new skills/upgrades and it luckily doesn’t ruin the game flow. I liked the level design in that sense. Most of the gameplay is focused around combat. It requires a certain degree of skills to time things right, but let’s say that once you unlock the first stunning skill it becomes quite easy and repetitive, even at the harder difficulties. Most enemies can be killed with the same skill, since there’s little to no variation to them. Even bosses, apart from maybe two (out of six), despite having different skills and move sets, are beaten in the same way: stay still, wait for them to attack, parry, counter, and repeat. That’s the combat system in a nutshell.

Anyhow, the fights are indeed frequent but short, so the game as a whole is fast-paced and doesn’t make the mistake of dragging itself too much.

Basically it’s been a short, enjoyable, but eventually forgettable experience.

I found the game way too simple, to the point that it felt kind of devoid of content. Too short, too little to do, uninteresting fight system (just mashing the attack button at close range), unpuzzling puzzles. It got a bit interesting only after getting the third character, but then again, it was at the end, with less than one hour of gameplay left.

The only redeeming point was the story, even if you can consider it a fairytale for kids. Probably that’s the whole point of the game: it could be a decent entry level game for a kid who’s never played anything of the sort. For anyone else I’d consider it skippable.

One last thing: the inventory management system was a really badly thought-out addition. Not only is there limited space that forces you to basically ignore almost all of the lootable objects, but there’s not even a way to fast exchange items between characters. To make things worse, once you learn how to handle fights, those objects aren’t needed because they’re mostly for healing. I think the developers should have just found a different way to manage healing and skip the inventory feature altogether.

It’s quite hard to give a review of this game because I liked it, but at the same time I found a few things to be really poorly designed.

The dive into Indian mythology was refreshing. It’s not often explored in Western media, so I found it very interesting, even if it probably represents just the tip of the iceberg, or even less. The hindi voice-over enhances the experience even more in that sense, even if it’s been hard to follow it sometimes (= reading and fighting at the same time). I was really impressed by the amplitude of the levels, from the 2nd to the 4th in particular. The top down view combined with the fact that you see your character so small compared to the rest of the world that surrounds her really sets the impression of being a small thing before the eyes of spectating Gods.

Gameplay-wise the game mostly focuses on combat; there’s some puzzle and platforming, but I wouldn’t weigh them in, since they’re really simple. I found the combat system to be quite weak: it mostly revolves around constantly dodging and then striking back, hoping not to be swarmed. Not particularly fun for me.

What I really didn’t like though was the management system for the skills and the weapons. It’s overcomplicated for no reason at all. 3 weapons, 3 possible elements to equip them with, 3 upgradable skills for each element. But at least in my experience you end up using just one weapon (bow) and just one element, because even if you wanna always use a maxed out element, you have to reassign the skill points every time and that becomes annoying fast.

What I liked even less was the story building and the ending in particular. You have 5-6 hours of constant narrative that builds up a story that makes you think you’re the chosen one or something. Gods give you blessings and weapons; they clearly state that they trust your abilities; you face and beat various divine beings up to the final battle. Well, in the last two-minute long cutscene, after the last boss fight, everything changes. There’s a plot twist (plus probably another implied one) and everything ends. It’s been kind of abrupt and unexpected to the point of being weird. Did they have to cut the game short for budget reasons? Did they think it was a good cliffhanger before a possible sequel? Whatever the reason, I didn't like it.

So yeah, play the game but be prepared for a possible letdown at the end.

The game is heavily based on trial and error which honestly I don't know if it’s a good or bad thing. Probably neither. It's just different from the usual puzzle game where you can plan your moves beforehand. Here you have to see how enemies move, then rewind time and plan what to do and see if it works. It's a bit of a time waster in that sense, but I still enjoyed it.

I particularly enjoyed the challenge of getting all the achievements, meaning solving some of the puzzles in a different, less intuitive way.

I also liked how some of the levels are interlaced with each other, in the sense that what you do on a level may have repercussions on a later one. I especially liked that they managed to integrate the fact of having to go back and change things with the story itself. I mean, in practice what you do is open the menu and select a previous chapter/level in order to replay it and do something differently, but what you’re actually doing (story-wise) is using your powers to go back in time in order to change the future. I found it clever, more so since the last puzzles are heavily based on this feature.

I liked the untold story too. The ending managed to get really emotional also thanks to the surging music.

I didn’t meddle with the “hard core” DLC (which is free btw).

I liked it overall, as expected from last month's first impression.

The boss fights were really engaging and challenging. The combat had the right kind of dynamics for my tastes, with a good grade of mobility and a nice balance among parries, pulls, dodges and attacks. I liked the setting and the story too, even if it was a bit opaque in some of its parts.

What I liked the most, though, was how they built the NG+ cycle. Bosses get new attacks and mechanics there, and that makes the fights even more of a challenge.

What I didn’t like was the map design (a bit too linear despite the appearance), fast travel being barred behind some almost end-game boss (backtracking is tedious without it), and the fact that some weapons aren’t really feasible to use in some fast paced fights (sort of a problem if you invest in those ones).

The gameplay felt repetitive in the 2nd chapter already.

There wasn't anything interesting or original in the level design or the fights in general.

There are too many cutscenes that interrupt the flow of the game in my opinion, and the fact that most of them are still-images with voice overs makes things even worse. I won’t even comment on the story and all its nonsense or the character design in general.

So let’s just say I didn’t particularly like this game and that’s it.

I had already played the whole game during early access and I liked it, despite the fact that I usually avoid survival games with crafting like the plague. It took me about 70 hours to go through the whole content with default settings at the time.

The whole crafting-boss hunting-upgrading loop the game is based upon is well built and balanced.

The map is not too big, but wide enough to create immersion, plus the graphics are unexpectedly pleasant to look at from the default top-down distance.

The game has recently come out of early access; they added new bosses, a new area, new end-game content and Steam achievements on top of that. So I decided to play it again. The thing is, I didn’t want to invest all those hours a second time. So let’s say I cheated? Well, no, but sort of, I mean, I heavily customized the server settings you can meddle with at the start when creating a new game. That means: no teleport limitations, max crafting rate, max drop rate, max material stacks, min material requirements for crafting, just 6 hours of light a day, max HP and Attack Power. Let’s say it’s not how it is meant to be played, but basically I removed useless waiting times and transformed the game into a sort of pure boss hunt game with fast upgrades in between bosses (it took me less than 20h playing this way). Playing on brutal difficulty and solo counterbalanced the fact that I pumped up my stats, just a bit that is. I still had more of a challenge the 1st time. Some of the bosses still posed a challenge though, but only a handful took me more than one attempt, so I guess I overdid a bit with the tweaking. Still, I had fun and I don’t feel particularly guilty for playing and getting the rarest achievements this way (a lot, and I mean A LOT, of people complain that the game is too hard and unfair on brutal difficulty).

Btw I loved the Castlevania crossover, I think it’s a perfect match.

It was about time I played this game.

I love how the co-op is the cornerstone of the whole game. The puzzles luckily weren’t too hard. My gf got a bit anxious when monsters started to appear (lol). Still, we had fun and we will probably try out the other games in the series.

A bit disappointed about the possible endings though. And well, maybe a bit short, but still a good experience.

I’m still playing it, but I’m not liking the game so far.

I don’t consider myself a fan of the yakuza series, but I’ve played a few of them (0, kiwami 1, kiwami 2, 3, in that order), and I quite liked them, even if following a downward trend.

I didn’t know much about this game, apart from the fact that it had an outstanding positive score on steam (94% positive reviews), so there was a certain grade of expectation. Well, let’s just say I’m quite disappointed and baffled by that score. I don’t understand where it comes from.

I mean, okay, we have the usual yakuza style story progression, the usual humor, the usual plethora of side quests and minigames to distract yourself with. There’s nothing really missing there. Furthermore I can honestly say that I liked the story and character design more than most of the previous games, but the gameplay, specifically the combat part of it, that’s what is really ruining everything for me. And mind you, it’s not because it’s a turn based jrpg now. The problem is its balance. How can the fights be balanced so poorly, I wonder. They’re either too easy, meaning you can simply set “auto-attack” without even needing to look at the screen, or you face enemies with like 10x, 20x or even 30x the normal HP and 10x the usual attack damage and waste 15-20 mins per fight chipping their HP away with the risk of dying and repeating the whole fight from the start. Sort of an artificial difficulty spike impossible not to see and that I found badly designed to the point of it being frustrating.

The other aspect that I didn’t like, which is exacerbated by the previous one, is the amount of grind required to just level up or gather rare materials. It’s extremely slow and you can hardly feel any sense of progression while you do it. All things are made worse by the fact that you’re supposed to level up different classes for each of the characters if you want to make them effectively stronger.

Basically it seems like they completely missed the middle way that makes jrpg fights interesting or fun, and leveling up a thing you actually want to do.

If I hadn’t won it on SG and didn’t feel obliged to beat at least the main story at this point, I would have already dropped it, honestly. And that's something, considering it's hard for me to drop a game, even when I don't like it.

I’m playing it co-op with my gf.

We’re having fun. We really like the setting and the world design in general so far (she’s kinda obsessed with the glowing red mushrooms lol). We like the chosen palette of colors. Even the lore is interesting enough if you take your time to read through all the logs scattered here and there (even though it would have been better if they had left a couple of pages that you would find more often rather than ten or more pages all at once in one spot).

The only things I’d wish were different are the fact that rolling (dodging) doesn’t interrupt the shooting animation, which, if it were possible, would allow more dynamic encounters, and the fact that if you’re not the host of the game you can’t see the updated map (meaning you see part of the maps you’ve already explored in previous sessions as unexplored/completely black). It can make it hard to orient yourself if you don’t have an especially good memory. Finally, enemies spawning behind you and the absence of a clear visual/auditory cue when they hit you can really be a pain.

Still, we’re progressing slow and steady and we’ll keep playing for sure.

I felt like it lost some of its charisma compared to the previous titles.

The story was plain bad, dialogues were boring, and some of the choices with the character arcs were highly questionable (referring to Maya in particular, without further spoilers). The few cutscenes present were rushed and awkwardly put together at times, especially the ones after the major bosses. The relationship between the antagonists ended up amounting for nothing and the final boss fight was really underwhelming. Just a huge let down as a whole.

Gameplay-wise the gun-play was ultimately passable, and there was a good variety of enemies/quests/activities to do. I didn't feel the necessity to explore different builds/characters, though. The 1st one I picked worked just fine and I breezed through the game without any particular challenge (I remember the circles of slaughter being much much harder in BL2).

I actually 100%ed the base game, but I decided not to buy the DLCs. They're too many and I presume─maybe I'm wrong─that they'd mostly be like the ones from BL2, i.e a waste of time, meaning they wouldn't add anything to the story, they'd be repetitive and feel like a drag to the end. I regretted playing those at the time.

Let's just say the game is okay if you're looking for some brainless shooting (but there are better options out there). For everything else, it's not worth it.

I think it does most of the things properlyfor a rouge-lite. There's a reasonable sense of progression after each death; there's a good variety of enemies, classes, weapons and game modes; the 3D pixel graphic is really well made; there's a sort of autosave feature that lets you quit during runs without losing much (that's something not usually granted in this kind of games); and lastly, the 360°/"orbital" idea level design is really original, and unexpectedly worked for me (I was skeptical at first). Overall I can say that it's addicting.

The letdowns are that I found the early bosses harder than the last ones and that some weapons are clearly OP compared to others, making certain builds strongly preferable. Probably the two things are related, meaning that once you have a good build, even supposedly hard bosses become trivial to beat.

Btw, I didn't encounter any bugs (many people on steam complained about game-breaking bugs. I guess they fixed them?).

You find yourself immersed in this morbid world right off the bat: not a text, not a dialogue, not a shed of any kind of explanation or tutorial, but in the end it works (btw it’s so paradoxical that it took me so long to just think to press “R” in order to reload my weapon just because there was no on-screen prompt telling me to do so; same goes for healing). Despite the sole presence of sound─there isn’t even a hint of music─the impacting visuals alone are able to make you feel like you're really there: an insignificant creature like many others in a vast, unknown and cruel world, lucky enough to be sentient enough to be struggling towards a goal. What is that goal though? Escape? Ascend? Simply survive? It's not clear and maybe not that important: you just need to keep moving forward. The ending is really sour. It took me a while to get over it.

The puzzles posed the right amount of challenge for my ability.

Overall I liked it.

The game is not shy at hinting that it took inspiration from Portal. The vibe is similar at times.

The puzzles are well thought and never repetitive. It's clear that they put a lot of effort into their whole design. Even the difficulty scales well the more you progress, without ever being excessive or impossible to overcome with a bit of trial and error.

The graphics are simple but pleasant. I liked the voice-acting. Less what the main plot ended out to be.

Still, I recommend it.

Man, it's weird how much I feel like I suck at this game but still manage to have the time of my life with it. I beat the game on hard mode, but till the very end I kept on crashing into the ground or against airships all by myself like when I had just started playing. I never ever ever ever got the hang of the controls properly. I had to drop mouse and keyboard right away and use a controller. It seems like my brain is not able to process the plane and camera movements separately at the same time, so I had to forget completely about the camera ones and just always look in front of me, where the plane was pointing. Still, I managed to play and enjoy the game to the very end.

The gameplay is really engaging, the physics of the planes are well done, the shooting feels right.

Furthermore, the graphics are really pleasing to the eye. I loved the dogfights. I liked much less engaging ground targets instead. Also, the story per se has no big pretenses but it is not half-hassed at all. I liked the soundtrack a lot too.It was a good match during the fights.

The only let down was a bug that made an enemy spawn under the map, which forced me to restart a mission (almost 30 mins in) because I couldn't kill it in any way and couldn’t progress.

I saw that the game was recently updated (2.0 available in beta play) but I'm hoping they'll work on a sequel too.

I’ll probably get back to it in the near future and try the hardest difficulty and conquest mode (that I didn’t touch).

The story was a bit rushed, most of all considering the relationship between the two protagonists, plus I found it a bit far-fetched (the whole Lucjan part, that is). On the other hand we have the gameplay that is really slow instead. Let’s say it’s not a good combination whatsoever. To make things worse, the story was predictable too. My first thought ended up spoiling the ending. So, I really couldn't get involved with any part of the game.

Sole saving points: the setting is really well made and full of details, the voice acting was decent and… it’s short? Not enough to recommend the game.

Oh, a secondary thing that fortunately didn’t concern me, but that I found really nonsensical if not plain stupid: when you finish the game, your save file gets deleted for good. So you are supposed to replay the whole game another time (2 times actually) in order to get all the achievements related to the possible endings. The game has no replay value imo, despite the different choices you can make here and there. To me, this thing makes absolutely no sense: it’s like punishing the player for no reason at all. (I was lucky enough that I checked a 100% achievement guide before playing it, so I backed up my save file at the right moment).

So far, It’s my kind of game. Hard boss fights, learning their attack pattern, beating them while underleveled. I’ll keep playing it next month, but I can already tell I’ll like it.

Finally completed.

After exploring through all the possible endings, I must say that the one introduced with the DLC, even if inevitably bittersweet, is the best one in my opinion. Seems like the whole "Blaze of glory or quiet life" conundrum has an obvious answer for me (getting older is giving me perspective it seems, lol).

Oh, something I forgot: the driving... my god... really really awful, probably the worst I have experienced in any game in my life. It baffles me how the state it still is in 2024, after years from release, with CD project saying they're basically done with the game, is what they intended.

Despite all the imperfections, I must say that, most of all thanks to the redeeming DLC, I ended up loving the game and having a memorable experience.

The game has some really good scares, some morbid and unsettling scenes that are visually impacting, and at times manages to deliver the frantic feeling that's proper for a survival horror game.

On the other hand, the story─as well as some of the puzzles─makes little to no sense. In this regard, there are often no hints as how to proceed and all you can do is aimlessly wander through the house hoping to stumble upon some objects that sometimes weren't even there before and that have no particular reason to be deemed interactable. I quite hated Dolores' chapter for that reason because in order to proceed with the game I was forced to search for a guide online, since I was stuck (the alternative was to quit the game altogether).

Another bad point is that ghosts spawn randomly; it may be that after they catch you and kill you, once you reload they won't spawn anymore for a while. That ruined the whole survival aspect of the game for me, not only because I felt there were no real challenge, but also because I basically wasn't scared of getting caught anymore.

Another thing I didn't like was the inventory management and how you use objects; it really could use some quality of life improvement.

Lastly, there are still bugs; I managed to fall off the map without even trying during a videotape sequence.

In conclusion, let's say I really liked the first 1-2 hours of the game (on a 9hour playthrough total), but once I could see past the first impression, all the fun was spoiled for me. Overall I can't recommend it.

I barely started playing. All I can say is that there's a clear graphic improvement compared to the previous ones, while the gun-play seems a little less convincing. Oh, and the NPCs talk a lot, maybe too much.

Gameplay-wise it ended up being quite repetitive and not challenging enough. The story was weak and I never felt any sort of connection with the main characters. I didn't particularly like it.

It took most of my play time for this month, even because I've decided to get all the achievements (still not done).

It slowly grew on me, I wasn't impressed at the beginning, but after a few hours the world started to feel real and it became a real pleasure diving in it. Still, the gameplay and gunplay are't particularly fun.

The strong points of the title are the characters, their story and the world built around them. Often the side jobs turned out to be more interesting than the main ones for that reason.

I really enjoyed the DLC, despite the weak premise.

I will keep playing it in March and I'm pretty sure I'll remember this game for a good while once completed.