Had an awestruck moment where I realized I liked this more than the previous expansion, what a heartfelt ride, fantastic

For (what I understand to be) her first game with real-time mechanics rather than a visual novel, Christine Love does a really admirable job. When the combat clicks, its fun, fast-paced, and rewarding. Sometimes however, the mechanics can be really opaque. The tutorial could use some work, as it took me quite a few battles to really wrap my head around the combat system.

The pacing was also a big issue, at a certain point I just was not interested in doing the same fight I had done over a dozen times before, acts needed to either have more variety in them or be shorter. Having only 1 song for normal combat was also quite grating, which is saying something because the track in question is REALLY GOOD, but any song played that frequently will grate over time.

Writing is what you have come to expect from Love Conquers All, walks the impossible tightrope of delightfully indulgent and crushingly sincere, the metaphor of the Devil Machine cultists and the Divine Hierarchy are very on the nose but sometimes you fucking have to be, and I do think this is one of those times.

Had a blast overall, very excited to see future releases from this dev.

Very solid tactical RPG, with great music, and charming visuals.

Held back by some pacing issues, the big cast needed a bit more room to breathe for the emotional beats to land more solidly, could have done with either setting some lore aside to let characters come to the fore a bit more or maybe cut down the cast a bit.

Some minor issues with the gameplay, can be unclear what the timing is for the timed hit system, sometimes the isometric perspective blocks key visual information, just a little bit too much time spent in random battles.

Loved the very queer cast, and variety of levels and enemies, great length for the price.

A fun Visual Novel / Dungeon Crawler, the concept is neat enough for the novelty to propel you forward as you get to know some hot weapons, and by the the time you've acclimated there is probably at least one person who intrigues you enough to keep going and figure them out.

I was surprised how much the focus on dating and flirting rather than romance enabled me to make more on-the-fly roleplaying decisions than I usually would in a visual novel where I might normally be tempted to try and steer towards a 'route'. Even the strictly platonic paths had a lot of playful energy to them, for example I had no interest in dating K-pop boy but he was fun for friendly snuggles.

Gameplay is perfectly serviceable, you can pretty clearly see the DNA of games like Bastian here, lacks the polish that later exemplars of the style like Hades would show but its fun and engaging (though I wish enemies had clear wind-up frames so combat was less memorizing how long enemies had between attacks and could instead be more reactive and fluid)

Be warned that a major, unavoidable part of this game is dealing with a creep who stalks you, kidnaps people, and is just in general the Worst kind of guy. I actually liked that the game went there, and found myself first trying to politely turn him down, then defuse him, and then just try and shoot him down outright at every opportunity, it felt really natural, even if he gets a little cartoonishly jerky.

Also, cannot be overstated how good the music is, phenomenal.


Generally, this game has excellent presentation, the mechs stomp across the battlefield and your view bobs up and down accordingly. Mechs are lovingly rendered and while they are not 1 to 1 with their original look, I tend to appreciate the redesigns.

However, what cannot be avoided is years or bizzare design decisions that have made the game cycle through various absurd weapon imbalances. Also, general changes like increasing matches from 8v8 to 12v12 have made it so a game that once excelled at drawn-out brawls with tactic usage of torso twisting to spread damage, to longer range sniping and skirmishing where the increased gun count on either side punishes not staying in a large deathball of mechs.

Worse has been the absurd monetary model the game has followed, selling mechs at absurd prices and jumping on whatever trend of the day to try and bleed the playerbase dry.

However since I have come back these practices have calmed down considerably and there are events running frequently to give out mechs and other goodies to active players. The base model of free-to-play and all the predatory aspects of it remain, but there is legitimately a fun game here about giant stompy robots here.

You can see a lot of the DNA of their previous game, Gunpoint in here, but with a focus more on player expression. The game is designed to make you work with whatever wacky tools you have to try and clown your way through the map you are on to get to your objective, and early on especially, it succeeds at this. Problems arise, at least for me, when after you have played for a while, dominant strategies start to emerge, for example a slipstream and a stealth shield can get you through just about anything the game throws at you until you start dealing with the newer tech the game added to thwart it. Which sounds like a solved problem, but things like doors that disable tech and jammers tend to just shrink possibility space and encourage efficient play rather than expressive play. What I think might have served the game's purposes better would have been introducing elements more suited for other tools rather than turning the good ones off occasionally, but despite this criticism, I had a great lot of fun with this one and still occasionally come back to it when I want that particular kind of fun

I usually cannot play horror games but this one was done masterfully well with a very unique take on the idea of the haunted house, KittyHorrorshow makes games that do such a wonderful job of evoking deep nameless feelings in me.

A game that resonates strongly with my experiences as a trans woman who spent way too much time on the internet in the 90s as a child trying to figure herself out. Fucked me up at times.

Very moody in a good way, clearly a set-up for later stories to be told but what is here stands well on its own. Very simple walk-around game but an enjoyable short experience.

A story the author has clearly spent a lot of time thinking about, with a lot of details and history you see bits and pieces of that you get the impression has depth you are just not privy to. Best played after Escaped Chasm, the previous work by the author which has some connections to this story. Biggest complaint would be that while there is clearly a lot of world-building being done, we are kept at arms length from everything, to the point where I keep thinking 'oh, that is interesting' but never anything beyond that.

These games are very cute and soft, nothing revolutionary or compelling but sometimes you just wanna play a cute gay game

If you loved Halo this is an excellent time. The story is often ridiculous and a bit sophomoric but reliving being in your teens is probably why you are here.

2018

Excellent feel to the controls with delightful characters, we stan our bisexual disaster king.

Really fun and addictive play that keeps having me play one more day when I know I should be doing something else. Writing is fairly weak with the occasional stand-out scene, but it is overshadowed by the fun though unrealistic fantasy of being productive ever.

Looking back at this it is shocking how starkly different I feel about these characters now vs. then. Half the cast was insufferable and the other bland with a meandering story. It is a testament to the improving writing of the expansions that I genuinely like all the Scions but woof it takes a bit to get there.