Rape End Aegis

This is a regular nukige which is entirely made up of rape content, and when I mean rape content I mean gargantuan amounts. This is in the same special genre of games that clockup pushes out which have extremely intriguing scenarios surrounding hyper fetish content, it's completely normal to not engage with this type of media but there's definitely a lot of creativity to come up with scenarios that outrape each other

I think what sets DEA apart from clockup titles is that clockup actually engages a lot with scat and gore content while DEA is mainly focused on rape, but it doubles the stress of reading it by attaching humiliation to it, all the content up to End 1 has the central theme of absolute embarrassment, you see the MC's vanity and self-righteousness completely collapse one rape after another, being reduced to a literal human semen toilet

Anyways, my honest thoughts are End 1 is extremely self indulgent to read and I found everything related to the forced impregnation to the "Grand One"/"Little One" plot extremely exhaustive, there's an entire part where Nana's boyfriend Satoru comes back and betrays her and it was the most lousily hamfisted thing ever, after the August attack reducing the MC's power and making her a designated cum dumpster was difficult to read not because it was disgusting but moreso because it was just yet another contrived scenario to completely destroy the MC's will, it felt like the writing was cyclic and it was the 26th time she was being reduced to a sex toy for the purposes of being gang raped (that's just what the VN is I can't really complain)

End 2 has 1/500th the rape (just 2 scenes) and deals with the politics of moon residents asking for independence and housing 1.2 million citizens on mars and it was fine, I'm glad it didn't stretch as disgustingly as End 1 did which I can't emphasis how much I hated reading End 1 so it was so much better to read about what was happening outside the Cathedral, it's probably the only optimistic piece of writing in the VN where the main cast survives and even though End 2 in it's entirety is anticlimactic it's still short and "sweet"

Pros!!! (HOW?)

+ Within it's own contrived rape scenario, the character writing for the MC is pretty interesting, they keep her tethered to her self-righteous attitude and keep the dial up and down just enough to not completely break her

+ The story is definitely very interesting with some decent reveals, although much of the contributions to the pacing are made by the absolute rape cage the Cathedral is but there's still general intrigue that keeps everything connected and gives the plot a sense of direction

+ The 3 main characters are extremely enjoyable and had not only distinct personalities but very well written chemistry

+ Illyusha

+ The fact that you can play soltaire in the extras menu on top of the fucking hentai CGs

That's all I have to say about Rape End Aegis, this is the type of content you engage with when you want to read something extremely taboo with very difficult to consume but interesting writing on the subject matter

Cancer of the Wild

A lot of my opinions aren't brand new or something that I haven't complained about earlier at great length, but I wanted to condense my thoughts into single post now that I've gone through the game

Pros:
(+) The shrines, even when I can whisk out the combat shrines, or the maze ones, or the ones that forced me to break my weapons or whatever, all of the shrines come together to bring an extra dimension to this game, I thought all of the gimmick tools were unique and the shrines really had some out of the box ways of making you use them,

(+) While on the topic of shrines, amongst the 60 I've done, I didn't need a guide for any of them, they've successfully made shrines that make logical sense even if you sometimes have to trial and error to figure out the exact system at play, and I really have to emphasis, some of these shrines with the extra mini-challenge for chests really DO an amaaaazing job, while others don't explore their mechanics in totality and just end as soon as they begin

(+) The story is nothing to write home about, but I think it works, anything that's more showing less telling is better and they don't exposition dump you genshin style where the text is literally bleeding out of the tiny text box

(+) On some occasions the game really has an interesting sense of cartoon-ism, oh you're destroyed a beast made out of bones? Well they can re-animate AND use each other's heads. You throw a bomb at a pig and the weapons knocks out of their hands, you can shock a horse and THEN find a way to tame it

(+) And finally and possibly the most underrated thing about the game, a layer of unpredictability, the game is filled with "aha" moments where you're like "will.....this work?" and then it does, I've solved countless of shrines where I was coming up with techniques on the fly to make my life easier and it was honestly astonishing how much creativity you can come up with

This is me scratching the boney frame of this game to dig out some positives, onto the negatives

Cons:
(-) The combat was designed by a team of developers who made it and then refused to let anyone playtest it, absolutely fucking cancer, the combat is at the level of atrociousness where it should be enshrined in the hall of fame for experience-ruining sections for games, the best thing you can do in the game is don't even hold up your shield to try to parry or dodge anything, go up to the enemy and spam normal attacks, or literally if you don't want to exhaust your weapons just throw bombs at them

(-) The OSTs are insanely fucking bad, I was running away from most combat encounters not only because they suck, but so that the fucking blood worm they unleased on my eardrums would stop burning up my ear canals, the composer took inspiration from pieces of rock falling down a mountain, and it's THE SAAAAAAAAAME IT DOESN'T CHANGE

(-) Open bodies of land that have nothing in it (believe it or not the game is actually pretty fucking short most of my time was actually spent going from A to B trying to unlock towers, hell if I even stopped doing that I'd have been done with the game in a week)

(-) Weapon breaking bad,
(-) Rain == slippery bad,
(-) "Grab this blue torch and go from A to B" bad,
(-) Horse kicks you off if you oversprint bad,
(-) Thunder shocks you if you equip a metallic weapon bad,
(-) Environmental hazards that require specific gear bad (they do this on 3 separate occasions, heat, fire and snow, all of them different variations of cancer)

These are mechanics that you're constantly dealing with and they put a damper on your experience insanely fast, the first time rain hit me outside the fish area I was like "oh.....so it's THAT kind of game", for the sake of pseudo-realism it creates embarrassing hurdles to simple tasks whose only way of completion is at the risk of being annoyed as opposed to being challenged,

Yes, these hurdles don't make the game meaningfully challenging, they make it ANNOYING

(-) Lack of direction splits two ways, for shrines and for the overworld,

Shrines:

I've talked about this at length but I can't emphasis how important having invisible direction is, some of the shrines are straight up "hit ball so it goes in hole" and it's as if they forgot that weapons break in 2 seconds in this godforsaken game, just put an invisible funnel or fix the shooting direction so that the player can go through the process more easily, why in god's earth are the puzzles designed so that you KNOW the solution but it takes FOREVER to solve, when in reality it should be the other way around, you should know the solution and the puzzle should solve immediately,

Other times the shrines NEEDS you to use arrows while it provides you with none, all of these are fixable issues if the game just GAVE YOU WHAT YOU NEED, don't make me go hunt for materials for trials,

Gyroscope puzzles are a better case for "how the fuck did they not add invisible walls or helpful direction to make this easier?" and they just didn't they didn't really give a fuck, on one hand there's 60 ways to solve a puzzle on the other executing the puzzle in it's intended format is a pain in the ass

Overworld:

The game teaches you about combat at specific parts of the game that you can entirely miss, this is also why I think the game's idea of freedom of choice is a veneer of bullshit, it fucks with the game's OWN interests, on some occasions you need to talk to a specific NPC so that ANOTHER specific NPC can pop up and sell you a bra and panty so you can enter le woman village,

(-) Bosses:

Thunderblight was cancer because the combat is cancer others were gimmicky and I don't really give a fuck about them, Ganon LOOKED really cool though, props to them for making him look all mushy and gross, very Silent Hill 5 final boss of them

Closing thoughts:

BOTW is a game where every critique you have for the game is at something that was designed with pure intention, none of this is an oversight by the developers, whether come rain or lightning, the game speaks to it's roots and builds on it's own archaic design

This is a PS1 game masking itself as a modern game, all of these elements you can find dating back to that era, even the beloved gliding of the game which brings ease of access you can find as a core mechanic in spyro the dragon (not to say gliding is some copyright design)

BOTW at it's core has all the right things to make it playable and interesting, but it's downfall is the inclusion of elements that exist only to beat and extend otherwise straightforward tasks,

Something as easy as climbing a pile of rocks is only an activity that could be made tedious and annoying in a game like BOTW, which perfectly summarizes why I did not like it at the end of the day

Cancer.

Metal: Hellsinger is at odds with itself throughout the entire 4.5 hour playthrough.

On one hand, rhythm mechanics are insanely fun. Shooting and dashing to the beat feels GREAT. Reloading to the beat is a great way to make an otherwise useless mechanic feel engaging.
However, the game falls short in fully embracing the rhythm aspects, causing them to feel somewhat inconsequential. Enemies move at their own pace, which means players don't always have the opportunity to play in sync with the beat.

That alone is enough for me to dislike this game. Half of the time, the game feels like Doom Eternal with some BPM mod slapped on it. Not to mention the questionable enemy design, effortless boss fights, and a really shitty challenge mode.

It's good but I don't really get it.

Like, mechanically, everything is so fantastic, yet it feels like the game opposes its own design? You can slide, roll, dash, go slow-mo after jumping over cover, clearly, motivating players to not use cover and rush into a fight like a badass. Yet, there are times when the best way or the only way to take down enemies is through turret sections?? It's like Vanquish wanted to break the conventions of what a third-person shooter at the time should be (Gears of War clones) yet it still adheres to these standards in its levels, enemy design, and overall narrative. It's strange. I found myself getting bored at times, or just uninterested in the combat, while other times I was really feeling it. At times, it felt like Platinum Games was trying too hard to be cool, which they never do! Sam feels like an MGR Raiden-Light although clearly being written beforehand. Some of the setpieces were jaw-dropping in concept, while others were very mundane. I feel like I can say this about a lot of the different aspects of the game. It's hit or miss. Still fun when its hits, but boring when it doesn't. Also, screw Act 5 Mission 2's ridiculous difficulty spike

Hit or Miss/10

I really had no idea what to expect from this game. The gameplay is like Hollow Knight, with a heavy emphasis on bosses and combat. The progression is similar to rougelikes, like Nuclear Throne, with weapons and evolutions that allow you to create insane builds. It sounds like it could be pretty fun, but it is constantly constrained by questionable game design.



Death, the character, controls strangely. From the get go, you are introduced to combat similar to Smash Brothers, having designated attacks according to the direction you hold your movement button in. The attack button is a long attack combo that changes based on the weapon you have equipped. You have a dash with IP Frames that has a quick cooldown.



NONE of this works. The directional attacks have no real place in this game and you'll find yourself pressing these buttons by accident. The only real use is the upwards attack button that acts like a second jump, which you can just substitute for a double jump.

The attack animations are FAR too long in a game like this, but the game attempts to fix this by having attacks STUN the enemies and bosses. None of the mobs ever pose a threat, because you can stand directly in front of them and mash the attack button until they die. You can cancel some boss attacks by attacking them until they get stunned, which isn't particularly bad, but it gets worse because....

You are simply more powerful than everything else in the game. You are already faster than all of the bosses bar one, so that IP Frame dash I mentioned earlier makes everything a joke. DID I ALSO MENTION YOU HAVE AN ULTIMATE SKILL THAT MAKES YOU INVUL FOR IT'S BEGINNING ANIMATION? This game truly gives you too much power. You will almost NEVER get hit in this game if you play with even a little bit of attention. The game is just painfully easy, but it doesn't even stop there.

This is a rougelike, so it needs a variety of weapons and powers to make each run different. You are limited to 2 weapons at once, Physical Weapons that have cooldowns and Magic Weapons that use mana.

None. I mean NONE of the weapons feel good to use. The physical weapons feel as slow as drinking a potion in fucking monster hunter. Magic Weapons only exist for spamming like hell. Some of the magic weapons break the fucking game, allowing you to kill some of the bosses without even being in the same room by spamming magic homing missiles before the boss encounter begins. Oh, and on the chance you don't get decent weapons, you actually get to play the game.



One of the only redeeming qualities of this game is the decent boss design. The game has boss design on the complexity level of Hollow Knight, making you learn multiple attack patterns. The bosses have good tells and competent attacks, for the most part. If you play right, you can be as aggressive as you want. Still, the bosses are a cakewalk if you upgrade damage and have decent weapons, but on the off chance you DO die. Well, have fun replaying the game from the beginning to get back to the boss. Normally, this is fine, but each run of the game is FAR too long for it's own sake.



Oh, and the level design is non-existent and it becomes a chore to just speedrun your way through every level just to fight another boss. Being a rougelike does this game absolutely zero positives and just creates a ton of tedium.

It's bad.

With the name Melatonin and the dreamy art direction, I was hoping for something more laid back and relaxing when in reality this is a fairly challenging rhythm game that will keep you awake and on your toes.

As a rhythm game, the levels are hit and miss. Some levels feel really good as you tap the buttons along to the beat, while others rely on subtle cues that or awkward patterns that feel like they impede the flow of the game rather than add to it.

Overall, Melatonin a cool game that I'm glad I played but is not quite the cult classic I was hoping it would be.

I normally don't high rate gacha games unless they have something special and make me actively >want< to play the game. Punishing Gray Raven does that in such a cool way: the gameplay is SO COOL and I can't stress this enough: this is the only gacha game that has skill expression of the player.

Sure, if you just started playing, the bosses are easy, the story stages are easier and you can breeze through almost any content until... some point. As a nature of gacha games, they have an endgame and you'll need to grind eventually to reach its high peak: but you can do this with any character you want.

Of course, if you're playing for meta-reasons, there's a chance where the character you like isn't the most optimal choice: but who cares? People are soloing endgame bosses with a support character they like a lot and invested into. You can use only one builded character to pass through some content, but the game still requires to build multiple teams and build more characters.

Some gacha players look for big numbers on screen, beautiful ladies, handsome men and PGR has it all with an extra: YOUR SKILL actually matters. For some, this sucks: after all, if you play FGO because of its clicking cards nature and you're just looking for a chill game to collect your .pngs, this game probably will not hype you up. But I suggest you at least give it a try.

This game also is really F2P friendly and, by design, it's made to you have the debut S-rank in patch (you can, of course, skip them if you want). If you're a dolphin, it's actually super cheap (~5 USD-ish...? Not sure). But again: only spend if you have money to spend, it's STILL a GACHA GAME.

It's important to say that every character plays differently and the OST is a banger. A massive banger. If you like anime action games overall, you should give it a shot.