2 reviews liked by Legba
The Final Station
2016
One of my favorite games ever in terms of pure atmosphere. The whole game is accompanied by a feeling of dread, as you drive your train through the apocalypse, and attempt to piece the story together through the tidpits you find, with nice and fitting soundtrack, as well as mesmerizing background visuals.
Sadly, it gets dragged down in its gameplay which, while mostly servicable, could have used a lot more work (although a lot of the issues were addressed in its amazing DLC). The train maintenance is fine, but the way its set up effectively prevents you from learning more of the story as the dialogue between passengers continues regardless whether you're able to read it or not (I get the idea but it's just annoying).
Overall a fine experience for its atmosphere, and relatively short runtime of around 6-7 hours.
Sadly, it gets dragged down in its gameplay which, while mostly servicable, could have used a lot more work (although a lot of the issues were addressed in its amazing DLC). The train maintenance is fine, but the way its set up effectively prevents you from learning more of the story as the dialogue between passengers continues regardless whether you're able to read it or not (I get the idea but it's just annoying).
Overall a fine experience for its atmosphere, and relatively short runtime of around 6-7 hours.
Jank Game is Jank!
I learned this was a port of a mobile phone game after I beat it. A port with some fixes...maybe.
It starts out really cute. It feels like old 2d Zelda, but jank.
The jank is fine and then it starts getting worse and worse. What is kinda funny, turns into frustration.
The game is too long for being as jank as it is. The boss fights are terrible. Like either the devs did not know what do or did not care.
It just all feels bad. Temples become too long. Boss fights get worse and worse. You start actively fighting the game and it's jank.
One late game puzzle is horrendous and I cannot believe they thought it was okay to ship that way. The final boss is infuriating. It's jank. Has bad hit boxes. And does way too much damage to you. Sometimes taking forever to let you damage it. However I will give the devs credit where credit is due. They put a checkpoint in after the terrible phase 1. Phase 2 is laughable.
So a game that starts out charming and jank. Has absolute banging music at times. Even has meme worthy terrible moments. It slowly turns into a miserable experience. The jank is no longer funny. The design is baffling and they should be ashamed of themselves for not fixing it when they rereleased it. It's one thing for it to be this way on phones. Another whole thing when you take time to rerelease and update it for consoles and pc. I cannot imagine the second game, a botw clone, being any good based on what this game was like.
I learned this was a port of a mobile phone game after I beat it. A port with some fixes...maybe.
It starts out really cute. It feels like old 2d Zelda, but jank.
The jank is fine and then it starts getting worse and worse. What is kinda funny, turns into frustration.
The game is too long for being as jank as it is. The boss fights are terrible. Like either the devs did not know what do or did not care.
It just all feels bad. Temples become too long. Boss fights get worse and worse. You start actively fighting the game and it's jank.
One late game puzzle is horrendous and I cannot believe they thought it was okay to ship that way. The final boss is infuriating. It's jank. Has bad hit boxes. And does way too much damage to you. Sometimes taking forever to let you damage it. However I will give the devs credit where credit is due. They put a checkpoint in after the terrible phase 1. Phase 2 is laughable.
So a game that starts out charming and jank. Has absolute banging music at times. Even has meme worthy terrible moments. It slowly turns into a miserable experience. The jank is no longer funny. The design is baffling and they should be ashamed of themselves for not fixing it when they rereleased it. It's one thing for it to be this way on phones. Another whole thing when you take time to rerelease and update it for consoles and pc. I cannot imagine the second game, a botw clone, being any good based on what this game was like.