OnlineSammie
12 Reviews liked by OnlineSammie
Yakuza Kiwami
2016
This review contains spoilers
Going from 0 to this feels like a massive downgrade in some aspects, though I'm not rating this lower because I can at least understand it's a remake of an incredibly old game. The story is noticeably worse, the substories are all fight related or just boring save for the normal few, and I [kind of but not really spoiler alert -----------------------------] just watched a lot of the characters I liked die for what felt like no reason at times. I know the reasons and how they were story relevant and all that, but the story did not feel good enough to warrant them or me feeling sad enough for them.
I heard Kiwami 2 is better. Can't wait.
I heard Kiwami 2 is better. Can't wait.
What a turn from "haha rich bastards do be killing each other over the pettiest things" to "generational consolidation of power assuredly leads to the raise of fascism"
The most uninspired, cliche, lifeless, dull, sleep inducing cutscene simulator ever made and it's not even a Sony game.
Does no one ever just shut up in this game? These NPC's be on their soapbox spouting nonsense left right and center.
On top of that you literally get no ammo and run out of bullets after 2 ops go down.
The story is so predictable, the characters are lackluster and in an open world game, if the story is trash then there is no reason to keep playing, something that RDR2 was able to get away with.
This game can't compete with modern FPS titles, it can't compete with story based single player games, it sucks as a looter shooter. So where does this leave Metro exodus?
In the bin where it belongs.
Don't trust anyone giving this game more than 2.5 stars, this has to be a psyop, Imma keep it real tho like always this is hot dog water.
Does no one ever just shut up in this game? These NPC's be on their soapbox spouting nonsense left right and center.
On top of that you literally get no ammo and run out of bullets after 2 ops go down.
The story is so predictable, the characters are lackluster and in an open world game, if the story is trash then there is no reason to keep playing, something that RDR2 was able to get away with.
This game can't compete with modern FPS titles, it can't compete with story based single player games, it sucks as a looter shooter. So where does this leave Metro exodus?
In the bin where it belongs.
Don't trust anyone giving this game more than 2.5 stars, this has to be a psyop, Imma keep it real tho like always this is hot dog water.
Its a mixed bag that, on average, comes out on the better end of the scale.
The core mystery and mechanics behind it are both excellent and the main draw of the entire experience. Unfortunately, the actual way in which the mystery is told and presented is a bit more lacking. Long, dense blocks of text seem to be the main way that the reader is actually caught up to speed which can often make it a bit of a headache to get through everything. While a generous search feature and notes can ease the problem a bit, there is still a lot of information here that will be difficult to keep in your head all at once.
If you have the attention span, memory, and willingness to really sink your teeth into it, I think Sekimeiya definitely offers enough to make that effort worth it. But it really doesn't like making things easy on you.
The core mystery and mechanics behind it are both excellent and the main draw of the entire experience. Unfortunately, the actual way in which the mystery is told and presented is a bit more lacking. Long, dense blocks of text seem to be the main way that the reader is actually caught up to speed which can often make it a bit of a headache to get through everything. While a generous search feature and notes can ease the problem a bit, there is still a lot of information here that will be difficult to keep in your head all at once.
If you have the attention span, memory, and willingness to really sink your teeth into it, I think Sekimeiya definitely offers enough to make that effort worth it. But it really doesn't like making things easy on you.
This review contains spoilers
I will start this off, as per tradition for the amateur reviews, with a food analogy. Suppose you buy a cake. It has a fundamental level of biscuit, the cream layers, maybe the jam layers, and the toppings. When you go for a slice of cake, you’re experiencing the gestalt of all those layers coming together.
Sekimeiya is a huge slab of biscuit with barely anything on top type of cake.
The foundation is extremely solid. The web of causes and effects is intricate and convoluted, but everything that appears to not make sense eventually will, and it is possible to feasibly figure out parts of it as you go along, or at least make decent guesses on the nature of what’s happening. Some things aren’t covered within the story, but, if you want complete understanding of the setting and mechanics not immediately relevant to the plot, there are post-game blurbs that will cover even that.
Despite that, the VN gave me little to no other reason to care about anything that is happening. This is especially evident in the first three or so hours devoid of any intrigue or apparent motivations for anything to happen whatsoever, that even avid Sekimeiya fans admit is kind of bad.
It’s multiplied tenfold by how the story is presented as well, there are dry emotionless impenetrable walls of text even for the very minute details of the environment or the very surface level observations. Basically, imagine the slog of this review, but stretched over twenty to fifty hours of reading. It has gotten so unbearable for me that I, a million-word fanfic and trashy manga reader, have started skimming the text about halfway through.
The character writing is extremely weak – they all have exactly the same voice. Thankfully, the game has an option to colour the dialogue text, or it would have been nigh impossible to tell who’s speaking at the moment. The characters have some distinctive traits, for the most part pertaining to their motivations, but all of them speak in the same exact robotic monotone you will read in the narration text for the entirety of the game.
The art is solid but unremarkable. The character sprites are very unexpressive, and you’ll be staring at them for the vast majority of the game, as the splash arts are few and far between, maybe a dozen or so over the whole game.
The music is mostly good, though as far as I’m aware, almost none of it was actually written for the game, so there’s very little thematic/melodic cohesion between the tracks, though they do capture roughly the same vibe. No character themes or location themes or persistent motifs or anything of the sort.
I can recommend Sekimeiya to anyone who puts untangling the web of causes and effects above everything else in a mystery story, to the point they’re willing to forgive it being mediocre to lacking in every other area.
I can’t recommend Sekimeiya to anyone for whom that just isn’t enough to engage them in the mystery the story is presenting.
SOMEWHAT SPOILERY PART OF THE REVIEW STARTS HERE
I’ve said near the beginning of this review that the story makes complete sense in the end. Now, how it gets there is a whole another question.
The beginning (the first 3 hours or so) is, frankly, atrocious. You’re immediately thrown into the thick of it and assaulted with exposition dumps to the point I was suspecting some weird memory-wiping stuff going on and that I was supposed to notice how flimsy and unconvincing the main character’s reason was to be where he is. Upon the incident happening, none of the characters react like you would expect them to react and go off on the little exploring adventure with absolutely no apparent incentive to do so (and with no non-apparent incentive either for the half of the cast).
Even after the beginning, the game is riddled with extremely convenient coincidences and actions taken for the sole purpose of getting on with the story, especially on the part of the main trio of characters. The characters themselves continuously oscillate between being so stupid you start to wonder how on Earth do they not forget how to breathe and super logically flawless 1000 IQ computing machines with eidetic memory as soon as it’s required of them to move the plot along.
As a lesser aside, the setting is very weird. And I don’t mean the tower – why did it have to be Japan? This just comes off as a huge case of “weeaboo, Japanophile for you gaijins”, the developers aren’t Japanese and it’s not ever relevant to the plot in the slightest, so I have no idea why didn’t they just write about the culture they lived in for their whole life, which would surely have added to the liveliness of the descriptions. Anime style doesn’t really lock you into the Japanese setting, after all.
For a game apparently inspired by Umineko, it seems to have taken the exact wrong lesson out of it: there is no heart to the story at all, none of the characters have more than second order depth (first being the motivation, and the second being the motivation for their motivation), and about half of them don’t even have that in the first place. Those motivations make sense on the logical level (example: she is his friend and he wants to save her) but not on the emotional engagement level (same example: the only interaction between them we get to see for a while feels more like a post-grad get-together of people who weren’t even particularly great friends at school, and the future interactions aren’t very convincing either).
The characters have no interests or quirks of distinctive ways of speech or particular ways they react to events or any strong opinions on anything. The few inter-character relationships the game has are more claimant than apparent – friendship apparently just means asking “how are you” periodically and giving a hug once. All this makes it especially funny when the game claims to avoid a certain type of paradox because the cause for the event originated in the characters mind, but there is no character to the character so it just ends up a one step removed motivational deus ex machina.
Honestly, the more I’m writing this, the less impressive it feels that the story makes sense in the end. It’s really not that impressive to write an intricate web of causes and effects, when you don’t have to work with characters being actual characters – that’s just basic puzzle design. Still, the recommendation stays the same – if you love solving puzzles just for the sake of it, so much that you can forgive the rest of it being less than impressive, give it a go. Otherwise it just doesn’t have enough of the rest of it to keep you invested
Sekimeiya is a huge slab of biscuit with barely anything on top type of cake.
The foundation is extremely solid. The web of causes and effects is intricate and convoluted, but everything that appears to not make sense eventually will, and it is possible to feasibly figure out parts of it as you go along, or at least make decent guesses on the nature of what’s happening. Some things aren’t covered within the story, but, if you want complete understanding of the setting and mechanics not immediately relevant to the plot, there are post-game blurbs that will cover even that.
Despite that, the VN gave me little to no other reason to care about anything that is happening. This is especially evident in the first three or so hours devoid of any intrigue or apparent motivations for anything to happen whatsoever, that even avid Sekimeiya fans admit is kind of bad.
It’s multiplied tenfold by how the story is presented as well, there are dry emotionless impenetrable walls of text even for the very minute details of the environment or the very surface level observations. Basically, imagine the slog of this review, but stretched over twenty to fifty hours of reading. It has gotten so unbearable for me that I, a million-word fanfic and trashy manga reader, have started skimming the text about halfway through.
The character writing is extremely weak – they all have exactly the same voice. Thankfully, the game has an option to colour the dialogue text, or it would have been nigh impossible to tell who’s speaking at the moment. The characters have some distinctive traits, for the most part pertaining to their motivations, but all of them speak in the same exact robotic monotone you will read in the narration text for the entirety of the game.
The art is solid but unremarkable. The character sprites are very unexpressive, and you’ll be staring at them for the vast majority of the game, as the splash arts are few and far between, maybe a dozen or so over the whole game.
The music is mostly good, though as far as I’m aware, almost none of it was actually written for the game, so there’s very little thematic/melodic cohesion between the tracks, though they do capture roughly the same vibe. No character themes or location themes or persistent motifs or anything of the sort.
I can recommend Sekimeiya to anyone who puts untangling the web of causes and effects above everything else in a mystery story, to the point they’re willing to forgive it being mediocre to lacking in every other area.
I can’t recommend Sekimeiya to anyone for whom that just isn’t enough to engage them in the mystery the story is presenting.
SOMEWHAT SPOILERY PART OF THE REVIEW STARTS HERE
I’ve said near the beginning of this review that the story makes complete sense in the end. Now, how it gets there is a whole another question.
The beginning (the first 3 hours or so) is, frankly, atrocious. You’re immediately thrown into the thick of it and assaulted with exposition dumps to the point I was suspecting some weird memory-wiping stuff going on and that I was supposed to notice how flimsy and unconvincing the main character’s reason was to be where he is. Upon the incident happening, none of the characters react like you would expect them to react and go off on the little exploring adventure with absolutely no apparent incentive to do so (and with no non-apparent incentive either for the half of the cast).
Even after the beginning, the game is riddled with extremely convenient coincidences and actions taken for the sole purpose of getting on with the story, especially on the part of the main trio of characters. The characters themselves continuously oscillate between being so stupid you start to wonder how on Earth do they not forget how to breathe and super logically flawless 1000 IQ computing machines with eidetic memory as soon as it’s required of them to move the plot along.
As a lesser aside, the setting is very weird. And I don’t mean the tower – why did it have to be Japan? This just comes off as a huge case of “weeaboo, Japanophile for you gaijins”, the developers aren’t Japanese and it’s not ever relevant to the plot in the slightest, so I have no idea why didn’t they just write about the culture they lived in for their whole life, which would surely have added to the liveliness of the descriptions. Anime style doesn’t really lock you into the Japanese setting, after all.
For a game apparently inspired by Umineko, it seems to have taken the exact wrong lesson out of it: there is no heart to the story at all, none of the characters have more than second order depth (first being the motivation, and the second being the motivation for their motivation), and about half of them don’t even have that in the first place. Those motivations make sense on the logical level (example: she is his friend and he wants to save her) but not on the emotional engagement level (same example: the only interaction between them we get to see for a while feels more like a post-grad get-together of people who weren’t even particularly great friends at school, and the future interactions aren’t very convincing either).
The characters have no interests or quirks of distinctive ways of speech or particular ways they react to events or any strong opinions on anything. The few inter-character relationships the game has are more claimant than apparent – friendship apparently just means asking “how are you” periodically and giving a hug once. All this makes it especially funny when the game claims to avoid a certain type of paradox because the cause for the event originated in the characters mind, but there is no character to the character so it just ends up a one step removed motivational deus ex machina.
Honestly, the more I’m writing this, the less impressive it feels that the story makes sense in the end. It’s really not that impressive to write an intricate web of causes and effects, when you don’t have to work with characters being actual characters – that’s just basic puzzle design. Still, the recommendation stays the same – if you love solving puzzles just for the sake of it, so much that you can forgive the rest of it being less than impressive, give it a go. Otherwise it just doesn’t have enough of the rest of it to keep you invested
Guns & Fishes
2023
uhhh, yeah, so this game is kinda sorta really bad. i feel shitty for even saying that abt an indie game, and im not even sure what the development of this game was like. was this one guy's shitpost? was this a paycheck for some devs? someone's first game? i don't know!
what i do know is that this game feels awful to control. it wants to be a high speed fps kinda like titanfall but your character gets so attached to walls youd think they were made of honey and the sprinting speed feels like you're constantly running on ice with your socks on. the guns are okay but they run out of ammo way too quickly, and there's nothing you can do to harm enemies if you run out of ammo. no melee or anything like that.
i think my biggest gripe with the game is the grappling hook. now, don't get excited like i did when i found out there was a grappling hook in beloved indie darling guns and fishes, because it controls like dogwater! you use it by clicking down middle mouse button (keep in mind you can't change controls in game and right mouse button is literally used for nothing) and the range of how far the grappling hook will go and if it will grapple on to anything feels like pure luck, so most of the time i just ended up whiffing a jump and falling into the pit. the momentum gained from the grappling hook is also awful, the physics in the game are already fucked beyond belief and most of the time the grappling hook just doesn't carry any of it after a swing. sometimes if it's nice enough it'll just send you flying past where you wanted to go! off the side of a building! (this happened a lot)
this isn't, like, the worst game ever made, or anything like that, but it's still a pretty bad game. i got 20 levels in and all the steam achievements, which is basically completing the game, especially since it just copy and pastes pieces of previous levels into new ones. it isn't procedurally generated, they were just that lazy. so, yeah.
what i do know is that this game feels awful to control. it wants to be a high speed fps kinda like titanfall but your character gets so attached to walls youd think they were made of honey and the sprinting speed feels like you're constantly running on ice with your socks on. the guns are okay but they run out of ammo way too quickly, and there's nothing you can do to harm enemies if you run out of ammo. no melee or anything like that.
i think my biggest gripe with the game is the grappling hook. now, don't get excited like i did when i found out there was a grappling hook in beloved indie darling guns and fishes, because it controls like dogwater! you use it by clicking down middle mouse button (keep in mind you can't change controls in game and right mouse button is literally used for nothing) and the range of how far the grappling hook will go and if it will grapple on to anything feels like pure luck, so most of the time i just ended up whiffing a jump and falling into the pit. the momentum gained from the grappling hook is also awful, the physics in the game are already fucked beyond belief and most of the time the grappling hook just doesn't carry any of it after a swing. sometimes if it's nice enough it'll just send you flying past where you wanted to go! off the side of a building! (this happened a lot)
this isn't, like, the worst game ever made, or anything like that, but it's still a pretty bad game. i got 20 levels in and all the steam achievements, which is basically completing the game, especially since it just copy and pastes pieces of previous levels into new ones. it isn't procedurally generated, they were just that lazy. so, yeah.
Blasphemous
2019
When you riff off of something in design philosophies according to gameplay and themes it's really important that one actually hold true to that foundation and/or offer something actually unique. Salt & Sanctuary understood 2d spacing and level design when it came to a slow methodical action platformer. Blasphemous seems intent on knowing nothing at all.
What's the point of having a disgustingly powerful parry and dodge when the enemies have ridiculously slow attacks and are placed in such easy not very interesting locations? What even is enemy placement here? What's the point of making platforming punishing for failure when the platforming isn't interesting? Why copy the structure of ringing the bells at all?
I had to ask myself these questions while I played a lot as I searched for an answer on why I was playing this game at all other than the indie buzz that barely caught my ear. (4.5/10)
What's the point of having a disgustingly powerful parry and dodge when the enemies have ridiculously slow attacks and are placed in such easy not very interesting locations? What even is enemy placement here? What's the point of making platforming punishing for failure when the platforming isn't interesting? Why copy the structure of ringing the bells at all?
I had to ask myself these questions while I played a lot as I searched for an answer on why I was playing this game at all other than the indie buzz that barely caught my ear. (4.5/10)
Hellpoint
2020
What a colossal shame. The combat and general souls mechanics are all perfectly fine (these guys clearly understand why souls combat is fun) and I like the way the game rewards you with mana for ranged attacks by taking risks with melee, but the world design is simply a mess: not only are mandatory areas locked behind doors whose keys are hidden behind obtuse secrets; not only is the fast travel system woefully inadequate for a game with this much backtracking and meandering design, but the biggest flaw is that everywhere looks the same: you will often (if not most of the time) be completely lost in dark metal corridors that all look exactly alike, with little to no signposting to speak of to help you orientate yourself on the way to your unspecified destination.
One of the final areas of the game requires crafting a space suit whose core components are hidden behind a secret wall or given to you after you no longer need it and the "bonfire" before the related boss fight is in the midst of an irradiated area that reduces your health to a fraction if exposed, forcing you to either change every time you respawn or keep the heavy suit all the time, which cripples your play style if you like to play with light armor and didn't invest in the stats required to wear the heavy space suit in combat.
Recommended only if you're extremely patient with exploring a confusingly laid out game world that will frustrate and infuriate you.
One of the final areas of the game requires crafting a space suit whose core components are hidden behind a secret wall or given to you after you no longer need it and the "bonfire" before the related boss fight is in the midst of an irradiated area that reduces your health to a fraction if exposed, forcing you to either change every time you respawn or keep the heavy suit all the time, which cripples your play style if you like to play with light armor and didn't invest in the stats required to wear the heavy space suit in combat.
Recommended only if you're extremely patient with exploring a confusingly laid out game world that will frustrate and infuriate you.
Hello! Notorious monster lover and huge Kaiju fan here (yes, I've seen every Godzilla film). I was pretty excited when I heard about Kaichu! It honestly seemed UNBELIEVABLY tailored to my tastes, so it breaks my heart to say that I just don't like this game.
I only gave it 30 minutes (which was a single playthrough) and found it to be really shallow. You just run around, select a location, and answer questions. There's nothing else to do. All the dialogue is narrated by a couple of newscasters so it never feels like I can actually connect with the personality of the Kaiju I'm romancing. Having a good date also isn't rewarding when the same kiss animation plays every time. I wish there were unique drawings tossed up on screen whenever you're victorious, or at least semi-frequently enough to keep things spiced up. Or maybe just different animations that showcase more interactions. It's just not satisfying at the moment.
I've played lots of dating sims where there's some sort of system at play to attain stats or interact with other elements of the world. In this sense, there's so little here and it's honestly the least gripping dating sim I've tried :(
It gets points for being cute to look at. I'm also not a huge fan of the Kaiju designs themselves, they're funky looking but not in a way that appeals to me. I did enjoy Seadora's design which is why I romanced them first. They're very cute and I actually did enjoy learning tidbits about their royal oceanic past!
I am sadly disappointed in this game but it's hard to be upset because it is rather inoffensive. It's just cute Kaiju dating goofiness, so I don't regret buying it even though dislike it. The developers deserve the money.
I only gave it 30 minutes (which was a single playthrough) and found it to be really shallow. You just run around, select a location, and answer questions. There's nothing else to do. All the dialogue is narrated by a couple of newscasters so it never feels like I can actually connect with the personality of the Kaiju I'm romancing. Having a good date also isn't rewarding when the same kiss animation plays every time. I wish there were unique drawings tossed up on screen whenever you're victorious, or at least semi-frequently enough to keep things spiced up. Or maybe just different animations that showcase more interactions. It's just not satisfying at the moment.
I've played lots of dating sims where there's some sort of system at play to attain stats or interact with other elements of the world. In this sense, there's so little here and it's honestly the least gripping dating sim I've tried :(
It gets points for being cute to look at. I'm also not a huge fan of the Kaiju designs themselves, they're funky looking but not in a way that appeals to me. I did enjoy Seadora's design which is why I romanced them first. They're very cute and I actually did enjoy learning tidbits about their royal oceanic past!
I am sadly disappointed in this game but it's hard to be upset because it is rather inoffensive. It's just cute Kaiju dating goofiness, so I don't regret buying it even though dislike it. The developers deserve the money.
A bit too much of a clear mix and match puzzle to actually tell a compelling narrative like Obra Dinn manages, but the deduction opportunities are still rock solid without much hand holding in sight. The notes system is also really great, simulating how you might make handwritten notes without requiring mandatory redundant slog if you already know the important answers.
This review contains spoilers
This is like one of the craziest games I've ever played
This game has atmosphere like a motherfucker, genuinely when it started off I loved exploring the hotel, it was a lot of fun and very cozy, then when the game wants the exact same hotel to be terrifying it is. The slow arduous journey from the chapel to your bedroom was the most tense I've felt in a long time. The game's sound design is also on point. Except for the weird end credits song. That kinda sucked.
Anyways, all that comes at odds with this game's baffling story which, as the rest of these reviews will tell you, is hilariously bizarre and also mostly about how cool pedophiles are. This game fucking SENT ME.
The voice acting is honestly so perfect for the dialogue. It's awkward and stilted and also somehow brimming with emotion. Like everyone voice acting was constantly on the verge of laughing while recording, or having a mental breakdown.
So right, you start thinking pretty soon into the game that the father is actually gonna be a misunderstood good guy, like everyone thought he was having sex with a 16 year old (or as this game keeps saying a 16 years-old), but he was just a genuinely understanding man who actually understood Rachel when nobody else did, and that relationship made say her dad or little brother jealous and so they started a rumor about the whole pedophile thing when in reality he was just the only one in the small town kind enough and smart enough to understand her and they had like a parental child bond, or like even a mutual friendship or something, but no, the dad is actually just an ethical pedophile and his dumb idiot prude wife just couldn't handle him experiencing so much love.
Also say that you're a woman and you find out your near-50 year old husband has impregnated a 16 year old girl. I'd say that the more rational response would be to kill your husband, not the 16 year old, but that's the game's final twist, and it's hilarious.
Most of this game's story is setting up a romance between the main character, Nicole, the daughter of the aforementioned ethical pedophile, and Irving, a character who is supposedly a FEMA worker, but in a reveal that was all too telegraphed turns out to be the little brother of the 16 year old, the titular Rachel. By the way there's a moment before the reveal where Irving pretends to be talking to someone else, but it's so incredibly obvious that it's just him doing the voice of an old lady so like, for a really long time I knew some shit was happening with him, and Nicole just doesn't realize that it was obviously him pitching his voice up a little bit. Once again, this game could absolutely send me. Also, that romance was actually kinda charming because of how awkward and bizarre the voice performance is, and genuinely I wish this game's ending was just them unraveling the mystery and then just like shrugging to each other and then leaving to go on the date they sorta set up. Like, man this sure was fucked up, but like idk at least we have each other. I don't know, I know there's some dialogue relating to their romance I missed so maybe I wouldn't like it so much if I had experienced it fully. Maybe it was because at that point their relationship was the only part of the game's story that wasn't a total dumpster fire and would've ended the game on at least something I liked.
The puzzles in this game are all basic and I never got lost, except for when I wanted to, like it's all there for a basic simple walking sim, and that's what it is. But everything else around it goes fucking crazy by the latter half, it's amazing.
I haven't laughed at a videogame this hard in so long, and I will say, even though this game is basically just 3 hours of defending the honor of a fictional pedophile, it really isn't that gross of a game. Maybe it's just because of how silly it all is, or maybe it is the voice work which made me laugh at all the big emotional scenes, but it plays out more like the devs being like "Oh, you fool, you thought the pedophile was a bad guy? He was actually the good guy and you were the bad guy for being mean to your classmate when you were a teenager!" Then some creepy person telling you about why age of consent laws are tyranny, like they only made the dad, once again, have sex with a high schooler, just so you'd be surprised when it turns out he was actually the good guy, and that's just kinda funny.
So this game hints constantly at the fact that Rachel is still alive or like is a ghost, but it never confirms it, like it should have, until near the end when it's revealed that yes, she is in fact a spooky ghost and can do spooky ghost things like possess people and write stuff on chalkboards. This is very very funny, and also is so stupid and ends anything this game could've done that was remotely good. Like they would talk a lot about how love stays within the hotel's walls, or like Rachel is still with us, and you think it's metaphorical, but no it's all literal and the game ends with Rachel possessing Nicole and trying to kill herself, because she thinks Nicole killed her? Rachel calls Nicole her murderer near the end even though she isn't. Thinking about it, you do get the keys to your mom's car, who was the killer, right before that, so you think that her writing "murderer" on a chalk board was referencing your mom, but no she does try to kill Nicole at the end. I don't get it, but the game demonizes Nicole for being mean to Rachel when she was 16 and also for paying more attention to her Hockey Finales then to if her mom was present during parts of that game, which is hilarious, like most of this game's plot, but man does it really suck how this game had the potential to be unironically good, but now can only be enjoyed entirely ironically.
The setup is decent, the characters are poorly acted and poorly written, but incredibly charming mostly because of those two things, but then the game had to go and defend pedophilia. You don't ever come back from that.
All in all this is the most insane game ever made, and I think it may be the most perfect fit for "so bad it's good" or whatever you want to call it, but of course I completely understand how subjective art is and that this game surely isn't for anyone.
Never after finishing a game has my head been full of so many thoughts, it's like a shotgun just went off in my brain. Like, why is this game? Why would you make this game? Who would make this game? How did this game develop into what it currently is?
I'm not tagging this review as spoilers because it honestly doesn't matter and I think that already knowing how silly and awful this game is before going in will only enhance your experience. Play at your own risk. Seriously. What the FUCK is this game.
This game has atmosphere like a motherfucker, genuinely when it started off I loved exploring the hotel, it was a lot of fun and very cozy, then when the game wants the exact same hotel to be terrifying it is. The slow arduous journey from the chapel to your bedroom was the most tense I've felt in a long time. The game's sound design is also on point. Except for the weird end credits song. That kinda sucked.
Anyways, all that comes at odds with this game's baffling story which, as the rest of these reviews will tell you, is hilariously bizarre and also mostly about how cool pedophiles are. This game fucking SENT ME.
The voice acting is honestly so perfect for the dialogue. It's awkward and stilted and also somehow brimming with emotion. Like everyone voice acting was constantly on the verge of laughing while recording, or having a mental breakdown.
So right, you start thinking pretty soon into the game that the father is actually gonna be a misunderstood good guy, like everyone thought he was having sex with a 16 year old (or as this game keeps saying a 16 years-old), but he was just a genuinely understanding man who actually understood Rachel when nobody else did, and that relationship made say her dad or little brother jealous and so they started a rumor about the whole pedophile thing when in reality he was just the only one in the small town kind enough and smart enough to understand her and they had like a parental child bond, or like even a mutual friendship or something, but no, the dad is actually just an ethical pedophile and his dumb idiot prude wife just couldn't handle him experiencing so much love.
Also say that you're a woman and you find out your near-50 year old husband has impregnated a 16 year old girl. I'd say that the more rational response would be to kill your husband, not the 16 year old, but that's the game's final twist, and it's hilarious.
Most of this game's story is setting up a romance between the main character, Nicole, the daughter of the aforementioned ethical pedophile, and Irving, a character who is supposedly a FEMA worker, but in a reveal that was all too telegraphed turns out to be the little brother of the 16 year old, the titular Rachel. By the way there's a moment before the reveal where Irving pretends to be talking to someone else, but it's so incredibly obvious that it's just him doing the voice of an old lady so like, for a really long time I knew some shit was happening with him, and Nicole just doesn't realize that it was obviously him pitching his voice up a little bit. Once again, this game could absolutely send me. Also, that romance was actually kinda charming because of how awkward and bizarre the voice performance is, and genuinely I wish this game's ending was just them unraveling the mystery and then just like shrugging to each other and then leaving to go on the date they sorta set up. Like, man this sure was fucked up, but like idk at least we have each other. I don't know, I know there's some dialogue relating to their romance I missed so maybe I wouldn't like it so much if I had experienced it fully. Maybe it was because at that point their relationship was the only part of the game's story that wasn't a total dumpster fire and would've ended the game on at least something I liked.
The puzzles in this game are all basic and I never got lost, except for when I wanted to, like it's all there for a basic simple walking sim, and that's what it is. But everything else around it goes fucking crazy by the latter half, it's amazing.
I haven't laughed at a videogame this hard in so long, and I will say, even though this game is basically just 3 hours of defending the honor of a fictional pedophile, it really isn't that gross of a game. Maybe it's just because of how silly it all is, or maybe it is the voice work which made me laugh at all the big emotional scenes, but it plays out more like the devs being like "Oh, you fool, you thought the pedophile was a bad guy? He was actually the good guy and you were the bad guy for being mean to your classmate when you were a teenager!" Then some creepy person telling you about why age of consent laws are tyranny, like they only made the dad, once again, have sex with a high schooler, just so you'd be surprised when it turns out he was actually the good guy, and that's just kinda funny.
So this game hints constantly at the fact that Rachel is still alive or like is a ghost, but it never confirms it, like it should have, until near the end when it's revealed that yes, she is in fact a spooky ghost and can do spooky ghost things like possess people and write stuff on chalkboards. This is very very funny, and also is so stupid and ends anything this game could've done that was remotely good. Like they would talk a lot about how love stays within the hotel's walls, or like Rachel is still with us, and you think it's metaphorical, but no it's all literal and the game ends with Rachel possessing Nicole and trying to kill herself, because she thinks Nicole killed her? Rachel calls Nicole her murderer near the end even though she isn't. Thinking about it, you do get the keys to your mom's car, who was the killer, right before that, so you think that her writing "murderer" on a chalk board was referencing your mom, but no she does try to kill Nicole at the end. I don't get it, but the game demonizes Nicole for being mean to Rachel when she was 16 and also for paying more attention to her Hockey Finales then to if her mom was present during parts of that game, which is hilarious, like most of this game's plot, but man does it really suck how this game had the potential to be unironically good, but now can only be enjoyed entirely ironically.
The setup is decent, the characters are poorly acted and poorly written, but incredibly charming mostly because of those two things, but then the game had to go and defend pedophilia. You don't ever come back from that.
All in all this is the most insane game ever made, and I think it may be the most perfect fit for "so bad it's good" or whatever you want to call it, but of course I completely understand how subjective art is and that this game surely isn't for anyone.
Never after finishing a game has my head been full of so many thoughts, it's like a shotgun just went off in my brain. Like, why is this game? Why would you make this game? Who would make this game? How did this game develop into what it currently is?
I'm not tagging this review as spoilers because it honestly doesn't matter and I think that already knowing how silly and awful this game is before going in will only enhance your experience. Play at your own risk. Seriously. What the FUCK is this game.
Of nearly all of the modern CRPGs I've tried, this one is the best. Better than Pillars of Eternity, Tyranny, Torment Tides of Numenera, Divinities, Shadowruns, Solasta. The only exception to this is Disco Elysium, but that game wrestles in it's own category altogether.
(Note: I haven't played Wrath of the Righteous yet, so this opinion may yet change.)
I've often felt that the more modern (3rd edition onward) iterations of DnD would be more fun on a video game than on the table, and this game seems to bear that out. It really feels like a sincere translation of the modern TTRPG experience: the extensive character building, the tactical challenge of combat, the character development power fantasy of 1-20 (ish, I only managed to get to lvl 18 by the end), combined with an enjoyable adventure story, world exploration and fun companions.
The scope of this game is immense and ambitious, which gives the game a great sense of adventure. You're given a relatively huge map to explore point-crawl style. Time passes during travel, and camping, lending to a certain amount of verisimilitude for the world, as the main quests do come with time limits (though the time limits never seemed particularly oppressive as long as you're prioritizing the order in which you do things).
The camping system in itself is the best I've seen in any CRPG; you assign party roles for watches, hunting, cooking, hiding the camp. Random encounters can take your camp by surprise, especially in more dangerous areas. This is an important part of a TTRPG adventure to me, and too many CRPGs opt to turning resting into some kind of an automatic heal-button, but not this game. You companions even have small conversations during camping, which adds a nice bit of flavor. It really does feel like taking a party to an adventure, much more so than any other CRPG I've played.
The gameplay is classic CRPG fair of party based dungeon crawling and tactical combat. The main difference maker here is that Kingmaker lets you switch between turn-based and realtime with pause on the fly, which is something I hope every modern CRPG does from now on. You can use real-time when you know a few on the fly commands combined with party AI will get the job done, and turn on turn based for more challenging encounters that require more granular control of what your party is doing.
Those challenging encounters can be very challenging indeed, and the game does have some difficulty spikes that may feel jarring. Frequent saving is advisable because the game does not pull it's punches. I do think many people are overstating the difficulty though, I never really felt like I was sucker punched with a completely unfair encounter, and I never had to revert a significant amount of progress due to difficult encounters.
The combat is some of the more satisfying CRPG combat that I've played, mostly owing to the faithfulness to the TTRPG system. There's a wide array of tactical choices at your disposal, and the game tests your knowledge of it's systems regularly, though it doesn't always present information to you that well.
I do have to say, though, that at time the combat encounters can become somewhat of a slog. Some dungeons are quite long and consist of a lot of repeated encounters of defeating groups of the same enemies one after the other. The pacing of the game could do with some tightening, and though I appreciate it's immense scope, it doesn't really need to be as long as it is.
The main story is fun. It is nothing groundbreaking to be sure, but it sets a good stage for your exploration of the Stolen Lands, and the journey itself is satisfying. A lot of it is pretty classic fantasy stuff: trolls, owlbears, fey and kobolds and the like. Personally, I've come to appreciate the more classic tropes like this. Dialogue gives you a nice amount of options of using your skills and stats for certain dialogue options, and the game gives you nice freedom of roleplaying the kind of character you want to be. Each companion comes with it's own set of quests that resolve throughout the lengthy game, and most of them go through some nice development.
The Kingdom Management will be an acquired taste, to be sure. It doesn't feel tacked on exactly, and I wasn't annoyed by its inclusion, but it is also not particularly deep and I can definitely see how some players might it gets in the way of the actual adventuring content. There is an option to let the game handle it, I didn't test that option out so I don't know how that affects the experience and whether you end up missing some content if you do automate it. It was an interesting experiment, and definitely suits the story this game tries to tell, but it doesn't completely hit its mark.
Overall, this is a robust and faithful TTRPG experience in a video game format, and the most worthy successor to games like Baldur's Gate out of the modern offerings. The game is incredibly ambitious and I'm shocked at how well it succeeded in what it set out to do.
(Note: I haven't played Wrath of the Righteous yet, so this opinion may yet change.)
I've often felt that the more modern (3rd edition onward) iterations of DnD would be more fun on a video game than on the table, and this game seems to bear that out. It really feels like a sincere translation of the modern TTRPG experience: the extensive character building, the tactical challenge of combat, the character development power fantasy of 1-20 (ish, I only managed to get to lvl 18 by the end), combined with an enjoyable adventure story, world exploration and fun companions.
The scope of this game is immense and ambitious, which gives the game a great sense of adventure. You're given a relatively huge map to explore point-crawl style. Time passes during travel, and camping, lending to a certain amount of verisimilitude for the world, as the main quests do come with time limits (though the time limits never seemed particularly oppressive as long as you're prioritizing the order in which you do things).
The camping system in itself is the best I've seen in any CRPG; you assign party roles for watches, hunting, cooking, hiding the camp. Random encounters can take your camp by surprise, especially in more dangerous areas. This is an important part of a TTRPG adventure to me, and too many CRPGs opt to turning resting into some kind of an automatic heal-button, but not this game. You companions even have small conversations during camping, which adds a nice bit of flavor. It really does feel like taking a party to an adventure, much more so than any other CRPG I've played.
The gameplay is classic CRPG fair of party based dungeon crawling and tactical combat. The main difference maker here is that Kingmaker lets you switch between turn-based and realtime with pause on the fly, which is something I hope every modern CRPG does from now on. You can use real-time when you know a few on the fly commands combined with party AI will get the job done, and turn on turn based for more challenging encounters that require more granular control of what your party is doing.
Those challenging encounters can be very challenging indeed, and the game does have some difficulty spikes that may feel jarring. Frequent saving is advisable because the game does not pull it's punches. I do think many people are overstating the difficulty though, I never really felt like I was sucker punched with a completely unfair encounter, and I never had to revert a significant amount of progress due to difficult encounters.
The combat is some of the more satisfying CRPG combat that I've played, mostly owing to the faithfulness to the TTRPG system. There's a wide array of tactical choices at your disposal, and the game tests your knowledge of it's systems regularly, though it doesn't always present information to you that well.
I do have to say, though, that at time the combat encounters can become somewhat of a slog. Some dungeons are quite long and consist of a lot of repeated encounters of defeating groups of the same enemies one after the other. The pacing of the game could do with some tightening, and though I appreciate it's immense scope, it doesn't really need to be as long as it is.
The main story is fun. It is nothing groundbreaking to be sure, but it sets a good stage for your exploration of the Stolen Lands, and the journey itself is satisfying. A lot of it is pretty classic fantasy stuff: trolls, owlbears, fey and kobolds and the like. Personally, I've come to appreciate the more classic tropes like this. Dialogue gives you a nice amount of options of using your skills and stats for certain dialogue options, and the game gives you nice freedom of roleplaying the kind of character you want to be. Each companion comes with it's own set of quests that resolve throughout the lengthy game, and most of them go through some nice development.
The Kingdom Management will be an acquired taste, to be sure. It doesn't feel tacked on exactly, and I wasn't annoyed by its inclusion, but it is also not particularly deep and I can definitely see how some players might it gets in the way of the actual adventuring content. There is an option to let the game handle it, I didn't test that option out so I don't know how that affects the experience and whether you end up missing some content if you do automate it. It was an interesting experiment, and definitely suits the story this game tries to tell, but it doesn't completely hit its mark.
Overall, this is a robust and faithful TTRPG experience in a video game format, and the most worthy successor to games like Baldur's Gate out of the modern offerings. The game is incredibly ambitious and I'm shocked at how well it succeeded in what it set out to do.