Trapezohedron
2015
The thing with UNDERTALE is that it's a masterfully crafted story with a wonderful soundtrack composed by indie musician and romhacker Toby Fox.
What it kind of falls short with is the gameplay itself; it's no stretch to say that the game kind of falls short with the gameplay thanks to being a linear sequence.
But it bypasses that by virtue of being a commentary of JRPGs and completionists, while also offering genuine agency about how you deal with things.
Nobody has to die, and it makes good on that, given that the game's three routes involve either excessively going towards a given extreme (sparing instead of killing, killing instead of sparing), or sitting in the middle and maybe killing, and then sparing some.
The message it has comes off very heartfelt, and it's no big wonder why the game is as popular as it is.
What it kind of falls short with is the gameplay itself; it's no stretch to say that the game kind of falls short with the gameplay thanks to being a linear sequence.
But it bypasses that by virtue of being a commentary of JRPGs and completionists, while also offering genuine agency about how you deal with things.
Nobody has to die, and it makes good on that, given that the game's three routes involve either excessively going towards a given extreme (sparing instead of killing, killing instead of sparing), or sitting in the middle and maybe killing, and then sparing some.
The message it has comes off very heartfelt, and it's no big wonder why the game is as popular as it is.
2011
Everyone has heaped praise for Terraria, so I'm going to go the complete opposite.
Mind you, it is a really great game with tons of mod support, but thanks to the way TModLoader is structured, and the fact that it is now on Steam with all the mods auto-updating, Terraria constantly updating its base game with tons of items, most of which are just fluff hampers TModLoader and long-term mod playthroughs.
Accordingly, you can only hope each mod you installed updates every monthly TModLoader stable update, or you risk breaking that given world, sometimes temporarily as you lose the custom blocks from map generation, other times permanently because the mod changed something very fundamental in the world it won't load anymore.
TL;DR, Terraria needs to stop updating tp its next Final Update.
Mind you, it is a really great game with tons of mod support, but thanks to the way TModLoader is structured, and the fact that it is now on Steam with all the mods auto-updating, Terraria constantly updating its base game with tons of items, most of which are just fluff hampers TModLoader and long-term mod playthroughs.
Accordingly, you can only hope each mod you installed updates every monthly TModLoader stable update, or you risk breaking that given world, sometimes temporarily as you lose the custom blocks from map generation, other times permanently because the mod changed something very fundamental in the world it won't load anymore.
TL;DR, Terraria needs to stop updating tp its next Final Update.
TBD
E: I decided to update this review following my permanent retirement of this game. The below review will still remain, but all I'm adding here is that the plot fails to captivate me and despite having multiple charming designs, the characters themselves feel one-note thus far.
Maxing a character's rarity is normally not too expensive. But with the planned addition of Chaos units which run Limited banners and require 14 copies to reach Origin tier, the rest being pullable off the exclusive Erika's Alchemy gacha (read: an expensive option), not a fan of the upcoming scope creep.
You still have to deal with the Keepsake (Equipment) grind, trying to get it with the attributes you so desire, as well as the leveling up process, which gets prohibitively expensive at levels 180, and only gets harder from there.
So yes, I actually am done this time around.
----
I am by no means done with the game, but I believe this is more than enough time for me to leave a review of whether the whole thing is worth your while or not.
Eversoul is a mobile gacha idle game that stars a modern era character (you) being whisked away into a fantastical future earth that is inhabited by 'Souls,' spirits of items who have gained sentience and the ability to form their own bodies.
As is standard for such games, all of the playable souls are girls, you are a male character, and of course, you get to collect your own harem and cultivate a relationship with them.
One of its core features is its 'love stories,' what-if scenarios
wherein your character decides to pursue the affection of a particular Soul. With this, the bulk of dialogue has you becoming romantically involved with characters, as you grind their affection high enough they start to likewise open up to you.
Aside from that, most of its combat is done as an idle battler, where a team of 5 characters at a time will fight another 5 characters or a superboss. Curiously, the game features no stamina gating system. You can go as far as you want to, whenever you need to, gated only by the dripfed level up currencies.
The Gacha economy here is rather cheap, in the sense that free currency is given almost at will. However, this is still balanced by you requiring 8 to 16 copies of a particular unit to max them to the highest rank possible that doesn't result in diminishing returns.
While it doesn't take too long to max the characters you desire, it's still a gacha luckfest and the system is so designed that you will eventually need to pull from rate-up banners if you're not patient or willing to wait for the game to randomly pull you characters from an expanding pool of other characters.
It on the unfortunate side has so many other systems and a hit-or-miss translation that it is somewhat a chore to play. Still, if you were looking to play something as a freemium player, this is it.
Maxing a character's rarity is normally not too expensive. But with the planned addition of Chaos units which run Limited banners and require 14 copies to reach Origin tier, the rest being pullable off the exclusive Erika's Alchemy gacha (read: an expensive option), not a fan of the upcoming scope creep.
You still have to deal with the Keepsake (Equipment) grind, trying to get it with the attributes you so desire, as well as the leveling up process, which gets prohibitively expensive at levels 180, and only gets harder from there.
So yes, I actually am done this time around.
----
I am by no means done with the game, but I believe this is more than enough time for me to leave a review of whether the whole thing is worth your while or not.
Eversoul is a mobile gacha idle game that stars a modern era character (you) being whisked away into a fantastical future earth that is inhabited by 'Souls,' spirits of items who have gained sentience and the ability to form their own bodies.
As is standard for such games, all of the playable souls are girls, you are a male character, and of course, you get to collect your own harem and cultivate a relationship with them.
One of its core features is its 'love stories,' what-if scenarios
wherein your character decides to pursue the affection of a particular Soul. With this, the bulk of dialogue has you becoming romantically involved with characters, as you grind their affection high enough they start to likewise open up to you.
Aside from that, most of its combat is done as an idle battler, where a team of 5 characters at a time will fight another 5 characters or a superboss. Curiously, the game features no stamina gating system. You can go as far as you want to, whenever you need to, gated only by the dripfed level up currencies.
The Gacha economy here is rather cheap, in the sense that free currency is given almost at will. However, this is still balanced by you requiring 8 to 16 copies of a particular unit to max them to the highest rank possible that doesn't result in diminishing returns.
While it doesn't take too long to max the characters you desire, it's still a gacha luckfest and the system is so designed that you will eventually need to pull from rate-up banners if you're not patient or willing to wait for the game to randomly pull you characters from an expanding pool of other characters.
It on the unfortunate side has so many other systems and a hit-or-miss translation that it is somewhat a chore to play. Still, if you were looking to play something as a freemium player, this is it.
2022
Here's the thing with Valheim: It's still incomplete. Much like Palworld at present, Valheim also exploded in popularity the moment it released due to its PS1-esque graphics, a progression that resembles Terraria, Nordic housing and big, big Vikings.
It's a bit hit or miss, and it's still lacking some of the biomes even until this day, but you get what you signed up for, save the fact that construction still gets to be a crapshoot if you use too many items, thus discouraging anything larger than a village.
It's a bit hit or miss, and it's still lacking some of the biomes even until this day, but you get what you signed up for, save the fact that construction still gets to be a crapshoot if you use too many items, thus discouraging anything larger than a village.
This review contains spoilers
This review contains light spoilers.
A wonderful light-hearted Cyberpunk-themed adventure game marred by an atrocious translation.
Furthermore, this is an H-Game. If you're unfamiliar with it, that means it's a Japanese porn game, though you have to download a separate patch in order to enable that.
Unfortunately, unless you have that installed, some context will be lost on you.
But I digress. MECHANICA is a story about a down-on-your-luck protagonist winning a raffle earning MECA-NICA, a super-powered, hyper-advanced robot maid with rabbit ears from a raffle. Far from the ideal situation to meet and greet, the maid is escorted around Guillotine City to learn more about life in the city and what you do.
Your special powers involve moving people to feel certain emotions through the use of your Magic Music, which helps your job at the bar since you want your patrons to enjoy their experiences there.
Unfortunately for MECA-NICA, your powers are empowered by your libido, and you fizzle out if you don't have enough power to play music. Doubly unfortunate for her, you're also an eager young man. Harassment ensues, which still leans more on the vanilla (nothing too extreme) side, so the game isn't always appealing to many people.
Later on, an early-game twist dwarfs the supposed job you were going to do daily, and you're tasked to deal with a mystery over the course of three days, or something disastrous unfolds.
-- Gameplay:
The gameplay is simple. You go around town, talk to them, figure out their mood and play music. You're rewarded with some stats you can spend to take MECA-NICA to a date or do... untoward things to her, or obtain your next clue. Or perhaps all three at once. You can only properly conduct your investigation if you still have POWER, which you gain by... doing untoward things to MECA-NICA or through chance encounters of the game's sub-heroines. The game is approximately 10 hours, and while the map is small, it is rather dynamic depending on whether you're using the right ambience to meet people or in the case of one NPC, dependent on the time of day. This progression is initially interesting, but can become cumbersome later on thanks to the lack of a direct 'End Day' button.
-- H-Scenes
Of course, given the game is of this sort, such scenes exist if you use the patch. The game involves one main heroine and 3 sub-heroines, the latter of which have 2 H-Scenes and 1 'harassment' scene each.
The Main Heroine's scenes are unlocked as you purchase/find more costumes, take her on dates or meet certain affinity thresholds.
Affinity is the MECA-NICA's measure of fondness with you, and all scenes involving her change dialogue to suit the affinity level accordingly. These are quite lengthy word-for-word and probably make the bulk of the dialogue of this game on the script itself.
The art here is rather inconsistent, given that multiple artists contributed to different scenes. For those who prefer consistency, this will definitely not be your cup of tea.
-- Story
The story starts out simple, but once the game starts out introducing the Causality Indicator, you can probably guess where the story is going to head given such a concept exists in this game, plus the intro which I've neglected to say.
For a game of this kind, it's genuinely engrossing and I would not blame you if you were to use Cheat Engine to bypass all the H-Scenes just to move the plot forward (you need POWER to progress after all)...
The cast is varied and colorful, but sometimes do not fit the concept of a cyberpunk setting. The game ends in a rather animesque way, so if you were expecting Cyberpunk in the way Deus Ex or Cyberpunk 2077 covers it, look elsewhere.
All of this is hugely marred by OtakuPLAN's atrocious translation. It is amateurish at best and borderline incomprehensible at worst, and would require quite a bit of mental gymnastics to understand the context.
Despite all this, the game comes out rather heartfelt and I still enjoyed it for what it is.
----------
I'm looking forward to what Loser/s is planning to do with their fledgling Doujin circle, since they've presented that they can create a competent story despite being confined in the market's... limitations. It wouldn't have sold otherwise if they didn't do this.
A wonderful light-hearted Cyberpunk-themed adventure game marred by an atrocious translation.
Furthermore, this is an H-Game. If you're unfamiliar with it, that means it's a Japanese porn game, though you have to download a separate patch in order to enable that.
Unfortunately, unless you have that installed, some context will be lost on you.
But I digress. MECHANICA is a story about a down-on-your-luck protagonist winning a raffle earning MECA-NICA, a super-powered, hyper-advanced robot maid with rabbit ears from a raffle. Far from the ideal situation to meet and greet, the maid is escorted around Guillotine City to learn more about life in the city and what you do.
Your special powers involve moving people to feel certain emotions through the use of your Magic Music, which helps your job at the bar since you want your patrons to enjoy their experiences there.
Unfortunately for MECA-NICA, your powers are empowered by your libido, and you fizzle out if you don't have enough power to play music. Doubly unfortunate for her, you're also an eager young man. Harassment ensues, which still leans more on the vanilla (nothing too extreme) side, so the game isn't always appealing to many people.
Later on, an early-game twist dwarfs the supposed job you were going to do daily, and you're tasked to deal with a mystery over the course of three days, or something disastrous unfolds.
-- Gameplay:
The gameplay is simple. You go around town, talk to them, figure out their mood and play music. You're rewarded with some stats you can spend to take MECA-NICA to a date or do... untoward things to her, or obtain your next clue. Or perhaps all three at once. You can only properly conduct your investigation if you still have POWER, which you gain by... doing untoward things to MECA-NICA or through chance encounters of the game's sub-heroines. The game is approximately 10 hours, and while the map is small, it is rather dynamic depending on whether you're using the right ambience to meet people or in the case of one NPC, dependent on the time of day. This progression is initially interesting, but can become cumbersome later on thanks to the lack of a direct 'End Day' button.
-- H-Scenes
Of course, given the game is of this sort, such scenes exist if you use the patch. The game involves one main heroine and 3 sub-heroines, the latter of which have 2 H-Scenes and 1 'harassment' scene each.
The Main Heroine's scenes are unlocked as you purchase/find more costumes, take her on dates or meet certain affinity thresholds.
Affinity is the MECA-NICA's measure of fondness with you, and all scenes involving her change dialogue to suit the affinity level accordingly. These are quite lengthy word-for-word and probably make the bulk of the dialogue of this game on the script itself.
The art here is rather inconsistent, given that multiple artists contributed to different scenes. For those who prefer consistency, this will definitely not be your cup of tea.
-- Story
The story starts out simple, but once the game starts out introducing the Causality Indicator, you can probably guess where the story is going to head given such a concept exists in this game, plus the intro which I've neglected to say.
For a game of this kind, it's genuinely engrossing and I would not blame you if you were to use Cheat Engine to bypass all the H-Scenes just to move the plot forward (you need POWER to progress after all)...
The cast is varied and colorful, but sometimes do not fit the concept of a cyberpunk setting. The game ends in a rather animesque way, so if you were expecting Cyberpunk in the way Deus Ex or Cyberpunk 2077 covers it, look elsewhere.
All of this is hugely marred by OtakuPLAN's atrocious translation. It is amateurish at best and borderline incomprehensible at worst, and would require quite a bit of mental gymnastics to understand the context.
Despite all this, the game comes out rather heartfelt and I still enjoyed it for what it is.
----------
I'm looking forward to what Loser/s is planning to do with their fledgling Doujin circle, since they've presented that they can create a competent story despite being confined in the market's... limitations. It wouldn't have sold otherwise if they didn't do this.
2014
The one good thing I can say about The Sims 4 is that it's stable.
You might not feel like it's a significant thing, but with how The Sims 2 can easily corrupt the entire GAME itself if you just delete a single gravestone, or how The Sims 3 is running on a program held inside a black box made of corrugated, rusty metal, this is a very BIG thing.
That being said, it's not infallible, and there are still some annoying bugs here and there in this game that makes the experience annoying.
---
The game itself harkens back to the old times of The Sims and The Sims 2, where everything was confined to a lot in a neighborhood instead of the whole neighborhood being absolutely live. The graphics have settled for the standard Pixar-esque art-style the series have come to adopt since The Sims 2. And the gameplay? There's quite a few things to do here and there, and a considerable amount of furniture variety... if you're willing to shell out real money to buy small DLC packs for the price of around a quarter to two-thirds of the game's retail price itself. If you think this is ridiculous, it's because it is.
I will not suggest you buy this game thanks to that, especially since the stuff packs don't mesh too well in the first place. Added that Japan Expansion Pack? Well, say hello to about half of their population filling up your neighborhood, and vice-versa finding desert Strangetown dwellers making their way to Komorebi as if this was their backyard.
You might not feel like it's a significant thing, but with how The Sims 2 can easily corrupt the entire GAME itself if you just delete a single gravestone, or how The Sims 3 is running on a program held inside a black box made of corrugated, rusty metal, this is a very BIG thing.
That being said, it's not infallible, and there are still some annoying bugs here and there in this game that makes the experience annoying.
---
The game itself harkens back to the old times of The Sims and The Sims 2, where everything was confined to a lot in a neighborhood instead of the whole neighborhood being absolutely live. The graphics have settled for the standard Pixar-esque art-style the series have come to adopt since The Sims 2. And the gameplay? There's quite a few things to do here and there, and a considerable amount of furniture variety... if you're willing to shell out real money to buy small DLC packs for the price of around a quarter to two-thirds of the game's retail price itself. If you think this is ridiculous, it's because it is.
I will not suggest you buy this game thanks to that, especially since the stuff packs don't mesh too well in the first place. Added that Japan Expansion Pack? Well, say hello to about half of their population filling up your neighborhood, and vice-versa finding desert Strangetown dwellers making their way to Komorebi as if this was their backyard.
Vampire Survivors, but free and the characters distinct. A later update added Holo House, a game mode I don't much care for.
Thanks to the fact that unlike in Vampire Survivors who start out with a predefined loadout you can randomly chance on as a character, in Holocure, each character has their own weapon which you can invest in and each weapon operates differently. You have Mumei and her homing feathers when they hit a target. You have Kronii who uses her clock swords to stab at the nearest enemy (and another one to stab at a random enemy).
The game falls apart at high level play, because the game is much easier when you ditch all the other weapon slots to limit rng and just invest in your starter weapon, plus a few combos which provide you heals or enemy slowdown.
Some combos are actively detrimental versus their base weapons too.
Then again, for the price of free, the game is incredibly polished. You won't lose anything but your time if you play this game.
Thanks to the fact that unlike in Vampire Survivors who start out with a predefined loadout you can randomly chance on as a character, in Holocure, each character has their own weapon which you can invest in and each weapon operates differently. You have Mumei and her homing feathers when they hit a target. You have Kronii who uses her clock swords to stab at the nearest enemy (and another one to stab at a random enemy).
The game falls apart at high level play, because the game is much easier when you ditch all the other weapon slots to limit rng and just invest in your starter weapon, plus a few combos which provide you heals or enemy slowdown.
Some combos are actively detrimental versus their base weapons too.
Then again, for the price of free, the game is incredibly polished. You won't lose anything but your time if you play this game.
2022
I'll say it first here: Elden Ring isn't perfect. Quite a bit of bosses are repeated and lategame exploration involves a lot of riding around and looking around things that are simply just more boluses instead of weapons that would make you feel excited.
But Elden Ring is a mastercraft of challenging fights that ease you into the gameplay; the game isn't truly hard at the beginning, but it gets harder than even Dark Souls III once the going gets tough.
It challenges you and provides you with a final exam to face all of your lessons with your knowledge.
There were times I asked myself, what if I could face the Dark Souls enemies without starting an NG+ loop all over?
Elden Ring has that, and for some that's a hit or miss, but for me I like it, given that I can fight the bosses I had difficulties with, and face them with my newfound skills without having to wait for the game to roll the credits over.
It also costs only an average AAA game's price, for a game that has a boatload of content. And for that reason, is why Elden Ring is easily my best of the best game ever.
But Elden Ring is a mastercraft of challenging fights that ease you into the gameplay; the game isn't truly hard at the beginning, but it gets harder than even Dark Souls III once the going gets tough.
It challenges you and provides you with a final exam to face all of your lessons with your knowledge.
There were times I asked myself, what if I could face the Dark Souls enemies without starting an NG+ loop all over?
Elden Ring has that, and for some that's a hit or miss, but for me I like it, given that I can fight the bosses I had difficulties with, and face them with my newfound skills without having to wait for the game to roll the credits over.
It also costs only an average AAA game's price, for a game that has a boatload of content. And for that reason, is why Elden Ring is easily my best of the best game ever.
SMT IV: Apocalypse improves on the game set by SMT IV in almost every way, excluding the story.
I have at least replayed this game over 5 times and grinded Matador to 999 stat, which while not hard, is utterly stressful given the amount of grinding you need to do to get around that stat level.
Playing as a poor kid who found a used, broken smartphone from a dead corpse, you soon become thrust into Tokyo's religiously-political factions and... wait I'm getting ahead of myself here.
You die first, and a god, pitying your poor excuse of an existence, offers you a second chance with one condition: You now serve under him.
Then you are thrust into the factions of the world, but are unable to join them ideologically thanks to your contract with the god who resurrected you. Instead, there are two routes in the game.
I should state that at a pivotal point in the game, if you're too inconsistent with your standing, as in you suddenly go for the other route when you qualify for the first route, you will lose all of your items as a punishment. It's a nice touch by the developers to ensure you're as consistent as can be.
Before I end up spoiling the rest of the game, here are the game's improvements, which were eventually carried on to Persona 5:
Smirking has been revamped. No longer do enemies become Speedy Gonzales once they smirk with you having little to no chance of hitting them, but instead Smirking provides guaranteed criticals and incentivizes their use by allowing skills to add additional effects if used while smirked. This can be a good thing for you or very bad if your enemy is smirking.
Two skills have been added to make this very core to the experience: Smile Charge, which grants you Smirk status at will, and Magaon, which removes Smirking status.
In a series where buffs are very important, this adds layers of complexity to the combat.
Estoma Sword is no longer Estoma Sword, but rather Estoma itself directly. It can be tapped in on the menu without going to your skills, and you don't need to hit enemies with it anymore. Pop in, and boom, repel encounters.
Dungeons, which were incredibly small in SMT IV, have been noticeably expanded in IVA. Of course, the small dungeons from the previous game still kind of exist, but new dungeons also fill that gap which are multi-layered.
Allies are also no longer suicidally stupid. Instead, they're just stupid in terms of not being able to properly coordinate with you. Allies will no longer use attacks that enemies block or repel, and it might seem like a cheat, but you will appreciate it given you no longer have a Walter equivalent casting Agi on Minotaur.
The Final Boss is awesome in that you're tested in as much as you know the game's inner workings, and a DLC superboss is the same take, but stronger.
----
There are parts where the game is weak however.
The game is focused on bonds and friendship. This weakens the general theme of the SMT series, but it's not so bad that you'll want to ignore the game and throw it on a Mexican trashheap never to be found alongside the many cartridges of ET buried with it.
The final dungeon is labyrinthine with its multiple stratums and teleporters, and by god the walking is painful. Even worse, you can't negotiate with the denizens inside that dungeon due to plot reasons.
Some AI allies are better than others, the worst of which is a certain spearman who will regularly steal press turns to attack enemies who may resist Physical attacks.
And the DLCs? Yeah, they exist, and most of them exist to make your character obscenely OP from the get-go.
It's not a perfect game, then again nothing is, but it's as close to one and I wish they would remake this game for the PC too.
I have at least replayed this game over 5 times and grinded Matador to 999 stat, which while not hard, is utterly stressful given the amount of grinding you need to do to get around that stat level.
Playing as a poor kid who found a used, broken smartphone from a dead corpse, you soon become thrust into Tokyo's religiously-political factions and... wait I'm getting ahead of myself here.
You die first, and a god, pitying your poor excuse of an existence, offers you a second chance with one condition: You now serve under him.
Then you are thrust into the factions of the world, but are unable to join them ideologically thanks to your contract with the god who resurrected you. Instead, there are two routes in the game.
I should state that at a pivotal point in the game, if you're too inconsistent with your standing, as in you suddenly go for the other route when you qualify for the first route, you will lose all of your items as a punishment. It's a nice touch by the developers to ensure you're as consistent as can be.
Before I end up spoiling the rest of the game, here are the game's improvements, which were eventually carried on to Persona 5:
Smirking has been revamped. No longer do enemies become Speedy Gonzales once they smirk with you having little to no chance of hitting them, but instead Smirking provides guaranteed criticals and incentivizes their use by allowing skills to add additional effects if used while smirked. This can be a good thing for you or very bad if your enemy is smirking.
Two skills have been added to make this very core to the experience: Smile Charge, which grants you Smirk status at will, and Magaon, which removes Smirking status.
In a series where buffs are very important, this adds layers of complexity to the combat.
Estoma Sword is no longer Estoma Sword, but rather Estoma itself directly. It can be tapped in on the menu without going to your skills, and you don't need to hit enemies with it anymore. Pop in, and boom, repel encounters.
Dungeons, which were incredibly small in SMT IV, have been noticeably expanded in IVA. Of course, the small dungeons from the previous game still kind of exist, but new dungeons also fill that gap which are multi-layered.
Allies are also no longer suicidally stupid. Instead, they're just stupid in terms of not being able to properly coordinate with you. Allies will no longer use attacks that enemies block or repel, and it might seem like a cheat, but you will appreciate it given you no longer have a Walter equivalent casting Agi on Minotaur.
The Final Boss is awesome in that you're tested in as much as you know the game's inner workings, and a DLC superboss is the same take, but stronger.
----
There are parts where the game is weak however.
The game is focused on bonds and friendship. This weakens the general theme of the SMT series, but it's not so bad that you'll want to ignore the game and throw it on a Mexican trashheap never to be found alongside the many cartridges of ET buried with it.
The final dungeon is labyrinthine with its multiple stratums and teleporters, and by god the walking is painful. Even worse, you can't negotiate with the denizens inside that dungeon due to plot reasons.
Some AI allies are better than others, the worst of which is a certain spearman who will regularly steal press turns to attack enemies who may resist Physical attacks.
And the DLCs? Yeah, they exist, and most of them exist to make your character obscenely OP from the get-go.
It's not a perfect game, then again nothing is, but it's as close to one and I wish they would remake this game for the PC too.
This game is to Metroid like how Project Wingman is to Ace Combat.
For those unfamiliar with the comparison, basically, this fangame is about as close as you can get to an official original formula Metroid game that isn't Metroid Dread (back then, Dread didn't exist so this basically was the only thing you could play that would scratch the itch, barring replaying Super Metroid again and again).
It takes the considerably linear Metroid 2 and turns it into a Metroid Fusion and Metroid Zero Mission-esque experience with its own twists and inspirations from Super.
Interestingly, the actual official Metroid 2 Remake: Metroid Samus Returns was developed in parallel to this fangame. Both games have some conceptual overlap, including the part where there are story logs of a recent expedition in the setting, and the prominence of Chozo ruins properly tying the game to the series' mythology.
While Samus Returns is... considerably experimental, including an emphasis on melee counters which I found rather droll to deal with, AM2R capitalizes on the things that made side-scrolling Metroid games work: the run and gunplay and the secrets/puzzles.
Seriously, the quality of said puzzles including the mandatory Shinespark Gauntlet is something you would find in an official Metroid game.
Finding the game given the fact that Nintendo DMCA'd it is a bit of a trouble, but it's still out there if you know the right keywords to put in.
This is a game I highly recommend Metroid fans to take, but then again if you're reading this review, you likely already know and played this game to begin with.
For those unfamiliar with the comparison, basically, this fangame is about as close as you can get to an official original formula Metroid game that isn't Metroid Dread (back then, Dread didn't exist so this basically was the only thing you could play that would scratch the itch, barring replaying Super Metroid again and again).
It takes the considerably linear Metroid 2 and turns it into a Metroid Fusion and Metroid Zero Mission-esque experience with its own twists and inspirations from Super.
Interestingly, the actual official Metroid 2 Remake: Metroid Samus Returns was developed in parallel to this fangame. Both games have some conceptual overlap, including the part where there are story logs of a recent expedition in the setting, and the prominence of Chozo ruins properly tying the game to the series' mythology.
While Samus Returns is... considerably experimental, including an emphasis on melee counters which I found rather droll to deal with, AM2R capitalizes on the things that made side-scrolling Metroid games work: the run and gunplay and the secrets/puzzles.
Seriously, the quality of said puzzles including the mandatory Shinespark Gauntlet is something you would find in an official Metroid game.
Finding the game given the fact that Nintendo DMCA'd it is a bit of a trouble, but it's still out there if you know the right keywords to put in.
This is a game I highly recommend Metroid fans to take, but then again if you're reading this review, you likely already know and played this game to begin with.
2007
People call this game a quasi-roguelike, and even on the Roguelike Reddit community, this is almost always never referred to as a real roguelike.
I find that an oddity, given that the gameplay, barring its slice-of-life additions, vastly resembles contemporaries like NetHack and its core inspiration, ADoM.
In any case, don't let those people fool you, this game is as much a Roguelike as the ancient contemporaries are, if you cared about the Berlin Interpretation anyway.
But I digress, you're here for a summary.
Elona is a quirky Japanese roguelike with an emphasis on the slice of life aspects of gameplay, and can feel rather unfinished if you're playing on the Vanilla version.
On the onset of the game, you're already provided a brief tutorial on basic controls that encourages you to eat something. There's a corpse of a beggar somewhere, so your natural inclination is to eat him, right? The game mocks you for this, but it also provides a handy warning that you'll encounter weird things as you go.
The game is particularly grindy, and if you're lost, it's very easy to lose stats and hard to gain them back. Many players give up on the game thanks to this fact. If you last long enough though, you'll end up owning a castle, have a bunch of storage spaces, and even sell goods as well as have a farm to grow plants in. Said locations are areas you can decorate, and adventurers come and go to visit you. You can also marry your pet, which is a choice of a dog, a bear, and a... little girl.
Yeah, the game is weird and in today's climes highly-questionable. Actually, you can marry both characters of your gender and in fact, marry abominations like a Shub-Niggurath which is a random enemy here.
For whatever reason, the game landed on a winning formula, and as such, it has a following on both EN and JP communities, with the JP community developing 2 branches of a variant, which includes: Elona+ and Elona OOMSESTepNC.
Elona+ is the quirkier, yet more-straightforward of the two. The game attempts to provide proper progression, but it doubles down on weird things, such as adding a peeing mechanic and getting characters or yourself wet with pee. Then you die thanks to being wet doubling the amount of damage you get from lightning.
Elona OOMSESTepNC is the other variant that's popular in EN side. This is actually just a mod-mod of a mod-mod, but is most often recommended everywhere for those not wanting to play Plus thanks to better English support and tons of quality of life features in it.
Omake Overhaul Modify Sukutu Edition South Tyris Step Nasuko Custom as it is known when you expand the abbreviation excels in doing what the Omake variants did: expanding existing features and making the whole existing experience more hollistic.
The lategame of this variant gets ridiculous, when attaining 2000 stat (where there is a cap) is just a mere pebble of progress in the game, you know that the game gets incredibly ridiculous with its Disgaea-tier power levels.
In order to beat its endgame, you will quite literally have to become a God ingame, which translates to infinite wishes and armor that grants you invulnerability, which will not save you in the final dungeon given certain enemies can bypass it.
All in all, Elona is a wonderful roguelike if you're not offended by the weirder things in Japan and are willing to put in the time to learn the system and its meta. As a classic roguelike, doing about anything requires multiple keypresses.
I find that an oddity, given that the gameplay, barring its slice-of-life additions, vastly resembles contemporaries like NetHack and its core inspiration, ADoM.
In any case, don't let those people fool you, this game is as much a Roguelike as the ancient contemporaries are, if you cared about the Berlin Interpretation anyway.
But I digress, you're here for a summary.
Elona is a quirky Japanese roguelike with an emphasis on the slice of life aspects of gameplay, and can feel rather unfinished if you're playing on the Vanilla version.
On the onset of the game, you're already provided a brief tutorial on basic controls that encourages you to eat something. There's a corpse of a beggar somewhere, so your natural inclination is to eat him, right? The game mocks you for this, but it also provides a handy warning that you'll encounter weird things as you go.
The game is particularly grindy, and if you're lost, it's very easy to lose stats and hard to gain them back. Many players give up on the game thanks to this fact. If you last long enough though, you'll end up owning a castle, have a bunch of storage spaces, and even sell goods as well as have a farm to grow plants in. Said locations are areas you can decorate, and adventurers come and go to visit you. You can also marry your pet, which is a choice of a dog, a bear, and a... little girl.
Yeah, the game is weird and in today's climes highly-questionable. Actually, you can marry both characters of your gender and in fact, marry abominations like a Shub-Niggurath which is a random enemy here.
For whatever reason, the game landed on a winning formula, and as such, it has a following on both EN and JP communities, with the JP community developing 2 branches of a variant, which includes: Elona+ and Elona OOMSESTepNC.
Elona+ is the quirkier, yet more-straightforward of the two. The game attempts to provide proper progression, but it doubles down on weird things, such as adding a peeing mechanic and getting characters or yourself wet with pee. Then you die thanks to being wet doubling the amount of damage you get from lightning.
Elona OOMSESTepNC is the other variant that's popular in EN side. This is actually just a mod-mod of a mod-mod, but is most often recommended everywhere for those not wanting to play Plus thanks to better English support and tons of quality of life features in it.
Omake Overhaul Modify Sukutu Edition South Tyris Step Nasuko Custom as it is known when you expand the abbreviation excels in doing what the Omake variants did: expanding existing features and making the whole existing experience more hollistic.
The lategame of this variant gets ridiculous, when attaining 2000 stat (where there is a cap) is just a mere pebble of progress in the game, you know that the game gets incredibly ridiculous with its Disgaea-tier power levels.
In order to beat its endgame, you will quite literally have to become a God ingame, which translates to infinite wishes and armor that grants you invulnerability, which will not save you in the final dungeon given certain enemies can bypass it.
All in all, Elona is a wonderful roguelike if you're not offended by the weirder things in Japan and are willing to put in the time to learn the system and its meta. As a classic roguelike, doing about anything requires multiple keypresses.
TBD
This VN released February 20 on Steam.
A kinetic novel of the Nukige (lewd-focused) Slice of Life genre, it tries to present multiple themes and the first few lines start out really strong in trying to establish its characters, but eventually falls rather flat after immediately contradicting the very thing both characters hate doing: doing the nasty deed.
E-5, the latest prototype from Erect Electronics' lineup of glorified mechanized blow-up dolls escapes from the lab she belongs as she absolutely disliked her intended purpose.
Our protagonist, Hajime 'Daigoro' Honda, meanwhile was a former ace host who wooed many women thanks to his good looks which he isn't afraid to flaunt, or rather, was, until a good turn had gone bad and he could barely afford his living expenses.
Thanks to a few contrivances, both characters meet on horrible terms and enter a contract, where it seems outlined both will simply have to live with each other platonically. But the contract requires a kiss, and given the genre of the VN, it doesn't take too long for things to escalate.
The themes it attempts to tackle are ultimately very weak. You'd think that a story with the name Ego's Spark would discuss how they arrived at that anomalous self-identity. In this case however, the Ego was already budding at that point which in turn caused the heroine to escape the lab in the first place, and instead grows as she goes onwards with her cohabitation with the protagonist.
The good thing about the story is that the heroine has an acerbic wit. The art is also not bad, and Kiba Satoshi once again delivers (and is my reason for grabbing this game ngl). Everything else is unfortunately middling, and there isn't much to glean from the story except some feels, and perhaps some pointers on how to write an understanding heroine protagonist while trying to also simultaneously make them almost sadistically abusive with their language.
Basically, the story can't make up its mind on whether it wants to be fluffy slice of life, nukige, or nakige.
It's not something I would recommend other people not already familiar with visual novels to play.
A kinetic novel of the Nukige (lewd-focused) Slice of Life genre, it tries to present multiple themes and the first few lines start out really strong in trying to establish its characters, but eventually falls rather flat after immediately contradicting the very thing both characters hate doing: doing the nasty deed.
E-5, the latest prototype from Erect Electronics' lineup of glorified mechanized blow-up dolls escapes from the lab she belongs as she absolutely disliked her intended purpose.
Our protagonist, Hajime 'Daigoro' Honda, meanwhile was a former ace host who wooed many women thanks to his good looks which he isn't afraid to flaunt, or rather, was, until a good turn had gone bad and he could barely afford his living expenses.
Thanks to a few contrivances, both characters meet on horrible terms and enter a contract, where it seems outlined both will simply have to live with each other platonically. But the contract requires a kiss, and given the genre of the VN, it doesn't take too long for things to escalate.
The themes it attempts to tackle are ultimately very weak. You'd think that a story with the name Ego's Spark would discuss how they arrived at that anomalous self-identity. In this case however, the Ego was already budding at that point which in turn caused the heroine to escape the lab in the first place, and instead grows as she goes onwards with her cohabitation with the protagonist.
The good thing about the story is that the heroine has an acerbic wit. The art is also not bad, and Kiba Satoshi once again delivers (and is my reason for grabbing this game ngl). Everything else is unfortunately middling, and there isn't much to glean from the story except some feels, and perhaps some pointers on how to write an understanding heroine protagonist while trying to also simultaneously make them almost sadistically abusive with their language.
Basically, the story can't make up its mind on whether it wants to be fluffy slice of life, nukige, or nakige.
It's not something I would recommend other people not already familiar with visual novels to play.
2011
Portal 2 is when you have a higher budget and you want to make a sequel for the game, but eventually realize Steam is a much better revenue funnel than making games so you kind of ditch the scene after making The Orange Box.
It's a really good game with more sensible puzzles, but the puzzles have a habit of railroading you where you need to go by way of walls being more restricted.
There's at least 3 setpieces here. Broken Aperture Science, old Aperture Science and BREAKING DOWN Aperture science, which can provide some unique experiences with how you deal and solve room puzzles.
It's a good game overall, but well, it's more of the same with a more humorous jaunt.
It's a really good game with more sensible puzzles, but the puzzles have a habit of railroading you where you need to go by way of walls being more restricted.
There's at least 3 setpieces here. Broken Aperture Science, old Aperture Science and BREAKING DOWN Aperture science, which can provide some unique experiences with how you deal and solve room puzzles.
It's a good game overall, but well, it's more of the same with a more humorous jaunt.
2010
PC port of this game can be found here: https://archive.org/details/infinity-blade-pc
Yes, I copied the most-recent description from the most-recent review here, but it needs to be said enough that subsequent reviews for this game, if played on the PC, should indicate this.
Amazing just how much secrets this game actually had that I wasn't able to discover until this came by as a fan's stealth PC release. Didn't know about the negative bloodlines back then and how it could actually speed up your grinding by a few weeks ahead of time.
Still, despite being the premier game that defined the iPhone's appeal and power at the time, it is certainly aging a little bit poorly. Game's much easier to play when you're not fat-fingering it on the phone, but all the same beyond upgrading your stats, the gameplay loop doesn't change.
One part sniping away coin bags and health potions, one part swiping the screen looking for alternate paths on the longest road to the God King, and the last one being a punch-out game fighting against 3 enemy types beside the God King and his Dark Knight, that's all the gameplay you'll get. The numbers and difficulty may change but the core is always static. Well, the PC version's free, so why not play it anyway? It's a meditative experience that you can just plop anywhere and stop at any time.
Yes, I copied the most-recent description from the most-recent review here, but it needs to be said enough that subsequent reviews for this game, if played on the PC, should indicate this.
Amazing just how much secrets this game actually had that I wasn't able to discover until this came by as a fan's stealth PC release. Didn't know about the negative bloodlines back then and how it could actually speed up your grinding by a few weeks ahead of time.
Still, despite being the premier game that defined the iPhone's appeal and power at the time, it is certainly aging a little bit poorly. Game's much easier to play when you're not fat-fingering it on the phone, but all the same beyond upgrading your stats, the gameplay loop doesn't change.
One part sniping away coin bags and health potions, one part swiping the screen looking for alternate paths on the longest road to the God King, and the last one being a punch-out game fighting against 3 enemy types beside the God King and his Dark Knight, that's all the gameplay you'll get. The numbers and difficulty may change but the core is always static. Well, the PC version's free, so why not play it anyway? It's a meditative experience that you can just plop anywhere and stop at any time.
2015
I've always been coming back to this game for some reason. It's a cute, simple colony-builder with a focus on creating a base for you and your minions to reside in and then subsequently raiding others. Repeat ad infinitum until all is dead and you become super powerful.
At its core, it is a perfectly-functional game that has somehow attained a good balance in both roguelike elements and in colony management.
However, it's lacking in both departments all the same to entice someone to play the game in the long-term.
Simple unit AI makes raiding high-level settlements a chore, and a lack of certain types of furniture makes the game hard to recommend for colony designers, because quite a bit of things are lacking, and for those that exist, they're purely on a functional basis.
The game's QoL is lacking. The game knows how to find all items in a stockpile, but the fact that there is no 'inventory' menu is daunting, especially when many mobs hobble their way to your repository to appropriate gear before you can assign them.
Quite frankly this becomes a logistical nightmare at later stages of the game.
The game having permadeath encourages you to finding a secondary character to act as your dungeon navigator. You could use your Keeper, but if you die, the game's gone forever (unless you force-quit by ALT+F4).
The latest update eschews most balancing in terms of snowballing in favor of other settlements upping in the difficulty curve the farther they are from your home settlement. Existence of a z-level feature is undermined by the lack of things to do in your colony.
There are performance issues as you reach 50+ units, and when you breach many, many Z-Levels downward.
Thankfully, mods exist as a good way to change up the gameplay, or augment it.
All my gripes being said, it should be noted that KeeperRL is interesting that it is one among a small list of single-developer games that managed to successfully reach a 1.0 release, so props to Michal for actually managing to do this.
Note that if you decide to mod the game yourself, the license for the tileset the game uses, which is under Oryx Design Labs, requires you to buy a $5.00 USD tileset before you're able to use derivatives on it, non-extensible.
At its core, it is a perfectly-functional game that has somehow attained a good balance in both roguelike elements and in colony management.
However, it's lacking in both departments all the same to entice someone to play the game in the long-term.
Simple unit AI makes raiding high-level settlements a chore, and a lack of certain types of furniture makes the game hard to recommend for colony designers, because quite a bit of things are lacking, and for those that exist, they're purely on a functional basis.
The game's QoL is lacking. The game knows how to find all items in a stockpile, but the fact that there is no 'inventory' menu is daunting, especially when many mobs hobble their way to your repository to appropriate gear before you can assign them.
Quite frankly this becomes a logistical nightmare at later stages of the game.
The game having permadeath encourages you to finding a secondary character to act as your dungeon navigator. You could use your Keeper, but if you die, the game's gone forever (unless you force-quit by ALT+F4).
The latest update eschews most balancing in terms of snowballing in favor of other settlements upping in the difficulty curve the farther they are from your home settlement. Existence of a z-level feature is undermined by the lack of things to do in your colony.
There are performance issues as you reach 50+ units, and when you breach many, many Z-Levels downward.
Thankfully, mods exist as a good way to change up the gameplay, or augment it.
All my gripes being said, it should be noted that KeeperRL is interesting that it is one among a small list of single-developer games that managed to successfully reach a 1.0 release, so props to Michal for actually managing to do this.
Note that if you decide to mod the game yourself, the license for the tileset the game uses, which is under Oryx Design Labs, requires you to buy a $5.00 USD tileset before you're able to use derivatives on it, non-extensible.