It's one of those games that doesn’t do anything particularly well.

As far as being a Soulslike goes, it simply doesn’t have strong enough level design to justify its existence within the genre. This issue plagues the majority of Soulslikes, and is why I can count on one hand how many good ones there are.

The combat doesn’t feel good, with wonky input buffers, a negative edge style parry, and piss-poor animations that load the enemy model in its finishing location before the animation has completed, resulting in the possibility of getting stuck on air while dodging.

The progression systems don’t exist other than a skill tree that does the beautiful thing where abilities that should be baked into the player’s skillset are carved out and locked behind the skill tree to justify its existence.

Most of the gear is useless, primarily due to the outrageous stat requirements. I nearly finished the game putting points exclusively into the attack stat and still couldn’t use most of the attack buffing stowaways.

There’s only one weapon with two move sets, one of which, the default, is pretty bad, and the other uses consumable resources and is merely passable.

And even with all of these issues, the game is piss easy. I get it that not all Soulslikes need to be butthole-clenching difficult, but man, you need to have some friction.

What almost filtered me was the constant barrage of annoying dialogue and puns whenever characters interacted. When you’re in a continuous yapping contest, and your opponent is Another Crab’s Treasure…

The aesthetic is hard to criticize because I doubt this game had a large budget, even for an indie title, but it isn’t exactly a looker.

I think there were a few neat ideas in this, like the use of shells as consumable armor, but there are just as many baffling balance issues that undermine what the game does well, such as most of the stats not mattering. Why would you ever want to invest skill points into resistance or umami? They’re completely useless.

It might sound like I hate this game, but it’s honestly pretty inoffensive even with all of its faults and does have a bit of charm that breaks through the cringe-worthy dialog at times (like a moment in the game where you inspect executed crab soldiers that are crucified outside the castle and their crimes are possessing seaweed)

Oh well, another milquetoast Soulslike experience to add to the ever-growing pile. At least it’s better than Lies of P or Stellar Blade.

I was going to knock this up to 2.5/5 because it has a Mr. Krabs skin but knocked that half star back off because it has an Among Us shell.

Senua's Slugfest: Hellbruh II

Man, this was such a let down for me that it's almost hard to put into words. Senua's Sacrifice back in 2017 was one of the neater gaming experiences I've had in recent years, a fantastic dive into the Celtic mythos coupled with a passionate tale of the general scorn and abandonment that those who suffer from mental illness have suffered for a heartbreaking amount of time. Even though it was largely basic in terms of gameplay, I felt like there was enough agency in movement and originality in the story to keep me going. Overall I gave it a four out of five stars, because the scant gameplay couldn't keep what the message of the game set out to offer.

Senua's Saga however took the concept of the first game and somehow turned it into a numbing tech demo with a runtime almost insulting for the price its offered at. I played this on Game Pass, but saw it was lifted as $50 on retail websites, and even then it's not worth it. It feels like 75% of the gameplay loop of Hellblade II is walking through fantastically designed, yet unfortunately monotonous environments, at snail speed as voices speak into your character's ears. Trot, trot, trot you do with very little in the way of worldbuilding or interesting conversation with your party members. A story is there but its told in such a jolted and lazy fashion that I couldn't be bothered to piece things together. The other quarter of the game is boiled down to brainless puzzles that revolve around pushing the trigger buttons to open up pathways, and then combat that is so incredibly one note and boring that you could very realistically fall asleep while playing. Dodge, attack, dodge attack... ooh an npc runs into the enemy you're fighting and stabs them, but is killed by a NEW enemy... no way? Rinse and repeat that a million times until completion. Everything is boiled down to the same recycled one on one fight, sometimes the enemy has a different appearance, but every single one plays the exact same. I like to believe this was better in the 2017 title but man, I don't have the heart to know.

Hellblade II is a lazy glorified tech demo. It's beautiful and the cutscenes are something special, but you are missing absolutely nothing by skipping this game. For a game that was paraded as a flagship title for Xbox in the current generation, Senua's Saga is quite telling of Microsoft's gaming offering. Starfield, Senua's Saga, Halo Infinite... all have been so impressively garbage that they're being lapped by everyone else when it comes to putting out compelling video games. I'm not sad, I'm just incredibly disappointed. If you want good games in the creepy linear walking sim genre, just play the Plague Tale titles, at least those have something going for them.