I played Driving Home before this, and thought it this was going to be a general improvement over it.. The car controls this time around don't feel all that much better. The ambiance of walking in the forest was exactly what I wanted more of and did greatly appreciate it.. The inclusion of more people definitely made it feel more of a real world, but ultimately this game had an even worse weakness of relying on a loud jumpscare than the last game.. I understand with such short campfire story type of plots, you need to go out with a bang, but.. This does just feel a bit cheap and trite.. The atmosphere is otherwise nice.

This game for better or worse completely changed the deck builder genre, as well as the card roguelike subgenre. I like all of the unique and stylistic flairs it has to offer, the truly engaging replayability making every single new playthrough have this infinite potential to be the "one". On the other hand, you're constantly battling with luck in a way that can't be helped with the roguelike genre. You'll never have the satisfaction of tuning and refining a perfect deck on your own terms, and in spite of a lot of trying I've never been able to take out the true final boss. A few ascensions, yeah. I'm really never going to be truly disappointed with this game, but it definitely is something that I have to put aside for long periods of time. It aggravates me and makes me wish there was something like it but a bit less random.. But.. this game totally made other deck building games feel less fun in contrast.. So I can't win.

I went in knowing this game was trying to be subversive and had a self aware element to it, and that it would devolve into horror but I was still entertained with all of the twists and turns. Without spoiling a lot of it, it starts to reveal more of its hand as a more depressing sort of story, but before it has a chance to, it pulls the rug from under you and starts to play with the set dressing of the game itself, keeping you as a little co-pilot to everything flying off of the rails. Regardless, it's still very linear, and has an aggravatingly high amount of insensitive and ridiculous moments almost directly pulling back and forth with the genuine profundity it can pull out of its pocket. I lived, I laughed, I loved. I cried a couple times maybe. But I mostly rolled my eyes.. I think it's worth the novelty, all things considered.

After playing several hours of this game through multiple sessions, generally after sessions of playing Terraria, I was always certain it pales in comparison to the much stronger sandbox building 2D RPG. Deciding I wasn't going to extract any amount of fun playing through the game and onto this page, I stumbled into a controversy of the devs exploiting the labor of children in order to complete it. That simply seals that it was a mistake for me to invest my time into this game, and I can only try and steer people away from it to do right by the people who were taken advantage of. More than that, there was a lot of needless cruelty and sexual predation, grooming, asking for pictures of minors happening behind the scenes as well. Don't buy this game. Don't play this game. Play modded Terraria.

Terraria is a game that I have a lot of nostalgia for, but have never really had a strictly positive experience with. Broadly speaking, if I'm playing this game at all, I've likely fallen into a pit of seclusion, or because I've had my arm twisted into playing a multiplayer game that me and a different friend both share. In both cases, I tend to end up pretty unsatisfied for wildly different reasons, because my personal experience with it is caught in many dualities.

When you start up a new game, you barely have any equipment, you need to explore and mine and upgrade and make a base. When night comes, it's not so much that it's difficult but tedious and boring to have to deal with the night enemies, or waiting for them to pass. You usually won't even be able to craft a bed for your base and to speed up the flow of time at night until you're well through three or four underground sessions. It's a slow crawl to get to a manageable place. And all throughout the process, even in the daytime you have to deal with unbearably annoying slimes that you can't simply ignore at this point. All of this is to say it hinders the creativity and wanderlust the game promises with tedium and stress.

You can optionally play Journey mode, which greatly reduces the grind and gives you god powers. But with that it takes all of the teeth out of the game for me. You can make it as difficult as the regular game mode, but after a while it just starts to feel empty. Some pressure can actually help. Even then, you're still not able to fully unleash creative potential on game start, you still have to grind and progress to a lesser extent. And usually when I'm in the mood for building, I never feel it long enough to get to a point where I can craft a whole world how I'd like. I get past my reclusive phase and move back onto something else. In both of these cases, the game falls too hard on two opposites that will hinder me or feel hollow in some way regardless.

When I actually decide to sink deeper into the regular game mode, go far enough to get to hard mode, maybe even beat all of the final bosses, I can really appreciate the challenge. But I've rarely had the dedication to get this far. It is worth it. With Journey mode, reaching the end is just as wonderful in its own ways, getting invested in making complicated hoik elevators, bases utilizing all of the aesthetic tools the game gives you like paints and decorations, completely unimpeded by the enemies and hazards. I do genuinely love Terraria, there's a great deal of goodness to it. You really just need to be the kind of person who can stick to it for long enough. You need to be invested, and in my experience, will need friends who will be invested too. And who can respect your vision of base design and not randomly blow your stuff up and build ugly makeshift rooms.

Maybe I'm just prissy. I'm not unaware of my own flaws as a person, my own issues playing these kinds of survival and building games. Terraria is a game that just isn't quite for me. But sometimes it just clicks and I fall completely into it for a few weeks and make a haunted pirate ship or brutalist rail station or dollhouse or underground lab.

I really think this one was quite miserable. I don't think it justifies enduring all of new game plus just to fight the new bosses and do a new story, considering how horribly tuned NG+ feels. The gameplay is completely unsatisfying, and maybe I'm just a casual or whatever, but if I'm having such a headache to get through early game areas then why would I take that all the way to the end? Even with a fully upgraded weapon, the damage is miserable and it won't be getting any better for the entirety of the game. I'm just hoping the last DLC isn't as tiresome, at least it can be completed without having to go into NG+.

Something about this game really gets under my skin. A few of the reviews here have helped me put it to words. The dissonance of having to get invested in all of the NPC relationships and reputation, what things to put money into and how to manage all of the options for the deck building, while being so similar to something like Slay the Spire, and just as likely to have a run end. It feels like I'm doing it all for nothing. It's not something I can actually enjoy. It doesn't make for a short fun run, but like, a very awkard long stressful one. Worst of all, maybe I just had bad draws, but the actual cards I had to work with were very frustrating and crappy and couldn't really synergize anything right. The cards all just feel weak even after you upgrade them and get your graft slots filled up. Conceptually, it's nice. I just can't stand it.

I don't think this game has legs. The character design is cute, the art style is clean and nice and matching in the cuteness of the characters. The writing is.. Okay everyone here saying that it's tumblr humor doesn't use tumblr. I'm a tumblrina and it doesn't quite meet my expectations for what tumblr humor is. But it does have the le epic reddit baconness haters gonna hate etc etc. Either way, the point isn't that it resembles any website but just that it's kind of sophomoric and elicits a cheap laugh. The gameplay itself is kind of a chore, and if you're doing it alone it feels next to pointless, especially considering how randomized it all is, including the main success state if you do everything correct. It's just. I don't know, something to do with a couple friends every now and then. I'd maybe prefer Jackbox.

On the heels of finishing a 100% base game, all achievements unrelated to miscellaneous challenges, not getting into the DLC content, I gotta say this game completely sucked me in. I've always sneered at the cross section between metroidvania and soulslike, because I've felt they're a cynical expression of game marketing and design ethic. I've obviously tried to cut back on this attitude, otherwise I wouldn't be playing Blasphemous. Through two playthroughs I've had a lot of time to ruminate on what I'm really so afraid of, and what makes Blasphemous specifically ward away my worries.

The first thing anyone who ever discovers this game notices is the care and love put into the art of the game. From the distinct concept and aesthetic heavily informed by iconography of Catholicism, to the sharp and fluid execution of the pixel art itself in game. All of the bosses are beautifully designed in a way that greatly compliments their encounters as bosses. All of the imagery and dark fantasy worship and use of symbolism or motifs just gels in such a perfect and genuine way. All of it is bespoke and none of it looks cheaply procedurally generated, like you sometimes see with these games.

Playing through the game itself, I'm largely coming off of my experience with gen 4-6 metroid and castlevania games as a point of reference for balancing and pacing. The world is very easy to explore, mercifully so considering how difficult non-boss enemy encounters can be. There are only a few exceptions at the latter end of the game, which feel earned. You're not going into the final areas of the game without the obligatory pungee pits. On that note, if I could say there was any flaw to the exploration, it would be said pungee pits, especially in cases where the ladder clipping causes you to die. The generous amount of shortcuts and checkpoints make up for this problem. Either way, each area has its own distinct identity, works well with the gimmicks of the area, and I have a lot of fun going back to explore them.

I can't really talk about this game without giving a dedicated paragraph to the difficulty. It's certainly not going to be as easy and breezy as a Metroid game, but once you get the hang of the mechanics most of the combat of the game turns out to be quite easy. It's as simple as finding the parry window of most of the enemies, or when to dodge and deal chip damage. This basic strategy applies to bosses. All of the health boosts and prayers and weapon upgrades don't feel like actual upgrades so much as they feel like it's shortening the encounter time and increasing the margin for error. The downside to this is you don't reach your full strength until you go through all of the motions. You could say this is a flawed approach, but I feel like it's a good enough compromise between the "git gud" crowd and the "make it easier" crowd.

I don't really know what's going on with the story half of the time. I'm the kind of person who takes the approach to games and stories like this in a much more personal and subjective way and I generally try to avoid conforming to the typical nauseating 'game theorists' type of take of the game, so I haven't honestly digested all of what's going on with the game. I'll have a clearer picture once I play through all of the DLC content, I'm assuming. I'm a hellenist, I typically look down on the catholic preoccupation with pain, suffering, penance, groveling, and 'correct worship'. The game feels very dryly satirical. I hope that's what they were going for. You never know with catholic inspired fiction.

All of this to say, the game is very well rounded and excels in all of the key ways a game like this would need to. It doesn't even have any flaws to speak of that you would've typically seen in the era of every douchebag on TIGSource and their dog making their own metroidvania game. I'm so glad we're past that generation; this game helped me see that. I would definitely pick it up if you're a fan of Castlevania. For a Souls inspired game, I don't think it's FOR people looking for a Soulslike. It's just a great game with great influences.

Also fuck the Archdeacons Peak specifically that's my one fuck you zone. It's UNBEARABLE with the sliding platforms and spike traps and enemies who hit you with projectiles FUCK

I've always wanted a game that has had all of the features of a maligned card TRPG game called PSO Episode III. Grid tactics, hero items that work as weapons, shields and buffs, minions that you summon on the board. I'm not super familiar with all of the games in this world that work like this, but Duelyst basically does all of what was good about this game, while also combining a lot of what I liked about Hearthstone back when I was playing it too. It has its own unique artstyle too, and I don't see myself getting sick of it any time soon. Still in beta, but what's already provided is a perfectly serviceable experience. I'm excited to collect and do deck building, and don't feel as much like it's crucial to winning since good tactics will make your bad deck beat an opponent who overlooks what you're doing. This is more common than you'd think. I'm going with an abyssian wraithling deck at the moment, but every class has a wide variety of playstyles you can make work. Nothing feels particularly out of balance. Hoping, praying this game sticks around and doesn't slide into the problems of other card strategy games. Also I never played the first Duelyst, so if this sounds like a redundant explanation of the legacy game, then I'm not aware.