This game combines the worst parts of No Man's Sky (the emptiness and boring void) and Bethesda games and feels underbaked even after 8 years in development.

I was going to maybe try giving it more of a chance, but then I learned that melee combat is shallow to the point where the entire game has less than 10 melee weapons and melee weapons cannot be modded. I don't expect Skyrim variety, but I expected Fallout at least. And I am only playing a melee build because the aiming and FPS controls on consoles is so bad.

And the UI is ATROCIOUS. It's especially jarring since I just played Everspace 2 and it does space combat and navigation UI infinitely better. The lack of any accessibility setting beyond subtitles is also a joke.

Even with bugs I was able to enjoy Skyrim and Fallout 4 on week 1. This game is just poorly designed.

It's a short, satirical, game that can be finished in an evening. Honestly this feels like a visual novel more than a game, but it is humorous and engaging enough that I really enjoyed it.

Like I literally do not know what to say because there's almost no gameplay (pun intended). You just... press a button when someone's like make photocopies for me. Then you move on and someone's like, make coffee, and you press a button and say no. You can change your tone, but I don't really see much difference besides inside certain scripted encounters?

It is fun though.

In a sea of crappy mobile incremental games, Magic Research stands out because it costs money and it's finite. It's not as short as Universal Paperclips or Spaceplan, so it does give days worth of content, but it still has a defined ending!

There's quite a lot of content to unlock, and there's a nice milestone system that lets you unlock major bonuses (that are more than number go up 1% faster) for future runs after meeting certain criteria and triggering special events. Once the unlocks start to slow down from organic discover you unlock the ability to see how other unlocks can be... unlocked, which both tells you that you're nowhere near the end and gives you something to work towards.

There is more active play in this game than most idle games since progression is tied to combat and there will be a bit of manual combat early and mid game. Gameplay is more important than narrative in this game, but overall it's a great incremental and well worth the price.

So I literally fell asleep during the prologue before the hero got isekaied to Alice in Wonderland. Like, it was legit so boring I fell asleep. When I woke up though I gave it another shot, and, it's okay?

Eventually, there is combat. It's... mediocre? Blocking and its associated stamina system are useless. You can stunlock most enemies by spamming attack. You get new special attacks by seeing a dialog box pop up after beating a boss. You can pause and use potions at any point, and since they are cheap and the only other buyable items are bombs which are terrible boss fights can generally be done as button smashing in front of a punching bag and sometimes chugging a potion. The leveling system is uninspired and overly annoying. Enemies have way too much health which makes it even more boring.

It IS satisfying when you hit a thing with a sword though, so it's mediocre instead of bad.

The thing is though it got me hooked because it's a visually stunning game, and I just wanted to keep playing and getting to more of it. The environments are gorgeous, and it honestly gave me Planescape Torment vibes sometimes. So I played through it despite the paper thin story and boring/annoying quests.

Anyway, I'm not sure if this game is meant for children? Either way, it's an okay way of spending an evening if you have game pass. Or when it's eventually on sale at 90% off.

It's a short metroidvania that really aims to capture NES era nostalgia. Its systems are simple. No shops, no complex inventory or skills or charms or equipment, just a stick and three spells. There's quite a bit of exploration that's gated by only these three spells, and it's even possible to sequence break (though I haven't done it).

When this game lands, it's really fun. There are some really tight platforming areas that take some puzzle solving and dexterity to complete. Optional orbs are scattered around the world (which is decently fun to explore) and all they do is damage bosses at the beginning of fights so it doesn't feel bad to skip any, though some are hidden behind those clever puzzles and platforming areas and are just fun to get.

The combat is... serviceable? It's simple with only a short range attack, a long range spell, and a defensive spell, though in boss fights it does create some puzzle solving since spells share the same cooldown. Some bosses are laughably easy, while some have frustrating screen-filling attacks that you need to position perfectly to block/avoid. It's not anything super spectacular, but it's... okay.

The difficulty curve, punishing restarts, and infrequent save points are the most problematic parts of the game and where this game really slips. The nostalgia unfortunately includes difficulty, and there are areas in the middle of the game where all of a sudden you have a room that's just a wall. Without turning on assist mode (which lets you respawn in the same room instead of a save point 5 rooms back) the game gets incredibly frustrating sometimes. If you moved faster in general or if there was more room for mistakes (you have 3 hp for the entire game and most platforming mistakes are instant kills) it would be fine with save point only respawns, but as is it's just not fun.

Anyway, this is a nice bite sized treat if you like metroidvanias. I am looking forward to playing the sequel which moves to the 16-bit era aesthetic and with it hopefully some QoL improvements.

It's an open world game but IN SPACE and you're IN A SPACESHIP! It is fun and a fresh take on the genre, and that's important because without it it's just another open world game with shallow repetitive missions (follow trail to get orbs, shoot these things, escort this guy by shooting these things quickly) and not particularly interesting plot. For its distinctions it also inherited a large problem from space games: the amount of time spent just pressing the sublight drive button and watching your ship go from waypoint to waypoint is boring as heck.

The main characters are well written though! And the interactions between them are great! Also the combat---once you unlock a few things---is quite fun compared to similar space combat games. The capital ship battles where you fly inside them and blow them up are especially fun. However that's not enough to make me want to finish this game, especially since with the way autosaves work I lost quite a bit of progress when my game crashed.

I absolutely love the graphic of this game. It's both stylish and clear, and at no point do I feel that it's impossible to see what's going on, which is important for a game in this genre. The 20 minute run limit is also great since you know exactly what you're going in for when you start a game.

The characters are mostly distinct, and the weapons are an interesting mix. By choosing one weapon and (mostly) only having one weapon instead of adding multiples of weapons and upgrading them only numerically makes the game both distinct and interesting.

Where the game falls short is build diversity. There are some builds that just feel much better than others, and that makes the game get stale faster than it could be. But for its price I don't think it's a huge issue.

It's the "original" survivor arena type game but it's not the first of the genre I've played. I can really see how the genre blossomed from this game. One thing I appreciate is that there's just SO MUCH CONTENT, probably a result of me going into this game in late 2022 instead of when it was released.

But the thing is... while this game is the OG I don't think it really aged super well. Other games have made a lot of innovations to make the game much more engaging from beginning to end, which Vampire Survivors doesn't really do. There are often times in a run where it just feels like an idle game, and that's not a good thing for a game that isn't an idle game...

It's impossible to not compare any time loop game to Outer Wilds and, well, this game is kind of like Outer Wilds with Mandatory Temporal Accessibility Features. It has quest markers, a very good but also very linear journal for each major objective, and a very nicely organized "knowledge" section which contains toggleable location markers. In some sense, it "spoils" some of the puzzle solving and loop exploration, but it also is just REALLY nice to not have to remember every single thing or remember how to get back to every location of interest. And also most of those objective markers don't actually solve the problems for you. You still have to do a good amount of the work.

The journal makes this the least frustrating time loop game I've played, which is good because the difficulty curve can be frustrating. There is a bit in the middle where you are too underpowered to get anywhere, but then once you get one or two powers or items that lets you plow through that challenging bit the action of the game becomes more annoying and interestingly challenging.

The story and vibe of the game is good, with platforming being nice with relevant powers, and honestly I prefer stealth and FPS over flying a crappy spaceship, so overall I enjoyed this game a lot more than Outer Wilds. I don't think it makes it a better game than Outer Wilds, but I definitely find that it provides both a good power fantasy in the mastery over shooting people and mastery over the time loop itself, and that's cool.