Wild to think that there are already Rift Wizard-likes out there, much less one this good; also borrows heavily from DCSS with the race-class-god character creation, from ToME4 with the insane skill trees, and possibly from... Path of Exile, with how these character perks and skills can combine with a variety of build enabling items (and most of the items in Path of Achra are potentially build enabling to some extent) to the point where if you're not deleting the screen by the end of the game you probably screwed up at some point. It does, after all, advertise itself as a "broken build sandbox", which at first makes it sound like it's some super easy power fantasy - and early runs might even give that impression - but you're really going to need to figure out how to put together and pilot these broken builds to survive the higher cycles (optional difficulty increases after each victory, with monsters getting higher stats and the player gaining more levels).

with winter having arrived and snow on the ground, i've been stricken with an urge to play a bunch of skyrim... largely to try some mods i've long been curious about, like the fully voiced and uniquely smart and funny khajiit companion, inigo. my character is one with a background in thievery and a curiosity for the arcane, now become a full-on wizard complimented by magic of stealth: silencing illusion spells and conjured bows... having long thought of skyrim as the most restrictive of the elder scrolls especially with regard to magical creativity, i'm discovering there's more to it than i'd known. naturally, this brings about a need to talk about one of my favorite games:

morrowind.

actually, i really want to talk about both. i want to talk about the nature of roleplay in these games, and what it means to inhabit these characters of our own making and imagining. see, there's been plenty of debate as to whether bethesda care any longer about making 'true' rpgs, having in many ways simplified the experience on a granular level, depriving the player more and more of their options and ownership over the experience of playing their games. i do think there's a lot of truth to this, though i feel there's more to be said.

getting to the point... before considering all the differences in the systems—how you build your character and develop their skills, defining their nature through mechanics and so forth—we have to consider the very concept of these characters, the intentions at work before we get involved. i'm setting oblivion aside here because it's a bit of an outlier in that you fill the shoes of an interloper, while the "real hero" of the story (the one who'll be remembered in the history books) is martin. in skyrim, you're meant to be the dragonborn, undeniably enjoying the favor of the gods unless you deliberately avoid the main quest (perhaps even going as far as installing an alternate start mod so you can just be a bandit in the wilderness or a fisherman or whatever). in my current run through the game (more like run around, given how these work) i've decided to embrace this blessing and use it to better the situation in skyrim as much as i can. my traveling companions are a vampire princess (my gay wife) and a recovering skooma fiend. (the latter is entirely a mod creation, while the former is augmented by several mods and they interact with voiced dialogue and radiant ai conversations and everything!) so, getting to morrowind: things are considerably more ambiguous and complicated, here. i'm going to keep it somewhat short because i'd prefer not to ruin the experience for anyone interested in giving the game a try—suffice to say the whole matter of whether you're any kind of chosen one is up for debate, and the range and options you have in the course of defining who your character is are considerably... more. or, well. at least it seems to be that way. it largely is... but it's also just different.

your choices in skyrim are essentially reduced to yes or no: yes, i will explore this destiny as dragonborn. no, i will not. yes, i will go to the college of winterhold and become arch-mage, or no, i'd rather not do that and perhaps instead become a nightingale, master of thieves. of course, you can choose to do all of these things—or to do none of them. and it sometimes does go further than that, such as when faced with the matter of joining the dark brotherhood. (i'm going to spoil some things here, so skip to the next paragraph if you'd rather avoid that.) having taken it upon yourself to murder the terrible, abusive matron of the orphanage in riften at the request of a young boy calling upon the infamous death cult, their leader eventually abducts you and locks you in a cabin with three blindfolded strangers, tells you that one of them has a contract on their head, and forces you into deciding which one to kill. a cruel initiation. (an interesting note is that the clairvoyance spell points toward one of them, though there's no other indication of which would be the correct choice, if any.) you have one alternative: kill your captor, free the others, and set about laying waste to the entire dark brotherhood. this is an actual questline, its availability as a path of action not readily apparent given the gravity of the situation—a bit of thinking on your feet is required to discover this. it's not always easy to stumble into these sort of options given the nature of questing in skyrim, where you're typically pulled along by quest markers... but they are there, and it's always refreshing.

morrowind is another beast entirely. beyond acceptance or denial, the matter of how you proceed is dramatically more self-driven. there are no quest markers. rarely will an npc tell you exactly where to go, and even when they do it's up to you to find your way. and then there's the question of how you'll go about accomplishing whatever task, left entirely up to you. you're not just an adventurer or a mercenary—you're an investigator. you keep a journal describing most of your interactions and observations in the game itself, and it's never a bad idea to keep notes of your own outside of the game. i've seen plenty of others describe dialogue as a bunch of wiki pages or whatever, entirely boring and so forth, but holy shit do i feel the exact opposite. i don't think there's any other game that fills me with such a desire to delve into its world and learn everything i can to understand its nature, its history, its people, and my role among them. reincarnation of a legend or not—and it's up to you to decide, not just via yes or no, but in the text, in your imagination, your headcanon, in the details. my favorite nerevarine is an iconoclastic wanderer who feels empowered by her otherwise bewildering involvement with the blades and, as an outlander to native dunmer 'culture', places the eradication of the enslavement of the khajiit and argonian races high on her list of motivations. becoming a demigod through her own efforts (albeit guided by prophecy) is just the icing on the cake. you could play through (in, around) morrowind a dozen times and find a new path, deepen the path(s) you've previously found interesting or exciting... it's just a game that makes me dream like no other.

also, you can (if you so choose) eventually craft spells that let you jump across the entire island of vvardenfell. or simply fly. you can't levitate at all in these other games! (well... without mods.)

i'm really enjoying my time with skyrim right now, and i think i've found a way to play a role i find fulfilling and comfortable with my own personality... but these games always lead back to morrowind, for me. it won't be long before i feel the pull back to vvardenfell once more.

obviously u can take me with a grain of salt if u know my tastes,,, but for however badly vivec is laid out, or however weird it is that a bunch of white guys from maryland keep trying to do meaningful commentary on imperialism but their main nuance is to make the occupied peoples Xenophobic and Supremacist, or however overly small and unmotivated the soundtrack is, this rly does come closer then just about anything else to fulfilling the Promise of the computer rpg world. definitely not necessarily the computer rpg, its not really reactive enough for that...but when i first found out about skyrim as a Young Child, the promise that was made that intoxicated me was that i was going to enter an entire world, believable and living, which was my playground but that existed apart from me. currently i do think the Open World is probably best served by less traditional games...eastshade, lil gator game, even death stranding use their spaces for more Big Expressive Ideas then simply to emulate some kind of Reality thru compromised shorthand. but morrowind nails on the goldest possible version of itself...a small island, culturally and politically dense and self-sufficient but still involved in larger conflicts, extremely diverse in terms of aesthetics but all feeling coherent anyway. u see where they get their food, where those who want to get away from everyone else live, where the centers of local and occupational government are, the slow errosion of any imperial structures the further away you are from seyda neen. and the granular growth of the RPG Journey is equally intoxicating...the emphasis on pure Numbers rather then real-time skill is a roadblock to some, but its the main thing that sells your progression...the way it fundamentally feels to do things is appreciably different at the start and end of the game. the faction quests in particular were a huge highlight for me, very simple moment to moment, but their cumulative effect is way more impactful then anything i can recall from skyrim.

when open world games let me keep playing past the completion of the main quest, my main way to achieve closure before the uninstall is to simply walk all the way back to the starting area, preferably to the place i first took control. i aim to do this without any fast travel or consulting the map if possible. in some games this is more feasible then others, but morrowind is perfect for it. in doing so i passed thru some of the first roads i ever walked thru, the first big city i found, the first imperial outpost i found, the first ancestral tomb i raided before giving up on tomb raiding and becoming religious out of penance, the little town where i met the first memorably weird npc who gave me a quest, and finally the place where i killed my first mudcrab. it was, genuinely, a greatly emotionally pregnant experience. the main quest is great honestly, and i love how it ends framing itself as basically a superhero origin story for your character. but more then anything, it felt like My adventure. my aforementioned religious penance, the time i spent adventuring in the bitter coast and west gash before ever going to balmora, the way i slowly clawed my way up to the top of house redornan (which started full of hostile ashlanders and ended with me having a mansion and every guard fawning over me), the way i stumbled into a levitation artifact about halfway through my playthrough that i used up till the end of the game, the way being the nerevarine caused a crisis of faith which had me embracing my new self but still holding onto my temple beliefs stubbornly, and the way that the ordinators that were supposed to be killing me for being a heretic ended up mostly killing me for stealing their sacred armor. i dont think any other of this Kind of rpg has given me these kinds of memories, not even my beloved new vegas. wealth beyond measure indeed.

After nearly one-thousand hours in Dark Souls III, Cinders offered a uniquely fun and refreshing experience with some intriguing high-points, several laughs, as well as a few missteps in design. There is plenty of customization, however, so not every playthrough will be the same, allowing for much more replay value than the standard Souls experience.

From the very start, there are over 25 new classes to choose from, as well as different game modes. Aside from the standard mode, there are things like Wanderer’s Mode which removes weapon upgrades in favor of gaining damage bonuses for every boss defeated, or Gauntlet Mode which is a boss-rush type challenge, and even Explorer’s Mode which functions as the “easy” difficulty for the game. The rest of the mod follows suit with this customization style - deciding which rings to upgrade, multiple bonfire progression paths, applying debuffs to create minor challenges or change gameplay, and even the ability to change the appearance of your armor completely.

Cinders also changes many of the areas, altering progression paths, bonfires, and enemy placement. This was the most intriguing and refreshing aspect of the mod as someone who has memorized just about every item and enemy location in the base game. Sometimes it does feel a little like Scholar of the First Sin with hordes of enemies waiting around a corner, but most of the time Cinders does this in a way that feels challenging rather than frustrating. Increased usage of areas’ signature enemies also makes sections of the game feel more unique, such as placing more of the Profaned Capital’s hand-monstrosities throughout that area, or adding Ruin Sentinels to the Ringed City. Another wonderful decision reminiscent of Dark Souls II is the addition of many unique NPC invasions, especially since the mod is mainly played offline without the other players being able to invade. These small encounters add character to the levels, as well as fun mini-boss challenges to overcome and contribute to making the player feel the threat of danger, even in familiar environments.

More enemies does naturally mean more challenge, however Cinders also creates several new mechanics to off-set this. One fantastic addition is Perfect Block - if a player hits block at the correct time, the incoming attack drains zero stamina. Perfect Block seemed to activate quite often, and it made using a shield much more rewarding than the standard more passive gameplay of just holding it up to tank hits. The biggest change to gameplay from the mod, however, is the decision for FP to regenerate. While at first this is a fun mechanic, it quickly becomes incredibly powerful. As a faith build, this meant not only infinite weapon buffs and lightning arrows/sunlight spears, but also unlimited healing, which trivialized sections of the game. Cinders tries to stop this by increasing the cost of spells, but the regeneration is so quick that this change is meaningless.

Fortunately, bosses are balanced around this a bit by upping their damage and health, as well as slightly altering mechanics such as speed, aggressiveness, or even new attacks. This shines most in regards to the mid-game bosses. Abyss Watchers excitingly became one of the most difficult and challenging bosses in the game due to the higher health pool, as well as a delay on a certain helpful mechanic arriving, while Deacons of the Deep became panic inducing as two Cathedral Knights were added to the fray. Not all of the bosses are this well-balanced, however, as there are several new additions that are just re-skins of the Dragonslayer Armour, or only serve to have incredibly high defenses and health which makes fighting them a slog. The opposite can be true as well, unfortunately, as some of the later DLC bosses have not been tweaked enough, removing the challenge from their fights.

Cinders also reverts poise back to the original Dark Souls mechanics, meaning that it functions all the time rather than as a hyper-armor on certain weapon swings. This is something that many fans disliked about Dark Souls III and is interesting in theory, however it just does not work very well in a game that is designed around limited poise. Many bosses, including some of the traditionally more challenging ones such as Gael, just cannot match up against a heavy weapon user that cannot be moved, again making the end-game fairly lack-luster compared to the rest of the mod.

Despite some of these issues, Cinders is still an exciting change-up of the Dark Souls III formula, and offers some great moments even outside of the new mechanics. There are call-backs to every other game in the series, and it is incredibly fun just to find and discover items from other games like Bloodborne or Demon’s Souls or even the Elden Ring community’s inside jokes. The mod truly at times feels like a love-letter to the FromSoft community, which makes it incredibly fun and a joy to play even with some low-points in design and execution.

A nightmare in an extravagant hell

Seeing the main menu and overall shader design for this game reminded me of Beach House's self titled album. Translucent diamonds in an sepia space filled with expensive jewelry. HYPER DEMON provides a simple gameplay loop at first glance but there's so much at play, it's hard to completely condense in the two hours I've played of this alone. A visual trip from beginning to end, no ramp up as you're in the heat of it from the first second of gameplay and provided some gameplay improvements to the genre I didn't really think was possible.

If you played Devil Daggers, it should feel familiar. Trying to get the highest score possible but saying the gameplay loop is that simple and leaving it at that would not be the complete picture. Aiming and movement feels completely fluid as can possibly be. Bunny hopping, dagger (rocket) jumping, and dashing feel great to pull off. Being able to translate some of my decades of first person experiences made me feel right at home with this title and managed to get a pretty high enough score to see the boss and man it's a visual spectacle in itself. What will probably grab your attention immediately is the visuals. The whole game feels like an RTX demo in itself with how some of the lights reflect off the enemies and the floor at times combined with how the game perceives peripheral vision pretty well makes for a visual light show when performing well. The enemies each have specific ways to beat each of them and some of them are harder to pull off but makes for faster kills which does increase the skill ceiling too. The better you do, the more gnarly it gets and the more likely you're going to end up with a visual induced migraine after an hour of play.

It almost feels like a human didn't even design this game. There's a lot of small yet complex decisions to make in every second of gameplay, it lends itself to being replayed an extreme amount of times with each accomplishment and improvement being visually shown on the leaderboard with a victory cry of sorts. The combination of peripheral vision, light reflection and haunting sound direction which feels like cries and energy dissipating. I remember watching a demo of getting far and I don't even remember how I pulled some of the stuff off to begin with. It takes you elsewhere. Your true potential.

Hyper Demon is basically just Doom Eternal for people who liked Eternal’s shift towards being a ‘game-y game’ but didn’t like how it executed its mechanics.

Both games try to combine Ninja Gaiden’s high difficulty and hyper aggressive enemy design with fps combat, creating stylish action games focused on RAW EFFICIENCY - killing enemies faster than they can kill you. Whereas Eternal took influence from MMO combat with cooldown management, infinitely replenishing resources, frequent healing, and damage rotations - Hyper Demon takes influence from minimalist arcade games, focusing on simple tactical trade-offs, routing, and long term risk/reward with a small but multi-faceted toolset.

An easy example is by looking at the first enemy you meet in the game - a Spawner (don’t know the official names, sorry). You can instantly kill the Spawner with a long-range laser, kill it with a melee attack to grant an instant speed boost, or kill it with your daggers to drop an item box.

If it drops an item box, you have 3 options -

1. Destroy the box with a laser to spawn a large swarm of homing daggers, automatically killing any nearby enemies

2. Destroy the box with a dash for a speed boost

3. Destroy the box with your daggers to spawn GEMS

Anyone familiar with Ninja Gaiden’s essence system knows exactly how this works. Pick up the essence gems to level up your weapons (HD does this automatically, no need to buy things from a menu) or destroy the essence to charge up a UT high damage super attack (in this case a big-ass laser beam). You’re balancing the short-term value of laser attacks vs the long-term value of powering up your weapons. And it’s not like you can stockpile these lasers - just like NG, you either use it or lose it.

BUT THEN, you have to consider aiming the laser directly at an enemy vs aiming the laser at the ground, splitting the shot to stun multiple enemies simultaneously.

The other enemies are also interesting to fight against! Larvae are trivial if shot from afar but function as jump pads if you dash into them, giving you a reason to get close. Spider enemies are annoying because they absorb any essence you leave on the ground, but if you deliberately leave them alive for long enough, they‘ll spawn explosive canisters that can be shot to decimate waves of enemies (and the explosions are bigger if you use a laser). There are also Snakes which are mostly harmless, but if you leave them alive for too long, they’ll block access to slow-mo power-ups by surrounding them with impenetrable steel tails (and the power-ups themselves can be sacrificed in place of Essence if you want to shoot a fat laser). Enemies spawn in large groups, so you always have to consider ‘What enemy should I keep alive? Who’s my biggest priority right now?’ There are even more enemy types in the game, but those will be a surprise for anyone who can survive for more than 2 minutes (much harder than it sounds!).

I’m not gonna list every decision you make in a run (I haven’t even talked about all of the movement options like bunny-hopping, fakes, or shotgun jumping) or go over its commitment to fairness (great sound design + spherical projection provide near perfect information) but hopefully you can see how every interaction is about making a deliberate trade-off that can subtly snowball over the course of a run. Routing what enemies you want to kill and how you want to kill them has a lot of depth! And this is all tied together with a simple scoring system where you lose points every second but regain points anytime you kill an enemy, forcing you to play as aggressively as possible if you want to maintain a high score. I’m absolutely in love with this game, and can see myself chasing high scores for the rest of the year. If Eternal rubbed you the wrong way (or you just want an alternative to Ultrakill’s Cyber Grind), then I highly recommend Hyper Demon!!!