This scratches a very specific itch, but if you do have that itch, it feels like home. This is an honest to goodness spiritual successor to Shadow Tower and its kin, and if you know what that means, that'll either frighten you dearly or set off long-dormant bulbs in your head.

Combat is dicey, it's easy to get lost, and savepoints are sparse—you're afraid to stray too far from what's familiar, and every adventure is a risk, exactly as it should be (although when more content drops, I am definitely drawing my own maps, navigation is TRICKY). The first couple hours of this game are perfect, and I do not use that word lightly.

That said, leveling is too fast or scaling is too generous, I can't tell which, and it stripped meaning from specialising in certain stats by making me a tanky dps powerhouse even as I focused on SPD and DEX. Items that offer +40 to max health or mana would be SUPER COOL finds, if only that wasn't easily attainable from just one level-up's worth of DEF or INT points, and leveling up is never terribly hard. The pre-castle area's placement also feels like a misstep, fracturing an otherwise gingerly interconnected world with too much space at [what I assume will be] a pivotal moment and flaunting the game's tonal hand too early. This is all peanuts though, and thinking about this game is just as rewarding as playing it. Also it just casually drops one of the best areas in any dungeon crawler ever as an optional side-route hinted at the moment the game kicks into gear. Lunacid brings me joy

I played the Prepare To Die Edition HEAPS, and endured a full co-op playthrough with 5+ minute wait times for summoning, incessant tinkering with third party multiplayer programs, and appeasing RNG superstitions in hopes of a successful summon. So as a long time adorer of Dark Souls co-op, I will admit my bias upfront: all I wanted out of the Remaster was stable multiplayer, and while other hefty changes would've been sweet and all, DSR gave me what I had hoped for.

The Dark Souls series has been a trove of wonderful experiences, and it was absolutely lovely to play through this first game again with a full group of buddies. Whether you wish to play together or alone, I will never not recommend this game. It rocks.

Outlandishly difficult, horrifically intense in the best possible way, and beautifully alive. It sets an ominous chord from the moment you slide out of a drainage pipe into the industrial wastes that hangs over your trek through the desolate, overgrown cityscape of its world. The sewers sloughing into orange dust, the mountains of garbage home to a dying ecosystem, the crypts that survive a land no longer for them. It's gorgeous and intriguing and as brutal and daunting as it can often be, it gently prods you to try again, and again, and again. I will play this game forever.

For clarity, this game is deathly polarizing. Oppressive atmosphere, difficult to the point of combat being meticulous, severe spikes (HAH) in environment hostility, few mid-area respites, and does not shy away from arbitrary cruelty to the player—the wrong mistake at the wrong time means game over in a blink, and little can be done to stop the death spiral once it starts spinning out of control. The devs have a habit of awkwardly tweaking core aspects of the game, for better and for worse. Its gorgeous world is gatekept behind gameplay that actively punishes new players, and it's a nightmare to learn.

This is one of the few games I can say I truly adore. Right off the bat the soundtrack has you sinking into the world with it. It's dreary and ethereal and feels otherworldly in a comfortable sort of way. The art direction is gorgeous and contributes to an atmosphere of apocalypse, leaving you the player as just an observer making sense of a world shattered beyond saving. The movement is snappy and weighty, and the combat is an elaborate game of maddened hopping, ducking in and out, and gauging over the course of dozens of hours what makes every foe tick. The world is obtuse, it hides itself from you unless you tinker with it until you find yourself somewhere you're not meant to be. It's all so gently hopeless and opposed to player traversal, and it compels me. This game is dreamlike, brutal, and I adore it so very, very much.