I started playing this game when it was still in very early access and it has come an incredible way to reach the 1.0 we're at now.

This is now a full fledged, incredibly polished platform fighter roguelike. It wears it's Smash bros and Hades inspirations proudly while still creating something wholly unique and of its own.

While you always play the same character, you have different movesets based on which of the 10 weapons you run, as well as optional mid run abilities you can collect, and modifiers to the properties of your moveset.

Overall I strongly recommend this to anyone who like platform fighters or action roguelike games; it's amongst the best of both worlds.

The love child between Diablo's accessibility and Path of Exile's complexity. This ARPG allows for very deep customization while still being very approachable and easy to understand.

So far I've enjoyed the game a lot more than I expected, especially when I realized my various characters were playing vastly differently.

The only real negatives I have so far are that the end game is only okay, and the story gets very lackluster despite the interesting premise.

Outside of that, if you like fluid ARPG combat and deeply customizable builds, this is a game for you.

This is an objectively fantastic game. It looks way better than its predecessor and plays smoothly (Even on steam deck?!). Great roster and customization options.

So why only 3.5 stars? It's just not for me is the simple answer. I've tried to play Tekken a few times over the years and I always enjoy it for a few hours then bounce off. Part of it is being a decade behind the meta, and part of it is that I want it to be more like Soul Calibur (Which isn't fair). I can't pin down exactly why I always bounce off Tekken but I'm accepting now that maybe this franchise isn't for me.

I really enjoy this one. May well be my favorite VR title so far. It feels like a full game, not just a gimmick to utilize VR functions, yet seemlessly blends in those same functions. There's nothing quite like physically peaking around the corner during an intense firefight with covenant only to realize they started flanking you and frantically looking around for places to reposition to. It sounds like such a basic thing, but the execution of it this flawlessly in VR space made every combat sequence a treat.

Exploration is also aided by the VR mechanics, and it is surprisingly fun to manually search through every nook and cranny for ammo and currency.

I do however have a few gripes:
-There is a point early on in the game where ammo is a bit too scarce. This can lead to having to reload an older save and try to aim better in order to have enough ammo to progress. This being early on is rough too, because I know at least in my case I was not yet used to aiming in VR.

-A few points near the end it can be a bit unclear where to go, but that could also be a user issue on my end.

-The reflex sight upgrade is a trap and makes it significantly harder to aim in my experience.

These minor gripes aside, this game is well worth a try, and I strongly recommend it to anyone with VR.

Several games have done the Poker meets roguelike mix, but none quite as efficiently as Balatro. Balatro truly understood what fans of both things wanted by basing the mechanics around poker but encouraging you to break the game in similar ways as roguelikes like Luck be landlord or Endgame of Devil.

It's a very fun time exploring the broken combos in this game, only to be beaten back into humility by some of the truly brutal boss blinds in this game.

Definitely recommend it to people who think they'd enjoy a non-serious poker game or fans of Luck be Landlord style roguelikes. Not quite the autobattler type game that one is, but captures the same vibes, and I mean that in the best of ways.

This is an experience unlike any other. This narratively focused RPG is silly yet asks important political and philosophical questions.
The sheer variety of ways you can play the game boggle the mind and encourage multiple playthroughs. Player creativity is encouraged and often rewarded in this game, and fuels most of the options in this game.

Only downside is that you can soft lock yourself in a variety of ways, but the soft locks are caused by such ludicrous things that make them more funny than frustrating and are 100% part of the design.

Fully recommend this to any fan of narrative RPGs who don't mind lengthy texts and don't need combat to enjoy a game.

One of the greatest roguelikes for good reason. This is a class based 3rd person shooter where you pick up randomized items to get more powerful but the longer you take in a stage the harder the game gets. This creates a cool dynamic where you have to balance scouring the stage for items against the rising difficulty cost of doing so.

This is also a game that encourages you to break it wide open, with some runs ending because you have so many crazy effects the game crashes should you choose to continue a run long enough. That said, there are multiple endings you can go to in order to end a run and unlock things. In fact one of these endings leads to one of the coolest final stages and last boss fights I've encountered. This stage also plays some of the best music in a game insanely full of good music. Seriously, just youtube the soundtrack really quick. This game's music is in a tier of its own.

I didn't even get time to talk about coop runs, but those are also very fun.
Basically, this game is incredible and a must play for any roguelike fan.

This was one of the first true RPGs I played, and definitely the first isometric game I played.

Child me installed the game, booted it up and IMMEDIATELY got rocked in the "tutorial". I put that in quotes because this game really didn't explain very much, and that first area eases you into the game by beating you upside the head and telling you "You're gonna learn today!".
Despite this brutal tutorial that thoroughly shows you how devastating poison can be, I was enthralled. The game truly takes a hands off approach from the very start and tells you in no uncertain terms that you are in control, that you can take any action you'd like and that the consequences are on you. This was so up my alley and I'd never seen a game like this before, so I was all in.

I've made dozens of save files in this game and still am nowhere near seeing everything the game has to offer. In fact, I've never even beaten the game (I kept getting rocked by the last boss). I've learned the hard way about the Pariah Dog, which itself more or less forced me to start a new save. I've tried character builds that were unsuited to the game and forced me to restart. And yet here I am, rating this as a 5 star game and one of my favorites of all time. Why? It's just that good.
From main story, to side quests, to characters, to the pure unlimited freedom this game offers and the impact the player can have on the world, this game is pretty damn near perfect even all these years later.

Also that intro cinematic hits DIFFERENT. I don't know if it's nostalgia but that cinematic is perfect to me; does an excellent job setting up the world and main story while having some surprises and some Louis Armstrong over top it all.

It's hard to be objective when rating formative games from our childhood, but honestly I still think this is the best Fallout game we've had after New Vegas (It's no coincidence both were made by the same people).

It makes me sad to hate on this one. I actually delayed reviewing this for so long because I kept trying to like it.
The combat is good, I'm a fan of the art and the music is GODLIKE.

But that movement... My god moving around in this game feels miserable. I eventually learned I'm supposed to use backdash cancels to move around, but even that doesn't feel fun or intuitive. I hate that movement is bringing this game down so much but in a Metroidvania which encourages backtracking and exploration, the movement being so bad made me not want to continue playing any time I had to backtrack.
Add to that how there's a lot of long paths to dead ends or sub-par rewards and I just couldn't push myself to keep playing.