Bio
I kinda like video games.
Personal Ratings
1★
5★

Badges


1 Years of Service

Being part of the Backloggd community for 1 year

GOTY '23

Participated in the 2023 Game of the Year Event

Donor

Liked 50+ reviews / lists

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Mentioned by another user

Best Friends

Become mutual friends with at least 3 others

Gone Gold

Received 5+ likes on a review while featured on the front page

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Gained 3+ followers

Liked

Gained 10+ total review likes

Favorite Games

God of War
God of War
Patapon 2
Patapon 2
Demon's Souls
Demon's Souls
Mass Effect Legendary Edition
Mass Effect Legendary Edition
God of War Ragnarök
God of War Ragnarök

079

Total Games Played

004

Played in 2024

009

Games Backloggd


Recently Played See More

Total War: Warhammer III
Total War: Warhammer III

Mar 13

Persona 3 Portable
Persona 3 Portable

Feb 15

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines
Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines

Jan 21

Celeste
Celeste

Jan 09

Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous - Enhanced Edition
Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous - Enhanced Edition

Nov 27

Recently Reviewed See More

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines is an interesting game. It is praised universally for its character writing, acting, interesting setting, lore and story. However, I did not think these points were enough to make up for other issues the game has, like horrible combat, subpar stealth mechanics and overall jank, lack of polish and amount of bugs.

The characters and dialogue are indeed the best part about this game. There are tons of NPCs, all voice acted, and they are all at least interesting. The interactions you have with them also changes depending on your “class”, which can make for unique and funny interactions. The Original Soundtrack slaps.

The story I thought was fine, for the most part. It starts interesting enough, and then gets kinda lame, and finishes very abruptly. The pay-off for the biggest mystery was also kinda of a let-down, at least for me. I never really became invested in the story.

Combat is super rough. It is very clunky and janky, your movement and attacks don’t feel good at all, melee weapons have very bad animations, that cause your attacks to whiff constantly while guns are very underpowered and your accuracy sucks, even with high levels of skill investment. Most enemies do little to no damage and others can kill you like you’re not even a vampire, but all of them are damage sponges. Bosses are particularly horrible to fight, as they have massive HP bars and, contrary to most enemies, can’t be stunlocked by your melee attacks.

Stealth is also super unreliable if you don’t have at least 4 points or more in it. Half the times, enemies can hear you easily when you get within 5 meters or less of them, even if they’re facing another way or through walls and floors, and the other half, enemies are literally blind. The prompt for stealth killing someone is also finicky, easily making you break your stealth because your characters simply attacked the enemy instead of assassinating them.

The “humanity” counter is really arbitrary. What defines humanity? I would guess the game treats it as being empathic, but that question could have a ton of answers. And it has basically no impact on the actual gameplay or story. Noncombat skills are useless for most of the main quest. Persuasion and seduction, specially, are pretty much useless.

Overall, this game doesn’t make me feel like I’m a vampire. While there are some positive aspects, the combat ruined the experience for me, and I think the game has aged very poorly. I have read that playing as the Malkavian class is the way to go, so I might actually revisit the game by doing that and also using the Plus version of the Unofficial Patch, which adds a little more content and supposedly balances some things.

"I just... can't go back to how it was before."

Celeste is an interesting experience. For starters, I’m not a fan of platformers, but I had fun with Celeste. This game falls into the same category that Furi (2016) does for me - it’s a game where the gameplay is not one of my favorite elements.

The story of Celeste is short, but relatable, easily touching the player. Madeline’s journey is one of self discovery, acceptance and self steem, which most people can easily relate to. The graphics are super nice, boasting beautiful pixel art scenarios and characters. Sometimes, though, I felt that some elements from the map were hard to spot due to the amount of detail. There are also drawn panels for some story moments and for characters during dialogues, which are also high quality.

As for the gameplay, I feel that my opinion isn’t worth much, as I generally avoid platformers, but I felt that Celeste has very tight and responsive controls. I rarely felt that a death as due to the game’s controls. The platforming is a mixed bag. There are some sections and levels I actually had fun, and others where I was frustrated. There was one level in particular that was pure pain, and the last level is a huge difficulty spike. The ending level, although thematically fitting, as it is the last step before the summit, requires really precise movement and timing, which was something the game was always lenient about.

I did finish the game without using it, but Celeste has an assist mode that I have heard is pretty good, so anyone can enjoy the story and the graphics. There are also more chapters that go beyond the main story, but I didn’t play them, just watched on YouTube. They seem super insane in terms of gameplay, greatly exceeding the base game’s difficulty.

The DLC, Farewell, in particular, is something else. I (probably) couldn’t finish it myself, as it is on a new level of difficulty compared to the base game, but I did enjoy the additional story and how some elements of the gameplay were tied to the actual context.

Overall, I did enjoy my time with Celeste, but I doubt I will come back to play more in the future. Still, I regret nothing and recommend anyone to accompany Madeline to the summit.

Divinity: Original Sin is a game I think is fun and probably worth a shot, but, unfortunately, it just wasn’t my thing.

Starting with good points, the graphics are nice, the game is stylized, very vibrant, colorful and the art style is pretty cool. The OST is pretty good, with some catchy tracks that got me to look it up. Combat can be fun, as there are some interesting mechanics and ways attacks and status effects can interact (talking about the different elements you can wield). Interacting with the world is pretty fun, as there are some physics based puzzles or areas that become easier or accessible with certain spells (like rain).

Having two protagonists creates funny situations if they regularly disagree, but, I feel it also limits the amount of role play you can have on the game. The voice acted dialogue choices also doesn’t help much. The majority of dialogues have only 2 or 3 options, severely limiting role play potential, as you’re pretty much forced to play a goody two shoes character other than some impactless dialogue options.

The game is kinda goofy. There are many jokes, in item descriptions, quest logs, and, most notably, in character writing and voice lines. Overall, characters are super dramatic and quirky, and the voice acting is very over the top, and you can’t go one second without someone saying a one-liner or making a pun.

I experienced unfun progression. You are thrown into the game super weak, and then it feels like you have to do every single mission possible, even when some missions can be missed forever, before you gain enough ex to level up and tackle higher level missions. In my playthrough, I was constantly having to backtrack and check the wiki to see if I missed anything, or, rather, what I missed, otherwise, I would be underleveled to progress the game.

The combat can be fun, but it is extremely slow, and, many times, even when on the same level, I felt super underleveled in some encounters. It felt like playing on normal was hard and playing on easy was normal, I don’t know, I’m not usually good at these min maxing kind of games. But, at least, when I felt too weak, the easy difficulty made it fair for me. As for the speed, there were some encounters where I would browse my phone because it took so long for my turn.

I had two quests become soft locked because I did something the developers allowed, but I guess it wasn’t intended, like killing a character to get a key to a place I need to be instead of doing a whole quest. I killed him, he dropped the key I needed, but the quest was stuck saying I still needed to complete his quest.

The game doesn’t take itself very seriously, and I can’t really either. Women’s armors are very sexualized and the overall comedic tone the game posses is just not my thing. I might come back later to at least finish the main quest, but, for now, there are other games I want to play more.