Hexxproof
2022
This is a very cute, very charming and very likeable game that I don't want to play more of after giving it an hour or two. It's a Zelda type game where you run back and forth in an overworld, while also delving into some dungeons and solving some puzzles, with some of the coziest graphics I've ever seen, relaxing music and the just plain adorable focus on the game having an in-game, Famicom-inspired manual complete with wonderfully cheesy little illustrations and explanatory text, just like a real Famicom manual. However, the fox moves far too slowly for me, in a game where you're supposed to do lots and lots of running back and forth, and I don't know why there's so much combat when it really kind of sucks. Clunky, slow, cannot cancel a single frame of animation. Probably on purpose to be retro, but I'm just feeling frustrated with the actual game while enjoying the aesthetics, and I no longer feel like I have time for a game that's only ticking some boxes for me and not all. If I felt like I had more time to play whatever I want, I might've stuck with and learned to love this game, but in a market as flooded as today's, I'm just going to have to prioritize other games over this. Glad I checked it out, though.
2023
Yeah, I don't know... Not feeling this one. I thought it looked cool in video reviews, but I was doubtful from minute one, and about two hours later, I think I feel like there are other things I'd rather spend my time on than this game. It's decent, but not exceptional, and too linear and too focused on anemic and dull combat for me.
The first cool bit that you both notice when playing and that I should start this review with is that this game is not one interconnected world, but a splintered one made up of floating islands that you fly between freely in your airship, in sections that really remind me of SNES games (or Afterimage since it did something similar). That part is really cool, but it's also what makes this game not really a metroidvania, as the sections you fly to are primarily linear with a collectable or two that you need to come back for with a double jump or whatever. First, and only, ability I found was a kind of cumbersome wall jump, but I presume a double jump or similar is coming as it always does.
I don't hate this game, but there isn't much I love either. It looks fine, but at the same time, the color scheme is drab and the enemy design is quite dull. Blobby looking humanoid (or other animals) grey rock creatures was all I really saw, except a few almost equally as grey hostile plants. The music is just kind of there and the PS5 version is very oddly mixed in that I had to almost double the volume, both in the game and on my TV, to hear anything. Not a huge complaint, but it was weird.
The huge complaint is the overabundance of boring combat, as well as the linearity. This game uses those rooms that lock you in when you enter them and until you've killed everything, and it does it a lot, and on top of that, the game does attempt to have a more advanced combat system, but nothing comes together for me. From the moves to the enemy graphics and animations to the sounds, none of the combat feels like it hits or feels exciting. Plus every enemy is a major damage sponge and spamming all of your basic attacks, special attacks and magic attacks feel like they add very little and like I'm mostly powerless in combat. Not in the sense that it's hard, because it isn't as one of your built-in special attacks also has healing properties, but in the sense that there's no sense of enjoyable power. You know how Symphony of the Night has 1HP enemies in the first corridor, immediately showing that Alucard is strong? Yeah, this game doesn't do that at all and it's just dull.
It doesn't help that this seemingly is the kind of game that allows you access to the map towards the end of an area, and that it's a mapping system that doesn't show you what corner you've actually visited, it only reveals the rooms and doors. I do like that it shows exactly what the room looks like instead of a square, though.
Again, I don't hate this game, but I don't really enjoy it either. There is some quality here for someone who vibes with what this game is, but that person isn't me and I'll pass on these drab aesthetics, boring combat and linear levels and move on to something else.
The first cool bit that you both notice when playing and that I should start this review with is that this game is not one interconnected world, but a splintered one made up of floating islands that you fly between freely in your airship, in sections that really remind me of SNES games (or Afterimage since it did something similar). That part is really cool, but it's also what makes this game not really a metroidvania, as the sections you fly to are primarily linear with a collectable or two that you need to come back for with a double jump or whatever. First, and only, ability I found was a kind of cumbersome wall jump, but I presume a double jump or similar is coming as it always does.
I don't hate this game, but there isn't much I love either. It looks fine, but at the same time, the color scheme is drab and the enemy design is quite dull. Blobby looking humanoid (or other animals) grey rock creatures was all I really saw, except a few almost equally as grey hostile plants. The music is just kind of there and the PS5 version is very oddly mixed in that I had to almost double the volume, both in the game and on my TV, to hear anything. Not a huge complaint, but it was weird.
The huge complaint is the overabundance of boring combat, as well as the linearity. This game uses those rooms that lock you in when you enter them and until you've killed everything, and it does it a lot, and on top of that, the game does attempt to have a more advanced combat system, but nothing comes together for me. From the moves to the enemy graphics and animations to the sounds, none of the combat feels like it hits or feels exciting. Plus every enemy is a major damage sponge and spamming all of your basic attacks, special attacks and magic attacks feel like they add very little and like I'm mostly powerless in combat. Not in the sense that it's hard, because it isn't as one of your built-in special attacks also has healing properties, but in the sense that there's no sense of enjoyable power. You know how Symphony of the Night has 1HP enemies in the first corridor, immediately showing that Alucard is strong? Yeah, this game doesn't do that at all and it's just dull.
It doesn't help that this seemingly is the kind of game that allows you access to the map towards the end of an area, and that it's a mapping system that doesn't show you what corner you've actually visited, it only reveals the rooms and doors. I do like that it shows exactly what the room looks like instead of a square, though.
Again, I don't hate this game, but I don't really enjoy it either. There is some quality here for someone who vibes with what this game is, but that person isn't me and I'll pass on these drab aesthetics, boring combat and linear levels and move on to something else.
2020
Too stiff and slow for me, at least with a PS5 controller. Gave it a couple of hours, but quickly found myself bored with what felt like sliding a slowly moving cube around very similar levels while using the same upgrades and guns and then dying and, of course, buying some metaprogression unlocks only to go back and then do it again. Levels feel the same on every run with no exploration necessary since it's all just the same rooms and general level vibe as the last run, and if you do want to go back for the blacksmith, it's discouragingly slow to do so and I ended up feeling like I really didn't want to drag my ass there and back. Did some five to ten runs and got the same guns, also very quickly deciding which to never pick up again. Do I have to unlock the run variety through metaprogression or is the game just very samey? I'm guessing it's the former in this case, and that there is more to find here had I wanted to keep digging, but with the stiff controls and boring levels, I'm not sure I want to find out and instead I'll count my losses and bail on this one after only a few hours. Might be more your speed if you like the idea of a simple and kind of lumbering roguelite FPS, but it isn't mine.
2021
Decent all around, but a bit flat. It's your nowadays typical sidescrolling roguelite thing where you dodge roll here and air dash there, while slashing dozens of foes at once with your flaming-electrified sword and mixing in some subweapon attacks mostly because you feel like you should and not because they feel like they do much. You find some roguey items that aim to change the run and grind for metaprogression upgrades. It's all decent, though not much more or less than that.
I did have some fun unlocking some metaprogression and making a few runs, feeling like I got stronger and stronger against the first two bosses, but ultimately, runs are far too similar to each other with too-often recurring rooms, the same bosses every time and items that don't feel like they do much to change things up. When I noticed that the metaprogression only allows you to pick one upgrade per category, as opposed to allowing you the full tree at once as I had lead myself to believe, I just felt like I was done with the game and while everything from controls to graphics are all decent or even good, it's just not something I want to spend more than a few hours on.
I did have some fun unlocking some metaprogression and making a few runs, feeling like I got stronger and stronger against the first two bosses, but ultimately, runs are far too similar to each other with too-often recurring rooms, the same bosses every time and items that don't feel like they do much to change things up. When I noticed that the metaprogression only allows you to pick one upgrade per category, as opposed to allowing you the full tree at once as I had lead myself to believe, I just felt like I was done with the game and while everything from controls to graphics are all decent or even good, it's just not something I want to spend more than a few hours on.
2023
An okay game with some cool ideas with serious potential, but nothing about it excited me enough to want to keep playing, and just as I was feeling like I wasn't really into it, the game hit me with the one-two punch of locking me into a challenge room with an enemy spawning outside of it, forcing me to quit the run, and then unlocked a character that was seemingly much worse than the starting one (since her attacks were slower and she couldn't double jump). That just killed the little motivation I had to continue.
It's unfortunate, because there is something here and these developers seem to want to make a good game. There is ambition, and cool ideas, and they've really tried, but none of it was exciting except for the pretty fun mid-run upgrade system. It uses a system where you get to pick from three upgrades when you find an upgrade station, all of which are color-coded, and once you've obtained three of one color, you get a bonus upgrade that is always the same (so red upgrade is always the same), allowing for some strategizing and build planning. The individual upgrades themselves were also pretty nice in that they were all the techy kind of +X% this or that, but for once in one of these metaprogression-obsessed rogelites, the numbers were actually hefty and you'd get +30% base damage here and +20% HP there, instead of the usual, easily coded and super-duper-lame +3% that's become so common in the genre. That part was quite nice and almost kept me hooked, but the pretty dull basic combat where you slash three times, dodge, slash twice, dodge, repeat, etc, and the also too-repetitive level design just made me feel like I should spend my time on something I like more.
As per above, though, this game really isn't terrible and anyone reading this review should still check out the demo if you had any interest to begin with. The game does have one on all platforms, as far as I know, and you might find yourself liking this one more than I did. I've seen some folks around the internet loving it, and I stress again that it's not outright bad, but it's just not something I'm vibing with right now and I'm pretty permanently over these metaprogression roguelites. Someone who's just starting out exploring the genre might adore this game since it does have strong aesthetics and an ambitious scifi world with advanced lore. I don't know, I guess I just feel a little bad about disliking a game with honest intention and earnest effort behind it even though I feel like it doesn't really come together to form an enjoyable whole. Ah, just ignore my review and try the demo.
It's unfortunate, because there is something here and these developers seem to want to make a good game. There is ambition, and cool ideas, and they've really tried, but none of it was exciting except for the pretty fun mid-run upgrade system. It uses a system where you get to pick from three upgrades when you find an upgrade station, all of which are color-coded, and once you've obtained three of one color, you get a bonus upgrade that is always the same (so red upgrade is always the same), allowing for some strategizing and build planning. The individual upgrades themselves were also pretty nice in that they were all the techy kind of +X% this or that, but for once in one of these metaprogression-obsessed rogelites, the numbers were actually hefty and you'd get +30% base damage here and +20% HP there, instead of the usual, easily coded and super-duper-lame +3% that's become so common in the genre. That part was quite nice and almost kept me hooked, but the pretty dull basic combat where you slash three times, dodge, slash twice, dodge, repeat, etc, and the also too-repetitive level design just made me feel like I should spend my time on something I like more.
As per above, though, this game really isn't terrible and anyone reading this review should still check out the demo if you had any interest to begin with. The game does have one on all platforms, as far as I know, and you might find yourself liking this one more than I did. I've seen some folks around the internet loving it, and I stress again that it's not outright bad, but it's just not something I'm vibing with right now and I'm pretty permanently over these metaprogression roguelites. Someone who's just starting out exploring the genre might adore this game since it does have strong aesthetics and an ambitious scifi world with advanced lore. I don't know, I guess I just feel a little bad about disliking a game with honest intention and earnest effort behind it even though I feel like it doesn't really come together to form an enjoyable whole. Ah, just ignore my review and try the demo.
2023
Pretty much the very definition of "just okay". If I was a teenager, I would've adored this and its punky aesthetic and attitude so much, but as an adult, I can't value the theme over the gameplay and the latter is just decent here. Pretty much a bog standard metroidvania with cool animations and a different kind of aesthetic (in everything from the character graphics to menu design).
Really, I don't know what there is to say about this game. You run around a 2D world and you obtain various movement abilities or puzzle solving abilities, like how the first major upgrade might be the double jump (the game offers a split path to start out with and you get double jump first if you head left, which I did), but then you also get a gun that can be used in combat but is also fired at crystals to open doors. You get a few abilities like that, like a ground stomp that both hurts enemies and opens up hatches in the ground. Just...typical stuff. If you're even looking at this review, you're probably already into metroidvanias and have seen everything this game offers on a mechanical design level. Double jumping, air dashing, dodge rolling and, of course, a few obstacle courses that combine all of this.
The world is fine too. Nothing special, but not bad and empty either. Just enough secrets that are just fun enough to find, and just enough stuff to find in order to complete each area 100% in order for it not to be boring, but also not so much that endgame cleanup became a major drag where I had to zoom in on Demajen's maps and scratch my head to find that one collectible I missed. It all flowed pretty nicely, I found the majority of the secrets myself and the game does strike a nice balance that rarely becomes annoying, but it also rarely becomes exciting and engaging. It's just fine.
The major thing worth mentioning is, of course, the aesthetics. Some parts I love, some parts I don't. I really love the graphic design and how, for example, the loading screen is an icon of the main character punching her fists together and it looks almost exactly like a punk album cover come to life. I do like those parts of the aesthetics; the menus, the icons, the general vibe. I'm indifferent on the animation style and character design. It looks to carry a bit of Bryan Lee O'Malley influence, which is confirmed by the fact that there's a painting of Ramona Flowers in one room, but I don't think I overall like how it looks. I'm not sure why the main character is an oddly shaped, bow-legged robot with a giant ass that's actually a plot point. No, really, the other characters comment on how yours has a massive ass. That just kind of leaves me non-plussed. I'm not excited by it, nor am I offended by it. I'm also not sure why your character does the fat girl thing of wearing a skirt that starts right below her armpits, because this isn't an inclusion or diversity thing. The character is very sexualized and shows off her panties literally constantly, not to mention the comments about her ass, so I'm not sure I understand her fashion choices. She's just kind of an ugly and annyoing character, and I don't mean in that incel "Aloy isn't hot enough" Twitter thing, because, as I said, this character is very sexualized. I just don't think she's well sexualized for my tastes, I guess. It's weird and the sexualization and all of the profanity in both dialogue and info boxes just leaves me kind of shrugging. It's supposed to be edgy and irreverent and I suppose that it by definition is, but it's not very exciting or offensive to me. It's just kind of there.
Combat is also just fine. To start, the enemies are incredibly spongy until you've leveled up the basic melee "charm" (as this game, of course, borrows Hollow Knight's charm system), adn the only reasonable way to kill early on is to slowly smack them with your special move and repeatedly knocking enemies down until the instakill finisher triggers. You better enjoy seeing the gory finishers, because you'll be seeing them a lot, as the combat doesn't become conveniently playable until the late game. Thankfully, enemies stay dead until you also die, which makes it much more acceptable that the combat is fine at best and kind of crappy at worst.
I did like the (more or less) hidden references to music. One secret room has the Fear Inoculum album cover in it, and another has that Death Grips album I don't know the name of. As an older person who lived the 90s, I found it amusing that Prodigy is now "obscure alternative music" that fits into a game that also references Death Grips. Young people don't understand what an enormously overplayed hit Firestarter was! Oh well, the references were cute and I also liked spotting Penitent One from Blasphemous stowed away in the background art. Speaking of music, though... This game really ought to have put in the effort to find a local pop punk band to record a theme song. Pop punk band grows on trees, you can probably find a bunch of them in Italy (where the dev team appears to be from) and the game really could've used some actual punk on the soundtrack. According to the credits, they hired an audio studio that is clearly competent and background music and they even tried to write a few riffs for a couple of boss fights, but the game is sorely missing a fun pop punk jam to either begin or end the game. It can be more Blink than Leftöver Crack; that's fine and the game doesn't need to reach a certain level of "punk enough", but it should maybe have had any punk at all in it.
I suppose I'm at a loss for words here even though the review is starting to get lengthy. I liked the aesthetics, I thought the gameplay was at least fun enough that I kept going and finished the game, but I never truly enjoyed myself and just kind of went through the motions and finished an acceptable, perfectly playable metroidvania that doesn't really do anything special on a gameplay level. It's fine. You probably won't hate it if you like the game's style, but you also probably won't excitedly love it. It's just kind of there and I'll probably forget about the gameplay, while remembering the aesthetics, in just a few weeks from now. All of this negativity aside, I didn't actually hate it, I just kind of cruised through it and didn't really react to much. Bopped some enemies on the head, collected some movement abilities, scouted for some secrets, unlocked some upgrades via material gathering. Typical MV stuff that's all just fine. That's the lead word of this review. It's all just fine, nothing more and nothing less.
(All that said, I do believe that this game deserved much better success than it has achieved so far. It seems like literally no one, not even MV fanatics, are playing this one and that's a shame. It's not a fantastic game, but it's better than that. Oh, and another side note; completionists beware. The PS5 version currently, nearly six months after release, has a bug where you cannot achieve 100%. You can get the platinum, but there are about 30 collectibles that cannot be saved, because they're in rooms that are supposed to avoid writing the collectibles to your save until you obtain all of them, but the game still forgets that you did it if you succeed and reload your save. So you can temporarily have 100% completion if you complete the collectible challenge, but the next time you load up, those 30 collectibles will go back to being uncollected and you'll drop back down to like 80%. If this bothers your completionist OCD, stay far away.)
Really, I don't know what there is to say about this game. You run around a 2D world and you obtain various movement abilities or puzzle solving abilities, like how the first major upgrade might be the double jump (the game offers a split path to start out with and you get double jump first if you head left, which I did), but then you also get a gun that can be used in combat but is also fired at crystals to open doors. You get a few abilities like that, like a ground stomp that both hurts enemies and opens up hatches in the ground. Just...typical stuff. If you're even looking at this review, you're probably already into metroidvanias and have seen everything this game offers on a mechanical design level. Double jumping, air dashing, dodge rolling and, of course, a few obstacle courses that combine all of this.
The world is fine too. Nothing special, but not bad and empty either. Just enough secrets that are just fun enough to find, and just enough stuff to find in order to complete each area 100% in order for it not to be boring, but also not so much that endgame cleanup became a major drag where I had to zoom in on Demajen's maps and scratch my head to find that one collectible I missed. It all flowed pretty nicely, I found the majority of the secrets myself and the game does strike a nice balance that rarely becomes annoying, but it also rarely becomes exciting and engaging. It's just fine.
The major thing worth mentioning is, of course, the aesthetics. Some parts I love, some parts I don't. I really love the graphic design and how, for example, the loading screen is an icon of the main character punching her fists together and it looks almost exactly like a punk album cover come to life. I do like those parts of the aesthetics; the menus, the icons, the general vibe. I'm indifferent on the animation style and character design. It looks to carry a bit of Bryan Lee O'Malley influence, which is confirmed by the fact that there's a painting of Ramona Flowers in one room, but I don't think I overall like how it looks. I'm not sure why the main character is an oddly shaped, bow-legged robot with a giant ass that's actually a plot point. No, really, the other characters comment on how yours has a massive ass. That just kind of leaves me non-plussed. I'm not excited by it, nor am I offended by it. I'm also not sure why your character does the fat girl thing of wearing a skirt that starts right below her armpits, because this isn't an inclusion or diversity thing. The character is very sexualized and shows off her panties literally constantly, not to mention the comments about her ass, so I'm not sure I understand her fashion choices. She's just kind of an ugly and annyoing character, and I don't mean in that incel "Aloy isn't hot enough" Twitter thing, because, as I said, this character is very sexualized. I just don't think she's well sexualized for my tastes, I guess. It's weird and the sexualization and all of the profanity in both dialogue and info boxes just leaves me kind of shrugging. It's supposed to be edgy and irreverent and I suppose that it by definition is, but it's not very exciting or offensive to me. It's just kind of there.
Combat is also just fine. To start, the enemies are incredibly spongy until you've leveled up the basic melee "charm" (as this game, of course, borrows Hollow Knight's charm system), adn the only reasonable way to kill early on is to slowly smack them with your special move and repeatedly knocking enemies down until the instakill finisher triggers. You better enjoy seeing the gory finishers, because you'll be seeing them a lot, as the combat doesn't become conveniently playable until the late game. Thankfully, enemies stay dead until you also die, which makes it much more acceptable that the combat is fine at best and kind of crappy at worst.
I did like the (more or less) hidden references to music. One secret room has the Fear Inoculum album cover in it, and another has that Death Grips album I don't know the name of. As an older person who lived the 90s, I found it amusing that Prodigy is now "obscure alternative music" that fits into a game that also references Death Grips. Young people don't understand what an enormously overplayed hit Firestarter was! Oh well, the references were cute and I also liked spotting Penitent One from Blasphemous stowed away in the background art. Speaking of music, though... This game really ought to have put in the effort to find a local pop punk band to record a theme song. Pop punk band grows on trees, you can probably find a bunch of them in Italy (where the dev team appears to be from) and the game really could've used some actual punk on the soundtrack. According to the credits, they hired an audio studio that is clearly competent and background music and they even tried to write a few riffs for a couple of boss fights, but the game is sorely missing a fun pop punk jam to either begin or end the game. It can be more Blink than Leftöver Crack; that's fine and the game doesn't need to reach a certain level of "punk enough", but it should maybe have had any punk at all in it.
I suppose I'm at a loss for words here even though the review is starting to get lengthy. I liked the aesthetics, I thought the gameplay was at least fun enough that I kept going and finished the game, but I never truly enjoyed myself and just kind of went through the motions and finished an acceptable, perfectly playable metroidvania that doesn't really do anything special on a gameplay level. It's fine. You probably won't hate it if you like the game's style, but you also probably won't excitedly love it. It's just kind of there and I'll probably forget about the gameplay, while remembering the aesthetics, in just a few weeks from now. All of this negativity aside, I didn't actually hate it, I just kind of cruised through it and didn't really react to much. Bopped some enemies on the head, collected some movement abilities, scouted for some secrets, unlocked some upgrades via material gathering. Typical MV stuff that's all just fine. That's the lead word of this review. It's all just fine, nothing more and nothing less.
(All that said, I do believe that this game deserved much better success than it has achieved so far. It seems like literally no one, not even MV fanatics, are playing this one and that's a shame. It's not a fantastic game, but it's better than that. Oh, and another side note; completionists beware. The PS5 version currently, nearly six months after release, has a bug where you cannot achieve 100%. You can get the platinum, but there are about 30 collectibles that cannot be saved, because they're in rooms that are supposed to avoid writing the collectibles to your save until you obtain all of them, but the game still forgets that you did it if you succeed and reload your save. So you can temporarily have 100% completion if you complete the collectible challenge, but the next time you load up, those 30 collectibles will go back to being uncollected and you'll drop back down to like 80%. If this bothers your completionist OCD, stay far away.)
2024
This game is super addictive and, when your run works, so much fun that it's very easy to end up losing several hours without even noticing, and it makes me hopeful for the future of the roguelite genre, but it's also just not very fun in the long run as you begin to relize that victory is just always down to RNG, primarily because of a few pesky design decisions. Oh, and I'll start off this review by making one thing clear; you do not have to care about poker to like this game. I don't, I've always hated and sucked at poker, and I'm mostly loving Balatro, with a few major complaints.
I feel like describing this game is pretty pointless as everyone already knows about it. You play a sort of video poker that allows you to cheat and achieve ridiculous high scores through the combination of various run multipliers called jokers. That's the fun and addictive part. Anyone that has even minor liking of games probably already knows the basic poker hands and how to get started in this game. You load the game up, are presented with playing cards and you try to put together your first full house, straight or flush and then the dopamine hits start coming as bells, whistles and blinking lights start firing off to celebrate your success. The little scoreboard part of your HUD shoots up a little fire that gets larger and larger the higher your score gets, which is such a tiny but infinitely satisfying little detail. Playing your hand and darting your eyes over to the score display, hoping to see those flames shoot up, is a genius little design and this game excels at making you feel good about the hand you just played. Cards shake around as they score, bonus feature shake a little extra, text pops up to tell you that your score was multiplied. Everything about this game is feedback loop and everything about it makes you feel good.
Except for the RNG nature of the game, which is unavoidable with the current design. Since all you do is play poker hands, there's nothing you as a player can actively do if a match is going poorly. The only strategy and player agency is in the shop between rounds, where you buy various upgrades and put together a build, but if the RNG for both the shop and a match decides that you can't have the win this time, you can't have the win this time. Unlike action roguelites, where you can still pull out a win through godlike dodging even if your item collection for that run is the worst it can possibly be, having a bad build in Balatro simply means that you just lost. You can't, like, play a full house harder and more sneakily in order to pull out a win. RNG decides whether you win or lose in all situations. No matter the difficulty, if you do not have any form of score multiplier by the time the blind rises above 1000, you've lost that run and there's nothing you can do. This is personally why I believe that it's a major mistake that they take away that kind of crappy and very basic score multiplier card that you get as a beginner crutch in your first few runs. After you've finished the tutorial phase, that card is taken away and you start every run with 0 jokers after that, and I think they should just patch the game to put that joker back in. It's crappy enough that it cannot possibly win you a run, but it guarantees that your run might have a chance to get started, so that you don't hit 1000+ blind and lose through pure RNG, which does happen very often in this game. Every other run is a loss before you've even started, because the shop refuses to have any score multiplier jokers. This just is not fun anymore once you get over the initial romance period where you're just having fun without fully understanding what's going on.
It doesn't help that I think the boss blinds are a completely failed experiment, since they just add even more RNG, and the solution for shitty bosses is just more RNG since you have to luck into the item that lets you reroll boss functionality (as well as enough money to actually use it). What do you do when you hit the "very large blind" boss with a run that's almost good, but still needs a little something to clear endgame? You lose, that's what. Similarly, what do you do if RNG decided that you were going to play a Half Jokar pairs run and you run into the boss that won't let you play repeat hands? You lose, of course. What if your build is amazing and centered around Blueprint and the other one I haven't learned the name of, both of which need exact positioning in your joker inventory to work, and you get the boss that mixes your jokers around and hides them, effectively destroying your whole build? You lose, obviously. It doesn't help that I hear that the PC version has made progress on improving these bullshit bosses and that this is the kind of indie that wasn't ready for all of the success, so now there's major issues with platform parity and the console versions are apparently months behind the PC version. Our version of Yorick, the legendary joker, is still useless and I hear that one was fixed like two months ago on PC. I get that LocalThunk is one person, but this game is also a smash hit that has made a significant amount of money. Time to actually spend some of that fat pile of cash on a porting team that can work faster than this.
Also, to be clear, I've unlocked about 95% of the collection, I've beaten all decks but the last 5, my best deck is currently on purple stake and my best hand ever scored 7 million points. I'm not an expert and I've never had one of those insane runs that break the game, but I'm not a novice that doesn't udnerstand the game yet and am just complaining because I don't like losing. I've paid my dues and put in my hours in this game.
All of that complaining aside, I do still enjoy this game and I plan to keep working at beating the game with every deck and trying to unlock all jokers, in the hopes that the console version is finally brought up to parity, but above all, this game makes me hopeful for the whole genre. The game and it's massive unexpected success makes me hope and wish that developers will finally find their way back to what made roguelites so popular. It's the items! It's not these stupid metaprogression unlock systems that the genre is obsessed with over the past like 5 years. It's the items! It's always the items! Balatro is a throwback to about a decade ago, when the items actually mattered and made major changes to your run, keeping things fresh and always keeping you addicted to the idea of "what if I manage to find item X and Y on the same run..." There's a reason The Binding of Isaac is legendary, yet no one cares about the past year's crop of popular (in the community) roguelites like Astral Ascent. It's! The! Items! Stop focusing so much on stupid metaprogression systems and go back to working on having fun, inventive and quirky items that completely mutate your run into something entirely different. I absoluetly love that LocalThunk and Balatro understand this very key concept of roguelites, and I'm hoping the success makes both players and developers re-discover the glory of what a roguelite can be. Stop putting in 7000 unlocks that unlock more unlocks and focus on the items and the builds that they can combine into!
If it wasn't for the RNG, and how the game begins to feel frustrating as you progress from not having any idea what's going on to understanding how to create some basic builds and what jokers are amazing, I would've given this game a perfect score, since it's so much fun despite being an RNG fest that I normally can't stand, and I'm going to love the game even more if it actually does manage to shape the future of roguelites, but at the end of the day, I can't get away from how frustrated I get with wasting my time on a run that could never have been won in the first place and I'm not sure how the design can really be tweaked to be better, aside from just throwing boss blinds out completely. I do hope that this game sees a lifetime sort of like Isaac's and that it changes, shifts and grows over the coming years. I will be checking in on each major content update because there is something special here, even if I don't always love it. I'm still giving this game a high score based on the pure fun factor and how strongly I recommend that you give this game a shot. Balatro is not just the kind of game that has a chance at revitalizing the genre it inhabits, but if you're in a gaming slump, this is the kind of game that might revitalize your love of the gaming hobby as a whole. You really should check it out if you are somehow still on the fence.
I feel like describing this game is pretty pointless as everyone already knows about it. You play a sort of video poker that allows you to cheat and achieve ridiculous high scores through the combination of various run multipliers called jokers. That's the fun and addictive part. Anyone that has even minor liking of games probably already knows the basic poker hands and how to get started in this game. You load the game up, are presented with playing cards and you try to put together your first full house, straight or flush and then the dopamine hits start coming as bells, whistles and blinking lights start firing off to celebrate your success. The little scoreboard part of your HUD shoots up a little fire that gets larger and larger the higher your score gets, which is such a tiny but infinitely satisfying little detail. Playing your hand and darting your eyes over to the score display, hoping to see those flames shoot up, is a genius little design and this game excels at making you feel good about the hand you just played. Cards shake around as they score, bonus feature shake a little extra, text pops up to tell you that your score was multiplied. Everything about this game is feedback loop and everything about it makes you feel good.
Except for the RNG nature of the game, which is unavoidable with the current design. Since all you do is play poker hands, there's nothing you as a player can actively do if a match is going poorly. The only strategy and player agency is in the shop between rounds, where you buy various upgrades and put together a build, but if the RNG for both the shop and a match decides that you can't have the win this time, you can't have the win this time. Unlike action roguelites, where you can still pull out a win through godlike dodging even if your item collection for that run is the worst it can possibly be, having a bad build in Balatro simply means that you just lost. You can't, like, play a full house harder and more sneakily in order to pull out a win. RNG decides whether you win or lose in all situations. No matter the difficulty, if you do not have any form of score multiplier by the time the blind rises above 1000, you've lost that run and there's nothing you can do. This is personally why I believe that it's a major mistake that they take away that kind of crappy and very basic score multiplier card that you get as a beginner crutch in your first few runs. After you've finished the tutorial phase, that card is taken away and you start every run with 0 jokers after that, and I think they should just patch the game to put that joker back in. It's crappy enough that it cannot possibly win you a run, but it guarantees that your run might have a chance to get started, so that you don't hit 1000+ blind and lose through pure RNG, which does happen very often in this game. Every other run is a loss before you've even started, because the shop refuses to have any score multiplier jokers. This just is not fun anymore once you get over the initial romance period where you're just having fun without fully understanding what's going on.
It doesn't help that I think the boss blinds are a completely failed experiment, since they just add even more RNG, and the solution for shitty bosses is just more RNG since you have to luck into the item that lets you reroll boss functionality (as well as enough money to actually use it). What do you do when you hit the "very large blind" boss with a run that's almost good, but still needs a little something to clear endgame? You lose, that's what. Similarly, what do you do if RNG decided that you were going to play a Half Jokar pairs run and you run into the boss that won't let you play repeat hands? You lose, of course. What if your build is amazing and centered around Blueprint and the other one I haven't learned the name of, both of which need exact positioning in your joker inventory to work, and you get the boss that mixes your jokers around and hides them, effectively destroying your whole build? You lose, obviously. It doesn't help that I hear that the PC version has made progress on improving these bullshit bosses and that this is the kind of indie that wasn't ready for all of the success, so now there's major issues with platform parity and the console versions are apparently months behind the PC version. Our version of Yorick, the legendary joker, is still useless and I hear that one was fixed like two months ago on PC. I get that LocalThunk is one person, but this game is also a smash hit that has made a significant amount of money. Time to actually spend some of that fat pile of cash on a porting team that can work faster than this.
Also, to be clear, I've unlocked about 95% of the collection, I've beaten all decks but the last 5, my best deck is currently on purple stake and my best hand ever scored 7 million points. I'm not an expert and I've never had one of those insane runs that break the game, but I'm not a novice that doesn't udnerstand the game yet and am just complaining because I don't like losing. I've paid my dues and put in my hours in this game.
All of that complaining aside, I do still enjoy this game and I plan to keep working at beating the game with every deck and trying to unlock all jokers, in the hopes that the console version is finally brought up to parity, but above all, this game makes me hopeful for the whole genre. The game and it's massive unexpected success makes me hope and wish that developers will finally find their way back to what made roguelites so popular. It's the items! It's not these stupid metaprogression unlock systems that the genre is obsessed with over the past like 5 years. It's the items! It's always the items! Balatro is a throwback to about a decade ago, when the items actually mattered and made major changes to your run, keeping things fresh and always keeping you addicted to the idea of "what if I manage to find item X and Y on the same run..." There's a reason The Binding of Isaac is legendary, yet no one cares about the past year's crop of popular (in the community) roguelites like Astral Ascent. It's! The! Items! Stop focusing so much on stupid metaprogression systems and go back to working on having fun, inventive and quirky items that completely mutate your run into something entirely different. I absoluetly love that LocalThunk and Balatro understand this very key concept of roguelites, and I'm hoping the success makes both players and developers re-discover the glory of what a roguelite can be. Stop putting in 7000 unlocks that unlock more unlocks and focus on the items and the builds that they can combine into!
If it wasn't for the RNG, and how the game begins to feel frustrating as you progress from not having any idea what's going on to understanding how to create some basic builds and what jokers are amazing, I would've given this game a perfect score, since it's so much fun despite being an RNG fest that I normally can't stand, and I'm going to love the game even more if it actually does manage to shape the future of roguelites, but at the end of the day, I can't get away from how frustrated I get with wasting my time on a run that could never have been won in the first place and I'm not sure how the design can really be tweaked to be better, aside from just throwing boss blinds out completely. I do hope that this game sees a lifetime sort of like Isaac's and that it changes, shifts and grows over the coming years. I will be checking in on each major content update because there is something special here, even if I don't always love it. I'm still giving this game a high score based on the pure fun factor and how strongly I recommend that you give this game a shot. Balatro is not just the kind of game that has a chance at revitalizing the genre it inhabits, but if you're in a gaming slump, this is the kind of game that might revitalize your love of the gaming hobby as a whole. You really should check it out if you are somehow still on the fence.
2024
Not usually my typical fare, but a friend of mine really wanted me to be their group's fourth, so I was, and I enjoyed myself for most of the evenings after work for a few weeks before everyone got bored. It's a fine game with many fun ideas, and seemingly a developer that wants to make good games, but it's also been a buggy mess since launch and even though we had lots of laughs during those first few weeks, the laughter over accidentally blowing each other up with ridiculous space ordinance does subside and what's left is a game where you run between markers to try to grind materials so you can unlock things in your spaceship base that you never really use and I found myself bored pretty quickly after that initial joy subsided. Good for laughs and blowing some alien bugs up for a few weeks, but also felt pretty shallow and, at the time of release, was definitely a broken mess where almost nothing worked and half the game wasn't implemented. Good times with friends, but perhaps not the religious experience that hype would have you believe it is.
2022
A neat little dice and deck builder that I did enjoy about a dozen hours of, but ultimately decided doesn't quite reach the full mark and that I'll be moving onto something else.
The game itself is kind of a deckbuilder, but thankfully not in the Slay the Spire school, where you always have the same hand and never draw cards, and instead you roll dice based on what equipment you're wearing (better loot equals more dice) and then you spend the mana from the dice on a deck you build between rounds. So, not like STS at all and that's a welcome change!
You prepare your deck, you move freely through a little world where there are bandit ambushes, camps to replenish food and the occasional little side quest (that is resolved when you discover it). You level up and replace cards in your "deck", as well as trying to find better equipment to rise your number of die. There is normal linear mode as well as a more non-linear adventure mode, where you can explore a larger world than in the regular campaign, which I found surprisingly ambitious.
The game looks good, it plays good and everything is solid, but it's also not exceptional. It is, honestly, a forgettable game and I often found myself remembering that it exists when I saw it in my PS5 dashboard, but it's also an enjoyable time while playing it even if it doesn't feel worth remembering. There isn't much to complain about, but also not much to praise, and after having completed all but one or two of the story campaigns, I feel like maybe I've had enough of this game and that it has served its purpose after some dozen hours. Uninstalling and moving on.
The game itself is kind of a deckbuilder, but thankfully not in the Slay the Spire school, where you always have the same hand and never draw cards, and instead you roll dice based on what equipment you're wearing (better loot equals more dice) and then you spend the mana from the dice on a deck you build between rounds. So, not like STS at all and that's a welcome change!
You prepare your deck, you move freely through a little world where there are bandit ambushes, camps to replenish food and the occasional little side quest (that is resolved when you discover it). You level up and replace cards in your "deck", as well as trying to find better equipment to rise your number of die. There is normal linear mode as well as a more non-linear adventure mode, where you can explore a larger world than in the regular campaign, which I found surprisingly ambitious.
The game looks good, it plays good and everything is solid, but it's also not exceptional. It is, honestly, a forgettable game and I often found myself remembering that it exists when I saw it in my PS5 dashboard, but it's also an enjoyable time while playing it even if it doesn't feel worth remembering. There isn't much to complain about, but also not much to praise, and after having completed all but one or two of the story campaigns, I feel like maybe I've had enough of this game and that it has served its purpose after some dozen hours. Uninstalling and moving on.
2022
Seems like it might be a good game for someone who isn't me. Seems like there is depth here, and I've heard good about it, but I just felt immediately bored by more or less all of it. Anemic combat where hits don't really register as you just hold the button down to kill 10 warriors at once, drab visuals and audio and just an overall vibe that didn't want to make me play more. Leaving a review without score just to note that I did try to play it and while I didn't hate it and could have seen myself playing more, I also felt like maybe I should focus on games that immediately spark more joy than this did for me.
2021
As much as I (used to) love roguelites, I really only had one thing in my mind when I was playing through, and enjoying, the original Everspace. This game really ought to be an RPG and not a linear roguelite type thing. I was obviously quite excited that the sequel was going to be what I hoped for, and then disappointed to find that they were going to spend several years in early access, and then excited again when I finally started the finished game and realized that this is more or less exactly the game I was hoping for, and that it is very good.
The original game was a roguelite where you jumped from map to map, in which you could do some dogfighting, explore for loot and sometimes perform a little map-specific tasks for some bonuses. This sequel takes that and builds upon it by retaining the level structure while also building an open world around it. So, to be clear, this isn't a "true" open world game and the game is divided into individual maps with quests, side quests, hidden loot and even races in them, but also a zoomed out map of the whole solar system (of which there are five) that you can fly around freely. However, to be clear; flying around freely between systems really mostly only looks and feels cool and doesn't serve much gameplay purpose as you cannot perform combat or find loot in open space. It's really just a travel route that makes you feel like you're zipping through a system.
Once inside one of the individual maps, it's a full-fledged 3D environment where you can fly around freely and perform quests and find secrets that are often very sneakily hidden. You even fly into houses and tunnels, and there is everything from asteroid fields to massive space stations to mining colonies on the surface of planets and so on, all of which are flown around freely and have little things hidden everywhere, both in the form of having them hidden in a sneaky and hard-to-see crevice and in the form of having little puzzles. Tons of little puzzles. Pushing buttons (with your guns) in sequence, pulling items around using the tractor beam, figuring out what piece goes where.
But most important is, of course, the core, which in this case is the flight and combat controls, and they are nothing short of excellent. On a PS5 controller, at least, this game plays like a dream and I often found myself having to remind myself that I'm actually enjoying how very smooth of an experience this game mostly is. The controls are so perfect that it's easy to forget them and take them for granted, and that's what I had to remind myself about as I was at times getting a little bored of the unfortunately repetitive combat. Just as I was getting a little frustrated with a certain task, I realized that it was actually enjoyable because everything about controlling this game just works. There's nothing about the core controls that feel sloppy, poorly designed or in any other way bad to me and a game's controls are at their very best when you kind of forget about them and have to remind yourself of how good they actually are. Even though I will be getting into negative points later in the review, the core of the game is so very good that I was always entertained and I did actually enjoy myself even if I felt frustrated with something on a more surface level.
The second biggest thing for me is the exploration, which this game offers so much of that it actually became exhausting in the end. There are something like 50 individual maps to explore, and the smallest ones have about 5 secrets to find while the bigger ones have upwards of 25. There is so much to see and do in this game, and all of it is delivered with remarkable and very striking visuals. This game looks damn good, and the controls and visuals combined lead to a very enticing and addictive exploration experience as you try to find secret loot while slowly sneaking through asteroids or blasting full speed through a mechanical tunnel that twists and winds as you boost through it, like you're playing a (good) Star Wars movie. You'll see things you wouldn't believe, like attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion, or C-beams glittering in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. There is so much cool space shit to see that every new map is exciting and impressively beautiful and even the maps that end up being the worst to play are still an impressive experience as you load into the map. Even more impressive is that the game does load you into an area from the direction you entered it, as in you don't always enter a map from the same angle, but the maps still look incredible from any viewpoint.
Other than that, this is your typical space freelancer type game, except maybe on a more slimmed scale and with more of a focus on dogfighting action. You partake in a story campaign of intergalactic warfare, perform side quests for a wide (but perhaps shallow) variety of characters, act like a trader who buys materials that are cheap in one system and sell them in a system where they're expensive, recruit companions and work on upgrading or replacing your ship (as there are about 10 or so different ship types). Pretty typical RPG fare, except in space and with striking visuals and a great feeling of being the kid in The Last Starfighter, blasting away at outlaw fools and earning XP while doing it. There's also a surprisingly deep crafting system, where materials feel like they matter and where many things can be crafted. Those space crystals you mined earlier will be useful for crafting that one item you need to upgrade a companion perk. Oh, and yeah, some of the companion perks as so satisfying and good that I don't think I would've completed this game if it wasn't for at the very least the companion that has perks that help with finding secrets and making sure you've cleared a map completely.
However, as much as I loved zipping around the various and visually distinct solar systems, blasting any outlaw fool enough to stand in my ship's way, tinkering with especially the looks of my ship (since the customization options are great), running a few trade routes and just generally inhabiting this game's world, there are a few glaring flaws that prevent me from giving it a perfect score. The big one being the fact that there's just simply too much of everything. There's too much combat and it's just annoying when enemies absolutely refuse to stop spawning when you're just trying to explore a series of asteroids and find some secrets, and the secrets themselves can also be too much in how often they are hidden in the deepest, darkest crevice, at times making me wonder how anyone ever found some of these secrets without internet guides, both of which combining into making me exhausted with the game at times and making me have to stop playing it because my brain was tired from all of the combat and how incredibly difficult that one secret in the last map was to find even with the help of internet guides and videos. At almost 65 hours, the game is just plain too long, since the story isn't good enough to sustain that much game and the just mentioned fact that both combat and exploration can be so much that you end up drained and unexcited to keep playing. For story hounds, the plot of the game is okay, and I do appreciate that it's a direct story sequel that even has an explanation for why the game isn't a roguelite anymore ("cloning was abolished"), but the writing was clearly created by a german guy who is pretty good at english but isn't quite at a native level and the dialogue is often stiff even when it's not meant to be. Also, the cutscenes that are barely animated motion comic style with unfinished-looking concept art-level drawings are really just unfortunate and should've been left on the cutting room floor. Just do dialogue boxes if you can't do better than concept art motion comic. I'd also like to underline, and be very clear, that this is a more lightweight game than I might have made it sound. It does have all of the elements of Freelancer and similar games, but on a smaller scale and the game is overall more action-oriented than some other games in the genre. This game is great, but it's not as deep as some might hope.
In summary, this was the game I wanted, and I'm very happy with it and had an overall great time, even if there was too much of the game I wanted and I felt like the game dragged pretty badly towards the end. The endgame content with rifts and incursions and all isn't especially fun either, and I truly hate the boring design idea of only being allowed 1-3 legendaries (when your ship has something like 15 different equipment slots that you are not allowed to fill with legendaries), but the journey towards the endgame is consistently fantastic and just the near-perfect controls, the visually striking maps, the engaging exploration and a little bit of the cool dogfighting leaves me very satisfied with this game and I really hope that they keep doing what it seems like they've been doing for hte past decade, which is to keep iterating on their space dogfighting game starting from Galaxy on Fire to now. I hope they keep expanding their game code and skills and that their next game is an Everspace 3 that maybe offers a little bit of on-foot controls, because I had a fantastic time with this game and I hope they keep building towards bigger and better with each new game.
The original game was a roguelite where you jumped from map to map, in which you could do some dogfighting, explore for loot and sometimes perform a little map-specific tasks for some bonuses. This sequel takes that and builds upon it by retaining the level structure while also building an open world around it. So, to be clear, this isn't a "true" open world game and the game is divided into individual maps with quests, side quests, hidden loot and even races in them, but also a zoomed out map of the whole solar system (of which there are five) that you can fly around freely. However, to be clear; flying around freely between systems really mostly only looks and feels cool and doesn't serve much gameplay purpose as you cannot perform combat or find loot in open space. It's really just a travel route that makes you feel like you're zipping through a system.
Once inside one of the individual maps, it's a full-fledged 3D environment where you can fly around freely and perform quests and find secrets that are often very sneakily hidden. You even fly into houses and tunnels, and there is everything from asteroid fields to massive space stations to mining colonies on the surface of planets and so on, all of which are flown around freely and have little things hidden everywhere, both in the form of having them hidden in a sneaky and hard-to-see crevice and in the form of having little puzzles. Tons of little puzzles. Pushing buttons (with your guns) in sequence, pulling items around using the tractor beam, figuring out what piece goes where.
But most important is, of course, the core, which in this case is the flight and combat controls, and they are nothing short of excellent. On a PS5 controller, at least, this game plays like a dream and I often found myself having to remind myself that I'm actually enjoying how very smooth of an experience this game mostly is. The controls are so perfect that it's easy to forget them and take them for granted, and that's what I had to remind myself about as I was at times getting a little bored of the unfortunately repetitive combat. Just as I was getting a little frustrated with a certain task, I realized that it was actually enjoyable because everything about controlling this game just works. There's nothing about the core controls that feel sloppy, poorly designed or in any other way bad to me and a game's controls are at their very best when you kind of forget about them and have to remind yourself of how good they actually are. Even though I will be getting into negative points later in the review, the core of the game is so very good that I was always entertained and I did actually enjoy myself even if I felt frustrated with something on a more surface level.
The second biggest thing for me is the exploration, which this game offers so much of that it actually became exhausting in the end. There are something like 50 individual maps to explore, and the smallest ones have about 5 secrets to find while the bigger ones have upwards of 25. There is so much to see and do in this game, and all of it is delivered with remarkable and very striking visuals. This game looks damn good, and the controls and visuals combined lead to a very enticing and addictive exploration experience as you try to find secret loot while slowly sneaking through asteroids or blasting full speed through a mechanical tunnel that twists and winds as you boost through it, like you're playing a (good) Star Wars movie. You'll see things you wouldn't believe, like attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion, or C-beams glittering in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. There is so much cool space shit to see that every new map is exciting and impressively beautiful and even the maps that end up being the worst to play are still an impressive experience as you load into the map. Even more impressive is that the game does load you into an area from the direction you entered it, as in you don't always enter a map from the same angle, but the maps still look incredible from any viewpoint.
Other than that, this is your typical space freelancer type game, except maybe on a more slimmed scale and with more of a focus on dogfighting action. You partake in a story campaign of intergalactic warfare, perform side quests for a wide (but perhaps shallow) variety of characters, act like a trader who buys materials that are cheap in one system and sell them in a system where they're expensive, recruit companions and work on upgrading or replacing your ship (as there are about 10 or so different ship types). Pretty typical RPG fare, except in space and with striking visuals and a great feeling of being the kid in The Last Starfighter, blasting away at outlaw fools and earning XP while doing it. There's also a surprisingly deep crafting system, where materials feel like they matter and where many things can be crafted. Those space crystals you mined earlier will be useful for crafting that one item you need to upgrade a companion perk. Oh, and yeah, some of the companion perks as so satisfying and good that I don't think I would've completed this game if it wasn't for at the very least the companion that has perks that help with finding secrets and making sure you've cleared a map completely.
However, as much as I loved zipping around the various and visually distinct solar systems, blasting any outlaw fool enough to stand in my ship's way, tinkering with especially the looks of my ship (since the customization options are great), running a few trade routes and just generally inhabiting this game's world, there are a few glaring flaws that prevent me from giving it a perfect score. The big one being the fact that there's just simply too much of everything. There's too much combat and it's just annoying when enemies absolutely refuse to stop spawning when you're just trying to explore a series of asteroids and find some secrets, and the secrets themselves can also be too much in how often they are hidden in the deepest, darkest crevice, at times making me wonder how anyone ever found some of these secrets without internet guides, both of which combining into making me exhausted with the game at times and making me have to stop playing it because my brain was tired from all of the combat and how incredibly difficult that one secret in the last map was to find even with the help of internet guides and videos. At almost 65 hours, the game is just plain too long, since the story isn't good enough to sustain that much game and the just mentioned fact that both combat and exploration can be so much that you end up drained and unexcited to keep playing. For story hounds, the plot of the game is okay, and I do appreciate that it's a direct story sequel that even has an explanation for why the game isn't a roguelite anymore ("cloning was abolished"), but the writing was clearly created by a german guy who is pretty good at english but isn't quite at a native level and the dialogue is often stiff even when it's not meant to be. Also, the cutscenes that are barely animated motion comic style with unfinished-looking concept art-level drawings are really just unfortunate and should've been left on the cutting room floor. Just do dialogue boxes if you can't do better than concept art motion comic. I'd also like to underline, and be very clear, that this is a more lightweight game than I might have made it sound. It does have all of the elements of Freelancer and similar games, but on a smaller scale and the game is overall more action-oriented than some other games in the genre. This game is great, but it's not as deep as some might hope.
In summary, this was the game I wanted, and I'm very happy with it and had an overall great time, even if there was too much of the game I wanted and I felt like the game dragged pretty badly towards the end. The endgame content with rifts and incursions and all isn't especially fun either, and I truly hate the boring design idea of only being allowed 1-3 legendaries (when your ship has something like 15 different equipment slots that you are not allowed to fill with legendaries), but the journey towards the endgame is consistently fantastic and just the near-perfect controls, the visually striking maps, the engaging exploration and a little bit of the cool dogfighting leaves me very satisfied with this game and I really hope that they keep doing what it seems like they've been doing for hte past decade, which is to keep iterating on their space dogfighting game starting from Galaxy on Fire to now. I hope they keep expanding their game code and skills and that their next game is an Everspace 3 that maybe offers a little bit of on-foot controls, because I had a fantastic time with this game and I hope they keep building towards bigger and better with each new game.
2023
I think I'm done... Paleo Pines begins as a typical farming and friendship simulator, except with the obvious twist that you can befriend, ride and task dinosaurs with everything you would normally do in a game like this. It's a nicely crafted game that plays well for what it is, and the premise is cute fun for a couple of dozen hours, before it becomes too obvious that there's too little to actually do in this game and that it actually becomes more and more dull as you progress.
The game is your typical Stardew Valley or Harvest Moon inspired game where you inherit a farm for some reason or another, except there are dinos in this farm valley, and so you go about performing the usual tasks of cleaning the farm up, growing some crops and, in this case, taming some dinos to use both to ride around on and to ask them to do some light farm tasks. There's also a story, also about dinoosaurs, and a little somewhat open world with metroidvania-ish sections where you need a certain dino to progress.
This is the fun part. Cleaning up your farm, looking out for better dinos that could perhaps help take out that obstacle in your path and growing a few vegetables is all well and good. You ride your friend Lucky around, then you recruit whatever the spitting dino is called to help with farm watering (though it's still manual even though you ride the water dino) and then another few dinos that can break fallen logs, rocks and bushes respectively and you spend some 20-30 hours just cleaning up the farm, building pens and little sleeping tents as well as feeding troughs for your dino friends while also running back and forth between the hub city and your farm to tend to and sell your crops.
However, as the game grows and two more areas are added, it starts to become clear that this is really all you do and I also started to realize just how much work the developers want us to put in with just a few mechanics. Have to do hundreds of daily requests in order to raise friendship levels to unlock this thing or that thing, have to grow thousands of carrots and potatoes to master all dishes. Once you've explored every area and used the dinos to open up the "secret" paths to find even more dinos and resources, the sense of discovery disappears and the only thing left is tedious slog. Wake up, ride to town to complete the same tasks as every day, water plants that feel like they take forever to grow, repeat, and there's so much more of that game left once you finish the exploration and the majority of the main quest. Even on a fast dino, there's too much riding in a straight line for too long to get to the next area only to drop off a thing for like 10 seconds and then ride back.
There's also a major problem with the dinos, in that they can level up and they do so by performing the task they're meant to complete, so the triceratops and its related species levels up by smashing rocks. The problem is that rocks, logs and bushes are finite and only very few of them respawn, meaning that you can't reasonably level more than one dino per type and you probably really shouldn't sell your wood and rock, like I did, since you can't get a steady stream of new ones. Dinos do level up from walking and it's nice that this makes it benificial to bring a whole little troupe when you go exploring, but it's slow going and the true leveling comes from performing their tasks, which ultimately means you can't really partake in the Pokemon-like system where you're meant to constantly hunt for dinos and wanting to replace common ones with ultra rare ones, because the ultra rare one will restart at level 1 and level 1 stamina is so low they're nearly useless. This is a bigger problem than I think even I realize, as it really
All that complaining aside, this is a good game that is fun at first for some 20 hours, then becomes a chore and I'm always disappointed when a game is too boring to finish as I'm a completionist that always wants to finish everything, but this one isn't getting finished. There was some fun recruiting the first few dinos and clearing up the farm, and this is a finely made game that is a cut or two above a lot of these lesser-known cozy games, but it just far overstays its welcome while offering too few tasks and I won't be sticking around to complete everything.
The game is your typical Stardew Valley or Harvest Moon inspired game where you inherit a farm for some reason or another, except there are dinos in this farm valley, and so you go about performing the usual tasks of cleaning the farm up, growing some crops and, in this case, taming some dinos to use both to ride around on and to ask them to do some light farm tasks. There's also a story, also about dinoosaurs, and a little somewhat open world with metroidvania-ish sections where you need a certain dino to progress.
This is the fun part. Cleaning up your farm, looking out for better dinos that could perhaps help take out that obstacle in your path and growing a few vegetables is all well and good. You ride your friend Lucky around, then you recruit whatever the spitting dino is called to help with farm watering (though it's still manual even though you ride the water dino) and then another few dinos that can break fallen logs, rocks and bushes respectively and you spend some 20-30 hours just cleaning up the farm, building pens and little sleeping tents as well as feeding troughs for your dino friends while also running back and forth between the hub city and your farm to tend to and sell your crops.
However, as the game grows and two more areas are added, it starts to become clear that this is really all you do and I also started to realize just how much work the developers want us to put in with just a few mechanics. Have to do hundreds of daily requests in order to raise friendship levels to unlock this thing or that thing, have to grow thousands of carrots and potatoes to master all dishes. Once you've explored every area and used the dinos to open up the "secret" paths to find even more dinos and resources, the sense of discovery disappears and the only thing left is tedious slog. Wake up, ride to town to complete the same tasks as every day, water plants that feel like they take forever to grow, repeat, and there's so much more of that game left once you finish the exploration and the majority of the main quest. Even on a fast dino, there's too much riding in a straight line for too long to get to the next area only to drop off a thing for like 10 seconds and then ride back.
There's also a major problem with the dinos, in that they can level up and they do so by performing the task they're meant to complete, so the triceratops and its related species levels up by smashing rocks. The problem is that rocks, logs and bushes are finite and only very few of them respawn, meaning that you can't reasonably level more than one dino per type and you probably really shouldn't sell your wood and rock, like I did, since you can't get a steady stream of new ones. Dinos do level up from walking and it's nice that this makes it benificial to bring a whole little troupe when you go exploring, but it's slow going and the true leveling comes from performing their tasks, which ultimately means you can't really partake in the Pokemon-like system where you're meant to constantly hunt for dinos and wanting to replace common ones with ultra rare ones, because the ultra rare one will restart at level 1 and level 1 stamina is so low they're nearly useless. This is a bigger problem than I think even I realize, as it really
All that complaining aside, this is a good game that is fun at first for some 20 hours, then becomes a chore and I'm always disappointed when a game is too boring to finish as I'm a completionist that always wants to finish everything, but this one isn't getting finished. There was some fun recruiting the first few dinos and clearing up the farm, and this is a finely made game that is a cut or two above a lot of these lesser-known cozy games, but it just far overstays its welcome while offering too few tasks and I won't be sticking around to complete everything.
2021
I don't really get it. It's kind of Pokemon with some jelly farming and some foraging, but it's all so slow and it feels like the tutorial just kind of stops and like there's so much left unexplained, and not in an exciting way, when it lets you loose in the game. Maybe I wasn't paying enough attention, but I found myself bored with not knowing what to do next or how to achieve it, and just running laps, picking up flowers and stuff and hunting for jellies with good traits while grinding away at the big jelly delivery quest, and what really killed my interest was that I really can't figure out why this shrine won't take my jelly crystal. I really do insist that it's the same icon, and I've even done it twice, but it won't take it and now I just feel stuck and bored and will be moving on.
Yeah... I've tried a few times now and, while this isn't a bad game by any means, I'm just not really vibing with it at all. The base combat is kinda boring and simplistic, as the diversity and depth is supposed to come from the various skulls you can obtain, but I've only found a few really fun skulls and a bunch of boring ones. Items seem overcomplicated and and pretty boring too, and this is one of those slow dripfeed games where metaprogression takes an eternity because it's +4% this and +6% that. On top of all that, I'm not really feeling the aesthetics and find especially the environment graphics to be quite dull and uninspiring. I will now accept that this game is not for me even though some love it, stop trying to find enjoyment in it and uninstall it once and for all.
2018
In real life, I don't shoplift or steal from people, but in your typical open world RPG, I'm a kleptomanic that pockets everything and gets addicted to trying to steal from that locked chest in the restricted area with 12 guards, so I was excited to play Thief Simulator, since it's a game that's only that.
I had this on my wishlist like five years ago, but I guess I removed it because it looks cheap and lame, and it kind of is cheap and lame. It's very obvious that this game was in the first wave of the modern and more popular work sim (not to be confused with the classic and very boring german work sims) and that it was made with stock Unity functionality. It has the same control feel and feature set as all of these games from the same genre and era. You can interact with objects in the world, in this case by stealing them, and you have access to a fake internet you can do things with, as well travel between a few locations. Standard Unity work sim stuff where nothing stands out and nothing feels technically (or artistically) impressive, but it works anyway because stealing digital stuff with no actual victims is just so much fun.
The game offers a hideout, a pawn shop and a few neighborhoods for you to loot. The first one is low and middle class and have little to no security and no guards. In those areas, you can either install a camera or manually spy on the family that lives there until you've fully tracked their routines and know when you can go in without witnesses. You usually get inside via a hole in the fence, or vines that you can climb. On very rare occasion, you have to park your van next to the fence so you can jump over. Inside, you dodge cameras and residents (if you need to go in while people are still at home) and lift small things to put in your backpack, while larger things have to manually carried to your getaway vehicle. This is the fun part, and creeping around people's houses does have a satisfying sense of tension, especially in houses that are never truly empty and where you have to perform yoru thievery with at least one resident still at home. What I would do is scout the place, plan my route in and out and try to make sure it's an empty path where residents/guards don't go and where I can haul as much as I can fit in my car out without being spotted. Thankfully, the other people don't care about opened car gates or garage doors for some reason (though they do care about open doors and windows), so that helped in planning a lot of escape routes. Fill my bag, try to grab both the TV and some art and then go home and fence it.
You fence by either going to the computer to fill special orders, like how someone wants four PC monitors and so you can either steal all four at once or you can stash them in your storage until you have the correct amount. If there are no special orders, you go to the pawn shop and sell it off. You can even steal a few cars, and there are even mechanics for taking it apart and selling for example the full wheel set. That part was surprisingly ambitious. You use the cash you gain to purchase upgrades to your equipment as the story and security progresses and asks more and more of you.
The other neighborhoods are the classy area with tons of security but few guards, and then the industrial/fancy area which has both tons of security and tons of guards. Difference between guards and tenants is that guards never leave and never take breaks, so there's always people in the industrial area. There's also the bonus, "free DLC", farming area that comes with its own (very barebones) subplot and a reputation mechanic, which I wish was in the whole game and not just one DLC area. The first two and the bonus area are all fine and enjoyable, but the final area is such a pain to get through, because this is where the problems start to crop up. In the previous areas, it was fine that other humans are frustratingly observant and that you go down immediately if a guard or cop (or even some residents) catch up with you and tase you, and they can tase you from pretty far and often through objects and such, so if you get seen and there's no closet to hide in nearby, you'll probably get tased and respawn at your car, having to do the whole heist over again. This is fine in the early, and easier, areas, but the latter areas are a painful trial and error party where you have to start over like a million times, and that's when you really start feeling the kind of brutal load times for what a small game it is running on a PS5. Like so many Unity games, this one also struggles with saving and saving freezes the game for longer and longer the more your save grows, and ultimately, I had to quit the game because the game somehow destroyed my save to the point where it would ONLY remember a save I had from monday evening, and any progress I made would still be done if I had the game still open, but if I shut down or the game crashed, the save would revert to the same point. The third time that happened, I quit out and uninstalled because I wasn't about to the final 5-10 hours of the game in one go since my save apparently decided to stop working.
In short, this is a cheap and basic Unity work sim with a fun theme and mechanics that are engaging, addictive and entertaining in the early areas, but the whole game becomes a pretty major drag in the late game for both game design and technical reasons. I enjoyed and can recommend the first half of the game, and will as such give it a decent score, but I don't think anyone will have fun with the final area and final third of the story campaign. It does help that I paid €3 for this on sale and I would probably have been less enthused if I had paid like €20+.
I had this on my wishlist like five years ago, but I guess I removed it because it looks cheap and lame, and it kind of is cheap and lame. It's very obvious that this game was in the first wave of the modern and more popular work sim (not to be confused with the classic and very boring german work sims) and that it was made with stock Unity functionality. It has the same control feel and feature set as all of these games from the same genre and era. You can interact with objects in the world, in this case by stealing them, and you have access to a fake internet you can do things with, as well travel between a few locations. Standard Unity work sim stuff where nothing stands out and nothing feels technically (or artistically) impressive, but it works anyway because stealing digital stuff with no actual victims is just so much fun.
The game offers a hideout, a pawn shop and a few neighborhoods for you to loot. The first one is low and middle class and have little to no security and no guards. In those areas, you can either install a camera or manually spy on the family that lives there until you've fully tracked their routines and know when you can go in without witnesses. You usually get inside via a hole in the fence, or vines that you can climb. On very rare occasion, you have to park your van next to the fence so you can jump over. Inside, you dodge cameras and residents (if you need to go in while people are still at home) and lift small things to put in your backpack, while larger things have to manually carried to your getaway vehicle. This is the fun part, and creeping around people's houses does have a satisfying sense of tension, especially in houses that are never truly empty and where you have to perform yoru thievery with at least one resident still at home. What I would do is scout the place, plan my route in and out and try to make sure it's an empty path where residents/guards don't go and where I can haul as much as I can fit in my car out without being spotted. Thankfully, the other people don't care about opened car gates or garage doors for some reason (though they do care about open doors and windows), so that helped in planning a lot of escape routes. Fill my bag, try to grab both the TV and some art and then go home and fence it.
You fence by either going to the computer to fill special orders, like how someone wants four PC monitors and so you can either steal all four at once or you can stash them in your storage until you have the correct amount. If there are no special orders, you go to the pawn shop and sell it off. You can even steal a few cars, and there are even mechanics for taking it apart and selling for example the full wheel set. That part was surprisingly ambitious. You use the cash you gain to purchase upgrades to your equipment as the story and security progresses and asks more and more of you.
The other neighborhoods are the classy area with tons of security but few guards, and then the industrial/fancy area which has both tons of security and tons of guards. Difference between guards and tenants is that guards never leave and never take breaks, so there's always people in the industrial area. There's also the bonus, "free DLC", farming area that comes with its own (very barebones) subplot and a reputation mechanic, which I wish was in the whole game and not just one DLC area. The first two and the bonus area are all fine and enjoyable, but the final area is such a pain to get through, because this is where the problems start to crop up. In the previous areas, it was fine that other humans are frustratingly observant and that you go down immediately if a guard or cop (or even some residents) catch up with you and tase you, and they can tase you from pretty far and often through objects and such, so if you get seen and there's no closet to hide in nearby, you'll probably get tased and respawn at your car, having to do the whole heist over again. This is fine in the early, and easier, areas, but the latter areas are a painful trial and error party where you have to start over like a million times, and that's when you really start feeling the kind of brutal load times for what a small game it is running on a PS5. Like so many Unity games, this one also struggles with saving and saving freezes the game for longer and longer the more your save grows, and ultimately, I had to quit the game because the game somehow destroyed my save to the point where it would ONLY remember a save I had from monday evening, and any progress I made would still be done if I had the game still open, but if I shut down or the game crashed, the save would revert to the same point. The third time that happened, I quit out and uninstalled because I wasn't about to the final 5-10 hours of the game in one go since my save apparently decided to stop working.
In short, this is a cheap and basic Unity work sim with a fun theme and mechanics that are engaging, addictive and entertaining in the early areas, but the whole game becomes a pretty major drag in the late game for both game design and technical reasons. I enjoyed and can recommend the first half of the game, and will as such give it a decent score, but I don't think anyone will have fun with the final area and final third of the story campaign. It does help that I paid €3 for this on sale and I would probably have been less enthused if I had paid like €20+.