As someone who really likes the challenge and difficulty in souls-likes but doesn't invest nearly as much energy into understanding their UI or RPG/stats aspect, Another Crab's Treasure is a game that I had to love.

The enemies and bosses, the systems like the shells and unlockable skills, and the story are all great. And while everything isn't perfect (expect some 3D jank and cutscenes feel cheap compared to the rest of the game), each of these elements work together as a fantastic whole that I loved playing through.

I do not have a lot of experience with these point and click style adventure games. In fact this might be the first one I have ever played, and for that, its quite good. First things first, the world is amazing, gorgeous in setting, sound, and world building. The idea of having multiple languages of people all living in close proximity, and us being an outsider trying to decipher said languages from context clues makes for a fantastic puzzle concept; and the execution of such here is simply superb. Having a book filled with visual representations and translations from the other languages in the game, combined with a chart of glyphs to reference back to works well. I never felt too stuck, or as if any answer was too obscure of weird for me too reasonably figure out on my own. If anything, the world can be a little annoying to traverse if you forget something on the other side of the map, and the over arching story does fumble in my opinion near the end. But this is still a great title, and definitely one worth of play if this is the sort of thing that interests you.

Chants of Sennaar is a game I never expected to like as much as I did! the premise of the game is simple; you simply go around this mystical tower, translating languages and trying to form links between the inhabitants. the puzzles are never too difficult, but rewarding once you figure them out and give that joy of discovery. the story is quite low-key and leaves a lot to interpretation, but I think it works in a puzzle game like this. the graphics are quite neat, but when I started the game they felt a bit off-putting and the colors were little too bright for my eyes, but the further into the game I went, I really grew to love the overall aesthetic and the world.

my only issue was the forced stealth in couple levels, while none of these sections were too difficult, they still took the enjoyment out of the game. in addition some of the answers felt a bit obtuse at times and I had to search some stuff up, but this wasn't a huge detriment to my enjoyment. ~

I think Animal Well is an example of a subgenre that fundamentally does not work in games: the overly esoteric puzzler largely cracked through community-effort. These games have existed before, though they're never been overly populous, but Animal Well is a particularly egregious example of the trend.

Other games of this ilk, Fez and Void Stranger come to mind, are conceivably solvable by oneself with a lot of trial and error. Often that's what these games come down to: a "How would I know to do that?" level of ridiculous solution. This blow is softened when the effort is outsourced to a community who can work together to try everything in a fraction of the time it would take one person. How much you feel like you'd enjoy being a part of this discovery process will vary, but something is undeniable here: It only happens once. If you miss the boat on the community puzzle solving then all that exists are the solutions published across countless websites. The way these games are intended to be played has a very rapid expiration date given how the internet works, but at least these other titles can conceivably be solo'd.

Animal Well does not share that trait. There is a very in-your-face puzzle that can only be solved by networking with at least 50 other people to compare notes about the unique item in your current save. The game explicitly leans into the idea that the secrets will be solved as team; the game explicitly asks you to turn to the internet to get through it.

I bought this game a few days after release and this puzzle had already been solved. There was nothing for me to do. And hey, once I am already forced to just look up a pre-existing solution, why not do it for other puzzles? They may also require outside assistance.

It's such a baffling design decision. Animal Well will spend the vast majority of its existence as an old game. The "gameplay" portion of this puzzle is already finished and will never exist again. It dings the experience solely to facilitate the short-lived fun of a few dozen people in some Discord. Incredibly short-sighted.

And this is why I think all of the games in this niche subgenre just do not work. They all share the same issue: the nature of setting their game in a physical environment is at odds with the effort required to work through esoteric puzzles. The cost of combing through areas for hidden compartments or niche interactions with forgotten items is much higher when travel time, platforming, and being put in danger are necessitated.
The motivation to try tapping the interact button three times on every bush sprite vanishes when I have to go through the spike platform zone.

There "game" portion of the computer game becomes busy work in the way of trial and error brute force puzzle solving. Better conveyance would solve this, but of course then the puzzles themselves wouldn't be needlessly secretive. To some, it's so much more interesting to have a secret series of collectables that require setting up your printer than it is to save 12 hours time by indicating their existence. To others, it's laborious.

Without focusing on these more involved puzzles, Animal Well is simply lacking. The platforming isn't fun despite some extra, hidden techniques hidden in the game's inventory. The aesthetic is both uninspired and severely misguided; artificial scanlines are not only ugly but at-odds with the need to pore over the finer details of the map. The base game content in what has been called the first two "layers" is too short to justify the purchase.

Buy Animal Well if you enjoy looking up solutions online to feel clever about the work others have already done. Buy Animal Well if you enjoy parking your RV at a campground rather than pitching a tent in anything resembling wilderness.

Dark souls 2 não foi dirigido pelo Miyazaki, porque ele estava trabalhando em outro projeto. Um projeto exclusivo para o novo console da Sony na época, o Playstation 4. Miyazaki estava trabalhando no Bloodborne, então a maioria dos recursos que a FromSoftware tinha, foi utilizado para o desenvolvimento desse jogo já que era um exclusivo de grande porte Sony, que também estava sendo co-desenvolvido pela SIE Japan Studio. Então o Desenvolvimento da continuação de um dos jogos mais aclamados de todos os tempos, Dark Souls, foi deixado para o time B da FromSoftware trabalhar. Pelo comando de dois novos diretores (Tomohiro Shibuya e Yui tanimura) e pela supervisão do Miyazaki, foi feito um dos jogos mais controversos de todos os tempos, DARK SOULS 2.

Dark Souls 2 é o jogo que possui a maior quantidade de bossfights da franquia Soulsborne (obviamente excluindo Elden Ring), e é incrível como nehuma delas me anima ou apresenta uma grande dificuldade, e os que apresentam alguma dificuldade não é nem por causa do boss em si e sim pelo caminho até ele, que é LOTADO de inimigos.

Uma das coisas que mais gosto nos jogos da FromSoftware e que também extremamente memoráveis são suas trilhas sonoras, que são lindas, tristes, desesperadoras, épicas e acima de tudo contam uma história. No Dark souls 2 eu não senti nada disso, nenhuma música desse jogo é memorável, a única que consigo lembrar de cabeça é a de Majula, tirando essa todas são esquecíveis.

As áreas iniciais são muito bem feitas porque elas detalham bem como vai ser o combate do jogo, CHEIO, LOTADO, ABARROTADO DE INIMIGOS. Na edição "Scholar of The First Sin" eles tiveram a brilhante idéia de colocar mais inimigos. Como essa versão foi a primeira que eu joguei, tive uma impressão mais negativa do jogo. Jogando a versão original fiquei impressionado que Iron Keep e Amana Shrine ( duas áreas do jogo) foram bem menos ruins de se atravessar.

Dark Souls 2 tem uma das melhores idéias da franquia, por exemplo, Bonfire Asthetics, Power Stance, Soul Vessel, mas todas essas coisas acabaram sendo ocultadas pelo level design questionavel, bossfights ruins, hitboxes bugadas pelo stat de ADP, Ganks irritantes, Runbacks dolorosas. Eu sinceramente poderia ficar muito mais tempo escrevendo sobre os problemas desse jogo, mas eu não vou, porque sou preguiçoso.

Dark Souls 2 é um jogo que podia ser muito bom, mas por causa do seu desenvolvimento problemático acabou sendo um jogo ruim e frustrante.

DS2 MOMENT

4/10

I was not expecting to love this as much as I did. It's not perfect for sure, but what it did right was more than enough to push it to 5 stars for me!

The combat felt THE best I've experienced in a soulslike outside of Fromsoft, even surpassing Dark Souls 2 or Lies of P for me. Aggro Crab just gets it somehow! My only gripe with the combat is just that the game got a little bit too easy towards the end. I think this is because you can unlock so many powerups that you get to a point where you can just mow enemies down without much trouble. I fought the final boss with full upgrades and took almost no damage (I didn't use assist mode a single time except to get the gun achievement post game). I would've loved to see a NG+ mode or boss rush to address this or just better scaling at least.

The platforming and movement were an absolute joy. Rolling around in one of the many incredibly creative shells and using the grappling hook had a great sense of speed. Sure some platforming sections could be janky but it never bothered me to the point of frustration. I wasn't even expecting the platforming going in so the level of quality it's at was a pleasant surprise. It also sounds like the team is hard at work on fixing bugs as well. Speaking of bugs, most of the ones I experienced just had to do with me getting launched after using certain moves. This also didn't happen often enough to frustrate me either.

The story is the other part that was a huge surprise. I was fully expecting the story to just be goofy crab shenanigans and there's for sure a lot of crab/ocean related humor that was mostly just fine and sometimes fell flat, but the main character actually goes through a lot of meaningful growth, the story gets pretty dark and serious, and it even had me on the verge of tears a few times. It wasn't a life changing story by any means, but it felt way more epic and meaningful than I could've anticipated.

The game also has a lot of references to other games which were kind of fun to discover though it felt like there were a little too many references at times. Now and then the attempts at humor even went a bit too far imo. Still, it was a great experience.

HIGHLY recommend this game to anyone who enjoys soulslike games or is looking for a challenge/different experience. I have heard about more bugs on other platforms so it could be worth waiting a while for more bug fixes. I'm feeling pretty strongly that this'll be my GOTY this year.

Soul of the mind, key to life’s ether.
Soul of the lost, withdrawn from its vessel.
Let strength be granted, so the world might be mended… So the world might be mended…

I don’t know how else to start this, so I’ll be blunt: Demon’s Souls is absolutely genius. This game is the definition of “lighting in a bottle” and we may never get to see this level of artistry from Miyazaki ever again.
Demon’s Souls is a title that is often looked at as nothing more than a stepping stone to what would eventually become the gaming giant that is the Souls-like subgenre, and frankly having now played it I find statements like this to be incredibly insulting. Demon’s Souls is a game that challenges every single so-called rule of game design in pursuit of providing players with a truly unique experience, something unlike anything else they’ve played before. That’s not to say it’s nothing more than an exercise in throwing shit at the wall, however; Demon’s Souls goes above and beyond to blend all of its seemingly disjointed parts together to pull you into the land of Boletaria as best as the PS3 allows it. It is daring, it is horrifying, it’s melancholic, it’s rough around the edges, but above all it shines bright with a soul unlike any other.
There was a point in Demon’s Souls, about 10 hours in, where I stopped dead in my tracks to take in my surroundings. Listening for any potential threats beyond the fog in front of me, looking for alternative routes to explore, thinking of the gear I had on me, soaking in the atmosphere. This wasn’t anything new; by this point I had already done this countless times, but for some reason this one stuck with me. It was the realization that I had been pulled into the grim world of Demon’s Souls just as much as the protagonist I was playing as. It’s not a feeling I get very often with games these days.
Demon’s Souls is a very unconventional game, but every aspect of it is working in one way or another towards pulling the player deeper into its deep fog. The existence of Soul Form encourages slow, methodical play that puts the player in the protagonist’s shoes, allowing time to absorb the thick atmosphere of Boletaria. World Tendency accomplishes much of the same, with the added bonus of giving certain choices that much more weight by directly affecting the world around you. This same philosophy extends to weight limit, weapon durability, shortcuts, the cling ring, the list goes on. Bosses in particular are a great example of this.
Bosses aren’t just about rolling all over the arena, but rather about exploiting a weakness and using your knowledge of the game mechanics to defeat them effectively, the way a real adventurer would. Bosses in Demon’s Souls are fought just as much outside of the fog door as inside. Take the Old Hero, for example; his attacks are relentless and do a ton of damage, but because he’s blind you can sneak around him and get hits in before he realizes you’re there. You can take this a step further by wearing the thief’s ring, which makes it harder for enemies to detect you, and makes it nigh impossible for him to even scratch you despite all his might. No one ever tells you the Old Hero is blind; you’re expected to figure that out on the fly. There’s no NPC to give you the thief’s ring right before this encounter, in fact the thief’s ring is found in a completely separate area. Demon’s Souls respects your intelligence enough to let you put the pieces together without any help. You don’t overcome these obstacles as a battle fantasy powerhouse, but rather as a clever adventurer trying to make it work with whatever tools you’ve got at your disposal. Immersion is the word that gets thrown around, and that’s exactly what Demon’s Souls excels at.
Of course, not everything in Demon’s Souls is a home run. Due to FromSoft experimenting with bosses some of them end up falling flat, the Dragon God being the most obvious example of this. It’s not even that I hate it, but it’s such an underwhelming encounter considering how awesome the Dragon God’s design is. Leechmonger is another that comes to mind, just kind of being there and not really having much going on outside of how repulsive leeches are. While on the topic of negatives, I find the moon grass to be infinitely inferior to the estus system the later games would implement. Not exactly a hot take. If anything I think the moon grass ends up working against the immersion the game tries to achieve by taking the player completely out of the experience just to farm some healing. It can be a bit frustrating at times, honestly.
All of this is to say I have a great deal of respect for Demon’s Souls. It’s a game with tons of heart and attention to detail poured into it, and I’m a sucker for those. It’s taken me years to enter the fog and tackle this one, but it’s been well worth the wait for such a lovely experience. It may not be for everyone, but I’d encourage you to at least try it if you haven’t done so already. You might just get a glimpse of a soul unlike any other.

The worst thing the internet ever did to me way back when was selling me on the idea of Dark Souls as this SUPER HARD GAMER series for GAMERS! GIT GUD and PREPARE TO DIE! When in reality it’s this really offbeat and interesting interpretation of an RPG where even though it’s entirely skill-based, and it can be pretty hard, there’s still more than enough to form personal attachments with outside of the gameplay itself. It’s very light on narrative but fosters mechanical storytelling through its nonlinearity and some of its wonkier mechanics. Getting cursed in Depths and having to climb my way out, having my weapon nearly break halfway through a bossfight and having to swap around on the fly; two emergent situations that aren’t really all that significant, but were memorable enough to hold onto and help my playthroughs feel ‘mine’. Working towards the Dragonslayer Spear only to realise I just transformed my only good weapon into something I’m 10(!!) levels away from being able to use would probably come off as cheap in any other game, but I found myself eager to work around this sudden frustrating wrench in my build when the whole game builds itself around putting you in uncomfortable situations and telling you to deal with it.

It’s a vibes game to me, really. It’s hard for me to imagine there’s many of that GIT GUD crowd still grinding out DS1 when games like DS3, Sekiro and Elden Ring exist because it just doesn’t offer the same mechanical depth or extreme upper limit of challenge compared to them, and it only gets easier when you realise you can deal with most of the enemies in the game by circle strafing and backstabbing where possible. But that’s not the point, right? It’s more than just a set of challenges, it’s a world to be explored and overcome. Combat encounters aren’t just enemies to be killed and walked past; they’re part of the world they live in, to transform threatening environments into dangerous ones and communicate the hostility of the world. “Easy” sections lighter on combat allow themselves to exist in order to punctuate the danger for feelings of peace, introspection, foreboding; Kiln of the First Flame, Lost Izalith, the empty space in Anor Londo. Challenge is part of the aesthetic, but it’s not *the* aesthetic.

Something I noticed even when I was playing DS3 as my first Souls game, and have only grown more vindicated on as I’ve gone back, is that the slow combat is much better to emphasise the games’ stellar visual design than the faster-paced lean the newer games have taken. Taking DS3 as the example, most combat encounters with anything too much harder than basic Hollows take a lot of focus to the point where it’s hard to take in anything that’s around me until they’re done, and in bossfights I’m spending too much focus on the attack cues to focus on really anything else. Not that DS1 doesn’t take focus, but there’s enough downtime *during* combat to take in everything else; to focus in on bossfights, there’s only one fight in DS3 - Gael - who I’ve been able to appreciate for anything except for the kinetic feel, whereas one of my favourites in DS1, being Gaping Dragon, I love for practically everything *but* the gameplay.

It’s probably not that surprising from this to hear that I have more of a strained relationship with From’s later titles, but this game really hits such a good blend of atmospheric exploration and slow and simple yet punishing combat that I just can’t get enough of, even when it’s not putting its best foot forwards. Anyway I can’t wait for King’s Field to beat my ass