It's cute, that's for certain.

Idk, I enjoyed the fantasy isekai FF of A1's aesthetic more than this, and that's pretty all you have to back yourself on, when this game is so easy to beat. Tactics to win are several times easier than the average, with pretty much any slight knowledge of a character's mechanic you can exploit the game well. I'm not vibing with these enemy encounters either, they could be far more interesting if they just made them do double damage, and there's no difficulty select at start.

Even still, I think this is a really dumbed down tactical adventure. If you're really dying for more tactics combat this isn't a particularly bad experience but I'd suggest elsewhere. (5/10)

Quick and super fun roguelite action game.

It has enough combat depth that it utilizes with dodges, parries, and spacing to be a good amount of fun, with an especially competent grasp of these fundamentals. Enemies force out quick thinking and reactionary attacks, with some strategy in terms of approaching any fight. There's a good amount of different weapons and cooldown abilities with decent depth, and all but a few super safe options are interesting. The bosses are a bit hit or miss, but they're well done as well, especially the final boss.

I've only finished the game on normal but I'm already sort of satisfied, which is part of its main problem. The gameplay peaks rather quickly in terms of your options, and it starts to slowly turn into trying to do things no hit or similar challenge aspects that expand out the game's content. Replaying it continuously is the name of the game for people (not me) so there's definitely enough in store to make this a worthy recommend.

I appear to have made a mistake playing this.

It was only at the end that I realized that I'd kind of just skipped to the last chapter of the book without my knowing. "Brand new players" in the game description is deathly misleading, as even to me it felt like I wasn't seeing the full picture at all. The game absolutely expects you to be on the final chapter of the whole journey, literally calling back to elements I had no way of knowing about until I just looked them up.

I don't think that changed my opinion on the end though. I could see that it was minimalist, very clearly a sort of painting put up on an art museum at the chronicles of fate, where this is the point of passing on. A final farewell to a series meant to feel very transcendent.

And it is dreadfully not fun to play, in fact my eyes are still strained and crying as I'm writing this, because it's fucking painful on the eyes. The game's main mechanic, in response to all you're doing being paddling the pong balls coming to you, is to obfuscate the way to hit them in the most 'fair' way possible, but at the same time with so many trippy and bright elements in the background ESCALATING as you get better at it. It was a fight against my eyes, and at the end of it I wasn't feeling the ethereal emotion.

I also kind of think the music just completely went one ear and out the other? I wasn't feeling anything, especially when I was severely trying to fight back against the pain to get through the game. I don't want to say the music just sucks, and I'm sure there's an intent to it, but I don't think I'm supposed to walk away thinking "I just wasted a full hour just to get my eyes hurting".

Y'know you could just play Journey. Ok that's unfair they're like not cognitively the same, but look I just want to give fair warning that unless you're in it to appreciate this, you're paying a ticket to potentially suffer.

The climax of BioWare's trilogy is in short, the weakest game I've played from the studio so far. Not that it doesn't have its strengths, the base combat is decent fun with more interesting shooting galleries and area utilization, some of the conclusions of characters are genuinely well written, and the Citadel DLC gets nothing but utmost praise from me. However, it is an absolute clusterfuck when it comes to any other particular component. The story while conceptually from a good place regarding the crucible and the theme of cyclical generations working together to stop a greater evil, it is paperthin written and it's collaborated with terrible new characters and terrible explanations. The Omega and Leviathan DLC especially gets my utmost distaste, representing the worst parts Mass Effect 3 has on offer, including anticlimactic endings to decent concepts with strewn into paper mache characters.

That said, I still enjoyed the game overall if only for my attachment to the world already and how it still makes true on its characters. I'm also weak to romancing Garrus, sue me. If you have half a mind to get this game you won't do too wrong, but I push against anyone buying ME3 without investment in the series already.

It's really neat to play what's p much a simulacrum of the military shooter bonanza 10 years later. It also being the poster child for Battlefield "when it was good" also makes it cool to see where people were coming from back then, not that I'd say I agree fully.

It definitely has the sound and visual design of Dice's crazy engine with the smoke and building destruction that people and honestly including me soy out for. The banter between the main cast is pretty charming too, which considering the hoorah paint-by-numbers aesthetic this shit usually goes for (and my experience with Battlefield 3 is any truth of) is real refreshing. While the environments are kind of so-so now, there's spots of genuine awe with where the lighting hits.

It's just too bad and unsurprising that it's not any fun to play. Gunplay meets the job required of it but it's not real fun to shoot, and the mission design is really scattershot leaning p awful. There's a lot of moments where you'll have to walk forward without your squad and then get forced into an enemy ambush that can down you quickly if you're unlucky. Game's quite buggy too even with all the patches, and hit detection is very weird and inconsistent for whatever reason. That part might just be a PC-only thing cuz I couldn't find anything for the console versions about that. The level and enemy design is of course, nothing remotely to write home about, because there isn't much to talk about. It's a military shooter you have to be prepared to fight the same slice of enemies for 4+ hours that's kind of what you sign up for.

I can't speak for the multiplayer at all, one because it's kind of dead, and secondly because the online pass thing is so finicky now. Really dated itself fast with that huh?

Don't feel like I wasted my time, but I don't recommend coming back to it.

First Impressions

I was personally really really really put away by the art style at first, and honestly I double down on that art style being really snooze-worthy and the general atmosphere to be a bit dull in a way I swear only dark dreary rpglikes will be excited for. But what's here on offer is an interesting take on Spelunky with more chaos put into here. I was only able to make it to the end of the second area (of which there are four total), but I was generally impressed by how the combat was done. There's still a lot of points where the enemies are so hectic and there's a bit of a weird mishmash between wanting to take it slow and wanting to use the whole arena v quickly to kite your foes. It's a bit of a conflicted design I feel, but still quite enjoyable.

The bosses are the real meat so far, and in general I found having to deal with them to be the best part with a lot of careful dancing of positioning, especially when they spawn or are surrounded by other enemies.

It could maybe do without the rpg style, which doesn't really add to that interesting decisions. It feels very number crunchy and just the general texture of this game is kind of a snoozy pushback. Really deserved more time on the dev floor, but maybe it rapidly improves in the final couple areas. Certainly worth my recommendation, as it's a good time overall from what I played. On to the shelf it goes!

Sometimes you need something good for the shitter.

And this is good enough I suppose. It's addicting, utilizing the foundations of 2048 that encapsulated a lot of phone batteries and working it around a simple but very effective loop. Now instead of moving strictly to stack blocks together you have to work around the enemy's pathway like Into the Breach, making cost/benefit calls down to each finger swipe. There's enough enemy types over time to keep things interesting to where I was enraptured for about a couple hours when I first played before bed, whoops! Doesn't really paint any picture but well, I wasn't really looking for much of one as much as just a distraction.

I'm on the lookout for quick or simple games to play on the phone, and this is a very good and rather cheap purchase from a single dev. Very much recommend.

The game is in such a currently awful optimized state, probably understandably so for running on an engine that feels like it's over a decade old. But it's buggy and fucked up enough to where I can't recommend ever trying this. I say this with a decently high-end computer too, and I had to run it on the lowest settings for it to not drop frames too badly, it's wild.

Even past that, what you get is a lot of weird contradictory vibes. Because of its current state you have potentially excellent combat wrapped around enemies that go down in less than 4 hits for more than a couple hours, paired with a story that's stupidly paced and tone changing on a dime. It does have a soul in all of this with its actually competently done cinematics with good choreography, and clear understanding to NOT WASTE THE PLAYER'S TIME with its quest design. It gets good I hear, eventually once your level matches back up with what the missions were supposed to have you on, but the hill is too tiresome to climb with such awful other things attached around it at the moment.

Best to wait for a massive rework before even considering touching this one, otherwise I'd just put it on ice.