MysticWonder
2014
Wearing its inspiration on its sleeve, Halfway is an XCOM-like. It's a difficult turn based strategy rpg set on a space ship that is mysteriously under attack from uncertain outside forces. You scavenge weapons and ammo, recruit and rescue colorful characters, and face down an ever changing cast of enemies in a fight for your lives.
The game has a wide variety of characters, and genuinely interesting plot. It may play into a number of sci-fi tropes, but I did feel invested in the story and it kept me playing all the way until the end. There was internal conflict in the team as well, with the addition of Dr. Shaffer and Thirteen, though I'm a little upset that nothing came of it in the end.
The pixel art is also pretty darn good, which has become a staple of games published by Chucklefish.
I'm trying to offload the first part of this review with positive things because I did enjoy my time playing Halfway for the most part, and I don't want to seem like I'm dogpiling a 10 year old Indie Dev's first title. If you really really like XCOM, then Halfway is a short 12h experience with cool pixel art graphics and a decent story.
Halfway, to put it nicely, feels like the first draft of a pretty good game. There are creative and mechanical choices that I do not think were thought through or polished at all.
For one, there is a baffling choice to not show how much health an enemy has. You can see a health bar on an enemy, but ONLY if you go and try and attack it. Additionally, it's JUST the health bar - no numerical value. Do you have a weapon that does 6-10 damage in its description and want to know if your character will one shot the enemy? Well then go fuck yourself, that's too much information to display to the player apparently.
There's no loading screens in Halfway. You don't realize just how necessary loading screens are in games until you play a game that doesn't have loading screens. You'll be in a level, click to go to the next level, and you jump straight into a new environment with new music. No fade to black or anything, it's very jarring.
There's no undoing a movement action either. If you miss-click right next to an enemy instead of clicking on them to attack them then your character is about to take a lot of damage and there's not a lot you can do about it.
The game is an RPG but there are really only three stats, Health, Agility, and Aiming. I'm down with this, it's pretty simple! There are stimpacks that you can find in levels that you can use to permanently grant increases to these stats.
However, each character can only use 5 stimpacks before they start to have negative effects from 'overstimming'. I think it's supposed to prevent making one souped up cracked character and just rolling encounters, but by the time we got to end game - it didn't matter because it felt like the only stat that mattered was aiming.
Additionally, how many stims each character has used is not conveyed to the player in the UI, and it really should be.
You know how there's the meme in XCOM where a soldier will have their gun pointed directly at the skull of an enemy and still somehow miss? Pretty funny! Now to ruin it, the meme is born out of the absurdity of it all, and it's absurd because it's something that should not occur, and yet it does.
If you play Halfway you are going to be spending a lot of time experiencing that meme over and over and over again. You'll be spending a lot of turns sitting there taking pot shots at immobile, out-of-cover turrets that regenerate their shields every 4 turns and occasionally resetting because your sniper with a 68% chance to hit missed 6 times in a row and died to retaliation. I had a character with a chain gun have a 50% chance to hit a grunt that was in a wide open space two squares away. There simply has got to be a better way of handling this combat system - I swear to god.
Lastly, I beat the game and there was an actually cool final boss at the end, but I ended up coming away with more questions then answers in the worst kind of way. They never fully explain what exactly was happening to the ship, and after everything I wrote above, I'm starting to wonder if the writers themselves even know the answer. There could be a true ending if you beat every optional mission, but I got sick of doing them right at the end and now I can't go back.
So yeah, that's Halfway. I can't tell if it's a bad good-game, or a good bad-game. I do think, however, it's a good case study in how to and how not to take inspiration from other big titles. It pulls off a lot of good things from XCOM, but it fails to remove a lot of the bad things about XCOM as well. Anyway, it's $13 and it takes 12 hours to beat, so hey at least I got my moneys worth.
The game has a wide variety of characters, and genuinely interesting plot. It may play into a number of sci-fi tropes, but I did feel invested in the story and it kept me playing all the way until the end. There was internal conflict in the team as well, with the addition of Dr. Shaffer and Thirteen, though I'm a little upset that nothing came of it in the end.
The pixel art is also pretty darn good, which has become a staple of games published by Chucklefish.
I'm trying to offload the first part of this review with positive things because I did enjoy my time playing Halfway for the most part, and I don't want to seem like I'm dogpiling a 10 year old Indie Dev's first title. If you really really like XCOM, then Halfway is a short 12h experience with cool pixel art graphics and a decent story.
Halfway, to put it nicely, feels like the first draft of a pretty good game. There are creative and mechanical choices that I do not think were thought through or polished at all.
For one, there is a baffling choice to not show how much health an enemy has. You can see a health bar on an enemy, but ONLY if you go and try and attack it. Additionally, it's JUST the health bar - no numerical value. Do you have a weapon that does 6-10 damage in its description and want to know if your character will one shot the enemy? Well then go fuck yourself, that's too much information to display to the player apparently.
There's no loading screens in Halfway. You don't realize just how necessary loading screens are in games until you play a game that doesn't have loading screens. You'll be in a level, click to go to the next level, and you jump straight into a new environment with new music. No fade to black or anything, it's very jarring.
There's no undoing a movement action either. If you miss-click right next to an enemy instead of clicking on them to attack them then your character is about to take a lot of damage and there's not a lot you can do about it.
The game is an RPG but there are really only three stats, Health, Agility, and Aiming. I'm down with this, it's pretty simple! There are stimpacks that you can find in levels that you can use to permanently grant increases to these stats.
However, each character can only use 5 stimpacks before they start to have negative effects from 'overstimming'. I think it's supposed to prevent making one souped up cracked character and just rolling encounters, but by the time we got to end game - it didn't matter because it felt like the only stat that mattered was aiming.
Additionally, how many stims each character has used is not conveyed to the player in the UI, and it really should be.
You know how there's the meme in XCOM where a soldier will have their gun pointed directly at the skull of an enemy and still somehow miss? Pretty funny! Now to ruin it, the meme is born out of the absurdity of it all, and it's absurd because it's something that should not occur, and yet it does.
If you play Halfway you are going to be spending a lot of time experiencing that meme over and over and over again. You'll be spending a lot of turns sitting there taking pot shots at immobile, out-of-cover turrets that regenerate their shields every 4 turns and occasionally resetting because your sniper with a 68% chance to hit missed 6 times in a row and died to retaliation. I had a character with a chain gun have a 50% chance to hit a grunt that was in a wide open space two squares away. There simply has got to be a better way of handling this combat system - I swear to god.
Lastly, I beat the game and there was an actually cool final boss at the end, but I ended up coming away with more questions then answers in the worst kind of way. They never fully explain what exactly was happening to the ship, and after everything I wrote above, I'm starting to wonder if the writers themselves even know the answer. There could be a true ending if you beat every optional mission, but I got sick of doing them right at the end and now I can't go back.
So yeah, that's Halfway. I can't tell if it's a bad good-game, or a good bad-game. I do think, however, it's a good case study in how to and how not to take inspiration from other big titles. It pulls off a lot of good things from XCOM, but it fails to remove a lot of the bad things about XCOM as well. Anyway, it's $13 and it takes 12 hours to beat, so hey at least I got my moneys worth.
2009
Left 4 Dead 2 is the only video game I've played so far that properly captures the feeling of being truly alone in a zombie apocalypse. And really, no other game even comes close.
It's also one of the only coop pve shooters worth playing, as countless other developers have tried to recreate what L4D2 did, and failed spectacularly.
As for L4D2 itself? It's fine. Really, it's just kinda fine. I played through the entirety of the L4D2 campaign again this past October and it really kinda struck me how bare bones it is, and how that's both a blessing and a curse. It's a blessing because it's easy to pick up and play with a group of friends. It's a curse, because if it's your Nth time playing the game, it can get to be super fucking boring and repetitive.
I don't think L4D2 would stand to improve from adding any more complexity to it though, I think that Valve developed the game to be the former (quick, easy, fun with friends) and kinda got stuck with the later on accident (boring and repetitive).
It's also a 15 year old game by now, so maybe I've just played too much of it.
I guess to summarize: it's solid. Not exemplary, not too flashy, it came, it saw, something something, 'pills here'.
It's also one of the only coop pve shooters worth playing, as countless other developers have tried to recreate what L4D2 did, and failed spectacularly.
As for L4D2 itself? It's fine. Really, it's just kinda fine. I played through the entirety of the L4D2 campaign again this past October and it really kinda struck me how bare bones it is, and how that's both a blessing and a curse. It's a blessing because it's easy to pick up and play with a group of friends. It's a curse, because if it's your Nth time playing the game, it can get to be super fucking boring and repetitive.
I don't think L4D2 would stand to improve from adding any more complexity to it though, I think that Valve developed the game to be the former (quick, easy, fun with friends) and kinda got stuck with the later on accident (boring and repetitive).
It's also a 15 year old game by now, so maybe I've just played too much of it.
I guess to summarize: it's solid. Not exemplary, not too flashy, it came, it saw, something something, 'pills here'.
FTL is great. It makes sad to call this an 'Old' Indie game, but I guess 12 years ago is a long time now.
It's a space-battle micro-management rogue-like, which is a mouthful but that's the only way I can really describe it. You manage a bunch of bars and systems to blow up enemy ships before they blow up you. It is just simple enough to not be entirely overwhelming to me, but I can see if other people might not enjoy that level of complexity.
To be critical, the game is ridiculously difficult. It's a struggle to beat the game on Easy difficulty, and it's made even harder by using the newer advanced systems. I know of a number of people who have put 20+ hours into this game and haven't even come close to beating the Easiest difficulty. The final boss is definitely a huge difficulty spike that I think could be toned down a bit.
It also, with help from Binding of Isaac, really put Roguelikes on the map in the indie space. But maybe that's revisionist history - I was still in my adolescence back then, so maybe the genre has always been popular.
Ben Prunty absolutely kills it on the soundtrack and I'm so glad they brought him back to do the Into the Breach soundtrack. Love his work.
It's a space-battle micro-management rogue-like, which is a mouthful but that's the only way I can really describe it. You manage a bunch of bars and systems to blow up enemy ships before they blow up you. It is just simple enough to not be entirely overwhelming to me, but I can see if other people might not enjoy that level of complexity.
To be critical, the game is ridiculously difficult. It's a struggle to beat the game on Easy difficulty, and it's made even harder by using the newer advanced systems. I know of a number of people who have put 20+ hours into this game and haven't even come close to beating the Easiest difficulty. The final boss is definitely a huge difficulty spike that I think could be toned down a bit.
It also, with help from Binding of Isaac, really put Roguelikes on the map in the indie space. But maybe that's revisionist history - I was still in my adolescence back then, so maybe the genre has always been popular.
Ben Prunty absolutely kills it on the soundtrack and I'm so glad they brought him back to do the Into the Breach soundtrack. Love his work.
I like Aria of Sorrow more, but Harmony of Dissonance grew on me the more I played it. It really is just kind of Symphony of the Night again, but if you haven't played Symphony of the Night (like I hadn't when I first played this) you'd think that the duel map was a sick idea.
An underrated gem of the GBA Castlevanias
2019
Everyone told me to go and play this game blind.
And so I did.
And now I'm telling you to go and play this game blind.
And you should.
You're only going to be able to play this game once.
And so I did.
And now I'm telling you to go and play this game blind.
And you should.
You're only going to be able to play this game once.
2023
This review contains spoilers
Go down the rabbit hole. Do it.
Void Stranger was a blast to play last year. A friend and I got in a voice call and collectively lost our god damn mind for a week straight trying to figure out all the puzzles.
If you do play this, grab a friend, and go in completely blind. Don't look up anything if you get stuck, you shouldn't need it.
8/10 would lose my god damn mind again.
Spoilers ahead:
A couple of the deeper lore puzzles are a bit bullshit (the snake one especially felt bad imo) but otherwise it was amazing from start to finish.
I didn't vibe with the true ending of the game admittedly. I thought they were going somewhere else but it ended up being a callback to another game by the same developers. Cool, but was really hoping for a big payoff at the end and it didn't really hit.
The times spent asking "wait is that a hint? Is this obscure thing a part of the bigger picture? NO WAY DUDE, IT IS?" is a vibe I don't think I'll ever get to experience again. Thanks for that System Erasure!
Void Stranger was a blast to play last year. A friend and I got in a voice call and collectively lost our god damn mind for a week straight trying to figure out all the puzzles.
If you do play this, grab a friend, and go in completely blind. Don't look up anything if you get stuck, you shouldn't need it.
8/10 would lose my god damn mind again.
Spoilers ahead:
A couple of the deeper lore puzzles are a bit bullshit (the snake one especially felt bad imo) but otherwise it was amazing from start to finish.
I didn't vibe with the true ending of the game admittedly. I thought they were going somewhere else but it ended up being a callback to another game by the same developers. Cool, but was really hoping for a big payoff at the end and it didn't really hit.
The times spent asking "wait is that a hint? Is this obscure thing a part of the bigger picture? NO WAY DUDE, IT IS?" is a vibe I don't think I'll ever get to experience again. Thanks for that System Erasure!
2023
The first ever Comedy Horror game. Pretty sure it's just flavor of the month, but the Dev seems swell and I could see myself returning to play this every once in a while for shits and giggles.
Loses half a star because parkour is dumb
Loses half a star because parkour is dumb
I played the shit out of this game as a kid.
Why?
Dude I don't know. Took me 1h to beat.
I laughed, I cried, it was a Frogger game.
Why?
Dude I don't know. Took me 1h to beat.
I laughed, I cried, it was a Frogger game.
2010
I'm a sucker for games with simple premises taken to extreme levels. VVVVVV has a weird name, but it is absolutely worth your time as an Indie title. Soundtrack also goes hard for no fucking reason.
2018
I have a poor relationship with Hades. On the one hand, it is an artistic powerhouse of good story writing, amazing visuals, and godlike voice acting.
On the other hand, it is one of my least favorite roguelikes in terms of gameplay I've ever played.
In my experience, the combat in Hades boils down to getting boons for one of your attacks and spamming that attack over and over and over again until you win. I'm fine with this, as long as there are creative boons that mix up the formula, and there just... aren't that many of them.
The room-to-room combat is fine - enjoyable even - as there is a lot of skill expression with the different weapons that makes quick fights fun. And then the game starts throwing armored enemies at you and you can no longer rely on stunning an enemy. Which then leads to fights where you hit them once and then run.... and then hit them once and then run... and then hit them once and then run... as you look at the clock and wonder why you're spending an hour-per-attempt on this game.
If you don't find a combo that makes room-to-room combat easier early, then later stages can get to be a real slog. The enemies aren't too hard to dodge, and they aren't too hard to hit, but they simply have too much health. Worse still some enemies can revive at full hp if you don't kill their egg in time because you're dealing with 10 of them at a time. I could give up and just let them win, or I can spend 30s of my life killing one enemy because I didn't get the right boons, or I got the right boons, just for the wrong weapon.
And then there's the Bosses. I know I'm bordering on hyperbole, but Hades takes my medal for worst Bosses in any game I've ever played, or at least worst bosses in an objectively good game I've ever played. I loathe these Bosses. Ironically the one I hate the least is the Hydra, but that's mostly because they're easy?
Every single Boss in this game spawns lesser enemies for you to deal with, while also trying to beat the shit out of you with their attacks. I'll be locked into an intense fight with Meg and then - oops I took a third of my healthbar because she spawned some fuckhead a mile away that hit me from off screen.
Oh remember how I said if you don't find a boon combo that works some of these enemies can take 30s or longer to kill? See, the Bosses don't feel compelling because without the swarm of enemies, the Bosses themselves aren't much of a threat. Their attacks don't come out very quickly and there is a lot of downtime between strikes.
Don't get me started on the travesty that is the Minotaur boss fight. The first time you get to the third area you have a duel with the Minotaur that is so good. It's genuinely a stressful fight with attacks that are difficult to dodge and sticks out in my mind as one of my favorite challenges the game threw at me.
And then they ruin it by adding Theseus. I have a special hatred for Ornstein and Smough boss fights, but this one is especially dreadful. The Minotaur is a compelling boss all by himself, and the developers proved this by having the Minotaur fight be it's own thing. The twink does not add anything good to the fight, he's just another thing to dodge and make the fight drag on for longer - again made worse by the hit-or-miss boon system.
I'm going to omit a 3 page long rant about Hades himself. He's the worst final boss I've ever played against. Hades - the god of the underworld - and the literal title of the game - summons basic enemies that are more of a threat than he is. He spends the entire game spawning enemies for you to kill and then when you finally get to 1 v 1 him, he just summons more. What a joke.
The game is, again, saved by it's presentation and by the fact that I just really like SuperGiant? The art style, characters, and voice acting, are all amazing. I love the game when I'm not playing the game part of the game.
This is the one game I hate that everyone else loves, but I still can't give it less than a 2.5 star because I do believe that it is a good game - it just doesn't click for me.
On the other hand, it is one of my least favorite roguelikes in terms of gameplay I've ever played.
In my experience, the combat in Hades boils down to getting boons for one of your attacks and spamming that attack over and over and over again until you win. I'm fine with this, as long as there are creative boons that mix up the formula, and there just... aren't that many of them.
The room-to-room combat is fine - enjoyable even - as there is a lot of skill expression with the different weapons that makes quick fights fun. And then the game starts throwing armored enemies at you and you can no longer rely on stunning an enemy. Which then leads to fights where you hit them once and then run.... and then hit them once and then run... and then hit them once and then run... as you look at the clock and wonder why you're spending an hour-per-attempt on this game.
If you don't find a combo that makes room-to-room combat easier early, then later stages can get to be a real slog. The enemies aren't too hard to dodge, and they aren't too hard to hit, but they simply have too much health. Worse still some enemies can revive at full hp if you don't kill their egg in time because you're dealing with 10 of them at a time. I could give up and just let them win, or I can spend 30s of my life killing one enemy because I didn't get the right boons, or I got the right boons, just for the wrong weapon.
And then there's the Bosses. I know I'm bordering on hyperbole, but Hades takes my medal for worst Bosses in any game I've ever played, or at least worst bosses in an objectively good game I've ever played. I loathe these Bosses. Ironically the one I hate the least is the Hydra, but that's mostly because they're easy?
Every single Boss in this game spawns lesser enemies for you to deal with, while also trying to beat the shit out of you with their attacks. I'll be locked into an intense fight with Meg and then - oops I took a third of my healthbar because she spawned some fuckhead a mile away that hit me from off screen.
Oh remember how I said if you don't find a boon combo that works some of these enemies can take 30s or longer to kill? See, the Bosses don't feel compelling because without the swarm of enemies, the Bosses themselves aren't much of a threat. Their attacks don't come out very quickly and there is a lot of downtime between strikes.
Don't get me started on the travesty that is the Minotaur boss fight. The first time you get to the third area you have a duel with the Minotaur that is so good. It's genuinely a stressful fight with attacks that are difficult to dodge and sticks out in my mind as one of my favorite challenges the game threw at me.
And then they ruin it by adding Theseus. I have a special hatred for Ornstein and Smough boss fights, but this one is especially dreadful. The Minotaur is a compelling boss all by himself, and the developers proved this by having the Minotaur fight be it's own thing. The twink does not add anything good to the fight, he's just another thing to dodge and make the fight drag on for longer - again made worse by the hit-or-miss boon system.
I'm going to omit a 3 page long rant about Hades himself. He's the worst final boss I've ever played against. Hades - the god of the underworld - and the literal title of the game - summons basic enemies that are more of a threat than he is. He spends the entire game spawning enemies for you to kill and then when you finally get to 1 v 1 him, he just summons more. What a joke.
The game is, again, saved by it's presentation and by the fact that I just really like SuperGiant? The art style, characters, and voice acting, are all amazing. I love the game when I'm not playing the game part of the game.
This is the one game I hate that everyone else loves, but I still can't give it less than a 2.5 star because I do believe that it is a good game - it just doesn't click for me.
2017
There's a ton of creativity in these micro-games. The first game especially sticks out in my mind because I saw some random dude stream it in 2017 and I remembered the premise 5 years later which lead me to play the full game.
Worth playing in the spooky season!
Worth playing in the spooky season!
2022
This review contains spoilers
This game should cost $200 with the amount of content that's in it, and I'm only halfway kidding. I have so much to say about this game so fucking strap in.
This is a once in a lifetime kind of game. One that anyone who wants a challenge should play. It will put your skills as a player to the test.
It will also eat up a minimum of 90 hours of your life to beat. Once. That's how big this game is. And on your first playthrough, none of it is filler. It's all genuinely compelling.
If you get stuck on a boss, you can just fuck off to the corners of the earth, explore a bit, level up a bit, and then come back and show them what for. It's genius design for a game series that's been so historically difficult and unapproachable for casual players.
The world is beautiful. FromSoft is the best company for mixing level design and visual POIs. The first time I entered the capital and looked out over city and saw.... well iykyk... Absolutely breathtaking.
Now for a bit more criticism:
The game suffers greatly from having PvP. This is a controversial take, but invading in the Souls games has never been compelling to me and in-fact I believe that each game would be better if the system was removed entirely. In Elden Ring however, this problem is much more visible. Some items in the game cannot be good for PvE because if they were good for PvE, they would be absolutely broken in PvP. The biggest example I can think of is Rivers of Blood and it's ability Corpse Piler. This completely innocuous sword is fine in PvE because of large HP bars and enemies that are immune to bleed, but was completely busted in PvP because it could be spammed for easy kills.
This means that any 'cool' or 'weird' weapon that has unique attack patterns must be kidney-punched to not be busted in PvP combat, leaving it borderline useless in normal gameplay scenarios.
Bows and Fists are some more examples of this. Fists can't have invulnerability frames because if they did they'd be abusable in PvP. Bows cannot be a reliable ranged option (even though magic is RIGHT THERE) because if they were as good as the Enemies that use them, they'd be abusable in PvP.
ON THE OTHER HAND. I did end up doing a Bow-Only playthrough and because of the restrictions, it ended up being one of the most challenging and fullfilling gaming moments of my entire life so... Fuck me I guess lol
Next, remember when I said there was no filler? Well there's only no filler on your first playthrough. After your first playthrough.... well.... There are a lot of dungeons you find out don't have items that you care too much about if you're locking in a build style. It's then you realize just how much of the game doesn't matter, and how quickly you can actually get to the final boss if you know where to go. I don't consider this a flaw of the game however, just because that first playthrough was so monumentally good.
Another point that's been beaten to death to the point where I just... am tired of saying it. Please stop making Ornstein and Smough boss fights. The industry has improved on the formula significantly, you have no excuse for just dumping two uncompelling bosses into an arena and calling it a day. Because of the size of this game, they did this like 10 times. It sucks every time.
I've beaten the game about 3 times, and I can say with confidence that this is the best Souls game ever made. I can also say with confidence, I hope FromSoft never makes another game like this ever again. There's nothing left for them to make, no ground that they haven't already treaded. Anything else they make in this style or genre can't beat this, and it would be a mistake to even try.
After ALLL of that though, I'm confident in giving this game a perfect score. It's just too good. Play it with a friend or two and have a blast beating one of the hardest and fulfilling games ever made.
This is a once in a lifetime kind of game. One that anyone who wants a challenge should play. It will put your skills as a player to the test.
It will also eat up a minimum of 90 hours of your life to beat. Once. That's how big this game is. And on your first playthrough, none of it is filler. It's all genuinely compelling.
If you get stuck on a boss, you can just fuck off to the corners of the earth, explore a bit, level up a bit, and then come back and show them what for. It's genius design for a game series that's been so historically difficult and unapproachable for casual players.
The world is beautiful. FromSoft is the best company for mixing level design and visual POIs. The first time I entered the capital and looked out over city and saw.... well iykyk... Absolutely breathtaking.
Now for a bit more criticism:
The game suffers greatly from having PvP. This is a controversial take, but invading in the Souls games has never been compelling to me and in-fact I believe that each game would be better if the system was removed entirely. In Elden Ring however, this problem is much more visible. Some items in the game cannot be good for PvE because if they were good for PvE, they would be absolutely broken in PvP. The biggest example I can think of is Rivers of Blood and it's ability Corpse Piler. This completely innocuous sword is fine in PvE because of large HP bars and enemies that are immune to bleed, but was completely busted in PvP because it could be spammed for easy kills.
This means that any 'cool' or 'weird' weapon that has unique attack patterns must be kidney-punched to not be busted in PvP combat, leaving it borderline useless in normal gameplay scenarios.
Bows and Fists are some more examples of this. Fists can't have invulnerability frames because if they did they'd be abusable in PvP. Bows cannot be a reliable ranged option (even though magic is RIGHT THERE) because if they were as good as the Enemies that use them, they'd be abusable in PvP.
ON THE OTHER HAND. I did end up doing a Bow-Only playthrough and because of the restrictions, it ended up being one of the most challenging and fullfilling gaming moments of my entire life so... Fuck me I guess lol
Next, remember when I said there was no filler? Well there's only no filler on your first playthrough. After your first playthrough.... well.... There are a lot of dungeons you find out don't have items that you care too much about if you're locking in a build style. It's then you realize just how much of the game doesn't matter, and how quickly you can actually get to the final boss if you know where to go. I don't consider this a flaw of the game however, just because that first playthrough was so monumentally good.
Another point that's been beaten to death to the point where I just... am tired of saying it. Please stop making Ornstein and Smough boss fights. The industry has improved on the formula significantly, you have no excuse for just dumping two uncompelling bosses into an arena and calling it a day. Because of the size of this game, they did this like 10 times. It sucks every time.
I've beaten the game about 3 times, and I can say with confidence that this is the best Souls game ever made. I can also say with confidence, I hope FromSoft never makes another game like this ever again. There's nothing left for them to make, no ground that they haven't already treaded. Anything else they make in this style or genre can't beat this, and it would be a mistake to even try.
After ALLL of that though, I'm confident in giving this game a perfect score. It's just too good. Play it with a friend or two and have a blast beating one of the hardest and fulfilling games ever made.
2020
When I finish this game in 2030, I'll update this review with my full thoughts.
Edit: Yeah it's pretty good.
It's absolutely crazy to me that they somehow captured the truly open-ended gameplay of an actual DnD session with a couple of friends in a video game. 99/100 times, if you wonder 'hey do you think I can do that?' or 'Do you think the dev's accounted for this scenario?': They absolutely did.
It's borderline magic, honestly! Great game, I love it.
Edit: Yeah it's pretty good.
It's absolutely crazy to me that they somehow captured the truly open-ended gameplay of an actual DnD session with a couple of friends in a video game. 99/100 times, if you wonder 'hey do you think I can do that?' or 'Do you think the dev's accounted for this scenario?': They absolutely did.
It's borderline magic, honestly! Great game, I love it.
2016
This game's great. It also sucks.
Honestly, the Joseph Anderson review of this game gets my feelings on it perfectly.
It's an good puzzle game with genuinely creative puzzles, compelling visuals, and a vibe so pretentious I wish there was an ass in the game I could shove a stick up.
And they'd still probably make that a puzzle.
Honestly, the Joseph Anderson review of this game gets my feelings on it perfectly.
It's an good puzzle game with genuinely creative puzzles, compelling visuals, and a vibe so pretentious I wish there was an ass in the game I could shove a stick up.
And they'd still probably make that a puzzle.