An unbalanced mess. However -- it's a fun one and quite engaging.
King's Field II is a complete improvement on the first game, improving camera speed, movement, more songs and a freer map design, but the problem is that King's Field has such a connected world that you can go from the beginning to the endgame zone in 30 minutes easily. Obviously the enemies will destroy you since they also have ranged attacks, but it's really worth the risk since the gear endgame literally makes you almost invincible wtf like there is a helmet that regenerates hp, another armor that gives you mana + another ring that gives hp, and they are quite visible, you just have to have the right key which is not that hard to get since you can buy it easily. The problem is that there are like 7 different keys and you have to open menu --> select menu --> select item with EVERY key and on top of that there's an incredible input delay lol


Another thing that really pissed me off is that you can easily get softlocked if you don't know how certain mechanics work that are never explained to you, and the main path is blocked by diamond keys that can be used infinitely--only in the direction you opened the door. This is on purpose, to create one-way trips that you can't get out unless you have another key or use an item to teleport, if you even understood the mechanics lol

The combat felt much more clunky than before but in a way it also improved... I don't know how to explain it.

While I'm more of a fan of the previous level design, concentrated on different floors instead of everything being connected, Fromsoftware really stepped out of their comfort zone with the second game and tried lots and lots of new things and I'm glad about that.

EDIT: I forgot to talk about the story! And I really liked that it was darker and better told than the first game :--) I also like that you can more or less imagine what's going to happen in the third game, really well crafted everything.

Artemy Burakh Route (cuz the other two ain't released yet)

The first Pathologic was an experience I had never lived before and after finishing it I was left wanting more, wanting to be able to play it as if it was the first time. Lucky for me; Pathologic 2 exists.

Pathologic 2 is the same situation and characters of the first game but "re-written". Like someone who brings out a book and revises it 10 years later, basically but more extreme since they changed almost all the mechanics and absolutely all the problems I had with the first installment were fixed (even the ones I didn't think were problems until I played Pathologic 2). The story is super improved in every way. Translation, dialogue, quests... when I say "everything" I mean everything. That I played all three routes of the first game and still got new information with this one was a pleasant surprise.

Oh right, I forgot to mention that while Pathologic 1 has 3 routes (aka three playable characters), Pathologic 2 (at the time of the review) only has one, with the second story just around the corner, and being as it took me 60 hours to do the first route without getting bored it's a great achievement since the first installment was 24 hours of gameplay per character + what you take to read and being that you couldn't run and the map was big.... yeah... it wasn't a fun experience (gameplay wise). Now in Pathologic 2 the map is smaller, you move faster, the combat is more interesting, the trading with the npcs is more interesting and above all the new plot twists and ways in which they tell things are MUCH more interesting.

If it's your first time playing Pathologic, I 100% recommend starting with this one and only play the first game if you really feel like it (no shame on using console commands!) but in the meantime, I can't wait for the game to be complete as the stories of all the characters offer a different point of view with different opinions, making the world of Pathologic richer in narrative. Highly recommended.

8 games (revamped and with a brief history of the development), 26 prototypes and 2 pdfs with cartoons; Epic Battle Fantasy Collection offers exactly what my 10 year old self was looking for when I was little.

I was never really that big of a fan of Epic Battle Fantasy (RPG) back in the day, but what my brother and I loved was Bullet Heaven and I'm so glad to see it restored with the addition of 5 playable characters, each one just as good as the other.

I love shmups/bullet hells and very rarely do I usually go from character to character or their shot types, but literally from the moment I opened the game I didn't stop until I got 100% out of it, which led me to think hard about which character I was taking in each stage and it was so much fun to see a shmup that incites so much to want to play through everything. Unfortunately, it is the only game that suffers from quite strong stuttering (i.e.; it runs at 30 fps and with 1fps drops that last two whole seconds) and it's a shame because it's my favorite game of the whole collection, but luckily I managed to get used to it and enjoy it.

The rest of the games are also fun and run well at 60fps.
I wish more devs would do things like this, compiling their flash games of the era and put them on steam because I enjoyed it a lot.


I write the review having played 5 hours, without having played Epic Battle Fantasy 1 + 2 and Adventure story, which is probably the main reason why people would buy this, but I doubt my review will change as every game has that early 2000's charisma and "cringe", which to be honest, I enjoy it quite a bit.

I Wanna Be The Guy Remastered (2020 - Original in 2007)

One of the biggest reasons I stopped playing the first one was because it crashed a lot and your save files got corrupted TOO often, and while there is a tool to fix your save file, it was doing it every 8 minutes which became quite exhausting. The remastered not only fixes this, but also adds several quality of life changes while keeping the essence of the original. You don't know how much I was happy when I saw that there is a button to skip the cinematics before the bosses that used to play EVERY TIME you faced the boss after dying and they lasted about 1 minute. There's still a lot of jank that I understand they didn't fix because lowkey was the joke of the game, but at the same time I'm curious to see what an IWBTG with coyote timing lmao would be like.
I loved that they have put several visual updates, not only in what upscaling is concerned, but directly to put better sprites and even add effects when a bug dies or spawns, something that the original didn't have. Also, this version mimics windows xp so that a certain trick near the end of the game still works lol

Anyways talking about the normal game, the level design is much better than I remembered, the traps are quite fun but if there's something I can't stand are the screens with cycles. For most of them there is a way to manipulate the position, but it's a real pain, those screens and the ones where you have to memorize invisible platforms (looking at you metroid section) like I have no problem when they are few, but when making the room flawless means being inside for 3 minutes, it becomes a problem because it means that the 900 deaths you have, easily become 1 hour being in the same room.

If you have time and want to relive IWBTG at its best, go ahead;
https://natsu-iw.itch.io/iwbtgr