Recent reviews by Alice

I recommend this game but tentatively; it's a great premise that's let down by the fact that it's not remotely challenging.
+++ Premise!
++ Galarius wins Quality of Life award of the year.
++ Gold looks nice
+ A few multiple endings; but upon finding the last one there's no real point to seeing the others.

--- It's really simple, it's follow the breadcrumbs simple.
-- Plot twist at the end is hilariously over used and disappointing... Reduced a - because at least they wrote it well.
- Some of the scenery is jank, shimmying along vines was a nightmare to navigate for some reason.

++++++ Every character is either a reflection, a continuation, a criticism or tribute to a wide and varied variety of cultures classical literature. With the framing of the story itself as cyberpunk retelling of Dante's inferno.
+++++ Beautifully dark cyberpunk dystopia. The director literally began making games because he was tired of the lack of video games made for and touching on mature themes.
+++++ Things are only light because there is darkness; if you're fed up of stories about cheap redemption, perfectly black and white narratives with barely any grey then this is the story for you. The light only shines at the end because it's dark.
+++++ Beautiful Art
+++++ Beautiful and stunning music, every chapter so far has ended with a stellar Mili song!
+++ The game is a simplistic match 3 game where you create a chain of symbols which denote your attacks so it's very easy to get into.
+++ But don't let that simplicity fool you, every boss has mechanics that require you to think, read their abilities and work around the torrent of nasty things coming your way.
+++ Gacha but incredibly forgiving with acquisition mechanics... Like there is no other gacha game on the market this generous or forgiving. You can easily grind out everything as long as you pace yourself. You don't need dupes to max anyone. The grind is very forgiving and really favours a few runs a week for the best time spent to pay out ratio. But that's not stopping you going hard with the grind if you wish. I have everything and don't even really pull for anything anymore, I just buy them out with shards (in-game tokens you don't pay for but get from playing the content).
+ The devs run a cute cafe next door.

Neutral: This game has a massive trigger warning... Go read it.

- Not all events are voiced, which is a shame but understandable, they are a small indie studio.

++++++ Mari
+++++ The kind of story that may break your heart, but you'll be glad you took the journey all the same. It does the cyberpunk genre proud.
+++++ Beautiful pixel art. The city really speaks to you so; don't look back.
+++++ Sh*tting on Elon Musk is always a win.
++++ Absolutely amazing soundtrack, there's only one song I don't consider a banger which is very rare for me.
+++ Fluid combat and controls that evolve the more familiar you are with them. My second play-through was so alien to my first because I had learned how to use the momentum to climb walls and swing backwards.
+++ A special speed run mode once completed the game.
++ One hit death difficulty mode unlocked upon first completion. It's brutal but I had a blast challenging this games final challenge.

There are two free DLC planned apparently.

Gameplay ++++++++
Imagine Nier Automata and Monster Hunter had a romantic one night stand while playing FFXIV raids.

Setting and World +++++
The sky realm is a neat world.

Spectacle +++++
I was not expecting this game to hit rules of nature level epic... It did, repeatedly.

The Story of Relink: ----
It's clearly meant to introduce newcomers to granblue, but it's incredibly safe. Incredibly basic anime plot where everything is black and white, redemption is cheap and the plot of granblue remains in limbo. Honestly feels like they were scared of writing a good story or it might butthurt their mobile players.

It's an amazingly fun game to play that suffers in the story side because it's following in a mobile games footsteps without trying to be as good as its predecessor. I hope for expansion content or heck regular content would be amazing and probably be able to improve on this singular complaint.

+++++ Strong Story
++++ Technically a different play-through for every starting character choice.
++++ No DLC
++++ Great lenght of content
++++ Cursed lands, Underdark, Iron Throne and House of Hope
++++ Improves DnD 5e so that it's not absolutely boring to play.
+++ Roughly three main story paths with multiple branching options along the way.
+++ Strong Act 1 and 2
+++ Baldur's Gate feels like a thriving city.

????? Disturbingly consensual eyeball kissing.
+++/--- The game is horny... Way too horny. Pick if that's a good or bad thing for yourself.

----- Keeping count throughout the game I encountered 20 janky moments where the game bugged in ways that were distinctly noticeably, 10 bugs that were a notable bug that affected gameplay. And 5 gameplay breaking bugs that forced a reload. 2 of which were specific to multiplayer.
---- Often the story feels on rails, denies you logical choices where you would have imagined you'd do something because of previous things you could do that you merely cannot because you are denied a choice.
---- Minthara's story feels completely lacking once recruited. She only gets a redemption arc if one very specific event occurs to her which has a huge chance not too.
---- Always friendzone Gale unless you're hungry for hands.
--- Act 3 is weaker, but has two of the best areas in the game.
--- That ironically most people will miss because they will make choices that cause them to never see them.
-- After certain optional bosses, end boss felt easy.
-- Non-lethal combat is rarely acknowledged or rewarded
-- No interactions with Clerics deities or Warlocks patrons unless you pick Shadowheart or Wyll.

It's tetris, with a fairly decent sound track and great particle effects... But yeah it's tetris... There's not much more to add here.

Combat is fairly fluid and you can speed around with a powerslide: ++++
They actually paid the license fees to have SEVERAL B-movie horror flicks in the game, that you can sit and watch: ++++
Aesthetics for a Dystopian Scifi are on point: +++
Some of the guns are quite fun to use and some are kinda weak and pointless: ++
There's some optional/hidden content: ++
Voice Acting is fairly decent for what it is: ++
Guns have some minor customisation through mods but usually one is better overall: +

If you 100% the game hunting chests it could clock you in at about 20 hours, 13 hours looking at optional content, shorter if you just ignore everything and rush the main plot: ++/-- depending on your playstyle.

The writer wears his style on his sleeve. As with all comedy the humour is hit and miss, personally I felt it came in at about 70% hit/30% miss. +++/--- Depending on your tastes.

Sweezy just seemed pointless: ----
Tries to have feels in the same way Rick and Morty tries... Honestly too predictable: ----

While I would actually love to recommend this game I cannot. The game is incomplete, it left early access and patches to finish the game have completely dried up.

Artistic Aesthetic: ++++
Fairly well done scaling difficulty: +++
Play-style Variety: ++
Multiple builds, even with the limited content in game: +

Despite there being multiple items, two weapons and I think several stage doors unopened, the games content patches have dried up and Konami seem uninterested in finishing their game: -----
Half the items listed in the shrine are completely missing from the game: ----
Story feels unfinished: ----

Let's see...

Epic Exclusive after gaining fame through steam.
Free to play with some of the worst turn arounds for free rewards of any free to play game I've played.
A lack of in game rewards for playing beyond regular engagement in stingy daily rewards.
Heavy focus on cosmetics over content
Heavy focus on lowering the bar trying to appeal to a dumber audience rather than focusing on the games strong points.
Episodic story with exclusive access time windows.

I don't think it was a cash grab, I think it was a series of bad choices that were caused solely by them going epic exclusive. Which haemorrhaged their player base right from the start. Which in turn caused them to be cash starved. So they focused on cosmetics trying to keep up with the need for enough income to account for employee wages. Which caused a lot of attention drawn away from what would have kept people around: content. The lack of content and income caused them to panic and assume the game complexity was the barrier to interest. So they dumbed down the system hoping to net a wider audience which in term turned off niche fanbase entirely.

Now they are fated to be absorbed by the moral vacuum that is blizzard.

A shame because the original game was truly a good game.

+++++ A lot to explore, all of it very pretty.
++++ This is basically dark souls 4.
+++ big variety of items, weapons and builds
+++ Longer quests with small story arcs (and one great one)
++ GRRM helped write the lore and it shows, it is clearly far more coherent and cohesive than previous FromSoft games. Since he's the new factor I can only assume his input helped a lot.
+ Jumping, double jumping.
+ Ghost spirits in case you don't want to summon people.

------ Namco Bandai ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up the translation on at least one of the endings, completely ruining its meaning.
----- Weapon Balance is atrocious, you can quite easily break and ruin any semblance of difficulty if you get your hands on certain weapons early.
----- Online Netcode is awful, constant disconnects, desyncing, poor lag compensation, laggy gameplay for everyone I have spoken too.
----- No multiplayer content. You compare this to previous entries the lack of covenants is very disapointing. There's really nothing to do in the world with the multiplayer beyond cookie cutter invasions, duels and co-op. By comparison DS2 had white summons, gold summons, blood arena, blue arena, red invasions, dragoneye duels, blue invasions, bell invasions, abyss invasions. DS3 had purple summons to at least bring some interesting variety to the multiplayer. Elden Ring has none of this, not even an arena. Though there are three arenas on the map they don't work yet. From have not said if they will be adding future content as of yet.
---- A lot of the exploration feels not worth it, but you just know if you don't do it you'll miss out on something really good hiding away in a random catacomb.
--- Weird time progression triggers that can sometimes advance the worlds quests without you even trying or wanting too.
--- World lore still has a lot of plothole by design philosophy FromSoft are infamous for.