Recent reviews by Ralfolas

A hidden gem! If you like Slay The Spire, you'll love this one.

Many different strategies and synergies make for very dynamic and fun runs. Everything is very transparent, well explained and there's very little RNG involved.

And don't get distracted by the "different floors", which make the game look complicated at a first glance (at least it did to me). The concept is actually very simple and adds more depth without feeling overwhelming.

Also an ideal Steam Deck game!

I am baffled how so many players claim that Hollow Knight is a masterpiece or even "the best game ever made". While the art style and music are truly beautiful, I dislike almost every other aspect of it.

My main gripe is the amount of backtracking due to a lack of direction, map features and fast traveling.
Of my four hours play time, only once the game gave me a rough indication where I need to go next (first Hornet encounter). The rest of the time I was hunting for non-explored paths on the map, 75% of which were dead ends. This is made worse by the the facts that:

• dying drops all collected Geo (the in-game currency) and it has to be picked up again in order to not lose progress
  
• fast traveling is limited to a few fast travel locations

This created situations where I backtracked to a previously undiscovered path, which contained challenging platforming and/or fighting sections. Once traversed I found myself in a dead end. On the way back I died and respawned at a far-away checkpoint. That meant that I had to backtrack once again to the path I now knew it was a dead end, had to redo the platforming sections just to pick up my dropped Geo and go all the way back out again. Backtracking-ception!

All this could have been solved by an ability that allows you to safely return to the last "Bench" (the respawn point). But the whole nature of the game is to be brutal - not only in difficulty but also to withhold Quality of Life features from the player, making simple tasks unnecessarily tedious. E.g. the map, one of the most important features of a metroidvania game, requires several unlocks to even be usable. Seeing your current location on the map requires a compass "Charm" to be bought and then equipped in one of the limited ability slots. The Wiki page even says that this charm is only worthwhile in the first playthrough of the game and is better replaced with combat-focused charms for boss fights, but this would be super tedious since you can only change charms at benches (adding more - you gessed it - backtracking).
What's even more weird is that buying a map of an area doesn't actually give you a map. It only unlocks the ability to use the map feature in that area, but you still have to uncover/map it by exploring the area. What does the character buy from the cartographer then? A blank piece of paper?

No, definitely not for me. If you're a hardcore player and a bit of a masochist, you could give it a try though.

tl;dr: If you're OK with watching Youtube guides, reading through the Noita Wiki and use exploits to beat the game, you'll probably have a blast with Noita. If you don't enjoy spoilers (like me), the game might not be for you.

Noita has been an emotional rollercoaster for me. At first I had a blast! The overall presentation, sound, graphics and atmosphere are top-notch. The world is large, mysterious and brutal, which is right up my alley.
But after a few hours frustration settled in, as I kept getting "Noita'd", which is the insider term for dying very unexpectedly in this game. Then I did something that I usually don't do: I watched a few basic guides on Youtube. That helped a lot, as I learned some new "tricks" to consistently make my runs better.

But the longer my runs got, the more frustrating were my deaths. Especially because the key to surviving is to carefully clear every area and collect as much gold/upgrades as possible, which I find rather tedious early in the run, because you don't have any cool wands/spells to play with.
Also, most of my deaths were caused by a lack of knowledge. In Noita, knowledge is more important than skill - which is actually a cool idea. But the problem is that the game doesn't present information very well or even hides it from the player.
The in-game description of spells/perks in the game are almost useless. You never know what is harmful until you try it out (which often leads to getting Noita'd). Some hazards are so deadly and inconspicuous, it's ridiculous.
To name one example: Propane tanks. They are small metal objects which are often buried in snow, making them almost invisible. They can be exploded by simply holding the wrong wand in your hand, and the explosion easily kills a player on full health.

I would still be able to cope with everything mentioned up to this point, but the final nail in the coffin for me was when I found out that this was just the tip of the iceberg... The required "knowledge" to be good at Noita greatly exceeds the usual stuff like knowing the spells, enemies and hazards. The community happily uses a ton of exploits that are in the game. There are relatively simple ones like using a spells "hidden mechanic" to deal thousands of damage instead of just 3 (Bouncing Ball acceleration).
Then there are more ridiculous ones like quirky key bindings to bypass a wand's recharge time. Even the non-exploit mechanics, like "Fungal Shift", are literally impossible to find out without watching guides/reading the Wiki. And for me this completely spoils the mystery and even immersion of the game.

Leaving a thumbs up, since I had a couple hours of fun, the price is low, art style is great and I've encountered no bugs.

But the more I learned how to play this game, the more I disliked it.

This is because it is an "anti simulation". You're not solving real world problems, which is managing traffic in ever growing cities. Instead you'll try to keep streets as separated and short as possible and learn how to cheese the RNG algorithm to place as few buildings as possible on the map. The latter is done by building dummy roads in spaces large enough to fit warehouses/malls.
Therefore the screenshots on the store page are misleading, as they show neat little cities with interconnected roads, which in fact is a bad play stile that makes reaching the higher score goals impossible.

I wish the player would have more control over where buildings are placed. The goal could be to produce/pick up a certain amount of items every week while allowing to freely place the required buildings. And to encourage building a somewhat interconnected infrastructure, a few points that must all be reachable could be generated (like in the current system).

When I started playing Red Dead Redemption 2, I was blown away. For the first three hours, I was literally grinning from ear to ear while playing - that's how much I enjoyed it.

The graphics are absolutely stunning, voice acting is top notch, the setting is superb and the whole atmosphere and details were super immersive. (The game also ran flawlessly on my RTX 3070 in 1440p and I had no issues with the Rockstar DRM.)

But slowly, mission after mission, the whole facade crumbled and eventually broke down completely, taking away all the enjoyment I had with this game.

Because hidden behind the AAA presentation are: An insultingly simple mission design (straight from GTA III), bad AI, a shallow "Wanted/witness" system and a dumb honor system.

Each mission is completely scripted and you have to read from the bottom left corner what you need to do next. "Go to the marked area", "Follow the guy", "Hide behind that rock", etc. There's no player freedom here and if you divert from the mission path, or don't reach a trigger in time, you'll get the "Mission Failed" screen.

The AI appears to be impressive when you visit a town for the first time, since they talk to you and react on what you do, but it's all part of the incredible presentation of the game. An unarmed attacker will not stop walking towards you if you aim his gun at him or even shoot him in the stomach. It's not possible to knock him/her out, as beating with fists an NPC will kill it - unless it's part of a scripted mission.

The honor system is so bad, it actually feels like an afterthought. There are ridiculously many situations that deduct your honor - like looting "innocent" bodies or killing horses. But then a mission requires you to kill 30+ lawmen and that's totally fine (no honor deduction).

All of this spoils 9 out of 10 the missions for me. In the last one I played I was pursuing prisoners who have escaped on a train. I tried lassoing the last one but the lasso clipped through him. Then a mission checkpoint is triggered and I'm locked inside a train wagon with him - he's wielding a knife. My first intuitions are to threaten him with a gun, shoot him in the stomach if necessary or maybe lasso him. But no - the game disables the weapon selection in this mission segment so you have to fight him with your fists. I'm not very good at melee (and I also don't like that system as well), so he stabs me in the stomach a couple of times. Doesn't matter, I eventually manage to beat him down, he's knocked out (again: which doesn't work outside of missions) and Arthur (my character) is completely fine in the next cutscene.

And that's the kind of stuff that happens in almost every mission.

I both love and hate PlateUp!. It can be tremendous fun with friends (also your SO), but runs are easily ruined by bad RNG.

I've been playing with my wife the entire time, and while we had some really great runs, three out of four were usually tedious and frustrating. That's also the reason why I thumb it down (would have chosen "neutral" if it was possible).

My main gripe is how appliances (the parts to build your kitchen with) are obtained. What you get each round is randomized, but there are several game mechanics that can be used to improve the odds for getting the appliances you need. This has gotten way out of hand in my opinion. It's no fun at all building up the "Research and Duplicate Area" in your kitchen every run.
It can also lead to very frustrating situations when you get a rare appliance you need (e.g. the Conveyor Belt), but you don't have the Duplicate Desk or a second Blueprint Cabinet yet, so you have to ditch it. And of course there are also runs where the RNG simply won't give you an essential appliance.

Then there's the "hardcore nature" of the game. One unhappy customer ends the whole run. While I actually like a challenge in games, they've overdone it in this one. You can have a perfectly running kitchen but one simple mistake (by anyone of the players) can end the whole run.
Example: A group of four customers order salads. Depending on your "Restaurant Cards" (more on that later) they can order salad with any combination of the following toppings: Tomatoes, onions, olives. As soon as you serve the first salad, you'll only have a few seconds to serve the other three for that group. The toppings are not actually listed anywhere (like in Overcooked), but you'll have to identify them from the icon over their heads. If you place a wrong salad (let's say with missing olives) on the table, they will not actively refuse it, but you won't be able to add another dish on the table. By the time you realize this, you basically ran out of time and the run is lost.

I mentioned Restaurant Cards earlier. These are modifiers that are applied to your restaurant every few rounds. Players can always choose one out of two random cards. While these cards are a fantastic idea and often create fun challenges, they can be absolutely brutal and unpredictable. E.g. when you choose to open a Cafè, you can get two restaurant cards that add other main dishes, e.g. Pizza and Dumplings. Either of these cards will completely transform your restaurant, as customers will now always order Pizza/Dumplings and occasionally want a coffee for dessert. Some cards are literally broken, because they overwrite your previous menu (e.g. Brownies/Cupcakes overwrite Cakes).

In my opinion these major problems could have been easily solved. Instead of the whole, luck-based "Appliances Blueprint Meta Game" players should be able to buy appliances via a shop system (with random discounts to keep things fresh).
And instead of one unhappy customer ending the run instantly, it should cost a penalty and the run should be over when the restaurant is bankrupt. The penalty could still be tough and quickly end runs, but at least players would have more control over it (and the "Extra Life" appliance is stupid).

Many others minor annoyances in the game have been addressed by modders already, so I highly recommend browsing the Steam Workshop for quality of life improvements if you want to give the game a try.

Astroneer is quite a unique game with nice eastetics and a few good concepts.

But it's also very tedious.

Every task involves so many steps and fiddling around that it felt like chores. It almost appears that the game was designed to make most basic tasks as hard as possible for the player. Each progression step will only give the player a possibility to make it just a tiiiny bit easier, while introducing new hurdles at the same time.
Then there are literal setbacks, e.g. when you're forced to travel to a different planet for obtaining a new resource and start a new base from scratch. With the tier 1 rocket it isn't even possible to attach any built machines or even travel with a coop buddy. And the limited fuel (which requires resources to craft) pretty much eliminates the option to make multiple trips back and forth.
While the UI is very beautiful and immersive/consistent, it is extremely cumbersome. Finding a specific machine inside the four different printer categories and indistinguishable sub-categories is pure torture. Why they haven't even designed different category icons (like "Power", "Vehicles", "Storage", etc.) is beyond me. Every sub-category is just a generic dot with no label or tool tip.

The final nail in the coffin for me was when I figured out how limited automation is in Astroneer. For the longest time I thought that eventually I'll be able to eliminate most of the tedious tasks, like constantly searching and collecting natural resources, by building automated factories. After failing to figure it out I looked up some automation guides on YouTube and was disappointed how even the jankyiest automation builds still required some manual input (like collecting soil for the Soil Centrifuge).

I could go on an on with these minor annoyances: Small inventory sizes, lack of proper resource storage, fiddly building, long printing times, machines requiring additional base platforms for placement, no UI to see power consumption/generation...

Most of these can't even be considered design flaws (except the UI sub-categories), as they all follow this consistent concept, which is probably what the game is all about. It's just not for me.

If you like to spend dozens of hours farming resources in beautiful, calming environments and slowly build up bases piece by piece, this game might be for you, though.

+ Fun mini games.
+ Some good, unique gameplay ideas.

- Lack of content/variation (4 mini games at the time of the review).
- In early access for almost 3 years with barely any updates.
- Bad user interface.
- Overpriced.

Even if I probably won't continue playing Eye of the Temple, I'm recommending it.

This is because the game is brilliant - I just don't like the slow pace.
While I was playing, I was absolutely amazed by how well the concept works and how much thought (and work) was obviously put into this. Several times I took of my Valve Index to see how badly entangled the cable was (I'm using a pulley cable management system), but it just wasn't!

But as I said, the pace is too slow for me. I like fast movement in VR like running, jumping, flying, etc. But here you're "forced" to take your route step by step, which is too tedious for me personally.
Still I think that this game is a must-try, as it's super unique and very well implemented!

Playing this as grown-up men on the couch is surely a good laugh, but unfortunately the game is utterly broken.

In the twenty minutes we've played this, we had to restart rounds three times (because the screen just went all grey) and even force shut the game once, because the main menu wasn't working anymore.