Recent reviews by Toren_S [Also Friendly]

A surprisingly good real-time with pause tactical combat game. The overall campaign is reminiscent of xcom, but it plays more like somebody threw in a dash of darkest dungeon after switching from turn based to real time. The levels are large and interesting, the classes work well together, and the game rises in difficulty well. I think the opening level when you have a real squad of marines was the strongest part of the game but the length was just about perfect, it ended right as I was ready to be done with the more stressful and more precision requiring late missions.

The game finally gets stealth right by making stealth not a thing you need to do to live but one you want to do because fighting aliens wastes resources, generates stress, and advances an internal clock that makes successive encounters rougher. It also accepts stealth through superior firepower, if you can kill something instantly even if you do it loud it doesn't trigger a hunt until an actual live alien spots your actual team, which leads to some interesting strategies.

The story is perfectly servicable. It exists, it's aliens, it won't really make you mad. The voice actors and everything are good, but the game isn't trying for any fancy twists or big new lore in the setting, it's just executing a standard tale quite well.

An amazing hybrid VN with character skill / development with baked in replayability through the plot. Its vibes are an interesting mix of queer and upbeat with lovecraftian madness and oppression, and the cast of characters is eclectic and personable and allows the character to choose which of them they want to get close to and if they want to get close to them if that's in a romantic or non romantic way.

You'll spend most of your time deciding what you want to do to level your stats or running around small exploration maps and event nodes, which culminates in card encounters where you try to beat or exceed a target score with cards from your deck. The deck is expanded naturally through playing and has some pruning, this isn't so much a 'card game' as a minigame mechanic using cards. It can be turned off, but it was generally fun enough and quick enough that it didn't wear on me over 4 playthroughs.

It took about 4 run throughs for me to get what I considered to be the 'good' ending to the VN, but there's a lot of alternate content that could still be seen. This is enough for me, but if you're completionist about wanting to see everything or close to everything it could take easily double this playtime.

I bounced off this game hard three times. Then, after the Developer's next major CRPG, Colony Ship, came out, I was like 'this looks really neat but didn't they make that other game I never managed to play?' So I buckled up, settled in, and finally decided to accept there was a game where you could only see a fraction of the game on each playthrough.

This time, I managed to get hooked. It's brutally difficult in combat but most paths through the game don't require or barely require any (just don't join the Assassins or Guards and expect to talk your way through everything). The game itself is fairly short for a CRPG, with a playthrough lasting 10-15 hours. But each playthrough only shows you part of the picture, you see spots where other people from other paths are doing things and if you're playing that path you get to be that person instead. So when you finish up, you start a different kind of character, and see a different part of the plot.

If you find the premise interesting, I recommend starting with a Merchant or Praetor or Thief path first, as these can be done with a minimum of combat and the combat tends to be easy with friendly NPCs around. See if you like the worldbuidling and lore and skills and choice system. Even use a mod to increase your free exp if needed (there's one easily findable in the discussions). Then after you complete one of those paths, try a more combat focused one and learn the combat system. Then try to find some of the niche things in the game that require specific combinations of stats and skills and get to the depths of some of the weirdness. If you can get into it, there's enough for 4 or 5 10ish hours playthroughs or so that will largely feel very different from each other

A very worthy successor to Jagged Alliance 2, bringing it to the modern era with the same quirky mercenary personalities and enjoyable tactical combat. If you like XCOM like combat with a strategic layer as well, this is an excellent game to choose. The strategic layer is simpler but also makes your playthrough open ended and lets you decide how you want to tackle the map, and the gear progression does a good job of making earlier enemies start to feel trivial while having newer and tougher opponents that will challenge what you've got.

This game wears its inspiration on its sleeve, and while it doesn't have the same budget as Ace Attorney it far and away has the same kind of heart, telling a story that evokes familiarity but treads its own ground. So far it's shorter and tighter than the Ace Attorney games, and while occasionally it still has the same flaw in that you might know what's going on but struggle to figure out what piece(s) of evidence the game wants you to show to get you there, most of the pointless failure spots have been removed. While you can brute force it, the game clearly doesn't want you to and the vast majority of the time having thought about the scenario and the evidence lets you be in a great position to resolve things that come up at the trial while still letting it throw the occasional twist or curveball at you. A hearty recommendation for any fan of the genre, and many more besides.

A lovecraftian visual novel whose opening chapters are stronger than the later ones, but worth it despite some rough translations into English. Though the visual aesthetic looks 'anime' but this is not an anime game, the story is serious and dark. They contain cuteness to one chapter out of six, and even then it doesn't go too far. The gameplay portions get in the way occasionally due to the rough translations, most of it you can figure out on your own but sometimes it's got the Ace Attorney problem where you don't know what it actually wants from you. There's guides easily available if you need them, you're basically here just to follow the story. Sort of a 6-7/10 style recommendation, play it if you like both genres.

The best of THE BROTHERHOOD's games, they continue to improve every time. It's a point and click puzzle adventure where you swap between three characters often in three different places to solve puzzles, usually needing items or data from one person to help another. Due to in game technology, the characters can transfer their items to each other but not themselves. The puzzles require some thought but I haven't been stuck for too long, the in game hinting is useful and I haven't needed to consult an outside walkthrough. The voice acting and character dialogue is much improved from their prior games. The ambience continues to be creepy and unsettling in all the right ways. A warning that if you can't handle gore you might want to stay away, the game is messy but so far I wouldn't say excessively so. It's done in the service of a horror atmosphere and not for giggles.

If you liked their prior games you'll definitely like this one. If you didn't like prior games but enjoy the genre, you might still want to check this one out with the new production values and QOL improvements.

Randomly, I enjoy that every character has a different line of text dialogue for looking at every inventory item, it's a nice little touch that helps add more depth and characterization to them while being ignorable if you don't care.

A phenomenal rebuilding of the original, a must play for any fan of Survival Horror even if you've played the original.

A great visual novel that is strongest at the start but is still thoroughly enjoyable through to the end. Though the writing is strong in the game itself and relatively easy to follow, the tips are excessively long which is occasionally helpful but a bit overly word dense.

The music is fantastic, used sparingly for great effect.

There's a little 'gameplay' but it's largely following the novel with rare logic puzzle bits.

It's not Dead Space. If you can get past that, you can probably enjoy The Callisto Protocol.
It's understandable why this is a problem, since the game itself invites the comparison on several occasions, but it stands on its own as an enjoyable survival horror experience.

Gameplay broadened the more you got into the game, with the game limited to rhythmic and brutal melee combat at the start and then opening up more and more with telekinetic power and gunplay. Stealth was possible for certain sections but never mandatory, and even though it feels like the combat is a trivial 'dodge right and left and wait until your turn to hit' it frequently tricks you into become greedy and getting hit or throwing multiple enemies at you that require you to use your actual arsenal. It wasn't until the last couple chapters that the game actually threw an overload of supplies, inventory management and careful use of weapons and selling whatever you can to buy upgrades kept the economy and inventory working well for the majority of it.

The environments continued to make me tense and the way they decorated the places was spot on in many cases for 'completely interrupted life'. While on the gloomy side, they did vary up, and with the varied environments came new and different enemy types.

The story isn't going to win an award but it did set up an interesting premise that could be expanded on later. I hope they get to make the later games and actually do more with it. It's a fairly standard affair of just trying to survive a horrible situation and get some lore along the way of why it happened, with a bit more exposition/villainy on the back end.

What I'm describing here I'd basically put as a B- or a C+. You can see why it disappointed people who were expecting an A or an A+, but fans of the horror genre will find a lot to enjoy here as long as they go in without that expectation that it's going to be Dead Space or better than Dead Space. There aren't a lot of games made with the immense production values of Callisto Protocol and that does a lot to elevate the package.