Recent reviews by metoxys

Excellent game, cool premise, does what it does super well.
Full endorsement.

Even if we ignore the disagreements I have with the design philosophy and writing of Fallout 3 and its expansions (in comparison to the OG Fallout games and New Vegas), I absolutely cannot recommend this game if you are using modern hardware and operating systems.

Fallout 3 didn't manage to launch before applying community-made ("unofficial") patches and fixes. Even after those fixes, loading saves takes a long time, there are random but reproducible crashes to desktop (such as an extremely annoying crash to desktop when attempting to get off the Rivet City boat; even taking an alternative route to a different exit crashed the game so my only solution was to use console commands to teleport myself to a different area), and some elements of the UI tend to freeze (like, stay in place on the screen) for no reason, and that issue even persists through loads and exiting to the main menu (imagine how unplayable the game is when you have an enemy marker stuck on your compass or when the quest marker doesn't update).

Overall the game is a mess on a technical level, still playable but with very huge caveats that make it borderline unplayable for sessions that are longer than 10 minutes.

Very lovely game.

Physics-based gameplay. I'm a really big fan of the fact that the game gives you a lot of freedom on how to complete the levels, as opposed to forcing a certain strategy on you. You can use terraforming and play slowly, you can use acrobatic maneuvers and nice tricks to just ignore that whole aspect, the game gives you the freedom to discover how you prefer to play it and stick with it. Big fan of that. Lovely story. Excellent ambient soundtrack.

Update:

Game keeps getting worse and worse over time as R* implements more and more things that are catered towards short term gains (toys for PvP-addicted kids with access to their parents' credit cards) while completely disregarding quality of life and features for those people who made the series popular and well-esteemed in the first place.

The updates keep getting lazier and lazier, more and more broken and unbalanced. As of today, the release of Arena Wars, it personally is my last straw for the time being.

Very polished puzzle game with a very clean interface, calm music, and easily understandable mechanics.

No handholding or guidance, the entire game is learning by doing.

Quite short, 50 levels, exponentially increasing difficulty.

No element of time, i.e. you can take as long as you want to figure out a puzzle or plan your next move.

Overall I liked it

Interesting take on nonograms, very challenging especially towards the end - had to whip out a piece of paper and do some logical tests in the penultimate puzzle, just like in Hexcells Infinite.

Very polished interface, very smooth and clean look, good ambient background music and good sound effects, just like in Hexcells Infinite.

Overall it's a bit short; I got through the 36 levels in 3.4 hours.

(I'm absolutely expecting this review to get downvoted a lot)

The moment I am absolutely unable to beat an enemy without consulting a wiki or a walkthrough is the moment in which I start being very very sceptical about the design of a game.

The moment I am unable to progress in the story without using external tools to cheat in the game is the moment I am unable to recommend it to anybody.

Undertale advertises itself as an RPG but unfortunately it really is a Bullet Hell game at times. Like, if you are interested in trying out Undertale because you like playing RPGs, be aware that it is absolutely necessary to be very skilled in the Bullet Hell genre. In other words, unless you are very very very greatly skilled at Bullet Hell games, then you might have similar problems as me.

In other words, if you are very greatly skilled at Bullet Hell games, and you like RPGs, and you like interesting storylines, and you have a very high tolerance for unfair game design, and you do not value your time much, then I can very much recommend this game to you.


tl;dr
This is a Bullet Hell game that advertises itself as an RPG. Not advertising your game correctly will lead to bad experiences for a subset of the playerbase. My experience playing Undertale, especially the last few fights, was bad. Therefore I cannot recommend it.

(This is a Bullet Hell game because, even if you play peacefully and choose noncombat options at every opportunity, you are still going to experience Bullet Hell gameplay. The only way to know that this is a Bullet Hell game is by spoiling the story for yourself by watching spoilerful gameplay. Like, I only watched a bit of spoiler-free gameplay and saw mild bullets - I can deal with bullets. What I cannot deal with is Bullet Hell.)

Is it hard to manipulate you emotionally?
Do you think it's unacceptable to spend money on a game, play it for 2 minutes, and then uninstall it to never play it again?
Do you have consistent and/or clearly defined ethical/moral principles?

If you answered no to these three questions, I would recommend Spec Ops: The Line to you.


As it stands, the gameplay is tedious, pretty much every single enemy or killable person in this game does an A+ job at making you hate them; the entire game could be resolved through communication or following the first order at the beginning of the game, the game attempts to guilt trip you, you are fighting against at least a thousand hyper-aggressive cheating enemies.
In short, I found this game to be a very unpleasant experience - not because of the "story" but because the game did an excellent and very competent job at making me hate it.

I like the concept behind RONIN and I like the game in spite of its small flaws.

In my opinion, the combat and the gameplay is a lot of fun because you can pull off all kinds of crazy kills and jumps and stunts etc that would be impossible without tools in other games.

If I had to rate the game with stars, I would give it 3 out of 5. If you had asked me before I started new game plus, I would have said 5 out of 5.

The biggest problem with the game is the stupidly high difficulty in new game plus. Apparently, since the 4th patch, the difficulty was drastically increased because the behavior of an enemy got changed (and new game plus gives you way too many of these enemies). I mean, the regular game was hard enough at some points, thanks to the level design, but new game plus absolutely takes the cake.

Suggestions for improving this game:
- Decrease the (stupidly high) difficulty of new game plus by reverting the behavior of that one enemy
- Add a "watch replay" feature to see your gameplay again in real time (might be difficult because of checkpoints)

Overall I would recommend the game and, on top of that, advise you to stay out of new game plus

Ohmygosh this game is gorgeous.

It teaches you a lot about typography, it is gorgeous, it is gorgeous, it's actually fun to play, it's gorgeous.

Have I already mentioned that this game is gorgeous? Seriously, check out the screenshot section. I believe that this gorgeous game is worth a buy just for the art.