Recent reviews by Luna

While it's a nice Harvest Moon / Stardew Valley-like farming sim with an interesting twist in regards to the diving gameplay - I find it rather frustrating that the game, despite being "released", clearly is still in a stage where it is not finished.
In some places, the map is completely grey, and some (side) characters have no images for their map markers. There are clearly places that are supposed to be puzzles, but that also have no solution at this point because there is nothing implemented besides the (interactable!) mechanism with which to solve something (that doesn't exist).
Oh, and it's not even possible to marry the merpeople yet, despite big announcements about how marriage was working now and specific merpeople being dateable (on paper)...!

Now, would this game still be early access I'd recommend it anyway, as it certainly is playable and kind of fun, but calling this a released game / 1.0 version with not even a comment about the clearly missing features (some of which were promised during the Kickstarter camaign to be included for release) at this point, despite calling it "released", is rather... meh.

I can forgive simple bugs, even after a release, as you can never catch all of them, but missing features that were clearly intended to be there? This ought to at least be addressed in some news, honestly.
And as someone who backed this game on Kickstarter originally I feel quite sad that this is what they would call a 'released' game. :(
(Might update this review in case the game actually does get to a state that feels as finished as e.g. Stardew Valley did at its release. Assuming I'll play it again around that time)

I swear, Grim is the most adorable Love Interest I've seen in any visual novel in a loong time. And the amount of customisations you can make for the MC are amazing as well! :)
The banter being top notch quality really is just the cherry on top here. I have been laughing at almost every line of dialogue as it's so damn cute/funny/silly/everything. Definitely recommended!

(Also, if you can, I'd definitely suggest buying the DLC as well. The extra options/ending are absolutely worth it and anyway, these devs deserve some money for their amazing work)

What a great game! :)

Nice game, this type of puzzle solving is really cool and the way it literally challenged your view on things was fun!
Sadly the plot really is quite bland (though I personally liked the tidbits of worldbuilding lying around everywhere), and the closer you get to the end, the less sense it seems to make. (Also: f*ck time contraints, that part was unnecessary and felt like inflated difficulty for no reason at all)

All in all, a nice experience though, if a little expensive at 25€ for barely 5 hours of playtime. Maybe wait for a sale.

I had some previous experience with roguelike games, but never having played a game of this exact type (bullet hell, kinda?) before I was initially wary - but it soon turned into a lot of fun!
I love all the different "characters" and the various gameplay styles they support, there are enough achievements to always feel like you can work towards a goal and that the difficulty is customizeable for each run makes for a very satisfying gameplay loop in general.
Clear recommendation! :)

It's sad that there still isn't an option to give a "meh" review on Steam - as such this will be a negative one instead.

The good thing about this DLC is the one thing that's really Owlcat's strength: When there IS story, it's fun! The reactivity wasn't the best I've ever seen but for a relatively short DLC I had a lot of fun playing as Trickster and quite a few options to pick that had exactly the same vibe as the mythic path in the main game.

Sadly the actual gameplay was horrible in comparison. The Axis as a plane sounded SO interesting, but in my opinion the text "You get to visit the axis" is a huge clickbait. Because, while you're technically there, the actual axis content is not only very little, but also the most unfun part of it all.
And I don't even mean the combat (cruising through enemies at Level 20 / Mythic 10 CAN be quite a lot of fun!), but the level design!
It even got so bad that I had to find a walkthrough during the first (?) dungeon to figure out how to continue and I had to resort to outright cheating to finish the last one as I couldn't find ANY path to go forward legitimately at some point and there seem to be zero guides on that last dungeon for some reason. (Doesn't help that the last quest is named "Inevitable Excess" too, so good luck googling for help there...)

At least the middle part was fun and my companions (I had Woljif and Daeran with me) had some funny lines as well, so again, story wise it was quite alright. (I did go for the secret ending first though and I would recommend it to others too - the other endings seem quite bland and not very rewarding in comparison. Though don't expect many ending slides.)

Will I play this again? Probably not. I just hope that I got the stuff unlocked for the main game that I wanted and will look into another playthrough of that instead.
If you really want to buy it maybe look for a sale or something. It took me just a few hours and really mostly felt like two annoying dungon crawls with some silly side quests in the middle. (Those were fun though!)

It's an interesting visual novel that allows for an astonishing amount of choice during the game - that even ends up having some influence in how the plot plays out later on!
There are four potential love interests, available for any MC (which can be created with three different body types and he, she or they pronouns!) and there is also the option of staying friends with everyone instead of pursuing a romance.
The game makes it pretty hard to actually get a "bad end", but things can still happen, there are "quests" that change how the story plays out et cetera, which is pretty damn good for a tiny development studio!
There is voice acting too - there are quite a few known people from game series like Persona or Fire Emblem - which is done really well and the puzzle aspect (a recurring minigame of matching specific patterns as seen in the Screenshots) has been well implemented too If you want the "Master Alchemist" achievement, prepare for some brainpower to go into solving those challenges!

Sometimes, especially later on the story got a bit convoluted for me, but it definitely has some very emptional moments, both happy and sad scenes, difficult decisions and whatever else you could wish for in a visual novel. It's not the longest though (My hour count consists of the beta, log afk sessions and some puzzling - I guess it's about 6-10 hours in total, depending on the reading speed)
It does offer quite some replayability though, for while the plot might not majorly change, the way the MC reacts with it can produce quite some different results in the end!

I can definitely recommed it for people who are interested in visual novels that are not purely romance, that have well thought out characters with different personalities and a great many options of choice in how your MC reacts to the world! (Hell, every single dialogue option has a "tone" attached to make it clear in what tone the MC delivers such a line. Very helpful for lovers of sarcasm!) Certainly worth it's price!

I'm not actually the biggest fan of Roguelike games, but Evertried convinced me not only by being very pretty, but also really giving this "Just one more try!" feeling a new meaning!
Also the game has relatively little RNG, so 90% of the deaths happening actually are the player's fault. Something I hate and love at the same time! Being able to either try to go as fast as you can or take your time and think your moves through is a great thing, allowing everyone to learn in their own speed. And the feeling of killing an enemy or clearing a floor that previously gave me troubles for the first time is amazing!
Add to it that it has multiple endings (unlocking more, slightly different game modes) and a bunch of different skills and modifiers that are very interesting to combine I personally do forgive the bugs that are, admittedly, still in the game.

Someone who is hoping for the next Hades might be disappointed, but I would still recommend supporting a small indie studio to make this game the masterpiece it deserves to be! (Also there are regular updates to deal with the bugs and while it IS frustrating if they happen, they don't happen every run or something either. Just give it a try if you're into Roguelikes!)

I don't have much experience with Visual Novels, but this one most certainly was amazing! I can't believe that this is free, it's worth a lot more! I admit, I didn't like all the love interests overly much, especially at first, but after playing the routes in the recommended order I have to admit, I got to like every one of them at least somewhat. The story is actually quite interesting, starting out slow but going quite a lot deeper - although in the last two routes I played I feel some things were a bit overdone.
And it's not always clear why exactly certain dialogue choiced give bonus points for your love interst and others don't... But that's where the indicator to tell you if this was good or not comed into play (which you can toggle off and on whenever you want) so it's not too frustrating either.

Still, the idea of a protagonist who's actually quite unlikeable in the beginning (although to the player it's also made obvious as to why, which helps a lot!) and then during the game changes... it's really an interesting concept!

Recommended to anyone who can at least think about reading a fantasy romance novel with some player input - and to everyone else, maybe give it a try anyway, it's free! :)

Although I'm not the biggest fan of visual novels and the game does have some quite long passages of dialogue only, I was hooked by the demo for I do love "Escape the Room" style puzzles.
With the price being quite moderate I decided to try out the full version, and I have to say I didn't regret it.

While one run through the whole game (getting the "True Ending" - out of six, I suppose?) was relatively short with about three hours I did really like the whole feeling of it, even though the warnings at the beginning of the game should be read carefully and, if there are problems with any of the mentioned topics, the game should be avoided, for it does get quite serious at the end.

On the other hand, I loved the rather dirty humour of it and the way Beryl and Chris keep flirting with each other and their interactions in general. It was quite satisfying to read!
The puzzles were not too difficult but I did sometimes sit on them a bit longer - it never got frustrating though, so some might find them a little too easy.

The only thing that really annoyed me was the navigation in the rooms themselves. I have no idea how often I tried to get to the door in the first room or a specific place required for a puzzle in one of the later rooms! The layout of the rooms felt weird to me and I couldn't always understand how exactly you were supposed to reach some screens without wildly clicking around until I finally managed. That was disappointing.

This is the only real flaw I found though, otherwise the gameplay was fun and the story was really interesting and had some unexpected twists in store for me, with some surprisingly cute romance.
Definitely a very interesting experience!

For me, who never played a soulslike game before, Code Vein was an amazing introduction into the genre! The possibility of taking a partner with you eased me into the whole principle of the genre and I could basically feel how I got better as the game progressed.
I'll have to admit not every aspect of the game was extremely challenging, but I actually quite liked this. And I did have enough bosses on which I was stuck for a while - just never long enough to become truly frustrating.
The newest patches made starting over in a higher difficulty bearable too (by enabling to lower the difficulty again, although I didn't need hat yet, even though the challenge really is quite a bit higher now) and as such there are many things to be done even after finishing the game once.
Although I'm not sure I would recommend starting the game over on the same difficult with your level 100+ character. That playthrough was quite boring. :/

There are a lot of skills, Blood Codes and Blood Veils to experiment with though, which makes trying out new options very interesting and no two runs need to be the same, as playing e.g. with a huge hammer, fast sword or bayonet with magic are already three very different experiences.

The story itself is alright, though of course a bit tropey, and the different endings are intersting enough (and at least not always super sad!), although I found myself skipping most of the (at times very long) cutscenes after watching them the first time.
I LOVE the character design though. The anime-esque style fits extremely well and, for me at least, is much more appealing than the grimdark settings of Dark Souls or Bloodborne.

All in all, I would recommend the game for everyone who thinkgs they might be interested in the soulslike subgenre but would like a slightly softer entry point (Especially since you can still go all out later with ramping up the difficulty once you've cleared the story once, and of course turning off the partner at any time) or who just really like the visual style. The feeling of being able to beat the bosses, even if you're playing "easy mode" (Yakumo! Why can you solo bosses better than me? Dx) is really nice and it just looks so good!
People who already feel Dark Souls is too easy or do Sekiro speedruns or something similar might want to think twice though - I guess the general difficulty is a bit lower than those games.