Recent reviews by Lengray

The visuals are really nice but they can't make up for the clunky combat and constant crashes.

[+]⠀The game is visually very pleasing but that's pretty much the only thing it has going for it.

[-]⠀I just didn't like the combat, which makes up the vast majority of the gameplay. It's unintuitive and slow, which is the awkward way the dev tried to give it weight. And then, there are the constant crashes. I first tried it on the Steam Deck, which is supposed to be compatible, and I couldn't go past one of the bosses in the caves despite trying over 10 times. It crashed to desktop every single time. I then tried it again on my desktop PC (no cloud saves so I had to start from the start) and once again, crashes to desktop. Enough is enough!

A colorful bittersweet adventure with a touching story and a deep underlying message.

[+]⠀Bought on a whim, I truly fell in love with this game. It's hard to pinpoint what exactly attracts me the most but I guess it's a combination of things that make Sumire better than the sum of its parts. The art direction is fantastic, the music gave me shivers and is probably the most beautiful I've heard in any game! Finally, I really enjoyed the story and the message it passes on. Sumire is all about dealing with the hardships life throws at us, the capacity for love and forgiveness and how it's important to see beauty in the little and seemingly insignificant things. Not everyone will relate to this but if you are a kind soul, it will undoubtedly resonate with you.

[-]⠀In my opinion, too many playthroughs are required to get all the achievements and I can't understand why some of them are related to how bad a person you can be. I guess I'll skip those.

Airoheart is rough around the edges but nicely calls upon the spirit of the classic 2D Zelda games to deliver a good adventure.

[+]⠀First, as a disclaimer, please note that while I backed it on Kickstarter, it doesn't affect my opinion.
After beating the game, I must say I had a very good time with it. It's in no way groundbreaking but still provides a very nice 20+ hours adventure filled with challenges, funny characters and many things to discover. The pixel art is lovely and very consistent, both in its design and color palette. The world map and the gameplay aren't very original but I think it was the dev's intention to make players of A Link To the Past feel at home. I really enjoyed most of the puzzles and I never got stuck in dungeons despite the lack of maps.

[-]⠀The game has many small shortcomings: inconsistent hitboxes, soft locks, lack of invincibility frames when hit, two dungeons are too dark and so on. However, the dev said he's aware of the players' feedback and is planning to both fix what needs fixing and implement some of the requested additions. It's just a shame the initial release was buggy and infuriated many people (including reviewers). That shouldn't happen when it's your first game and you expect people to pay a steep price for it. Finally, the music is hit and miss. Some tracks are great while others not so much. The Red Regions one even has dissonant and off-key parts which makes my musician ears hurt.

Review update (October 31): I've decided to take a second star off my rating since the updates to fix the issues many players have reported have been extremely few. A month after release, the vast majority of the problems are still present. I'll update my review again once the promised fixes have been delivered.

A superb blend of heartbreaking storytelling and captivating adventures.

[+]⠀On the surface, Citizen Sleeper is a cyberpunk survival game, at least in the beginning. Taking place on a patched-up space station, the player and all the NPCs struggle to stay alive and carve out a place for themselves through generosity, honesty or treachery. But if you scratch that surface, what you find is an emotional roller-coaster and an inspiring outlook on sentient beings' resilience capacity. It's a game about choices but also one about luck. The core gameplay, deciding the outcomes of your actions through a combination of dice-rolling and RNG, makes you carefully weigh your options and take risks and I absolutely loved it! Besides, you can chose to end the game in various ways or just settle in a routine and keep going for as long as you want. The visuals and the music are superb, the characters are all memorable and the writing is really good. So good in fact that one of the endings actually made me cry and stare at the screen for 5 full minutes. I loved In Other Waters but this is next level. And the post-release free updates make it even better!

[-]⠀The very few bugs I encountered didn't bother me much, especially for a game I started to play on release day. However, I wish manual saving were possible to be able to more easily explore the different paths and that the type of character you choose to play mattered more in the long run and even locked some storylines to increase replayability.

Despite being pretty generic in many ways, this great old-school RPG gives the player a lot of freedom.

[+]⠀The retro visuals and the grid-based movement will remind long-time gamers of the classic RPGs from the 90s. Coupled with turn-based combat, The Quest provides a nice and long adventure which you can enjoy at your own pace. There is no hand-holding here as the player is expected to pay attention to details, listen closely to conversations and piece everything together to solve puzzles and quests. The journal is sometimes not enough to know what to do next and that's very enjoyable for those who like to explore. The quests are varied and usually quite interesting, the dialogues blend well with the rest of the game and so does the music. What I really enjoyed is the level of freedom given to the player. You can choose which skills to specialize in, play a good or evil character and solve quests in different ways. The game is pretty easy if you carefully plan before leaving towns but I played as a pure mage and, apparently, it's the easiest way to beat the game.

[-]⠀There are only a few things I didn't like: The combat is slow, playing a mage forced me to chug down mana potions all the time which seriously toned down the feeling of being mighty and the recharge wand spell can be abused to break the game.

A fantastic thriller, this game manages to capture the mysterious nightly atmosphere, cultural blend and philosophical questioning typical of great cyberpunk narratives.

[+]⠀First, the game is served by jaw-dropping pixel graphics. Everything is extremely detailed, the lighting is phenomenal and so are the animations, especially the environmental ones. Without spoiling the story, I really liked how it develops and how the lore is slowly presented through discussions or relics of the past you get to examine. The cast of NPCs plays a crucial part in making the story work and they're all interesting, from the simple maid robot to the insane antagonist. The puzzles are quite original and their difficulty is just right, which is what's needed not to get in the way of the story. The music is great too and perfectly complements what's visually presented. You can tell all the efforts that were put into making this game (which is the the devs' first!) and I'll gladly play it again many times over.

[-]⠀There are a few typos here and there and I wish dialogues displayed a little faster.

A great underrated shooter featuring non-stop action sequences and witty dialogue.

[+]⠀To be honest, I didn't expect much from this game since it doesn't seem popular among my friends despite many owning it. Well, they really should give it a spin like I did! The gameplay keeps you on your toes at pretty much all times and the visuals hold up very well for a 10-year old game, especially reflections and how robots break apart. Though their backgrounds are barely mentioned, the characters are all interesting and you get that "team" feeling very quickly, mostly because of the excellent dialogue lines and how teammates react to your answers and gunplay. The story follows the classical cyberpunk themes but has nice twists which keep it interesting. The length of the campaign is perfect and there's no filler content.

[-]⠀The first couple of hours felt pretty weak and made the game look like a generic shooter. If you can get past those, you're in it for treat. I also can't understand why most of the settings are not ingame but in a separate exe file and why it's impossible to disable mouse acceleration (that made me struggle with the controls for some time). Finally, while I know it was mandatory for the plot, I just couldn't buy the love story. Things just happen too fast for the kind of deep romance presented here.

A work of love, Cleo is a wonderful surprise! It is a short and tight adventure but one to remember.

[+]⠀There is so much to love about this game! The pixel art is gorgeous, the music and voice acting are stellar, the story, characters and dialogue lines are delightful and the puzzles have just the right difficulty. You may scratch your head for a short while but you will get that "a-ha" moment pretty quickly and move on with the great story.
The in-game cards and dice game is very well thought-out and a joy to play. To think that all of this (except the voice acting) was made by one person leaves me speechless. Thank you for making this game. I will tell all my friends about it.

[-]⠀I only wish I could play rounds of Kraken Fodder right from the start menu. Maybe that will come in a future update.

Skyrim is certainly a gem. A rough one, but a gem nonetheless. And I'm very grateful to the modding community for polishing it so well over the years.

[+]⠀What I love the most about Skyrim is not the excellent combat, the compelling quests or the gorgeous graphics. It truly shines in how it gives the player the freedom to do whatever they please and be whoever they want, especially with mods. You can choose to follow the main quest and the minor ones you find along the way or you can simply choose to ignore everything, explore as you see fit and actually role-play the game. If you're a slow player like me and love to take the time to immerse yourself, Skyrim never gets boring. Watching a wolf hunting deer in the distance, spying on a lone passing giant, marvelling at dwemer architecture or reading a book by the fire then become wonderful experiences.

[-]⠀The faction questlines are pretty poor and definitely not specialist-oriented (except the Thieves' one to a degree) and you must role-play the game to really enjoy them. Besides, while I'm glad Bethesda opened the game to mods, they should have made the effort to fix all those bugs themselves instead of relying on the modding community to do it for them. I could also moan about the various repackaged versions of the game over the years and the push towards paid mods but they are things easily ignored.

Anniversary Edition update⠀Well, Bethesda broke many people's games with the (sort of) forced update, which was expected. The free CC mods are nice but it's likely they deliberately broke major free mods to push their Anniversary paid upgrade (which I still got) but the mod scene will pull through in the end.

Eastward is an excellent title but some strange design decisions keep it short of being a masterpiece.

[+]⠀The first thing that appeals to the player and anyone interested in this game is the gorgeous pixel art. Not only is it well designed (but not quite pixel-perfect yet, see the negative section) and beautifully-animated but Pixpil have taken it to the next level by adding great lighting and animation effects. This blend works out extremely well and is jaw-dropping right until the end. I found the story very good overall but as a potential buyer, be aware that most of the gameplay is reading speech bubbles and watching cutscenes while combat takes a back seat. Speaking of combat, I found it very interesting if a little basic. The bosses are great and beating them gives you a warm feeling of accomplishment. There's also crafting in this game through cooking. It's nifty but could be improved by directly selecting the recipe if you already know it and have all the ingredients. The music is excellent for the most part and that chiptune vibe goes really well with the visuals. Finally, I really enjoyed the ingame mini-RPG with its Amiibo-like figurines to collect. It's a nice addition to take a break.

[-]⠀One thing that bothered me a bit is how the story regularly drags on and some parts almost feel like filler material. It nicely alternates between dark and funny moments but it's quite unfocused at times.

Edit: A new pixel-perfect mode is now available, making the visuals nice and crisp. Thanks for implementing it!