Recent reviews by Blaul Part

Really suggest avoiding this, for a slew of reasons.

First of all, whether the dev realizes this or not, she's being really emotionally manipulative on social media. I'm guessing a lot of people who found this game already know this, but there's been a ton of complaining about EA releasing their C&C collection on the same day that this game dropped. I dislike EA as much as the next guy, but that's life. The reason that they got more attention than this game did is because they're better-made games that a lot of people really treasure. I promise EA wasn't trying to screw over any little guys when they dropped their games, so playing the victim on this is wild and comes off as a desperate plea to get more purchases.

Second of all, the positive reviews for this game are sketch as hell. Take a look through the profiles leaving the reviews. You'll find that about half of them are from profiles that have never reviewed any other games, are private profiles, are extremely new/unused accounts, have played for less than 30 minutes yet make sweeping comments on the entire quality of the game, or some combination of all the above.

But all of that aside, it wouldn't be fair to leave a negative review without having actually tried the game. What I played didn't really feel too great. There's no control rebinding, or even a control menu. It takes 20-30 minutes of walking around before you get any sort of sprint capability. No local maps means that you might be finding yourself backtracking quite a bit. Character motivations are bizarre at times (ex: MC treating Emily like a friend at Yaga's house - why?). Characters go from just meeting each other to talking like good friends very quickly. Thematically, it makes sense to have to be at a cauldron to make potions, but it just isn't fun when you're in the middle of a boss fight or reach a spot where something in particular is needed, and you have to reset a fight or backtrack after making more potions. Potion making is also kind of tedious, since you can't have the recipe book open while you're adding ingredients, so may have to go back and forth between recipe book and cauldron frequently. Map movement is weird (ex: when in level 4 of fairy forest, going back a level put me at level 1 instead of 3). A world map function directly from Granny's house would have been much appreciated, because it's really annoying to spend the 10-15 seconds leaving the hut and walking to the world map every single time you return home. Hitboxes can be questionable. Animations are clunky and slow, especially having to wait a second every single time you pick up a resource. A lot of missions boil down to "go find X thing somewhere in X location", leaving surprisingly little motivation to engage with potion making. If a character requests an ingredient as a side quest and you already have that ingredient, too bad - you have to go find another. I know most of these sound nitpicky on their own, but when it all piles up, in makes for a tedious and unpleasant overall experience. On the bright side, a lot of those things can probably be updated and patched with time. There might be a gem hiding in this rough, but in its current state, I'd strongly recommend passing on it.

Cool game! Super original, which is hard to do in the rogue genre nowadays. It maybe feels a bit grindy to work on your base and improve your runs - this is alleviated by the alchemist, but the alchemist takes a long while to get to and there's nothing really suggesting how useful the alchemist is for improving your camp until you unlock it. Otherwise, it's pretty good. It's relaxed, has tile combos that are fun to explore, classes that feel fairly different and fresh from one another, interesting base building and upgrading - all that you can really need in a rogue, with a new and unique coat of paint.

Great concept. Pretty bad execution.

Having power shot be a card is a massive mistake. I feel compelled to actually avoid adding new cards to my deck unless they help me get more power shots into my hand. There's just too many times that you can do absolutely nothing if you don't have a power shot or lob shot.

The procedural generation is pretty rough. Each different stage just has like 8-10 map "pieces" I guess you could call them that seem to be stuck together in each hole. Very little variety, gets stale very quick. That procedural generation can also rarely create holes that soft lock you, due to the hole spawning inside of a some other map piece, making it inaccessible.

There's a lot here that's cool and could've gone somewhere, but this is a game that feels like it doesn't want to be played sometimes.

It's good if you can get it on sale. Regular price is probably a bit much.

Very fun and smart concept. The execution is a bit lacking, but having looked over the reviews from a year or two ago, it's clear this game has gone pretty far in the correct direction since then, so I'll give it a weak thumbs up in hopes that this game gets even stronger with time.

Despite what a lot of other players seem to think, I don't really have an issue with this game's balancing. I think you can make a lot of different builds work, and it's a lot of fun to play around with different set-ups! This is especially true on low cruciball runs, where the game feels much more fair and rewarding to play. The issue, especially in high cruciball runs, is that you need to really rely on RNG. Most builds seem to be viable, yes, but you have to really commit to those builds and get most/all relics and orbs that lean into that play style, which is a massive ask. The game just doesn't give you enough options, especially not for relics. There doesn't really feel like there's enough time to pivot either - once you pick a build, it feels like you must stick with it, and if it doesn't pan out, then GG, start again. Peglin can be really frustrating and anticlimactic to this end.

However, when things align well (or you're playing lower difficulties and having a more relaxed run), this game is super satisfying. Designing some maps to looks like the enemies you're facing is really creative. Others move about in really fun ways. The dragon fight was a personal favorite. There's just a lot of cool stuff going on. Wish there was more variety - 7 total bosses across 3 stages is pretty minimal, and each encounter's map has no variations. But I still think the gimmick is quite fun for quite awhile regardless.

Fun game for $10-$15. Hope to see a full release with much more depth in the future.

Performance is atrocious, lets get that out of the way first. Really, really bad.

However, this game is a ton of fun. The shop keeping gameplay loop is immensely satisfying and feels like a really fresh addition to the survival genre. Everything serves a purpose, always, because it can ALL be sold. You can sell a rock. You can sell someone a banana peel that they just threw on the floor. You can sell the knives that a cultist gang just rolled up on you with. It's great! World exploration feels wonderful, and the desire to keep your store stocked as well as maintain resources to build more with creates a very addicting cycle.

The tech tree and crafting systems are also super intuitive and feel good to use. Nothing feels unnecessarily grindy or tedious. There's a load of customization options to be unlocked and played around with. It feels like you always have plenty of goals to work towards.

Combat is iffy. My experience with ranged weapons has been poor - they feel horribly inaccurate, even when standing still. Melee weapons are fun. Either way, there's not a ton of depth to combat, but enough to be fine with participating in it. It exists to further the storekeeping gameplay, really.

As said up top, performance sucks really bad. Stutters and frame drops galore. Crashes are infrequent but certainly annoying when they come up. I play on the minimum settings with a decent set up and still find myself stuck for 5-10 seconds at a time on occasion, particularly when playing with a friend who is teleporting to a waypoint.

Overall, a good experience riddled with some frustrations. Devs seem passionate about the game and involved with the community, so I'm trusting that those frustrations will disappear with time. Really looking forward to the future of this game, think it can do a lot more cool stuff by the time of its official release. (though there's already quite a bit here!)

RIP to what used to be a real one. Between the disastrous update 237 and the PD3 micro-transaction leak, there's not much ability to defend this company anymore. Yet another falls victim to the depressing world of modern video game company greed and laziness.

It was still impressive how long of a run they had, fwiw. It's just unfortunate that this was a super avoidable final straw.

Enjoyable enough. Atmosphere is great and the soundtracks are a lot of fun. The map design and enemy placements feel really thoughtful most of time and help you really get into the game, especially on higher difficulties. Dodging bullets and shooting to the beat is immensely satisfying when you get into the rhythm. Campaigns are neat for what they are, hardly a selling point though. A decent selection of weapons and a vast amount of modifiers create replayability, which is necessary here due to the limited amount of levels. Be sure to give the soundtrack a listen before buying as I'm not sure it'll be for everyone, but I liked it quite a bit. Not a revolutionary game by any means but good for what it is.

Tl;dr I'd give it a 6.5/10. A long list of pros outweighs a long list of cons. It's not going to be for everyone, including fans of RL1.

Pros:
+ Gameplay feels pretty smooth. Every class has their own interesting weapons and stats to help make every run feel unique. Although it starts a tad clunky, you unlock additional abilities to help your movement feel awesome as the game progresses.
+ Boss design is super cool. I was always excited to see the next fight. NG+ unlocks new versions of bosses, which, aside from a few duds, are really fun redesigns.
+ Scars, which are optional unlockable challenges, allow you to experience a variety of difficult encounters and class-specific mechanic tests without starting a new run. Nice for occasionally breaking up the gameplay loop. They can be made easier as your progress if you're struggling as well, which is great.
+ This game has a "house rules" menu which allows you to fine tune things like enemy health and damage to best fit your desired difficulty level, making this game approachable for basically any player and their needs.
+ Crazy variety of weapons, spells, talents, traits, and modifiers. Lots of replayability as a result.
+ World building and lore seem pretty rich and deep. Unfortunately, it didn't really interest me, but the effort is there and I appreciate that. Maybe it'll be more intriguing for you.
+ RL1 played like ♥♥♥♥ without a controller. RL2 feels totally fine without one!
+ Solid soundtrack with a few standout bangers.

Cons:
- The most glaring problem for me was how grindy this game felt. Whereas RL1 felt like stat increases were there to help you if you were struggling, they almost feel mandatory here. Likely a natural consequence of a longer game, but it got very tedious after awhile, even for a game in this genre.
- Tying into the above point, the difficulty scaling/pacing in this game kind of sucks. The 3rd area felt easier than the 2nd which felt easier than the 1st, and then suddenly the 4th area comes along and wrecked my world over and over. 5th did the same thing, but then 6th was super easy. Maybe I just sucked against the bosses and enemies in those areas, but others reviews make it sound like I'm not alone here.
- Class imbalances. Melees felt like they were naturally disadvantaged, even with health boosts. Gunslinger, ranger, and pirate felt like much safer and easier runs than any other class. Maybe comes down to personal preference, but certainly having range makes MANY enemies and bosses much easier if not trivial.
- Extremely tedious to get the true ending/100%, Many might not care, and that's fine, but beating the game 8 times is a bit excessive imo when it easily could have been 2 or 3 instead.
- Relative to RL1, the manor (where you buy permanent upgrades) is bloated. Health up, for example, has 3 different upgrade paths that do the exact same thing with something like 20, 40, and 70 upgrades each. Also, EVERY single upgrade goes up in cost whenever you buy an upgrade. Feels like you're getting punished for using a core game mechanic. Really disagree with this choice, personally.
- While graphically superior to RL1 without a doubt, it lost some charm along the way. This feels like it was trying to mix RL1 with Dark Souls, for no real discernible reason. As such, it lacks its own unique personality.
- This game came out 7 years after RL1. Overall, it absolutely does not reflect 7 years worth of ideas, improvements, and innovations. I could've believed this came out a year or two after RL1. I'd be fine with a lack of innovations if the game felt otherwise flawless, but it doesn't, at least not to me.

Do yourself a favor and ignore any negative review that claims this game is entirely/almost entirely luck based, primarily a slot machine/gambling game, or that only 1 or 2 builds are viable. These are objectively false claims that show a fundamental misunderstanding of the game from people who probably had a tough time keeping enough drool off their keyboard to write their reviews.

This is a deckbuilding roguelike game that presents its mechanics through a slot machine. It does rely on some luck, but with adaptability and strategy, you can consistently run a lot of different builds into wins. I appreciate this game a ton for its originality and creativity. It's easy to understand and any ambiguity in descriptions tends to benefit the player rather that shaft you in unexpected ways. It's a fun, simple game that is easy to pick up and understand. Lots of options create lots of replayability to try new things. If you're on the fence, it's at least worth a try, and it's easy to know within the refund period whether or not it'll be a game for you.

What a pleasant surprise this game is. Makes me a bit sad that I didn't hear about it until the game awards. Even then, I wasn't expecting a ton since I'm not personally a big fan of most games with the Annapurna name on them. This game has really been blowing me away though.

I'm not normally a fan of speedrun focused games, but imo this game nails the formula. Levels are short enough to never be upset about having to reset a run. The gameplay mechanics are simple, well-paced in introduction, satisfying to use, and a ton of fun. It's easy to approach but very difficult to master. You can also get whatever you want out of the game - personally, I'm not satisified until I have at least beat the developer times (which is something I've never felt compelled to care about in previous speedrun centric games), and even then, some friend scores just look so tempting to beat. Global leaderboards have some cheater issues, but if you feel like sorting through those, you can also compete with the best in the world.

The soundtrack too, so good. Easy to listen to for extended periods and always feels like it compliments the stage and environment. Love it, very well done.

The writing and the story aren't good by any means, but all the reviews saying this is some of the worst writing ever clearly haven't played many visual novels, because this isn't really that bad either compared to some garbage out there. If you don't like it though, just press F and skip dialogue, It really doesn't feel like you need to care about it to enjoy the gameplay.

Great game so far overall (written partway through mission 5), excited to try to 100%.

Edit: After finishing the 100%, I would only recommend this game more. The later missions are my favorites, especially mission 9. This game... just keeps getting better and better :B1: