Recent reviews by AVSManfred

Fairly intresting choice of game genre to turn into rouglike
On the FPS side the gunplay is enjoyable even melee feels good despitebeing inplemented in fairly simple way, the gun designs are intresting and sometimes whacky on par with "doomclone" era FPS', and all guns are fun to shoot, even if there are some weapons that do lag behind compared to others in their role
On the rouglike side there is a lot of things that can affect the playtrough, scrolls, ascensions, inscriptions, some specific combinations can lead to really broken results, but overall there isn't any useless options tho some are strongly situational

Visua style is simple and cartoony, giving the game a feel of a comic book or cartoon based of of fairy tale, keeping everything cohisive to it too while not putting some insane strain on the hardware to run it,

Main issues i have with game is
#1: "void" minimap, it's really annoying to see icon of peddler or blacksmith just to find out you need to go aroudn the wall becouse there isn't anything on the map indicating it;s in another room, and i don't even need much details, just basic area geometry
#2: lack of universal melee attack, somethign that became a standard in most FPS games, and in this game it would be really useful especially to not waste ammo on breaking pots or crates, or swapping to Foundry to do this, even if it doen so little damage it wouldn't be usefull for anything else

A really great sequel to already good game, bringing a lot of new things to the formula while polishing what worked in previous game, again giving a nice "easy to learn hard to master" gameplay now with new character, and more fleshed out movesets for past characters

Story is interesting and good to see it focus on threat that comes from the Avalice itself and gives us reason to learn more of the history of the world while trying to stop it and fact characters stories have more separate branches while seemgly not making any exclusive locations to accomodate these is nice touch, also true ending might be oen of the strongest emotional moments i expirianced in games for a long while but it's a secret for reason so no spoilers

Movement is really feeling good and rewards keeping up the speed, but also gives a lot of room for choosing different paths, even if it might seem like there is a lot of automation actually a lot of elements still demand active imput to keep working, but downside to it is there isn't as much to seek for on stages as in previous game, which helps with making stages be more streamlined and allowe better speedrun tactics but lostbit of a charm of previous games slightly labirynthian stage desing, also addition of rail gringing is fun, adds a lot of spectacle and dynamic sections but fact that to change direction of it we need to disconnect from the rail makes it feel unfinished, and seem to be actively makign some platformign sectiosn relying on rails feel bit awkward to pull off without skipping rail grinding entierly

Combat again feels very well weaved into speedster platforming, with quite decent amount of new options to work with, entire new guard mechanis (which honetly feels more like a doge but it's a nitpick on naming) giving even more invisiframes to use when trying to avoid taking damage, definetly comes in handy, especially that for side activities like restorign the gallery, or buing items to get "Treassure hunter" achievment secondary currency, cores, are pretty much neccessary and they only drop after defeating enemies (some types of enemies don't drop them but haven't seen a stage without any core dropping ones mixed in), also change that really huert me in my playtrough was redusing amount of health we get back while using extra life (now named stock), in previous game it was half the health by default, now it's like one point and can be brought back to 3 with potions but still feels like harsh change, especially that alternative of coming back with full health but on checkpoint can often mean loss of a lot of progress

New item system feels like really fun way to manually adjust dificulty of the game to your own preferences, feel like there could still be more room for different bravestone modifiers to play around with challenging effects but current set already gives plenty of options

The overworld map system is really nice, having to watch the big scale overview of locations we explore, seeing some changes happening to map as we progress the story, also some clever ways to to spice up traversing across certain natural barriers, one nitpick is that 2 specific trasnsitions (from Parusa to Sky Bridge and from Sky Bridge to Paraise Prime) are bit lengthy, put back to back and considering i had to do them a lot wehn getting all vinyls and items for achievemnts they started getting on my nerves

Over all fun game for fans of speedster platformers, still think might be better entry point for people new to the genre than 1st game with item system, but story does have a lot of plot points that are explained well enough but might feel exagerated without expiriancing story of 1st game

So, returning after my initial quit during the split of original AirMech into Strike and Wastelands out of curiosity of the promise that all I have gathered before will remain on my account, well at least that was true but I have a lot of mixed feelings about this game and think I might quit it again.

- the gameplay loop of doing missions to earn Kudos(non-premium currency) to improve your gear is nothing new, but the fact we don't earn them as mission reward but by collecting scrap drops from enemies, which oftentimes die far away from us if we focus on RTS style of gameplay is just stupid, and often makes running a mission not rewarding enough even for long missions
- having to use kudos to level-up mechs is kinda ridiculous, especially with a steep price increase, and not rewarding grind for Kudos makes it seriously tedious
- fact that different mech variants do count as separate items with better stats, rather than just cosmetics like in original stinks with p2w nonsense, which feels even more on the nose considering we need slots in Hangar to access them and we have only 8 of them so 1 short form having access to all classes of Mech without the need of switching them around, let alone having more than 1 of the same class
- the remaining connectivity between Strike and Wastelands only shows how half-baked split of the games was performed, with the shop that allows buying new types of units for the army being present only in Strike, with most of the store locations in Wastelands selling only parts for mechs or items for the pilot(and few Wastelands exclusive units that can't be used in Strike) also both game having the same chat server makes Wastelands artificially more lived in while activity is really low
- in few missions that remain true to AirMEchs original PvP formula AI is annoyingly aggressive, and with it having the handicap of having control over the majority of the map from the start rather than how in strike both players had to start from just their fortress makes it even more annoying, also fact that with the sheer amount of grind to get higher Mech levels and better mech parts I think it's impossible to not stumble into mission with the enemy on way higher level than we are with their mech much harder to kill and dishing out way more damage
- some of the survival missions have been kept on difficulty clearly meant for co-op play which again with lack of active players makes them a seriously bad idea, especially when they are part of mandatory champing mission line
- pilot and pilot missions feel like a lot of wasted potentials, amount of customization is weirdly limited, pilots kit being limited to only one gun and few abilities, and no way to heal themselves feel like just lack of imagination, also the fact we go on with a machinegun doesn't feel fit with the style of sneaky gameplay game tries to enforce

With all that I feel like despite buying it on heavy sale, it still wasn't worth the money I spent on it

Cute, simplistic artstyle, making game not very demanding hardware-wise, easily accessible even for people who don't have much expiriance with other games, a lot of posibilities to make expiriance different with lobby settings, only caviat being it's one of these games best played with group of friends rather than with random people

P.S. it might be just me but i find doing random tasks in Freeplay mode very relaxing

Very fun game, focused on simple gameplay idea, implementing it in many imaginative and smart ways, allowign for casual play for newcomers but also with a lot of potential for skilled players for speedrunning, pixelart artstyle is adorable and really well made, story for about 2/3 of games fels like satire of the typical stories for such game but after certain point it gets quite serious, still keeping humor but making for the final portion of story feeling way more impactful, and giving it feel of truly epic advventure

Game is fun, mechanics are simple and easy to learn, only nitpick is that in flight character feels bit too masive, but not a big deal really, short expiriance but logn enought to tell its story with keeping us focused on it, a lot of intresting lore to find, and wish there could be a continuation of a stoy, or a game depiction of events that we read about, that lead to the shape of the world we expiriance.

Really fun speedster platfromer, with nice "easy to learn hard to master" balance of dificulty that lets even a newcomer to genre get invested into playing it for long enough to start getting better, and smartly avoiding many typical frustrating features of it's genre, also story is just fun to follow so it's reallly good to give Adventure mode a shot

Character balance is non-existing, and community keeps exploiting it, also probably worst possible gamemode is set as recomended.

Well as long as the game ramians nice, i still cant forgive Chukelsifish how much fun they've killedafter releasing update 1.0, 1st of all they promised players tha tthere will be no more character wipes after Giraffie beta, but well looks like they have short memory, another thing is that they turned it from amazing sandbox lettig us to explore great galaxy with a mysterious lore behind everything into a flat, and generic linear story, excatly same for every character no matter what race it is, and leaveing no point of further play after finishig the story, or no reason to start it again with new character. Seriously i might be not the only oen thinkinng like that but honestly in my opinion Chuckelfish killed this game with 1.0

And also small note for everyone interested in topic, players who were disapointed with 1.0 were trying to fight for what they liked in their game on official formus but Chuckelfish was keep baning them for any cirtical sentences on 1.0, I really thik it's not right and that something should be done with such policy of treating earrly access players.