Recent reviews by Salt Baron

It's good. Some of the weapons are a bit janky (Dynamite for most of the game is pretty useless but ends up being clutch near the end), but it's a nice little love letter to RE1. It's definitely not scary, but it's pretty well-made. For $5, you get a fun, short little horror game where juking zombies like the old days still matters. Nice work by the dev.

This one is more of a hesitant yes and is a game that really makes me wish that Steam had less of a binary Yes or No system for providing feedback for future players. For the sake of expediency and readability, I'll just break this up into Pros and Cons.

PROS:
- A literal modern toaster with smart features could run this game. If you're gaming on a woefully outdated computer, you're good

- Atmosphere is downright creepy at times. The whole game is surprisingly unsettling for a game with old school indie graphics.

- Wide variety of weapons and spells.

- Most puzzles needed for actual progression are straightforward and make a lot of sense. You will often make use of a spell you get early on for small puzzles or activating little hidden "switches" or triggers in the game.

- Combat is easy to approach

- Soundtrack is ambient but adds much to the atmosphere of the game

- The game actually makes type resistances and element damage matter; some enemies can only be damaged by certain types of attacks

- It's fun to find lots of different weapons and spells for a sense of progression

- Fast Travel is a nice feature given how much backtracking there can be to pick up some items


CONS:
- Combat is extremely simplistic. This is in line with the games this game is based off of, but there's not a whole lot of depth throughout the game. You sort of just stack as much Speed as possible from the beginning and then just kite everything. Blocking is usually (not always) unnecessary and not helpful, though there are a FEW enemies which can charge fast enough to warrant blocking. Even so, you're better off killing things ASAP. Offense >>>>>> Defense in this game.

- Bad Stat Balance. Speaking of Defense, DEF is a terrible stat in this game. You get health from Strength, and Damage from Strength. Defense gives you twice as much health as Strength, but that's it. You realize almost immediately what a bad deal this is. Same with RES (Resistance), which only decreases the duration of Status Effects. This is OK. if not a little underwhelming...but considering enemies apply status effects to you by hitting you with attacks, you just solve everything with Speed. The first boss in the game struggled to hit me at all because of backpedaling with high Speed and just death by a thousand cuts for him. Especially early on the game just encourages you to mindlessly dump stats into Strength and Speed so you can Unga Bunga your way through most anything. As you start getting more useful spells and mana upgrades, you can start making use of magic, but it's still more of just an OK thing. You're forced to stock up on mana potions and/or use (I only found 1 weapon like this 5 hours into the game) weapons that can restore mana on non-resisted hits in order to make spells not suck.

- Story. It's 5 hours into the game. There is no significant story. The intro is intriguing, and some of the dialogue and implications from the NPCs in the hub are mildly interesting, but it goes no further than that so far.

- Navigation. Oh my God, navigation. Bless those people who painstakingly charted out maps like the old days of GameFAQs, because navigation in this game is downright painful if you're not drawing your own map or viewing someone else's when catacombs look so similar. There are some items you can find in the tombs that will help you leave markers for yourself, but that's about it. For some really old school gamers, this might be a pro and not a con.

- Only Vampire is significantly different from the other selectable classes. This is FINE, but really really weird that just one class gets significant differences when everyone else is more like a Dark Souls class choice.

- The Weapon system is extremely weird and not really in a great way. There's a shield....but why bother when it doesn't really do anything and has to be equipped on its own to bash things. Other than elemental damage on some weapons, pretty much every weapon feels about the same. An Axe feels like a Club which feels like a Sword which feels like a Spear. A Wand feels like a Bow. And so on. There are a few unique weapons which do shake things up a bit (like regaining mana on hit), but for the most part, things feel basically the same in terms of function. You can upgrade some weapons but not others. This is very arbitrary even though the UI conveys which weapons can be upgraded pretty well. You also have to take your upgradeable weapons to a single location in the hub to upgrade them when they hit max weapon XP.

- Some bonus "puzzles" for loot involve you having to psychically know that a certain spell type can open gates. Unlike a different spell type you get for puzzles earlier in the game, there's not a great indicator that these gates can be opened like this.

- You can't pause the game at all. Ever.

VERDICT:
The game is alright. It runs well, sound and atmosphere are on point, and it has a few modern convenience features like fast travel. It's a game that also makes elemental types matter, which is pretty rare. That said, combat is not particularly deep, stats are severely imbalanced, and weapons feel samey. If I could give a handwavey "ehhhhh" instead of a Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down, I would. You can tell that the dev put good time into the game, but it just feels "fine" in its current state.

It’s a great, immersive, and thought-provoking game with an incredible amount of hand-drawn artwork, voice acting, and branching paths with many major and minor differences and outcomes. Each of the paths can have an amazing amount of variation for its endings.

It’s a game about love, passion, hatred, suspicion, trust, justice, conflict, existence, and perhaps above all, identity. It’s simultaneously bleak and hopeful, depending on what decisions you make.

A full playthrough involves walking down many paths to begin with, and even then, there are many more paths to take and variations of those paths to witness.

It is definitely worth picking up this game, especially while it’s on sale.

I suck at this game and mostly have played single player over the years. I got this game to play as a 5000 lb Giant Tuba Man. To this day, I can play as a 5000 lb Giant Tuba Man, as well as a whole host of beautifully animated characters. 10/10

The gameplay is solid, the dialogue and humor is great, and the art and voices are charming. For your own sanity, come in with the lowest expectations possible for the ending, and the rest of the game should be a fun ride.

Curse of the Moon 2 is one of those games where I really wish you could leave a "Mixed" review on Steam. There's a lot of charm to this game, but it falls short of its predecessor in some areas that really hurts the experience.

Pros:
- Overall tight controls
- A wide variety of playable characters
- A fantastic "Episode 1"
- Challenging boss fights

Cons:
- Other episodes fall short of the first one, partially due to pure tediousness and repetition. The game expects you to play through the game 4-5 times for the full experience, and the only difference is SOME paths through the levels

- The design is less carefully handled than the original Castlevania games. The existence of a character with channeled invincibility makes the developers feel justified to insert insane clusters of enemies in certain areas

- Checkpoints are incredibly far apart, and losing a character on the Veteran mode (i.e. Normal) can be so devastating in certain areas (especially if you want to grab a permanent upgrade item no other characters can reach) that you need to retry from a checkpoint just to get back to grab the item

- The downside of some bosses being so difficult is that while you're learning the boss, you should be prepared to hike fifty miles back to the boss when you die. This is a problem when you enjoy the difficulty but don't have the time to spare going back over and over through slow, tedious levels

- The Final Episode has sloppy execution with all the backtracking you may be required to do for all upgrades

The first game has a simpler design, but it's both cheaper and more enjoyable than its sequel.

The game has a great concept, but is quickly ruined due to being a roguelike with ungodly long run times, as opposed to failure only burning up perhaps an hour at most. Confusing mechanics such as being unable to disembark from the final vehicle to purchase supplies, poor controls wasting movement points when you attempt to highlight a square, and a tedious experience overall torpedo this game experience. The gameplay could possibly be salvaged if the story was any good, but since the story is essentially nonexistent, that isn't happening any time soon. I waited for a sale to get this game and I still feel like I wasted money on this.

Nyakuza Metro is a fine addition to A Hat in Time's various worlds and levels. The expansion provides a lot of new cosmetics, and a fairly laid-back experience as you traverse through the underground city. The attention to detail, easter eggs, level design, and so on are spot on, but the experience is pretty short. I can't speak to the quality of the multiplayer side of this DLC, as I haven't played it, but the meat of this expansion was always going to be the single player content for me.

Pros:
+ Visually gorgeous metro/underground cityscape that's rich with color
+ Easter eggs scattered across the map range from movie poster parodies to character conversations to gameplay itself
+ Solid level design and gameplay
+ Most parts of the metro can be accessed in any order, with only one part of the map being barred off at first
+ Lots of new cosmetic options
+ Voice acting is well done as usual

Cons:
- Relatively short game length (I'd estimate about 2 hours to get the time pieces at a leisurely pace, maybe 4-5 hours if you're really keen on exploring every inch of the city and finding all the hidden secrets)

Death Road to Canada is a comedic rogue-like zombie apocalypse game that combines solid gameplay with copious amounts of humor. Easily the best of Rocketcat Games's offerings, the game is part Oregon Trail, part action game/RPG. The gameplay is thus divided into travel sections and trading camps where you must make important decisions and manage resources, and action stages where you scavenge for resources or hold off the zombie horde for a set amount of time.

Pros:
+ Incredible replayability thanks to random generation of events, maps, etc.
+ Character customization that is both cosmetic and enables you to create specific combinations of one personality trait and one perk that come with their own unique strengths and weaknesses
+ Catchy soundtrack
+ Packed to the brim with humor, including various rare characters that reference and parody pop culture figures
+ Local multiplayer
+ Multiple game modes offering a variety of difficulties
+ Simple and tight controls (a controller is highly recommended for optimal zombie crowd maneuvering)
+ Indirect control over AI allies through a simple and intuitive "tactics" menu
+ Decision making feels impactful, especially the more you play and learn what kind of skills are needed to breeze past common events

Cons:
- AI can sometimes behave "stupidly." The AI is unable to maneuver like a human can and can get stuck on obstacles and confused in rare situations, often resulting in a death. Worse movement than a human being is completely understandable. Unfortunately, the way the AI prioritizes weapons is seemingly based on factors such as their strength and tiredness, which while logical to a degree sometimes means that they can drop a relatively valuable item that you gave them to hold in their inventory to swap it out for a weapon far less effective in the long run.
- No online multiplayer. Not really a big deal since single player is still incredibly fun, and if you can find at least one other person, you can have a blast with the local multiplayer. (Up to 4 players supported)

Overall, Death Road to Canada is an amazing game with a bit of a learning curve to it and a surprising amount of depth. It's easily worth the $15.

Controls are absolute garbage and the game's unlocks are purely cosmetic as far as I can tell. There's no real reason to play this through more than once if you don't get hooked on the gameplay.

POSITIVES:
- Lots of Secrets
- Can disarm traps and look ahead by crouching or looking up

NEGATIVES:
- Controls are customizable but still clunky
- Nothing to really unlock beyond cosmetic options
- Boring due to the forced linearity of playstyles (robbing a shopkeeper is a terrible idea unless it's for a jetpack, you have to go pretty slow unless you've memorized the various room possibilities, etc)
- Enemies all feel exactly the same, way too many instant kill traps to avoid for a roguelike
- Too short to really feel immersed in, even for a roguelike

All in all, the game is extremely overrated. Grab it during a sale, or do yourself a favor and don't pick it up at all.