Recent reviews by bird school

Great game, can't recommend enough.

- It feels good. You can adjust your FOV and sensitivity easily. You can navigate quickly, and there's lots of interesting movement tech that feels natural to discover. It can take a little while to get used to moving and jumping, but it ends up feeling pretty good by the end of the first area or so.

- It's fun. The weapons are all unique enough to be worth switching up what you're using against different enemies while not having a clear Best Answer For Everything. It's satisfying to defeat enemies. It feels great to parry and there's enough of a parry window where it's very viable. The music is incredible. Each area is incredibly unique from each other, and each level is unique within its area. Boss fights are challenging and engaging without being repetitive.

- It's hard. If you're familiar with first-person shooters, you'll find enough challenge to really enjoy it. The standard difficulty is engaging, and there's a harder mode that makes things even more insane if you're looking for it. Each new enemy introduces a new variable to consider during a level, and the ranking system encourages you to keep trying for a better score.

- It can be easier. There are TONS of accessibility options if you're not having fun with the game in the state you're playing it. You can adjust it to be at the level that you find to be an enjoyable challenge. If you're looking at this game and thinking "ohh great, another stupidly hard game that everyone's being weird about, I don't want to make myself miserable trying to prove some useless level of skill" I'm holding your face in my hands and telling you it doesn't have to be that way. That's why Ultrakill is good. It doesn't need to hurt. You can have fun playing this game too.

GREAT concept and first act, but falls apart by the second boss. The game gets repetitive as you throw yourself at the bosses until you figure out which class you're expected to beat it with (since there's clearly an expected class and build for each boss), then wait for RNG to give you an actual shot at it.

It shouldn't be as surprising as it is that a repetitive auto-runner is repetitive, but it's also annoying how hands-on it is because you aren't actually required to strategize beyond a very basic level - it's just reacting to the random items you get.

Great music and a fantastic eerie atmosphere, and a fun blend of humor and horror. Dialogue is fun, with plenty of options and a definite weight to actions and decisions you make.

tl;dr too heavily based on RNG, gameplay is repetitive, punishes failure despite failure being expected and unavoidable

I like strategy games, but none of my choices actually matter. you just send your best guys in and hope you don't get ♥♥♥♥♥♥. sometimes you do amazing and dodge four attacks in a row, and sometimes you have to run from an "easy" fight because you just got decimated. everything is based on RNG, to the point where no amount of planning actually seems to matter. combat, sanity, finding items, trap disarming, de-stressing, even what new characters you get is based on luck.

I've heard this game compared to dark souls in difficulty, but at least soulsborne games are fun - the whole point of them is to lose and try again, but darkest dungeon punishes you for failure and retreat even on the easiest difficulty. I'd honestly probably like this game if I felt like I wasn't punished for failure, which is a core mechanic of the game. you're supposed to back out of dangerous fights, you're supposed to fail and retreat, you're supposed to lose units, but then you're punished for not doing it perfectly. at that point, it's punishment for the sake of punishment, not for any constructive use.

I wanted to give it a proper shot because my friends seem to love it, the atmosphere and lore and music are fantastic but the actual gameplay just isn't worth coming back to