Recent reviews by A Lionlike Mane

This is a two hour long game. Lets get that out of the way now.

I'll be honest; I didn't know what I was getting myself into. Saw the girl with the sword, saw a little gameplay, saw the cheap price and I blindly bought thinking I was gonna have - at the very least - a hack and slasher with (maybe) some RPG elements.

Within minutes of starting it up, the pacing made it clear that I was not gonna find my RPG elements here. A few more minutes informed me that I wouldn't be getting my hack and slash either. What I did get was fulfilling in ways I didn't expect. It was beautiful, mystifying, artistic, mysteriously symbolic. My complaints are fairly minor.... the sand symbol segments are a bit too frequent, and the button that was supposed to clarify your next steps sometimes didn't... but I never had to consult a guide or anything to make it through so I can't make too big of a deal about it. Within the two hours, I did get a sword and some extremely light combat, but that wasn't the focus of the game... it was the progressively building sense that some heavily symbolic things are happening that someone coming into this blind may not immediately understand. I myself feel like I'll be analyzing, researching and discovering more about Toren long after completing this game, and long after the next four times I complete this game... and it actually leaves me wanting to unpack it. That kind of superseded my original goal of beating the numbers out of mobs.

It's one of those games like Ico that I can appreciate for it's artistic and symbolic appeal.

(Also it looks and runs beautifully on Steam Deck!)

If you like adorable games that'll really challenge you to improve your reaction times, this is it.

It's charming, it's polished, and while you can play it at your own pace/skill level, it's always danging that S-Rank above your head. Very rewarding to just walk through the maps and see S-Ranks everywhere.

Astoundingly well paced, thrilling in terms of plot execution, and there's little to nothing at all in terms of filler content so it's basically great from start to finish. There's something special about the fact that I can 100% this game multiple times without having felt like it got old.

Somehow, in 2022 this is still the best zombie game. Without question.

This game doesn't remember my full-screen settings, the lack of achievements is absolutely unacceptable, and there isn't an exit game option in the menu for us controller people.

For the aforementioned problems, I'm docking the game 5 points, leaving it at a 10/10 (the original score was a 15/10).