Recent reviews by Vulphi

I have been hunting since 2007.

This feels like so much thematic potential lost in a MMO-ified package and lost to in-dev hell. The grind feels noisome instead of progressive in terms of difficulty and reward. It gets same-y; more same-y, more quickly than titles before MHW/IB. The difficulty curve is... unearned with how easy hunts become a 5 minute stagger-fest at nearly all points of the game, leaving much to be desired as you never feel like you improve with gear investment. It furthermore lacks a substantial monster roster, has a bloated sense of item/cash economy in progression, has confusingly cluttered menus and game systems, and a claustrophobic, constrained feeling despite the open environments. Oh, and constant issues with sync and client-host disconnection. The coffin nail is that I have to manually delete and re-allocate my shader cache every time I want to play without excessive lag; yet the game will still lag with decent hardware.

Blue Prince is a roguelite puzzle-mystery game whose ludic elements are every bit as part of the puzzle as the worldbuilding interwoven within it is, making the intriguing details worth the delve to retread old ground with new eyes. Keep a journal, immerse yourself in the emergent experience, and go in blind.

Even after "solving" the main mystery at 24 hours in, There are a myriad other puzzles and secrets to the manor I have yet to fully discover, unlock, collect, and solve.

A beautiful piece of work with delightful parallels commenting on life, outlook, and zeitgeists at large.

Miserable writing, forgettable characters, flanderized callbacks, over the top dialogue with no payoff other than to be ribald. This is the only game I have ever felt compelled to play without audio- it's that bad.

Gunplay is great though.

If you liked Remnant: From the Ashes, you will like this game for a few reasons:

* Actual mechanical differences in playstyle based on class archetype
* Bosses that are more developed beyond how R:FtA merely threw adds at you while the boss frametraps- and a lot of them are inspired designs
* Graphical and animation improvements
* World environmental designs that wow you even more- just a lot of cool concepts going for it
* More build flexibility on paper with so many equipment slots, relics, and mutators

What isn't so great about Remnant 2 versus From the Ashes:

* Poor performance and optimization- myself having crashed from UI memory leaks
* Not as much implicit worldbuilding content, most is just kinda given to you plainly without much ado
* A lack of enemy diversity leaves worlds feeling a bit more barren and same-y than the prior game
* A lack of end game build diversity due to traits being capped, unlike the prior game- also...
* Some rings are rendered useless by other rings that are just plainly good and unconditional; most gimmick-y rings tend to give only minor boons in conjunction with more highly conditional procs
* This leads to slots being consumed by a meta surrounding regen tanking and DR since those kinds of rings are just universally applicable and solid
* Just a lack of overall content-hours that weren't just grinding compared to the R:FtA in my experience
* Somehow worse dialogue and kinda half-baked attempt at storytelling compared to the way R:FtA presented things. I can see this game being hard to follow if one hadn't played the prior game.
* Boss modifier combinations that basically re-establish some of the issues with older bosses: minion spam or command grabs that now instakill
* Overland/non-dungeon side paths with insta-kill traps and/or unwieldy platforming are tedious and not fun
* Armor being rend unto Leto's as meta because of scaling and incentives to maximize encumbrance at the high end of a weight/roll tier

I'd give it around a 7.5/10. It improves in some areas but definitely backpedaled in others.

Slay the Spire has some of the worst, most grueling-to-fight enemy designs I have ever had the displeasure of experiencing across all acts, especially bosses and some elites.

Darkest Dungeon is one of my favorite games of all time and I love difficult games, but I think this game is just flawed with how it approaches RNG and enemy balance.

I stopped playing after the first year it came out and came back to see if it improved; it still feels mundane and laborious to run through.

I come back to this game every other year or so since the first and it is in a much better state compared to how it was when Marching Fire came out. Between the dodge update and the last update just before Y7S1 with Jorm and Afeera balancing, the game has been in the best state I have ever seen it in.

Though recent dodge changes are weird, I can see that they were put in place to make dodging more read-based and more readily countered on good reads. Even the light spammers can be caught in the act with few exceptions if you make a conservative defense.

Buffing up or reworking the stragglers of the cast to be as as relevant (not stronger necessarily, but at least worth the pick) as the rest of the heroes might be all the game needs right now (Nuxia, PK, Warden, maybe HL) since recent nerfs that addressed the Tiandi and Valkyrie situation are now live. The devs are surprisingly more active than when I played more in the past and the game feels good.

The aesthetics of this universe are phenomenally executed in Darktide. The gameplay is immersive, with poignant attention to detail as you seek redemption or death for the Inquisition: fitting lore and characterizations, high-fidelity environment design with diegetic pathing, incredibly hard-hitting future-gothic club electronica by Jesper Kyd- right down to the complexities of the little things conveyed by beautiful animation work and the red-hot glow of your gun's barrel as you lay into the opposition. Everything has a clear, ambitious vision that is actualized.

Design of its elements are stylish, diegetic, and thoroughly cinematic as both a game, but also as a cogent universe it is established in.

I understand the past grievances people had from a botched release and poor developer communication and follow-up, but they have stuck to their word and have made sweeping improvements, balancing, and additions in the right direction since. I can actually recommend this game to friends if they are fans of the genre.

An unbelievably stylish and simply complex strategy-fighting sandbox.

UPDATED: September 5th 2023

These experiences are from the point of view of someone who plays exclusively in VR on either professional or nightmare. I first started playing Phasmophobia in 2020.

I have once upheld that the "golden era" of this game was between the time they overhauled ghost speed mechanics, up to the Nightmare Update and its relevant patches (Fall 2021). During this interval, the game had a great sense of balance between its gameplay and sim-like flow and tone.

I still believe that every update since the Cursed Possessions update has felt like bloat towards this once a solid foundation.

HOWEVER. I am changing my review back to positive- but warily.

PROS

The Ascension Update has breathed some life into the game again with more player style now possible in the form of loadouts and preferences, contributing to the feeling of sim-like investigation. It also rebalanced equipment in ways that I feel are more diegetic to the game and give a good sense of progression.

Custom difficulty feels better than their first crackdown on it did at least, and I have been able to enjoy the game for the features that I personally think add to a more investigative experience more-so than a super quick survival gauntlet against chain hunts all the time (thanks to new sanity drain rates).

Ghosts have been given a balance pass to really make them more distinct without making them a dead giveaway.

Evidence types have also been overhauled to finally get rid of some dead giveaways and give more incentive to be more thorough in your investigation

CONS

The game still feels botched with any new VR implementations to a point where I have to question whether or not they even test their builds in VR.

Spatial frustrations arise between bugs, unoptomized weather and lighting causing lag on good hardware, and low-tier equipment being really hard to see through or look at closely in VR (i.e. level 1 thermometer, video camera).

Also, forcing the usage of the weak flashlights for so long in the progression curve is abysmal with the new lighting changes. You can hardly see in front of you with the torch turned on in VR. At least we now have options to toggle the weird door snap points and journal/radio points to be what they used to be.

Getting hunted atop the above gripes makes the game feel more and more like a checklist chore for each escape feature they continue to add beyond "don't talk and break line of sight"; it makes the game feel less about investigating with a build-up of tension and scares, and more like you are fighting the game to do a series of quick-time events while the devs keep making it harder to react in a timely window in the hunting phase or force you into 50/50s with the newest ghost types.

TLDR

The game is back in a new kind of light and I think its a step in the right direction for the tone and flow of the game.

Overall I still feel that Team Kinetic has a penchant for undercutting the player's agency because of how they keep making mechanical difficulty harder without necessarily giving the player a modicum of outplay potential especially at lower equipment tiers. I can only hope that they allow a little more wiggle room to adjust playstyle preferences with more parameters to change and gain experience with some custom difficulty multipliers

A fast paced team based hero shooter whose movement feels like that of an arena shooter whilst dashing, hovering, and omni-thrusting about. It is rightly difficult, but it feels just because it will punish you for identifiable reasons: whiffs, poor positioning or movement, and lack of team coordination.

Though some units are insane in the right hands, it is also part of the balance of the game. Mid-range is bad up close; close range is bad from afar. Some units are merely countered by others and the growing pains may prove them needing to be re-balanced down the line; overall it feels nice though. Plus, it's free to play!

I am still in the throes of learning so things here may be subject to change.

Most negative reviews seem to be upset about a leaving penalty and some crashing bugs- which sucks when you are 1 person down and the game tells you that you are a allowed to leave but then freezes your ability to queue for a little anyway; however, it's nothing about the way the game feels and plays- which is rather good.