Recent reviews by [VF] November

AETHUS is a single-player mining & exploration game, with quite a bit of depth to its world and story.

The characters are believable, and I have to give credit to Roland as being the first tutorial guide bot who is endearing instead of annoying.

Also, I suspect there is some serious sequence breaking and secrets to be found underground. I've only explored a few caves and I've found an automated drill, someone else's ditched outpost, and some purple loot.

So, if you like any of that, AETHUS is one you should pick up.

Or, if you are like me, and yearn for the mines.

MIO is incredibly pretty, and has great controls for a game of its type.

Unfortunately, it doesn't respect the real world time of its players.

There are way too many 3-5+ minute runbacks for dying to out of the way puzzles, not enough checkpoints, and no where near enough warps. Making this worse, the warps are often disabled without doing story beats near them, so even if you find one, you have to survive the turn-on event or you don't turn on the warp.

It feels disjointed in its design.

The game has an open world style, fluid movement, jump resets and probably plenty of sequence breaking possibility. Dying isn't costly in terms of in-game resources, as you get the ability to preserve your currency.

However, it is seriously punishing in terms of real world time, by spawning you halfway across the world at one of two warps available at ~4 hours in.

It's not overly technically difficult, but you still have to learn patterns on bosses, and you can't farm health, you can only restore it at specific places. So, some dying is inevitable.

I feel like if I spend an hour playing this game, 20+ minutes of it is running back to make another attempt on a boss or a difficult area.

MIO's default movement speed is far too slow in the early game. Not sure if she gets a smaller and cuter version of the Speed Booster later, but it seems like the game's world is too big for her starting movement speed.

It's quite a sad situation, as the game evidently has massive effort put into its graphics, physics & combat.

I really want to love it and finish it, but I doubt it will happen at this point.

Somewhere between one-third and one-half of the time spent playing it, is spent walking back through the same solemn world, to the same melodic music....

....for another attempt.

EDIT---

I asked the developer about this and they doubled down, so this isn't likely to change.

They know their game is frustrating to play, but it's too much effort for them to fix it.

The developer:

"It's just way too much work and change a lot of thing that need to be playtested, we understand that it's frustrating to die far from a checkpoint but often you can just find a closer checkpoint or just use one or more accessibility option that already exist to make thing easier"

Environments are all way too small, with too many invisible walls that make no sense. I suspect it was heavily toned down to run on consoles.

Also, the story was kind of corny.

Quite possibly the best title screen in the history of video games.

Combat seems like a cross between YS 3, Illusion of Gaia and Secret of Mana. It is somewhat simple at the beginning, without a lot of mechanics, skills or customization.

Uses a lot of common RPG story themes that you will recognize. If you like to save the princess (or get saved.), this is likely for you.

I was an early backer on The Girl from Arkanya, of course attracted to a game about "a cute adventurer girl and a talking capybara". It delivers on the adorable pixel art in droves.

It's been described as a Zelda clone quite a bit in media.

However, now that I have played it, I think it is closer to another legendary artifact from our pasts: Illusion of Gaia.

It seems to have a normal-person in a cosmic world theme to it, like Marisa is in for dealings with forces far beyond the normal world.

If any of this interests you...you should definitely pick this up.

The only thing I'd recommend to the developer is to eliminate the loading screen while entering houses. Old Super Nintendo games didn't require them, so this running on a modern PC shouldn't either.

Dawn Apart has some interesting factory mechanics, and promises a unique combination of factory building and defense gameplay.

It is still early access, and they claim 20-30 months of EA is likely.

The primary item to consider before buying this is the graphics style. It uses a blocky, vector graphics that reminds me of older DOS games like Magic Carpet.

If this makes you happy, you will love Dawn Apart.

If not, then you might be better off with one of the other factory titles like Dyson Sphere Program or Satisfactory that use more detailed, realistic graphical styles.

An aggressive Metroidvania with paths to power available quickly if you go out of your way for them. Strikes the right balance between freedom and protecting the main questline from sequence breaking.

The combat is an overall positive, your hero feels powerful, which is a big draw to these games for me. The only negative I've run into is a seriously annoying stealth section. All of these games do them, but very few of them get it right.

Overall, if you're a fan of Axiom Verge, Timespinners, Castlevania or 2D Metroid game, this is a good pick for you.

Goooooood.

The soundtrack in this is out of this world good.

I've not gotten very far in the factory-progression, so I'll be back to finish this review after I automate some things.

Visions of Mana absolutely lives up to its name, steeped in history for many of us. I learned to read from Secret of Mana and other Super NES RPGs, so this review is quite the full circle for me, three decades later.

It is one of the best installments in the series, up there with the original Secret and the excellent Trials remake.

Visions of Mana has memorable, lively, and distinct characters, comparable to Randi, Primm and Popoi from Secret of Mana.

There's a lot of adorability, if you like that in your games - including shameless magical girl (and guy.) transformations for every class. I never skipped a piece of dialog in this. The voice acting is excellent overall, minus a few squeaky NPCs that might grind a few gears.

Combat is fluid and fun. Some fights can be quite spectacular with effects. Balance seems slightly easy, although I did do a bit of sequence breaking and going after higher level enemies. There are some powerful enemies scattered around the map that I cannot beat yet. If you like ancient ruins diving, definitely play this.

The physics are exceptional, if you enjoy sequence breaking and getting to places you shouldn't by jumping, climbing and sneaking around enemies to steal treasure you weren't supposed to have, there's plenty of that in Visions of Mana.

Such as...

there is a way to get an end-game weapon very early in the game

Overall, I'd recommend this for anyone into action RPGs, fans of the Ys series, and especially those who were Mana Knights & errant princesses as young people. This one was definitely for you.