Recent reviews by Gerex

A puzzle game and borderline visual novel masquerading as a card game. And here I was just expecting some good old Gwent.

I had this on my wishlist for the longest time, and I hesitated getting it due to negative reviews at launch. And after playing it now, I'm not seeing why it had so many? It's a competently made deckbuilder with good balance and it's own set of unique mechanics to differiante it from all the others. Art's unique, the controls are snappy and the difficulty tough, but not frustratingly so.

Feels bad to give a 'no' to this. The art is really pretty, but the gameplay is sorely lacking, sadly. The combat system is a neat idea but it does not evolve at all past the initial presentation, after the first few runs you'll see it all and you're going to be doing the exact thing over and over with very little alteration to your approach.

Starts out promising, but quickly devolves to a janky mess. I've had some of the most frustrating deaths I can ever remember in a roguelike within a 5 hour span. Either due to some bug (invisible, invincible zombies, anyone?), getting stuck on random piece of terrain and getting hit by a charger for 70% of my health, clipping a pixel on a fire and burning to death, or getting immediatelly pounced by a hunter upon entering a bunker and getting wrecked by his buddies before I can get up.

This game tickles all the right brain receptors as far as deckuilders go, very addictive. Perhaps not the best balancing, I do think the game shines best at the lowest difficulty, where your only real incentive is to see how far you can keep going before you lose, and/or find some unconventional win condition for the round. The higher 'stakes' (difficulties) kinda fall apart because you end beholden to earlygame RNG far too much. Nonetheless, still incredibly fun, and will no doubt spawn many copy-cats (if it hasn't already). If that isn't a seal of quality, I don't know what is.

Really damn good, you can feel this was a labor of love. Ridiculous amount of replayability and many decks to choose from AND the art and UI design is absolutelly gorgeous. But don't let the cutesy artstyle fool you, this is pure autismo, the amount of effects and choices might be a bit much for someone that's not a diehard deckbuilding fan, this is hands down the game with the most effects and deck-building complexity I've ever played, and I've played A LOT of drafters. I am frankly amazed this was seemingly programmed by 1 person, it's a feat of game-mechanics engineering.

My only real complain that there is significant bloat with the dice and passive abilities. There are A LOT of dice that you'd only really ever pick up if you have a set of some other, very hyper specific dice. Lots are just outright inferior to other variants. But with how complex this game is, I honestly can't complain about the balance too much, it's pretty damn tight and you can play around a lot of the RNG.

Pretty damn good card drafter, with one key mechanical twist - lanes. While I'd say the game is a bit on the easy side for veteran deckbuilder aficionados, it makes up up for with the really solid mechanics, variety of combos, balance, a VERY cute art style, and, surprisingly of all things, fun writting. The little unlockable story and banter between characters is very enjoyable.

My only criticism is that the meta seems to push you torwards slim decks, which essentially forces you to refuse a lot of card rewards. But, on the bright side, constructing infinite combos is much easier than in most other drafters!

Time to be a contrarian and dunk on an Overwhelmingly Positive game.

Simply put, the mechanics/material physics and the gameplay design does not gel at all, it is as if they were pulled from two different games. You have all these various materials, liquids, spells and creatures that interact with one another in spectacularly chaotic and deadly ways, yet this is a brutal roguelite where you're extremely squishy and can die in a fraction of a second with no fault of your own in a run that's already 4 hours in. The game forces to play extremely conservatively, despite having all these fun mechanics that you're heavily discouraged from participating if you want to progress.

It would be slightly more tolerable if every run felt truly different, but you always start out with the lamest (if not outright useless) possible spells, and the game is so miserly at giving you passives (most of which are detrimental trash), it's frankly baffling.

This game is so damn good, I had to buy it THRICE. Every aspect of this game is perfect. It's incredibly mechanically entertaining (Jester is probably the most fun I've ever had in a deckbuilder), the artwork and writting is charming, and the music is ridiculously catchy.

Now this one is difficult game to review/give a straight-forward recommendation. This would be a prime candidate for a neutral review, if Steam had the option.

Visually, the game is peerless. The aesthetic and art direction is gorgeous, and the highly-destructible environments are a blast to fight in. I think I spent like 30 minutes just destroyed the office section when I got the telekenisis power. Watching everything flawlessly chip, shatter and splinter into thousands particles is truly cathartic.

I like that the game doesn't give you mission markers and you need to use the environmental hints to navigate. A double edged sword, since sometimes navigating in the backrooms-esque environments can be difficult, but it's still a rare and welcome decision.

The gameplay... is passable. While the chucking stuff at enemies is extremelly fun, it can't carry the whole game on by itself; Half life 2 knew that well. It doesn't exactly evolve past the initial presentation. You walk into a room, it gets locked and a few enemies spawn (out of a selection of like major 5 types), you kill them by throwing stuff, rinse and repeat. Most of them aren't very threatening, and the variety is sorely lacking. The gunplay is also mediocre, with a relatively small selection and a quite-unfun regenerating ammo mechanic, where you can only fire in tiny bursts before you have to resort to your equally small energy reserves to toss stuff at enemies. The worst offender is the fact that the game seems to be chock-full of filler. Between the crafting/upgrade system, the frequent fetch-quests and the bizarre 'kill x enemies' repeatable missions, all of it starts reeking like they wanted to make this a live service game, but decided against midway through.

Special mention to the voice acting. Most of it is overperformed to a, frankly, grating degree. which especially noticeable when your main character has fallen victim to it too. Our protagonist ping-pongs between over-the-top dramatic, where she sounds like she is on the verge of tears after every single word, to overly flowery, long-winded monologues. A damn shame, because I was genuinelly excited to see an action game with a female lead for once.

Anyway, yeah, I don't know. it's _okay_. It genuinelly could have been amazing if it had more meat gameplay wise.