Recent reviews by Machiavelli

Took down a swindling genie in the midst of a circus scam. I exposed him when he tried to run the scam on me, resulting in he transforming me into an actual stinky cheese wheel (literally). Once I regained my normal form, i saw his wares showcased on a shelf looked like very rare gear, driving me to lay waste to a significant portion of the circus, including him, all for nothing. Every item, as it turns out, was a magical illusion - even that was part of the swindle.

10/10 worth it.

This game is heavily underpriced.

After 50 hours of this game and having made it all the way through the endgame is safe to say that this game even though is fun it is very flawed and might not be worth the price of admision at launch of 60$

The problem lies in multiple things:

• Poor choices from devs. We'll see where this game ends but devs just announced a new update nerfing what everyone uses. In a game 100% PVE with no leaderboards or even PVP there is no much sense to doing this other than to drag the content and make it last longer. Instead of nerfing the very FEW viable builds for endgame they should focus on buffing the anomaly builds.
  
• Another poor choice, there is a quest line that after completing 10 monster hunts or assassinations you deliver it to the designated NPC and you will get a free legendary after all those ten are done, and you could retake and repeat the quest line and get another legendary each new 10 objectives (takes about an hour to do all ten) Well, that was how it used to be, there was an exploit and instead fixing it they decided to nerf it completely, and you cannot get a legendary past the 1st time, so there is no reason to repeat those anymore. Therefore cutting content from the game. Why do it if doesn't bring anything back?
  
• Legendaries are one of the most important core elements on the looter shooter genre... but in this game even though they are scarce they don't feel like legendaries at all when you get them, at least 90% of the time. You might get a tier 3 mod from it, but that's pretty much it, and it's a bit underwhelming.
  
• The strongest point of the game is into the modding system. The fact that you can take any weapon or armor and save their mods in a collection to later put it in any piece of equipment is amazing, truly, and it can make build diversity incredible. The problem is, in the balance, right now the anomaly options are very nerfed and to do end content with them is either very hard or impossible.
  
• The endgame is called Expeditions. These are missions that gives you better rewards in terms of how fast you clear the expedition, having gold-silver-bronze tiers. This again, makes no sense on a game without leaderboards and full pve. Turns the game into a DPS race (and it baffles me that after all these years game devs are not able to realize it most of the time), it makes a game driven by meta where only rush builds are viable and that's what's happening with pretty much any anomaly build or anything that isn't twisted bullets build. Turns something supposed to be fun and challenging into stressful and unrewarding, also because if you play solo you cannot revive at all if you die, and you have to start over. Unlike playing with groups where you have 1 ress per expedition segment.
  
• The map. It's plainly awful. I have played games for decades and never in a game I had to spend 20 hours of gameplay to understand where I am. Its weird, convoluted, it has a local and global map for no damn reason, the minimap doesn't have north or anything indicative to tell you where the hell you need to go other than the breadcrumb trail using TAB key... I don't want you to hold my hand with a trail I want to know where the ♥♥♥♥ I'm situated.
  
• There is a lot of loading screens, they don't take time at all but its: new section>fade to black>your guy entering the zone>fade to black. Always like that, and the fade to black is in every single one..

In essence, many of the choices being made are cutting the already lacking diversity and content in the game due to poor balance.

On the technical side of things, there is no reason for a game in 2021 to release with such crashes and server sided issues as they have released it. P2P connections are very bad and highly unplayable unless you play with someone from your area.

Even after all those flaws I still enjoy the game for what it is and i think that with the right directions on balancing the game can be quite big in the genre. The gubs and classes skills are pretty cool and fun to use, while in the story mode it might feel like playing spec ops the line, the expeditions feel more like playing doom with hordes and hordes of guys to kill, while each enemy fights on their own way depending on their looks.

The story, wasn't awful, but it's a bit hard to care about your character when most decisions he makes are 'shoot him/her in the head'. As deep as a freakin pebble. But I did enjoy the story so far for other reasons, I felt that I wanted to know about what would happen in the end to other characters you meet along the way... Seen worse to be fair.

Feels bad for the devs because i enjoyed their previous title Bulletstorm but even if i enjoy the game i don't think i could recommend this to anyone i know for what it costs. Maybe for half-price or less.

Honestly. Maybe for 20 bucks is hard to justify this purchase; That being said, if you are able to buy it half price or less, I personally find it really hard to find a better value/money relation in a current videogame. It's quite polished and fluid, the atmosphere is quite consistent throughout the course of the game. The guns feel good to use and one of the most important aspects of a rogue-lite is the persistent progression in between matches, etc. You migh get stuck at certain areas but you will always have that sense of progress that makes it fullfiling.

Its pretty decent for what is worth. Hard to beat in value.

In terms of remake, it's very far from optimal. There is sections completely removed from the game (Cemetery, Watchtower), same with puzzles. The city hall puzzle is now an optional puzzle and you can progress without it.

In general, the game is a goty contender just like RE 2 Remake was. But this game could have been very well just a RE:2 Remake DLC instead of a full price game because it's not worth 60$. You can tell they had to cut in the singleplayer side of things in order to commit and bring the multiplayer to life. And in my eyes, it was a mistake. They should have released resistance mode as a separated 15-20$ sorta like Dead by Deadlight and delay the game until they add every section of the original.

There is so much stuff missing. A good game with many flaws that could have been a great game.

10/10 would rage again.

Flawless combat mechanics. Beautiful art style. Unique storytelling. Hard but fair.

Previous From Software projects changed the way I perceive and appreciate games for what they actually are, an art form. So this time around, didn't expect less from Miyazaki. The day he stop making games, will most definitely be a sad day.

The epitome of 'git gud' - 10/10

Let's start by saying that yes its Early Access but has way more content from day 0 than many published games. Lack of it is definitely not an issue here.
There is over 80 different items that you can get, stack and swap each run, countless mobs and boss variations, different ways of looting said items... and so on. The only thing I would say is lacking its the maps, there is only type of maps, that being said they are slightly different each time you play them.

This game it's a sequel that is pretty much like the first Risk of Rain, an endless roguelite but being way more complex and hard than before. The leap from the previous game being 2D to the new 3D style works marvelous.

In terms of actual gameplay, it can get pretty steep in terms of difficulty, with time and unlocking other heroes you learn about the different threats and how to play around them, on top of that, if your skill level it's a bit high in terms of playing action shooter games you can end playing runs of 3/4 hours where you are a literal god with speedhack while your computer is about to explode and the chests costs over 700k $

Honestly im glad to heard the devs pulled such big numbers early on, the dedication to this title is there and it's a pretty amazing and affordable game.

10/10 would cart again.

IMHO, once again Indie games prove themselves to be the triple A of this generation.

ICEY it's a pretty aesthetic 2D side-scrolling brawler with a unique story-telling made to mess with your thoughts and the aspect of free will. All this it's done through a narrator, making you wonder if his intentions are truly sincere or not.

Even if you take out all the meta-narration you still have a very enjoyable combat system with amazing mechanics and progression, allowing you to upgrade various skills and combo finishers.

It's truly hard to find weak points for me to dislike this game. Probably the biggest one is that it is very short. I managed to finish the game in 1 hour and 8 minutes. And still, for me it was worth every euro.

A memorable & fun experience, so can hope for nothing but many more games like this one.