Recent reviews by Random

I came in with the hopes and expectations that the game would "fix" me. I burn out easily. Big bursts of energy that come and go, then nothing. I aim for big, lofty goals and I achieve them, then I fall down hard and struggle to get back up again with any, *any* kind of setback. This, among other issues, convinced me to play Wanderstop and see if I could fix these things.

Wanderstop, before anything, is a story about processing failure and burnout. At times, it feels like it could've been a game whose story explored so much more through each customer that each seemed to have vastly different problems, but for Wanderstop in particular with Alta I think what was explored was more than enough. I really can't say more without spoiling parts of the story.

It's also a game - you run a tea shop. You serve tea to customers. You listen to them - a lot of them have problems, and a few of them don't, and a few of them even try to help you solve yours. There so many small meaningless things to do - weeding, petting the puffins, planting things in pots, decorating the shop - things that do not matter for achievements, for progression, for whatever, but simply exist for the sake of it. The game encourages you to take your time and that doing nothing or the bare minimum as slow as possible is just as okay as doing everything possible as fast as you can if that's how you want to play it. It is okay to let your mind wander and to stop doing things. Alta even pokes fun at Boro at how he doesn't give Alta any kind of measurable objectives or tasks. In spite of this, I still tried to turn the game into a checklist.

At the end of the game, I did not feel "fixed". I did, however, walk away feeling like I was heard and that I was shown what I was experiencing with failure and burnout through Alta. The game provides sometimes simple but needed-to-be-said commentary in some conversations and deeply insightful reflections in other. Through the story of Wanderstop, I think Davey Wreden nailed the feeling and tone perfectly.

For my readers that are worried about missing things or that this game will not "fix" you - I encourage you to try the game. Take your time with it and enjoy Wanderstop as a story that happens to have you running a tea shop on the side. There is a chapter select after you finish the game to see other story choices and things you feel like you missed. Take away what you will from the game. If nothing else, listen to the music and pet the puffins.

you are excited to carry a 2nd weapon type
i am excited to carry a 2nd hunting horn
we are not the same

>>>
Aside from minor graphical glitches that seems to involve very specific locations in very specific lighting and link parties feeling a little clunky, I'm having a fantastic time solo and with friends. This version of Monster Hunter feels like a return to MH: World's playstyle with new mechanical additions to each weapon, surprisingly decent FPS for great graphics, and most importantly greatly expanded character visual and build customization. While games could always be cheaper, I found it well worth the price.

This game feels like Dead Cells and Hades had a baby but everyone turned into a cute animal along the way. In all seriousness, the combat is VERY fast in a good, non-disorienting way while still putting the oomph in the hits that matter. Really smooth performance and a nice half-cel shaded, half cartoon style. The upgrade system will feel very familiar to anyone that's played Dead Cells, and those who have played Hades will find it pretty similar. Like Dead Cells, you'll be carrying 2 weapons and 2 trinkets (re-usable items that you pick up each run that can be activated on a short cooldown) through each run. Very early on, you'll also unlock some permanent abilities that activate on certain conditions like unleashing a powerful weapon attack by attacking with your alternate weapon, or nuking strong enemies after staggering them. The weapon combinations, talents, and both the meta progression and run progression gives you something to work towards every run while making every run feel distinct from the previous failed attempt. I highly recommend trying it out if gameplay footage catches your curiosity - if you already play similar games, you can't go wrong with trying out Windblown.

If you have any concerns about the developers for some reason, check out their development history with Dead Cells. These lads are absolutely going to cook with this game.

As a side note, I love dashing between areas. I see all enemies dead, neuron activates zoomies.

I am probably not the target demographic as someone that prefers to play colony sims and roguelites.

DD2 is the first RPG I've finished in years. The game's strengths are in exploring the world by foot (emphasis on by foot) and the thrill of combat through player expression and through how well you've mastered your vocation's skills. For me, these are the biggest draw to me as someone that never gets deep into build optimization, studying boss behavior or what have you. Between all of the vocations I have tried (I've yet to unlock 3 of the advanced ones), all have enough oomph and means to make you feel strong enough to tackle anything save for the Trickster. The enemy AI is not groundbreaking and the enemy variety is lacking, but you have enough agency and tools to make each fight not feel like a menial chore. Big enemies have always been a thrill to fight for me because that's when you're able to most see your tactics and understanding of weak spots/vulnerabilities be rewarded.

I am a "leave no stone unturned" type of explorer and save for one somewhat labyrinthian cave system, I've loved exploring every foot of the world. The shifting times, weathers and comments from your pawns (whether that be idle banter or them pointing out points of interest) has made both exploring new areas and backtracking always feel fresh. If you ever feel like an area has becoming dull, I recommend traveling through it at a different time for a fresh experience. You may be surprised at how vastly things can change when your low level butt is being chased by a Dullahan. In New Game+, I am still holding fast onto the sense of wonder while exploring the same area looking for Seeker's Tokens.

Where the game falls short currently for me is, again, enemy variety and game length. There are 3 main enemy types: goblins, saurians, and bandits. You can count undead as the 4th if you travel at night frequently, and that's only sometimes. It will be few and far inbetween that you see more than these 3 types and it does leave me wanting for more. The same applies to large enemy types with you generally never seeing more than cyclops, ogres, griffons and the occasional minotaur or chimera. With sufficient enough gear, only drakes and lesser dragons become real threats.

I reached the the True Ending after completing the Good Ending ending, types of 2 ending in spoilers with no other details after around 20 hours of gameplay. I missed out on a lot of the world, not because it was lacking and I definitely went out of my way to explore each nook and cranny as well as pick up all side quests, but because the game does little to warn you that once you have started the path of the the True Ending ending, the game deletes your Inn save file and locks your save to Day 1 of the True Ending path. Whenever you die at this point, you may only resume from that save point or whenever you started the next day. This path is time-sensitive and progressives EXTREMELY FAST. While the game warns you this path is cataclysmic to say the least, it does not warn you that it'll remove the ability to go back to your Inn Rest save slot before all this. I was livid to say the least. After you complete this path, you are FORCED to New Game+. The ability to continue on in in this world state is removed. You also cannot start fresh - you MUST do New Game+ which means carrying over you experience, items and map progress.

The most I will touch on PC performance is that the game runs smoothly for me and I haven't noticed any staggering frame rate drops in town. I run on near max settings and my PC is on a 3070 + i7-13700. For MTX, they are laughable. I have earned around 6000 Rift Crystals so far, most of which were playing (drops, quests, riftstones) and around 1500 from people using my pawns. Riftstones were the primary method of earning rift crystals for me and they reset on New Game+. That's 12 character edits at 500 Rift Crystals each. While it's disappointing that this game has MTX, to say that the game is P2W or has features severely gated by MTX is laughable.

In my current New Game+, I'm currently trying to 100% the Seeker's Tokens. I still very much enjoy the game and have had a blast the last 5 days. If player expression in combat and exploration is not your focus, or if lack of enemy variety and the main story length is an issue, I think you should either 1) wait for it to go on sale or 2) wait for DLC which seems to be expected.

If you are set on buying this game soon, then here's my advice for you, Arisen (spoiler free).

1) Write down and remember where you picked up your first Seeker's Token. You will need to revisit that spot for an optional quest. If you don't remember, the community has come up with several solutions so worry not.

2) Rehire pawns liberally to make sure your party stays up-to-date and wellrounded. Also look into that disease your pawns keeps talking about unless you want to be severely punished by your own inattentitveness. Look up Dragonsplague if you want to be super safe.

3) Stealth is jank in this game. If you are confused on how to best proceed because the game is telling you to stealth, just keep evading people until you're out of their patrol limits and you're fine.

4) Get a save file manager if you're on PC. There will probably be several "Wtf was I supposed to do there" or "I really don't want to lose 1 hour of my life again" moments. I use "DD2 Save Manager" which is on Nexus.

5) REALLY REALLY REALLY keep that 2nd part of the 2nd piece of advice in mind.

6) For knowing the point of no return for the True Ending ending, stop when you get the main story quest called Legacy. This will be soon after you make a certain item through help of an NPC for the preceding main story quest. You can save the at the inn at this final quest location, but should you proceed any further with the quest and start the the True Ending ending, you will not be able to return to this Inn save.

i love risking life and limb so i can buy a toilet to sit on while honking my brand new fog horn

all i wanted was a cute deckbuilder and all i got was sparkly galaxy cocaine that turned me into a high risk high reward dice gambling gremlin

11/10, would become corrupted again

DISCLAIMER: I use 4 mods and because of this, my review cannot be considered reliable. One for QoL like increased movement speed and auto-belt refill, another to outright cheat crusader fights, another to aufo-buff, and another for visual character adjustments. For context about myself, I enjoy both making terrible builds for RP reasons and min-maxing. I study fights and am used to save scumming on high difficulties. There are no spoilers in my review.

>>VERDICT<<
As a person who uses the turn-based combat mode and explores everything, I have come across several minor to major bugs as well as QoL grievances. Currently at the end of Act 3 at the time of this review. Things like many empty info cards, wasted turns due to how touch range spells or charge works, hanging cutscenes (they resolve themselves eventually), janky camera movements (mostly patched now but still awkward in some parts), and conversations magically happening again are the most common bugs I've faced. I'd wait a few months for bug fixes and QoL features to go through if you want something closer to a finished product, but if you're willing to power through all that, the game's story and mechanics are fine and I intend on doing a 2nd playthrough. If Kingmaker is anything to go by, wait a year.

>>DIFFICULTY<<
Difficulty-wise, I strongly recommend playing with standard amount of enemies or the recommended normal difficulty until you're familiar with Pathfinder. I play on Core and revived companions after fight, and saving + reloading multiple times an hour because of fights is common. After getting through the first 2 acts I've managed to reduced my deaths considerably. If you prefer magic DPS, you will find the game unenjoyable at the start as many enemies have high spell resistance or damage resistance to common damage spells. I was a grease + stinking cloud buff bot Wizard until I got 4th level spells like Acid Pit and Phantasmal Killer.

>>CRUSADER MODE<<
I've tried the crusader mode and was able to clear out most demon armies up until tier 7 armies. It seems like it was rushed for release. For example, the inspect feature and abilities use info cards that make sense if you were looking at the unit in a normal fight, but in a crusader fight they don't/do provide information that most people would/wouldn't find useful like "how much does this unit do normally with this many people in a standard situation" or "why do I care in Crusade mode that this thing has X/Y/Z when it will never come up during Crusade mode". Other Crusader-specific descriptions or feats just read null.

I've had no problem clearing most fights but I find them boring and irrelevant to why I bought the game (to roleplay and fight). Playing a bland, grid-based afterthought of a strategy game is not my idea of fun. I also care little for the settlement management system because it seems to have very little function outside of supplementing the crusader system and teleportation circles/corruption mitigation. So, I cut both out of the game using a mod and focused on doing things I actually care about. Yes, there are ways to cheese crusader fights and the entire crusade system, but as said earlier I do not care for the crusader system at all.

>>WHY MODS<<
As for why I have the mods: Moving through the main city and some of the more empty maps is unbearably slow. You can use some speed spells like Expeditious Retreat or send your faster animal companion to do shopping for you. Without that, combined with load screens as you enter each building or rest, I dislike ever having to return to the city for quests or shopping. I cranked up the move speed modifier and it's been tolerable since.

Said mod also allows you to auto-refill consumables on your belt. Healing is sparse if you consider 2-4 fights a normal amount between rests even with a cleric or oracle. Healing potions become extremely important for conserving spell slots. At the start especially most of your healing depends on healing potions, but there's no feature to "consume until fully healed" or auto-refill to spam from your belt. Recovering after a fight becomes a tedious process of right clicking and consuming a healing potion 10-30 times on each person if you're on the brink of death but you don't want to short rest spam or use your healing resources. Eventually with proper buffs and builds later on in the game you can get by most fights with minor casualties.

Speaking of buffs, core difficulty and up seems designed around having as many buffs up as necessary (my character average around 10~15 different buffs at all times). Get one of the Pathfinder autobuff mods to avoid the tedium of buffing over and over again. Yes, there are Mythic Feats that prolong your duration so that they last 24 hours ingame, but I still value being able to use my hands after playing this game so have this mod I shall.

The visual character adjustment mod is unnecessary. I just enjoy using some class armors visually over what my character actually is supposed to look like according to the game because oof, caster fashion is not amazing (I play dudes, chicks may differ).

[Was gifted by a good friend.]

Phasmophobia has a great atmosphere and perfect pacing for a investigative horror game. It's great for people looking for an adrenaline rush or thrill of the moment. For a early access game, the sound design leaves little to be desired and the voice chat (both local and global), while optional, works great and adds value to chase scenes when all you can hear is static and distance screaming. While the controls are slightly awkward to get used to at first and player animations are goofy, I got used to it after an hour. The tutorial does a good enough job to get you on your feet, and you definitely don't need to know the specifics of all the mechanics to "win" or have a good time.

In terms of difficulty, obviously playing solo is very difficult due to a combination of player skill, knowledge and luck. Even with 4 people, however, there is enough area to cover and clues to uncover with different tools that you're usually lucky if you find all three clues before the setup phase is over. Sanity, individual ghost type behaviors and limited resource pools all incentivize an investigation team to be quick, efficient and cautious. On larger maps, your survival and success will depend on those qualities tenfold.

There are only a handful of different maps and ghost types, but with the level of engagement by the devs on Discord and the Trello page, I only see this game going up. Even if progress stops though, I think if I were to buy the game again or a friend, it would be well worth the purchase for a long while.