Recent reviews by Augusto

The thought that there's people out there who are like Sasara brings me genuine happiness.

I bought this game ages ago thinking it would be similar to Yume Nikki, but it's really more like this one freeware game called Soup (ver 0.9), except there's a time limit whenever you enter a world, which removes the appeal of exploration to me... Part of why I love Yume Nikki is because I can stop to appreciate the dream world, it's an incredibly nice game to chill to, when you add a time limit that slowly distorts the screen to me it just takes away the premise of enjoying the atmosphere and turns the game into an errand.

I thought to myself there must be a way to slow down time, but I couldn't find anything looking it up... Regardless, even assuming it's possible, the game would still just be you walking around from a small piece of terrain to another, there's no elevation and even Soup has more walking between rooms than this. Terrains usually have a different background theme going for them, which means you will be changing theme every few seconds and will have no space to actually take in any of them. It's basically like scrolling down on your feed in any social media website, which is something I never thought I would say to an exploration game.

Yume Nikki's locations can change drastically in theme from one room to another, but there's plenty of worlds that have space to breathe, and it's part of why the exploration can be so good and leave a lot to your imagination. In this game the worlds are reduced to a small patch of terrain that you quickly go through as you are looking for items before the timer runs out. The background does a lot of service here, but it's barely enough. I played for just a few mins and things started repeating too...

Really more of a point and click adventure than a RPG, though the RPG elements are still there together with a mindless yet tad flashy turn-based combat. Possibly the biggest appeal of Anachronox is its worldbuilding, the setting is very creative and elaborated upon, much more conceptually than in terms of lore depth, I would think, but it's still pretty captivating. Maps are rich in details, personality and spots to look at, and I really love the visual variety as you hop from one hub area to another. They designed so many things to make the world feel original and appealing to your curiosity. Graphics, aesthetics, music and sound effects are incredibly awesome.

I find the story to be more of a lightweight adventure than a narrative with substance on its themes, the game pulls off plenty of smart scenes but it doesn't go beyond the feeling of "really cool", it is never much thrilling or very interesting, but they can be very amusing and well thought out. Plenty of the NPC text dialogue kind of bore me, but sometimes they are more unique and give a nice charm. Characters are sometimes part of a twist, sometimes they get lines or even scenes that give background about their past, and there's a little bit of development for each one of them. Though they mostly serve more to compliment the scenes and push the plot forward, being more or less fixed with their present personality. Personally, I really like Boots and Rho and the contrast between Sera and her past self is interesting.

Possibly the worst thing about this game is how there's way too much backtracking and trying to figure out what to do, at least the game's world is rich, otherwise this wouldn't be very tolerable. Plenty of fetch quests or similar objectives which will have you going from place to place reading signs for directions and remembering where each spot is at, and the contents in the sidequests often don't really stand out much. Even looking for an answer online can be sorta confusing as the guides can be vague and there isn't much coverage on this game.

With that said, I think areas like Sunder and Democratus are the ones that work the most in terms of puzzle and exploration, the pieces for the objectives are all somewhat close to each other so you don't have to navigate too much, they are also neat enough to keep you entertained, and it mostly requires exploration without anything too convoluted. I also liked playing as PAL at Sender Station since it was pretty straightforward. Areas like Bricks are just annoying to navigate, with their strange amount of elevators that trigger cutscenes you are forced to watch whenever you are there backtracking, puzzles seem to get more illogical the more you progress on the game as well. I like the skill minigames.

It seems that at the last third of the game, it just starts to grow dull and less interesting. Areas like the cave at Hephaestus, the military camp at Democratus surface as well as the forest are just missing the charm that made the other areas more appealing. The entire comic book chapter is a filler I wish I didn't have to go through, it has nothing much going for it other than Paco. I at least really like that they show more of Boots and Fatima's past later on, that intrigued me more than the main plot about saving the universe, Rho's explanation of universe weight aside.

Overall this feels like it would be a more enjoyable experience if you watched a full playthrough in good quality on Youtube, you get to skip all the back and forth with the quests, sometimes weird puzzles and the combat isn't interesting enough to make the gameplay worth the hassle, but then again having full control of your characters helps taking your time to enjoy the locations, if that's your thing. I still think it's a great game for the incredible visuals, entertaining lightweight plot, audio, and creative world with clearly plenty of effort put into it conceptually and design-wise. There's just some obvious negatives with the way the combat can drag on, the final boss, amount of walking and finding directions, sometimes frustrating puzzles, etc.

-=[Spoilers]=-
My only issue with the ending is that it didn't give much time for the characters to look back on the events in the game before departing to another journey. The game ends on a cliffhanger, but it isn't that unsatisfying as I've seen people describe. Boots became like who he used to be before he went down the ♥♥♥♥, in fact it's implied he's even more determined and willing than his past self, Fatima respects him once more too, and Sera was able to close a chapter of her past. We may not see where these characters went, but I wouldn't worry much about it.

https://youtu.be/GyLASGfpdVY

The true chaotic neutral experience

It's good. There's an strive for realism in how the areas work and it really captures that experience of exploring abandoned and neglected industrial locations well, and all those places and rooms you never went to as a kid in your city but that you had curiosity for, like a door inside a metro tunnel. The strive to make the environment feel believable is pretty impressive, it rarely feels like a video-game level, the same goes for the puzzles.

As far as I understand the story, I don't think it's really deep or thoughtful, it's mostly a conspiracy thriller and a surface level exploration of the society surrounding the fictional city the game takes place, there's a small layer of horror, but it has a lot to do with the dark atmosphere of the underground areas, and small snippets you get of the unknown dangers there. You see plenty of how some people live in the city, but that never goes in an interesting depth. I think it's nice to have it though, it makes the exploration more interesting and you become curious as to how everything will turn out.

The narrative and lore are good fun, and charming too, there's a lot of comical instances that make you question the sanity of the people who live in rather poorly maintained areas of the city or the workers that have to work with ♥♥♥♥♥♥ and dangerous conditions, there's an alcoholism and drug problem as well... Additionally, there's different secrets, urban legends, and even an ARG surrounding the game, which adds to its world and makes it feel larger than you can grasp.

One of the few things that really stands out to me about this game is how there's a lot of personality to the maps, a lot of details concerning the game's world and the humans that are part of it, there's probably like a hundred of them honestly, like signs of people just being more carefree in their workplace, signs of comical situations they had to go through, etc I think that's one of the main things that makes up the game, they consistently reward the player for looking carefully at the environment.

The puzzles are often intuitive and don't take too long to solve, they can appear overwhelming at first when they give you a lot of rooms to circle to, but by paying attention to your surroundings you get the gist of what you are meant to do, a little bit in a Myst fashion except Myst had fictional structures and patterns. Solving the puzzles is fun, they also tend to give you more than one way of obtaining an item or prop required for the puzzle, and sometimes more than one solution, but regardless it's important to save in different save slots given you can softlock yourself by losing specific props or even reaching a dead end you can't go back from. Completing optional tasks and making decisions don't have high repercussions aside from the ending but from time to time the game rewards you for them or gives a detail that shows how your task impacted things, which is nice...

There's one part I find boring near the end as it concerns walking in an empty and poorly illuminated city at night, which is nothing like the premise of the game, it doesn't help the part before it didn't have much going for it too, mostly just a typical neighborhood... To compensate for it though, the chapter after is such a good one, it feels like playing Jazzpunk, it gives you this little bizarre and isolated society that's compact but filled with things to see and to interact with, it's probably one of the best chapters in the game despite not being quite like what the game is selling you for.

Things I consider flaws of this game:

• The city/neighborhood sunset chapters.
  
• Source jank, I want my 15 coins worth of bottles back.
  
• While movement is satisfying, the platforming is horrendous.
  
• Puzzles/tasks can sometimes be chore-ish or tedious, like the one with the crane, you know what you are meant to do but it's a back and forth if you don't get it just right.
  
• Eventually props and environmental details start to repeat, like teddy bears are hidden often with accessories but the gag becomes overused so it isn't that neat to see it again and it makes the world feel smaller, they could had maybe given an explanation to the player like maybe it's part of the city's secular folk.
  
• Mark just falls at different rabbit holes in a single day by coincidence, like he's just trying to come back to the office but he keeps coming across conspiracy ♥♥♥♥, it either makes the world feel smaller or it makes it seem like it's a huge part of the city that's involved in the conspiracy overall for Mark to just easily come across material concerning them. It would have been better if the narrative made this more of an investigative effort instead of plain causality, as it's much more believable, most importantly though it makes these secrets feel more confined and secure, making them more thrilling to discover.
  
• The game is too generous with batteries for the camera and flashlight, so there's 0 need to save energy, it leads to Mark mentioning his inv is full all the time which is a lil annoying ngl...
  
• I GOT SOFTLOCKED AND HAD TO FIX WITH CHEATS? ALSO SOME BUGS & CRASHES HERE N THERE...

Probably a good choice if you enjoy dungeon exploration and first person immersive sims, it seemed to have taken a lot from Ultima Underworld and Thief: Dark Project, it's also a good starting point for the dungeon crawler genre, as it's often what you would normally expect from it, without anything done too spectacularly, or too poorly.

Arx Fatalis has a somewhat of a weak lore, it never expands on the background of any of the characters, races or it's mythos, there are a few books that you can read but they provide very basic information about what goes in this world and there isn't much insight to get nor much originality. The game seems more interested in having you experience snippets of the daily life of the characters & races rather than giving depth to them.

For example: there's this cave with globins fishing and I remember I jumped to the water and a globin said "STUPID HUMAN SCARE FISH!"; you might see globins eating near a campfire as well, or even bandits; there also seems to be a decent variety of guard banter as you progress through the story; sometimes you will see this troll we befriended fishing or playing with his flute; there's this goblin cook that likes to sing to himself, etc... Arx seems to focus on these details of daily life way more than in having a expansive lore, and if you look around, there's some effort in making these societies make sense and appear functional, places usually have kitchens, bedrooms, toilets, sewers, storages, machinery, etc with the loot you would expect them to have. This is even more of a treat when you consider that everything takes place underground.

There isn't much in Arx that feels expansive, the entire game feels confined, isolated and a bit claustrophobic, while the map as a whole isn't too short, the size of each "kingdom" is more of a neighborhood plaza, and each kingdom is more or less very close to each other, it feels like there isn't enough room for everyone, which fits well with dungeon crawling. You are probably meant to use your imagination to see each kingdom as much bigger than they actually appear, or maybe every race really is dying out, in a post apocalyptic fashion.

Interestingly, the main character's background and goal explains his indifference to the story, why he adapts and strengthens himself so quickly, and why you never get to know any of the characters or societies of the world in much depth. You are always experiencing it's daily life, but the depth is just not there, because our character is not meant to make connections with this world, to attach himself would only be detrimental to the main goal.

The ambience is quite original and nicely done, the game had the balls (or lack of resource) to have barely any music at all, it seems to prefer messing with you by the use of creepy noises. You mistake ambience sounds for a door opening/closing, magic being cast, a monster idling or alerted, etc. It contributed to having me wary of monsters or traps, and made me easily more spooked in scarier areas of the game, even in the safest stage (Hall of Illusions) I was expecting some creepy ♥♥♥♥ to happen because of the disturbing ambience there.

Oh yeah, and this game is dark, sometimes overkill and edgy, but others grim just to the right degree. It seems that some of the races tend to just be vicious, while humans have a more elaborate type of evil, carried by their own delusions. Bones and skulls are scattered about pretty much everywhere in the setting, blood & rust too are not difficult to find, and there's a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of rats everywhere, to top it off the main antagonist group is involved with some eldritch bs that you wouldn't want any human society near. Gotta be thankful that you at least can do your share of good, and grave robber all those ghost ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ who are wandering the crypt.

Initially part of the fun for me was exploring, scavenging, eating rats, managing my inventory and updating my character, which is to expect. The combat is basic and it mostly depends on the tactics that you are going for or how well built & prepared your character is, there's a few ways each character build can deal with an enemy or situation, and you will have to settle for an specific build if you want to be effective endgame, meaning you can't be a generalist.

Like some other rpgs, there's a lot of activities that you can do, but they are all simple, which encourages you to do a variety of them so you are not bored and have that make up your experience. I went for a strength & defense based character, but just swinging swords can get boring, so I brew a lot of potions, enchanted some weapons, sold & bought a bunch of items, spent some of my stats on magic & used a couple of spells, etc this mix of different tasks makes the game more fun and engaging, you just have to sure make there's a focus on a chosen build.

Finding secrets and completing puzzles is great fun, as well as figuring out your own way of dealing with certain enemies and situations. However, I didn't have the patience to figure everything out by myself, as I found myself disoriented and doing a lot of backtracking, which is tedious but hey at least there's a speed spell you can use to make this more tolerable. Not everything's really clear in this game, spots don't get marked on the map often and your quest book sucks, so I would recommend checking a guide every once in a while if you are lost.

The ending then leaves you surprisingly satisfied despite being short, it has a twist and it gives you hope.

Make sure to install Arx Libertatis with it as it improves a variety of things in the game without altering it's core, such as making the rune detection system more reliable, and having the game more compatible to modern systems.

SPOILERS AHEAD

This game is bizarre and there were definitely aspects of the story that could had been handled better, but whenever I think of the experience it offers not only for being very distinct from many others across games but also for the way it has been executed it makes me very glad I made sure to give it a try back when it's artstyle was poor in comparison to this recent version.

Edna's a really interesting character and no wonder she's in the title of her game, she's the charm from beginning to end and though everyone else has their part none would be any impactful without her. The way there's so much recorded dialogue, and how there's hundreds of item combinations and interactions with unique responses really gives the player the opportunity to experience a day in her self-absorbed life. Hours of recorded dialogue of her playing around with her imagination, having conversations with mundane objects, having something to say to every little thing or just nothing but noises. And while there's so much that unravels her personality, most of the game takes place in a single building to which she's confined to. I wouldn't think a game would go so far to show the daydreams of a crazy girl, and it makes me think on some people I've met in life, which gave effort to their daydreams and to get themselves absorbed and involved in their own imagination, allowing even mundane objects invoke a series of thoughts, all while they are confined to their own homes.

Even with her problems you end up supporting Edna in her escape, and when she finally escapes you feel slightly worried on what's going to happen next now that she's outside, because Edna only spent time outside at her childhood, the rest of her life was spent inside the mental hospital. She's not connected to the world in the slightest sense and she never matured despite being a young adult by the time the game takes place. Fatherless, motherless, it puts her in a very unfair situation if you are to argue she's not insane and shouldn't be in the mental hospital. Because inside there she never got prepared for life, and now she's highly dependent on the very thing that hasn't prepared her, the mental hospital to which she's allowed all her daydreams and thoughts.

This feeling of abandonment is well shown when Edna reaches her home at night to find it completely forgotten. There's no music in this part, just the wind. I just wondered to myself what Edna is going to do, she has nowhere to go, no one to turn to, and she's not prepared in the slightest to the real world. Nothing in her life seems to favor her escape, and it all feels very unjust, were it not for the possibility that perhaps Edna's place really is the mental hospital. The game's ambiguous enough to leave people discussing whether she deserves to retain her personality or submit to the mental hospital's testings and undo her integrity to remain there. Which is something I like about the game, just how much does it take to have someone be put righteously in a mental hospital and if there weren't unfair cases of this? As well as just how an mental hospital can affect somebody when they are there for years.

I'm one to say Edna deserved a second chance she never got. Edna bricht aus und kommt nie wieder.

Verei as más preferências do Autumn 2017 enquanto persistir consciênte, e verei também sob ele, uma sombra trágica e íntima, lembrando com esse gesto um outro, tráfico, enfeitado de vídeo-games inúteis, estendendo os braços sobre a névoa do dilúvio infernal, formando-se sobre ele, o rio das trevas. Tudo começou quando encaminhei esta carta até ele:

"Autumn, eu vi aquele post que você publicou no Facebook, que inclusive, ninguém notou, mas como sou teu amigo, vi com alta audácia, por favor, Autumn 2017, não perca tempo em jogos TEAM FORTRESS 2, estude um campo que salvarás tua vida, não um que frustrará o que já é evidente por isso."

Autumn ignorou como igualmente fará com o resto de sua vida, nunca preocupando-se em abrir as cortinas e facejar seus problemas, esperando que a luz eventualmente ingresse dentro de si. Ícaro de nossa geração, que lhe fez minha preocupação! Fui forçado a enviar outra carta.

"Boa tarde Autumn 2017, não tenho certeza se você recebeu minha primeira mensagem, já dei f5 32 vezes e nada foi-se encontrado, abraços."

Logo no fim de setembro. Em uma noite relembrável por sua potente chuva, por volta das onze horas, o núcleo do mural de comentários do Autumn quebrou pós sobrecarregar em culpa de TEAM FORTRESS 2, de modo que, passadas horas, não dava para memear, o processo de memear por amônia tornou-se impossível. Ele alertou-me por meio de extensos textos via mensagens privadas, e eu, desesperado, tentei meu máximo para conserta-lo e remover os estragos enquanto meu companheiro memeador me colocou a uma chamada do Skype onde ligou sua webcam enquanto praguejava em um tom de voz cujo caráter agonizante e fútil estaria além de qualquer descrição plausível. O pânico e o ódio do solitário morrediço, tendo elevado a medidas excêntricas, aparentavam estar prestes a quebrar o quanto sobejava de seu físico enfraquecido; uma contração fez com que levasse as mãos a sua face e corresse até o banheiro. Autumn saiu de lá com o rosto coberto por bandagens, e nunca mais o vi.

Meses depois, busquei por seu perfil com a maior prudência, mas jamais o reencontrei. Investiguei a fundo o perfil de seus amigos e explorei pessoalmente todas as informações, independente do contexto, que pudessem corresponder a algo relacionado ao caso perdido. No entanto, o resultado vergonhoso de que não consigo encontrar ele, o ID ou até mesmo a pagina onde, no espaço de os últimos meses da minha moderada vida como estudante Memer na universidade, postava os ensinamentos antepassados da Turminha.

Encargo uma certeza de que o registro onde estarei a grafar sobre o que vi antes de Autumn cobrir-se com bandagens diante de seu rosto é importante ser exposto a esse mundo, no minimo, descrito de uma forma imaginável, para o homem que não acredite por natureza, que só estará por ganhar. Quando olhei através daquela que era anteriormente a mais invulgar de todas as feições, não enxerguei face alguma dentre as brechas que as ataduras falharam em mascarar, apenas as trevas do infinito; uma zona insólita, viva, uma escuridão bárbara e insensível em companhia a um caos e a loucura demoníaca da ausência de sentido que violentava meu psique. O resto das informações que esclarecem a relevância dada ao desaparecimento de Autumn é a tese abordada no quinto comentário que ainda tenho dever de postar. Parece-me que em uma ocasião anterior o Autumn 2017 havia sofrido experiências espantosas como a da recentemente registrada, considerando seu humor devastado momentos antes do período em que se tornou claro a desumanidade inqualificável que vi presente em seu rosto -- como se ele já soubesse o que estava por vir!

Nesta análise demonstro pelo meu trabalho como arqueólogo e historiador uma experiência própria que emite as supostas relações de um jovem excêntrico com o sobrenatural. Descrevo usando evidência pessoal com intuito de demonstrar o porque a narrativa dos patriarcas de Lima até as profécias de Autumn 2016 em questão do caso são farsas ideológicas, por conectar-se a linha de tempo da escravidão em Sorocaba, o Exodus e a Guerra do Futebol Clube. A verdadeira escravidão da terra deu-se ao longo de três séculos de ocupação do território de Boa Vista. Aqui a própria história é falsificada ao nos fazer crer que não é nada de inverídico com TEAM FORTRESS 2, como projetado por Lima, para que ele ainda disponha argumentos efetivos quando precisar defender o jogo, que só cairiam em um caso de valor emocional tão forte quanto de Autumn 2017, o passado não pode mais ser negado e omitido. Certas pessoas como Lima se beneficiam do NÃO-REGISTRO do pretérito para poder reescrevê-lo conforme seus arbítrios, desejos e ambições, para iludir as mentes preguiçosas, que, eles têm toda a certeza de que NUNCA buscarão a verdade. Por fim, revela-se um complexo sobre o desaparecimento ainda mal resolvido. Assim, cria-se uma junção de bisbilhotices em torno de leitores que foram abalados pela nova ausência de Autumn 2017, esse que fazia uma apocalíptica presença anteriormente, no minimo, antes de investir dias inteiros sem fazer nada que não seja jogar TEAM FORTRESS 2. É como o estranho caso do rapaz Clément Cadou, que depois de se deparar com Witold Gombrowicz, um dos seus escritores prediletos, sentiu-se de natureza igual a uma peça de mobília perto do ídolo e, justamente por isso, despovoou a auspiciosa carreira literária para se prestar à pintura de auto-retratos – sofás e poltronas. Autumn é uma pessoa importante nesse universo virtual cheio de apedeutas e futilidades.

As razões para o abandono da investigação são diversos e as desculpas indicam que não foi por falta de vestígios. O português Orville Ataíde, por exemplo, deixou seu trabalho militarista aos 23 anos para traficar armas no Brasil. O equatoriano Jonathan Golfo deixou de investigar logo após o assassinato do seu tio Humphrey, um que de forma acadêmica, lhe contava histórias heroicas, um belo porquê para o seu recém desenvolvido mutismo. Já o argentino Sergio Wandekoken pôs a culpa na língua portuguesa, segundo ele, ao tentar aprende-la, passou por frustrações e se viu inseguro para progredir na investigação. Outra ocorrência curiosa é o abandono da pesquisa por Carlos Borges, que fez o esforço de fugir do país para livrar-se da fama, porque ela dava um sentido de propriedade aos registros dos indícios, quando, para ele, a obra não é mais do autor quando é reelaborada por outros leitores policiais. "Que será o desfecho dessa historia?" Foram essas as declarações finais dos investigadores, guardei seus relatos em minha estante, portando um fardo de decepção com os resultados. Pôs junto aos demais papéis a respeito de minhas próprias observações. Sou obrigado a trazer um fim idêntico em meu informe. Admito que em breve baterei as botas -- e as baterei bem. Assim como Autumn se foi, eu também irei. Meu conhecimento é além de qualquer linha que os patriarcas grafaram -- e não gostam disso. Mesmo com todo perigo, persisto disposto a mostrar ao exterior o absurdo inteiro dessa historia. Até meu último suspiro.

Poxa, seguia este jogo e acreditava ser um tanto que bom. Adeus! Não sou como Autumn para cair em heresias, a vida não é fácil não. Vocês são todos malucos. Fui!