Recent reviews by blue

any criticism of AI aside, this game sucks. like, genuinely. you are thrown into levels with a 4 seconds loop audio while you stare at the piss filter, picking upgrades that do not matter other than arbitrary number go up and you get tons of levels while nothing feels like it comes together. so i can see this game being a homerun for a lot of people. the perfect game for the average gamer, completely devoid of any sort of thought put into it.

e: devs are trying to push this as a "steam deck issue". it is not a steam deck issue. the game is simply not fun. insanely disingenuous.

did everhood need a sequel? i don't personally think so. it was relatively well contained and didn't feel like it needed expanding upon. with that said, i still really like everhood 2. well, except for a major detail, more on that a little bit below.

biggest change (that i am a fan of) is the combat, pushing it to be more rpg-like opposed to the first's game adventure vibe. i think it works well compared to the first game and serves as a nice foil. where it gets crazier is the story : 1 definitely had a thread of thought going, and 2 does absolutely not follow the same line, playing more with an extended universe rather than focusing on the exact things 1 does.

so given all of that and how wildly different everhood 2 is in terms of story, it's not too surprising most people are relatively lukewarm on it or consider it inferior, especially because of a single massive thing no one or nothing tells you about : collecting the damn weapons. oh sorry you didn't collect them? go back to the beginning of the game and do it all over again. without going too in details about the rest, i still think it's fine and fun, but this really soured my experience!!!! even if you can wear a hot dog hat and even if soundtrack bangs!!!

like the first game however please don't even consider it if you are photosensitive!

playing this in good faith, and any criticism of paywalling 90% of the game (instead of just one big up front price?) aside, the game is overwhelming visually and not terribly pleasant to get into as a novice.

i wasn't sold on unbeatable as a game because the genre is not something i am comfortable with, then i tried white label. it sold me on the game and the studio's ability to deliver.

playing the demo before release had me really skeptical. no rating? no scoring? just pure platforming? kind of weird for a game that seems to be based off gunvolt in terms of gameplay!

thankfully the game exceeded my expectations and i'm glad i gave it a shot despite the disjointed and unconvincing demo. there's a de-focus on arcade and scoring gameplay and more of a focus on the slower pace, setpieces and platforming. your moveset is deliberate, mashing buttons does not favor you, and there's a decent level of difficulty on offer to keep you on your toes.

unfortunately (?) the usual inti suspects are here, with a strong focus on what people would describe as "anime aesthetics" and designs that won't appeal to a more mainstream audience, which is a real shame because majogami is one of inti's stronger offerings out of their catalogue, and i can somewhat see why it was announced and released as an anniversary title. i think you should play this game and i hope it does well commercially for them.

any ideology (i am too stupid for this), symbology (i am too stupid for that) or iconography (i am also too stupid for this) this game threw my way went way over my head but it's a good time that you should assuredly NOT play if you are photo sensitive. a little bit on the nose with what it draws inspiration from but whatever it's a good time and you should give it a shot.

this review is mostly pointless because the game was delisted but i like to get my thoughts out so i'm going to post one anyway

do not be fooled by the comparisons to final fantasy : this is a SaGa game in disguise. just weird layers of mechanics that are absolutely not explained to the player, like each character having a completely unique and unexplained stat, battle commands being somewhat random, no straight-forward leveling but instead having a weird "world level" and stats that eventually level. exp is, apparently, proportional to battle difficulty, which is measured in turns taken. mid combat qtes. party management that seems to be encouraged but also does not seem to matter. layer upon layer of weird ideas. also other weird knick knack like the area intro playing every time you re-enter an area.

this is a mostly fixed version of the seemingly very broken xbox version (with bugs and insanely easy way to brick a run) and certain features like quick battles are welcome with how many units can end up on the battlefield.

gameplay aside, the main character is not super likeable and the story is a bit whatever. still not a terrible time, but absolutely not the first rpg i would recommend to someone for sure.

ran into several bugs, including being unable to deploy units unless i restarted. on top of that, the ui is terribly grating to use, whether it's with a controller or m+kb. extremely amateur on that front and made the game unpleasant to -play-.

on top of that, part of what makes SRPGs interesting is how attached you get to your units. some games will have ways for you to get "random" units that aren't part of the story, but you can get attached to them. they can even carry some runs for you! and that's cool! unfortunately units kind of vanish and you have no real reliable way to get them again, even if units are drawn from a pool. so uh sorry if you liked someone, might take a while till you get them again. and this isn't even accounting for the randomness of a playthrough in a SRPG, which is part of the appeal and seeing which unit will pop off this playthrough. mix of unreliable units + skills being picked from a roguelike format is not super fun to me and goes against the fundamentals of the genre, to me at least.

if you have more patience than me then i'm sure this game could be for you. unfortunately, the tragic part is that there's a lot of strong SRPGs that deserve their accolades, ranging from mythic titles like FFT or Tactics Ogre to good ole Fire Emblem, that are widely available to play and easy to access. try the demo to see if it floats your boat, i guess?

playing neptunia vii hot off the heels of the rebirth trilogy highlights how terrible this game is. where do i even begin?

- i already had issues with rb1, mostly because of the absurd grind required. "oh but it's not that bad!" diehard fans would say. sure, i guess, if you know the game insides out and can tolerate wailing on punching bags just to get through the game because the difficulty curve is stupid then yeah i guess it's acceptable to you. still bad. what does this game do? triples down on it. awesome!

- the overworld sucks. random encounters are not why i played these games. on top of that, dungeons suck too now! unless i missed it, normal enemies dont respawn until you leave, and some of the dungeons here sprawl across several maps, making it incredibly tedious.

- add on top to that, symbol attacks suck to pull off. lost count of how many times i still got back attacked while mid swing at an enemy. awesome!

- the combo system. i appreciate trying to add layers to a game but it just sucks? especially early. oops sorry you changed weapons, it got stronger but you can't do the combo path anymore. very cool idea!

- you don't even heal on level up. please go back to town. alleviated by characters finally being able to heal out of combat (lol, 4 games in) but then you just chew through consumables. which sucks early. maybe it gets better later on. i do not care to find out.

- removed the basics that there were save points before bosses. awesome. love dying and wasting my time grinding and trekking back.

i think it's pretty awesome that, 4 games into a series that got progressively better even if it was never truly "great" (let's be honest, most people play these games for the characters, not the gameplay), they decided to just regress to something as equally bad as 1. stellar job compile heart.

if you intend to play these games i suggest you stop at rb3, it doesn't get better than that.

i thought people were overselling this game but no they really were not. solid writing all around and any critique i would have would be around the infinity engine's quirks. do yourself a favor and play this game. a good companion piece to baldur's gate/icewind dale.