Recent reviews by Hf

Highly recommend this game to anybody in the mood for an RPG experience that I can only describe as very anime. Very much in the same vein as Angels of Death/Satsuriku no Tenshi

The mechanics are overall very simple, even by RPG Maker-esque game standards, but its characters, story, and worldbuilding are strong enough to carry the entire experience.

Let's be honest here, I'm probably not going to sway you either way. I'll still give my quick opinion on the game though.

Positives:
+ The open world content is extremely good. There are an unbelievable amount of places to explore on the map.
+ The base player mechanics are relatively good. They brought back the best parts of the three Dark Souls games and gave them a little dash of Sekiro. My only complaint here is that the input for two-handing weapons feels awkward.
+ The lore and worldbuilding have received all the love you'd expect from a Miyazaki and GRRM game, with tons of attention to detail.
+ The PvP is currently both fun and active. There's definitely a meta but you can pull off some silly stuff.

Negatives:
- The bosses in this game are honestly the worst designed out of any of the Souls games From has released. In a casual playthrough you can roll over most of them easily by out-leveling them and using spirit ashes and OP combinations. Trying to do a no-shield/low-level/no-summons type run consists of a lot of waiting/baiting out the one attack you can safely punish because most bosses are some combination of gank boss/hyper aggressive/high HP/difficult to stagger. Both of these feel extremely boring and/or tedious and rarely produce that same sense of overcoming an obstacle that you'd expect from a Soulsborne boss.
- Damage in the end game seems to be tuned expecting that all characters will have 60 Vigor and heavy armor. This severely limits the number of builds that are viable in the end game in a casual playthrough, since if you have these things you'll die in 2-3 hits and if you don't you'll die in 1-2 (also some things still do enough damage to one-shot or nearly one-shot you at 60 Vigor).
- The upgrade system somehow managed to combine the worst aspects of every Soulsborne game. Not sure how they pulled this one off.
- Really poor optimization. Stutters badly on latest gen hardware.
- The game was inexplicably released with half of the NPC quests unfinished??? Plus just a surprising amount of polish issues in places. Definitely feels like it was a bit rushed despite the incredible amount of content it pushed with.

Overall, I'd easily recommend it for anyone who likes Soulsborne games or open world games in general. It's pretty easy to get hundreds of hours of enjoyment out of it. Definitely has a few faults though, primarily in boss design in damage tuning, which unfortunately make it less replayable than it might've been otherwise.

Did you like Kingmaker? This is more of the same. Did you dislike Kingmaker? This is more of the same.

Overall, unless you were a super fan of Kingmaker and loved it even in its buggy state a few weeks after launch, I cannot recommend this game at this point in time. I'd say it'll take at least another 6 months to fix all the glaring issues. I would suggest waiting for that point or waiting for a really good sale, because this is a $30 game at best as it stands.

I don't really know how to explain the game itself other than that it feels like playing with a brand new DM who has a lot of really big ideas but hasn't sat down to polish any of them and doesn't have a firm grasp on how to execute. Moreover, there is no unifying vision so a lot of the grand ideas actually work against each other. Here are some specific complaints.

1. There's just way too much combat. It's like a 90-10 combat-story/exploration split.
2. The vast majority of combat is against just random minion-tier mobs that you mow down. There's nothing engaging or tactical about it.
3. The developers seem to like dropping a massively more difficult enemy on you in the most random of places. You'll be in an area mowing down CR nothing ghouls at level 5 and then take a right turn and find an enemy with AC and spell resistance so high that you need all your buffs or nat 20s to even touch them with little to no indication that you're about to enter the thunderdome.
4. The above three issues all work together to become an even worse issue: the vast majority of fights are not worth pre-buffing or preparing for in any significant way, and it would waste hours of time to bother preparing for every little fight, but if you don't pre-buff for the occasional meaningful fight you're going to get stomped. This means that combat boils down to guessing at boss/miniboss placement (or saving and reloading after).
5. For an added laugh, by Chapter 2 it was pretty common that random side rooms would have enemies 2 or 3x more powerful than the boss of an area, even if it made no sense or there was no indication of this lorewise.
6. DC checks for Athletics, Mobility, etc. are just all over the place. You'll get a DC 30 knowledge check to determine that a book is, in fact, made of ink and paper and then you'll get a DC 18 athletics check three minutes later to pole vault to the moon.
7. The alignment dialogue is really weird in a lot of places. I'm playing an evil-aligned character who's steadily drifting toward neutral just based on me picking what I feel is the natural dialogue for them, because in most cases they would lie and say the thing that aligns with the "Good" option. I had a similar issue in Pathfinder where my character ended up True Neutral just because they lied a lot.
8. Again, just so many bugs. In turn-based mode alone I've seen spells and abilities being consumed but not going off, attacks of opportunity happening randomly and with no reason (I had a level 1 character somehow get an attack of opportunity off against an enemy melee combatant in the middle of the character's turn), and characters just ignoring tactical mode entirely and unleashing volleys on each other before the first round starts.

It's a bit sad because this is very clearly a labor of love and, at its base, it has the spark of a fun, consuming game. The lack of polish really shows though, and as soon as I start to really have fun with it I get yanked back out of it by one of its various jagged edges.

Games like Cannibal Crossing make me wish that Steam had an "it depends" option for recommendations.

The concept is good, the core gameplay loop is fun, but there's still a lot of bugs and a lot of polish needed and whether or not this is worth the price of admission is dependent largely on what you're looking for in a game.

I bought it because I liked the idea of an arcade-y, online coop survival game. I learned after the fact that online coop only really works for horde mode. The horde mode is fun but marred by bugs and a lack of focus in comparison to the open world mode. For example, last night I ran a melee build and bought a lightsaber and 40 plates of spaghetti and proceeded to break the entire game by zipping around decapitating dozens of cannibals with dash attacks, causing it to desync so badly that enemies started spawning just 1 at a time with no additional enemies spawning until after each before it had died.

The open world mode itself is also fun, but I didn't really grab the title for single player. Using Steam's remote play in order to use the couch co-op style open world multiplayer reveals a lot of unfortunate design decisions. Trying to loot a box pauses the entire game for every player, which is pretty rough in a game where you're doing a lot of looting. Any sort of inventory management is the same, and trying to clear up my inventory and do base building resulted in the person I was playing with having to just sit there and wait for me, with them unable to even do inventory cleanup of their own in the interim.

Ultimately, right now, if you're really into the single player, open world arcade-y combat, I'd say it's a good purchase. If you're into online coop and enjoy horde mode and roguelike-ish character building then probably wait for it to be half-off. Otherwise, I'd recommend holding off. Put it on Follow or wishlist it and check back on reviews from after release to see if it's still got a lot of bugs/polish issues, then make a decision from there.

A very ambitious game that ultimately has fallen flat on its face so far. The only hope at this point is that it can still theoretically be patched into what was originally promised, though given the amount of time since release I wouldn't recommend holding your breath.

Coming from having played Mount & Blade and specifically Warband from all the way back around 2009, I had high hopes for Bannerlord. As is, the only thing it's managed to deliver on is that the vanilla campaign experience is mostly enjoyable outside of the bugs, terrible siege AI, and questionable battle AI plus a plethora of bad balancing and game breaking exploits on the campaign map and battle map. If you really, really liked the previous games' single player vanilla campaigns then this is probably still a salvageable experience for you.

That said, if you preferred mods then don't bother, the promised modding framework basically doesn't exist yet and modders are stuck trying to work around developer decisions to add anything or adjust anything in the game. Likewise, multiplayer is currently a horrendously unbalanced, uninteresting, janky mess and all it's ever succeeded in is making me go back and play more Warband MP.

Final verdict: probably fine to grab it if you really, really liked the previous M&B's vanilla campaigns. Otherwise don't bother, wait and hope that patches fix the game into a decent state.

2021-04-16 update: Game of the decade (or until Project Moon makes another game), to be honest. Negative reviews are mad about the ending but in my opinion it was a perfect ending to an incredible game. I'm eagerly awaiting Project Moon's next games.

2021-04-11 update: following up to say that after this latest story update this is basically my game of the decade and, in my opinion, best early access title ever in that early access actually added to my overall enjoyment of the game through its weekly almost episodic story updates. With 5 days left until the final story update, it would be extremely hard for Project Moon to do anything that would make me not highly recommend this game.

Original review: Excellent game. The battle mechanics are an extreme breath of fresh air from other RPG style battlers. People compare it to Slay the Spire but the only real similarity is that both have combat systems based on deck building, they're apples and oranges otherwise in terms of mechanics.

Library of Ruina has a lot of mechanics that mesh together to make an extremely interesting system with a lot of deep interactions. It also has a fantastic story for anybody who likes cyberpunk dystopia with a smidge of Lovecraft and philosophical introspection mixed in. Highly recommend this game for anybody who likes deckbuilding or complex card game mechanics. Also highly recommend it for people the aforementioned cyberpunk dystopia stories. It's a direct sequel to Lobotomy Corporation, so you might want to play that first if you're interested in that style of game.

Library of Ruina also happens to be one of the only cases of early access done right on Steam, with major story patches having come out like clockwork every single Friday and balance/tweak patches coming out between as needed. If every developer used Steam's early access the way Project Moon has used it for Library of Ruina, then early access wouldn't be considered such a joke.

To summarize in one sentence: Ender Lilies is a great game that would be one of my all-time favorite metroidvanias if not for some regrettable polishing issues.

The aesthetics are absolutely gorgeous, the music is incredible, the story is beautiful and hopeful and painful (in a good way) all at once. Unfortunately, the mechanics are where it falls a little bit flat. While the basic gameplay loop feels good and is enjoyable, it suffers from a lack of focus in what it wants to do mechanically.

A lot of the combat system lends itself to slow, methodical fighting but then it also hands the player a lot of mobility options which are extremely satisfying. However, enemies cause a lot of damage just on touch and so attempting to make full use of mobility tends to punish the player. Simultaneously though, a lot of enemies are extremely mobile to the extent of being hard to hit when trying to be slow and methodical. This led to some extremely frustrating situations where I would try to dash and keep up to punish a boss's opening after a swing just to run into their hitbox and take damage, and also frustrating situations where I'd go slow and they'd do a backhop (not even an attack) through me and do a ton of damage that way.

There's also smaller polish issues like the way the map indicates whether an area is unfinished (e.g. haven't picked up all items). Maps are either marked as unfinished or finished, with no indication of what's left to obtain from them. It's a metroidvania, so some areas and pickups are gated behind later mobility powerups obtained from bosses. Coming back to the same map 3 times over the course of the game to figure out if the powerups I had could find/reach the missing item and then finally getting it only to discover that it was the equivalent of 2 pennies and a stick of gum was frustrating. It would've been really nice if the map had indicated what type of pickup was left in an area (e.g. readable, relic, blight, etc.).

These aren't bad enough for me to dislike the game, and I still think that overall it's extremely fun, but they do stand out compared to some of the other excellent titles in the genre such as Hollow Knight and Momodora.

All that said, I would highly recommend this game if you like darker, bittersweet stories and aesthetics, good music, and/or are just a fan of metroidvanias in general. Well worth the $25, in my opinion. If you're a hardcore mechanics-only player with no interest in the story or music aspects of the game then this will probably not be worth the purchase.

May 2021 Review:

Stuck in Early Access purgatory now. Devs are pushing for Patreon subscribers, doing side projects, looking to create an anime, etc.

I have nothing against side projects, but I get the feeling that this is either never going to be finished or is going to be finished in an underwhelming matter a long time after EA opened. I'd recommend not buying until after it's officially released.

That said, I still wish the devs the best of luck. I don't think the lack of focus is a sign of ill intent on their part. I think any issues are likely because the level of success Little Witch Nobeta had was unexpected and it led to content creep and forgetting to finish the actual game prior to branching out into a dozen other related projects.

Original Review below:

Extremely fun game. The term is a bit overused but this does absolutely follow the base Souls-like flow of action RPG gameplay. Explore, kill enemies, look for checkpoints, heal and level up, and repeat. The exploration part is actually much more forgiving than a typical Souls game though, as under most circumstances you won't lose any exp/currency for dying.

The combat, on the other hand, is unforgiving (at least at Advanced, haven't tried Standard) and takes a notable mechanical departure from its obvious inspirations. Dodges on their own aren't as strong as they are usually are in these titles, mostly because of the rapid nature of enemy attacks and the boss design. You'll have to make good use of running, jumping, and counter magic in addition to dodging if you want to avoid a trip back to the last checkpoint. Likewise, when it comes time to go on the offensive the combat pacing is designed around building up enough mana by meleeing, dodging, and natural regen to take down your enemies with spells.

If you take the time to understand the game's mechanics, understand what the spells do, and practice using everything you're given, you'll be rewarded with challenging but fun, satisfying fights. If you try to play this with the mindset of last second dodging and chipping away with a few hits at a time, you'll be rewarded by seeing the boss's intro cinematic again in short order.

Which brings me to my only major criticism of the game: it needs some quality of life touches. A faster trip back to the last checkpoint on death and the ability to automatically skip boss intro cutscenes after seeing them the first time would be much appreciated.

All that said, if you're a fan of Souls-like games, cute anime girls, and/or gameplay that rewards practice and skill, this is a fantastic choice and I would highly recommend it.

Incredible game and clearly a labor of love. The combat is easily one of the best interpretations of sword combat in a turn-based RPG system that I've ever seen. I think it deserves to go down alongside Mount & Blade, Chivalry, and Mordhau as an example of how to make a melee system entertaining by taking more (but not all) cues from the real world.

The way the combat system is designed also has the enjoyable effect of creating extremely different approaches to fighting that are less based on stats (though stats certainly do play a role and help you build toward your preferred style), and more on personal philosophy. You can play cautiously and slowly cut away at your opponent's limbs until they're too hobbled to effectively fight back, you can play the counter-attacker and bait your opponent into risky attacks in order to parry and instantly return a killing blow, or you can follow the true way of the warrior and attack wildly without concern for your own well being. No matter which you choose, you'll probably still eventually get murdered by a peasant with a rusty katana getting a lucky hit after you get overconfident.

My only criticism is that the events outside of combats feel like they're lacking in randomization of outcomes. Once you've seen an event and a dialogue branch once, it seems to stay the same and you'll know exactly which choices are safe and what they grant on future playthroughs. For $3 though, this definitely isn't a deal breaker as I've already gotten 7 hours out of this game and expect I'll get a fair amount more.

If you like anything samurai-related, enjoy combat systems with depth, or are just a fan of roguelikes, this is definitely worth the price of admission.

Another great side scrolling action-adventure game by Bombservice. If you loved the Momodora series then I would highly recommend picking Minoria up. Likewise, if you're really into story-driven metroidvanias and, for lack of a better term, Souls-like games, this will scratch your itch.

In terms of storytelling and world-building, Minoria feels like a case study in the value of execution, presentation, and tying together a general atmosphere over trying to make something filled with muscled-in unique 'twists' that don't fit into the story's motif at all. The story itself is not unique by any stretch of the imagination, as it follows some pretty standard tropes that you'll have probably seen in basically every anime/JRPG with a monolithic church organization, yet this doesn't detract from Minoria at all. I discovered that I had correctly predicted large portions of the plot early on but it didn't matter because Minoria's presentation was so solid that I was still excited to see the details of how each act of the game unfolded.

I think this is because Minoria does an excellent job of tying everything together behind the scenes in a way that bundles the entire experience into a single, cohesive atmosphere, and beyond that it takes a very show-don't-tell approach to revealing things. I know that "Souls-like" is usually used as a term to indicate that a game is very difficult, but this isn't what I'm trying to say when I call Minoria Souls-like. Minoria is Souls-like to me in the way it presents its world and its story.

You, as a player, probably interact with only the smallest fraction of the overall Minoria world, despite that this world has clearly been fleshed out and is driving all of the events of the game forward in the background. You're given sparse dialogue which comes from characters who have clearly been affected by the world in some way and shouldn't be taken as pure black-and-white arbiters of what's morally right or wrong. You're given archives and item descriptions to help piece together the truth of what's happening and, if you look hard enough at everything presented to you, the world and its actors neatly tie together beneath the surface of what's presented. At the very end, there is no morality or karma system that determines how your adventure ends, you get to make whatever you feel to be the right choice.

Overall, you're trusted to put all these things together as a player or to ignore them entirely and never figure out exactly what's going on. I really wish more game designers would put this level of faith in their players. And given Bombservice's continued track record of this and its related game design concepts, I'll probably be buying all of their games even when they inevitably branch out into Momodora Kart and it's revealed that the only way to purify the latest evil is to beat them in 3 laps on the Karst Castle track.

But story alone doesn't make a game, so to briefly touch on gameplay and difficulty: in terms of overall difficulty I'd say that Minoria is actually a step down from the game it spiritually sequels, Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight. This isn't to say that RutM was exceedingly difficult on its own, as there was some ridiculous cheese you could pull off in that game. The cheese you can pull off in Minoria feels like it makes RutM's pale in comparison though, and combined with feeling a little less polished in terms of general combat it made Minoria feel very easy even compared to RutM.

With a little bit of practice using the parry system you can become an invincible blender-nun, with the advanced combat techniques you can juggle enemies with ease and go zipping across screens in an instant to avoid pretty much every enemy on the map, and even if you're not good at either of those things you can use the incense system, parry mashing, and generous save point distribution to turn almost every challenging encounter into a brawl of attrition where you're face-tanking enemies and spamming heals while swinging back and you'll usually win. It feels like the player character is at base much more powerful and has more options than in the previous games in addition to being able to do much flashier things in general. This makes the combat system entertaining and satisfying but notably less punishing, though Minoria does have an NG+ system and items can be used to alleviate this a bit.

That said, I'm not really listing this as an outright positive or a negative, but rather just to be informative. As noted, the combat system is still fun even with the lessened challenge. The reduced difficulty also means that even if you don't feel like you're very skilled at sidescrolling action-adventure games, you should be able to clear the game without any major roadblocks. If you're a hardcore player though, you'll probably clear Minoria the first time in under a few hours without breaking much of a sweat. And if you're purely in it for the difficulty and not interested in the story at all, then you might want to hold off for a few patches and see what gets added/changed.

To summarize:
If you like the Momodora series, I highly recommend picking Minoria up.
If you like the storytelling/adventuring aspects of the Souls series and metroidvanias in general, I highly recommend picking Minoria up.
If you like flashy, skill-based combat but aren't too concerned about overall difficulty, I recommend picking Minoria up.
If you like sidescrolling action-adventure games for the challenge alone and aren't interested in any of the other things, then you should probably wait and see what patches bring.

Looking forward to seeing the first speedruns of Minoria and the announcement of Momodora Kart in 2020.