Reseñas recientes de 🍒 Lilly (🌸◠‿◠)

Like the title suggests, Alchemist: The Potion Monger is a simulation game centered around preparing alchemical potions. You gather ingredients from the environment and use them to craft potions. These potions are further used to complete quests or fulfill NPC contracts, but you can also sell them in your shop in town for extra coins. With the coins earned, you can buy new recipes, rare ingredients or various tools needed to produce more advanced potions.

The game has pretty much all the mechanics one would look for in this genre, together with a very basic combat mechanic (just a light attack) and an equally basic farming mechanic (you plant the seeds once and gather them indefinitely every day afterward). Currently, there is no relationship system with the NPCs and all the ingredients are available at any time because there is no seasonal cycle implemented (although a few of them appear only at night).

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3269674742
On the other hand, the whole layer of crafting alchemical potions is rather complex, which is expected from this kind of game. Each of the four alchemical elements (earth, water, fire, wind) consists of 16 aspects (attributes). All the ingredients, as well as potion recipes, have a specific subset of these aspects. To craft a potion, you will need to use those ingredients whose attributes match the ones required by the portion. However, this is not as easy as it sounds, as the ingredients often have to go through a chain of several alchemical transformations to change their aspects into the ones needed. This is done with the help of several tools that can either morph one aspect into another based on the tiers or elements they belong to or apply other sorts of transformations on the ingredient, such as removing the weakest / strongest aspect or entirely swapping it with the one corresponding to the opposite element.

Your main item to use will be the Philosopher’s Stone, which shows the ingredients the player could use to craft a potion, as well as the tools required for processing those ingredients. While you are not obliged to craft the recipe as indicated by the Philosopher's Stone, nor does it show all possible combinations (there would be way too many possibilities), this is a real help in simplifying the process, especially until the player learns the ropes. The Philosopher’s Stone acts only as a hint, as it provides neither the full solution nor all the steps that a certain ingredient needs to go through to reach the goal attribute. The actual puzzle and the core of the gameplay is figuring out the transformation sequence by yourself, which tools to use on which ingredients and in what order to apply them. While it takes some time to find a solution (and, in some cases, some trial and error too), they are always logical - which is one of the aspects I like most about this game.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3269674773
Several other quality-of-life features are aimed at increasing the enjoyment of the game. Portals can help you quickly navigate various areas of the world. The locations of the ingredients are saved on the map (and visible at all times) after you gather them once from that zone. There are several furniture items (aside from chests) that can hold ingredients and they add a really stylish touch to your cozy alchemist hut. There is also the feature of saving the solution of a potion to recreate it later with one click without having to go through the whole process again (as long as you have the required ingredients in the inventory). Crafting using such a saved recipe automatically uses the ingredients available in all storages of the house, removing the annoying requirement to transfer them to your inventory beforehand. A tool that can create dyes also exists, allowing you to change the colors of your house walls for example. And you can adopt several pets that will help you identify the aspects of a certain ingredient (by default you know only the element they belong to).

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3269674624
Alchemist: The Potion Monger is currently in Early Access but it’s fully playable, with around 15 hours of content (quests and achievements), although it can surely be played for much longer than that. The full version will expand the current universe with new side quests, potion types, NPCs, a house expansion and obviously new ingredients.

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Undercover - Secret Management is the second installment in the latest supernatural thriller series, Undercover, published by GameHouse. The central character of the series is Veronica - a feisty journalist whose sister mysteriously disappears one night. Instead of waiting for the police to do their slow investigation work, Vera decides to take matters into her own hands and go undercover as a barista for the club where her sister Lilly was last seen. Once successfully infiltrated there, she discovers that Lilly was transformed into a vampire and joined their ranks, leaving her human life behind. The story of Undercover - Secret Management picks up at this exact spot, and the plot is extended with some new murders committed in town, in which the vampire coven is potentially involved. While trying to escape the vampires’ web of intrigue, Vera attempts to reason with Lilly as the new manager of one of the most influential vampire nightclubs by appealing to her humanity through their sisterly bond.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3262789498
While the first game is aimed at introducing the various characters in this universe (as Vera makes new friends as well as enemies along the way) and ends rather abruptly, Secret Management’s story is more fleshed out and gives a new depth to these characters, revealing their background stories and unexpected identities - although it still ends with major cliffhangers for all plotlines. The writing in the second game makes sure that everything the player needs to know about the events of the first game is already explained during the first few levels through character interactions, thus having played the first game before diving into Secret Management is not a must. On the other hand, playing Blood Bonds alone without its current sequel feels more like watching just the first episode of a lengthy series and will only leave you hanging and wanting for “more”. I played both games back-to-back, and I’m really glad to have done so for the narrative continuity.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3262789483
Regarding the gameplay, this is the typical GameHouse game in its simplified version (no location or item upgrades). Vera works as a barista in various clubs where her investigation leads her. There she fulfills customer orders, bills them and cleans the tables they used. Because of having fewer items to handle in one location, Blood Bonds gave me the impression that it was meant to be one of the easier GameHouse games. On the contrary, the second installment of the series goes back to the standard difficulty or even slightly higher than that considering that in some locations multiple dishes have to be cooked under a timer are usually situated in opposite corners of the room and one customer often orders several of them in one go. The pathing here is thus much more important than in the first game, or rather than in pretty much any other GameHouse game. On the other hand, in both Undercover games, there are fewer levels than usual (60 compared to 90 which is the standard for Delicious games) because there are no intermediate / secondary levels. The requirements to grind extra levels for the last few achievements post-game have also been removed and now all achievements can be unlocked in one go, without having to replay any level (as long as you complete all their respective tasks).

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3262789533
Undercover - Secret Management takes between eight to ten hours to complete, and it’s a very enjoyable ride due to its compelling story and addictive gameplay. Like all other GameHouse games, there are three difficulty options, unique minigames for each location, and a special scene where you can spend the diamonds earned from completing levels to decorate Vera’s desk.

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Pine Hearts is a short and cozy exploration game with a small emotional story to guide you along the way.

From an isometric perspective, you control a cute and colorful nugget character as he wanders the tranquil world of Pine Hearts Caravan Park, meets various NPCs and helps them with their tasks. The map is rather vast and the game is heavily focused on exploring it, as there are no quest markers (neither to distinguish the NPCs that can give you a quest from the rest of the NPCs, nor for the items you are required to fetch), nor a detailed map of all paths possible. Available is only a top-level map of the game world that displays the regions, but not the connections between them or any other details such as paths or points of interest.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3260336888
However, the game is split into distinctive regions, and accessing them requires obtaining a specific ability, which is unlocked by gathering enough “droplets”. These can be obtained not only by completing quests but also by interacting with various objects in the game world or simply collecting them from your path, as you explore the maze-like environment. Without a map, navigating the world is not exactly trivial (especially for those without a clear sense of direction like me), as you have to project the zones visited in your mind and obviously remember their location, together with which NPC gives you which quest. Unfortunately, only the quests belonging to the main storyline are shown and not the side quests (which are encountered in much higher numbers than the former).

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3260337065
While I could think of several QoL features that I would like to see in the game, I’m deeply appreciative of how much effort was put into accessibility options. There are several color palettes to choose from, and the interactable objects (including the NPCs) are brightly colored to distinguish them from the muted colors of the environment. To be honest, this was extremely helpful to me during the end game (even if I don’t have any disabilities) for gathering those last difficult-to-find droplets required for the hardest achievement of the game: gathering all 1500 of them. While roughly 1300 are obtained through quests and from wandering around, the last ~200 come from object interactions or other areas reachable only after unlocking all abilities. The map is also designed so that even the early zones contain areas accessible only with fully unlocked abilities, thus a full traversal through the entire map will be required for this achievement. I would have really liked to see from which of these zones I can still collect droplets, as opposed to wandering around aimlessly until I find something to interact with, but unfortunately, this information is not available to the player. The rest of the achievements are naturally unlocked as you play and complete quests. None of them are missable, as you can always return to the previous zones to obtain them and they’re color-coded based on the region they belong to, which is quite helpful.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3260337016
Pine Hearts’ story is not the one that drives the gameplay forward, as it consists only of five miniature memories of the character and his father. However, they’re quite emotional and are bound to touch your heart, even if they’re short-lived. These memories, together with all the cute interactions that you can do with the objects in the environment and the colorful, positive visuals give the game a heartfelt, wholesome vibe. Pine Hearts is certainly a chill and enjoyable ride that will take you between five and seven hours to complete, depending on how much you like to dawdle, yet pretty expensive for the content that it offers.

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Purpose 1951 is a short and linear walking simulator narrated by a medical practitioner who reminisces about the hardships of being a surgeon during the post-World War II period.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3243101544
Set in the United States in the 1950s, when medical equipment was scarce and the possibilities of performing thorough medical check-ups were very limited, the surgeon faces a life crisis after a failed surgery on a patient with strong political ties. When a certain chain of events beyond his control leads to the death of his patient, he is wrongfully accused and condemned to resign from his job, resulting in his beloved wife leaving him. While the narrative has a strong dark realism aspect as the doctor reflects on how his entire life fell apart, the overall direction is a positive one, with him finding the strength to move on in the end despite his misfortune.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3243100935
When it comes to creating beautiful environments for his walking simulators, Tonguç Bodur never disappoints. Purpose 1951 even managed to exceed my expectations, quickly becoming my favorite game from this developer in regards to the scenery traversed. The colorful autumnal forest and the dance of violet, blue and pink colors of the sunset sky completely mesmerized me throughout the entire game and strongly reminded me of the gorgeous sights from The Vanishing of Ethan Carter. Each frame is a work of art of outstanding beauty, a stunning painting in itself.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3243101275
Sadly, this experience only lasted for an hour and at the end of it, I was left wanting more. Purpose 1951 is perfect to play during a relaxing, contemplative night and the few achievements that the game offers are very easy to obtain. They are awarded for finding eight collectibles, commonly placed outside the main road (yet still close to it) inviting the player to explore this beautiful environment beyond the leading pathway.

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Sanya is a nostalgic slice-of-life story set in post-Soviet '90s Russia. It’s a short and warm point & click adventure about Sanya - a young boy who moves into a new apartment together with his family. We’re shown the day after Sanya arrives at his new home when he discovers a friendly dog that he adopts as his pet, makes friends with the kids around the block and embarks on small childhood adventures with them.

The game succeeds at conveying these childhood memories as the best time of Sanya’s life: when innocence and curiosity intertwine, when ghost stories become real adventures that you have to brave as a rite of passage, or when a simple bike trip turns into a race. A rather subtle education aspect is also present, as Sanya learns to lock the door behind him after leaving the apartment, or choosing between unpacking his toys, as his mother asked him to, or completely ignoring her request. Other times, the game will tug at your heart strings, as we see Sanya being left alone while his parents go to work, with his father being deeply absorbed into his job, thus being able to come home rather rarely.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3219231017
Just like in classic point & click games, interacting with the items in the game world will either produce a flavor text or allow Sanya to pick up an object needed for a future puzzle. Additionally, a few interactions trigger some simple, yet fun minigames. There is one exception in which the minigame is extremely frustrating, namely a platformer sequence with the most horrendous controls ever encountered in the history of gaming. Not only are they unresponsive, but it’s also very difficult to control the character and stop its movement at the right moment to avoid various traps. One of the achievements will require you to explore all areas of this minigame and collect the star found at the end of each zone, which could take over an hour of repeatedly dying, despite the minigame being only a few screens long, just because the controls don’t respond to your input. This struggle-inducing sequence doesn’t fit in any way, in an otherwise a very casual and relaxing game and since there is no skip option, the only thing you can do is to endure it until you manage to traverse it. The frustration I had after beating it fully was almost enough to turn this review into a negative one. What saved it from that was the overall bright and cheerful atmosphere of the game, outside this particular bit.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3219230902
The rest of the achievements are a mix of story-related ones and missable ones, the latter being awarded for performing some specific actions. There are also two pairs of mutually exclusive achievements, thus obtaining 100% completion will require you to start (not necessarily complete) a second playthrough. There is no chapter selection and no manual save feature. The game does save from time to time, yet this is not indicated in any way.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3219230756
Sanya is a nice game (with the exception of the dreadful platformer minigame), but an extremely short one for the asking price of $14.99. It’s true that its art style is sweet and its simple story is calming and might even bring you a smile or two, but considering that one playthrough takes around 1.5 hours at a relaxed pace and that there is close to zero replayability (aside from obtaining those mutually exclusive achievements), I would advise waiting for a deep sale before diving in.

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Clean The Sea is a short and very casual sandbox game in which you navigate a ship to collect floating macro-waste and debris, then dump the cargo at a nearby drop point where you can exchange it for money. With the money earned, you can expand the area that needs to be cleaned and eventually move to a new location, upgrade your ship by increasing its speed or the garbage capacity that you can scoop in one go, or hire workers that will automatically help you pick up individual trash items.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3181112819
It’s a relaxing game with very simple mechanics, albeit a tad repetitive. It has infinite replayability, as new waste items keep being generated in the already cleaned areas. This happens at a very slow rate though, slowly enough to not make it seem like your cleaning efforts are futile, but fast enough to allow picking all of them up in one trip around the zone.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3181112947
As you collect the garbage from the surface of the water, the pollution slowly starts to disperse and the aquatic life gradually comes back to inhabit the clean area: you can see fish swimming, turtles and penguins playing in the water. As soon as most of the areas from the current location are clean, you’ll be able to travel to a new one. In its current form, the game offers four different locations of around 8 zones each, with more locations planned to be added in the future.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3181112909
While it’s by all means not a deep game and can’t be compared in quality with similarly-themed games like Loddlenaut, it can prove to be a cute distraction for one hour or so. It also has the advantage of raising environmental awareness in a way that appeals to both younger and older audiences. It offers 18 easy achievements which are unlocked naturally as you play through the game and clean the areas one by one (currently, it takes roughly 30-35 minutes to obtain all of them).

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Nova Hearts is a visual novel that manages to seamlessly integrate a turn-based battle mechanic into the genre. The game is planned to be released later this summer and will have three or more chapters, totaling around 12h of gameplay. The first of these chapters is released as a standalone free-to-play app: Nova Hearts: The Spark.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3167387764
The game impresses through its outstanding art direction. The CGs are exquisitely drawn and unlike most other visual novels where only the facial expressions change according to the current dialog line, here the character models are fully animated. This provides fluidity to the story and allows the player to fully immerse themselves in it.

The story itself is also a bit of a treat. You are Luce, a young girl who comes back home to live with her mother, ten years after her parents divorced. While she focuses on rekindling old friendships with two former schoolmates, strange occurrences start to happen in town, which makes the trio undergo a sudden and surprising Sailor Moon-like transformation, becoming superheroes to fight off evil.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3167388209
The story unfolds through lengthy dialogues and chats on the phone. There is a good amount of choices, but most of the time these deliver only a few extra lines of dialogue. However, they will positively or negatively affect your relationship with the other characters, which in turn can lead to potentially having some additional scenes at the end of the chapter. The way your choices influence a character is visually indicated on the screen through a very pleasant rain-effect of symbols: heart for the romance route, crown for relationship increase, dagger for relationship decrease. There are several characters to romance and the game is gender-fluid, allowing you same-sex relationships. There are no explicit erotic scenes (and according to the developers, there won’t be any in the full game either), but there are kissing scenes even in the first chapter.

The turn-based battles occur while the trio is in their superhero form. The enemies and heroes alternate turns, each of them being able to cast only one ability per turn. While enqueuing their abilities, you also have the possibility to delay them so that they get cast at the same time as one of your teammates, creating combos for added damage. The XP points gained in battles can then be used to upgrade your character's abilities or to unlock new ones.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3167387627
The game was developed using the Unity engine. Unfortunately, this comes with a couple of flaws. In its current form, you can neither skip nor have a history of previously read lines. You can’t go back and pick a different choice to see how it develops, and while a manual save is possible, this is available only at specific points during the game (otherwise, there is an autosave feature, but it’s not clearly indicated when the game decides to autosave).

Overall, Nova Hearts: The Spark is a very promising title. The first chapter alone got me all excited to see it fully released and experience the full story. If Nova Hearts sparked your interest, give the first chapter a try!

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If Stardew Valley and Pokemon had a baby, that would be Moonstone Island - although a lot of people prefer to compare it to Slay the Spire rather than Pokemon. The game is an adorable pixel-art farming sim / life sim, in which you adventure in the wild to engage in pet battles and collect spirits instead of fighting off enemies.

As a life sim, Moonstone Island has all the mechanics that you would expect from the genre. You plant seeds, tend to them and harvest them for consumables to be used in pet battles or sell them to the general shop in town. You can also mine and chop trees, whose resulting resources allow you to craft building stations and furniture items or upgrade your items and home. The little town has plenty of interesting characters that you can build your friendships with, or even romantically pursue. The universe of Moonstone Island offers 100 uniquely-generated floating mini-islands for you to explore at your own pace and a nice cozy story, closely guided through quests, with a good mix of easily reachable objectives and long-term goals.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3162740026
As a creature collector, Moonstone Island provides a really entertaining experience through its card-based pet battles, where the decks of your active pets are put together. This allows you to combine these cards for fun combos, as long as the cards drawn are suitable for that. The designs of the 70 spirits that you can tame are full of creativity, one more adorable than the other. Also very cute is that your pet team follows you around like little ducklings when you move on the map, although sometimes they tend to get in your way, especially when farming; however, there’s an option to make them stop following you. The pets that you don’t bring into battle can be stored either in a barn or in a research center, the difference between these two being that the latter does not require any maintenance on your part. The pets stored in your barn need to be fed constantly and in return, they drop items required for quest completion, for crafting or which can be sold for some extra income.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3162739898
Each of these two aspects of the gameplay has its own strengths and weaknesses. For instance, the crafting part is very straightforward, requiring only a couple of steps even for more complex items. The tools don’t have that annoying durability mechanic that requires you to always craft a new one every few days. The plants require daily watering (aside from rainy days), but the watering can doesn’t ever need to be filled and besides, you can just craft sprinklers to water your plants automatically. There are plenty of basic resources to gather (although trees and grass don’t automatically respawn) and the mines that you can open on each island are rich in minerals, chests that drop blueprints, and spirits to tame. On the other hand, a lot of the items required for progression (such as the barn or essential flying items) are gated behind the acquisition of Moonstones. Up until close to the endgame where you get a blueprint to mass-produce them, likely for transitioning into a sandbox kind of gameplay, these are extremely rare: each island contains only one per season, and very few bosses or chests drop any. Due to their scarcity, the progression is extremely slow, and exploring as many islands as possible quickly becomes your main goal. This in turn requires you to be able to fly greater distances (to reach further islands) and to be equipped to fight any enemies that you might find there.

In regards to the deckbuilding aspect, you get to expand your deck by one random card (chosen out of three possible ones that the game offers) every time you level your pet. Upgrading or removing a card is possible, however you will need special tokens for that, which are also quite rare (you can find one every few islands). Thus, while the battles are really fun, the deckbuilding mechanic is rather restrictive, as you don’t have full flexibility in customizing your deck. Moonstone Island also offers 30 rather lengthy, yet very exciting dungeons, where you get to solve little puzzles, uncover chests and fight higher-level spirits.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3162739334
Like pretty much any other game belonging to the genre, Moonstone Island is quite addictive. There’s always something to do or explore, and your stamina bar allows you to perform enough activities to keep you hooked throughout the entire in-game day. The game keeps things really fresh by throwing this mix of mechanics at you, which offers endless possibilities. However, keep in mind that the farming aspect is not the main focus of Moonstone Island. Instead, it’s used only as a support system for the pet battles, which is the actual essence of the gameplay.

Note: I played this game on a different account, hence the low playtime here.

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Noxia Somnia is a pixel-art horror game that tells an emotional story through a peculiar combination of several game mechanics. At its core, it’s a side-scrolling adventure in 2D, in which you sometimes fight enemies and bosses, other times you try your best to run away from invincible ones while being chased, and yet other times you solve puzzles or ponder about the deeper life aspects that the dialog cutscenes bring up.

It’s a game about facing your deepest fears and controlling your negativity and sorrow with hope and luminous thoughts of self-forgiveness. While it does touch on sensitive topics such as depression, bullying, and self-harm, the overall direction of the game is a light-hearted one, aimed at giving you constructive advice on how to overcome these emotional struggles.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3158363608
Gameplay-wise, you will control Tristan and guide him through his nightmares to fight off “harvesters” - these are monsters who feed on people's fears, pain and despair, hunting them with the goal of harvesting their souls. A central hub where you can shop for consumables, items, or cosmetics and upgrade your talent tree with the currency you earn from defeating monsters can be visited between the three acts that the game consists of or when the level offers you a portal to the hub. The levels are fairly lengthy, having several doors that lead to other rooms, some of them exiting in the same screen, others leading you to a different segment with a new set of doors. Without a map available, the navigation was pretty difficult for me, especially since the enemies reset every time you come back to the same room. I got lost multiple times, and each time I had to defeat all the monsters again, which on the positive side gave me enough currency to fully upgrade my talent tree. Each level has one invincible enemy that starts chasing you when it detects you and one of the main gameplay mechanics is to manage your detection meter by hiding in other rooms to avoid getting caught.

The game can currently be played on two difficulties: a “story mode”, in which the enemies are more forgiving, and a “nightmare mode” of considerably increased difficulty and extra bosses. There’s no median option between “easy” and “hard”. Additionally, one extra difficulty mode (“Ultra nightmare”) is planned to be released soon. The game has Steam-integrated achievements, but to obtain 100% completion you will not only need to gather all collectible items, weapons and cosmetics and defeat all the bosses, but these have to be done in nightmare mode. Additionally, there’s a speedrun achievement and a no-death run that have to also be done in nightmare mode. Even if the game is rather short (the ending can be reached in ~5 hours), achievement hunters will have to spend a considerable amount of extra effort to obtain that sweet 100%.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3158363466
For me, Noxia Somnia is a mixed bag. I really liked the story and how relatable Tristan (the protagonist) is. Among the many slice-of-life episodes that we get to see from his past, each of us can relate to at least one of them: being called a failure / nobody (or feeling as such), regrets for things that remain unsaid before a loved one passed away, finding out that your friends are not honest towards you, etc. We see Tristan rise above all these situations, finding strength in himself to accept his flaws and work towards bettering his negative thinking, or simply forgiving himself for his failures. The resolution of each of these scenes is uplifting and brings a most-wanted peace of mind.

On the other hand, I am not the biggest fan of the struggle that the game gives you. It’s likely symbolic for everyone’s lives, yet for me, the added frustration of the difficulty mode decreased my overall enjoyment, and not even the outstanding retro pixel art was able to make up for it. The enemies hit hard, the navigation is cumbersome (although it does leave space for a lot of exploration), and your consumables (like the medikit) are limited. However, one thing that I liked about the boss fights was that the cooldown of the next boss's ability is indicated on top of its health bar so that the player can plan ahead and prepare to dodge it. Despite that, the boss battles are rather long and difficult (on “nightmare” mode). There is also no manual save feature, and the checkpoints are rather scarce, which means that the built-in autosave often makes the player replay a lengthy segment.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3158363540
A lot of love has been put into creating this little indie game and this is rather obvious while experiencing the game. However, Noxia Somnia is not a game that could easily satisfy a wide range of players. It’s meant more for those who like challenging story-rich / emotional games and don’t get easily frustrated by repeatedly dying.

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Much like its predecessor Crystar, Crymachina is a story-driven action RPG with great visuals and flavorful anime characters, and overall a game with lots of emotion and personality. Some say that Crymachina is a much-improved version of Crystar, but as someone who played through both games one after another, I beg to differ. Each of them has its own strengths and weaknesses, and picking a favorite among those two is rather difficult.

The two games have unrelated stories and can be played individually from each other. While Crystar’s story is a personal one (the protagonist journeys through purgatory to find her younger sister's soul and bring her back to life), Crymachina’s narrative takes place on a grander scale in a futuristic setting, even if it's not quite a space opera. Crymachina’s core message is also deeply impactful: humanity is not given by being born as a human, but by having a heart, a soul that loves and protects the ones that it cares for.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3149539941
Two thousand years ago, an unknown disease with a 100% fatality rate and a mysterious cause wiped out more than 20% of the population. Because of resource scarcity, the rest of the population engaged in a war and eventually went extinct. In their last moments, the remaining surviving humans created a gigantic space structure (called "Eden") in hopes of preserving their species. Eden was equipped with eight Dei ex Machina (machine gods): self-evolving, artificial life forms whose only purpose was mankind's resurrection. The game’s storyline starts with the sudden disappearance of the first Deus ex Machina, which leads to a war for control among the other Dei ex Machinas, causing havoc on Eden. To overpower the machines, command them back into order and install peace, a "Real Human" is needed, as to machines humans are gods. For this purpose, the eighth Deus ex Machina (Enoa) revives a young human girl (Leben) by encasing her soul into a synthetic frame, essentially transforming her into a battle machine. The team led by Enoa and otherwise consisting of Leben and two other girls, (Ami and Mikoto) will try to make their way through various virtual areas of the space structure, fixing the corrupted machine code and overwriting it with Enoa’s, while also trying to gather enough ExP for Leben (the “chosen one”) to become a "Real Human".

Both games use the same formula of alternating between individual missions and story bits. However, Crymachina’s story is much more ample than Crystar’s, covering most of the gameplay. The missions, which in Crystar took 30-45 minutes each, were spawned over several floors with lots of side paths and had dozens of enemies to fight, are now squeezed into very short and linear runs that usually take less than 10 minutes and end in a boss fight. Barely any enemy is encountered and every mission is basically a straight and quick path to the boss, with some of them having an optional micro puzzle that unlocks a high-level miniboss.

This 180° turn in the design might have been a response to the complaints about Crystar that the gameplay is too repetitive or boring. Personally, I find this decision to strongly downgrade the fun of the game. While the environments are extremely spacious and beautifully crafted, they’re not meant to be explored. You’re not even expected to spend much time traversing them, because there’s almost no one to fight (Crystar has at least ten times more enemies). The boss fights are rather lengthy, thus most of the “action” part of the game will be spent in the boss room. I love the visual novel aspect of the game and that roughly 75% of the time goes into reading through the story, but during the action parts of the game, my fingers were itching for some quick hack-and-slash action and unfortunately, Crymachina failed to fully satisfy this itch. It’s considered a hack-and-slash game, although… there is not nearly enough hacking and slashing.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3149539195
In each of the missions, you will play as one of the three girls, with you being able to freely pick which one of them to bring into battle only during side missions or in the additional content that you can unlock after the main story ends. Unlike in Crystar, where all four playable characters were always available and you were also allowed to switch between them mid-run or even mid-fight, here the main missions are usually locked to a specific character. This means that you will have to equally level up and gear up all three girls to be able to overcome all levels / boss fights, which will require a bit of grinding.

In between missions, the girls gather for a tea party in a virtual garden, where they will chit-chat about their progress or plan their further actions. Most of these cutscenes / dialog sequences are mandatory for story progression, but there are some optional ones with some extra dialogues that add flavor to the game and help build up the characters, all of them being fully voiced. The virtual garden also acts like a main hub for the game, allowing you to transform the items collected from missions into pieces of gear (using the same “cry” mechanic from Crystar), organize your equipment, upgrade combat abilities, consult the encyclopedia of enemies and story concepts, etc.

The combat in Crymachina retains its simplicity from Crystar, which for me is one of the most enjoyable aspects of both games. Your basic melee attack and your ranged attack will fill the damage gauge of the enemies. When it’s filled, you can perform a heavy attack that downs them, followed by a finishing attack on already downed enemies. Rinse and repeat this sequence until the enemy is killed - that’s pretty much all there is to it. You can also dodge attacks by dashing away or sometimes counter them by parrying and additionally make use of three extra abilities (a heal and two damage-increase skills) that can be upgraded with the currency gathered from your runs. The difficulty of the enemies depends heavily on your level: being 2-3 levels lower makes them pretty difficult to kill (requiring lots of attacks) while being 2-3 levels higher can kill regular enemies even with one hit. The bosses hit very hard, and often you can even die after a couple of their hits even if your level matches theirs, and even on the easiest difficulty mode. It’s a game in which you have to constantly dodge the attacks, but fortunately, there’s a pretty clear visual cue that shows you when you're expected to do that. The required reaction times are also very decent, the enemies allow you enough time to dodge their attacks as long as you're not stunned.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3149540022

Crymachina is more of a Yuri visual novel rather than an action RPG. It’s a decent and enjoyable game, but it won’t scratch that itch of mashing buttons and seeing enemies drop dead. The visuals and the music are top-notch, the story is immersive enough (as long as you enjoy lengthy reads), and the combat is fast, fluid and to some extent effortless. Given that it’s a ~20-hour game, with around five extra hours of grinding for 100% achievement completion, I’d say that the asking price of $60 is rather steep. It’s certainly a game worth playing or wishlisting if you’re into some casual, laid-back hack-and-slash action, but it’s advisable to wait for a sale.

You are invited to read my review of Crystar if you want to find out more about it.

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