Recent reviews by Lunaria

Friend had an extra copy of this, and it seemed like my cup of tea.

Turns out, no, it's not. To wear my bias on my sleeves: I love Zelda Breath of the Wild. I didn't expect this game to be at that level, obviously. But I had still heard some good things.

But no, the combat feels really bad for an action RPG sort of thing. And the game is excessively handholdy and forcing you on a grand tour where the narrator will just not shut up. Unfortunately for you the narrative itself is very simply, at least at the start, while the basic plot points and lore are repeated ad nauseam. The tutorial is also not very well contstructed with constant bombardment of pop up tooltips and new mechanics at a pace where it just becomes mush.

Ideally this game gets better after the first few hours, but it's frankly so unbearable to me that I can't muster any more motivation to push forwards. The final nail in the coffin for me was that when I finally reached the first open area and I decided to explore it rather than follow way points blindly I was treated to basically an empty world that refuted my access and engagement at every turn.

Oh, and, you can absolutely tell this game was not made by furries, the character creator is like, absolutely vapid and baffelingly constructed when it comes to making the visuals of your character. But hey, if you want to play a game where you can use the big heads cheat from golden eye 64, just put all your stats into intelligence!

Very fun and cute collect-a-thon. I 100% it and that ran me a little over six hours, but if you're into this genre then it's worth the time. I got the game on a sale, but really, consider it more how much you want to support developer, I guess.

The game is incredibly adorable.

I've had an account for this game since it's inception 15 or some such years ago. I played it a bunch us a young teen, and frankly it was quite a neat game. It wouldn't surprise me if the game has some issues these days, pretty hard to run an online game without them. But no, my concerns is more with absolutely awful customer services this company has.

I booted up this game again now in early December after not having played it for over a year, and when I'm logged in I'm faced with a notice that my account has been banned. Why? No proper reason is spellt out. Mind, the last time I played this game for a few hours was a year ago, so I was sufficiently baffled.

Now, obviously, I figured in my right mind that either one of two things had happened:
1. My account had been compromised and someone else had used it, or:
2. The mods made a mistake.
I figured I'd get in touch with staff to get ♥♥♥♥ sorted, should be a piece of cake, right? Nooooooooooo.

So the first major issue is that if your account is banned, that means you also can't login on their forums, which is also the only listed avenue to get in touch with someone to have this resolved. They genuinely want you to reg an alt to do this, something which in general is heavilly frowned upon. Secondly, after registering an alt account you have to then have played on the account for a certain amount of time, *and* it needs to be a couple of days old. I assume these meassures exists to prevent spam bots on the forums, but the fact that this is the intended avenue to inquire about a moderational action is ass.

Once I actually managed to get in touch with a mod, they were initially unwilling to help me, since I'd messaged an English speaking mod, and apparantly a Polish mod had banned my account, so I needed to get in touch with someone on that mod team??? I insisted and eventually they looked into it, though, of course, they refused to actually providde me any details. Instead they redirected me to their contact form and insisted I'd fill in that to have my account recovered.

Which I did, only to get an automated message in return telling me to basically ♥♥♥♥ off; insisting that they can't verify that it's my account. The fact that I can login to it and get the message that I've been banned clearly not being relevant in the slightest.

As of the time of this writing I've gotten neither:
A. A proper reason for why my account is banned.
B. Given any indication if there is a way to get it unbanned.
C. Any proper closure or actual attempt to resolve this.


Abyssmal.

I've got rather complicated opinions of this game, but the gist of it is this: Do you like roguelite deck builders? Do you like point-and-click adventure games? If either of those two (or both) is true then this is a game worth getting.

It's a game that wants you to beat it. Reaching the credits will likely take somewhere between eight and twenty hours, and the journey there is one littered with milestones. These milestones take two forms: Knowledge, and meta progression. Both of these things will help you in reaching the credits, and it's truly an enjoyable experience.

There's also plenty to do after the credits, both things that you missed before the credits, but also new challenges that basically only unlock after the credits. It's in the post game challenges/objectives in which I've got more complicated opinions. Some of them feels completely asinine, as if they are constructed to not be able to piece them together solo. And for me, personally, this type of game just isn't enjoyable if I need to go and look up a solution online in a guide.

It's not very long, but it oozes of charm, very cute! The puzzles are nice and not overtly complicated. Would recommend, it's pretty hard to beat the price of free. Because this one is absolutely worth the time.

Friend gave me their key for this one. If I could rate this an "eh?" rather than Yes or No then I would have.

To be honest I don't think the game is all that amazing. Was it a fun romp? Yeah. Took 14 and a half hours to beat on the first go which matches what the steam page says. Like, it's all good fun, everything in the game is competent. But as another reviewer put it: After a while everything becomes too same-y.

Normally the roguelite genre prides itself on having that one gameplay loop that is just so addicting that you keep coming back. Yet I don't really feel like Void Bastards has that. Hard to pin point exactly what is the issue though. Maybe there is simply not enough variation? Or maybe it's the lack of a meaningful "run" so to speak. Each ship dive is a run, but then there is a larger meta-progress.

The extra modifiers that unlock when you beat the game all seem neat and interesting for those who want to spice things up, so if the game appeals to you there is quite the meaty package here. For me though? I'll probably only spend a few more hours on this and then maybe come back to it once in a blue moon.

Thanks game for railroading me into a killing an innocent guy and then autosaving over my save file so I have to either play the rest of the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game and maybe realize six hours later that I missed out on something, or instead replay the first three hours. Really cool, much appreciated.

I think I'll just not ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ play at all.


Edit:

So, after talking to a friend of mine that had played the game. It came across to them that you couldn't even save the NPC in the first place. After taking a step back, I decided in my stubbornness to start a new save file and see. If it it's a forced thing where you can't save the dude? Maybe then it's less bad and I had an overreaction.

But no, after running around and doing everything else I could possibly to do in the game first-- and then taking a meticulous trip around the dungeon to map it out --I tried to see if you could save him.

The answer is yes, there's even an achivement. As such I stand by my initial reasoning that I think this entire segment sucks ass.


Anyway, I beat the rest of the game. It has some improvements over the first game in places, but there's a shocking amount of steps backwards in both game feel and mechanics. As long as you like a more refined version of what could be an NES game, then the first Alwa game is vastly better, even if shorter.

The story in this one was wholey unsatisfying too, despite seemingly doing a lot more setup in an attempt to do something interesting. Furthermore I ran into several bugs and oversights; enemy attack animations and when they can start them being one of the biggest sources.

One of the best and most unique RPGs of all time. If you like RPGs then this is honestly something you have to give a try. Even if you don't end up liking it the experience of it all is worth seeing.

Some chapters are less good than others, but which ones are good and which ones are bad will depend a lot on your own sensibilities. I really dislike the prehistoric chapter, but I've talked to people that love that one, for example.

Also, just straight up one of the best OSTs in gaming.

If steam had a mixed option rather than Yes/No I would have picked that. My final playtime on my first blind play-through was nine hours and two minutes (09:02), for those who are curious.

Crop and Claw is very much a game inspired by old NES RPGs, and that brings with it both good and bad. If you haven't played any game like those previously then be careful with this game, since you're likely in for a rude awakening.

One versus one combat is also an interesting choice in that very few games does that, and for good reason. There is basically no turn economy considerations at all since you don't have more than one character. The best option then will always be what kills the enemy the fastest without you yourself dying.

To be honest though, my biggest complaints with this game are the following:
1. Not enough music. The songs that are there are good, but another dungeon theme as well as maybe another track for town music would have done a lot for the experience. (LAPIS also uses the title screen song, which I find rather grating to listen to at length.
2. Lack of in-game QoL. Games like these usual came with manuals that had all the info so you could reference it. And the INFO command in-game usually give you the gist on items. But I feel like lack of QoL features don't really add much to the retro feel but makes the game clunkier to play. Here's a non extensive list of things I would have wanted to see personally:

• TP cost indication for spells in battle.
  
• Icon for item types before or after item names in shops and inventory. (One each for: Weapon / Armour / Accessory / Orb / Consumable / Spell learning item / Key Item)
  
• The ability to glance at least on your own stat ups / downs in battle.
  
• Some indication if damage inflicted deals extra or less due to exploiting a weakness / hitting a resistance. (Final Fantasy 3 (NES) does this by changing the damage text colour).
  
• The bestiary being a free action. You're already wasting inventory space if you're carrying the thing around, an entire turn with this kind of turn economy is a pretty big ask.
  
• Some NPC or something that can tell you how much EXP you need for the next level. Given that the ORBs (especially the poison one) encourages min maxing, this would be rather useful.

3. The story I feel is too absent. It takes a little bit too long before any sort of plot happens. There really does not need to be anything big, but say DQ1 and similar at least put an eventual end goal on the map right from the start. For most of the game it's really hard to not feel like the protagonist/you are just drifting from town to town and just happen to help out.


Unrelated, but I had the game crash a lot for me. But I couldn't say for sure if it's the game or if it was screen sharing it on discord that caused these issues. Regardless I figured I should mention it. The game's very robust autosave feature made sure I didn't really lose any progress to it at the very least.

I'm looking forward to future cute dragon themed RPGs by these developers, this one was a treat and a more complex sequel would be a blast.

A funny and quirky ""metroidvania"" that is on the shorter side. The cutscenes and aesthetics, as well as the level design, is refined versions of things that aren't made anymore; all which makes this a *very* unique experience.

My only immediate complaint is the price point which is a bit high for how relatively short the game is. But hey, you can judge the value of your money; and there are always sales.