Recent reviews by neizod

Lore-wise, despite the setting is in different era, the game just offer Harry Potter Experience™. Nothing more. Nothing less. Everything you're familiar with the books or films appear here.

Basically, you ARE Harry Potter, under different identity (name/appearance/house of your choice). You ARE the chosen one w/ the special power. Start the predetermined journey on the first semester at Hogwarts. Disobeyed school's rules and uncover secrets. Have epic fights w/ bad guys and save the day. Then sum it up by the headmaster of the school at end of year ceremony (with a house win).

It's not a bad format... but after like two decades of this story-telling, I already have enough.

Instead of the same final epic story, where every player walk the same path to the same conclusion (well, not the same, you are presented with a choice to finally be a bad guy or a good guy in the finale quest 🤷‍♀️). Why not let player craft their own unique story? Not unique like just selecting a unique wand. But the whole experience. Which class to spent a lot of time to master (let the player build a character whose never cast spell, but rely on plant alone, for example). Which quest to take in order or just simply skip it entirely to find another way around I'm mostly disturbed by Sebastian's questline and wish they are not mandatory; or the Polyjuice Plot that should be skipable since you can fly and land on balcony of the headmaster's office. ETC.

Why not just let the player be a normal Hogwarts student, experiencing the school in the way they like, have a personal experience with their time in the school.

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Gameplay-wise, admittedly it is a fun experience for like the first 10 hours, but after that it just chores of unended unfun prolonged quests.

Quests are super linear. Walk from this too that in almost straight path. Do some actions. Watch cut-scenes. Rinse and repeat. Puzzles along the way are mindlessly simple. Optional pickups are tiresome to pick since they're hidden behind narrow walls that force you to go slow (very cheap trick I'd say).

Also, the game is NOT an open-world like it advertised. Wanna explore on your own? Here's a level 3 door lock that you won't learn how to unlock until doing some chores that take 3 hours IRL. Wanna go "Pokémon" all those magical beast? This one won't spawn until a very late main quest, despite you've found its nest. (if you want the true open-world experience, just go play Zelda BOTW!)

Most important of all. There's no consistency with the lore! Hogwarts forbid students to wander around in the castle at night. But you can just go anywhere anytime without the fear of being spotted. Wizarding World condemn those who dare to cast Unforgivable Curses. However you can Abracadabra everywhere without any penalty.

Sigh...

It's not really a bad game, at least that's something you can expect from AAA studios. But it is, at most, on par w/ the previously existing books/films/games in the franchise.

Holding hand, I'd say that. Like watching a movie with interaction. While it's might be fun for some people, this is just not work for me.

A bit repetitive, quite slow, and punishing. But I find that's kinda ok somehow...

The most frustrating part is the challenge (train crash, don't stop, wrong station, etc) where one unaware mistake (focus on a specific part of the map and overlook other places) cost half an hour of replaying the level. Wish there could be some kind of undo or rewind a few seconds before a disaster.

Still a decent micro-management game overall.

Sadly I have to say no to this "game".

The hyperbolic geometry is fascinating. But that's about all.

Because quests in game are not fun.

In the restaurant area where player have to serve quickly. The game practically assist nothing to help this task. Yes it show a target icon to the next table. But if the player facing other direction, there's no way to tell where's the next target (an arrow at the edge of screen pointing toward the direction of the next target would be nice). Actually, there is no serving order, so the player may plan the shortest route to serve all orders (instead of moving around inefficiently pointing to the next target shown by the game). But the game really have no concept of this planning: stop the time before the quest start, look at a map and pan around, show multiple target with distances.

In the farm area where player have to shoot beavers. It's so tedious to hit a beaver. It is ok that standing somewhat close to the beaver and shoot make them scare and hide. But I moved backward some distance to the point that the beaver is large over the horizon. Why shooting them at this stage still make them go hiding???

In the snow area where player have to do a snowball fight against NPCs. Not only the mechanic is clunky and tedious. The more important part is it is unfair, 3 vs 1. Each one (including the player) has 5 HP. JUST WHY??? This unfairness can be compensated with the player having 5 HP while others have 2 or 3 HP instead. That's not to the point of fair, but definitely more fair and more achievable.

And, guess what, all of these quests are mandatory to progress the story!

I really appreciate the mindblowing implementation of this weirdly unintuitive geometry. But honestly, speaking of it as a game, at least get a team with a game designer and play testers. They can help weeding out those unfun aspects off the game. Or if you're really tight on budget, the release the game as early-access to get a live feedback from actual players. Don't let the game fall into this stage of colorful limbo. (actually, go see the global achievement stat. there's only 1/4 players completing the game. that's really tell something.)

weird but fun lol

ways better than my complex-analysis textbook lol

noice romcom slice of life eroge wwwww~

Bad puzzle game.

Puzzle should be intuitive. This game is not. Wires IRL can be stretch when we push or squeeze objects between gap. But this game treat those wires as hard walls. Furthermore, the playable character in the game also can't jump over / crouch under existing wires. It's so annoying counter-intuitive.

Puzzle should be clear of logic. This game is not. Mainly this happen because of the design that's rely on continuous 2D coordinate (unlike other games that's play on square/hexagonal grid). The downside of this coordinate system is that there are infinitely possible positions to consider. No, not on the developer's programming side. But on the player's cognitive side. Say, if the puzzle require a wire from A to B with angle of 37 degree. How the heck we human can figure that out with the exact number? Keep in mind that there are other possible positions that yield very similar results, but fail to solve the problem, like a wire from C to B with angle of 40 degree. This design discourage planning since players will not know if the plan is right or not until actually try it out. (not to mention that when the plan is slightly wrong, there is no way to "fix" just some part of the plan. the player practically need to restart the whole level. what the fun with this approach?)

Puzzle should gives a revelation. This game is not. This issue continue from the continuous 2D coordinate design, magnified by the unique solution concept -- the developer carefully craft each level with a preferable "revelation" way to solve it: change the way to tackle the succeeding puzzles. But now we have infinitely many feasible solutions to play-test, it is unavoidable that unintended solutions pop up everywhere. These unintended solution are super complex (instead of a simple a-ha solution, which I think this game already fail to make even the preferred way simple in the first place), they not only ruin the fun of the game, but also hide away crucial information on how to tackle the puzzle in the future. So what, how the developer tackle this problem? They just fiddle their levels with bits and bobs. Evidently, you can see weird wall of different length here and there as a part of iteration to prevent players solve it unintended way (go see images in community's walkthrough). So ugly to the eye. (...and to be honest, I don't think the developer really craft the puzzle with revelation approach in the first place. instead, I think they just throw in noises and traps just to pad the hardness of their puzzle. so solve any of them was never felt eureka.)

Puzzle-- unlike mechanics IRL that keep people safe such as combination lock that only the owner know the right number --should be fun to play. This game is not. Take a look at Wordle, everyone loves that game despite they sometimes fail to solve today's puzzle. This game, however, is a chore of unending trial-and-error with practically no strategy. What the fun (and fair) with this puzzle design?

Actually, the sign that this game so proudly present itself as a hard puzzle game, as seen in the promo video, hints that it has a very high potential to be a bad puzzle. Because if you aim to produce a hard puzzle, just throw in a 6-digit combination lock. That's hard. Since there are one million possibilities for the player to consider, and that's take ages. A good puzzle design may throw 6-digit combination lock to the player as well, but they will leave breadcrumb trails along the way to reduce the possibility down to just one exact solution. And guess what? The game never bothered to spare us even a tiny bit of bread.

Avoid this game at all cost.

By the way, good luck playing this game at 4:3 aspect ratio, because THE crucial information will be only seen on 16:9 screen 😡😡😡

speedrun goes brrrrr

FINALLY, SOMEONE WHO HATES TRAZOM AS ME!!!

Sail Forth is a sailing-exploration game, emphasis on the sailing (hence the title). Which reminds me of the legendary game Sid Meier's Pirates! (2005). Heck, this game even surpass the predecessor in sailing aspect. This reason alone easily put the game in my top-10 favorites of all time.

Bear in mind that this is a game, not a simulator. So sailing is somehow inaccurate, like, the angle of the no-go zone is so small -- so forgivable to sail close-hauled, however you cannot tacking with square-rigged Viking ship, while sometimes you can sail a ship so fast she flew of a tip of a wave (which is actually quite fascinating and fun)!

Nevertheless, this game done the sailing part a lot better than other games that feature sail ships. As you can see, humanity popularize the "pirate" theme fantasy. In film, we have the flagship of the genre the Pirates of the Caribbean (2003-2017), which in turn expanded into the game universe Sea of Thieves (2018). And that game, is a scar on sailing genre. How the heck their ship can sail directly into the eye of the wind, with full sail? Not to mention that they only feature square-rigged ships! (Well, at least SoT is a lot better than some other games that just simply ignore the wind all together.)

So it is crucial that Sail Forth stays true to the nature of sailing. That is the game take wind direction seriously. Which is reflected in the ship control that you are not only need to positioning your ship according to the point of sail, but also have to trim the sail to catch maximum amount of wind as well! On gaming level, I would say that the developer strike the perfect balance of how much to take wind into account. Keep us players busy observing wind direction, but not make it too complicated to the point that hindered the fun of the game.

And it's the trimming part that makes this game surpass Sid Meier's Pirates! in term of sailing. Make us fun just by maneuvering the ship around, like Super Mario that prioritized movements of the Jumpman first.

That being said, the game is not flawless.

The main drawback of the game is that it employ a procedural generated world, rather than a carefully hand-crafted map. On the plus side, this enable replayability with the element of randomness. However, the generated world, as the time of writing during the launch, is quite shallow. Most of the map is the vast emptiness of the sea, even the archipelago feels empty. Each island also possess an unrealistic simple shape: a circle. I don't think the game should go toward realism, but at least I wish the game's world to contain more island variation, like, a long strip island, a crescent island, or even a large island with river and peninsula. The point is, make those islands more distinguished, so we are more immersed into this Waterworld. Which ultimately it's easier to hand-crafted the world instead, but I guess it's too late in this stage of the game?

Also the exploration part is a lot far behind those well written stories in Sid Meier's Pirates! or Sea of Thieves. Can't really blame them though, it's an indie studio vs AAA blockbusters. (And, take studio's size into account, Sail Forth have done an impressive job with this limited resource!)

This is a great game, not perfect, not masterpiece, but really really great. And if you're into sailing, I can totally recommend it.