Recent reviews by Stan Um

This was good training for a linguistics degree. 10/10.

A great experience all the way through.

Great take on the deck builder genre. A solid 9/10.

TL;DR: Way harder than Hollow Knight and equally as frustrating at points, but a solid 9/10 for how well designed this game is, especially at this price point. It was well worth the 7 year long wait.

The music, sound design, art, atmosphere and story are all top notch. The game is HUGE. The map design is well done, with secrets in every corner. Hornet's movement feels incredibly fluid to play with, especially for some boss fights. The game rewards exploration, skill and engaging with the mechanics, making some of the later fights relatively easy if you know what you're doing. That said, some areas are incredibly frustrating due to enemy spam (especially flying ones) and platforming in some cases is a chore due to long sections without a respawn if you hit a spike.

As a side note, I played this entire game on the steam deck with zero issues, and it was a great overall experience.

10/10 Made me feel one with the Tao.

This game is a true and proper masterpiece. A lot of people are comparing this to Hollow Knight, but I would say that it's even better in some aspects. It doesn't overstay its welcome, it doesn't have random ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ enemies or quests, and every single boss is good at the very least. Some of the last few bosses reward precise inputs, good ability usage and well-thought-out builds. The story, world-building and soundtracks are also really well done. My only real "complaint" is that there simply isn't enough; it took about 13 hours to beat while doing all questlines and having almost 100%ed the game (I missed 4-5 items but didn't really care to go search). I can't wait to see if Red Candle makes more games like this.

Never thought I'd see a good Soulsborne game from another studio. What a time to be alive.

Having played the demo as well as the final product, the game right now feels extremely polished in comparison to what it was during the demo. Combat is tight and mostly fair, while only being annoying on certain bosses/enemies that have fake-out stuns.

The plot is passable and to the point, though I wish they'd have done more with the overall premise. As it stands, it's not a story you haven't seen or heard before, and some dialogue can come across as a bit cringey.

The record collecting was one of my favorite things. The music on those is great. Also, you can pet a cat.

Overall, would recommend. Can't wait for more games like this!

Very different from FromSoft's usual style of games. The game is a mech-based power fantasy where it's fairly easy if you understand the concept being taught. Use a certain playstyle, care about effective range, and combine the right parts together for a given scenario, and you'll sail through the game. While it's a lot easier than other fromsoft games, I don't mind it because it's just high-paced fun. The story and soundtrack also hit hard in certain sections of the game.

The only game I ever actively WANTED to 100%.

Worth your time, effort, and money. The gameplay, story, and world are mind-blowing. Furthermore, the game is very well optimised even for entry-level GPUs.

I wouldn't say that it's without flaws though:

- Laggy/unintuitive ways of playing with friends.

- FPS drops still haven't been fixed.

- Almost couldn't 100% because of an inventory glitch that removed a weapon for no reason.

- Unlike previous FromSoft titles where the games are hard but never felt unfair, there are moments in this game that feel like pure luck, though these moments only happened once or twice with a very specific boss.

Pros:
Anime waifu teaches you about existential philosophy.
Fluid animations and amazing music.
Strong plot.
Ending sequence is heart-wrenching.

Cons:
The game is grindy and repetitive, even on easier difficulties. Towards the second half of the game, I had completely given up on even bothering to play it (you can literally just have the game play itself for you) with exception to the boss fights. The camera is not also your friend on some of the boss fights. Some of the fights feel like they last much longer than they should, and the story can be really cringey at certain points.

Spoiler-related Con:
The plot incentivizes not killing the machines, but you can't upgrade anything without killing them since you need EXP. In short, you're punished for actually trying to have any moral understanding of the plot, which in turn makes the game significantly harder in the latter half since you do practically no damage at all in comparison to the massive health bars of each enemy.

Conclusion:
Would I play this game again? No.
Am I glad I played it at least once? Definitely.
Despite all my gripes with the game, some of the moments really made the whole process worth it.

*Gets into game with a solo sloop.*

*Fights a bunch of pirate skeles and accumulates a ton of loot*

*Gets attacked by a kraken 10m away from the outpost and has the ship destroyed*

*Puts all treasure on rowboat*

*Gets killed and has loot stolen by a 4-man galleon crew spamming the macarena on voice chat despite saying that you're friendly*

10/10 would pirate again.