Recent reviews by Red Raven Thorn

Not just boring, this game is bored. It practically sighs while going through it's own introduction.

I played this for a few hours, hated it, tried again a few months later, hated it again.

I loved Borderlands 2, so what went wrong? Well, the writing doesn't seem as bad as BL3. I wasn't enjoying it, but it wasn't making me actively cringe.

The first major issue I have is that the weapons suck. They just don't feel good to use, the damage is next to nothing. When I got my hands on a sniper rifle I was like "finally" only to find head-shots didn't do enough to kill even the most basic enemy minions. Shotguns seem to tickle the enemy, and it does this terrible ragdoll thing which seems like it's *supposed* to knock them back, but instead it just knocks them around in a random direction, sometimes towards you.
Anyway, point being, they just all feel really unsatisfying.

The second issue is the game now has this really clunky world map like something out of a JRPG from 40 years ago. Complete with random encounters. And the random encounters start like a random battle in a pre-gen village or ruin or something and you have to kill a certain amount of enemies. But what's weird (other than how pointless the encounters are in the first place) is that the encounter ends once you've killed a certain amount of enemies, but not once you've killed *all* the enemies. It's like they keep spawning, and as soon as your kill count hits 15, the rest of them just vanish, even if you're looking right at them. So why not just not have the encounter spawn more enemies than it would let you kill? Like, if it's gonna stop at 15, then just spawn 15 guys. It's just makes it all feel even more meaningless when the fight arbitrarily ends once you hit your kill limit.

And lastly and most importantly, the DLC. Now, all the Borderlands games have had DLC, but they've never had a game so aggressively try to upsell you within the game before. The very first town you visit in this game exists ONLY to sell you the DLC. The only NPC you can talk to in the whole town encourages you to use a slot machine that only works with currency you can only buy from doing DLC quests. And I've got a sinking feeling maybe the reason all the weapons feel *so awful*, is to get you desperate for better loot, better loot that you can conveniently win through this machine. Or maybe I'm just getting paranoid. Either way, the first town you visit should have NPCs that give you quests, like every other Borderlands game and every other RPG ever. It shouldn't be a naked cash grab trying to sell you DLC with gambling mechanics. Feels absolutely soul-less.

If you're a borderlands fan, I encourage you not to buy this game. Just play BL2 again, don't support this kind of corruption.

So, the art is a bit off-putting, in the sense that it gives off a distinctly Hidden Objects genre vibe. Which, I don't mean to ♥♥♥♥ on that genre, I've enjoyed a few, but the vibe is cheap and not exactly well written.

Then I started playing and at first, all the women are *minor spoilers* models, fashion designers and housewives. Which, nothing wrong with that on a personal decision level, but I *was* worrying about if this game had some underlying problematic ideas about what a woman's role should be. Having played further, that doesn't seem to be the case at all.

Some of the clues feel a little "puzzle gamey", like *minor spoilers* you have to find the names of five people, there's an article written about how the inventor of this candy made it about his five kids, each of the candies starts with the same letter as one of the kids. In reality, if somebody bothered to write an article like that, they'd include the names of the kids. But that'd give the puzzle away so. It's a minor grudge, you just gotta let some things slide.

So there's a few things that made me doubt if this was really gonna be the Corkboard Detective game I was really hoping it would be. But I thought I'd dig a little deeper, kept collecting information, making notes, and then I said "huh, that's weird".

And honestly, when a detective game can get you to that exact moment, it's succeeded. I mean, I'm only 3 hours in, if it turns out to disappoint I'll change my review but I don't think I'll need to.

Yo this game sucks!

Had to sit through 15 minutes of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ before I get to do anything. The first thing I get told to do is hide so I go hide in these nearby stables. Then get told I gotta hide *specifically* in the COW SHED. So I'm like, ok, what's a cow shed? I go to the nearest shed, get yelled at because it's not a COW shed, so I go to the other shed, ALSO not a cow shed.

Yeah, the stables I was already in, that was the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ cow shed. Then after a quick gunfight I get told to search the house, which is just going around picking up cans of food. But you can't just press a button to pick ♥♥♥♥ up, you have to sit there and HOLD the button, for every damn item. And he walks so painfully slow. I spent more time picking up cans of food than I did having the gunfight. As soon as I leave the house I get told to keep searching, so I go back into the house only to be told to go look in the shed, and I'm like ♥♥♥♥ man, but whatever. And then micah walks into the house so I back up to let him through and he just corners me behind the door and I can't get past him.

When I eventually get to the shed I get cutscene-jumped and I have to have a fistfight with some guy, which, I ♥♥♥♥ you not, consists of just pressing the punch button 20 times until he falls over. I don't mean you CAN win that fight by spamming the punch button, I mean, that's the only button, you gotta press it 20 times.

The first hour of your game is your chance to set the tone, and the tone this game seems to be going for is "boring and restrictive." I honestly don't care if it gets better later on, any game that ♥♥♥♥♥ up the intro that badly isn't worth my time.

Bawled my ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ eyes out.

Judy I'm sorry.

Attack and Dash both feel bad in a way I have no idea how to express. Like there's no oomph to them. Gameplay is really basic, just collecting resources to build stuff to get to more resources. It's a shame, because obviously a lot of hard work has gone into the pixel art, at least. But it definitely needs more than that.

It's beautiful, but I was bored. A lot of people really like it though, so I dunno, give it a shot. But I've played for a few hours and I don't think it's gonna evolve into a different game that really grabs my interest.

It's a choose your own adventure movie. But the movie isn't very good.

Probably gonna be my gateway drug into Dark Souls

Even by warhammer game standards, this is trash.

Unintuitive controls, a tutorial consisting of text on screen (once you're already in the middle of fighting, that disappears before you can read it), a "regain health by killing" function that is non-canon, and both overpowered and necessary for this clumsy-ass game. And after 10 minutes I clipped through a wall and would have had to restart, if for some reason I wanted to subject myself to that again.

7 hour play time was just for the cards.