Recent reviews by Rubyeyed

It is 6.5/10 for me. Competent design but could use more polish and do with less enemy inconsistency.

Good parts - level design is allright, animations are great, executions for every enemy and all different (not lazy like in Blasphemous 2), different weapons, responsive movement. Enemy variety is ok.

So now, moving to the issues.

There are enemies in this game that can just go through walls and even follow you from another screen and they are frustrating af. Like why would anyone implement bs like this? Also, there are some enemies that shoot through walls and similarly to the complaint I just made, annoying af. Why the inconsistencies? Who would find this fun? It's not even like well thought out placement or really any deep scheme to this. Just 2 types of enemies in this game are there purely to be d**ks.

Speaking of d**ks, the whole humor and theme is heavily influenced by sex and genitalia. Your "sidekick" is called Regina and it is an AI. This AI though looks similar to a real "regina" if you catch my drift and is also situated in the protagonist's crotch area. The game is not woke or anything, it just has this kind of juvenile, crude humor.

Controls are rebindable but the directional inputs are not the same for menus and character control so if you swap from arrows to WSAD then you will have to use arrows for menus anyway. It is janky af + they forgot to add a rebind for "zoom out" so for me it was forever stuck to A. A is also move left which means every time I moved map left it was zooming out. Defninitely could use more work.

Also, only the very beginning of the game is voiced, like literally first 5 min (and the voiceover doesn't even match the text for some reason). It gives a really bad impression but the story is very simple so it's not like there is a deep lore to follow.

In the later part of the game the devs keep relying heavily on instant death spikes. I know some ppl hate those a lot.

2 months and a few TINY patches later basically nothing of real importance has been fixed. Devs just recently added framegen for 40XX series (that modders already added shortly after release). If you don't have the absolute best PC on the market you will not maintain 60FPS in the cities. It will be closer to 40.

I guess Capcom can't just keep winning, Ls happen.

Maybe they will do something with it eventually but for now I strongly recommend to wait. There is an ok game in there but with those performance issues it's just not worth it.

Not amazing, not horrible. It was good.

Strong points here are atmosphere and general mood of the game. World is interesting to explore and enemies have some nice designs. Weapon upgrading is really nice and there is A LOT of weapons and spells to find. Plenty of secrets and "puzzles" too. NPCs you meet are also entertaining.

Speaking of design, The maps are too empty and many of the maps are just like mazes. It is super easy to get lost in the same looking winding corridors connecting the same looking rooms.

Movement speed is one of the best stats in the game. Not only because you have to walk a lot everywhere but also because it makes you the fastest being in the universe and that is an insane advantage. Most enemies are like enemies from a typical dungeon crawler, slower swings, normal movement speed, you know, normal. The player with high MS stat on the other hand is Sonic on steroids just running around the place slapping enemies that can't catch up with either movement or attack speed.

All that said, bosses are the weakest part of the game. Massive HP sponges. With 100 STR (which is reasonably a good cut off point for stats) and the best weapons you are able to find you will still be hacking at them for a long time. There are thankfully only a few bosses in the game.

btw, there is only like 5 or so ranged weapons in the game so don't think about leveling up that DEX, you will have a bad time.

Still, it is a good game even with the flaws it has. 7/10

PS: There are some very good guides in the guides section for this game. The one with the maps is especially useful.

For now I would advise to wait. The game is extremely casual and there is quite a few bugs to iron out. Nothing game breaking but still the lack of polish is noticeable.

Performance is also not the best, game seems to not utilize the system resources properly. It will drop frames when there is more patients in the hospital but CPU/GPU usage will be stuck around 30-40%.

Although, if you are looking for a "chill" experience managing a space hospital then it is a good purchase even now.

If you want any challenge though, come back in a year. Devs have some future plans. It's basically early access without the EA label.

When you look at the storepage you think "Looks nice, a metroidvania and has great reviews, must be good".

You start playing and you get a lot of fetch quests and then you think "Well, it's just the beginning so this must be like a tutorial phase, that's fine". Hours pass and the fetch quests never end and at that point you realize that this actually is the game.

You basically go back and forth between the multi zone hub and small "dungeons" doing trivial fetch quests from start to finish. Gameplay is very simplistic and easy. Hardmode unlocks after you have beaten the game but it just raises enemy levels across the board (which doesn't really amount to much). Bosses have like 3 moves each, maybe 4? Nothing to write home about (+ there is only a few bosses in the game).

Metroidvania elements boil down to basically getting appropriate element rune to break corresponding elemental pillar blocking the way. Dungeons are very small and exploration is minimal because you are on rails all the time.

Overall it is a very casual experience with game loop that will either frustrate you or put you to sleep.

Easy to 100% though.

A solid roguelike with unique gameplay in the genre.

I haven't experienced any technical issues and the gameplay has all the elements you can expect from a roguelike like: meta progression, various weapons and traits/boons to pick, relics etc.

Difficulty wise it might feel kind of easy at start but there are plenty of modifiers to make it harder (like in Hades for example, you pick which ones you want).

Overall it's a 9/10.

A great classic that holds up pretty well. Sadly this release is very barebones and you will have to manually edit higher resolution and mouse speed, patch maps because some units don't spawn and Steam overlay doesn't work. Annoying bugs that were present back in the day are also still here.

It is doable to fix most of those issues if you spend 20min and look for some fixes/unofficial patches though.

Even with those drawbacks it is nice to play a game that you haven't played for ages. Nostalgia is hell of a drug.

If you like what you see on the storepage but want a faster paced, less wonky experience check out War for the Overworld which is basically the best DK2 successor at this point in time.

Honestly, It's way overhyped and overrated. It can surely use a negative counterbalance. If you are looking for a casual game get an actual casual game like Stardew Valley etc. If you are looking for a roguelike then get a roguelike with good combat like idk, Dead Cells or Isaac etc.

This game is a mix of taking care of your "cult" (more like daycare for cute anthropomorphic creatures) but your followers can't be left alone for longer than literally 5 min until you get the rituals to extend it to like 20. What do you do with that free 20 min? You mostly go into the dungeons to fight but the combat is very mid. Some enemies telegraph projectiles some don't, most weapons feel the same with fast attack weapons being FAR better than the slower ones. btw, you can only go through 4 stages at maximum, after that it's just going back home.

btw, difficulty levels are there but those also affect the cult so if you want your cuties to b**ch even more often than usual you can do that but it's just adding more busywork not real difficulty. In combat difficulty is just the usual HP bloat. Honestly after playing on hard for like 20h I switched to easy and never looked back.

imo if you want this just get it on sale and don't expect anything spectacular because the edgy cult stuff wears off fast and what you are left with is just 20 toddler-minded followers to babysit and doing mid dungeons on your breaks.

In short, looks gorgeous 10 out of 10 but when all of it's parts are added up it's just ok, nothing mindblowing but it has it's moments here and there. If I had to give it a score I would say 7 out of 10.

Story does not have any wild turns and goes pretty much as expected. Man wakes up in an unknown location and starts looking for his family and things happen. There are a few exciting moments though.

Strangely enough, for me it was far more intense at start than at the end. To not go into spoilers I will just say that beginning presents you with actual monsters and feeling of danger while the second part of the game kind of downgrades the monsters so to speak and they aren't as intimidating as before.

Audio is amazing here. There are many "scary sounds" that play I guess at random and those are very well made. There is only one instance where the sound effect sounds as the recording was done somewhere totally different, it is A LOT louder than everything else in the game and sounds like it is of a bit lower quality. It's only one sound though that plays only once and it is a scream, don't worry about it.

Most of PDAs are readable and there is quite a bit to read out there. The ones I would say are weaker reads are towards the very end.

Puzzles are ok and mostly logical if you pay attention to everything. Which for some might be a tall order but it helps immersion. There are like 2 or 3 occasions where it is problematic to figure out what to do but in general it's not that hard. If stuck there is a lot of info available, it's a 2015 game after all. (or you can just spam items on things like a point and click pro)

From the technical side it's fine, a bit annoying, but nothing game breaking. Sometimes the banter between characters gets repeated for some reason and rarely when you want to interact with an object the PC approaches it and doesn't do anything. Also, one animation at the end of the game is broken and the moving seat and PC move at different speeds = totally misaligned which is jarring. All minor annoyances, nothing serious.

One of the better sidescrolling roguelikes out there.

It's a bit infamous for difficulty but runs have the same feel as in Binding of Isaac. You get poor items and buffs, you struggle. You get god tier combos you roll (but you need to be at leas a bit competent). Overall I would say that after you get gud you will win 8 or 9 out of 10 runs every time.

Bugs are minimal. One lore quest isn't working but it's just one entry in the bestiary.

Gameplay is very smooth, biomes diverse, bosses challenging. Graphics are 10 out of 10. Characters you meet are also fun to interact with. Workplace setting makes for some jokes that you don't hear every day.

Progression is based on unlocking items for future runs, nothing crazy.

Achievements for getting all curses and all first bestiary entries are grindy. Especially the curses.

If you like roguelikes that are a bit on the difficult side give it a go.