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"Charming" isn't a word I thought I'd ever be using to describe a soulslike, but here we are! Another Crab's Treasure is a refreshingly bright and simple take on an otherwise dark and arcane genre that's infused with some welcome quality-of-life boosts from more mainstream action platformers. The writing and mechanics are clever, there are souls references aplenty, and the length and depth of the experience is nice and tidy.

My only complaint is that it easier too quickly. It starts out challenging, but as you gain more and more levels and tools, your damage and health quickly outpace what the enemy is able to throw at you. I feel like this misses both demographics: a souls veteran isn't going to be engaged when the game isn't challenging, and a new player is going to have trouble getting through the sparser early sections. Evening the curve out would go a long way towards making this progression feel more intentionally designed.

I'm glad Sony walked back their account linking policy, and it's a testament to the will of the community that this was able to happen so quickly and decisively. But it's you're on the fence about this game and reading reviews, I'm sure you want to hear about the game itself and not the drama.

To sum up: it's great. I loved the first game and 2 is a fine evolution, keeping many principles and assets that made the first game fun while presenting it in a gorgeously modern package. $40 is an absolute steal for a game of this quality. If you're a fan of other co-op PvE games like Killing Floor and Deep Rock Galactic, this would absolutely be your next favorite.

Unfortunately, it's tedious. Content is spread thin over several batches of mandatory sidequests and every new task involves a lot of running back and forth and back and forth.

Overall presentation is pretty and the story is fine. Combat is simple but still manages to underuse its own tools, largely eschewing the blocking and countering you're taught in the early game in favor of just dodging lots of fast unblockable hits, which in turn makes all the neat looking heavy armor you'll find a liability.

Normally I love games that try to boil down to the essentials of their genre, but this is a case in which less does not equal more IMO.

- There's not enough to do in combat. You shoot, you dodge, that's it. The enemy variety is good but the way you engage with them is always the same. Compare this to something like Scourgebringer that also has a simple and unchanging kit, but spices it up with different modes of attack and enemies that change your approach.
- Making health practically your only resource removes too much texture from the risk vs reward calculation, especially when you're low on health and functionally locked out of buying things.
- A completely linear path through each level makes the early game long and repetitive and removes interesting choices about when to explore and what rewards to prioritize.

FIST was a pleasant surprise throughout my playthrough: great dieselpunk visuals, challenging and varied combat, and decent localization and voice acting. My only issue is poorly placed and marked fast travel points, which made backtracking later in the game more of a chore than it needed to be.

If you're looking for a solid metroidvania, look no further.

A fantastic entry in the soulslike canon. Probably the best non-From souls game I've played.

+ Looks great. Krat and its inhabitants have a distinct look, and the graphics look modern and stylish.
+ Fantastic enemy design. Animations are effective and attacks feel impactful. A large variety of enemies keeps things fresh.
+ Good weapon and build variety. Mixing handles and blades is fun. I really appreciate that only the blade is upgradeable and only the handle defines your moveset; this made it easy to try new moves without having to sink resources into leveling a new blade. I swapped my build around several times during the game and found success with everything I tried.
+ Hard. Hard hard hard. Enemies hit like trucks in both speed and force, and bosses will reduce you to paste very quickly before you get the hand of them. Laxasia and the end boss were particularly brutal. I'd put this higher than Sekiro in difficulty, mainly because of the narrow parry window (see below).

- Super narrow parry window. The parry timing is super narrow and nearly everything has "furious" moves that can only be parried. I was still struggling to consistently land parries all the way up to the final boss.
- Quite linear. There are a handful of sidequests and secrets, but by and large you're moving straight through one level at a time for the entire game. I feel that this game has owned its linear nature and used it to deliver a consistent ramp up in stakes and difficulty, but if you're in the souls genre for exploration, look elsewhere.
- Underwhelming story. You must go to [place] to find [thing] and stop [bad dude], over and over; when one ends, another begins, branching off from the hub area. Because the game is linear, the player engages more with the plot (vs the world when exploring nonlinear games), and this didn't really have much meat to dig into. But who plays soulslikes for the plot, anyway?

Overall: a definite strong recommend if you enjoy this genre. I'm looking forward to this studio's foreshadowed next entry, and I hope this helps set a new high standard for non-From developers looking to play in this space.

Played the demo and wasn't thrilled, but the visuals and gameplay are right up my alley on paper, so I bought it on sale to see if my opinion got any better. It didn't.

Underneath the very cool and weird look is a painfully regular game. It's got the soulslike things, it's got the vania things, everything is exactly what you'd expect and no more, and for me that drained the charm out exploring this strange new world. Combat and platforming also felt stiff and sticky throughout.

This review is negative because I didn't have a good time with it personally, but if you're a huge fan of this genre intersection and don't mind the ho-hum gameplay, the visuals and interface are very polished and bug-free so far as I could tell. If you like the demo and feel you could play a whole game of that, go for it.

I'm a big fan of this developer and loved the previous two Zeno Clash games. This is the weakest entry in the series, despite the obviously bigger budget and more modernized game design. I'm hardly a luddite and appreciate the care the developer has taken to update their sensibilities, but in this case they've lost more than they've gained IMO.

Combat never really clicked. Feedback is low both from incoming and outgoing hits, it's very easy to get knocked out of your combo, and flowing between offense and defense is difficult. Even when you do well in battle and parry, dodge, and strike your way to unlocking the (very fun) first-person punching, it completely ignores the rest of the systems that the game spends so much time teaching and improving: your stances, weapons, and special moves don't have any bearing on it. There's neither the sense of engagement than the previous games had, nor a deep and interesting new combat system to replace it.

The shift to third person really disconnects from the visceral combat and the detailed world. Looking enemies in the eyes, bobbing around their firsts, and getting up close to all the weird little structures and people in Zenozoik was a huge part of the charm of the first games, and it just doesn't hit right in third person. It was very easy to get lost or betrayed by the camera in the twisting canyons and tunnels, and miss landmarks in a way that wouldn't have happened in first person.

For as much gameplay and narrative space as the Ritual takes up, its presence felt vestigial to the rest of the experience. It's possible to entirely ignore the mechanic and just get by on your fists, without needing to risk drinking poison or getting tied up. I really wanted to enjoy this mechanic (I'm a board game maker IRL and playing a little board game before fighting for a boost is conceptually perfect for me), but it was just not satisfying to interact with.

I'm still looking forward to supporting the devs and this series in the future, and I applaud them for trying to make a different game with this new entry. I just don't feel like it's a better game for it.

A fine little soulsy boss rush.

+ Art and animation are good.
+ Combat is interesting with several moves and builds to try out along the way.
+ Most attacks can heal you, so any damage you receive can be recoverable; winning is more about not making too many mistakes at once (a la The Surge and Bloodborne) vs not making any mistakes at all.
- Short; only nine bosses. Does have NG+ content.

I reinstalled recently to replay this, and realized I never wrote a review for this hidden gem. Time to fix that!

Cryptark is a heist game in which you surgically sever key security systems on board a derelict space hulk before taking out the brain. It's a sort of Monaco meets Helldivers, and it's very good at what it does. Making a plan is fun, rethinking your plan is fun, weapons and movement feel satisfying, and there's lots of good variety in equipment and suits. The story and voice acting are surprisingly engaging, and the Giger-esque interiors and creatures look fantastic reflecting on your dim flashlight.

It's not without some jank though. Weapon balance can be a little funky, enemies can be a little too wiggly, and interiors sometimes generate in a way that makes tight segments impossible to navigate. Co-op is buggy and bizarrely designed: player 2 is a quantum clone of player 1, and the two share ammo and gear configurations.

Overall though, it's a fantastic package that IMO still holds up today.