Cats Love Boxes: 8/10; cute puzzler, didn't expect it to have difficult puzzles but they were fun to get right
A Divine Guide to Puzzle Solving: 6/10; it's really short (<2hrs) and it doesn't seem to want to be, there's supposed to be a narrative but it's skippable and the devs know this (cheeky dialogue if you skip the final convo), no real challenge because the game gives itself no time to develop
10 out of FUCKING TEN BABEEEEEEEEEEEEH
Despite the fact that this is more or less copying of Pokemon designs and tossing it into a blender of different successful game categories, it doesn't come out as unappealing slop but as gourmet oatmeal. There's not a whole lot of complexity; bigger number equal better result and always try to STAB. However, the haphazardly thrown together mechanics end up creating a whole slew of enjoyment. Like base building? It's wobbly but somewhat above serviceable. Cute 'mons? Yeah there are a lot to like. An actual advertised product and a dev team that isn't running with their beyond expected launch success? Seems to be the case! I hope for this game's longevity and continued success and thank the team for finally shaking up the monster catching genre (although I do fear this could have the unintended side effect of a bunch of trash copycats, but alas is capitalism).
10/10
Will we ever play it again? Who knows since trying to play games with friends is either the easiest thing in the world or you have to schedule 3 weeks in advance and hope the weather turns out right. So...
The modding community will keep this game alive for a long time.
9.5/10
I honestly don't like monster hunters, probably because I'm a baddie but this one is not nearly as demanding. It seems the devs took a risk in making this (through all its related development hell) and succeeded. The fights flow well, the first runthrough of everything is fun and exciting, characters are different enough to not feel like reskins and some even have dumb techs that may or may not be patched (roadmap is slim, devs are a bit quiet), and the later grinds aren't awful. Play who you like, screw tier lists, and probably get carried by the guy who has a lot more free time than you!
#JusticeForPunchyGrandpa #BuffGhandagoza
Lucilius Update (March): 8/10
Good direction for the fights going forward, however their update schedule needs to be more broad than what they have currently. One fight or new characters every month is not going to cut it for the game's longevity. New sigils just exacerbate the build problem but perhaps the lvl150 update in April will help.
7/10
Cute time waster, nothing really revolutionary. Fixed solutions, some a little wacky, but nonetheless not a bad game.
8/10
Would be higher but I'm bad. About as much customization as Vampire Survivors with more unlocks and enemy variation. Good title if you want a harder experience than VS.
3/10
What a sad, sad tower defense game this is. It's interesting in the beginning but quickly devolves into being another horde gunner. War scenarios are slogs and provide nothing interesting compared to normal maps. Many traps and weapons feel awful and perform awful. The most viable strat for most maps is spam walls and make a death corridor/box. How uninteresting! They introduce new mobs basically every map, but hell if you actually know what they do except via dialogue that is not prioritized in the sound layering during the middle of a wave. Not that it even really matters, they all die pretty much the same.
Back to Dungeon Defenders where towers feel good to use, characters are unique and not unique-lite, and you can't just funnel every spawn point down the same path!
I'm gonna be real...
4/10 (co-op)
3/10 (solo)
I'm not going for the true ending. It does almost nothing right. The exclusion of mouse movement in a game that wants so badly to be "action" is terrible, especially when it does not want to respond to your inputs. Trying to change direction mid-cast or to guard is awful. The story feels like a first draft, not once looked over for anything that could make it worth a damn. I did not care about a single person in this despite it so desperately wanting me to several times. Combat devolves to on-screen vomit the farther you go. Nothing felt good to use. Equipment meant jack shit, just more stat sticks. Grinding meant so little. I just. Wow. Glad I had zero expectations, but this would not have been worth waiting 10 or so years for.
Maybe this will change as the game goes forward, but it has nothing that shows this is a 10+ year project. The graphics are on par with similar low-budget RPGs (nothing makes it stand out), the combat is dull because monsters are just reskinned melee bots and/or projectile spammers and the PC doesn't need variety you just need raw damage and to keep moving. The story is... somewhere? It certainly can't take itself seriously with how many references and memes it throws at you. The "grind" is there to be there it feels, much like half of the level-up options, and not something that will make you noticeably stronger. I saw the reviews confused about why they were complaining about bullet hell sections and yeah, there are bullet hell sections for some reason in a game that can't even properly manage diagonal movement without speeding up your character (I have now been made aware this was a DESIGN CHOICE?).
Nothing about this game feels special. If I wanted a pixel art RPG with a story that only exists when it's required, a bunch of random side objectives that probably only really come into play to achieve a true ending, the illusion of choice, and unnecessary bullet hell segments, I'd go play Sea of Stars. Actually, just go play Chained Echoes, objectively better game all-around.
5/10; dev needs more time to cook and honestly I'm not sure I get the hype around the game other than it's monotonous and simple to get into, the game has so little sustenance as of release that other than potential features (that many should have been in the base release to be quite honest) to carry the game on there's no reason to care about this simulator game compared to the hundreds of bare-bone ones out there like it
March 22: The mod scene is making this game an actual game. The dev, well, he got his paycheck and free devs.
Current Rating: 7/10; it's okay.
Awaiting further review
7/10; revisiting a few patches later and I think this game suffers from not wanting to stick to one thing. Do you want machines to be fuel-based or power-based? Can't seem to agree on that. Do you want us to mine out ore or do you want us to automate it via factory production? Well it seems they want to do the latter (with more options now to reduce waste byproducts) but they also keep putting loads of huge ore veins in the map. Do we want the map to be usable for factories with little environmental destruction or do we want you to keep the landscape intact and mine out your own area? Again, the ores veins get really annoying in making your own and there aren't a lot of really good prefab areas to build in. The cave setting is neat, but for the love of all that is good please don't make the only way to mass-excavate tediously slow and cumbersome.
Anyway I will be playing for the next hundred hours when I get my groove back <3
0/10; gacha trash (I will be playing it daily for the next two years)
7/10; it's very pretty but sadly about 10-20hrs too short (roughly 10hrs with most sidequests and some collections), the combat does not try to do anything super innovative and the one thing it does try (randomness of support match-ups) never played enough of a role in the difficulty of fights as most are over in maybe ten turns with almost all of them being yours, the definition of on-rails gameplay
5/10; this has such a great premise and overall pretty excellent execution in regards to storytelling and not being obvious, however, it's way too short, the game abruptly ends with a lot left unresolved; I jokingly said "And that's the end of the game" and it literally was at about the two hour mark, the ending reads like the story was meant to be longer but it just... isn't, there's way too much secondary plot relevant topics that go out the window because the main issue is solved
Sadly a game I was looking forward to but let down by its delivery
7/10; charming little puzzler, a nice entry suggestion to this genre with the puzzles being pretty straightforward and easy to decipher with the abundance of clues
