Recent reviews by Complexity

Yakuza games are no stranger to filler, but this one felt like it was actively wasting my time. 5 hours before getting to Hawaii dulled any interest I had in playing the game.

I almost passed on this due to the 90s anime style (it is a bit off putting personally), but I couldn't have been more wrong. Little Goody Two Shoes is a full realization of a Grimm's fairy tale in game format - the joys and deeply human flawed characters, dark magics in the woods, and the hubris-ridden downfall . The art is gorgeous and a breath of fresh air in a world of sterile modern design. If you can deal with the relatively difficult dream sections (for the VN genre) and are not put off by retrying a section once or twice, it will become one your favorites.

Quite good for EA. Art design, WASD movement, boss design, audio design, and in game stats are all incredible features. There are systems and balancing issues that need to get fixed, but judging by how willing they were to adjust core game systems in the week 1 patch, I expect them to fix the vast majority of issues before full release. If you are interested in playing, it may be good to wait until mid-January when POB2 is expected to be out.

EDIT: Dawn of the Hunt (0.2.0) has made me feel not confident in the game direction. They nerfed ES substantially, did not add life or armour buffs, and then made it substantially easier for monsters to apply ailments (lower ailment threshold on players). The parry mechanic requires you to specifically disengage the mob that you parried, which is quite difficult practically in an ARPG, where you may be dealing with groups of monsters at once. Along with the nerf to leveling uniques (eg Pillar) it is unsurprising many people are having a bad time in the campaign. Other changes are extremely confusing, such as nerfing hardcasted curses to take 1.5s to activate instead of 1s (why? no good curse build does hardcasted curses as the activation time is already too long).

EDIT 0.3.0: While certain changes are good (instant buyout is a goated change), implementations of features still are hobbled by confusing downsides. There was finally a response to the movement speed problem, except they can't add movement speed because bosses are balanced around it, so instead they added "sprint," which you activate by holding down dodge (meaning start lag). If you take "too much" damage while sprinting (ie a random projectile) then you fall and have like a 5s delay before getting back up. You have a maximum turn speed while sprinting, which makes you feel like you are piloting a tank and feels particularly bad on WASD (you always have to commit to 90+ degree turns). There is a long end lag on finishing sprinting. And if you bump into a wall when sprinting, it immediately drops you out of sprint and into end lag? Why? This feels terrible. PoE has always been about snappy, responsive gameplay. Perhaps this design philosophy has been lost somewhere along the way.