Recent reviews by Alpr

This game is absolutely phenomenal. World hooks you in the first 30 minutes, the humor some characters have is pretty hilarious, gameplay is fun with a superb fighting system with unique characters and attacks. You can even overpower much stronger enemies if you're good enough at dodging and parrying. Spent 40 minutes on a boss doing that when he was probably 40 levels higher.

The only two negatives I see is no way to change party members mid-fight and I've had 3 crashes in 18 hours.

This is what gaming is about. Easily by GOTY. This is what FF16 should have been.

I want to like the game. It has hollow knight vibes and seems like a cool, fun little game. My main problems with the game is there is basically no direction on where to go after you complete a section, leading you to backtrack all over the place to progress a little bit before you have to do it all over again. You can't fast travel to different save points (or rather, they are all locked for me inside that area) as far as I can tell so it just isn't fun in that regard.

The second issue I have is it doesn't really tell you...well...much of anything on items. There's 2 items inside your save point area for instance and I still haven't figured out what one of them does. You can buy them for currency (which is always full from killing enemies since there's nothing to really spend them on) but there's no description of what they do so you just gotta figure it out yourself.

Also really dislike the spikes that appear literally in front of you so you have to walk slow to not get hit and get sent back to the beginning of the screen, where other things you can take a hit and just take damage but these things you take damage and you spawn back at screen start like wtf.

Too much backtracking. Why can you only teleport to the last node you've been to instead of any? Most of the time you're just wandering around without much of a clear direction of where to go.

Hitboxes are all over the place. Enemies have the reach of 5 ultrawide monitor screens. Don't perfectly parry the enemy? Half your hp gone! This game demands perfection.

Bosses kill you too easily before being able to do anything. Upgrades feel very weak (one of the first you get is to run and honestly I don't feel any faster lol) and mediocre. I've played all the souls-like main game series, including serkiro and this ain't it.

Nice art style though.

Early game can be pretty challenging and it doesn't let you change your configuration in several "surprise" battles which can get frustrating, but overall it's a great game with a solid story and cast of characters! Excellent JRPG

Poorly made game. The fun parts take ages get to and you're constantly just collecting rocks, sticks, etc which gets really boring.

Kept running into a bug where I couldn't respawn after dying (you have 2 choices - nearby or back at base) so when it forces me to respawn back at base, I ain't gonna walk 1000m back to where I was. Happened multiple times.

Your companion is as annoying as it is helpful. Want to share resources with someone else in co op? Well neither of you better have your companion nearby else they'll pick it up before your friend does.

For every 1 thing I liked about the game, I had about 4 that I didn't. 4/10 game overall. Zombie killing at nights is the fun part but but the gameplay loop isn't fun enough to enjoy it.

Fun little mining game. There are a few things that can be good QOL. Not much is explained for you, so idk if its just me but it took me forever to realize that the 3 resources you use are iron, water, and cobalt. Also some events you gotta figure out to unlock (one that 'eats' your resources I still have no idea after feeding it like 50 lol)

Also losing a long run really sucks as you get nothing out of it so it feels like a waste of time.

Beautiful game, fun game-play (even if a little simplistic), fun characters mostly.

That's the only positives I have for this game. Now onto the negatives (minor spoilers at best):

* Controls fight you tooth and nail to listen to you when you want to use items in battle. I've twice had issues where I cannot use items at all during the fight (bug), leading to frustrating restarts. You also have to standing perfectly still to use items in battle or else your character just stands there like an idiot. I even had a few instances where it bugged out completely and I couldn't even attack (different bug) - had to restart.
* There are no auto-saves at all, so if you fail due to you know, bugs like not being able to use items in game, you damn well better have saved recently else you gotta do a bit of it over again (it does auto-save whenever you enter an area but that's it).
* AI seems brain-dead STUPID when it comes to flying enemies. On several occasions, I am wondering why I am struggling against enemies I am 15 levels stronger than and its because I find my AI companions just running back and forth not doing a damn thing (everything set to be offensive battle strat).
* Half the characters are pretty good, and the other half I cannot stand. Alm of Wind and Darkness can go jump off a cliff as I cannot stand them.
* Exploration is nigh-meaningless as everything except the lil cactus dudes is highlighted on the map for you. This would have been nice as an end-game feature, instead of given to you immediately.
* Playing on normal difficulty, the difficulty spikes are all around.
* Status effects. They are all extremely debilitating and if all 3 of you get hit by something, you just gotta stand there and die. I remember some tutorial saying spam buttons to get out but it's never worked for me.
* Speaking of tutorials, it throws so many at you towards the start of the game its annoying. Another tutorial says to double tap left bumper to auto-run to your next destination - that never worked for me either lol.
* Collecting chests or talking to anyone is very *precise*. You basically have to stop in front of it in order to perform the action, cant just run up and press it like pretty much any other game.
* Invisible walls galore. If you ain't on the path, it blocks you basically. See something that looks like you can jump on? Nope, invisible wall.
* Your dog companion (to travel faster) is pretty useless. A lot of actions will kick you off him, he throws you off whenever he touched any water (even puddles) but other times he can roam water just fine. There's no consistency.
* Unless you're constantly boosting, grinding seems pretty weak so you're just progressing the story - feels like a 'fake' RPG in that sense. It does get better, especially if you do all the side content.
* You're extremely weak up until you get your 3rd main character to help in battles. The first boss in the game took me like 10 minutes because I did no damage. Then you go insane damage.
* Story is rather predictable - it has one twist that is easily seen coming somewhat early on and the rest of the story is pretty mid. Due to the numerous frustrating issues I was having with the game, I fully tapped out of the story By Chapter 6 and after witnessing my allies doing nothing against a flying enemy *again*, I had enough and uninstalled - I wanted to finish the game but that was the final straw for me.
* Several story elements make no damn sense except to progress the plot (bad guy gets away? When you're in a cave? and he can barely run? Your bird companion doesn't want to move a rock and go to the area behind it but after you move it, all good it will go with you!??? etc)
* Had 2 crashes, which wouldn't be so bad if the game auto saved more often.

Overall, the game is quite fun and nice to look at, but has a lot of frustrating mechanics and bugs that irritated me to death to where I cannot stomach finishing it anymore. I do not recall Trials of Mana being like this, so play that instead.

Short and sweet mining game that is in the same vein as the old flash game Motherlode and also the Steamworld Dig games.

Could use some improvements though - teleporters to go back down (only one item to go up with 5m CD), way to increase # of bombs you can carry with you at a given time, drilling speed doesn't increase vs weaker areas - should become a bit faster than just "normal speed", and just more content in general!

Took about 10h to get all achievements - nothing too difficult. Will look forward to their next game. Enjoyed this much better than DRG, which was a letdown for me as a mining game.

Stiff animations, was in a cutscene for over 2 minutes and nothing was happening. Being thick isn't enough for me to like this game.

The story and haunting cases are interesting enough. The combat is ok and at times annoying due to trying to work a case and constantly have to clear spawns that interrupt you. The map is honestly too large and I will find it hard to 100% this game since it requires 2 playthroughs.

Biggest issue with the game is there are these void traveling activities that are battle gauntlets. That's great, but the exit puts you somewhere far away where you went into it at, forcing you to go to the nearest campsite to fast travel back. Sometimes it slaps you nowhere near a campish. Highly infuriating. It's anti-exploration in that regard.

Turning down the combat to story mode doesn't seem to help very much as some enemies or special features (some fights have requirements where you hit like a wet noodle unless you attack in a specific manner) are still major tanks just to go through them and continue with what you're doing.

Solid 7/10 game. At this point I'm not sure I will finish the game as it takes so long just do one haunting case which are the interesting bits since most of the time you gotta run 700m in 2 different directions to continue the quest.