Recent reviews by Ganjalf the Green

FlyKnight is part of what I'd like to call "PS1 revival" games.

It takes the gameplay and aesthetics of a PS1 era dungeon crawler (i.e. King's Field), refines it and then puts it's own spin on it.

The bug-centred story is rather fresh and does just enough explaining to entice you, but not so much that half the game is a lore dump.

The first person exploration and combat is purposefully slow - demanding more planning and looking for openings rather than spamming attacks. The addition of fishing, where fish can be consumed for timed buffs, is pretty novel. There aren't any RPG elements in the game per se, you only progress through finding better gear.

The game is rather short - took me about 4h to beat. However, unlike much of open-world slop these days, I enjoyed every minute of it.

I hope to see more from this developer. FlyKnight is amazing! Highly recommended!

Felvidek is an amazing little JRPG set in the Austro-Hungarian empire in the 15th century.

You play as Pavol, a miserable drunk of a knight whose wife has left him, sent to investigate the burning of an old castle.

Felvidek exudes charm with it's PS1-like art style, relaxing music, great writing and strange, yet wonderful, art direction. I can not understate how absolutely amazing the game is when it comes to the visuals. The low-poly 3D cutscenes almost give the game a horror vibe.

The gameplay itself is relatively standard for anyone who's played a JRPG before - attack, use skills, guard, use items. Skills depend on the weapon your wielding and your character progression is through gear and rare items that permanently boost stats. Some of the fights can be rather tough in the game - especially the voluntary ones, but the challenge level is on the lower end.

Felvidek is rather short, at about 4 hours, but honestly, it is some of the best time I've had with a game in recent years. The atmosphere and unique setting alone are worth the price of admission.

Highly recommended!

Lost in Random is a charming action adventure game with deck-building elements.

You take on the roll of Even, a girl living in strange world where lives are decided by the roll of the Queen's dice. The game has quite a lot going for it. The story is quite fun - reminicent of a "more mature" kids movie - a la Tim Burton. The world that the developers have built is really interesting. In addition, the claymation art style is absolutely fantastic.

The gameplay consists of exploring areas (where you can find a few sidequests) and battling enemy robots. The battle system relies on collecting cards with energy costs, building your deck and using your dice to roll for energy. While there is a good variety of cards, there are unfortunately not that many enemy types and once you find combos that work, there is not that much incentive to try new ones. In general, over the roughly 14h it took me to beat the game, I'd say the combat got pretty stale around the 11h mark.

On the whole, I'd recommend this game!

Spark the Electric Jester 3 is a master-class in 3D platformer design. It's fast paced, easy to control, hard to master and an absolute blast to play through.

The main story took me around 6h to beat on normal difficulty. However, most stages have speed and score medals to strive for, which will definetly push your play time well into double digits.

Highly recommended!

Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth could be considered the 9th mainline entry in the long-running Yakuza/Like a Dragon series.

You once again step into the shoes of Kasuga Ichiban in a turn-based JRPG, much like the previous game. However Infinite Wealth has seen a great deal of upgrading, mostly in the quality of life department. The fights are faster and you actually have an option to "skip" fights that are significantly below your level at the cost of less exp from the battle. However, I do feel that the RPG style gameplay robs the game of a lot of potentially epic moments - 4 v 1 with a regular human (boss) just starts feeling a bit silly at some point.

The story takes you to Hawaii this time around, which is a welcome change of scenery. However, I'd have to say that the story this time around is not as good as the previous game(s). It also dips a little too hard into the fantastical RPG elements for my taste. On the plus side, they've significantly toned down Ichibans idiocy, turning him from an unbelivable moron into a kind of lovable goof.

The side-content is absolutely amazing in this one, both the legally distinct Pokemon and Animal Crossing.

On the whole, I think the series is going in an interesting direction, even if I personally would prefer the old Brawler style gameplay. I'd reccommend this game.

South Park the Stick of Truth is an adventure game with turn-based combat and RPG elements, filled with the trademark humour of the show that you either love or hate.

The story sees you as a new kid with a mysterious past, moving into South Park and getting caught up in an Elves vs Humans game played by the cast of the show. The story is dumb - in the way that all South Park stories are, but it is pretty fun and there are some good jokes along the way.

The gameplay is divided between exploring the town and fighting in turn-based combat. The exploration has some cool secrets, especially for fans of the show. The combat side is rather bland by modern standards, but with the length of the game, there is enough variety to keep things more or less interesting. Gear matters a lot in the game and some of the best gear can be gotten as quest rewards for side-quests.

Overall, if you like the humour of South Park and want to essentially play an extended episode then I'd definetly reccommend this game.

Disclaimer: I only care about the single player

Need for Speed: Unbound is a pretty classic arcade racing game. The handling is fun and the race tracks are interesting enough. The rubber-banding on the enemy and cops is crazy though - it really feels like only your cars rating matters. On normal difficulty there were a couple of times where the enemy would just... spawn in in front or right behind me. Thankfully, it's relatively rare and doesn't really detract too much from the experience.

The half-cartoony asthetics worked for me - kinda reminded me of NFS:Underground in a way.

I'd suggest getting it on a steep discount. It's good fun!

Lies of P is a really solid souls-like that leans more towards Bloodborne and Sekiro for its inspiration than Dark Souls. This means that the combat is fast and deflecting is a big thing. I'd argue it's borderline impossible to beat some of the later bosses without deflecting.

The atmosphere and art style is great - using puppets as enemies leaves a lot of room for them to move around in strange and almost creepy ways.

The story isn't anything amazing, but most of the characters are interesting and the setting itself is compelling enough to keep you interested.

Fair warning/disclaimer - I never beat the game. The second to last boss is such a massive difficulty spike that the game became unfun for me. It brings out some of the worst problems of the combat system - there's massive tracking on most attacks (bosses doing 270° heel turns levels) and deflecting is pretty much the only way to reliably win.

Still, overall, I'd reccommend this game. I think if you're really into souls-likes with a focus on parrying then you'll like this one.

Shadowrun: Hong Kong is the last of the Harebrained Schemes Shadowrun trilogy and the best one of them.

The game is still based on the tabletop RPG, which has solid mechanics that translate well into a cRPG. However, this time around it feels like there are more roleplay options and little flourishes tied to your stats and skills.

The big innovation is having Matrix combat be partly real time - when there are no (active) enemies on the screen you avoid detection by timing your movement and skirting sightlines. It's a bit jarring at first, but by the end of the game it feels natural. A hacking minigame has also been added this time around, which makes the Matrix part of the game feel more distinct.

The story for this one is good, significantly longer than both Shadowrun Returns and SR: Dragonfall, but it never feels like it drags. This time around your decisions during the game seem to carry more weight at the end as well, which is nice.

All in all, it's an amazing game and I highly recommend it!

Dungeons of Hinterberg is a rare game - managing to land almost every category of its design.

The combat is fun and allows for creativity through combining spells, special attacks and modifiers

The artstyle is wonderful - I'm not sure it can be called cel-shaded, but it's close. The environments are absolutely wonderful in this style. The love of Austrian country side that the devs must have really comes through

Exploration provides just enough nooks and crannies to keep things interesting for the length of the game

The puzzles aren't anything mind-bending, but just enough to stop you in your tracks every once in a while.

The social interactions in the town are very well made and give you the feeling of actually being meaningful.

In terms of length - I finished the game in about 15 hours, but you can extend the game time significantly if you want to make friends with every NPC and max out your stats. Also, there's New Game+

Honestly, this would be a perfect 10/10 game if there was a jump button instead of context based automatic jumping (which killed me more times than I'd like to admit).

Highly recommended