Recent reviews by Lars

In initial EA this was in my eyes a promising but so far lacking entry in the Survivorslike genre.

<Fast forward one year, or so>

This is really fun! Since I last dipped my feet in proper on this game, there are now many more classes with surprising and distinct playstyles and limitations that don't even look like they should work in this genre of game (Hello Gunslinger) but it somehow does.

There is also a lot more meta progression now which is tied into beating Challenges, which also look like they have no business actually working in a Survivors like, but it somehow does. I'm nowhere through the list of challenges to unlock upgrades yet, but I can't forget challenges such as -100% movement speed (literally tower defense), only 'Tainted' upgrades (On paper, terrible upgrades) on levelups, or having to beat a survival stage with just 1 HP. I've had a surprisingly good time working out how to beat these challenges.

While I'm not 'Endgame' yet, I also want to mention that so far from the varities of builds of tried such as melee, auras, multihit projectiles or summons, they all get the job done (assuming a little luck with your upgrades of course).

I could gush on with more stuff I think this game does well, but I think it will suffice to say Rogue: Genesia is already a high quality entry into its genre.

I think think the only thing I can personally say I'm not a fan of is how long it takes to beat a run when you start doing the higher world tiers. 1 hour plus to get through a run feels too long even if it is broken up into smaller stages and opportunities to save and resume at your leisure.

Oh, and as an edit I need to mention that the Steam Store page for this game is terribly outdated, if anyone from the devs are checking in, I strongly suggest updating the videos, screenshots and Store page descriptions, and for the readers, there's quite a bit more going on than the Store page lets on.

A very well put together survivorslike with town elements from Stardew Valley set in a world of freak alien creatures known as Vtubers who fight and murder hordes of fans.. to save them! For FREEDOM!

So I first heard of this game on a Discord I frequent because of a mobile Gacha game I play, it sounded like it was a fun fan made survivorslike, and it was getting a release on Steam, and it was going to be free. I mulled it over for a bit but eventually on a dull Sunday I decided I'd give this a look myself, being a fairly dedicated survivorslike enjoyer, myself.

So here's my thoughts after a few runs:

TLDR: It's a little weeb. And its very good. Also, this is free, and there is a lot of game here

Pros:
- For a Holo-something fan game, the survivorslike gameplay is very solid!
- Abilities as well explained and work as you'd expect, the same goes for upgrades. Its clear and understandable, and you would perhaps think this is a given,but in the land of survivorslikes it is not. Take notes please, Halls of Torment.
- Each character I've played so far have very distinct playstyles, and they come with personal skill upgrades to tailor their style aside from the standard weapon and item choices.
- Deeper weapon evolve system than the survivorslike usual, with some weapons having multiple different but exclusive evolves that are completely different.
- 2D art and sound is phenomenal, for a fan project. I really dig the sprites and animations.
- Side game which I've just barely dipped into. It looks like Stardew Valley a bit, but I might be wrong. Even if I'm wrong I can still fish there, and steal fish from the other Vtubers, which makes this a 2023 GOTY contender.
- Its free ? Actually free though, not F2P. If there's a way to give my VISA details here I haven't found it yet. And this is not a demo, its a game.

Cons:
- It is a little weeb

Thoughts about Halls of Torment after playing Early Access for about 25h:

I've enjoyed this survivorslike a lot so far. It follows the 'standards' of the genre fairly faithfully, if you've played any other survivorslike you'll be instantly familiar here, but there's a few things here that make this game stand out from the rest.

First is the 'feel' of the game, it's retro, but its very authentic about it as well. The visual and audio style really brings me back to loved classics like Diablo and Baldur's Gate.

Second, the game feels tight. There's so far around 7 different classes you can play, and their all have distinct play styles, and at least for the content currently in the game, they're all equally viable. You can just pick which you like the most and have reasonable success with it, whether its a melee warrior, archer, cleric or spellcaster.

That said, after the hours I've put in I'm pretty much finished with what the game currently has. I didn't buy all the upgrades yet and there's still a few achievements I can hunt, but the game only has three maps and no difficulty or challenge settings, so at this point every run is pretty much the same. This game has a great foundation but for its 1.0 release I think it needs a little more flesh in the form of more maps and challenges for the more dedicated player.

I'm hopeful for more and eager to see how this game develops in the future, but if you're eager for a new Survivors like game and don't mind the gamble of Early Access, you can do far worse than this. I certainly feel like I've got my $5 worth already from this game.

I was a bit worried at first during the earlier builds of the game but the devs have really come through with a lot of content, making Army of Ruin in my book one of the top dogs of 'Survivors-likes'. Its a VERY competent entry into the genre and there is a lot to sink your teeth into here.

If you came here looking for options to your favourite Survivors game, I feel safe recommending this one.

This is really good

For old people: Its like Asteroids, but really, really good.
For middle-aged people: Its like Binding of Isaac, except its really good, and you also most of the time get a build going that works
For yung people: No battlepass, season pass, DLC in general or even participation prizes. Sorry!

Got a new pc a few weeks ago. i9-11900KF, RTX 3080, 32gb ram. What am I using it for? This game. Haven't even fired up Cyberpunk 2077 yet. Since finding this game a few days ago, this is what I choose to do.

Make of that what you will.

Addictive carcollectathon, beautiful visuals, cars handle superbly, and it is great fun racing with your friends.

...If you can get past the slew of annoying bugs and technical issues the game currently has. Daily challenges that just do not work. Performance degradation (game starts at 90 fps for me, after 2 hours of playtime its down to 30 fps). Online open world lobbies seem to be limited to 10-12 players, where in Horizon 4 you saw up to 70 at once per session, which leads into the next point, Horizon Arcade events which are required for seasonal challenges being IMPOSSIBLE to finish, since they need quite a few players to reach the goals. But 99 times out of 100, you're doing it alone.

I'm willing to have a little faith in the developers being able to fix these issues since Horizon 4 too was troubled at launch, but today it runs flawlessly. And despite the problems listed above, at its core, Horizon 5 is an incredibly fun playground for all things racing!

I will re-write my recommendation after the launch dust has settled and the release of Ascent's first major patches.

TL;DR: Love some cyberpunk action? High tolerance for big nasty bugs, up to and including resetting your progress in the game completely? Dive right in. Otherwise, I suggest waiting a bit for bug fixing patches before putting your money down.

In a lot more words: The Ascent is an action shooter with rpg elements and worldbuilding, and twinstick shooter controls, set in a cyberpunk inspired world. If you like some light legged ARPG style combat set in a seriously delicious cyberpunk setting with gorgeous visuals and a banger hard synth soundtrack, this is probably right up your alley.

When you get going on this game and catch sight of the city you're playing in proper, I instinctively compare it to the biggest budget releases, and it holds up, darn well, in fact. Its unbelieavable that this game was brought to life by a very small developer team consisting of 12 devs.

Moving onto gameplay, the action bits play pretty well. At its core, the game plays like a very capable twinstick shooter, while looking sexy as hell with its extremely detailed setting, great music, overall solid sound design and violent explosions and effects.

The term 'Action RPG' in the adverts for the game should be interpreted in the loosest of senses, however. The only RPG you find here are a fairly basic character creator, skill points to specialize your guy or girl as you like, and dialogue options to fill out some lore for the game. The only decisions you get, is if you want to accept or decline sidequests.

One very important thing to warn about however is that the game is buggy as hell right now. Ascent was really not ready for release, but here we are. Expect crashes, items not adding to your inventory after picking up, quest mobs not spawning as they should even after reloading the game, effectively killing your playthrough, save files disappearing, also of course killing your playthrough, your characters' weapons randomly firing endlessly without you pressing anything, and more. I'm sure some reading this will feel the urge to chime in that they didn't have any bugs so the game is fine, to you I say, I belive you and I'm happy for you, consider yourself very lucky. Because this game needs bugfixes, badly!

- New to Mass Effect? Only partially finished the trilogy?

Don't just sit there, get this and go play! The Mass Effect Trilogy is a true masterpiece in terms of epic stories, characters you will love to bond with (or love to hate), sci-fi worldbuilding, deep and fascinating lore and truly impactful game choices. Play the games in order, and export your character and his choices from each game to the next. You are in for a hell of a ride!

- Expert ME player who has been through it all before, maybe several times to see all endings?

Pass! While the visual and QoL improvements are definitely noticeable and welcome in the first game, 2 and 3 recieved only minor facelifts such as dynamic lighting and shadows, lens flares and godrays and the like. There's mods to make the first game look better, including QoL improvements such as custom FOV. That's right, you still need to install a mod to get a tolerable FOV if you like most people play your pc games with a monitor half a meter away from your face.


- The titles are mostly well paced. Typically there's missions of varying length but rarely more than 30 mins per mission, followed by (optional but recommended) interludes where you chat with your crew to learn interesting bits about them, thoughts on the previous mission, or visit a hub city to do some shopping. On a few occasions, the amount of time spent just running around and talking to different people can be a bit much. I remember at least one evening I was playing this, and didn't fire my guns a single time because there was a lot of story bits to talk through. I don't mind it that much since as mentioned above I LOVE the lore and characters on offer, but I also know some people get anxious if the downtime is long between the action-bits.

- None of the titles are without their small or big annoyances.

In Mass Effect 1, planet exploration is mostly a timeconsuming drag, and while exploring the game loves to constantly make you do the little stupid hacking minigame. Despite some improvements to weapon accuracy, there's no getting around that the combat is definitely starting to feel outdated and a bit janky.

Mass Effect 2 can feel 'gamey' because they for some reason felt the need to present a results screen after each mission, sorta makes you feel like you're playing through levels in an oldschool FPS like Duke3D again. While exploring, every single planet you come across can be scanned for resources which is at least better than driving around on them like the first game, but it still quickly becomes a dull chore if you don't want to miss out on stuff. Also more hacking minigames.

Mass Effect 3 wisely ditched the busywork regarding planet scanning, and bypassing locks are done automatically, but it has its own annoyances as well. First and foremost, unlike in the first game you can't holster your guns outside of combat and explore places without looking like a space murderhobo. Pretty darn annoying since the camera is a close and over your shoulder POV the whole time on missions with its zoomed and narrow FOV.
There is also the matter of big, vital plot points that were cut from the game at launch, and sold as DLC. In this package you don't have to worry about that, but lets not forget what they tried to pull with this game, there is no excuse for doing that, ever.
Finally, the mission log is incredibly unhelpful for some reason. Often it gives no hints which system you're supposed to go to, and it does not update if complete their conditions. ME1 and 2's logs were much better.

Concluding thoughts:

Now it might sound after the paragraphs above that I hate these games but I assure you, the positives these games gave me FAR outweighed their negatives. Sadly this game cannot get a GOTY from me since there are no fishing minigames, but the experiences and feels I've had with Mass Effect Legendary Edition are among the finest I can recall, EVER.

Mass Effect as a trilogy is a strong 9/10 for me.
Mass Effect Legendary Edition, judged as a remaster for those who have done it all before comes out less favourably. Lets say a 5/10 for the nice facelift it gave the first game.