Recent reviews by Mug

Game's nuts and is a colossal step up from Pony Island. This game has its own signature charm and is a must play imo.

P.S. don't read any spoilers

Great game, I only wish that it had more time.

I am sad that this game probably won't get updated because it was really fun.

This game is absolutely incredible.
The only thing I can reasonably complain about is using mouse and keyboard in this game feels really bad, even though that would've been my preferred way of playing.
Nonetheless this game is a 10/10, absolutely awesome.

Lots of fun, I wouldn't worry too much about unlocking all of the clips though.

The Good:
+ Controls very well on controller (not so much on keyboard).
+ Fun, well designed boss fights. Can somewhat be on the easy side but overall manage to be within a sweet-spot of challenging but never frustrating.
+ Solid progression system, upgrades come at the end of areas or boss fights and typically allow for a new way to explore blocked off areas of the map.
+ Gameplay mechanics feel fully explored and don't overstay their welcome. The game feels brimming with content despite being on the short side.
++ Great dialogue overall, the lab reports you find are quite rare and feel special, the story, while simple, isn't bad either. The "villain" feels very relatable and his motivations make him feel like he isn't a villain at all.
+/- This doesn't really matter, but this game features a little bit of advanced tech (namely rocket jumping/boosting) which can allow you to access areas of the map earlier than otherwise intended, and makes many otherwise impossible jumps possible. I don't know whether or not this tech is required to reach certain areas, but it feels natural enough that most players can probably expect to figure it out at some point in the run.

The Bad:

- This may just be me, but in my opinion one gameplay mechanic isn't conveyed when it really should have been. Most notably, in one zone of the map a room-type is silently introduced in which you have to slay all of the enemies in the area to progress, but you are otherwise allowed to leave the area. Rooms which lock down when entered and only allow you to leave once all enemies are defeated already have been introduced by this point, this is not one of those rooms. Because defeating enemies yields no reward in this game I didn't try defeating all the enemies in the room until 15 minutes later when I was already hopelessly lost, and surprise surprise, the game let me progress.

- Progression through the map lacks any difficulty in sections where you are allowed to use your mech. Your mech has so much health (starts with 6 ends with 16) and enemies all only deal 1 damage, have very limited health, and are all extremely predictable. On top of this almost all rooms can be skipped without needing to defeat the enemies inside. Save points which refill your hp entirely are also extremely abundant. Some of the puzzle areas also can be skipped entirely if you're willing to take a few measly points of damage. It is an entirely viable strategy to simply race through rooms without a care in the world for how much damage you take. In my opinion the best area in the game is easily the area in which you are mostly stripped of your mech.

+/- Some of the rooms containing cartridges don't show up on the map until you've entered the room, making them essentially secret areas. This is only true for 2 of the cartridges, but I expect that most players who want to unlock the final upgrade will have to look them up. This is okay and plenty of other games do similar things, but throughout the whole game I was under the impression that areas like this either didn't exist, or wouldn't contain items needed to unlock the final upgrade, and thus I didn't look for them. Because of the difficulty of backtracking in this game, searching for these areas the old fashioned way ought to be a right pain in the ass.

+/- The game is kind of short. Overall though I can't really consider this a con given the game feels like a full experience by the end.

The Ugly:

-- Backtracking. Backtracking in this game is usually necessary to find all of the cartridges on the map (which unlock additional palette swaps and can be used to upgrade your mech). The developers for whatever reason included no form of fast travel to checkpoints, and because it isn't the way some areas are intended to be moved through, backtracking through areas takes frustratingly long and can require you to re-complete certain puzzles. On top of this, if you think you might have forgotten something but aren't sure, you aren't allowed to just check the map, you will have to trek all the way back to a zone to simply view it on the map. Sometimes backtracking through certain paths is impossible and you will have to find another route, requiring more backtracking, and sometimes it is only possible by utilizing the aforementioned rocket boosting. I cannot stress enough how annoying it is to have to backtrack in this game, especially when the rest of the game is so well paced.

--- The ending sucks. SPOILERS AHEAD:

The story of the game builds you up to a climactic ending where the Laboratory's head scientist, Dr. Heinrich, who has been mistreated by his colleagues enacts his "evil plan" to save his beloved dog Barkley. Barkley is a "defective" dog who was given to Dr. Heinrich for use in bio experiments, Dr Heinrich takes a liking for the dog and decides to secretly spare his life. After finding that the dog is on death's door due to exposure to powerful carcinogens, the doctor secretly diverts funding from the laboratory experiments to medicine and life support for his beloved dog. At the conclusion of the game it is revealed that the rat whom you have been fighting against for most of the game's boss battles is actually Dr. Heinrich. He has transported his consciousness into the body of a rat in one of his experiments with the goal in mind to transport Barkley's consciousness into the body of a healthy animal.

Before the final battle, the doctor reveals that all of the trials the player has gone through during the game were merely experiments to see if Kiki the cat's body was a worthy vessel for Barkley. Before this battle, the doctor had also kidnapped your master, a soldier, Gary, who was stuck in the ship after a crash landing on the planet. He transports his consciousness into Gary's body and fights you for the game's final battle. After he ultimately defeats you in battle and prepares to use your body as a vessel for Barkley, Barkley smashes his life support tube and escapes, defeating the doctor in your stead. You then run off with Barkley and escape the planet in an escape pod and then roll the credits.

EXCUSE ME?????????????? How is Barkley healthy enough to do this? Wasn't he deathly ill? How is this a happy ending? Why are the animals smiling in the end? What happens to your master Gary? Is this sequel bait? Who approved this ending?

SPOILERS OVER

The game is so perfectly set up for an uncharacteristically emotional ending and somehow manages to completely soil it in favor of barely comedic, confusing garbage. Maybe this is just sequel bait and everything will be explained in Gato Roboto 2, but I can't help but doubt it. The game could have simply had no ending and just rolled credits and I would have been happier. Rushed does not begin to describe how this conclusion feels.

OH WELL. Overall I give this game a 7/10. At its full price of $6.79 USD I wouldn't give it a glowing recommendation unless you are really into metroid-like games, but overall it's worth its price unless you are particularly stingy. On sale however I think it is well worth its price tag even for penny pinchers like myself.

This game is a unique experience you won't get anywhere else, but has some glaring flaws. Its unique atmosphere and style is immediately captivating and the gameplay is satisfying for people who like detective sort of games, not to mention it is wonderfully polished and does a great job at enhancing the satisfaction which you'd have to feel for yourself. It feels great.

Here are a list of a few flaws which reduced my enjoyment of the game to about a 7/10, in order of least important to most important. I've elected to neglect a few minor design flaws which I consider too unimportant to mention.

1. The gameplay loop begins to feel stale. You are doing the same thing in this game from start to finish and there is very little variety. The gameplay involves searching for corpses and using the information hidden in frozen scenes to solve mysteries, and the game never takes this mechanic further than what you see in the first 30 minutes.

2. This game is about solving the identities and fates of all 60 crew members on the Obra Dinn. The system used to document this information through means of a book is admittedly highly polished and surprises me with its overall lack of flaws, allowing multiple options for fates to work in situations where cause of death is slightly ambiguous (crushed/strangled for example). The book even includes plenty of decoy options which are never used throughout the entire game avoiding the problem of solving mysteries through abuse of meta-knowledge of game mechanics.

It doesn't, however, come without problems. Whenever 3 crewmembers have their identites and fates correctly entered into the book, their information will be locked in and unable to be changed. In some ways this mechanic is great, it tells you that all of the other completed identities and fates written into the book contain inaccuracies which can give you enough of a hint to avoid getting hopelessly stuck. By having 2 crewmembers whose fates and identities you are sure of, however, you are essentially granted a cheat. Don't know which of the 4 Chinese crewmen were killed in this scene? Just try all of them and the game will lock it in for you when you get it right. Don't know which of the dozen crewmen died here? Just put them all in and see what sticks.

In a lot of situations this feels 'okay' but it often left a bad taste in my mouth knowing I merely cheated the system. None of the game's mysteries require you to solve them this way, all of them can be figured out through deduction or process of elimination, but each precious clue this game gives you is rare and one-of-a-kind. Tiny missed clues can make the game unsolvable without use of this method so I feel like it was intended, I just think there must be a better way of going about it.

3. Lack of quality of life. To traverse from corpse to corpse on the ship to revisit memories you must first find the corpse, whose location can be found in your book, walk to it and enter it. To leave the memory you must walk to a door which will let you leave. There is no sprint button, there is no method of fast travel. Within memories if you wish to enter the corpse of another crewmember who dies in the same Part, you won't be able to unless they had already died in that memory, which means that while travelling from memory to memory is convenient, it is only possible to travel backwards through the part, not forwards. Certain memories can only be accessed through corpses found within the memory of another corpse, but thankfully this is rare. I think that the lack of sprint or fast travel options contributes to a rustic charm that Obra Dinn is obviously going for, but having to constantly pause my thoughts to spend 30 seconds walking around the ship feels amiss in what is essentially a puzzle game.

4. The fourth and most critical flaw of this game is this: an underwhelming story with an underwhelming payoff. In a game with such attention to atmosphere atmosphere and where the core mechanics of the game involve slowly piecing together bits of a story in mostly reverse order, where the game demands an extreme attention to detail in every scene, there must be a compelling story in here. Unfortunately there is not, despite the game virtually screaming for it, the story is simple and can be summed up in a mere few sentences, and the payoff that your hours of painstaking deduction leads to is cool, but it wasn't the mind-blowing conclusion I had hoped, it really was just another small Part. It wasn't even fully animated which I felt could have been a cool conclusion to a story entirely composed in still shots.

---

If you like deduction and puzzle solving with a neat story and incredible atmosphere and polish, play this game, but only if the gameplay mechanics already sound compelling to you.

It is important to note that I am mostly ignoring the parts of the game which I found appealing, as this is mostly a critique and not a review. Overall, while finding this game considerably less enjoyable than the developer's previous installment, Paper's Please, mostly due to finding the core gameplay loop less enjoyable, Return of the Obra Dinn brings something new to the table which I can easily say has never been done before, and the level at polish at which this idea is realised is frankly incredible. For fans of the mystery genre, or of seafaring stories and tragedies, this is a must play.

In terms of personal enjoyment I give this game a 7/10, but its level of polish and originality definitely score a perfect 10.

I think Sekiro is a good game, and I actually would recommend it (albeit maybe not at its current price point), but it has many flaws that makes this game worse than its predecessors in many ways. I'll start with the smallest problems and work my way up. I'm leaving out spoilers for the most part.

- Lack of online: this may not be an issue for some people, but people who really enjoy the online aspects of souls games are out of luck entirely.

- Braindead stealth AI: This game's stealth is incredibly generous, blowing your stealth has almost no consequences and is just a waste of time. If you want to re-enter stealth, just run a short distance away and hide, enemies will sometimes check the last place they saw you, but give up extremely quickly and walk back to their usual position, begging to be stealth killed right after catching you.

- Exploration can be confusing: It is easy to miss some very important NPCs, paths, items, etc... on your first playthrough and become lost for hours. This might not be a problem for everyone, but this game basically screams at you to wiki it if you get lost. Some entire areas of the map, such as the Great Carp Feeding Grounds, I wasn't able to find the entrance to for over an hour, despite being right next to the area. When I went through the Hirata Estate for the first time, I didn't see Owl as he blended in with the fire and missed him entirely. When I got to the end of the Hirata Estate and the door was locked, I had no idea what to do, the man leading up to the door mentions illusions so I thought it might be an illusions and I couldn't figure it out until I looked it up. Apparently this happened to other players as well.

- Lack of boss and enemy variety: I found there weren't that many enemy types in the game, each miniboss is repeated at least once, and up to four times (5 total), many bosses come back as optional bosses as well. I feel like I could name all of the enemies and bosses just by memory. Fighting the same bosses multiple times can be fun because destroying them with the knowledge you earned fighting them for the first time is satisfying, sometimes (rarely) these encounters even have new phases which really test your skills. This is cool, but in a game where most bosses and mini-bosses are people with names, giving the same boss three different names and copy pasting it in different locations can be pretty damn immersion breaking. It also makes encounters feel less unique and special when you're left wondering "I wonder the next time I'm gonna see this boss".

- No weapon and armour variety: this really blows, not being able to customize your character removes a lot of the RPG elements that made Dark Souls games fun, this is a really big deal, but is forgivable if other elements of the game (loot, prosthetic tools, memories) make up for it, (spoiler: they don't).

- Prosthetic tools are mostly lame: most prosthetic tools in this game have limited use, with exception of the firecracker. Some tools are better than others and every tool gets its moment but many of them are too situational and cost spirit emblems.

- Prosthetic tool upgrades are very lame: Prosthetic tool upgrades aren't interesting, they aren't even upgrades, most of the time they are sidegrades or tiny upgrades, and sometimes they are even downgrades. Upgrading your prosthetic tools requires materials which can be easily and quickly farmed (with 1 exception) but even then, it's probably not worth your time unless you are achievement hunting.

- Esoteric Texts are a disappointment: You can only use one combat art at a time and even the lategame enhanced skill-tree ending ultimate combat arts are pretty much useless, cost lots of spirit emblems and deal less damage than just pressing R1. There are some good combat arts but High Monk is the only one that seems well designed (and it is being nerfed lol). The passives are alright and actually give you meaningful buffs, especially the one that lets you heal on deathblows, but aren't game changing in any way. The only truly good thing you get from esoteric texts is Mikiri Counter, which you get at the very beginning.

- Boss rewards are a disappointment: Prayer beads and memories increase your health and attack power respectively, but you don't get anything cool from bosses that isn't a key item for story purposes. Headless bosses are even more disappointing, and might as well give you nothing at all.

- Exploration is a disappointment: The vast majority of the things you find while exploring are not exciting to find. Most of the consumable items are useless and the more rare items will need to be farmed anyway. You will be let down by almost every pick up you find until you lower your expectations. Finding prayer beads is nice, they are usually very well hidden or hidden in ways that make you very unlikely to find them without a wiki, but the ones that you do find are rewarding. The biggest mini-quest in the game rewards you with a couple of garbage consumables regardless of the path you take.?

- Progression and subsequent playthroughs are a disappointment: This is just due to all of the problems I've mentioned already, The only meaningful progression in this game is prayer beads and memories,(esoteric texts and prosthetic upgrades suck), which is already extremely underwhelming and you can get all of these on your first playthrough. If you thought progression on your first playthrough was weak, on your second playthrough there is virtually none at all.

this game blows

Nov 19 2019

Vagante is a game that shows a lot of promise for the first few hours of play, but fails to deliver on a number of critical fronts to the point where I have to assume that the developers lost passion in the project, or simply didn't play their own game past the first couple of acts.

I should mention here I mostly played multiplayer

The Good:
Vagante has a very captivating early game, enemy types are interesting and fun to interact with, insta-kill boulders and spikes are often hilarious, and the gameplay feels familiar and fun to anybody familiar with 2D platformers and/or roguelikes. Bosses maintain a level of difficulty that is fair and allows for observant players to pick up on attack patterns.

The visuals and sound are on point and playing well genuinely feels amazing. Some basic puzzles are weaved into early levels which consist of bouncing off of enemy heads and stacking boulders from traps to reach otherwise unreachable rewards. Throwing enemy corpses can trigger traps to avoid taking damage and escorting a chicken safely to the end of the level rewards you with a healing item. The multiplayer also worked in my experience without a hitch.

The game plays exactly how you would expect a good roguelike to play, until you've started beating act 2 or otherwise entered into the later phases of the game.

The Bad:

There is far too much for me to mention here, which saddens me because a lot of the good is deeply rooted in its core, while a lot of the bad just feels like laziness, like the developers played the first couple of levels but never bothered beating the game themselves from start to finish. I'll be mentioning a bunch of specifics in this section but I'll do my best to make this readable for somebody who has never played the game. I'll be splitting the problems with this game into 2 main parts which are:

1. Health and health regeneration - As you would expect from roguelikes, health doesn't regerate in this game and is only recovered through:

finishing a level (20hp) , consuming a regen potion (30hp), saving a fairy (40hp) / chicken (10hp), using a Light shrine (0-~20hp randomly per 20g spent averaging ~5-6), burning spellbooks (10hp) or using rare items with lifesteal etc

The starting hitpoints of the player is 60-100 depending on class, and increases throughout the game as you gain vigor, however for the most part the ways you gain hitpoints stay static throughout the entire game. The bonfire is by far the most reliable form of healing, but by the 2nd act and even in the 1st act plenty of bosses or regular enemies are dealing 20 damage in a single hit. The fairy I mentioned only spawns on exactly the 2nd level of act 1, and never again. Regeneration potions spawn randomly and extremely rarely among a variety of other potions which can just as easily hurt you. Don't hope to get more than 1 or 2 of these in a typical run, if you get any at all. Chickens are finnicky and oftentimes you will find yourself taking more fall damage trying to navigate the chicken to the exit than the measley 10hp restores anyway, or accidentally end your run by landing on spikes. They also seem to stop spawning after act 2. The Light shrine only appears on a few levels and even then offers a pretty pathetic gold:hp ratio. Revival can be nice, especially as a tanky class as it actually scales with your hp (reviving you at 50% of your maximum), but it destroys the item it is attached to and there is no guarantee you will find an item with that quality. The same goes for lifesteal, which steals a rather pathetic amount of hp, which makes sense considering how valuable hitpoint are in this game.

2. How valuable are my hitpoints?

I just mentioned that your hitpoints are incredibly valuable in the mid-late section of the game. It can take several damageless levels to restore your hitpoints and as damage ramps up in the lategame you are getting absolutely chunked. your health is treated as a valuable resource, but the game has no qualms in instantly killing you for making minor mistakes, which seems contradictory as many traps only deal ~5 damage while others deal 999 and instantly kill. If you are playing multiplayer you can be revived at 1hp, but such a huge health swing is often too much to come back from (it costs 20hp to revive a teammate). Not to mention simply getting to the mid-lategame can take nearly an hour of work and can be erased instantly from full hp in a single misstep.

To solve this problem the game allows you to skip any boss you wish, no boss is required to fight save for the final boss. I think it goes without saying that this is a bad solution. You are rewarded with a key to a treasure chest (or a secret level to replace the next level) for defeating the boss, but bosses in this game get very difficult very quickly especially after act 2. The items in the treasure chests are also pretty pathetic, usually consisting of 1 piece of above average gear (which may or may not be useful to you at all), ~20 gold and a couple potions which are negative/useless as often as they are positive. Taking as few as 2 or even a single hit from mid-lategame bosses makes the item gained not worth the valuable hp lost.

Oftentimes you are better off just running through the level once you have acquired decent gear early game, stopping to steal from the shopkeeper lategame who often sells better items than the treasure chest holds anyway (and you can easily cheese him on spikes or leave him behind in an area where he cannot reach you). The 2-5 gold you get from defeating an enemy is not worth the potential damage dealt, especially considering The Light shrine's abysmal gold:hp ratio.

To end off the bad I have a couple of qualms which, while major, are not as big as the aforementioned issues.

3a. As mid-late game begins to rear its ugly head, many items can be or come enchanted with one or more additional elemental damage type, consisting of lightning, cold, poison, and fire damage, on top of the normal physical damage. This starts to cause a problem because all of these damage types are calculated separately and the damage numbers are kept separate, so a single attack can cause 5 or sometimes more ANNOYING LARGE damage numbers, combine that with a reasonably fast attack rate and/or multiple enemies and/or multiple party members and you literally cannot see your enemies, which is a problem when their attacks start dealing 30 damage and/or throwing you into insta-kill traps. The cleanliness and simplicity of early game damage numbers is completely lost in this absurd sea of pointless, differently colored. illegible arithmatic

3b. The magic system is clunky and overall terribly balanced, the spells you obtain throughout a run are completely random and some of them (ahem... summon monster) are absolutely broken and require no thought, while others (a lot of them actually) fall off lategame and become useless because they do not scale or hardly scale at all. In order to upgrade an existing spell of yours you have to be lucky enough to find another tome of a spell you have already found a tome for, and plenty of spells are still extremely weak lategame especially compared to spells like summon monster, which to save you time, is extremely broken and requires no skill whatsoever.

3c. Not a problem with the game itself but from what I've seen in about 20 minutes of looking is that the developers and studio, contrary to their promise of continual updates post-release, have fallen off the face of the earth, privating their steam profiles, radio silence on twitter. EDIT: this has since been resolved

Anyway I'm running out of characters.

TLDR, there is undeniably fun to be had in this game, and the first 2 acts are surprisingly well polished as well as balanced. The game is held back by some seriously questionable design decisions (such as skippable levels without unique boss loot), and a stunning lack of awareness of even the most obvious oversights.