Recent reviews by Kichi

This will probably sound redundant from other reviews but to put it simply:
-If you want a game with complex or challenging gameplay this really isn't the game for you.
-If you want a game with an interesting story focusing on a well written romance between two great characters, where the music, art, gameplay loops, and everything else are very expertly designed to enhance the core emotional feel of the game, then you should 100% get this.



Detailed Breakdown

First, lengthwise this game is probably 15-18 hours, assuming you mostly play for the main story rather than in a completionist way. Extra content doesn't add a whole lot, as my fiance and I got 100% completion in 22 hours.

As noted above, the gameplay is mostly very simple, and not particularly challenging. Most enemies have a specific pattern or trick to battling them, and once you know, even combining multiple enemies doesn't really add much depth.

The co-op mechanics are simple. It's neither a huge asset-nor a hinderance. If anything, it's probably slightly easier to solo that co-op the combat.

But what this game lacks in system complexity and challenge, it more than makes up for with a strong emotional core, supported by excellently tailored style, writing, art, music, and everything else. Even the way the basics of gameplay work out, including the game's leveling system, the way time passes as you do various things, and yes, even the way co-op works, all serve to really support and enhance the emotional core of this game: the romance between the two main characters.

Speaking of, both characters are amusing, and my fiance and I both regularly laughed, or found ourselves going "well that conversation is familiar." Even the loading screens use art of them going about daily life, one of while amused us greatly by literally being a mirror image of us on the couch playing the game.

To rephrase what I said at first: If you're here for what this game offers, it's amazing. Otherwise, probably pass on it.

I literally cannot recommend this game enough, and cannot even properly explain here without spoiling the game. This is an incredibly hard game to give details about without spoiling, but I'll try regardless. The TL;DR though is there's absolutely good reason it got so many game of the year awards, and it deserves every one of them, and you should 100% play without looking looking at spoilers.

It's a game where exploration and knowledge are your only forms of "progression." You are handed a solar system to explore, and whenever you die, you wake back up, right at the start again. This lets you play in short bursts, at your leisure, without fear of a stupid mistake really costing you anything. It gives easy breakpoints, and allows quick runs to explore some specific thing, then call it good if you want, or keep going if you have time and drive. It's like a sandbox in that you have this whole solar system to explore, with little immediate goal other than just that: explore and learn, and things you learn let you explore more, even without any added mechanics or upgrades.

To talk about form rather than function, the game is stylistically gorgeous, gives so many great sights, has an absolutely incredible OST, impeccable sound design, and an incredible amount of detail to be discovered, even beyond the big important stuff. The devs were dedicated to giving realistic physics too (obviously scaled and fiddled with to make it fun as a game, but as realistic as they could make them), to a truly marvelous extent, and understanding of these allows for some incredible emergent gameplay. The emotional notes of the game hit a bullseye every time, and the writing is as strong as any of the other aspects of this game.

One thing of note: They say when you boot the game a controller is recommended and they are not kidding, but they're should probably have been a little more specific in that you should use a controller with both joysticks and pressure-sensitive triggers! So a PS4 or XBox controller both work great, but a Switch Pro controller will be less than ideal. This is because when using your ship's thrusters, L2/R2 or LT/RT are your vertical controls. This means if those buttons are analog instead of pressure sensitive, then you can only thrust up/down at either 0% or 100%, rather than having that full spectrum of thrust power. Your horizontal controls are on the left joystick, and thus using a D-Pad or WASD is also going to have the same problems.

I love this game, so I'll leave my review how it opened: I literally cannot recommend this game enough.

It's like hotwheels with rocket boosters on steroids. Absolute gem and 100% recommended.

On a more actual review note:
The gameplay is incredibly smooth. It's very technical, and takes a lot of skill for harder levels, but provides one hell of an experience. User made and randomly generated content add a LOT of extra replayability, but if I'm being honest? You hardly need it. The fast paced, deadly racing in this game is great, the acrobatic flying, driving on walls and ceilings is spectacular, the OST is awesome.... there's just a a LOT to love here.

More chill than Beat Saber, and different enough that you could easily get both and enjoy them for different reasons. The 80s Synthwave vibe is leaned into hard, and it works real well for this game. Definitely recommended. Will probably edit this for a lot more detail once I've checked out the modding scene and such

Pretty much THE killer VR app now.

I don't feel like I need to review it too much because the game is pretty self explanitory. So I'll just say it's an incredibly good and fun game, and if you have a VR headset, this is a must buy.

And I'll admit, I'm partly reviewing to offset the review-bombing it's currently getting after the first music pack it's released, so I'll address some concerns you may have after hearing about it, or reading other reviews.

1: Yes, it's still "early access," but releasing paid DLC. That's partly for the nature of having to licence music for a music pack. It's also not horribly expensive, though a bit pricier than I'd prefer, at $2 per song. That said, the base game is quite cheap, so I'm not too concerned about the overall cost still.

2: Yes, the game has a very active modder community, including custom songs, swords, and a whole bunch of other stuff, and it adds a LOT to the game.

3: No the devs did NOT "remove mods" or "disable modding" or any such thing. They've never officially supported it in the first place, but they updated the game, and changed a lot of things. This is where the Early Access hits hardest. If they optimize the game, change UI, or basically anything, mods often break. For Early Access, the game is otherwise incredibly well polished and optimized, and I've only seen one leaderboard reset. So to reitterate: THEY DID NOT INTENTIONALLY DO ANYTHING TO THE MODDING COMMUNITY, they just updated the game, and it broke a lot of mods, it happens. The modding community is dedicated, as I said, and a bunch of the mods, including custom songs are already updated for the new version of the game.

If you're worries about the devs specifically trying to stop modders, I wouldn't worry. The modding community has already pretty much agreed on it being a bad idea to step on the devs toes (for example, releasing the DLC songs for free as custom songs), and as long as they don't I really doubt the devs would fight them on any of it.

That's pretty much all I'll say on the issue, because almost every negative review is "Devs how dare you remove the mods."

Again, it's an incredibly fun game, very intuitive to start, with a high level of skill you can build up as you play, and very easy to put a LOT of hours in, especially with the mods that are available.

So I played and loved the original Windlands, and when I saw the sequel had a story, bow based combat and multiplayer, I was stoked to a level most would say was probably a bad idea because that level of hype usually leads to letdowns.

In short, it did not let me down, and is now my #1 favorite VR experience.

Pros/cons list:
PROS:
-You feel like spiderman with the grappling hook swinging
-Really comfortable for a full motion VR game
-Fun bow based combat
-Really well styled fun graphics
-A fun storyline
-Lots of fun exploring/looking for collectibles
-All very fun solo, but somehow the whole experience is that much more incredible with friends
-Can play cross platform with Oculus and Viveport players! (Hopefully also PSVR players when that comes out be we don't know yet)
-Might turn into a longer running series, from what I've heard, so if you like it and it does well, expect more to come.
CONS:
-Need to develop at least some amount of being used to VR motion
-Storyline is a little short (but given the devs are pretty indie, it's understandable)
-Cross Platform Multiplayer cannot be set to friends only (for obvious reasons), but there's no password system to lock it down otherwise. Not a huge deal, but figured it is good to note.


You WILL probably need to develop a level of VR-legs to play, as it's an intense game with the motion, between the high speed parkour/jumping and grappling hook swinging, and if you need to sit down and play seated, don't feel bad at all! ANd with that said, I have to say, the motion sickness issues are almost nonexistant. I don't know how they did it, but the only confort setting I need to use is segmented turning (smooth turning always is hard on me), but with just that, they made an intense full motion VR game I can actually play standing without falling over. It's honestly an incredible accomplishment.

Playing with Oculus at least, the controls are easy to learn, and fast to get a good handle on some of the physics and momentum based stuff. Before I was done with the first boss, I was regularly swinging myself into the air, firing my bow from the peak of my jump, and landing shots. Even still, there's a high skill ceiling, and you can keep getting better and better as you play.

The story is only 3 areas long, but with usually multiple bosses per area, that's not too bad. Given this is an indie team, I,m actually impressed with how large the areas are, and how much there is to explore and play with. Plus, the available gameplay is really lengthened by collectible hunting (which is actually fun, and not a slog, thanks to all the exploration that comes with it and exploration itself being fun with the movement), challenges (I'm still only starting that after 6 hours and just beating the game now, and I still have some collectible hunting to do), and playing with different friends.

All in all, this is a GREAT game, which I HIGHLY recommend. Especially if you have friends who also have VR headsets, get a few copies and play together, you won't regret it at all!

PS: I've seen talk of this turning into a longer running series, and I could not be happier about that possibly being true.

Now, while this game is a lot of fun, it's not without issues. I love the game, put a lot of time in, BUT...

I want to write what I feel is a pretty fair review, that one could use to weigh pros and cons.

I'll start with the whole recent Paid DLC debacle by saying I understand the reason for making it paid, but also STILL don't think it's a good idea. ON one hand, they recently lost a lot of money in a lawsuit filed against them by Trendy Entertainment (the guys behind Dungeon Defenders). It was a settlement, but that still means they lost money they had planned to put towards the release of the game. One method to regain that is an optional paid DLC. Unfortunately, it's overly expensive, especially considering it's mostly a tech test, and it also faces pay-to-win problems, both of which are significant detractors from any plus-sides I can make about it.

As for the base game, it's a lot of fun, and they have been VERY reliable with making updates and improvements on a regular basis. This is why I forgive the game overall depite viewing the DLC fiasco very negatively. It's definitely easy to put in a lot of hours, the workshop mods add even more value, and they're almost always adding more stuff.

As for the downsides of the base game...well, the biggest is opimization. TO put it mildly, add 50% to every minimum requirement they have listed. Period. It's been improved a lot, but the game is 60+ GB on the HDD, still suffers framerate and resource usage issues to the point that my really nice gaming Rig rarely gets more than 45FPS with medium settings. ON a lower end machine, you will find it's hard to run, if not impossible, even on low settings.

I'm not gonna remark on gameplay mechanics much aside from saying if you like survival/building games like Minecraft, Terraria, sStarbound, etc, but don't necessarily need the procedurally generated world aspects, and don't mind it being a lot less forgiving regarding risk, reward, and death stuff, then it's really a fun game. The Dino taming adds a fun side to the game too, and offers a good twist on the survival/building formula. They even let you tweak values on your servers in case you don't like how slow (or fast, if you really believe that) the process is by default.


TL;DR: Overall, it's a really fun game, but it has a lot of issues, and optimization is a huge one. If your computer isn't at least deserving the term "pretty good," you probably won't wanna bother until optimization gets notably improved, but if you can run it, the base game is worth it. The DLC thing is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, but the company and game have otherwise been good enough that I'll forgive it, even if I won't support that particulardecision.

UPDATE AS OF 11/24/2017: The game has recieved huge performance boosts, and runs much better. The upcoming expansion looks really good, and all in all I feel the negatives of this have been pretty much all negated. While I still don't like that they put put a fairly hefty paid DLC before release, now that we are post release, I don't have that problem with the announced Abberration expansion. In fact, they seem to have put a lot of effort into that one, so I'm honestly excited to see it, especially with all the added movement mechanics.

There are dogs.

11/10