Recent reviews by Morshu The Shopkeeper

12 years and still no 3-rd game, remake of the 1st, or even a PC port of the Original.

Gambling w/e having to take out loans or bet your entire life savings.

Certified shopkeeper's bestseller!

Game is simple & fun. A bit repetitive later on, but the quest only become more silly over time.

Cheap, quick and fun. The narration is fun at first, but it gets old after a few runs, since the lines keep repeating. It has some good replayability, runs don't take too long. It has some tactical elements and strategy, since it is turn-based. The UI & Map is a bit janky, but still playable enough to enjoy. Not breathtaking, but good enough. Sometimes good enough is still good.

A frequent bug that I get is using the use potion/equipment menu a bit too fast and it end's up bugging the next event card, meaning you cannot continue the run, unless it can be drawn, an easy fix I found was to click the top-left arrow for the pause menu, save & exit to the main menu & then resume the run.

It's alright, the "Battle Passes" can be unlocked by playing the game, game has no FOMO and the Micro-transactions are actually MICRO.

The game which started the rhythm game hype. It gets the job done, there are games which do certain elements better, but this one is still the OG, just like Crypt of the Necrodancer. The gamma can be a bit of an eyesore, but you can adjust it to your preference. Still planing on playing this in the future, even if it get no more updates. A very fun and short game with a decent amount of replay value.

It's slowly getting where it needs to be. A few more missions, talents and maybe some new enemies & weapons and it will be worth the price.

Get it on sale now, skip if you don't play games like Verminetide or Left 4 Dead.

Currently on my second playthrough. Already finding lots of stuff I missed and I'm not even doing the evil choices. You can probably cut a good 30-40 hours of me doing character builds, quests and hints for them when I get stuck, without spoilers. By all means, I don't play CRPG's in general. But this one really is a sandbox story where you can make your own fun, and play it multiple times. Yes this game is trully CHOICES ACTUALLY MATTER! At least those concerning key NPC's and how you interact with them & your companions which are not all created equal. Plenty of quality of life improvements, with maybe more to come?

Just get it, now or on discount if you are really on the fence. But it's really good fun solo AND with friends.
No brain recommendation.

Feels like booting up an old CRT Windows 98 PC, hoping that it has some kind of games for you to play. I'm not really a fan of puzzle games of any kind, but I found my time here well spent.
If you are looking for a vintage experience that takes you back in time, give this a try! God knows that this is the studio's last game, due to them having to close down.

Please add trackers to the collectable achievements! (Wake The Devil, Scholar and a Gentleman, Goodbye Mr. Deneveux) You had the trackers in West of Dead, please add them here! For those of us who are doing 100% and want to know how much longer we have to do it!

The music, art & animations are literally torn out of the comic book. The lore, voice acting & visuals are what a Hellboy game should be. Where it's lacking is the polishing and the actual rogue-like elements. There are in-game upgrades, but the rewards give out in runs are slow and random in amounts, even if that is the point, i rarely ever have to make choices between rewards due to limited room spawns.

Upgrades are expensive but meaningful, there is meta-progression, but the combat does still feel like operating on tank controls. When fighting multiple big enemies or "Big Bads" as the game calls them, you can only focus on one, that's not the problem, it's the fact that a room layers multiple of them in the later levels and expects you to dodge/block see incoming attack with the camera glued to your shoulder, whilst you cannot see or hear the enemies on your sides hitting you, taking your shield/toughness away. It gets worse if you have your back to a corner, and are covered in enemies, good luck seeing if that is the case. Camera work needs to be improved for combat, in those scenarios.

And the bugs I have encountered so far are not game breaking, but a bit frustrating. So i will make a list for those which I've encountered and had issues with:

1:Punching an enemy who is stunned next to a wall, sometimes does not push them into the wall, resulting in the animation of them being tossed/pushed/knocked to not play, resulting in my punch doing no damage, and no impact.

2: Whilst fighting the Faithless King, doing his charges, power punch next to an open door, got him stuck for a good fraction of a second, resulting in me charming with the shield to avoid his punch, it being delayed, and him punching me after the shield timer was gone. Did a re-run and tried again, and the bug happened, the open doors in the entrance are blocking him pathing during the charge, after he is done charging. An easy fix would be the door closing during the fight perhaps?

3: Trying to jump down to enemy to perform a slam attack is near impossible to do depending on elevation as the delay between key presses has a delay, and it might need to be shortened in order for a slam attack to register. Which it almost never does if you are directly on top of a big enemy.

4: Once payback is charged, the noise it makes to indicate that you can use it, gets stuck and repeated on loop. Which is not a problem to start of with, but after the 4-5-6-7th jingle it starts to get on my nerves and results in me generally dodging more than blocking, and only using it when I take big hits from big enemies, rather than perfect blocking. Please fix the sound so that it plays once or twice and not 24/7 loop like an alarm!

5: Combat music loops after defeating all enemies in a room. I am uncertain what is the cause of this, but after multiple playthroughs it keeps happening and it takes me out of the moment to moment gameplay when I am actively looking for enemies and the room is empty, yet combat music is still playing.

6: Grenade launcher animation gets bugged, usually the model of the weapon being adjusted at an odd angle, if during the animation I am hit or dodge. Resulting in the subsequent reload animations for the run functioning properly, but looking rather silly.

I've played Upstream Arcade's other game, West of Dead. I'm familiar with their visual style and the fact that I had similar issues with West of Dead, which were somewhat, fixed with later patches. So please, if West of Dead can't get the polishing due to reasons which I am not aware of, then please put more effort into polishing this one! The fans love it, and it shows.

Edit: After beating the game multiple times and currently doing collectable runs to get 100% completion.
The game does really feel like a 5-6 issue video game version of a hellboy comic, the combat is slow and feel Ssluggish. My issues generally come from small bugs, which can easily be fixed, as well as a small decrease in the input delay for attacks, blocking and use of the charm.

It's really much a Rogue-light, rather than a Rogue-like. Hopefully the game gets more content updates & quality of life improvements! The game is worth the price if you are a Hellboy fan, otherwise, wait for it to go on sale.