Recent reviews by Spectral_Orion

Bruh, why is Pepe the Frog watching me bathe? Ya sick freak.

I don't know who would pay $16.99 for this game (I got it on sale for less than $2). As of writing this, I cleared the whole game with all achievements in exactly one hour. Kinda stretching that price tag there. . .just saying.

"Cube Runner" is a rough-around-the-edges autorunner with stiff, janky controls and some nice electronic music. The jump button (space bar) is sometimes unresponsive, which is unacceptable for a game that demands some pixel-perfect button presses.

One of the main gameplay gimmicks is the "gravity switch" (which is more like a plane switch, really). The biggest problem I have with it is that it disorients your mouse cursor, which will often make you run into those orange blocks you're supposed to destroy by clicking directly on them.

With that said, this is an okay game for a quick distraction so I'm giving it an iffy recommendation. If you're good at precision platformers, you'll probably clear it in a short time.

I'd give this a neutral rating if I could. A solid enough remake for a JRPG of the NES. I really liked the remastered soundtrack. But as for the definitive version of the game. . .just get the PSP version. Bonus dungeons and a superboss not present in any other version of the game.

As someone who played AoE2 since the 2000s, I'm genuinely disappointed with this DLC. By far the most buggy and unpolished thing I played from this franchise since Age of Mythology's "Tale of the Dragon" DLC. I'm already aware that this DLC is just a scenario compilation so I bit the bullet anyway.

As of writing this, the Komnenos, Stephen and Mstislav scenarios don't work for me. Nothing but a black screen. And whatever scenarios I actually got to play, I have mixed feelings. The Charlemagne scenario felt longer than it needed to be, especially with the extra requirements to advance to the Imperial Age just so you can finish the damn thing. Vortigern isn't fun. Temujin and Fetih are alright. Nobunaga is fine. . .up until the hard achievement requirements turning it into a micromanagement nightmare under a time limit.

If there are more DLCs in the future, please do better. At least make sure all scenarios can actually launch before you sell them on Steam.

Not a bad Backrooms game. Not a scary game if you're used to horror titles. A little on the short side but also relaxing and atmospheric.

Out here, we are

If you can't tell from the playtime already, I enjoyed the game a lot. While I'm more of a fan of Akuma Kira's Lost in Vivo, this is a solid dark fantasy RPG. I'm familiar with the Soulsborne games but I never played the King's Field or Shadow Tower series so I can't make comparisons. But I love dark, immersive worlds with tons of secrets and lots of cool weapons/spells to try out. If that's what you're looking for in a game, go ahead and give this one a try.

If you're seeing some of the recent negative reviews, many of them came from whiny, toxic, entitled infants who are pulling a heelvsbabyface (that one infamous chud Youtuber who threw a literal tantrum over pronoun selections in Bethesda's Starfield). They'll make all sorts of poor excuses like "I'm a paying customer, the game should be tailored to ME!" or "it goes against my religion!" or "who put politics in muh vidya games!" in order to justify targeted harassment and inflammatory behavior. They'll make a ton of thinly veiled attacks against the developer and the LBGTQ+ community while simultaneously playing the victim card, claiming they got banned for "sharing their views" and that the developer was being unprofessional (while devolving into mindless ad hominem attacks and throwing more accusations for the sake of starting more arguments). I don't think I need to go any further on how immature and hypocritical they are. If five seconds of changing pronouns on a menu that has no general effect on the gameplay bugs you that much, please take your whinefests elsewhere. It's unproductive and tiresome.

While I'm giving this game a recommendation, my feelings on the overall experience are mixed. I'll start with the positives.

Aesthetically, the game pulls off the minimalist pixelated look using only shades of monochrome and a blood red color. This gives the areas an intensely ethereal appearance on par with old 32-bit horror games. It also has great sound design, knowing when to add more tension or relief into an area's atmosphere. Many of the puzzles are well thought out.

Now, the negatives. The pause feature doesn't really work, as monsters can still move and kill you while "paused." The level design of each area can be all over the place; often, there are many labyrinthine corridors with too many dead ends and locked doors. Notes and important items can sometimes blend in with the environment, making it difficult to backtrack and see what you're actually missing.

There are a total of 5 endings: two of which are death-related, two that rely on whether you complete a specific optional puzzle in the game or not, and one secret ending that you can only get a hint on how to achieve by finding a note in a Rebirth playthrough. I'm cool with having multiple endings as they do give this game some replay value.

However, there's one major flaw. Even though the game does seem to be structured by chapters/areas, there is no actual chapter select. There's only one save file, so you can't go back to an earlier point in your playthrough. If you're a completionist and trying to get all achievements, you know where I'm going with this; if you miss ANYTHING and can't backtrack, you'd have to start a new playthrough to try again.

Ideally, you can complete everything the game offers you in just two full playthroughs. But to find out how to get the secret ending without looking up a guide, you need to do a Rebirth playthrough; if you do an Awakening playthrough first, you're probably going to end up with three separate playthroughs minimum just to get that last ending.

The final area in the Rebirth story path is also poorly designed and frustrating. To survive it, you'd pretty much have to speedrun it without knowing what you're supposed to do next. You get a short time limit to solve some puzzles, then explore a large area to find collectibles and wherever you're supposed to go and avoid the monsters. The ending also feels like a major slap in the face after going through more work, feeling like a hollow victory for the protagonist and places him into yet another less-than-ideal fate.

Overall, a decent pixel horror title with some glaring flaws.

A cheesy game for cheesy goblins such as myself.

Easily one of the best Sonic games ever made, serving as both a throwback to the Sega Genesis classics while including some new content of its own. The remixed older zones is a wonderful idea and the new zones are awesome. The whole damn soundtrack is MWAH! CHEF'S KISS!

But here are the evil parts.

32 separate Blue Spheres special stages for some unlockables and two hard achievements. If you thought the ones in S&K are hard, these are gonna piss you off.

The giant special stage rings are hidden in odd places. It's not like with S3&K where you can accidentally run into them very often.

The new special stage for the Chaos Emeralds is sporadic in difficulty. The 5th stage should've been moved to the 7th. Pretty damn aggravating.