Recent reviews by Pyetech

Does nothing new compared to Vampire Survivors or Dota's Crownfall: Nest of Thorns.

EDIT: Having played many more hours, I still think the game is too derivative but it's also too addicting. It's very grindy and upgrade-gated, to the point where it reminds me of the South Park quote: "What do you mean? Now we can finally play the game."

Hollow Knight: Silksong is a great game that's both lengthy and rewarding. Movement and combat feel very fluid, stylish, and responsive. The Bloodborne-style offense-focused combat (where you must deal damage to heal) fits the game well. The map is diverse and interconnected, with numerous discoverable shortcuts and secret passages.

I know there's been a lot of discussion about whether the game is too difficult. It's high skill cap and certainly not easy, but as someone with experience with Soulslikes, I wouldn't say it's overly difficult. I think Silksong's level of difficulty is appropriate and I hope it remains unchanged. The bosses are extremely generous with their telegraphs and the player has access to a built-in heal, so at worst, it felt "tough but fair". There's a grand total of one boss that I thought was poorly designed (Groal the Great), and one that frustrated me with its difficulty (Lost Lace). I used the Wanderer's Crest for pretty much the entirety of my playthrough.

My only complaints are the number of low-effort "kill waves of normal enemies" gauntlet rooms, and quest design that often asks you to backtrack to areas you've already cleared to search for objects or to kill a certain number of enemies (these quests should've been available at the start of your exploration).

I don't tend to notice a video game's music, but there are some great tracks here, with "Cogwork Core" being the standout as far as I'm concerned.

For $20, Hollow Knight: Silksong is a no-brainer.

Monster Hunter: Wilds is perhaps a disappointing sequel to Monster Hunter: World and an incremental upgrade at best, but it's still a very good game.

To preface this: as for my experience with the series, I've extensively played and loved Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate (in which I mained the Greatsword) and Monster Hunter: World (in which I mained the Longsword). In Wilds, I chose to try something new and mained the Hammer.

The actual monster hunting gameplay is still very solid. I enjoy the wound system they added with Wilds, even if it is a bit shallow.

However, many of the changes made from World are to the game's detriment. Seikrets have extremely negative consequences: they (by default) automatically run you to your objective, which deemphasizes exploring and learning the maps; they can climb, cross, and jump off of places where the player character can't by themselves, encouraging environment design where it is difficult to determine if there is a navigable path or not and generally making seikrets necessary for trial and error exploration; and they can be called in combat, allowing the player to cancel animations, use items, and sharpen their weapons while moving, which discourages learning a monster's moveset to identify where and when it would be safe to plant your feet and stand still to perform these actions. I do like that seikrets give the player more opportunities to perform jumping attacks for mount damage.

The story is fine but there are way too many drawn-out cutscenes and segments that limit your movement to the extent that they might as well be cutscenes. It's not uncommon to have a cutscene of people talking followed by a scripted on-rails seikret ride while people talk, followed by another cutscene of people talking. I did not appreciate my exploration and sense of adventure being limited by random "you can't go there yet" areas for the sake of the story.

The general interface, menuing, and systems for grouping are as clunky as ever.

Technically, it looks good although I do notice frequent polygon and texture LOD pop-in and I expect higher framerates than I'm getting.

The game's difficulty is lacking until partway into High Rank; it wasn't until I started fighting a title update monster that I felt the need to go out of my way to upgrade or optimize any of my gear. I haven't noticed particular power spikes like, for example, Anjanath in World...without a high difficulty, there's no incentive to itemize against your opponents, which means there's no reason to go back and farm monsters for parts, so the gameplay loop breaks down a bit. I would say 6+ star quests are appropriately difficult.

Postlaunch updates have been relatively slow.

I know that all sounds very negative but I enjoyed the endgame gameplay loop quite a bit, and was sad when I'd finished all the content. I will definitely be buying the inevitable G-Rank expansion on release.

It's good; it seems like more of everything from Monster Train 1. The gameplay is definitely there and I like the variety of the challenge mode scenarios. There are plenty of Clans to level up and combine in unique ways. The meta-goals are nice and lasted me 30 hours but I would've loved more of them for smoother/extended progression, perhaps like an in-game achievement system sort of thing. The story/cutscenes are pretty awful. I also miss combining units like you could with the first game's DLC. Slay the Spire is probably still superior but Monster Train 2 certainly scratches my roguelite deckbuilder itch.

It's more Elden Ring, and a lot more of it at that--Shadow of the Erdtree contains as much content as most action RPG games today, if not more.

The map design has been changed for the better. There are fewer formulaic caves and crypts, and the region is divided into vertically stacked plateaus. It's still open in terms of design, but it's not quite as overwhelmingly expansive in every direction as the continents were in the base game. The player is pleasantly teased with new plateaus when looking down or up, and accessing them is a reward for exploration, generally. The other reward for exploration is Scadutree Fragments, which permanently increase your attack and defense in the DLC and therefore make thorough exploration mandatory. As usual, there are secrets within secrets, and in true From Software DLC fashion, a secret so obtuse that it is nearly impossible for a solo player to decipher. As in the base game, you will be bombarded with crafting materials, smithing stones, new weapons, new armor, spirit ashes, new spells, etc., the vast majority of which are either useless, against the spirit of the game, or have too high of a barrier to entry.

The story has a few beats but is cryptic as ever, both in terms of what's happening and how you should respond. There is essentially no connection between the lands of the base game and those of this DLC, either in story or gameplay. I think I would've preferred it to mesh more seamlessly together rather than being so disparate.

The combat is as good as it ever was. I found the difficulty curve to be identical to the base game: it starts off hard but given the open-world nature of the game, with exploration, it's very possible to outlevel the midgame content and only fight bosses when they're easier than they should be. The endgame content is a test of skill, and I enjoyed the slow process of learning and mastering the endgame bosses, particularly Bayle (though the camera lock-on was wonky) and the final boss. However, the penultimate encounter, Needle-Knight Leda and Allies, was absolute trash in terms of design if you're doing a no-summon run.

It famously took two years for From Software to develop the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC. Would I have preferred them to work on a new game instead? Maybe, but this is such a meaty addition to such a seminal game that I'm happy to see Elden Ring stuffed with even more content that people will enjoy for years to come.

Undoubtedly 2023's Game of the Year. Amazing worldbuilding, great story, very interesting characters (Shadowheart being the breakout), rewarding exploration, significant and impactful decisions to make, extremely talented voice acting, expressive animations, and serviceable combat. The attention to detail given the game's level of freedom is remarkable, with voice acted dialogue even for unusual situations. I was very easily able to immerse myself in the role-playing; I felt like a detective and a historian. Sometimes you are asked to make decisions based on incomplete information, but I suppose that's realistic.

Multiplayer is supported but the game mechanics simply aren't designed for it--especially if everyone's priorities are not on the same page.

Really a masterfully designed game, with such an obvious premise that it's a wonder it hasn't been made before (or at least, not successfully). At the end of the day, Balatro has very little to do with poker. I enjoyed winning but I enjoyed collecting everything even more. However, I feel the game falls apart in the higher difficulties due to the level of randomness, requiring the player to restart repeatedly to get a run off the ground.

Elden Ring is a seminal game with a massive scale, and is certainly 2022's Game of the Year, but the open world experiment is not entirely successful.

The especially large early areas are my least favorite because the points of interest are too spread out for my liking. For someone who exhaustively explores games, Elden Ring's open world can be a chore to fully explore, particularly because mists and rock outcrops frequently limit visibility. A map that tracks where you've already been would've been a godsend, though I would've still found myself methodically exploring to ensure I didn't miss anything (to the detriment of my own fun).

From Software's strength has always been in the meticulously hand-crafted, tightly designed, labyrinthine areas, and even in their previous games, the more open areas have been the weakest. Rest assured, though, that with the exception of the very samey Chalice Dungeon-like crypts, the points of interest in Elden Ring are as good as or better than anything they've made before.

Souls games have always had an issue where players will (or at least can) outscale the difficulty curve as the game goes on. For example, while not a smooth curve, in the original Dark Souls, you can tell that the difficulty spikes were deliberate all the way through Ornstein and Smough. After that, the world opens up, and many players do the bosses out of their "intended" order and find some of them to be trivial. The problem is worse than ever in Elden Ring because while there is an intended path through the game, the open world provides many more ways for players to outlevel the main path. This issue has downstream effects such as discouraging the usage of consumables, soul ashes, new weapons, etc.. It also discourages players from learning a fight, playing conservatively, getting good, and barely pulling out a victory, since there is always the option to come back later when the encounter will be much easier. To be clear, I found the beginning and also the end of the game (when you've hit soft- or hard- caps) to be difficult, with uneven difficulty in the middle where I sometimes found myself blowing through content.

A common criticism levied against the game is that bosses and minibosses get repeated a few times in the optional content, which is true and unfortunate, but ultimately not a big deal to me. Horseback combat is much less engaging than on-foot combat--mostly because elements of timing are removed--so I consider that feature to be a failure overall. The Stakes of Marika, however, mitigate long runbacks while still disallowing warping, and are an elegant solution.

I found myself getting invested in the lore of Elden Ring as the game went on, despite its ludonarrative issues. As the player, you are frequently asked to make stark decisions with no information to go on, and even worse, you're generally expected to simply answer in the affirmative if you want to see the content. NPCs will appear and disappear at seemingly random locations without warning as you progress through their stories, which is inelegant but fine, I suppose, if the intent is to force the player to just go with the flow. It is very difficult to piece together what is happening, and there is simply not enough information in the game to determine good from evil, if there even is a good.

The game engine is serviceable; there are some beautiful and detailed vistas with incredible draw distances and no loading times. While the torch is the neatest and most useful it's ever been, I think a state-of-the-art lighting system would've brought the visuals to another level.

Again, Elden Ring is a content-rich, memorable game that will be analyzed and used as a yardstick for years to come. Western game developers are clearly concerned about their ability to compete, and for good reason.

Worth playing. Strategic gameplay and an interesting (if impregnable) story.

Simply the best incremental game I've come across. Unlock systems upon systems as you optimize your path forward. I am continually impressed with how well-designed Trimps is, in that it provides endless satisfying short- and long-term goals with permanent benefits.

The dev releases regular updates and is very good at providing catch-up mechanics and quality of life changes for newer players without upsetting the veterans. It's truly free to play: no paywalls nor pay-to-win.

EDIT: I have played this game off Steam for upwards of half a decade.