Recent reviews by The Great Metaphor

Ok, look. If you're seeing this, you're probably an EBF fan that already knows they want this. I'm going to review this collection anyway, on the off chance you aren't. Here's a tl;dr: it's probably worth it.

Adventure Story: This game has neither Adventure nor Story. but it's a solid action platformer, and you don't need to be a fan of the series to enjoy it. And the extra content is good, so it's still good for returning fans. This game alone is probably worth the price, and it's not even the only worthwhile game in the collection. I know nostalgia is probably influenced my decision, but even that aside I still think it's a solid game.
After writing the rest of the review, I said a lot more about the game I don't like than the ones I do. So I'll specify two things I like about it: 1, it has a really intuitive pogo mechanic. 2, the upgraded bosses are more interesting than just being "the previous version, but stupid hard". The first one fights differently enough to its default counterpart to still be interesting, and the other 3 are so different they are basically brand new bosses,

Bullet Heaven: While it's less impressive than its sequel, and it certainly shows its age, it's still a good shoot-em-up from an odd era where shoot-em-ups that were designed to be played in multiple sessions could do well. I do think it's odd that that sub-genre never took off outside of flash. While I'd hesitate to recommend this collection from Bullet Heaven alone, but it's still worth checking out.
The extra characters are admittedly a bit lackluster (even if one helped me beat the base game where others I had unlocked couldn't), but still a nice addition.

Mecha Dress-Up: exactly what it says on the tin. Bafflingly, it has a really good soundtrack. That's the only interesting part

Brawl Royal: if you aren't familiar with this game already, don't get your hopes up, it's not half as interesting as it sounds. It's a quick-draw minigame with animations that are impressive for the time. It doesn't take too long to play, and the difficulty settings added in this version make it very approachable, so if you get the collection you might as well check it out.

The Kitten Game: I can't judge this game fairly, I refuse to bring such violence against that many cats.

Epic Battle Fantasy (1): I'll be honest, this game is worth nothing outside of the nostalgia for long-time fans of the series, and novelty for new ones. It's an RPG, stripped down to less than its bare essentials; no world map, no save points, no level ups, very little strategy; just beat up wave after wave of enemy until the game tells you to stop. The enemy selection isn't terribly interesting either, since every zone only has one enemy type outside of the boss.
A lot of the nostalgia (and novelty) is lost since all the copyrighted content had to be replaced. The game's probably better for it, and it was necessary for a retail release, but it's still a loss. It's worth noting that copyrighted content had to be altered in Brawl Royal too, but it's more interesting here.
The new soundtrack is pretty rad though.

Epic Battle Fantasy 2: A major improvement to the first game. There's more enemy variety, more strategy, saves, a bestiary (with enemy weakness and resistance data!), and level-ups. In fact, the level ups work differently than any other game in the series, leading to interesting decision making not seen its vastly superior successors, even if the latter games have features that do similar things. It still doesn't have a world map though, and it lacks the fleshed elemental weakness system that makes the later games so good. It's a tough sell for anyone other than hardcore fans, but probably barely worth your time.

Cat Cafe: It's a glorified minigame made for the mobile market. It might have been decent on that platform, but even with the balance changes, being moved to desktop did it no favors. I don't know why Kupo put it in here, other than the sake of taking videogame preservation to its logical limit. It's quiet boring, and in the dev commentary even Kupo says he doesn't like it.

demos, prototypes, and artbooks: I can't be bothered to go through them all, so no fair judgement for them either.

While the increased price compared to the other DLC might be a tough pill to swallow, Return to Castlevania is by far the best DLC for this game. (as long as you don't care about lore) Or at least, the best paid DLC. And the final boss is actually one of the more reasonably balanced final bosses in this game, curiously enough.
I wish I had more to say on this, but it's hard to say more. But if I had to, all I could say is that it suffers from the same issue the rest of the game does: Normal enemies do too much damage. But I sound like a broken record at this point.
I will say, the first boss is very diffacult by first boss standards, probably the hardest fair first boss in the game, but nothing that can't be overcome. (Especially compared to Mama Tick. ugh.)

The Queen and The Sea is a huge step up from the previous paid DLC. Two new bosses instead of one, and one of them's a final boss, giving some much-needed veriaty on the grind to get the first 4 boss cells. The bosses are crazy brutal, but aside from damage output are fair. (and I can't hold the damage output against this DLC in particular when the entire game has a problem with it, and most soulslike fans are crazy enough not to mind this game's overwhelming amount of punishment anyway...)
So, overall, would reccomend. Assuming you want to play Dead Cells at all, of course.

Fatal Falls is a tough sell compared to some of the other DLC as it doesn't really add anything that a dedicated player of this game can live without, except maybe some lore, but story is not Dead Cell's strongsuit. But it's still fun, having one of my favorite areas in this game, and a nice way to not fight that dang Timekeeper for the gajilienth time... if you can figure out how to access the Undying Shores. Just look up a guide for that, you'll never figure it out on your own.
Overall my thoughts on this DLC reflect most DLC for this game: "If you absolutely must play Dead Cells, then you ought to get all the DLC other than Bad Seed too"

The good content isn't spectacular, and the bad content; namely, the DLC's signature Mama Tick; is garbage. Across all the unreasonable content in both vinella and all the DLC, Mama Tick is by far the worst. Despite being an alternate first boss, her phase-transition attack is bar-none the hardest attack to dodge in the entire game. Her claws come out so quickly and so unpredictably that even with the warning the game gives it's an RNG fest on whether or not you get out unscathed.
Now, I've seen some reviews say "Don't buy this for the content, by it to support the developers." And as far as it goes, I agree. This is best seen as an excuse to shovel money into the developers' mouths, not for extra content. But considering I left a negative review of the base game, that's hard for me to recommend doing that either.

While I disapprove of the "lock the true ending behind crazy difficult content" mindset, this DLC is a lot of fun. The first half of the DLC is very reasonable despite the developer's claims, (Well, minus enemy damage output but the entire game has a problem with that) and the second half is mostly only diffacult because it's locked behind the 5 cell requirement, but anyone crazy enough to get 5 cells can handle the astrolab.
What puzzles me about this DLC though is that there's no reason not to get it. It's free, and if you don't like the new content and don't care about the true ending, you can just ignore it. So I'm not sure why Rise of the Giant is DLC instead of an update.
So, if you do play Dead Cells, go ahead and get this DLC. The only thing you lose if you don't like it is a tiny bit of drive space.

Dead Cells is a great game. The gameplay is fun, the levels are interesting despite most biomes sharing 50% of enemies, the music is overall really good, the references are fun, and the visuals... goodness, the visuals. I have no idea how a game that looks this good runs this well on my crappy computer that has 4 gigs of ram and shipped with Windows 8. The only notable lag was during one attack of one of the DLC bosses. I thoroughly enjoyed most of this game.

So, why am I giving a negative review?

In a nutshell: This game has no respect for you. This game hates you. It despises you. And there are two reasons for this: Damage output, and time.

First, damage. Normal enemies do way too much damage. Look, getting beaned by an attack because you threw out my parry too early? that's a skill issue. Losing half your health because you threw out your parry too early? That's cruel. Loosing a run because you threw out a parry too early against a normal enemy (NOT a big enemy) and lost half your health or got combo'd to death in a second? That's bull. Losing a 2+ hour run to the previous scenario? That's a call too turn on assist mode and severely reduce the enemy and trap damage output. Which I did eventually, and enemies still did a lot of damage. 20% enemy and trap damage, and the game still didn't feel fair at times.
And before anyone dismisses me with the thought 'git gud scrub' or 'hah, don't let this idiot a real souls game like-' I say:
-The first time I beat this game, I did it with assist mode off. That without any cells, but still.
-I've beaten Bloodborne's true ending, both the true ending and evil ending of Sekiro, and the remake of Demon Souls. And this game has more bull than any of them.
At least with Fromsoft games- or for a Rougelike example, Splunkey -you only lose 5-10 minutes, or like 15-30 in the later example, when you go from full health to dead in less than 5 seconds. At least when the same thing happens to you in Noita, another brutally difficult Rougelite that's really cool, the main path only takes like 20-40 minutes and if you go for any of the side content that takes dozens of hours, it's a case of "you know what you were getting into." But Dead Cell? The most basic ending can take over 2 hours unless you speedrun. 2 whole hours, down the drain, because a basic enemy got a cheep shot at you in the latter half of the game.
...It's worth noting that the obscene damage output mostly has to do with normal enemies. Strangely, bosses do far more reasonable damage than normal enemies. Why is it that the enemies that are designed to be fought 1v1, or at least in closed and predictable environments, do less damage than enemies that can potentially be fought 1-3 at a time, and even more than that on the highest two difficulties? Don't get me wrong, the bosses are still brutal, but it's weirdly reasonable compared to the rest of the game.

The second reason is time. Like I said, runs taken at a casual pace can take over 2 hours. That's already a long time for an action rougelike. But that's not the BS part. The BS part is that, to get the intended experience, beating the game once isn't enough. Now, anyone who goes into a Rougelike/Rougelite with the intention of beating it once and then never touching it again isn't playing Rougelikes correctly. But there's a point where it gets obsessive. Once you beat the game, you unlock a boss cell, and activating it does several things:
* It makes 1-cell doors available, giving you access to more loot and shops, most importantly health item shops, which sell a rare item that refills one of the charges of your health flask.
* It makes extra enemies spawn, including some that I'm pretty sure are excusive to the NG+ runs.
* It decreases the amount of health potion refills that you get.
I actually like part of how the higher diffaculities work, it's a lot more interesting than just "HAHA YOUR SURVIVABILITY IS SO LOW THAT THE GAME IS NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE NOW LOL, GOOD LUCK IDIOT." But considering the damage output issues I said before, less health refills a big deal. Especially once you unlock the second cell, and the third cell, and the fourth, and the fifth. But the worst part is, to get the true ending, which is part of the intended experience, you have to get all 5 boss cells, and go through the Rise of the Giant DLC content, which the developers actually brag about being "too hard for most people to consider fair". While I enjoyed Rise of The Giant, I can't say it's ok to lock the true ending behind content that the developers brag about not being fair, and the base game is already unfair. (also the Rise of the Giant DLC is free, and you can just ignore that content if you don't like it and don't care about the true ending, so I don't know why it's DLC) But that's a minimum of six loops, realistically much more, to get the true ending, and the final one is longer. I'm fine with crazy difficulty settings, but locking the true ending behind it is uncool. I'd consider 2 or 3 cells to be the hardest semi-reasonable difficulty. 4 cells has mechanics that are clearly not designed for casual play, and 5... 5 is just nuts. You wanna know a game that does the "forces you to play at a higher difficulty to get the true ending" right? Monolith: After The End. That game has two difficulty levels: Normal and Hard, hard mode doesn't decrease your effective health, and the content between starting hard and getting the true ending is actually shorter than starting normal and getting the not-true ending. That's much more reasonable than the nonsense you have to go through to get the true ending in this game. And while I won't spoil the contents of the ending, lore-wise the true ending you get for defeating the true final boss of dead cells isn't worth it.

I don't believe my opinions are popular ones, but soulslike fans tend to be so masochistic that it borders on toxic, and they aren't afraid to let you know. But personally, despite thoroughly enjoying the game, I can't recommend it. If enemy and trap damage output was severely reduced, I'd consider recommending the game, but I don't think the devs would ever consider that. Plus, that's only half the issue, and the other half a fundamental flaw that would require changing part of the game's identity.

For the approximately 0 people who care, I plan on writing reviews for all of the DLC as well. But here's the short version: "If you must buy Dead Cells, all the DLC is worth it except 'The Bad Seed' DLC, so get all the DLC except that one if you can"


TL;DR: Dead Cells is the best game that I would not hesitate to say "Don't play it, ever."

I generally don't like this kind of high-precision platformer game, but Super Cable Boy is one of the few exceptions. The movement is just... really good. There's a lot of abilities for how short this game is, but none of them feel underutilized, and I got to give this game credit for being the only platformer where I actually like to use a swinging thing, in this case a grappling hook ability.
I only have two complaints for this game, and they are both pretty minor. One, I feel like the final main cart, voltage, steps on the toes of the triple jump a bit too much. Two, I feel as though the levels in the final area are a bit too long and don't give much time to actually process what you're looking at. But neither of these flaws are dealbreakers. I still thoughly enjoyed this game despite

Vampire Survivor is... definitely one of the games I've played. I wasn't really sure if I should recommend this game or not. But I decided to do so. If you don't want to read my entire review, here's the tl;dr: "It's pretty good, but gets dull after a while, and don't try to go for 100% like I did."

Unless you enjoy this game a ton, or have way too much time on your hands, I recommend only opening all the standard coffins, beteating every challange stage, beating the final boss, and getting a few cards for the card thingy.

I originally wrote this review on the 16th of October, 2022, 4 days before the planned release date of this game's 1.0, but have updated with the release of 1.0.

I'll walk through what was roughly my experience with this game.
At the start of the game, it's pretty simple. Stupid simple. so simple, it really shouldn't be fun. But, strangely, it's a lot of fun. It kinda reminds me a flash game that's more fun than it has any right to be. I really admired, and still admire, how many interesting situations the game manages to create with its selection of enemies when said selection is so limited. How did they manage to create such an interesting game when the overwhelming majority of enemies' only attack pattern is to move directly at you and do contact damage, changing only in tankyness, size, and speed? I may never know.
So, was going along, and I unlocked the second stage, and found out that this game was much larger and much more in-depth than I thought it was going to be.
And then I unlocked the third stage, got the map, and then... I got stuck. I could not, for the life of me, figure out how to progress. I couldn't figure out how to open coffins, and even once I learned, I couldn't figure out how to do enough damage before I got overwhelmed. And I could not even come close to reaching the level requirement on stage 3. And I was starting to not have fun any more. But, I started going after other achivements, since I wasn't bored of the game yet. And then I figured out I was playing the game wrong, and I did not proiritize my upgrades correctly at all. So I changed my stratagy, and started mowing down the game, and I was a having fun again!
...for a while.
The novelty of effortlessly mowing down thousands of enemies wears off after a while, especially when builds don't vary much in function after a while, and late-game runs take half an hour, or longer if your computer stinks. (like mine...) You'll spend hours grinding the same things over and over again if you want to get everything. it's still fun, but... still.
(NOTE: As of 1.0, the grinding is a lot less bad. It's still pretty bad thoungg)

From this point foward, I'll be delving into spoilers and late game content. Which, surprizingly, is actually interseting enough that you may want to avoid getting spoilers. I won't put it in a spoiler because... well, there's just too much to bother, ok?

After you unlock stage 4, the way you progress changes some. Instead of getting to a certian level on stage 4, you have to unlock hyper mode for the 4 main stages that exist so far. And to do that, you have to beat a certian boss in each stage, which I will give the entirly arbitrary title of that stage's "major boss". And these are one of the weakest parts of the game. Most bosses aren't really all that special, just being visually notible, tanky enemies that give rewards when you kill them, and not even the major bosses are the exeption. More of a "are you a high enough level and have enough dps to kill this boss?" kinda thing. The major boss of stage 4 is a bit of an exeption, somening enemies to increase its control over the stage, which is a nice change of pace.
Once you unlock all 4 hypermodes, you unlock the second bonus stage. Which, despite being labled a bonus stage, is manditory. After the not-terribly-interesting trek through it, things start getting tripped and heck, and then you are warped to another stage and have a psudo-bossfight against Madener. After the fight with Madener, you unlock the final normal stage. At the end of the final stage, you fight Ender.
Once you beat Madener, you can't fight it again while its at its full power, as Bonus Stage 2 will never warp you back to the fight against it after the first time. If you don't beat it the first time, you can skip straight to the fight on subsiquent playthroughs in its own stage, but that stage becomes locked after you beat Madener. Same goes with Ender: after you beat it, it won't appear at the end of stage 5 again. Although, you can fight a weaker (and more interesting) version of Ender in the Boss Rush- I'm sorry, Boss Rash stage
Strangley, the game's actual final boss CAN be fought again after you beat him.
Even stranger... this will be the one thing I'll put behind a spoiler in this review: there's no vampire. The game is called vampire survivors, but you don't even get to survive the vampire

This game is fun, but it's also self-defeating. The way you are intended to play the game is to minmax powerful weapons, but then you're so powerful that the game can barelly put up a fight. Having runs where you can mow the game down are fun... in small quantities. if it's not novel, it starts getting boring. But the game makes no effort to pace out overpowered runs, it darnright expects you to be overpowered for most of your runs. So, unless you pace yourself and not play the game often, it won't be as much fun. But it's a very addicting game, probably by design, so you'll want to play it a lot.
The four most interesting parts of the game are the boss fight against Madener, the boss fight against Ender, the boss rash, and the final boss. But halfof those things can't be accsessed after beating them the first time.
And while this was the thing I thought they were going to change (same spoiler as before), you don't even get to fight the titular vampire that you're supposed to be surviving!
I dunno. I'm overthinking this. Don't take this game too seriously, and you'll have a good time.

This game is very cool but it will cause a lot of emotional