Recent reviews by Raguna

I love Wuxia inspired games but god my time with this was rather... miserable. And the time it says I have is, frankly, a lie. The game wouldn't ever properly close, steam kept thinking it was running and I had to forceclose Steam to get it to stop, so my "4 hours" of playtime is more like 1.5. Regardless...

The English localization is frankly abysmal and several tutorials still popped up in Mandarin. It isn't just a case of "Engrish" or stilted dialogue - some of it is absolutely incomprehensible. Now, I know plenty of people can work around this or use guides but I'm the type of guy who likes to take a game as it is - with no outside resources or help - and enjoy it. And I frankly couldn't. I've enjoyed many other Chinese/Wuxia inspired games - even some with similarly rough translations - but their systems were also just more intuitive to figure out.

Take the "Verbal Dueling" in this game for example. Even having read the "tutorial" twice, it felt like an absolute mess of trying to be a deckbuilder of sorts but with no real clear indication to where I was pulling stuff from, what a lot of it did, etc. Then when I leveled up my jumping, I got a popup tutorial in full Mandarin so... if that gave me something extra, I have no idea what it was.

Some positives - the actual combat system is really pretty fun and cool, very stylized. Definitely the best part of the game. It's just a shame that it unlocks new options and ways to engage with it SOOOOOO slowly. If there was a faster way to do it, I couldn't find it... might have been one of the untranslated popups.

Frankly, I'm disappointed with my time here, but maybe with time it will be a better game. But as far as being "Matchless," I find that claim falling very flat: Hero's Journey - Road to Passion and Wandering Sword both have pulled off what I wanted this game to be better in their own ways.

I've played a lot of MMOs - many of them PVP based MMOs - and while I can say there is a lot to like about Throne & Liberty, I cannot in good conscience recommend anyone get into the game at this time.

First, the good.

+ Good core combat loop
+ Visually pleasing to look at
+ Extremely fast load times and minimal loading screens
+ Lots of incentive to join and play with a guild
+ Relatively deep character creator

Unfortunately, the bad quickly begins to outweigh the good.

- The entire game is essentially full PVP - even the PvE events are competitive, with some rewards being locked to higher ranks. It feeds into the core problem with this game: the strong get stronger with little to no catchup mechanics.

- Skill and Gear progression/upgrades uses a system almost identical to gacha games, similar to Genshin Impact. The Pay-to-Win inherent in this is exactly what you'd think: Whales can afford multiple copies of high-end gear in order to push it higher, faster.

- Small Scale PVP is determined almost exclusively by 2 things: Gear and who gets the first stun off in order to stunchain. It is an EXTREMELY stun and burst heavy meta, and if you've played things like actual Vanilla WoW with rogue stunlocks, or more recently DotA stun and delete metas, you'll get the idea... But here, if you have just outright better gear, you'll survive their stunburst and then you can just return with your own and there isn't much they can do about it.

- Large Scale PvP - like in most games of this nature - is almost all about numbers. Since there's basically no cap on how many people a single side can bring... the biggest guild with the most geared members just kinda takes the win. And there's no real way to ally up against them to bring them down, since most of them have grown to make their own mega-alliances.

- Siege PvP is insanely Defender sided, so whomever gets it first is likely to hold it for awhile. The major reason for this is all the "attacker" guilds are also hostile to each other, meaning they'd have to watch AoEs and be careful not to hit each other whereas the defenders don't have this problem. So the attackers are likely to do just as much damage to each other as the defenders do.

- The PvE dungeons are frankly, for the most part, not very good. There are a few that are fun but the majority of them are just a bunch of trash pulls and then a singular main boss. The bosses are generally a bit more interesting than most MMO bosses mechanically - reminiscent of Trial fights from FFXIV - but unlike the aforementioned Trials, the fights in T&L lack much in the way of character, presentation and soul. The mechanics also are just a bit buggier overall.

- The game uses the Trinity of Tank/Healer/DPS, but because the game is primarily balanced around PVP and burst gameplay, healing just felt terrible in all PvE content. It was doable - even as an off meta healer - but even on the most meta of builds it felt really unrewarding and stressful.

- If you were not in at the start, RIP. Getting free Lucent (premium currency) is much less viable now as the lower stuff stuff sells for practically nothing. Because the game uses a set stamina/energy system to run content that drops meaningful gear/resources, you're timegated on how much you can farm without having Lucent or dropping your own money. Starting to see the issue here?

- The game heavily plays into snowball progression. Power leads to more power, but because the game is competitive at the core, if you don't already have power, you will be locked out of options to get power meanwhile everyone ahead is still getting power. You need to spend a LOT of time to keep up or grow at a viable pace... meanwhile people who play AND pay will grow at a rate you just can't even catch. During that time they can trounce you in any PvP events that pop up, thus getting themselves more rewards while you are denied them... and the gap widens.

And then a few situational things that may or may not matter to you:

= No racial options. You're a human, end of story.
= No mounts, you just morph into animals. Functionally the same, but it does hide cosmetics of your character.
= No player housing outside of basic guild halls.
= Little to no RP community. Whether you see this is as a plus or minus, YMMV, but I generally prefer to see them in MMORPGs, as the RPers are generally what keep the game's lights on during content droughts.

There's just a bit too much predatory here and fishing for whales, for me to see this game as sustainable for the long haul, especially with how much time it demands from the player. While Steam says I have about 110-120 hours somewhere in there, I have closer to 200 between two accounts (I made a second one after the game had been out a bit to see if not being at the first wave made a difference: it did). While this is by no means the most time played, I feel it is plenty of time to give the game a fair assessment.

Which brings me to my conclusion: It is fun with friends - as are most games - but it is a somewhat miserable experience if you aren't willing to make it your "one game" and the inherent problems with writing on the wall with the thinly veiled gacha style mechanics will drain your time or wallet heavily: you decide which is worth it. For a similar gameplay experience that is way less FOMO and PVP focused, check out Guild Wars 2, or if you'd like a more Korean style MMO still, Black Desert might be your speed.

If you like the dungeon fights of T&L but hate the PVP, check out Lost Ark or FFXIV.

Any of those games will treat you and your time with more respect, and also hit your wallet less.

That said, T&L is still probably worth a play through the main quest and a few dungeons. It's fun and has a lot of good ideas, and it is free, so play it for yourself and form your own opinion... but if you want my recommendation? Don't. Play something else.

Basically Overcooked: Tower Defense Edition. I mean this in the most flattering way possible. Art style is cute, gameplay is just hectic enough to be engaging but just slow enough to let you make plans.... plans that will all fall apart the second you make a mistake, but that's the fun of it.

Highly recommend.

Has promise but seems to sort of miss the mark on what makes most "Survivor" games really good. It honestly needs a faster paced track (the music is good, but just doesn't really fit the action on screen). There also needs to be some audio feedback for picking up the EXP orbs. The sound design leaves a lot to be desired so far.

Visually I wish the mech wasn't bathed in a bright light when attacking is turned on as it hides a lot of the mech's detail and they honestly look pretty good.

The energy system is interesting but I don't think it lands very well. Hoping to RNG into energy upgrades isn't fun and having to choose them over a new weapon doesn't feel engaging or strategic. A large portion of the fun in this genre is starting tiny and ramping up into a bullet spewing demi-god. This feels like it is intended to keep you as the underdog at all times and while that is interesting in concept it doesn't feel particularly good in practice. Perhaps the full version will rectify this in some way with meta-upgrades, but as of right now, the demo is a bit tedious.

Still, looking forward to see how this turns out. I think the devs have a good passion for it and the sci-fi/mech/anime style is really enticing. I will come back and review it at a later date when more is produced for the game and re-evaluate, but for now I do not think it is particularly stand out.

The demo is free though, so please try it out for yourself and form your own opinion.

Genuinely really love this game but ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ the moderation needs to be implemented. The amount of people just being outright racist or sexist is insane, and beyond just muting them, there's not much you can do unless you're the host.

If you ever see a game hosted by me, I do my best to moderate them and will kick people who are being gross, but it definitely is a drain.

I really hope more tools are added to moderate, because it would suck to lose this game to a bunch of literal nazis. Of the random games I played, very few of them failed to start without people chanting racist slurs. This is not hyperbole.

Deathbound is an overall interesting and refreshing take on the "Souslike" formula. Building a party of 4 characters (called Essences) and managing their individual life and stamina bars as you weave combos and dodge attacks while keeping up aggression.

The story is engaging enough to carry the roughly 8 to 12 hour experience for a single playthrough. It's told a bit more straightforward than most games in the genre - which I appreciate - even if it doesn't tread particularly new ground. The final moments of the story feel a little rushed and not as coherent but it was still simple enough to keep it paced together.

On the topic of the characters, not all of them are created equal in my opinion. Some are clearly better than others, seemingly better tested and balanced. Of the 7 characters, the two mages felt particularly bad to use with the way the combat system worked, along with the heat system. I won't go into a lot of detail here, trying to keep it succint but both systems seemed heavily at odds with each other and clunky.

Each character's weapon and armor are permently set to them, which is fine, leaving gear as a single artefact and 2 rings. I found almost every piece of gear to be so incredibly niche or oddly specific with some odd drawbacks that very little of it interested me enough to even really use it. A few late-game pieces finally got me to use my upgrade materials, but even then it felt like it had minimal impact.

The game isn't particularly difficult - which is not a bad thing, not every Soulslike needs to be - so the above mentioned item situation isn't a real problem. However, the very backend of the game does seem to artificially inflate the difficulty. Enemy placement gets a lot more tedious and the "secret" boss felt particularly rushed in design. It is a shame, as the final hour of the game added a bit of a stain on an otherwise great game.

All in all, I enjoyed my time with Deathbound and think it is worth the time of every fan of Soulslikes. Go in with the proper expectations - this is NOT Dark Souls, it is NOT Bloodborne, it is NOT Elden ring.. nor is it trying to be. Deathbound is very much its own game, and if you approach it on its own terms, it will offer you a good time.

I'm going to be flat out honest about this: look at the other reviews. Most, if not all, of the negative reviews will feature 1 of 2 things.

1. It is a review from when the game launched (and it was a mess, to be sure, and warranted that bad review at the time, hands down)

2. They talk about how they're a From Software/Souls fan and compare it to Dark Souls/Elden Ring.

Let me be crystal clear: this is not Dark Souls or Elden Ring. And frankly, despite what people think, it isn't TRYING to be. Yes, the influence - especially visually - is right there. And you got the general flow of combat, levels, "bonfires", etc. It's definitely a "soulslike." But if you try to approach it and play it like a From Software made game, you're just going to have a bad time with it.

Like another Soulslike I enjoyed - Lies of P - Lords of the Fallen asks you to come to it and play it on its terms. You'll hear talk of clunky controls because people are spamming R1, totally ignoring the tutorial at the start that talks about stance swapping mid combo (you can go seemlessly from 1h to 2h mode mid combo), weave light and heavy attacks, and even use a "Multi" attack (L1+R2 by default) to start a good multi hit combo. Almost everyone I've watched play just sort of R1 spams and hopes for the best. That works in a lot of Soulslikes - it doesn't work here.

I also see people tend to lean almost exclusively on trying to parry or dodge - you need to accept that both are needed. Some attacks - even in heavy armor - are best dodged. Some are best going for a block or parry. In fact, blocking is INCREDIBLY strong in this game in a lot of situations: blocked attacks turn into white (withered) HP which can be recovered by damaging enemies (but you lose it all if you get hit). The game wants you to be more aggressive than the average Souls game, but not quite the ferocity of, say, Bloodborne.

I'll also see complaints about there being too many enemies at once. This is a valid complaint in some areas, but often I'll see this complaint and then see people using their weapon in the wrong stance. Most weapons have a heavier, narrow moveset and a lighter, wider moveset. It's also OK to not lock on and go for sweeps. It feels really smooth and rewarding to be hitting someone with a narrow combo and stance switch mid combo to go wide and catch the new challenger as well.

Multiplayer is, frankly, better in LotF than it is in any mainline Souls game, or even Elden Ring. You can summon a friend and they stay with you until they leave or you kick them. Kill a boss? Keep going. Die? Bring 'em back with a charge of your Sanguinex (Estus) or at the nearest Vestige (bonfire). No resummoning needed. You'll need to occasionally swap host to match a bit of progress (while the summon gets loot drops and boss rewards, they can't loot the actual placed world loot), but it just lets both players get to experience the host mechanic of swapping Umbral states and potentially take a different storyline path (while still playing together).

The game is also visually nice - especially since the patches - has good overall voice acting, and some interesting locations and lore as well. It isn't anything super novel, but it's still solid and works.

I encourage you to stick out the growing pains and let yourself take LotF on its own merits, instead of wanting it to be Dark Souls 3.5 or 4. It's a really solid, fun experience in the genre that dares to do things a little differently and while that may not be for everyone, it definitely is worth your time.

You can also do a quest to get a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ gilded with gold as a fist weapon to pummel people with. So, there's that.

I genuinely do not understand the positive reviews for this. Visually, it is awesome. That is true. The art team has nailed really cool designs... but that's it. The characters look amazing. The art of the world is interesting but it stays this sort of washed out, drab color the entire time that honestly felt hard on the eyes after awhile. That's where the good all ends. The tags are also a straight up lie - it is not an RPG in the least.

The story is nonsensical. It parades itself as deep and meaningful and like most other "disturbing, dark surreal" indie games it is the same schlock. It just is all flash and promise of more with not a hint of substance. I understand this is just "chapter one" but it doesn't hook me at all, it ends abruptly.

The "gameplay" really isn't. There's a few (very simple) puzzles and VERY few actual "bullet hell" moments (which are painfully easy). I was given a ton of healing items that I basically didn't use. Most of the actual action moments are in the trailers already - it is not most of the game. Most of the game is just walking around poking at stuff with some "ha ha so weird" dialogue that mostly doesn't land.

Many of the characters show up exactly once never to show up again. One character's personality shifts so rapidly that it felt like they combined two different characters. She starts off trying to end her own life and is all drab and sad, then suddenly she's afraid to die, then she's indifferent again, and then again fighting to live. I am not illiterate nor am I able to read between the lines. I love analyzing games and plots and characters. This is just one of those "oh so quirky!" kind of characters and I don't care for it. I understand that English was not the native language of this and it shows (the translation is a little rough), but even that aside this hard to justify.

I've seen some reviews praise the voice acting - I want to be clear, this game doesn't have voice acting. I'm starting to think a lot of the reviews are fake or just attempting to generate hype.

Being "Free" and "cute" isn't enough to make something "good." Is there potential? Sure. A lot of games have potential. But as it stands, right now? No. Hard no. This "game" barely is, and the story currently goes nowhere with no real hints of anything more interesting to come.

TIme may change my mind, but if you are looking for a game right now, this product is more Illusion than Carnival.

I'm going to join the chorus of many others voicing displeasure here for the same reason as many - the bosses simply aren't fun. They're not impossible. You can learn their patterns and pick away at their health and you'll win. But the health is too high and the damage output is insane - even if you have every fragment possible when engaging the bosses.

And then there's just the design philosophy. They're all fast, super mobile, highly aggro bosses that give very few openings to deal damage. Which is all the more heartbreaking when you see a lot of the new weapons they added have beautifully animated and super fun and cool combo chains... that you'll never, ever have openings to actually use. One or two hits then back to dodging with you.

I've not hit any walls. I've cleared everything I've faced, but I've had a miserable experience with it. Bosses are an exercise in boring tedium, offering nothing truly new, engaging or exciting - just "difficulty" for the sake off. And I want to be painfully clear - difficult and challenging are not the same thing. Difficult is just something that is hard to do. It's difficult to walk barefoot across Legos. Challenging is something that must be overcome, a test of one's abilities. A good challenge allows a player a stage on which to skill express. This is not that. This is a gauntlet.

We may play as the Tarnished, but From's reputation is starting to quickly become this as I suspect they have lost the plot on what made a "fair, but challenging" game.

What can I say that hasn't already been said?
It's optimized to absolute ♥♥♥♥. I can get 60 FPS out in about most places but once I go to the main city it absolutely tanks. It wouldn't be a huge deal except I've had a few fights take place in the city against rather hard enemies and that was abysmal.

I've had pawns just drop through the world and die in places I can't recover them, so I gotta schlep my ass back to a riftstone to get them back. I've had big enemies suddenly disappear and just be... gone. Time and resources wasted and nothing to show for it.

I was so hype for this game. I took time off work to enjoy it. I feel so disappointed and crushed. And this isn't even touching on MTX in a singleplayer game, which Capcom is getting especially egregious with lately.

I wish I hadn't tried to play as much as I did. I'd have refunded it and waited for a sale. But now the taste in my mouth is so bad, and the few lucky friends able to push through and enjoy it I just... have to let them have the fun they are having without me. I wanted to have our pawns working with each other. But I guess that's not happening...

So by the time this gets fixed and is able to be played, the experience will be soured.

I'm so bummed, man...