Recent reviews by Ruffie

Abandonware that sadly does not fulfill any of the developer promises.
Starbound is a ocean that is a puddle deep. Beyond the pretty graphics and the few neat mechanics the game showcases, it's ultimately an unintuitive, clunky, and unrewarding game which doesn't respect your time.

It didn't used to be this way, but Chucklefish has decided that a hamfisted attempt at a story, and stripping the player of exciting tools over the course of several agonizing updates, is the way the game was meant to be played.


Chucklefish is a disgusting & morally bankrupt company which has abused & exploited workers.
Modders are continuing to keep this game alive, and have an indefinitely more robust skillset towards making Starbound the game it was MEANT to be.

Also, make sure to get the game for free, don't give Chucklefish a penny.

Apparently requires 2GB of RAM to play, constantly stutters during enemy spawns.

Game has like no content, and is essentially abandonware.

Skip this game.

EDIT: THIS GAME IS BARELY PLAYABLE AS OF THE RECENT PATCH. CONSTANT LAG & STUTTERING IN A FIGHTING GAME IS COMPLETELY RIDICULOUS. I WILL BE QUITTING THIS GAME UNTIL SOMETHING IS DONE ABOUT IT.

THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR A GAME TO BE THIS BROKEN AFTER A PATCH.

FIX YOUR GAME.

Rivals of Aether II cements its place as a heavyweight of the Platform Fighter genre with this recent entry. One of the most responsive, engaging and demanding games of its genre, all things that I believe Smash Bros. Ultimate wasn't.

- Strong Character design.
Each character's playstyle feels incredibly unique, and fleshed out. The transition to 3D along with Rivals II's new mechanics keep the game fresh.

- Intuitive Controls.
A technically demanding game that will not break your hands. The movement is easy to utilize, but allows for high-levels of skill expression when all advanced movement techniques are used in combination with eachother to create incredibly satisfying gameplay.

- Banger Soundtrack.
Songs from the Original Rivals I OST have gotten an incredible remix, with new, original songs for Rivals II never feeling out of place.

- All new characters are FREE.
With the new way this game will be monetized, all new content featuring characters being free of charge is an excellent change so players are not left out of the loop when new characters come out. Players will come to appreciate this fact more as we continue into this game's development cycle with new character releases.


- Complete lack of Onboarding.
Tutorial mode does not exist in any capacity. Rivals I's tutorial was an amazing step in teaching basic & advanced mechanics alike. Tutorials have been replaced with a submenu that comes in a link within a link, containing diagrams and YouTube videos.

For a game that is trying to appeal to a broader audience, this is completely unacceptable.

- Content Lite
10 Characters, and 3 modes. Arcade, Casual, and Ranked.
Arcade is just a small gauntlet of fights with different mechanics, such as a team battle, or a swarm of enemies, finishing off with a boss battle. Casual & Ranked are what you think they are; an online VS mode. Rivals II could do with more singleplayer & multplayer options in the future.

- Singleplayer is Rough.
Arcade mode is NOT it. the A.I is broken in a lot of situations, and the higher difficulties don't make the A.I much smarter. They take the lame route of just making them deal more damage & knockback, and take less damage & knockback.

In all, Rivals II is an excellent entry, but needs some tidying up during its development cycle before it becomes what it's meant to be. I have hope that the development team will address a lot of known issues into the coming year.

For a game called Slap City, there's only 1 character that can actually slap you.

I'll ignore the false advertising this time, but only because Fishbunjin was fun.

Do better.

Fight for survival in the mean streets of Kentucky to become the strongest of all the Zomboids.
Dying teaches you to die less when you live again, only to die from something else farther than you came before.

The quintessential dying experience.
It's to die for.

Nothing in my entire time playing video games has been more entertaining than flying my space engineer at Mach 10 into my friend and killing us both.

Truly an experience.

Unable to create Goblin Shortstacks nor gigantic 6'7 buff Japanese Men.

Truly a disappointing experience.

EDIT 4/10/2024:
I am also unable to create my ideal gender-ambiguous, caked-up forest centaur with blonde hair and elven features.

My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined.

EDIT 6/8/2024:
I am also unable to create my voluptuous anthro Boeing 777 Jet woman OC who is old enough to be my mother; both literally and figuratively.

I cannot believe this is happening to me folks. This is nothing short of a tragedy.

It's quite puzzling how an otherwise okay game can get WORSE as it updates.
Some of the worst optimization I've seen in a really long time, and multiplayer is simply out of the question.

Play it if you like building things, and even then- there's better and even cheaper options out there.

Design decisions work against eachother resulting in clunky & unintuitive gameplay.
Poorly optimized, and constantly stutters on a 32G RAM & 5.3 Ghz Computer.

You have tiny melee range, and just barely more than enemies, which isn't a problem until you realize that the sword will thrust you forward into enemies and damage you. Back peddling and micro-spacing every rat and skeleton is not fun nor rewarding gameplay.

Traps are just darkened tiles on the floor and will almost always hit you when you trip them. They're easy enough to avoid, but are virtually invisible in darkened rooms.

The point I'm getting at, is that Rogue Heroes doesn't provide instant deaths like a lot of modern "Hardcore" Roguelikes, but will whittle down on you with chip damage from many unavoidable sources, and will instead frustrate you until you'll want to just throw yourself into a trap to end the run prematurely. Generally a frustrating, tedious and unrewarding experience. I'm sure the Developers have learned their lesson from this game, considering they've went on to make the Blasphemous series.

Doesn't matter how many hours you have in Barony, you'll still find a way to die on the first level.
It just happens, and you just gotta roll with it like the boulder which ended that run.