Recent reviews by Taedirk

Screw slider puzzles.

Playing Hexcells Plus, I realized my two hour clear of the first game was simply a tutorial mission.

Minesweeper with a dash of picross. Short but enjoyable. My only complaint is I didn't notice the Dark Mode option until after I finished.

The music is amazing, the artwork is pretty, but the gameplay is terrible.

The platforming just isn't good. There's a very inconsistent platforming "language", by which I mean being able to visually identify what you can interact with on screen. Since the artwork is taking the main focus in every scene, there are numerous cases where a platform in one area is background in another or several graphically identical walls are both solid and pass-through with the only way to tell being trial and error.

The tension is too artificial. Once you realize there's no failure condition ("bottomless" platform jumps with a bottom just off camera, "tense" chase scenes where you can't actually be caught), the sense of agency goes out the window. You're no longer participating in gameplay to advance the story, you're being told the story with no tension from failure.

Gris is too busy trying to be artsy and 2deep4u metaphors that it forgets it's supposedly a game.

Mediocre bordering on bad. The concept is good - procedural generation Metroidvania - but the implementation just doesn't cut it. There are too many instances of bad controls (walljump, backdash, attack time) getting in the way of an enjoyable experience to recommend, especially at full price. Wait this game out, see if the devs push updates, and it might be passable; otherwise there are plenty of better titles in the genre out on Steam.

Sidenote: this is maybe the first game I've seen with "excluded from Family Sharing" that wasn't a MMO/pure online title. Not a big deal personally, but definitely another little kick while it's down.

This rating can be improved to "Recommended" for 1500 CC Credits.

The music is amazing and the graphics are pretty, but everything moves too slow (both literally in the runspeed and figuratively in the story progression) for me to find enjoyable. I expected a stronger focus on the events that led up to whatever happened in the village but instead received a level of tawdry small town gossip that I couldn't bring myself to care about.

Forgotten, Not Lost had a good concept with a character suffering from dementia, but it suffered too much from poor execution. There's so little respect given towards the visual novel format being used to tell this story (broken options, no transitions) that I'm not sure why it was even created in this medium. Along with that, the fantastical twist on the story felt out of place. This is a short story that wandered into the wrong room and had trouble finding its way out again.

The developers keep pushing the "release" date back on Steam, tagging every existing review with a "Pre-release review" tag. Scummy business practices for an already poor game.

For those who've watched the anime, it's still a worthwhile investment of time and money. Events in this arc have more time to build up and play out, with plenty of foreshadowing to remind you just how things are going to end. As you progress through the story, you also get access to a poorly named "TIPS" section, which really contains side-scenes and documents from the story.