Recent reviews by Chimera

Devs: "We want the game to be as realistic as possible and have players be confronted with real life issues."

Also Devs: *start censoring*

It's been 4 months since release and the game hasn't seen any notable performance fixes. Not only wasn't the bad performance fixed, it got actually worse for a lot of people.

I have a 4080 and 7800x3d and while the game ran fine for me on release (mostly due to my pc being able to just brute force reasonable fps), the performance has gotten so bad that I would now call the game literally unplayable.
Random crashes about every hour, fps dropping to single digits for a few seconds every hunt, loading times taking exceedingly long (often times ending in crashes) and sometimes the game needs to be started multiple times for it to actually launch.

I really wanted to give Capcom the benefit of the doubt that they would fix performance issues (even after Dragons Dogma 2...), but it doesn't seem like Capcom even cares. There has been pretty much no communication regarding performance and the little content updates the game so far received are literally so small that most players are done with them within a day or two.

It hurts to see a Monster Hunter sit at overwhelmingly negative (recent) reviews (19% positive as of writing this review), but it's absolutely warranted.

Before jumping to conclusion because of outdated negative reviews, please take a minute to actually check what that controversy was about.

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Tl:dr

Simple Timeline:
- Original DLC buyers = monthly updates
- Replacement DLC buyers = monthly Updates + paid DLC packs --- Original DLC buyers = monthly updates + free DLC packs (more content overall)
- People complained
- Replacement and Original DLC buyers = monthly updates + no more DLCs (less content overall, back to the original)

I usually don't take the side of developers / publishers, but the entitlement some people have here is just embarrassing.
As of March 2025 the base game offers 62 songs at 3,49€ with an additional 544(!) at 32,99€ (not including future monthly updates). Due to not renewing the license, the 20 songs from the DLC packs as well as 2 characters are now unobtainable for anyone that didn't buy / receive them before being delisted.

I hope this clears up some of the (imo) unjustified hate the game received.

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Originally Muse Dash was somewhat of a two part game. One being the "Main Game" which nowadays includes 62 songs which is available for 3,49€ (and goes on sale often to less than 1€). Needless to say this is already incredible value. As someone that plays a lot of different rhythm games, most of the have like 20 songs in their base game and cost at least 15€.
The second part was originally known as Muse Dash Just as Planned (DLC), which is essentially a pass which granted access to all future (content) updates. These updates came each month and consisted of on average 6 new Songs (with usually 3 difficulty settings). They also at times included new characters and elfins (something like a partner that grants bonus effects).
After a few years, the developers decided to rework the Just as Planned DLC. The rework consisted of pretty much removing the Just as Planned DLC and instead adding a replacement DLC called Muse Plus. IN ADDITION to the monthly updates, the game now was supposed to have additional DLC Packs, which consisted of high profile (usually also meaning high licensing cost) songs from well known artists.
People that had already bought the Just as Planned DLC would get these additional DLC packs for free, as this DLC was advertised to include all future updates.
People that haven't bought the Just as Planned DLC, would need to buy Muse Plus for the monthly updates, as well as the additional DLC packs. These DLC packs had 10 new songs, at least a new character and cost 7.79€ (0.78€ per song, not valuing the character, which is really cheap compared to most other rhythm game dlc songs which cost ~2€/song).

Of course there would be people complaining about it, because they wouldn't get stuff for free that other people do.
With the (mostly Chinese) community being in a complete uproar, the game was flooded with negative reviews and the developers even received death threats over it.

In the end the developers retracted their approach with the Muse Plus DLC now offering the same as the Just as Planned DLC did and releasing no more extra DLCs.
So to conclude, Muse Plus buyers get the same they had (monthly updates) and Just as Planned owners still get the monthly updates, but no more free DLC.
So to be precise, because people complained, we now receive less content, because the DLC packs, which were additional to the monthly updates, got cancelled.

Haven't played this game in a while, but wanted to express my support for boycotting this company. Not paying / crediting your artists, laying off your community manager and pushing cosmetic DLCs worth 150€+ rather than fixing bugs (even game breaking ones) and controller support is just disgusting. Also asking fans for free translations which won't even be checked for mistakes and then switching from fan translation (which were still mostly fine) to what seems like copy-paste translator text that is barely understandable is just laughable.

I genuinely think there is a great game here and a lot of talented people worked hard on it. However, seeing how milking every cent out of this game (and their employees) takes priority over actually fixing the game, makes this game unrecommendable for me.
There are a lot of great farming sims and RPGs out there, so I'd advice everyone to rather look elsewhere and not support this unethical company.

I've only played ~3h so far, but as of right now, ENDER MAGNOLIA does pretty much everything ENDER LILIES does but better... and that's saying a lot considering how good ENDER LILIES already is.

The difficulty seems to increase slowly the further you get and seems to be slightly above its predecessor. It's not punishingly hard like some other metroidvanias, but isn't a walk in the park either.

A lot of people disliked the way ENDER LILIES managed its minimap, where you don't have actual room layouts, but rather only boxes that show you in which room you are in. This has been changed for its successor and the minimap now shows precise room and area layouts.

Another thing I want to point out is its fast-travel system. ENDER MAGNOLIA has save points called "respites" that also act as locations where you can upgrade your abilities, change equipment and difficulty etc. You can fast travel to those respites from anywhere on the map, which makes backtracking and completing already visited areas a lot more enjoyable.

I've only briefly tested it on steam deck, but it seems to run pretty much flawlessly.

:)))

It took me ~16h to fully unlock everything the current build has to offer. While the combat is fun, I don't see myself continue playing it until the next content patch.
25€ is a fairly steep price to ask for the current build. Especially considering a price increase during early access as well as another one at full release seem to be planned.
At the moment the game is 20% off and you can get another 10% off if you own deadcells and buy the bundle. That brings the price down to ~18€, which seems to be more in line with what I expected the base price to be at early access launch.

I wouldn't pay full price for the game, but if you can get it on a discount and have a few friends to play with, might as well pick it up before the next price increase.

I made it near the end of episode 3 and couldn't finish it.
Who tf thought it would be great to have one of the most annoying and obnoxious video game characters of all time tag along throughout the whole game. I know children can be annoying and irrational at times, but the fact that your choices don't matter at all and Daniel just keeps doing whatever he wants (even in life and death situations) is just frustrating. It feels like he is written by someone that never interacted with children themselves and only read the horror stories on the internet.
In my opinion the game isn't that interesting to begin with and fairly predictable. The fact that everyone except the two main characters are only really in the picture for their respected episode doesn't help either. You barely care for other characters since you'll only really get to know them for like 2 hours anyway.
I didn't mind Sean as the player character, even though he is somewhat bland. It probably helps that he is the only character you really care for in the whole game.

♥♥♥♥ Daniel, ♥♥♥♥ this game.

In my opinion the best Shantae game. It checks all boxes of a good metroidvania while not taking tens of hours to complete. I finished the game in ~8 hours with 80% completion, so 100% will likely give you a good 10 hours.
Shantae's wiggle when crouching is still 11/10.

Game plays great on Steam Deck

Half Genie Hero deviates from the usual metroidvania formular that the previous titles (and the following title Seven Sirens) use.
Half Genie Hero is more like a level-based action platformer. However you do go back to previous levels with new powers, unlocking further powers or obtaining items to proceed story.

The game is quite short. It took me ~5.5 hours of ingame time to complete the game with 90% of items collected. I guess if you want to 100% the game, it'll probably last ~7 hours. If you want to go for all achievements, you'll have to replay the game at least twice (likely 3 times), giving you a good few hours more.

The game is definitely on the easier side, but the Shantae games never aimed for a high difficulty anyway.
Shantae's wiggle when crouching looks even more cute with the new art style 11/10.

Aside from the quite small main menu text, the game plays flawlessly on Steam Deck.