Recent reviews by TwistedBOLT

Unpolished, buggy, containing dumb UI elements that irritate, lacks overall content and yet I give it a massive thumbs up.

Although the game has problems the amount of potential it contains is incredible and with a bit of spit shine it can be something truly beautiful.

I won't be focusing on the positives at all (considering I've already given the game a thumbs up) but instead I'll just give you the rundown of the negatives:

Bugs: mostly with the last boss where the portals that take you back from the shadow realm just stop working and require you a restart. The mirror also stopped working for some reason and needed a restart. Enemy AI varies from brilliant to very dumb but overall it's fine.

Every time you die the game goes pure white. I'm not a fan of being blinded and this should be an easy change.

The minimap/map is worthless at times on any level that has elevation. The entire map should always be displayed with different colours for elevations.

There's not that much incentive to level up weapons other than the ones you heavily invest in because getting an "upgrade" requires taking 3 steps back. An easy fix would be to make all newly acquired gear drop as "your max leveled gear minus 3 (or something)".

Now the big one. The random nature of the game. I'm honestly not sure why this is a thing. I guess that "everyone has their own unique experience" but that can be achieved by making the player have a choice instead of relying on RNG. Being forced to reroll a level over and over again in order to get what you want feels bad and should not be a feature.

Overall, massive potential and I hope updates fix these problems. I absolutely recommend it and hope for more content soon.

A masochists delight.

Pros:
*The atmosphere and music were quite good at times especially at the ending.
*The artstyle is great albeit very simplistic.
*The game emits a fantastic relaxing vibe.
*It was made by a solo dev and for that I have to applaud it. But unfortunately I found more issues with the games that I've found positives.
Cons:
*The starting area lacks directions. Adding more lights at the start as well as giving initiative to the player to jump down a waterfall (to what appears to be certain death)
*This game would heavily benefit from more invisible walls. Lots of areas are heavily open with nothing to look at, meaning if you wonder off course for a while you'll be stuck looking at nothing for a while. Generally puzzle games are known for their secrets so open areas invite exploration. And exploring the areas in this game is both tedious and pointless. An alternative of walling everything off would be to add stuff that makes exploration worth it but that would require a lot more work.
*The texturework on the start could use at least a bit more effort put in to it. Trees/Plants/Rocks are pretty much all just a single colour. Even a simple gradient effect would heavily improve the graphics as a whole.
*The lack of difficulty is also massive disappointment there were no puzzles that got me scratching my head or stopping to think. What needs to be done is usually obvious and feels more like busywork than thought provoking problem solving. Adding a few red harings would help.
*The last level is an incredible disappointment the name (Apex), the music, the setting everything appears to be the perfect setup to a massive challenge culminating in everything you've learned so far. Which just makes what follows that much soul-crushingly painful.
*The alien text around the game might mean something but without any hints on how to solve it adds nothing (And that's assuming it isn't just random gibberish).
*Even if we ignore the fact that the game lacks any semblance of a story giving out interesting information from time to time to keep the player intrigued would have helped some segments of the game.
*Bugs, 3 times a cube simply went trough a wall.
*A lot of the puzzles are skippable by simply stacking and then jumping on cubes.

Overall: I don't think the $20 is worth it for the 2h mediocre experience. Instead of this go play portal, witness the talos principle or something else.

Spoilers:
Imagine a choose your own adventure game where no action you make has any influence on the plot and the story itself is quite literally made up, by yourself, on the spot with absolutely no indication of what actually happened nor a way to reach a conclusion. Remember kids: Don't set up a mystery ambient if there is no mystery to be solved in the first place. Please don't waste your time on this semi-interesting idea that goes nowhere.

Without sounding like a complete fanboy I'll attempt to cover the goods and bads of the game. Starting with the cons (Please read the entire thing before commenting/voting, I'll come back to everything later on in the text):

*At times the game offers little to no information on how certain things are done and even the wiki itself will confuse the inexperienced player. Without a guiding hand you'll probably get completely lost, confused and quit without really stepping in to it. This is the reason why a lot players just can't get hooked.

*By definition the game is pay-to-win as "pay to win" simply means that you can use real life money to gain any advantage in the game, regardless if the monetization system is fair or not.

*The game contains various content that don't really function as it should due to neglect from the devs. All of which adds confusion in priorities of new players.

*Bad rep. I know it's a tad bit confusing for me to add this as a con but people that barely know anything about the game usually just think that it's a massive grindfest and not much else.

*No real end game.

Alright now that we established the bad things about the game let's negate every single one of them:

*Although the game itself is void of info the community is the best one I have ever been a part of. Any question you can think off will be answered in a matter of seconds from at least 5 different people in the help chat. The lack of information actually works to the games advantage as as it constantly fuels a sense of exploration, and causes eye opening moment. The game does a great job of almost constantly one-upping itself so if you stick it out and learn the basics you'll love it.

*If the game was any other genre, I'd agree, pay to win is a horrible practice that needs to die. But Warframe also has one of THE BEST micro transaction systems in the gaming industry (Aside from Valve games). How's this possible? Well it's due to its coop nature where PVP doesn't really matter even thought it does exist. Pay to win elements are bad in two circumstances:
1) When not spending money puts the player at a disadvantage hindering their ability to win VERSUS other players.
2) When the payments feel forced and needed for progression.
I've spent over $2000 in to this game and almost none of it was necessary I blew most of it on gifts I gave out to other players as well as various, frankly pointless, weapon tests that no one should do. I spent the money more to support the developers and less for my own benefits.
I never felt forced to spend any money not was I at any disadvantage before I spent it. That being said the game does not contain a pay wall for non-cosmetic items meaning anything but a few cosmetic items can be farmed without any real life purchases.

*Due to neglect a lot of secretion has been piled up, the good news is that the devs are actively re-defining the game by reworking old mechanics and re-integrating them in to the game, albeit at a slower pace than players would like... reworks don't really put food on the table as much as shiny new additions do.

*Over the years the game changed so much it's impossible to compare the old and the new version. If you played it in the past and was put off by something, give it another go but try not to do it alone as an experienced friend that can show you the ropes will greatly improve your experience.

*Although the devs constantly add higher level content and harder missions they can never make content as fast as we can finish it. So the true objective of the game is to get all the things in the game while looking as good as possible.

And finally I'll just name some stuff on why you should play the game in general:

*Insanely smooth movement system and incredible abilities that make you feel powerful constantly.

*A complex, fantastic, modding system that can make even the worst weapons useful in the late game if you put enough energy and resources in to them.

*More customization options than you can shake a stick at.

*Fantastic story, lore, art and sound design.

*Constantly rewarding, it really gives you a sense of progression.

*An incredible amount of content. Even at 7k hours I still have stuff on my bucket list that haven't been crossed out.

*Constant patches and fixes.

*Runs on a potato

*CLEM

*THE BEST COMMUNITY OF EVERY VIDEO GAME EVER.

And after all those positive things I really want to use this last bit here to address some less stellar things I'd love to shove under the carpet but that are very important to be said anyway:

*The chat moderation system is a joke. You can get chat banned for a week by saying "Nezha is a trap" or something similar in to the region chat.

*You can get trade banned for a while if you stay in a mission for too long because the game can't tell the difference between someone coming back from a long mission with millions of resources and someone hacking in said resources.

*You can get your account banned if you run programs like cheat engine or other process manipulators while playing. DE will grant a pardon the first time if this happens but you're better off not letting it happen again.

And that's all I wanted to say, thanks for reading, If you need advice or help with the game add me, IGN: TwistedBOLT_ or here on steam. I give the game a solid 9/10 and an absolute recommendation to play it. Even if you don't like it, hey, it's a free game!

Tries to be artsy and fails horribly. If you even consider this a game then it's a horrible waste of time. If you instead consider this a thought experiment then it's still a horrible waste of time. The sound is horrible considering the music makes the voice unintelligible, not that what he was saying was anything creative to begin with. 10/10 would not recommend.

Masochistic delight! If you love being plastered 'till you're blue in the face, boy do I have good news for you. Probably the best "that didn't ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hit me YOU SACK OF ♥♥♥♥" and "I ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ROLLED ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥" simulator out there. It has everything and anything to make you rage and quit:

Installing the game: Seriously... you need to spend a lot of time figuring out how to get the fps up to 30...

Insane learning curve: This game tells you absolutely-♥♥♥♥♥♥♥-nothing, you're left to wonder what the ♥♥♥♥ stuff does and without the wiki you'll probably miss 50% of its content why? ♥♥♥♥ you that's why!

Horrible optimization: Oh boy will this game make you fall in love with 30 FPS. Blasphemy you might think until it drops to 5 and gets stuck there. Did you spend all your money on an expensive machine to run new games at high resolutions and frame-rates? That's great! You'll be happy that my crap-top is having the same performance on blight town and some other areas. Speaking of which:

Blight town: If I pulled off my nails every time I died at this forsaking cesspool it'd probably be less painful than playing trough this part of the game again. Why? Because I'd pull all 20 rather fast instead of torturing myself for days!

The DLC: It is absolutely amazing how easily missable this entire thing is. Oh so after getting a random item with no description for what is it for you didn't return to the place where a random NPC talked to you about something completely unrelated? Well call me a ♥♥♥♥ and paint me purple you just missed half the game!

Completely balanced PVP: It's so balanced it broke the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ scale!

The feels Oh you killed this thing? Now let me reward you by telling you why you're a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ♥♥♥♥ for doing so.

Blight town: Severe PTSD of anything remotely similar to wooden planks or the word "toxic".

The itemization: Oh you didn't know that you can use this thing that you find just around the corner, over a hell and a river, in a different castle, under ground, behind two illusionary walls, in a secret room behind a fire to eeeeasily beat this thing? Well, dude, that's like... your problem.

The bosses: How would you like your death to be served today? And by today I of course mean in the next 40+ second before you die in the same place again blaming the game for your own impatience and incompetence!

Blight town: Do you like falling to your death? I guess you haven't fallen to your death enough times so here's some falling to your death while being poisoned... and bleeding... and toxicated because who doesn't love the magical debuff rainbow!

The community: Imagine if a guy comes to you and hands you a Rubik's Cube, but not a regular one, oh no, one that stabs your hand every few seconds and also glues to your hand on touch just to release it when it's solved then sits next to you with this stupid grin on his face, saying "go on, you can do it" and then violently forces a laugh every time you get stabbed while trying to conceal his PTSD of when he first put the darn thing on... I've got no idea where I'm going with this but my point is that the dark souls community is consistent of the most smug, elitist, asshats you can find... AND WE ARE PROUD OF THAT FACT. GIT GUD SKRUB!

Being a nice guy gets you ♥♥♥♥♥♥: Just... trust me... Being a ♥♥♥♥ ain't that bad...

Messages: Try jumping :)

Blight town: Try jumping :)

The game does not like you: Seriously... The game really doesn't like you... or me... or anyone honestly.

More reasons: I'm lazy and writing this only to get a steam achievement...

9/10 would recommend. Just download dsfix and git gud.

Same as the first one just more content. What's not to like?

Only about 10H worth of content. This game would make a decent movie, don't get me wrong but it's better to watch a walk-trough of it without commentary and skip all the combat/walking around then to actually play.

Story: 7/10
Gameplay: 2/10
Aesthetics: 7/10

Final grade 5.

It's like the first one just better.