Recent reviews by Lysander

Of the wave of Bullet Heaven games Vampire Survivors inspired, this is my favorite by far.

Brotato's most notable differences are that it limits the playing field to a comparatively small around and there is no grinding. Progression is in the form of unlocks that require completing objectives (such as finishing a match as a character or reaching a certain stat value). Unlike other Bullet Heavens where you enter the grinder until your stats are high enough to finally win, Brotato rewards skill and build strategy.

The game gets gradually more challenging as you increase the difficulty levels, and feels fair on almost all the characters. The is an extremely large roster of characters, many with radically different stats/features that change the way you play/build. There is a degree of luck to your build though, as certain items synergize extremely well with certain characters to the point where whether you get that item alone can make or break your run. Most of the characters are fun to play, some are kind of bland, and a few are frustrating. You're never required to play any individual character on a higher difficulty to unlock anything, so the bad characters won't hold you back.

Pretty solid metroidvania that does a lot right but with some annoying aspects.

The map is huge with tons to see, do, and find. This is a double edged sword because it provides a lot of content but can get a bit tedious at times. Despite the size, I don't think I ever got lost, and generally there's multiple areas accessible to the player at any given time (a huge pro for me). For the most part the opening up of the map feels organic. This game is good about opening up areas through movement based power-ups instead of lock-and-key checks (though there are some of the latter). There's fast travel nodes that you can travel between for free, and then there's consumable items that let you fast travel at will to any checkpoint. I think making this consumable was a bad idea, but it's not too difficult to stock up on the item.

The combat and platforming are the bread and butter of the game, and both are very good. There's a large variety of enemies with different visual designs and attack patterns. There's a lot of bosses, and they're diverse and fun to fight. The platforming doesn't have anything particularly innovative, but there's tons of little platforming challenges sprinkled throughout the game that are mostly engaging. There's a typical complement of power-ups that given you more movement and exploration options, but again, nothing innovative.

The story is passable. I didn't love it or hate it, though I found myself caring less and less as the game went on. There's a good amount of lore, it's somewhat convoluted but interesting.

The game has a bunch of different endings locked behind various conditions and bosses. They're mostly intuitive and fun, though some are duds. I didn't get the true ending because there's a required item that you can't get until you level up to a certain point. I killed every boss and explored most of every area, and still wasn't a high enough level. I would've needed to tediously grind exp (which I did not care to do).

Overall I liked it. The true ending situation leaves a bad taste in my mouth, but I still enjoyed my time spent.

Terrible as a metroidvania, but okay as a platformer. Unfortunately there's just too many questionable design decisions. Not a bad game, but not worth my time.

The game is far too linear. There's only ever one path forward at any time. The game introduces a fast travel room pretty early, and then completely neglects to insert additional fast travel rooms for the majority of the game.

The color armor system is cool, but it's not implemented well enough to use on the fly reliably. The game would've been better off with only 2-3 colors, or with a dedicated button for each color so you know exactly how to get the color you want and develop muscle memory.

Enemies, levels, and obstacles are all pretty repetitive, though I liked most of the boss fights.

Most bosses have a save room nearby, but you can't skip dialogue/cutscenes, so if you die you have to mash through text boxes and/or wait through cutscenes every time.

I liked the health system. Combat, particularly the bosses, felt fast paced and fun.

I feel like the game would've been better off as a finely tuned platformer instead of a metroidvania.

A little rough around the edges, but the concept is executed pretty well. The one-arm mechanic creates a lot of tension, but can also lead to frustration when you fail to draw or holster a weapon. The game is also a bit wonky when enemies or terrain are too close (bullets go through the enemies or get eaten by the terrain). Other than that, it works very well and creates frantic moments where you're carefully balancing moving and shooting.

The resource management system is great. In a lot of survival horror games, you get to a point where you've stockpiled enough resources to just unload on enemies without worrying about running out and all tension is gone. Here, the game is split into levels with only your current inventory being carried over, and each level is pretty well balanced to provide a reasonable amount of ammo/recovery items.

A decent puzzler with a similar structure to The Witness, but not quite as good or well polished.

My main complaint is how the game teaches you new puzzle mechanics. The Witness is good about teaching the foundations of each puzzle type with increasingly difficult puzzles such that you gradually piece together the ruling logic. Taiji often throws you into the deep end right away. It's not that the puzzles are too hard, but that the game doesn't teach you the logic first. The intro puzzles are complicated enough that there are multiple rule sets that could be correct.
You can easily build a rule set that isn't correct, then have to repeatedly go back and build a new set when the old set doesn't work. A few times I skipped the intro because I thought "surely there's a simpler puzzle somewhere that teaches this." As a result, the intro puzzles themselves feel very brute force dependent. Not all of the puzzle types have this problem. Once you've figured out the right rules, most of the puzzles are pretty good.

If you liked the Witness, Taiji is worth a shot. If you haven't played the Witness, I'd start there instead.

It's not a terrible game, but there's too many poor mechanics to make it worth playing. What ultimately made me quit was multiple mandatory "side-quests" that required me to backtrack to previously visited out of the way areas. If the quests were optional or if I could have stacked the quests so that I could go down and do it all at the same time, I probably would've kept playing.

There's a lot of other tedious backtracking as well. E.g., you need to get a quest by getting to the nearest travel station, traveling to area A, going to where the quest giver is, going back to the travel station, traveling to area B, etc.

There's tons of weapons and armor but they're essentially just re-skins with minor stat differences. You just equip the ones with the best stats and that's it. I'd rather there be less equipment but with gameplay differences and perhaps replace the superfluous equipment with stat buffs or cosmetics.

The dialogue told with pictures is a fine concept, but it's too slow with no option to accelerate/skip them. In addition the characters often repeat pictures that the last character already told you. The narrator summarizes the pictures immediately afterwards, so I don't see the point other than to waste time.

I generally liked the bosses, but most of the combat in between felt tedious.

Wonderfully innovative roguelike, but with a strong puzzle feel. It's simple to play but has enough depth and variety to make it fun.

I really like the game, but I haven't been able to complete a temple because of disconnects.

Fantastic logic based puzzle game.

My only complaint is that some levels are unnecessarily large, making them more of a challenge of endurance rather than logic. I would much prefer smaller, harder levels.

Simple and fun. The small puzzle boards keep the challenge dependent on clever tricks instead of length.