Recent reviews by byte

It seems like the game is mostly passed the troubled launch period.

Now, matchmaking works, and it's pretty fantastic.

This is a really solid PVE squad shooter with fun mechanics and tons of character.

I can imagine the gameplay loop might get old eventually, but certainly not until you've had your $40 worth of fun times.

The standard by which all "spaceship games" should be judged.

You should know by now that this game is mostly a "simulator" and has not much by way of plot, story, narrative, or characters.

But if you want a game in which you are the captain of a spacecraft, exploring uncharted start systems in a practically unlimited galaxy, this is the one.

I think the greatest innovation of this game is how it seamlessly combines three different "arenas" of play-
- You have the "sub lightspeed" travel, where you are travelling in space at "low" velocity, and can see other players, ships, satellites, etc
- You have superliminal travel, where you fling around in a given solar system (which are accurately scaled!) travelling with real velocity between planets. Truly gives you an impression of the scale of planetary systems.
- You have frameshift jumps, which are like teleports between systems. Since you'll be doing this a lot during gameplay, the developers smartly decided the experience should be cool and fun - and boy, did they nail it. Instead of a canned animation - or, god forbid, a loading screen! - you get a fully immersive experience (you never lose control of the camera) with god-tier sound design, and the unforgettable experience of getting dumped directly in the path of a massive star, which feels like a jump scare the first time you see it, and never gets old.

I'm about 8 hours in, so here's a review of the early game.

I really love creative mission design. There's so much room for creative storytelling in video game missions, so many ways to delight and surprise the player.

So let me tell you about one of the first missions I played in Starfield. Don't worry, this will be spoiler free. It goes like this:

You get a distress call after jumping to one of the early systems in the game. Par for the course in a "space" game. You follow the distress beacon to a research outpost, and there are bad guys there, so you shoot them. You rescue the lieutenant who was held hostage. The lieutenant tells you about other hostages, with other bad guys. You go shoot those bad guys and rescue those hostages. Sometimes while shooting you reload. Sometimes your health gets low and so you use a medpack. Some guns go bangbangbang and others are more like pewpewpew. When you point at the bad guys and click on them their health bar goes down until you win.

So anyway, you rescue the second group of hostages from bad guys. Now all the hostages meet up, and tell you to go in your spaceship and shoot some other spaceships, which are piloted by bad guys. These other space ships are both orbiting two different planets. To get to those planets, there's a magical moment where you power up your jump drive, aim at the distant planet, set power to full, and perform this super immersive light-speed jump like in Elite: Dangerous - hahaha, just kidding, actually you open the map and click on the planet and it teleports you there. There's not even an animation of your ship traveling. But there is a brief "woosh" sound during the loading screen that indicates you are doing superliminal space travel, though. I really appreciate how the game values my time so much that they actually didn't add any space travel to the space game.

So, now you're orbiting the planet with the bad guy ships. Combat here is just like when shooting bad guys on the ground, except instead of being on the ground, you are in space, and the bad guys are in ships.

So you shoot these bad guy ships, and then some text on the screen says "mission complete" and then it tells you there are more bad guys back on the ground with the hostages. So you travel back to where you started, where the first hostages were, and you shoot the same type of bad guys in the same exact level, until they are all gone.

At this point the mission is over, and presumably you get some reward, but I'm not really sure because the game tells me to talk to the lieutenant again, but the lieutenant got stuck in some "downed" position, and I can't revive him or talk to him so I can't continue. So I'm not sure if you get any reward or if he knows about more bad guys somewhere he wants you to click on or what.

Now, I've heard the later missions in the game are not like this. Apparently they have some kind of plot, or engaging characters, with meaningful stakes, or something, later on. But I'm not there yet, and not sure if I'll ever get there.

Very cute and well-polished VN-style game with a few good laughs.

I love stories that show the same events from multiple viewpoints, and this does exactly that.

The core idea is good on its own, but it's enhanced by extremely cute art, music, and style. This game is light-hearted and knows it (despite the frequency of bloody murders).

Only downside is that the current price ($10) feels a bit steep for the short ~2.5 hours it takes to get 100% (which you will definitely want to do).

I was not hyped for this game, really. I could never handle the pain of former Souls games.

This avoids that problem by throwing you into what is surely one of the best open worlds in gaming. Similar to BotW, there's something completely new around every corner (which will probably kill you immediately).

The reward of exploration is so great that the constant pain of death feels entirely worth it.

If I had to be *really* picky, the variety of boss fights did not match the variety of the open world (though some boss fights in this game are stellar).

And certain mechanics are not explained well to the user - some things you can figure out on your own (which feels great). Other things you will never figure out unless you read about it online (which doesn't feel great).

Also, parrying is a lie. In almost 300 hours I have not once successfully parried. It doesn't exist and anyone who claims to have parried is a liar.

Bought this game on sale because I enjoyed Danganronpa, and love "film noir" style detective games where you collect clues and put them together to solve mysteries.

Unfortunately, this game (well, the five hours I could stand to play it) has basically none of that, despite how it looks.

You don't collect clues. Instead, you delve into dreams, Christopher Nolan style. On the surface, this is a cool idea; surely these dreams will be playgrounds you can explore to uncover the truth of what a witness REALLY saw, or why a killer killed, or to try and pull a license plate number from the subconscious of a forgetful bystander.

Nah, it's not like that at all. What's it like? This is an direct example from the game:

You see a lamp. What do you do?
a) pick it up
b) grab it (unclear how this is different from A)
c) kick it
d) turn it off

The correct answer was b, "grab it". Why is that the correct answer? WHO KNOWS. Just because. Did you pick "a", "c", or "d"? Well ♥♥♥♥ YOU, you don't get to progress until you select "b". So what happens after you select "b" and grab it? Is a secret note revealed under the base? Does a trap door open up and reveal a hidden room? Lol, nah, nothing happens. But now you can interact with a book instead.

While this is going on, I am not kidding you, there is a 6min timer ticking. Did you pick a, c, or d? Well, that's an additional time penalty. When you're out of time, you start over. This time you better remember you need to GRAB the lamp, not pick it up, you dunce.

Here's the CORRECT order in which one of these levels must be played. If this sounds fun to you, by all means I urge you to purchase this game:
1. Flip the light switch (don't try to remove the vines covering it)
2. Ignore the ringing phone (what, you thought answering it or hanging up was the correct choice?)
3. Pick up the flower (DO NOT SMELL IT)
4. Tear the book apart (reading it is a waste of time, it's not necessary to advance)
5. Ignore the ringing phone AGAIN
6. Grab the lamp (NOT "pick up", but "grab")
7. Close the curtain (this one actually does make sense in the game, kinda)
8. Tear another book (again, reading just wastes time)
9. Throw the skull
10. Lock the door (do NOT pick "ignore", you must ignore the PHONE, NOT the door)

And let me reiterate, those choices are not presented to you via any logic-based or clue-based puzzle. These are all literally trial and error. You must remember (or write down) the exact order in which to do these things, with every action deducting from your time, with few if any mistakes, just because the game director wants you to.

The game looks amazing. The advertising campaign specifically mentioned the shader tech, which is the first time I've seen a marketing campaign mention a shader. Well, they were right - it's awesome. No clue how they did it, but graphically this is maybe the best translation of "anime-to-3D" I've seen in a game. I tried playing Scarlet Nexus after this, and it just looks flat, grey, and bland in comparison. IMO this is the "next gen" of JRPG graphics (though I'm a JRPG novice so take that with a grain of salt).

How's the gameplay? Fun, for like 20-hours. After that it depends on your tolerance for grinding.

How's the story? It's an anime story. Protagonist with amnesia? Check. Orphan? Check. Chosen one? Check. The guy who appears early on and helps you, but has the villainy talk, the villainy walk, the villainy clothes? Yeah. I don't even need spoiler tags for this. Come on.

Truth be told I did not finish this game and probably won't. But if you want a solid 20+hours of fun combat at the very minimum, this should probably hold your attention.

(review is spoiler free except for the spoiler tags)

An absolute blast of a card battler. Inventive, stylish, and equal parts escape room, roguelite, deckbuilder, and... Blair Witch?

The mechanics are fun, but it's the polish and execution that really make the experience.

The developer took the central conceit of deck-building roguelites and built a meta-narrative experience on top of it. It's like Hades and Slay the Spire had a baby, but then a paternity test revealed Pony Island was actually the father. (which makes more sense after I found out Pony Island is from the same dev)

My only gripe is the game perhaps tries to be too much. I think the Blair-Witch-esque found-footage aspect was a bit over the top, and honestly distracted from what made the rest of the game so enjoyable. Another minor complaint is that I found the "first section" of the game to be far more interesting and polished than any section afterward, so after beating the old dude, the rest of the game was a bit of a come-down, even if it was still a good time.

It's one of those "emotionally captivating, character-driven RGPMaker games" a la To the Moon and Undertale, but IMO better than either of them by miles, and that's saying something because I loved both of those games.

It's also extremely polished. You can just feel how much care and attention went into every detail. Apparently this game has been in development for seven years, and it shows.

In the battle system, characters can feel a whole range of emotions that affect how they perform and interact with other characters - from "happy", "sad", and "angry" to "ecstatic", "depressed", "furious", and "terrified." You will feel all these things, too, I promise.

This is one of those games that should decisively convince someone that video games are art. The story did some things toward the end that I didn't love, and I think the game missed on a chance to take on even bigger emotional themes - but even with the ending we got, holy cow. It's like "sit there and stare at the wall when it's over" good.

(this review is spoiler free. only 13 hours in at the moment but I'll update this as I learn more)

I'm recommending this game, since IMO it fulfills every basic promise: it's gorgeous, it's cyberpunk, it's got a noir-like story.

But we all know why the game is good - so let me list some reasons why you might *not* enjoy it, even if overall I do recommend it.

* The voice acting itself is fine, but the direction is terrible. Whoever was directing these actors had no clue what was going on in the script. Hard to explain, but the voice acting, even in pivotal plot scenes, totally flubs the inflection and delivery. When two characters are talking to one another, it's like they're each in totally different conversations. Emotions change wildly from line to line because no one was directing the actors properly, and it's clear the actors usually have no idea what's actually going on in their scene. Keanu, however, does a great job with what he's given. I'm mentioning this first because most problems in a game can be patched - but terrible voice direction? That's gonna plague this game forever, even through the inevitable remasters, re-releases, and "GOTY" editions that will no doubt be released over the next decade. It will never be fixed.

* I haven't noticed many "gameplay" bugs in the open world, but boy oh boy are there bugs in the UI and menu system.

* Speaking of the menu system... yeesh. It's a confusing mess. It works okay after you learn how to use it, but damn is it clunky.

* There are too many mechanics in this game. Too many systems. And though I'm only 13 hours in, I get the feeling I will be punished later on for not mastering all of them.

* This game does not hold your hand enough in the beginning. It throws these systems at you all at once, with little to no explanation. Yeah, there's a "database"/codex of vocabulary words you can study. But it's not enough to teach you what you need to know. Some games intentionally throw you into the deep water and force you to learn how to swim. But when this game does it, it's just frustrating, because there are gameplay moments that are simple if you understand a complex system, and utterly impossible if you don't.

* The story is okay so far, but... sometimes the plot simply makes no sense. Characters will suddenly know things that they didn't know before, with no explanation as to how. Characters' intentions are inconsistent and unclear. Characters give off death-flags a mile away. You will roll your eyes at the scenes that should really be the most impactful.

* Compared to Geralt, the main character is a flavorless lump of wet bread. Geralt was your classic "tough guy hiding a sensitive side". Simple and effective. V is... V's character and dialog could have been generated from your keyboard's auto-complete.