Recent reviews by adamant

I will not recommend any "auto save" game in which auto saves are placed in a manner that you can lose half an hour of progress if you didn't save manually. This one is no exception.

Updating the review to a slightly more serious one.

I really liked and enjoyed the game.It really is like Sekiro, the jrpg, and I greatly enjoy a good parry mechanic.

... Which is why I still will give the game a positive review. But, frankly, act 3 was a total disappointment (main story-wise, side activities are still pretty cool). I think the game would be so much better if they just finished it after act 2...

I really wanted to like this game. But January is approaching and it is clear I won't be able to max out all social links, despite trying to prioritise them throughout the whole playthrough. I'm a sore loser, yes, but I can't really recommend a game that frustrates and wears me out to the point that I don't find energy and motivation to properly complete it.

A friend sent it to me recently, and I finally had a chance to try it out. It felt weird at first, but damn using track pads instead of joysticks is a game changer. I want more.

Nice little fishing game. Hoping for sequel.

It is a good game. But resetting all progress (map unlocking, picked up items, etc) since last save on death without auto checkpoints, etc is a terrible mechanic and easily allows you to lose 20-30 minutes of progress if you're not careful. Of course, this happened in this game too, and I really can't stress enough how much it spoils the fun.

Cute little game. Gameplay-wise is similar to Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet.

I played it in March, 2019. I enjoyed it. Then at some point the game just told me that we're going to skip a game chapter cause it's Early Access and the chapter is unfinished. This is the reason I don't play any other games on Early Access since then. It's been 5 years. The game is still Early Access. I hoped to return to it when it releases.

Alright, as I finished probably most of the game, and generally enjoyed it.

Nice things:
- Art, lore and general vibes of the world. It feels a bit too empty sometimes, but it kind of matches the doomed atmosphere.
- There are a lot of culture references.
- Interesting encounter mechanics: encounters are determined by the type of the soil you're standing on.
- Creature taming is reasonably straightforward. There are no limits on the number of "bench warmer" creatures, and there is very limited fusion/breeding: Lesser creatures are unalterable, while greater creatures can be enhanced by directly adding two lesser creatures skills and attributes to theirs.

Not so nice things:
- Navigating the game world often feels inconvenient and slow. It constantly feels that too few things fit in the camera view, and there is no in-game map to meaningfully track where you have already been, and whether it makes sense to try looking for a new path in some direction.
- There is a certain lack of enemy (and generally side activity) diversity, especially by the end of the game. late-game "forest" area seems to only have one kind of enemy, and this same enemy is used in 4 hardest "training grounds" fights with the only difference being that each next fight has one more wave than the last one (up to 5 waves).
- Instead of MP management, most non-trivial skills need to be "charged". While nice in theory, on practice it means that you must actively skip a turn to make the skill available. In most cases, it just doesn't pay out and it's better to use the most basic attack or heal option. It might have been better if "trivial" actions still contributed to charging abilities, but maybe on a smaller scale.
- Level progression seems kind of broken, as by the end of the game, there is one superboss that you're unlikely to kill without some dedicated grinding or fishing, while all the other fights become basically trivial, including two canonical end-game bosses.
- A lot of plot lines seem to cut abruptly. For example, the game starts with two guys asking you to be "their summoner". You'd expect that they'd care about you and your progress along the journey, give you a lot of missions, etc, but essentially the only meaningful task you do for them specifically is unclogging the toilet and finding a crowbar? A lot of other characters seem underutilized, i.e. they seem important as if they might use your help or something, but really they're just there as a decoration. Then, there are characters that tell you to do something specific, but when you do and try to talk to them again, they don't seem to acknowledge it or react to it in any way.
- There are some minor bugs e.g. when fishing (imagine catching a "fish", but it doesn't register in the inventory and you only see the "!!!" message) or eavesdropping (you get a "PLACEHOLDER" text if you apply the bug on non-resistance NPC).

That being said, the overall experience was very nice for me, just from "how it feels" perspective, as I like games in which there is just some kind of bizarre world and you spend time immersing in it and getting to know it better.

I have very mixed feelings about this game.

I really enjoyed the combat system, it's something between Sekiro and Nine Sols: You can dodge (with sidestep when camera is focused on an enemy, and with rolls otherwise), jump (and it works quite well against ground-based attacks, similar to Elden Ring) and, most importantly, parry. Parry in this game is closer to Nine Sols than to Sekiro: You can't continuously block attacks, so only short-termed parry is available. When you parry, it fills enemy's stun bar and when they're stunned, you can do a strong riposte attack. As in Sekiro and Nine Sols, you essentially can parry anything.

There were some bugs that others mentioned, like down button not working (happened only once and was fixed by resting), or certain bosses stopping fighting mid through the encounter. The later is more severe, and made 3 boss fights feel somewhat less rewarding. But, honestly, it didn't affect my impression of the game that much.

Probably one extremely negative (to me) side of the game was the fact that the point of no return for side quests is, very surprisingly, not the point you e.g. enter the last location, but actually the point you talk to Pulcinella about it. After that, without warning, all side quest NPCs simply disappear from their standard location. I can't express enough how frustrating it was for me, as I hoped to make a round run to wrap up all side quests before going to the final boss, only to find out that side quest NPCs are no longer there.

The later was so frustrating to me that I contemplated giving a thumbs down to the game just for that. But, ultimately, it's a very nice game to scratch that Sekiro feel, it has a lot of beautiful sunny locations (unlike most soulslike games with their constant gloom), and overall I think it is a very nice and enjoyable game, if you keep in mind that you must not talk to Pulcinella after beating the third act boss before wrapping up all the questlines.

On a side note, the game has story mode that significantly reduces the game difficulty, and I think it's nice. I played most of the game on the soulslike mode, but switched to story mode on the final boss, simply because I was too tired by that time and frustrated due to side quests and wanted to get it over with quicker.