Recent reviews by adamant

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♥♥♥♥ Denuvo.

Nice game

A hidden gem for sure. The graphics is very unassuming, but have you ever played Omori, Tunic, Undertale? If you enjoyed either of them, you should certainly enjoy this one as well!

It is actually a very good game. Gameplay-wise, it's somewhat similar to Psychonauts, albeit not as quirky. Rare occasion in modern days of a game that's just pleasant to play...

It was fun at first, but the run length is way too long for my liking...

The game is adorable, and I really enjoyed it, so I just can't put a thumbs down, but it is super annoying that there is no in-game map for collectibles, and completing museum is even more annoying due to how much grind it requires. You get it all:
- Rare fish that you have like 1% chance of catching with apparently no way of improving it;
- Minerals that drop from breakable stones at random that you need to grind to find all;
- Bugs that spawn randomly on cutting grass that you need to grind to find all;
- ~30 independent cryptic text clues that you need to follow to get artifacts (see enigmas from Assassin's creed);

It's really sad to see such a nice game that at the same time doesn't seem to respect player's time at all.

I mean... Gameplay-wise it's a good game with nice aerial combat. But repeated multi-stage challenges (final boss, fragile egg, target challenge) are just frustrating without proper checkpoints. I ended up dropping the final boss fight when he started teleporting to prior bosses arena, because there's no way I do 5-6 stages in a row in one go. That's sad, as I enjoyed the game overall.

I wish there were more rating options than simple yes/no. The game has some nice things and some bad things, and my overall rating would probably be around 6.5/10.

What I liked:
1. The game is pretty good at maintaining the general atmosphere.
2. Graphics is very good and seems to be a big step up from Souls games. A lot of beautiful landscapes.
3. Guard counters are very nice and also a big step up from classic Souls mechanic of dodge rolling everything.

What I didn't like:
1. The game strives on intentionally loose controls. It's somewhat better than Souls games, but still feels very unpleasant and like an artificial difficulty. What I mean here is the following:
1.1. Whenever you do any action, the playing character usually commits to doing it to the end no matter what. A lot of such actions have a deliberately slow animation, both in PC and enemies, and It feels very unnatural (unlike other games when you can interrupt most actions to dodge or block) and overall greatly devalues reactive elements of the gameplay, forcing you to learn enemies actions and trying predicting them in fights rather than striving on quickly reacting to whatever the enemy is doing.
1.2. During the whole game it bugged me over and over again that the character only starts dodging when you release the dodge button, and not when you press it. It took me time adjusting to do very quick taps on dodge button, and it's annoying. This is explained by the fact that by holding dodge button you start running, but e.g. Sekiro mitigates this but doing a dodge immediately and starting running afterwards.
2. Intentionally loose storytelling. I mean I like environmental storytelling, but the way Souls series and Elden Ring approach it is a slap to the face. There are vague statements all over the place, mostly in item descriptions, sometimes they don't make sense or contradict each other and we are left to wonder what the hell actually happened.
2.1. Somewhat related is that NPC quests are very inconsistent. You sometimes need to do some random actions or visit random locations that you'd have no idea about unless you read up about them on Wiki. There is no way to keep track of them, and you can fail them by progressing in a random unrelated part of the game.
3. I hate iframes on dodge rollings in all games, and Souls games, and Elden Ring in particular abuse the mechanic. I think Sekiro handled this way better, where you get quicksteps instead of dodge rolls, you get less iframes, etc. It's somewhat more tolerable if teleport dodging is used.
3.1. Also to me personally timing dodges is super annoying and also feels like an artificial difficulty. They feel unresponsive (see above), and basically any enemy times attack in a manner to dodge-catch you, so that you get hit twice if you dodge immediately after you got hit first time. It also makes the game unnecessary slow-paced with some ridiculous delays between attacks and I don't like it. It's only mitigated in some fights (e.g. Malenia) where you can punish these ridiculously long windups by poise-breaking, but most enemies that do them are giant and it's impossible to poise-break them.

I really enjoyed the game! It is somewhat annoying that the point of no return is so far from the final, so I probably won't go for the "true" ending, simply because it would make me repeat a pretty stressful game segment.

Parry system is largely similar to Sekiro's, as you need to repeatedly deflect enemy attacks in a certain rhythm to acquire charges that you can use for strong talisman attacks. Moreover, if you use a certain charm deflecting will also build up internal damage for the enemy which you can transform into real damage by applying talisman attacks. This way, the combat would be even more similar to Sekiro's with its posture meter.

Boss fights are challenging and engaging, and the final fight also strongly resembles final boss fight of Sekiro, as you have a duel with a humanoid that uses a skill set that is similar to the main character's.

The story is pretty engaging and enigmatic, so is the general atmosphere and graphics of the game. Overall, I think it's a really good game.

This is actually a very nice, atmospheric game! I greatly enjoyed exploration in it, and I think it was pretty good at creating suspense.