Recent reviews by Algray Solipso

Very fun gameplay loop, but its fun factor is dragged down by being *extremely* RNG dependent, with very few ways to mitigate it. I prefer roguelikes where I feel like every death was my fault.

The game has a fairly high skill ceiling, and many of the situations that appear like "♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ unwinnable RNG" are actually winnable with experience and better execution. However, as one gets good at the game, the situations that actually ARE unwinnable worse. Getting stunlocked in a random pulsar fight while an enemy gets to beat you to death feels a LOT worse when it ends a run earned through skillful execution and decisionmaking.

Some cool ideas that don't quite come together.

Levels are same-ish corridors with no map, everything blends together.

Story is minimal and told through item descriptions and cryptic lines from NPCs. It mostly ends up as a mess of Capital Letters without a narrative to connect them together. Don't expect any deep lore here.

Combat is impactful, but slow, sluggish and lacks variety, There are just 2-4 enemy types per area and you'll be fighting them over and over. It desperately needs variety in encounter design and ways to approach fights. Harden + sprint attack is king and dominates all encounters and all boss fights.

Overall, it's an interesting case study of how copying all of the key elements from a good game does not result in a good game, but I would not call it enjoyable.

I'm torn on this one and would have voted "maybe" if that were an option.

On one hand, this DLC is jam packed with truly difficult puzzles that the base game severely lacked. I could count on one hand how many puzzles took more than 10 minutes to solve in the original, but in this one some of them took hours.

On the other hand, two thirds of the puzzles are focused on lasers, with no new mechanics. There are only so many times I could tackle the "get intersecting colors through a door" problem before I was absolutely sick of it, even if the solutions were different every time. Compare this to Road to Gehenna, where most puzzles were both hard AND memorable.

There also isn't much to think about while solving the difficult puzzles. Isle of the Blessed has some interesting musings on what constitutes art and whether it needs to have a purpose or be unique, but Orpheus Rising is a cliche love story and all of the writing in Into the Abyss is forgettable filler.

If what you liked about Talos Principle 2 was the brainwracking puzzles and eye candy, then this DLC is for you. If what you enjoyed was its philosophy and meaningful choices, then you should skip this one.

An adrenaline ride like no other - high octane action with an extremely high skill ceiling.

Where other games hand you a power trip, this one makes you earn it, but god does it feel good.

The combat encounters are an interesting puzzle, especially on the highest difficulty - some encounters start out brutally unfair, until you "solve" the fight as a puzzle and trivialize it down to a few shots.

Map design is bland. Aside from a few vistas, it's just same-ish looking outdoor corridors. It's not terrible but also not memorable.

The story is alright - the premise is interesting but it is not explored deeply enough to be interesting.

Last 20-30% of the game feels padded - you could tell they were not happy with the final playtime, and squeezed in a few more hours of corridor crawling to pad the game up to 8-9 hours. Once the designers start busting out the "activate 3 towers" and "get 4 keys to open this door" cards, you know they're out of ideas and just padding playtime at this point.

On a honest 10 point scale, I would rate it a 6. The elemental combat system and encounter design is what kept me going, otherwise even with the game being as short as it is, I would not have finished it.

This Fox of Mine

Expected a game about killing spiders via increasingly disproportionate means.

Got a game that is more about hunting hidden objects to fulfill optional objectives.

Nothing objectively wrong with that, but it was not for me.

Absolute gem. Deeply immersive, enthralling from beginning to end. One of the best story-driven FPS experiences of all time.

Special mention: I have never before seen a game put so much effort into fleshing out its side cast - so many "slices of life" that make them feel like real humans, who laugh, cry, rejoice and despair. There are LITERAL HOURS of optional worldbuilding dialogue you can easily walk past. In particular, the portrayal of Artyom and Anna's relationship is probably the most believable I've ever seen in a video game - it really feels like they love each other, worry about each other and miss each other whenever they are apart. It is incredible how much emotion the developers managed to portray from a mute first person view, where all we see is Artyom's hands.

The deck-building gameplay is a bit basic and easy to overwhelm with broken builds, but the game itself is captivating and just dripping with atmosphere. It's clearly a labor of love, and I could feel it just as strongly in the first hour of the game as in the 30th.

It is worth noting that the fights are not the main focus of the game - the story and characters are. If you come into this expect deep combat a-la Slay the Spire, you will be disappointed; but if you play this to be immersed in the strange and rich world of Russian provincial folklore, you're in for a true delight.

Bonus: the Russian voice acting is some of the best I have seen in any media, including movies and other triple A games. The people working on this game had an absolute blast and you can tell.

The selling point of the game is carefully interacting with an AI that has feelings, holds grudges and even suffers from PTSD. It's a nice idea in theory, but it doesn't work at all in practice - talking to the AI feels like talking to a patient with severe dementia. Even if it could hold a coherent conversation, the AI's role in the game amounts to a glorified door opener and your rapport makes no real difference.