Recent reviews by Froufe

Honestly, Nine Sols is one of the best metroidvanias I ever played. Gorgeous graphics, great soundtrack, and a surprisingly deep story about making amends and correcting wrongs. It goes light on the exploration and does not really require much backtracking, focusing instead heavily on its combat - which is excellent.

Gameplay is buttery smooth, with fights centered around parrying, dancing around your enemies' moves, and finding the right time to punish them. Decent build variety and a healthy number of movement upgrades doled out at regular intervals make Nine Sols an addictive and interesting experience. It is, however, a thoroughly challenging game in its standard difficulty.

Regular mobs will test your reflexes well enough, but they can mostly be rushed once you learn their tells; Mini-bosses will actually force you to learn their patterns and never become too easy, even when fully decked out. And the bosses themselves are all quite spectacular, from the visuals, to the fights themselves all having interesting variations. The balance of the bosses is very well done, with most of them feeling close to impossible when you first meet them, but slowly becoming easier to read as your strategy becomes more methodical. The final boss, in particular, is one I won't forget anytime soon - for all the right reasons.

If you're a fan of Sekiro, metroidvanias, or difficult challenges, odds are you'll love this game.
If not, there are accessibility options to make the game as easy as you want to be - up to the point where you can just one-shot everything and just see the story unfolding if that's your cup of tea.

A full run doing all I could manage to find took me around 35h. I then did a second run to mop up some missing achievements that kept me entertained for 5h more.

All in all, Nine Sols gets a strong recommend from me.

It looks, plays, and feels, like a knock-off version of Blasphemous.
A good game that could have been great, if it had just a bit more oomph on all fronts.

It will scratch the metroidvania itch while you wait for whatever is coming next.

Pepper is here to go fast with her grinder and to chew bubblegum. And she's all out of gum.

Great little platformer that won't take too much of your time and has just the right amount of challenge. Cool pixel art, smooth movement, and a banger soundtrack. The time trials are a welcome addition to those who are looking for a bit more gameplay once the story is over.

Wonderfully weird little game, filled with creative puzzles and very little repetition.
A bit too short for the price point, but still very much worth the trip.

It's like I'm back in 96 playing Chrono Trigger the whole day while it rains outside.

Being a sequel, it is inevitable to compare Blasphemous 2 to the original, so let me start by addressing that. In my opinion, it does some things better that its predecessor: the detail in the pixel art is on another level, the combat is a lot more fluid, and overall the game feels smoother to play. It also falls short of the first one in some areas: the oppressive atmosphere and gruesomeness are noticeably toned down, and in particular the boss fights are considerably easy in this second entry. All of this is fine.

It is, all in all, a worthy successor. I'd venture if you enjoyed the first, chances are you'll have fun with this one too.

If, however, you haven't played the first, I can assure you: despite its differences from the one that came before, Blasphemous is a very good game and a great example of what a metroidvania should be. Easy buy from me.

Videogames are a hobby that allows a little bit of escapism from reality. I don't spend what little free time I have with them so that I can dwell on real world events - so let me start by saying my review is apolitical. It's my take on Atomic Heart for its merits and faults as a videogame, and ONLY as a videogame.

With that out of the way, let me tell you - this game is an absolute blast, especially considering it was Mundfish's first attempt at a game.

In no particular order, some good things about Atomic Heart:
- Graphically, the game is stunning and quite well optimized for PC;
- World building is very detailed and really paints a picture of how a retro-futuristic soviet union might be like;
- Sound design really meshes with the world it was built for;
- The soundtrack in particular is a banger and had me listening to several songs for days;
- Gameplay is tight - perhaps a bit simple once you figure out the mechanics, but there are enough weapons and powers to keep things fresh and interesting;
- Bosses are all fun to do combat with and well put together;
- The main character is a douche, yes - but he owns it and by the end of the story you can mostly empathize with why he acts the way he acts. He has a very stupid catch phrase, but even that is explained in-game if you pay attention;
- Exploration is more often than not rewarded.

Some less positive things:
- Enemy variety is limited - you'll have seen most of the fodder-type enemies by about one third of your adventure;
- The story skips a few beats and feels a bit disjointed sometimes - but most main characters (and a few secondary ones like NORA) are memorable and interesting;
- The DLC story in particular felt a bit rushed, and the DLC as a whole is quite short;
- The open world can be scary at first due to the infinitely respawnable bots - but it takes like 20 minutes to figure out the rules of the game and how to circumvent this.

In the end it took me 28h to finish a run, 6 more to do a New Game Plus and wrap up achievements, and 4 more for the DLC. I had fun the entire time, and there were sexy robot twins - can I really ask more of a videogame?

You can Naruto-run around with an adorable lil' gator.
10/10 would explore again.

A shorter Spider Man that brings back more of what made the first one so good without the unnecessary bloat of a thousand collectibles. Great story, amazing gameplay, awesome music, and just the perfect length.

An interesting prequel that, over the course of three new and intrincate tableaus, explains how the famed Golden Idol first came to Albion. The third scenario in particular got some loud Eureka moments out of me as I slowly managed to piece the story together.

If you liked the base game, you're gonna like this one too.