Recent reviews by Keebz

I really love some new things, but there are others I'm uncertain about. Open world exploration and building are fun additions. However, coming from Ryza 1 (the only Atelier game I've played to completion) it feels like they might have lost sight of a few elements that make this series stand out.

The combat, gathering, and alchemy systems seem to have been over-simplified in this iteration. I'm not far enough into the game yet to say how this will affect my long term enjoyment, but my gut feeling is that they may have dumbed down a few too many systems.

In Ryza, discovering new recipes was a satisfying "maze" where you had to build items in a certain way to unlock new recipes. Now recipe unlocks are just a single menu with no "gameplay" to unlocking them.

Manual synthesis doesn't seem as important. The game isn't hard enough to demand it (so far) which is a shame because that's the main thing that sets this series apart. The satisfaction of manually cooking up an amazingly powerful item that you couldn't have auto-crafted was really fun. Even on "very hard" difficulty I am destroying most enemies.

Gathering also has no challenge to it now, as everything can be gathered with your starting tool. I miss having different gathering tools I could unlock as the game progresses.

The new combat system is mostly button mashing with minimal strategy involved, though on "very hard" difficulty it can be more fun, as you actually need to pay attention and dodge attacks.

Building is fun, but they could have made it serve more of a purpose. It seems mostly cosmetic. The game also should offer you an option to move your main Atelier to one of the other build sites.

Most of these aforementioned elements are a step back from Ryza, in my opinion, BUT the overall feel of movement, the visuals, animations, the story, etc. are all steps forward.

I still recommend the game, and I'm addicted to it. It STILL has a satisfying gameplay loop. It plays great on the Steam Deck. But what they need to do going forward I think is blend some of what they've done here with those other cherished elements from Ryza that they've let go of. If my review sounds overly critical it's just because I really LIKE the game, I just want them to make it (or its sequels) even better.

This game is straight up fire. One of the best indie games I've ever played. Such a good "flow state" game where you just chill out and destroy enemies while doing cool tricks. The traversal is so much fun.

IDK how I haven't reviewed this yet, but simply put Titanfall 1 and 2 are some of the best shooters ever made. In the case of TF2, this remains true for both the single player campaign (which is stellar), and the multiplayer. I am not sure we'll ever get another game in the series with Apex Legends and associated microtransaction greed hogging all of EA's attention. But thankfully, this has a dedicated, active community even if it's not an enormous one.

Hours played is inaccurate, as I put in a lot of hours before it came to Steam.

It's fun! Feels good to play, runs well, art style is cool, there are a variety of modes. Card system is fresh and changes based on the mode you're playing. Runs incredibly well on Steam Deck. Battle passes don't expire. Some typical 'F2P game' menus and currencies but at least it's not pay to win. Give it a shot.

It's fun! It feels like a proof of concept right now more than anything. UI, music, etc. don't feel like a lot of budget have been poured into them yet, but the bones are there. The gameplay is pretty satisfying. Easy to learn/difficult to master.

Nothing quite hits the same as Chivalry's combat. The best Medieval melee combat game around. Always a good time to hop into.

I'm going to give this an initial positive review. But I need more time to fully say. A lot of early reviews were bad because the game was crashing and had an audio bug--the devs addressed a lot of these problems on the very first day, so many of those complaints are not relevant anymore.

Aside from that, you have some other folks complaining about this game having PVP. That's literally the point. There are plenty of PVE games out there to play, but if you're looking for a third person fantasy themed PVP extraction game, you really don't have a lot of choice. In fact, I can't think of a single one that has "made it." Dark and Darker is the closest but it's first person and not quite what I'm looking for.

I think it's pretty fun, but whether or not I can fully recommend it will entirely depend on how the developers handle this game. Will they stand by it, through ups and downs? Or will it be a quick cash grab? Can't say at the moment but I'm hoping they stick with it. They could have something really special on their hands if they do. Character animations and performance could use some polishing but the classes, abilities and overall combat elements are fun.

Good VR co-op fun. Played through all the levels on Veteran difficulty, which was the right amount of challenge. Definitely a game to play with friends. Can get pretty spicy on Master difficulty and above. Fun to upgrade weapons and mow down hordes of zombies.

I don't understand people. This feels really solid. Yes it looks like an AAA game in some ways, but it is not nor is it priced as much therefore it should not be held to the same standards in my opinion. Even so, this indie studio shows more mastery of the Unreal engine than many AAA devs, and it attempts some fresh physics-based combat which I appreciate. Sure, that can come with a bit of jank but folks are grilling it for what I consider to be minor, fixable things.

Hopefully people give it a chance and the devs can fix whatever minor gripes people have. The dialogue and voice work is quite solid so far, and it seems a lot of care was given to the lore of the world.

The Game
This game is massive, but at no point does it force you to participate deeply in its multitude of side activities if you choose not to. Unlike many open world games, you can blitz the main storyline if you want and ignore those side activities. I think for many people this will be the optimal route to follow, as it could be argued that these activities halt the pacing of an otherwise well-paced story. However, so far I've personally really enjoyed collecting everything, knowing that I can continue with the main story whenever I wish to.

The beauty of it all is that you get to choose. That's why I can't really agree with a lot of the complaints about the game being too bloated. Enjoy it in whatever way suits you.

Overall, everything in this game is an improvement over the first part. Aside from two things. 1) The difficulty curve. Some fights feel too easy for a while compared to the first game, even on Dynamic difficulty. Though that does change as it progresses and there are plenty of challenging fights late game. 2) The second thing that is not improved is the Fort Condor mini game. They had it perfect in part 1's DLC, where you could collect different units and customize your board. I don't like the changes made to it in this sequel. There is no room for error and you have to use preset loadouts.

That said, all is balanced out because somehow they made the most addicting game within a game I have ever played. Queens Blood is a phenomenal card game and I am going to spend countless hours just playing that, collecting new cards, etc.

The Tech
Square Enix is getting better at PC ports. They have come a long way since the FF13 series, but they're still behind some of their Japanese competitors like Capcom due to lack of features such as Ultrawide support (there is already a great mod for it but official support would be very nice).

That said this feels quite polished. I’m so used to open world games being weighed down by technical problems, but this game runs really smoothly and looks incredible while doing so.

Did I mention the game runs surprisingly well on the freaking Steam Deck? What wizardry is this, to have a game of this scope playable on there?