Recent reviews by KneeKo

Tried getting into the game to finally play again after some time, and I got blocked from being able to do so due to the website that it leads me to to try and "verify" my account literally not working. When I try to edit the e-mail field and then try to edit the "verification code" field, it doesn't work at all. It's literally a static box.

Not worth the asking price. The game tries to implore Darkest Dungeon's "misery simulator" where your characters are like disposable weapons, with quirks and pros, but it doesn't work. The system is just too shallow.

On the other hand, it tries to adopt the Battle Brothers exploration and combat system, but falls so flat because of how tedious fights are. In BB, drawn-out fights happen when you're dealing with really difficult encounters that involve your company fighting a battalion. Here, even on the default difficulty meters (100% on everything), 4:4 fights are extremely drawn out.

It's very, VERY tedious. The game obviously wanted to do more, but was suddenly cut short. What we get are these mixed up systems adopted from other games it was inspired by, but not meshing well with each other at all.

The spritework looks good, but there are too many recycled things going on here. Too many reskins due to how little their asset pool is. For the asking price, you can get Battle Brothers at base game with so much more going for it.

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F**k you Bethesda. Stop repeatedly trying to push for paid mods. YOU DIDN'T MAKE THESE MODS, YOU DON'T DESERVE A SINGLE CENT FROM THE HARD WORK OF MODDERS.

EDIT: The game has this "free content" roadmap. Do not be fooled. These are simply things that SHOULD have been with the game on release, but was cut out, and now they have the audacity to say "it's free stuff we're giving you". This is Blizzard-level scamming, and this developer needs to suffer loss sales. I am baffled this is something still not considered illegal.

No. These developers do not understand what makes Souls-likes or everything in this genre challenging. This game relies on very specific things to "challenge" players:

1. Spamming mobs
2. Spamming traps
3. Spamming ambushes
4. Spamming very small platforms (designed together with how much distance you travel by attacking/dodging)
5. Spamming very tight tunnels (designed together with almost EVERY weapon except the spear -WILL make you hit the ceiling or the walls to get you killed)

These challenges, spammed so much are not fun to overcome. Before Calrath (Roughly the 4th/5th biome of the game, depending on how you tackle stuff), which is right around after midgame, the above enumerated cheap mechanics are spammed so much. They are in no way hard, but the sheer amount of it just makes it impossible to enjoy skirmishes and encounters. You'll find yourself expecting it everytime, which then makes you focus more on watching out for these gimmicks that will make you forget where you are, or just deter you from exploring around, lest you want to risk dying.

Let me give you an example scenario:

You get to a new biome. You find an enemy (FIRE ENCHANTRESS, take note) that spams literally INFINITE range spells at a distance, or melee-tracking attacks that burn you, and they are unflinchable. On your way to them they are guarded by hidden trash enemies that throw fireballs that take 1/4 of your HP and goes through walls. So after a somewhat hectic encounter, you move on.

Now even 10 steps, you are greeted by another elite that hits very hard and can block your attacks. You think "Ok sure, this'll be fun!" But then he's guarded by 5 dogs that run fast and will spam their pounce attacks on you. Maybe you've now burned 1-2 flasks out of your 6, maybe you died. But now you know what to expect, cool.

NOT EVEN ANOTHER 10 steps, you are ambushed by a suicide trash mob that takes 1/2 of your health. Ok, cool, you somehow avoided/survived that. 3 steps later, 2 more pop-up. If you happened to dodge forward, too bad, a FIRE ENCHANTRESS (that's why I said take note) will spam her infinite range spells that targets you within a very large AOE. It DOES NOT matter if you're behind a 5-meter wall, by god you WILL get hit. Oh you rolled to the left so you can somehow avoid some of her damage? Too bad, there's a fire-breathing dog there.

So you again either die, or live through that having popped 1-2 more potions of your 6.

After about 20 steps, you see a corner going to the left. Being used to the BS this game you check it before you cross. Ah, there's a ranged that will shoot 3 consecutive exploding arrows. Cool, you snipe it just to be safe. You roll/attack to remove the annoying crates. WHOOPS, there's a dual-axe guy waiting at your left, and he just took half your HP. So you roll some distance to recollect yourself. WHOOPS, there were floor traps hidden below those crates, and now you're either dead, or very low on HP. This goes on again and again not even a good distance from each other.

I am not even kidding or exaggerating. At the beginning, things are manageable, because they rebalanced them somehow. But when you get to mid-game, everything is just a fustercluck. Good luck to you because no amount of superhuman reflex will save you from the spam of the BS you will encounter moving forward. You WILL die, alot. ALOT MORE than you died in Sekiro.

But don't worry, the bosses are a total joke. In contrast to the absolute BS you just went through, you'll 1-try them not because of the skills you picked up from the fights you did to get to said boss, but rather because of your own, pure base skills.

Do not buy until they've stopped the balancing. If you think you can stomach the BS, be warned that this is worse than DS2 (base game, not SotFS). If you can still stomach that, then beware of plenty of bugs that will either kill you, make you lose some items, dupe some of your items, or cause other issues that'll ruin your time.

If you're just a casual player that enjoys good, chill lobbies and laughing with with people with random trashtalks but leave in the SEA region, this game is not for you.

The fact is, China predominantly makes up of the majourity of Asia players. I am from the PH, and I am being SPECIFICALLY matched with Chinese players. I have -NEVER- been able to encounter A N Y O N E that speaks English in ANY of the lobbies I play. Valve seems to think that Asia = China.

It's a good thing I'm not good at this game, else I'd be playing in Competitive, and would be more angry at this game for matching me with players I do not understand. If you're going to tell me to "find friends to play with" online, that's BS because any game that forces me to go outside of its integrated tools to play it in its base experience is a trash game in my opinion.

Unless I can choose to specifically block out China as one of the servers I play in, I cannot in good faith recommend this game to fellow SEA players that do not understand a lick of Mandarin. I don't hate Chinese players, I hate that Valve is just putting every Asia/SEA server in the China servers.

Why is this game free? The dev could've atleast charged for a dollar!

What can I say? I didn't expect much, but it was a nice ride. The game is simple, but the music, boss variety, design is absolutely gorgeous. The story was kind of cheesy, but note that this was made for more than a decade, so if you're ready to expect a 10-year-old style theme, delivery, you're in for a nice, warm ride.

EDIT: I'd also like to point out that about 40% of players finished this game, with about 30% finishing the extra story. Most AAA "Overwhelmingly Positive" games out there do not have this kind of completion rate. This is one solid evidence of how great this game is.

PROS:
- Addictive combat. While it can be simplistic, it is very satisfying in a sense. It's not as pretty as other modern games of its kind though.
- GREAT progression. Character progression is very, very good. If you take a little bit of time to grind A LITTLE, you can pretty much reach and grab all missables as you progress through the story.
- Railroaded, but you can revisit other stages. So you missed an item from a stage? You can go ahead and go back to it after you finish your current "chapter".
- No missables. In connection to bullet 2, this game very much respects the player's time. If I miss something from a stage, I can go back. Before I finished the game, it warned me that I can no longer go back if I progress, so there is always a clear indicator if I'm about to miss some stuff.
- Finish the game now, or play more. You can finish the game with a "good" ending, but you can play more. I'm not going to spoil it, but this game is about 50-60h long storywise.
- Endearing and engaging story. It's a 10-year-old theme, and you can see how the cheesy interactions supports how long this took to deliver. But it's very endearing, heartwarming, and the twists and plot, while not over-the-top, are very good.
- Very, VERY good character development. Each character is very much developed properly with their own backstory, and not just simple backstories, but intertwine through your own to build theirs. They are VERY much fleshed out, and they are just not some lame background. You will learn to remember and appreciate each character, not just because they have their own motivations, but their story doesn't end when they met you, their story goes on as yours does.

CONS:
- Animations are limited. Animations themselves, like joint twists and physics look like the old Flash games. But they are not that bad, just looks old.
- Bad translations. While the translations were somehow fixed in a lot of places, there's still some awkward translations in a lot of spots, and line breaks where it isn't necessary. Some of the jokes and parody can't be appreciated to their full potential because of these awkward translations, but the story still overpowers these bad translations because it's really nice.
- Bad translations on skills. Some skills, called KARON can be VERY confusing. This is also due to translation, but the information that some of the skills give are extremely unclear in what they do.
- Why do I have to keep watching the intro movie each time I finish a chapter?
- Why does the grow board give infinite keys on the very last and bottom node if there's nothing to use it for?
- Some few imbalances, but these do not make you OP or gimp you, it just feels it could've been fleshed out more, but the developers didn't because there wasn't really anything you could use it for.
- Lack of "infinite replay" endgame. Because of the design philosophy of the developer, the endgame is revolved and heavily tied to the story as well. You can grind a little to max out everything, but basically the "infinite replayability" is tied to a 4-level procedurally generated dungeon that has 3 variants of themes. Not a big problem, because this game wasn't designed for that. It's great the developers tried to incorporate something for people who can't get enough of the game though.

All in all, this game was worth every penny. There is great progression, very good variety of enemies, bosses (more then Elden Ring or Breath of the Wild), and the best feature that I personally like, VERY VERY good character development.

Buy it full price. It's worth every penny you drop, and don't let the limited animations in combat disappoint you. Play for a few hours and it'll grow on you and you'll suddenly find yourself trying to finish it and unlock everything!

CLEAN EDIT:

This game is basically a room-based roguelite in the same vein as Hades. It has the same metagame. If you like Hades, you'll probably like this too, especially if you love pixel-stylized graphics.

With that said, there some very jarring issues you need to consider:

> The game is somewhat close to Hades in price, but is about 20% cheaper. Now you'd expect 20% less content AT WORST, or at best, far more content due to how this has NO VOICE ACTING IN THE LEVEL OF HADES, and IT HAS A FAR MORE EASIER TO DESIGN GRAPHICAL STYLE.
>> But nope, this game is about 50% less in content compared to Hades. The game, before launch, was at 0.11. And then suddenly it was 1.0. Go figure.

> Cheap reliance on difficulty. At 1.0, the game's difficulty was on the easier side, but this was because the controls are SUPER RESPONSIVE and there's no attack commitments. Devs didn't like people beating the whole 1h campaign in less than 1h and cranked up enemy density to roughly 3x or more. They also attack WAY faster.
>> To add insult to that, the most recent update, as if charge attacks weren't an absolute trash of a mechanic, they made more mechanics revolve more on charge attacks. With now much more enemy density and how fast they attack (this is on normal, mind you), and you have half of the weapons literally losing half their power due to relying on charge attacks. On worlds 3+, charge attacks become IMPOSSIBLE to do. So forget about using hammer.
>>> A lot of these charge attacks rely on perfect timing. It's not just charging attacks and you'll be good, even skills need to be charged to get their full potential. Their base functions suck if you don't time the releases right or charge them, and this becomes especially important in world 3++.

These devs decided not just to cut content and then add it later into the game in the guise of a "free update cos we good guys" type of scummy BS move, they also do not play their own game and listen to the community re: balance. They just throw enemies at you, cut animation charges of enemies and half, and then called it a day.

Do not support these developers in the future. Even Skul, with it's atrocuious balance as well, fares better than this. Better buy Astral Ascent instead, that one is gorgeous and has very nice balance.

- Can't customize HOTA controls
- Can't modify cockpit FOV
- Can't modify camera distance in third person view
- No mouse controls on menu.

Such a lazy port. Refunded.