Recent reviews by Ryou

Shoulda called it Nexus 5Xus

Gorgeous visuals, great gameplay loop, and good elevator pitch for an addicting roguelite puzzle crawler.

So far, it feels a bit limited in content, not in terms of unlockables, but rather in terms of actual depth. The characters, while visually stunning, don't feel really that different from one another, which limits the appeal a bit. There's 3 biomes in the game, and the full game promises 5, but frankly, I think the game could do with like 10 biomes, and have them mixed throughout the crawl. Runs feel kind of samey otherwise.

I'm cautiously optimistic, it's probably going to be sitting in my library for a year or so before I think it's worth giving it a go again, but it's a nice game that may appeal to some more than others.

One of, if not the greatest auto battler in existence. Unfortunately gravely mismanaged, it finally did land on Steam with a very odd payment structure that I do not think will work well in the long run, but nevertheless, I have roughly 1,000 hours in this game from before we went to Steam, so I have thoughts.

There's been a lot of drama in regards to management, as there's plenty of people who have sunk a pretty penny into this game as Founders expecting some sort of VIP status, but ultimately ended up getting lumped together unceremoniously with the majority of free-to-play players. And that's right, this game was free-to-play for about a year off Steam, but their previous payment model was apparently insufficient, which is why we've migrated to Steam now.

Game balance is, all things considered, fairly solid. It's kind of a nightmare to balance a game with this many different heroes and item sets, and for that fact alone it feels astonishingly balanced. Yes, there's dominant strategies every patch that see rampant play, but patch cycles tend to address those problems relatively quickly. Disregarding meta builds, it has a great variety of playstyles, which is what makes this game so addicting.

I've grabbed this game on Steam alongside the "Stelle 20 buck bundle" deal, which seems like a fair price for the game in my position. I've spent easily twice that before Steam, but that's a personal issue. What I do not understand is the absolute insane move to be selling this game for 40 bucks after that initial launch bundle ends. Don't get me wrong, this game is worth every penny of that, it's genuinely just a masterpiece of a game in terms of presentation and gameplay, however I just don't think many people will see it that way.

A demo version with only one playable hero would have honestly gone far with this game, and perhaps that will come eventually, but as it stands I can wholeheartedly recommend this game regardless. It's very good, very addicting, and it's truly just one of a kind.

When I was reading some of the reviews about horrendous this game is in terms of writing, UI and balancing, I genuinely braced for the worst. But what I found was that most of the issues with the game are greatly exaggerated.

The game has shoddy writing, yes. It's predictable, boring, and there's no real bite to anything. The lack of perma-death doesn't help that it feels like there's no consequences, you're just a happy dandy little gang of misfits that are completely abandoning their former homeland to side with the enemy forces on a hunch, and the plot is all over the place. Some of the character designs are cute, though, and a handful of characters are charming enough they stand out despite the writing.

As for the difficulty... it's actually really easy. I was expecting some old-school Fire Emblem brutality from what people were saying, but I've barely broken a sweat. I'm not spending any of the cash the game throws at me, I have way too many overpowered units that can probably solo each map by themselves, and every new chapter I get two new units that are somehow even more powercrept. I think one or two people died early on, and here and there, but you barely lose any stats for it and if it rolls a stat you don't care about it's even less relevant. I'm not complaining about the difficutly, I was just surprised.

Lastly the UI, I mean... it's clunky, and extremely uninspired, but it's serviceable. The buttons are clearly labelled and things do what they're supposed to. Some people seem to be struggling with misinputs or other bugs, but I can't say I've ran into any of those issues myself.

I hear tales of the sequel being significantly better, which is something I am looking forward to. I'm not quite done with this game, but I'll keep slogging through it. It's a perfectly adequate FE clone, although I wouldn't recommend getting it at full price, perhaps wait for a sale.

One of the most satisfying tower defense-esque strategy roguelites out there. From the moment I picked it up I couldn't put it down for like 7 straight hours. There's a crazy amount of variety in playstyles and a lot of intermingling of cards between different factions which skyrockets the possibilities given to the player.

I genuinely don't really have anything negative to say to the game. There's a few cards that are useless on higher difficulties, which is a shame and a design problem, but that doesn't detract from the enjoyment because there's tons of alternative strategies.

So far the game has 8 out of 9 possible kings playable, excited to try the last one once it's out, and I urge anyone to grab this when it looks even mildly interesting to you.

One of the coolest takes on a bat race, an extremely aesthetically pleasing new architectural style and two really unique biomes that change up the way you play. As per usual, it's entirely overpriced compared to the basegame, but the content it offers is peak. Grab it on a sale unless you're a hardcore supporter.

I'm very conflicted on Mortal Sin. It's an incredibly game with a unique aesthetic and very satisfying gameplay elements, but on the other hand it suffers from what I'd describe as both visual and mechanical overload. It's kind of a "boomer-shooter" with melee combat, enemies move at speeds that make it difficult to actually anticipate anything and most combat, for me, felt like a series of "spray-and-pray" moments where you kind of just button mash while a horde of enemies mauls you, with no real regard for safety, and only occasionally mix in a block or parry.

The biggest issue I have with the game is that there's no clear way to be able to know if your attack causes any hitstun. It feels like half the time I can stun-lock an enemy, and the other times they just poise through my attack and I get hit. This is particularly bad for classes like the monk who get up close. And if I can't estimate when to attack an enemy, I just sort of have to mash the button and hope they die before I get hit. I don't know if this is because I don't understand the mechanics, or if I'm doing something wrong, but I genuinely wish there was more consistency. It might have to do with targeting particular body parts, but when you're surrounded by 10 enemies you don't pay attention to that kind of stuff.

The roguelike aspects of the game are great and like I said the game is has a great atmosphere, but I unlike many other roguelikes where I feel like I made a mistake when I die, in this one I do feel like the game just didn't teach me the tools to understand if what just happened, so it feels more frustrating. I almost wish there was an option to halve the movement and attack speed of the enemies because it just feels like things move too fast to process, but this could be a personal issue.

Nevertheless, I think the game is awesome on paper, but perhaps it's just not for me. I'm leaving this review in part because I saw the dev comment that 90% of people don't leave the early game, and I'm one of those people. It's not the rewards, it's not the mechanics, it's just the enemies.

What an incredible game. I've been waiting on this to release for years now and I'm so happy with the final product.

Mechanically, you have a game where you spend your daily allotted time to manage your resources, primarily hunger and cash, but alongside that you have a surprisingly gripping narrative and really well written characters. The game doesn't pull any punches however, it's extremely punishing if you don't know what you're doing, however it encourages you to redo your days bit-by-bit via a memory recall feature, which you should probably make use of.

Most of the time is spent walking around and talking to people, figuring out what they like and befriending them so that you can gain access to their unique skills. Every character has one and they'll all be uniquely useful in some capacity, some help you manage daily obstacles, others let you solve puzzles and many will boost your combat prowess. The combat itself is heavily inspired by Punch Club, but the visuals and general vibe of the game share this too.

The game has at least 5 endings that I know of, and all of them are equally cryptic, with some of them being very easy to miss out on accidentally. It's both the strength and the weakness of the game, because uncovering those routes is what makes the game fun, however it's also very frustrating if you locked yourself out of several endings and your only chance is to replay the game.

My first playthrough was kind of a breeze after a week or so, I must've just invested in the right skills and done the right things, but nevertheless I was very satisfied seeing how the game ended. I suspect the majority of people playing this won't even finish a single playthrough, let alone play the secondary campaign the game has to offer, but I honestly think if you're looking at the price of this game, even if you only put in 10 hours instead of what's probably an easy 30 hours of content, you'll get your money's worth. Highly recommend everyone to check this game out.

Great DLC, frogs are a solid albeit slightly more awkward race to work with and the new maps are very unique, the Ashen Thicket in particular is one of my favorites.

Much like everyone else is saying though, the DLC is overpriced. Half the price of the full game for a 4th of the content is not good business. Buy it on a sale.

On paper this seems like an incredible game, but in practice it's incredibly clunky and extremely time-consuming.

Perhaps if this was marked as early access or cost only half as much as it currently does I may be more lenient on it, but what I experienced so far really didn't live up to my expectations. This is clearly a passionate project and I can see that a lot of thought went into many detailed aspects of the game, but there's also a lot about the game that I didn't really sign up for, such as hiring characters, buying and sorting equipment and crafting.

I wanted something like Impossible Creatures but with turn-based combat and more freedom and depth, but this feels like something entirely different, and maybe that's a personal issue.