Recent reviews by iMoo

Great graphics, fantastic character design (mostly).

Gunplay feels bad though, and the game in general feels half-baked. It feels like there's almost no polish. Interacting through the world feels kinda janky sometimes, and some abilities have deceptively small range that I couldn't get used to. Enemies are all fodder without much variability, and damage scaling is insane at low level.

It also, in general, just kind of feels like warframe, which is not my cup of tea.

Finally, another company who's managed to get the feel of Hand Cannons down. Very good gunplay feel, generally.

So far, pretty good as far as roguelites go. Pretty difficult. The upgrades haven't gotten too crazy yet, and it seems there's an emphasis on gunplay as far as I've noticed, but I'm only a few hrs in so who knows if that'll change (hopefully it does).

Only bug I've encountered is my game crashes. So far it's happened 3 ish times (once on startup, twice in-game). That's pretty bad, but it's happened rarely enough that it hasn't affected my experience.

Edit: I'm also having the issue where, when I close the game, my entire computer will crash and reset itself. Weird and annoying. Only happens with this game.

Great value, especially on sale.

Game feels completed already, which is rare for an Early Access title, a very good survivor-like

First thing's first, the game is gorgeous. It has the best trees, mountains, and sky I've ever seen in a video game- truly, it is art in its highest form. The lighting, the shading- everything is beautiful. There are some cattywompus effect tearings at a distance, but otherwise the game is immaculate.

So far, the game has not been difficult, only sometimes frustrating. I'm going to continue since I can't refund the game at this point, and hopefully I'll begin to enjoy it more, but as it stands, it's difficult to recommend at full price. I would say this is closer to a $40 game.

I just finished the first chapter, and I've gotta say, for some reason, so far, I'm not enjoying the game, and I think it's because of the combat. Everything feels so...floaty; and the hitboxes are kind of jank. Snake-man's only hurtbox is his torso- his long tail doesn't have one. When you're fighting a giant frog or wolf, or a bear the size of a small building, or a 10 ft statue, you would expect them to have weight. If they move fast, they would probably have some wind-up before, or wind-down after- but no. A powerful attack comes and goes just as fast, and the movement in their models carry no inertia. More often than not, they're zipping and soaring through the small arena without any follow-through, before then sweeping next to you with a wimpy multi-hit attack that you can just roll or jump out of the way of.

Perfect dodges are a great addition to the roll mechanic, but sometimes feel like they can only trigger retroactively for some reason. It's probably a skill issue on my part, but I just can't seem to consistently trigger them. I trigger them a lot, probably almost least 40% of the time, but the % of times they've been on purpose is lower than I would like to admit. Roll 1 frame before the impact and it's just a regular dodge. 1 frame too late and you're hit/staggered.

The enemy staggers aren't dynamic, so even if you attack them from behind, they're gonna fall backwards over you, and displace your character. It's not a major issue, it just makes the fight look/feel cheap.

Enemies with any mist effect is going to sweep through into you, but their attack-boxes almost always feel a little too wide for the animation.

The range of some boss's attacks are also anyone's guess, since they have 0 tell until it occurs. They'll have an animation showing them doing something, but you'll need to keep your distance, at least 50 ft away, otherwise you might get hit by an invisible force for half of your health.

Almost all bosses have delayed attacks. I don't always mind that, I have over 300 hrs in Elden Ring, but something else is off about the enemy movement that makes the attacks worse. Some bosses track you a little too strongly, or get staggered lightly on the first hit, but not after, or almost always jump in a little-too-wide of a sweeping motion for the initial lift-off animation. Things that make you think "Hmm, that was...questionable."

There's no animation cancelling, which is fine; that just means combat has intent-- except since a light attack chain takes ~6 consecutive seconds of follow-through, and bosses only stagger for ~2 seconds before they begin a 10 second long combo, you're left with a hit-and-run strategy since your third light attack's animation in the chain lasts 2 or 3 seconds, and the game queues button presses. If you get stuck in that animation by accident, or because a boss got staggered lightly then recuperates, you're guaranteed to lose health from hitting your attack button one-too-many times, even before your character has reached that third hit.

I also haven't even mentioned the fact that, because of most enemy's strong tracking, even if you're behind them while they're in the middle of an attack combo, they'll occasionally spin around on a 180 swivel to hit you, instead of having a separate animation for different player positions that would make anatomical sense. Except for the frog. The back-kick on those got me ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up the first time I saw that lol.

The invisible walls also really suck sometimes, and there's a lot of them. For instance, your character has an animation for stopping right before a cliff edge to regain his balance, except the game won't actually let you fall or jump off. There are small little sections where it would be more efficient to jump over a cliff, or down, but the game puts invisible walls in some of the dumbest spots, like before a cliff with a 4ft drop, or the top of one rock and not another.

All in all, the game is...fine, but there are just so many issues I have with it that I can't seem to enjoy playing it. I know a lot of people enjoy it, and the shining reviews definitely show it, but I don't. =(

Thank GOD there's no microtransactions, holy MOLY.

TLDR; but it on sale, but still do recommend it as a good time

This feels like a true successor to the original Kingdom Rush games- top notch animations, voice acting, art aesthetics, you name it. Even map interactions are still here. And! You earn everything in game through progression- towers, heroes, and meta power progression! There's no hero shop!

Really fantastic game so far. Each level has ranged from mildly to decently challenging for 3 stars on veteran, but feels rewarding once you achieve it. To be able to stutter step your archer reinforcements if you care enough feels SO so good. Even just the ability to move literally everything around! Except imps, for some reason, but that's ok since they have a short life-span anyways.

One thing I would like to see, however, is the tower upgrades be able to branch into two different tower specializations again. I don't know why Ironhide just didn't add tower branches in this time. I really would have loved to have seen more tower dynamicism during a run.

I really hope there's an achievement to complete all maps on veteran because that's absolutely what I'm doing lol. I also wish we got something as a reward for completing the challenge runs. They do feel a bit easy as you level your meta progression, but I would imagine if you do them as you progress they are would be decently challenging

idk if it's worth $20, because of how few towers there are, since they didn't add the end branch specializations, but I would say it is at least worth $15

I'll be honest, this felt pretty iffy to me at first, but after a certain point, the entire game clicked for me: after my GF found a cave in the multiplayer world we're playing on together. I've yet to find one in my single player world, but I'm excited to now.

I won't beat around the bush anymore, Blacksmithing in this game is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ incredible. It turns every aspect of turning iron ore you find in caves into usable material for crafting into a mini game, and every aspect of it works and feels good. After I spent 2 minutes pumping bellows, keeping the temperature in its goldilox zone, my girldfriend and I beat on the hot ore until it was slag free, rotating the cube of metal and looking for any impurities. I then watched my girlfriend head over to the anvil, get confused, and then head back over. She couldn't hammer the iron to shape yet because it needed to be heated first. She needed to put the iron in a crucible to heat it all to a maleable temperature before slowly hammering the iron into nails. The final process from iron to nails was very quick, and was essentially hammering slag off until the nails underneath took shape. The thing is though, she accidentally quenched the nails too soon, and the they got ruined. That was the bit that tickled my brain. being able to fail, for some reason, makes the process feel more worth it, because you need to be careful to actually clean it up all the way. Really great design.

The game is pretty good otherwise though. There's jank, but it's the good kind of jank, like the developer understands function > form. Turning in a sled twists the bones in your wrists in hilarious ways, only to get fixed once the sled is back to its correct angle. Chopping down a felled tree moves you to the base to begin chopping, so if you're at the tip of the tree, you'll slide through whatever you need to to get down there, including other trees. And they added an unstuck, so good on them for thinking ahead, because we've actually needed to use it before.

Turns out unstuck will actually teleport you back to the beach, where you start, which is GREAT for fast travel, depending on if you need to go back there for thatch or fish. Speaking of fish, we haven't figured out how to cook those yet, and we're like 10-15 hrs into our world lol. We assumed you could skewer them, but we can't. Can't cook them in the pot in the cookhouse, either. I can't remember if there's even any other craftable cooking method. It could just not be implemented yet. I'm too lazy to look it up though since fish isn't my main source of food anyways.

Anyways, I've rambled enough. Good game, fantastic mood, beautiful environment, kind-of janky combat but still fine. I've nearly already gotten my dollars per hour worth, and I still haven't stopped, so, worth it imo.

gad daYmn this is a difficult game

5 hours in and I've reached the 3rd element twice now, first time @4hrs, and the 3rd element boss once @5hrs

Not having iframes and being able to get stun locked really taught me to play much more defensively, and at a range when needed

I would recommend getting this on sale, since the 2nd game is coming out soon.

MAN this game is hard tho. I'm *good* at these sorts of games, and even I'm struggling.

Edit: 7hrs in and I finally got to the last boss. haven't killed him yet tho

Finally beat it after 13 hrs =) feels good, great ending

2 player mode isn't true online co-op, unfortunately, it's remote couch co-op, and it isn't optimized or built for it imo. The two players share a camera, the host's arcana/relic stash, gold, health potions, and the opportunity for cursed relics (only 1 player can choose *one*) they DON'T share health globes, bought arcana, or relics. If one player dies, the other keeps going, either until they die, or they kill enough enemies to revive your co-op buddy. It's really easy to get lost with more than one player sharing a single camera, and it's really easy to lose sight of enemies with high mobility. Honestly I'm not sure if I can recommend buying the game for your friend unless you know for sure they're going to be able to keep up.

I die a lot

I regret not playing more of this until now, especially because I've been anticipating this game since kickstarter

A beautiful, relaxing time, and it's still getting consistent updates. Absolutely recommend

TLDR; It's a good game, but there are definitely faults. It's hard to recommend buying it at full price after playing through it. I really wish there was a "mixed" recommendation. You need to play through the game in it's entirety to fully absorb its message, which sounds obvious, but needs to be stated. You'll feel railroaded through the entirety of the game.

Honestly, the first game was kind of better. Buy that one if you haven't played it yet, it is *very* good.

A friend and I were discussing the writing, and it seems to sway between very good, and too on-the-nose. I'll discuss that at the bottom after a story spoiler warning-

First things first though, the game is a cinematic masterpiece. Straight up, probably the most beautifully life-like graphics I've ever seen. Above all else though, understand you are playing through a story. Gameplay is secondary.

Here are my key points:

- The dialogue is good for the most part, but way too often, the game feels like...when a parent is holding their toddler's hand when they're learning to walk. Almost everything is said out loud, for the benefit of the viewer, which is great for the story they are portraying, but often starts to feel like you're being talked down to, like you're incapable of understanding otherwise. Already obvious things are spoken out, and you are reminded of something every 10-20 seconds if you aren't progressing fast enough during a "puzzle".

- The entire game is VERY easy. It is basically a single, very long, very pretty corridor- which is not automatically a bad thing, but absolutely something to keep in mind.

- There's "yellow paint" on nearly every. single. ledge- white barnacles to keep the thematics, which is a good touch, but it becomes distractingly noticeable, especially after playing for more than 10 minutes.

- I put "puzzle" in quotes earlier because they are not puzzles, they are very minor obstacles to overcome by walking, picking something up, looking at a floating orb in the sky, or wandering around until the game tells you to look in a very specific direction- then forcibly guides your character's vision to it anyways so you aren't even actually attempting to line anything up. My god, just let me do the mechanic that was designed for me to do- ah, so frustrating.

- I understand the developers are heavy leaning into accessibility- and that's very admirable and virtuous of them, but for someone who already know what a video game is, it really knocks the wind out of my sails to have the game do basically everything besides combat for you.

- Speaking of, combat feels very fluid/reactive, like the first game, but much easier. It is 4 buttons, with a mix of dynamic animations. There's solid animation cancelling so you almost never feel like you're not able to react in time to an enemy swing, and the mechanics behind making combat feel immersive while keeping the enemies spawning in one at a time I'm sure took a lot of complex coding- but man, it's nearly impossible to die if you aren't trying to lol. Between the dynamic difficulty and the 2nd and 3rd chances when knocked down, and the mirror being your automatic save/win button, the only thing that keeps combat interesting is the parry system- and even then it's incredibly forgiving. Poorly timed parries turn into blocks, that I would assume decrease your guard meter, but it takes a -lot- for that to happen. After I completed the finale, my GF, who was watching, said "Oh, that was it? That was the last boss?"

- Combat is centered around parrying. Perfect-parrying an enemy on their first attack will kill them instantly sometimes, and any parry after that will generate a huge amount of focus/damage. The enemy usually dodges open heavy swings without any quick attacks before hand, and they have a lot of health if you are only using the two basic attacks, which at least motivates players to try parrying whenever they can.,

-- Major Spoiler Warning Ahead --

My friend pointed out how much more "in your face" all of the strife is. How "real" the enemies were, how everyone else in the world could also see and interact with them. We discussed how in Hellblade 1, mostl of her enemies, and all of the conflict she went through, was from her mental illness, and how evocative her pain was, and how metaphoric the overarching story was- I assumed this game was going to be the same thing.

Until discussing everything, I assumed the giants were metaphors for natural catastrophes, like famine and hurricanes, however until I completed the campaign in its entirety, the way everything plays out in the game felt diametrically opposed to that idea. Senua was able to kill the Giants- legitimately solve the world's problems. That meant that the Giants were an actual physical embodiment of something- they weren't just metaphors anymore, the game had entirely changed its underlying message, or so I thought. What was Senua actually fighting against? Literal Giants seemed to be killing and eating people. Each giant was a human victim of circumstance, but none of that justified any of their actions, or explained what they really were. Senua was just killing monsters who used to be people- that was it, I thought, that was entire story.

Coming to that conclusion after discussing the game with my friend defeated a lot of my motivation to play, but I wanted to finish it, and when I eventually did, I felt justified in my prior beliefs. The giants weren't natural disasters, but the myths spread from a malignant tyrant. Ironically, my friend and I had succumbed to their propaganda.

Senua being revealed to apparently be a chosen Seeress- a special hero, nearly entirely because of her mental illness convinced me that this was her way of dealing with, and processing, the different myths. She is granted the power to see things differently- seeing and understanding things for herself. I understand now that her killing the giants is a metaphor for dispelling the myths surrounding the villages, and by finding a Giant's "True name", she is redirecting the villager's superstitions into "purifying" the dead through a ritual, and convincing them in the process that sacrifices are not needed. -She stumbles upon a victim of circumstance, explains that -they- are the giant, and then "frees" them.

Senua using the trials as a way of introspection was clever, but I'm still kind of questioning the legitimacy of some of them.

The only genuinely abrasive trial the player experiences was going down into the caves (♥♥♥♥ the caves btw). The constant theme of "unknown creatures hide in the dark" was really well done, and the phobia was projected very thoroughly through the game.

Her being lost in the forest (for apparently weeks?) didn't really have much punch to it, however, and the companions being lost felt...like they were only there so she had someone to "rescue". Choosing a companion to save had literally 0 impact on anything, so it being a choice in the first place was entirely meaningless, and the time passage was very questionable. Edit: -unless?! Maybe her choice being meaningless was meant to create a purposefully incredibly difficult decision based on no context of what will happen, only to prove it meaningless immediately after- to symbolize people overthinking conflicts! Interesting. Or maybe I'm the one overthinking- haha.



Edit: After further retrospection, perhaps the purpose of the caves was also to help Senua overcome her survivors guilt? I think? And the moral of the story is sometimes you can't get over what afears you, but you can still perservere, or something about baby steps towards recovery? I don't know. It's late. Honestly the 2nd half of the caves really threw me into an anxious panic and I completely forgot about her wading through the lost souls that she for some reason thinks she's responsible for- which is what lead me to assume it was survivors guilt from the trauma in the beginning. I could be entirely wrong.