Recent reviews by Kaldo

I love pretty much everything about it. The gameplay and progression is excellent, I love how they use the theme and atmosphere of this SCP / Half-Life facility, the map is interesting to explore (very complex and interconnected but with so many shortcuts to discover and unlock), lots of QoL features (it has an automatic item sorter and finder!)... It's just a really well crafted product of love, oozing with charm. It also has an incredibly large amount of content, the game just keeps going and throwing new stuff at you!

If there's one thing I wish it'd be if they leaned more into the SCP containment part of the game, the few times you get to do it is great but not enough. The game is a bit buggy and rough around the edges, some resources and areas felt a bit underutilized, combat is an acquired taste but none of these small issues got in the way of fun and the game hooked me hard once I got past the first few hours.

Devs also seemed great throughout the EA, posting constant updates, dev blogs and interacting with the community and I can't wait for more from them. Definitely don't sleep on it if interested, it's an amazing games and deserves all the success it can get.

Yes, it is *that* good.

Formula from base game perfected, or just more of it. Boss fights are excellent and new weapons fun to use.

It's excellent, better than fromsoft soulslikes in every way except for Elden Ring's open world exploration if you're a fan of it. Combat, progression, story, atmosphere, animations, build customization, sound... 10/10

The devs have been updating the game diligently for years, never shying away from making big drastic changes to it and then polishing them to perfection. This game is one of the best supported early access titles and it's still receiving huge updates despite not feeling like EA for quite a time now. It is a fantastic and very charming game that just keeps getting better and the devs deserve a lot of praise and love for it.

In terms of actual gameplay, it is a very chill and cozy city builder with a focus on terrain and water manipulation. It can be challenging at first and you might lose a settlement or two before figuring out what to do but generally speaking it's more about building creative functional beaver cities in a creative way.

If I had one wish for it it'd be that it had a somewhat bigger focus on production chains and some more complex industries down the line, considering all the advanced mechanics for transportation and logistics that they added I feel like it'd be a good fit since we could really put them to a good use then.

It will be a while before I'm good at it but I'm having fun practising and learning and that's a pretty big W for any game. There are many songs, they are all awesome and the game works well. There is even workshop support for custom songs! It was a day one purchase for me based on the demo and I'm very happy with it.

Really good story and writing, very mediocre (sometimes outright bad) gameplay. If you played Vampyr and liked it you will probably like this one too, there are many similarities. For someone who hasn't played it, imagine an AA less expansive and ambitious Witcher 3, except instead of hunting monsters you are banishing ghosts. If you're still not convinced, there's a demo so give it a try yourself!

I really like the 2 protagonists, the writing and VA is amazing. The game looks great and I love the environment and the overall atmosphere in the colonial New England (or more accurately, its wilderness since you won't be visiting any larger cities unfortunately). I don't remember much about music, it does its job I guess but I wish they got Olivier Deriviere to compose for them again! Game runs well and I haven't had any bugs or technical issues except for really bad lip syncing. I was engaged by the mystery and was looking forward to finding out what happens.

As for the bad, combat is very bland and even tedious at times. Between a very limited moveset and a really really bad enemy variety (there's like 5 enemy times in total?), even if you find it entertaining at first you will be 'done' with it way before completing the game once. With most side objectives being combat oriented it means you probably won't enjoy 100%ing the game. Higher difficulties just makes enemies feel like damage sponges even more. There's some buildcraft with different items that you can find or skills to assign but it wasn't anything exceptional, you can focus on different aspects but will end up using a little bit of everything anyway.

Exploration is decent but some side content feels shoehorned in and not worth doing and I really hope I never have to crawl through another crevice or climb up/down a cliff. You are constantly, and I mean CONSTANTLY, forced to go through these animation breaks that completely ruin any flow the game might have gotten you into. It is just ludicrous how many there are and how often you run into them, and it can't even be excused with "it's a fake loading screen" because many of these time wasters are often obviously not in separately loaded areas and are really unnecessary. For me this was probably the worst part of the game that made it drop at least 2 points out of 10 in my non-defined score.

To conclude, its a flawed game but if you care more about the story and atmosphere than gameplay (and can gloss over some/many of its problems), it's a definite recommendation from me.

As everyone else has already said, this is Hollow Knight + Sekiro, and it is very very good.

At first glance it looks like just a typical casual builder survival open world RPG but it has a few things that make it stand apart and above other games in the genre. I'm still having a blast with it and if they keep up this pace of updates it's just gonna keep getting better.

The game engine they made is amazing and can render huge distances and awesome terrain accompanied by excellent lighting and fog effects, I've only seen vistas this detailed with long distances in Death Stranding and in this game it's voxel based and editable. I can't easily explain just how open and free the huge world map feels in later stages.

Exploration is excellent - the map is handcrafted and has an insane amount of detail. In procgen games you will usually see a few points of interest that will repeat all the time until you get bored of them - in ES every city, village, mountain, mine or road is unique, either filled with secrets and hidden passages, unique collectables, quests, lore pages.... The map is built with intent and care, with specific experiences in mind along the way and it is incredible they managed to add so much. Lack of procgen was offputting at first but in the end, I much prefer their approach honestly.

The building system is one of the best. Very detailed, very free form, a very large amount of decorations and building blocks, if you just wanna build creatively this is the game for you. Look up some big player builds and it will blow your mind.

Early access has been excellent so far, they are making big changes to core gameplay (adding new skills and abilities, weapon types, more dynamic base NPCs, animal husbandry, weather effects, etc) but also adding a huge amount of raw content like areas to explore, types of blocks to build with, bosses to fight.

As for less good things:

Combat is serviceable but not that great. Classes don't feel really balanced well vs each other and it can lead to some frustrations. Same goes for gear progression, there is a large amount of items with incremental gains but it's all pretty straightforward and you won't be making many unique builds with it. Enemy variety is low and there is a lot of repetition in this area. It might not ruin the game for you but it certainly won't carry it.

No mod support (at least for now and the foreseeable future)

Needs a beefy PC to run it well

I've only reached the first new planet and I feel it's already worth it, this expansion is basically Factorio 3 and it's excellent from the quality updates to existing content to brand new challenges and mechanics.