Recent reviews by Karoshi

Damn I wish i were a cute anime girl a cute anime girl forced into child labor because of her father's crippling debt.

UPDATE: The second part that is not on Steam is even better :))

Let me just start with saying that i LOVED Kara no Shojo. I really enjoyed the art, music, the writing. The characters were very lovable and the plot really well written. Sure, there were some minor plot holes here and there and also some parts were a bit slow, but overall I REALLY liked it. But would I recommend it? Ehhh not sure. Plz decide for yourself:

- It's pretty gory so you might get disgusted if you are a crybaby by any chance
- It's pretty gory in a sexual way so you might get aroused and then be ashamed of yourself if you are hopeless degenerate by any chance
- You can't get most of the sexual scenes in normal good endings so you might get sad
- There are lots of depictions of how miserable were Japanese women at that time so you might get angry (if you are feminist) or sad that you can't get your own cute obedient waifu/lil sister (if you are cis white man)
- The investigation parts are... pretty hard tbh so you might get sad YET AGAIN that you are terrible detective
- The true ending is about as satisfying as your first sexual encounter in high school

But emotions are healthy so don't be scared of feeling a lil bit sad and lil bit ashamed and go play it, it's pretty unique experience and you have nothing better to do in quarantine anyway.

So I kinda do not know how to review this so I prepared useful checklist to determine if you will like this game or not:

1. Are you prepared for not only standart escape room puzzles, but also ridiculously complex math puzzles that you will have to make notes for?
(Because I wasn't and it was fine in 999, the puzzles there were mostly enviromental and made sense, but the combinatory mathematical problems from VLR were just painful sometimes (but I am stupid so).)

2. Are you prepared to be confused with like trillion different story paths and timelines?
(This is not as much of a problem in VLR, because it makes sense story-wise and it's kinda interesting to piece together the different information you have from different timelines, but in 999 it's really confusing and honestly, I still do not have any idea what is supposed to be canon and I got tired of it pretty quickly.)

3. Do you mind pseudo science?
(This is really important because the whole story is based on really far-fetched "science" stuff and if you by any chance have PhD in quantum physics, it can be quite ridiculous.)

4. Are you annoyed when someone is saying totally obvious things or is repeating the same thing over and over again?
(Like really, the characters have the worst habit of dramatically exclaiming something that is totally obvious and also you will have to go through some scenes several times and it gets really tiring.)

5. Did you come here because you loved Danganronpa and want something similar to play just as I did?
(Because while the setting and overall the type of the game might seem similar, unfortunately Zero Escape lacks the thing I loved Danganronpa the most for, which is a roster of different, carefully created characters each with their own personalities and touching stories.)

Idk, decide for yourself, I personally had a good time ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(Review after episodes 1-3)

Honestly I do not understand the reviews here that praise the storytelling when it is so obviously bad. I loved Life is Strange 1 so much (even though it was kind of obnoxious sometimes and not really as deep as it wanted to be, but hey, it worked so good!) and then I hated LiS: Before the storm so much and couldn't wait for this one, but I am just so disappointed.

Don't get me wrong, the premise of the story is touching and emotional, but all those things happening that are meant to advance the plot just DO NOT MAKE ANY DAMN SENSE. Everybody is acting totally out of character, the protagonists make so many terrible decisions that you cannot even blame it on the fact they are distressed little kids, things just happen because you need something to push you to the next video not because something led to it.
Because of this all those emotional moments seems kind of forced and I was not able to really enjoy them (although I already cried on multiple occasions, but you can't take it seriously, once I cried because ice cream was too good lol).

The only moments I felt old LiS vibes and completely enjoyed what is happening were in Ep 3 where you get to meet group of runaways - they are really bunch of interesting characters each with their own personality, history, motivations. And that gay romance option? Don't even get me started and give me more right now.

TLDR: Writing bad, tearjerking bad, gay romance good.

+ It's weird
+ It's Japanese
+ The art is beatiful and sountrack is cool
+ It managed to combine sex, gore, relationship drama and puzzles which is cool
+ It is much more clever than I expected
+ The ending I got made me feel so good, like who doesn't want to become king of the underworld and fu*k superhot succubus omg

- Some of the puzzles are quite sadistic even on easy difficulty and I wanted to die on multiple occasions
- I MEAN EXTREMELY SADISTIC GUYS, DON'T BE FOOLED
- I once had a dream about climbing from playing it too much and it scared me a little

Solid 9/10 overall.

I cannot recommend this game enough.
If you enjoy being emotionally hurt.
And watch people you are emotionally invested in betray each other and die.
A lot.
In multiple different very creative ways.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This game made me so sad and so angry at the same time, angry on all those unreasonably prejudiced people who have nothing more important to do than force their medieval-aged views that actually hurt people that don't fit into their categories, make them feel worthless, left out, confused and guilty, instead of letting them live their life in a way they make them happy.

Yes, it's just a game, but it's also real story of so many people, told in such an intimate, touching way that you can't help but cry with anger and sadness and happiness and contemplate the state of the society that let these things happen.

This and similar games are so important I can't praise the devs enough for it. Thank you.

(I've also played "Another Lost Phone: Laura's story" by the same dev, which is basicaly the same, but with different topic, and I didn't find it half as interesting as this one - still quite good read though!)

My first impression from the game was very good - creepy glitchy visuals here and there, atmospheric sound effect, possibility of creeping into strangers phone (yeah I am stalker af so whatttt) and putting random pieces of information together to uncover the story. Awesome, I love games like this!

As the game progresses, your paranoia is fed more unnerving facts. This guy acts weird, right? Do you really trust him? Isn't he actually psycho rapist? And what about the other guy? What are his plans?

If it would stop there, it would be so good, but the story is unfortunately ruined by terrible, unsatisfying conclusion, and all that build-up atmosphere just vanishes and you stare at the screen like "are you kidding me Mr. Developer couldn't you think of something even cheesier" and you can't help but think about your high school essays where you couldn't think of proper ending of a story so you just shoved some aliens in there and hoped nobody would care.

Anyway the premise and execution are still quite good and I am fully aware that my opinion of the story can be just my personal preference.

Game equivalent of that oh so charming, cocky bad boy you fell so hard for in high school even though he has the personality of a coffee machine and will probably end up in jail for drug dealing in 2 years.

Don't lie to yourself - we all need that guy.

Hellblade není ani tak hra jako spíš zážitek - všechny herní aspekty nejsou dokonalé (obtížnost soubojů je někdy fakt nefér, jsou tam dohromady asi tak 3 herní mechaniky které se pořád opakují), ale... Život když trpíte duševní chorobou je taky fakt nefér, takže to byl beztak záměr!
Celá hra, každý její jednotlivý aspekt, je úžasně udělaná "metafora" (metafora v uvozovkách protože někdy to fakt skrývané není) života s psychózou, traumaty, úzkostí a depresí, boje proti sobě samému (protože duševně nemocný člověk v podstatě nic jiného ani nedělá), života v nenávisti, strachu a zoufalství. Hellblade je prostě potřeba brát trochu jinak než jako standartní brainless mainstream hru a pak se vztekat nad tím že se tam málo seká mečem... věci někdy nejsou tak jednoduché.

Jinak to vypadá úplně nádherně, Senua je strašně skvělá postava, ty opakující se puzzly mi fakt nevadily a vůbec, dost jsem se v tom poznala celé se mě to strašně moc dotklo.