Recent reviews by Tort

Back up on steam hell yeah

Great game that starts slow but is a lot of fun with friends once you reach raids.

You have to play through the story first, which isn't bad but it drags on a bit. The story is completely linear and there isn't much to explore, so at its worst it feels like walking from encounter to encounter while mashing through dialogue.
But when the story is done and you unlock co-op raids, the game opens up. You unlock flashier characters and better skills, reviving becomes a relevant mechanic, and now that the exploration/walking is gone you can start to enjoy the combat.
And the combat is good. The bosses are pretty well-designed and the raids are engaging (Pyet-A is peak Relink). Most characters have more depth than just "pick X because its their best skill", as they have their own resources to manage. And, just about every character deals competent amounts of damage, although the ranged characters feel a bit weaker.

Even now pugs aren't dead (check online for the worldwide matchmaking mod if it is hard to find lobbies in your region) but its more fun with friends in a vc. I highly recommend picking this game up.


🦜すごい🦜すごい🦜アンビリーバボー🦜

Amazing demo!
Having objectives on the map to keep you busy instead of just reaching the point where you do enough damage to sit there without moving is great, and is far more engaging than many other survivors-like games. The art is great, the weapons are fun, I'm really looking forward to this game's full release

This game is a lot of fun. Devs seem pretty active and have a roadmap/respond to player feedback, so I expect it to only improve over time.
Even though its in early access, it already feels pretty polished. Although, some of the enemy waves feel slightly overtuned and not all skills are equal right now. That said it sounds like the devs hope to increase the number of strong builds rather than nerfing the best ones, which is great.

Collecting all the achievements should take somewhere around 20 hours, or significantly less if you rush higher difficulty content to get the better equipment drops/gold farm. I can easily recommend this title.

An unusually well-polished roguelike. Gameplay is a bit shallow (as one might expect of an ecchi title - although it is not overly adult), but balance is pretty good between skills. Has a bit of the classic "harder mode > more enemies > more exp > actually easier mode" issue that many roguelikes have, though.
Collecting all the achievements shouldn't take longer than 10 hours. If you're looking for a break from the endless swarms and infinite scaling in other titles, WW is not a bad pickup.

Decent survivors-like game with a weapon-merging system that keeps you making active decisions for longer into a run than most. Run-to-run variation is sadly pretty low, with the majority coming from which character you selected at the start. Though on the bright side, each new update has brought several new characters with it.

Balance is still a work in progress. Strong weapons or characters get nerfed, while older ones tend to be forgotten as long as they aren't worst-in-the-game levels of bad, leaving them as weak, mediocre picks... Due to the indie nature of this project and its free price, I expect this to continue to get worse as time goes on.
Also the fishing minigame needs work. I'm not a fan of uncontrollable highway speeds, the minigame suffers from some kind of input lag, and the game expects you to use all 4 directions as fishing inputs, forcing you to have fewer fingers than inputs due to the lack of fishing keybinds.

Steam has no mixed reviews so I am giving it a recommended, but I actually wouldn't recommend this game in its current state, unless you have already sunk dozens of hours into several other survivors games and are looking for a fresh title.
For what its worth, I probably have some 80+ hours in this game before its launch on steam.

One of the best survivors games. Crowd size and mob stats are nearly perfect, and lategame builds stack stats into satisfyingly ridiculous numbers.
My only criticism is that runs lack a bit of midgame choice weight - once you decide the build for your run, you just kind of stack stats relevant to that build (similar to PoE) until you get overwhelmed.

The game receives fairly regular updates that enable new builds without nerfing the old ones to the ground (unlike PoE), and I look forward to seeing the full release of this game.

Return to Abyss is a very flashy survivors game that lacks kill satisfaction due to excessive enemy crowd size.
If Spellbook Demonslayers represents the best from Path of Exile gameplay, this game represents the mediocre from Path of Exile gameplay.

I'm favorably impressed by the amount of weapon customization that exists in the game, which helps every run feel unique. But within a given run, gameplay can become monotonous as very few enemies or situations feel noteworthy, which gets worse the more you replay it. That said, if you like the artstyle and are looking for a cute casual mow simulator with a bit of lore, you can't go wrong with the price.

Good game so far, easily worth the price in its present state. I am not connected to any kind of news or dev roadmaps for this game so I do not know if these are planned to change, but my current concerns are:

- There is some issue with off-screen exp drops. I do not know the exact problem but the result is you level up much faster if you can stay in the center of the screen, hardly moving - which isn't all that engaging
- Game lacks replayable build diversity. When you select your character and weapons at the start, some upgrades will work and some will not. So if you manage to level up fast enough to unlock all the upgrades in the game, you may shaft your build; and you will often find yourself searching for specific upgrades in order to run the same endgame builds, over and over. (More upgrades to choose from and some balancing may fix this but it could be dev intent, I don't know)

As of now the devs are pushing out small patches pretty rapidly though, so I have good hope for improvement and I expect some of the worse weapons to be tuned in line with the rest. There's enough content in the game for a while and unlocking all current achievements will probably run you about 20 hours

gameplay is unplayable
severe letdown after all the positivity during last couple leagues
not worth playing