Recent reviews by Nauya

Nefia my beloved. I'm home again...

Years of playing Elona carrying over nearly seamlessly is like the cherry on top.

My only regret is not backing the game sooner, I could only get the final extra tier that was released. Wish I could've supported noa more for all the years of entertainment Elona had given me, through the harshest times in my life, just having Elona on a USB to take with me to play everywhere helped so much.

Anyway, as for the game itself... What you're getting here is a Classic turn based Sandbox Roguelike, with a bunch of quirky Japanese humor and innuendos, made with passion and love, with a flair and style of it's own that still leaves it as my favorite Roguelike ever (The whole Nefia duology that is). This also comes with all of the caveats of the genre, like a steep learning curve with so many systems in the game constantly intermingling with one another, and with so many things to do, if you're bad at giving yourself direction, you can easily be overwhelmed. The upside is that even in the Early Access state, the game has so many things to do that even after days of nonstop playing, there's still no end in sight.

In Elin, you can...

Fish! To the point where you start fishing up all kinds of things, including things that might be hostile or literal gods. Careful you don't drown, deep water is scary!

Play music! Then either stick with it so long that you become the number one artist and make billions playing music at casinos, or give up when the first time you pick up a lute and strum it, some random guy across the street yells at you about how horrible you are at music then throws a rock at you, critting you so hard that you instantly turn into a pile of red paste on the ground!

Focus on home building! You'll start receiving Packages from random senders in game. Open some packages and see that people are mailing you literal coiled ♥♥♥♥, eat the ♥♥♥♥ to prove them that it doesn't harm you and is instead a food source. The next day you get another package, open it, and there's an entire building sized Minotaur inside that pops out of the box and then proceeds to bisect you in half with it's battle axe, killing you instantly!

Go dungeoneering! Your first time in a dungeon with only clothes and a torch, you step on a teleport trap that your character is too blind to discover and get sent into a room with a Kobold that sucker punches you so hard that you're immediately in your grave!

Become a sex worker! You make a lot of money easily, but then you realize too late that not only are you getting all kinds of STIs, but your Karma went so low that you're now a wanted criminal and will be turned into mince meat the moment any guard so much as smells you in the vicinity!

Go to the northern village to celebrate in game christmas! Only to run out of food going through the snow as terrain penalties affect you so heavily that you end up dying of hunger and frostbite at the same time because you walked too many tiles on the world map where time is hyper accelerated to simulate traveling long distances!

Find wish granting wells and make wishes! You wish for a pair of boots that let you travel insanely fast on the world map, only for them to be made out of paper, then the next thing you know, you're ambushed on the world map by a fire breathing dog that burns up your boots before you can even react!

Worship a god! You gain various bonuses and even rewards for gaining favor with your god, and then as you try to take over another god's altar for yours, get hyper cursed by the angry god and proceed to get pulverized the next time a rat looks at you funny because your stats have been nuked into the ground!

And much much more...


All that aside, Elin is open for anyone to enjoy, as it has systems and features that ease you into the game and genre if you're new, like the more modernized control scheme and optional permadeath. But it's also got room for the hardcore fans of Classic Rogue, as you can take an Oath during character creation, one that turns save scumming off (no manual saves / loads) and one that combines that with Permadeath. There's fun to be had no matter your playstyle, you can zoom around everywhere or take each and every turn meticulously with strategy.

Also there's some partial online functionality, like finding other player's corpses and looting them, other player's pets roaming around, trees planted by other players, etc etc.

I grew up with Elona, and now I'll grow old with Elin and I couldn't be more happy.

The TOS is fine (watch Pirate Software's video if you don't want to read the TOS yourself). It's essentially the same for every other online game ever made. People are just blowing it out of proportion because the game put the TOS in front of players to read while they were stuck waiting in queue on launch day, causing them to actually read a TOS for an online game for the first time.

The Monetization is fine, unless you consider skipping free battle pass tiers for farmable resources, a tiny tent upgrade that only helps if you never go back to your base, and accumulating login currency without logging in as a big enough advantage that it ruins your enjoyment of the game. The rest of it is purely cosmetic.

The game doesn't have a virus or a trojan or a bitcoin miner or whatever other fear mongering social media says it has. If it did, that would be an insane scandal that could ruin platforms given that well over a million people have installed the game and several hundreds of thousands play it daily. Steam, Epic, and Microsoft are litigious enough that a game of this size would've been nuked the second it had something like that built in.

Other criticisms like the resets/wipes every x weeks and such are valid, however since the first reset hasn't happened yet, please wait until it actually happens and seeing for yourself what changes before lambasting the game. We only know what the devs told us about resets so far, and with what info was given, it seems like we keep quite a lot of meta progression. Plus, the devs have put into consideration possibly making a permanent season similar to the standard league Path of Exile, alongside many other ideas. Let them cook.

Ah Toram, played it back on release as something to do at my dead end graveyard shift job at the time. Came back to it on PC thanks to a certain devilishly handsome MMO reviewer and I can say that I'm glad I'm here again.

While the game has the expected issues that a mobile game port from nearly a decade ago would expectantly have, such as the menuing being unintuitive, accessibility options being practically nonexistent, and an extremely tiny character chat limit, past those baseline issues is a surprisingly in depth MMO with an old school learning curve that rewards you for engaging with all of the game's systems instead of just plodding ahead brainlessly.

The combat in Toram seems simple at first glance, especially in the tutorial where it looks like all you do is highlight a monster and watch your character slog it out. However, as you play and unlock new abilities and encounters get more difficult, thing start opening up for individual player skill to really shine. The fact that it's possible to no-hit boss encounters in this game using the right setup and learning the boss' attacks already makes it better than most cookie cutter MMOs on the market today.

The mercenary and partner system is something I wish more games had, with the only other one off the top of my head being Phantasy Star Online. Being able to hire other player's characters to help you out and also being able to bring one of your own alts along to fight with you draws a solid middle ground for players who aren't fully solo but also aren't constantly partying with other players.

This, coupled with how the game handles extra characters makes for a really unique breath of fresh air in the genre. Your alts on your account all share the same inventory, storage, cosmetic items, and equipment. Not only that, but none of the gear is level locked, and a single piece of gear can be worn by everyone on your account. The main progression on your account is also tied to the character who's the highest level and furthest in the story. This creates a kind of game where you can make more characters and essentially power level them up very rapidly as they'll immediately be able to use all of your best gear that you've acquired and will be able to bring along your higher level character to help them blaze through the parts of the game you've already completed, making it essentially like unlocking and using a new class in FFXIV, but instead of putting on a job stone, you're hotswapping between your characters and letting your extras tag along for even more fun, making it feel ever so slightly like an SRPG.

The housing and pet taming systems are also interesting and having them actually benefit your gameplay gives ample reason to actually play more of the game than just fighting the next boss over and over. Houses basically serving as a hub where you can create food dishes to give you powerful buffs and being a spot for your pets to be raised at, which after sufficient training, can join you in your party without taking up a party member slot in the main portion of the game.

All of this is wrapped in a charming world where the old graphics actually serve to enhance the feeling of the game. It's like taking a trip through an old PS2 RPG game with some areas that give off haunting visual and audio spectacles with a feeling like you shouldn't be there or that something is wrong. The game oozes personality with it's area design and musical tracks. While each track isn't super long, they're all surprisingly high quality and really help bring the experience to life.

Not to mention that with a smaller MMO like this, the community is more tight knit, friendly, and helpful. If you're lost, just ask around, join a guild, you'll make some new friends and they'll be glad to point you in the right direction.

But at the end of the day, nothing's without it's flaws.

Toram being an online game with RPG elements that's somehow lasted this long comes with a laundry list of crept design choices. For instance, some class combos being no longer viable due to new skills coming out (Bowtana) , or some progression being entirely shafted by a selection of endgame gears that are surprisingly cheap on the market. Remember that gear isn't level locked, so this means that a new player that attains this knowledge can essentially skip 95% of the gearing in the game. Compounding on this even more is that certain playstyles with certain weapons can vastly outclass others depending on player skill. Another thing that just happens to games like this is that being an aged MMO without a constant stream of new players, inflation rears it's ugly head and some items can be completely outside the realm of affordability for all but the most hardcore players.

Then last but not least, is the Cash/Orb Shop. While a majority of the items in there are cosmetics, quite a handful are clear P2W elements, such as being able to just buy yourself back to life should you go down or just throwing money at the game to get all of your best gears to be even better. The cosmetic system being Gacha with no Pity either means that if you're unlucky, you can easily blow hundreds of dollars to gambling just to try to make yourself look pretty. The silver lining here being that the premium currency is farmable during events and resets, and that the game hands you a big pile of 330 pulls as a new player to potentially get some decent looking outfits for free. Also that barely any of the P2W elements are really worth spending on, however the possibility is still there.

All of these are solid standing reasons why someone might not click with the game.

At the end of the day, in my opinion, the biggest hurdle in this day and age is Toram's roots in older MMO design. Things such as...
- Being able to mess up your build and bricking your character if you don't look ahead to what stats you should be building for.
- Having essentially no explanation for how anything works, forcing you to either engage with the community or look up guides on how to exist.
- Unforgiving gameplay that can feel like you're bashing your head against a wall if you're not keeping up with everything properly, if you hit a stat wall, you gotta figure it all out in your head how to overcome that wall before you can proceed.

With how hand holdy games have gotten and recent studies showing that a majority of gamers are no longer seeking games that engage their critical thinking and learning skills, it's very difficult to recommend this game to someone who isn't already an experienced veteran in MMOs or someone seeking a game that wracks their brain and asks the player to work things out with their own smarts and research skills.

In summary,
Toram is a charming MMO that blends a lot of smaller lesser used ideas in the genre together into a very unique experience. It's visual and audio style making use of the older graphics alongside a standout musical score to build you a world that can be astonishingly beautiful at times. However, If you're new to MMOs, Toram might seem at first glance like a good easy first MMO to start with, but it's keenly hidden fangs and claws will rip you to shreds if you're not already someone who knows what you're getting into or someone with enough time and patience to really get stuck in with a game.

Toram is not for everyone, but damn if it hasn't carved out it's own niche in the stagnant MMO market. Landing itself in a similar sweet spot as Mabinogi where it's got unique enough systems and mechanics that it's fully understandable why it's got a cult following and is still living and breathing to this day, unlike the myriads of other copy pasted MMOs who've all shut down at this point.

MMO Prog Raiding, Touhou style controls with flying bnuuys, all wrapped up in a easily accessible fast paced Roguelite package with a coat of Final Fantasy style paint.

If you like MMO Raiding, you'll enjoy this game.
If you like Touhou style difficult bullet hells encounters that are like puzzles, you'll enjoy this game.
If you like difficult Roguelites that require dozens of runs and lots of trial and error, you'll enjoy this game.
If you play as, or have played as a Viera in the critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV with an expanded free trial that goes all the way up through the award winning Heavensward expansion as well as the Stormblood expansion letting you level up all the way to 70, you'll enjoy this game.

If you're like me and all of the above is true, be wary, as this game is actually a time machine in disguise and before you know it, the last time you looked out the window you could've sworn the sun was setting, not rising.

With all that said, I'm unaware if any other game has attempted to adopt the MMO Raid style of combat into a game that's not an MMO before. So at the end of the day, that novelty alone is at least worth a download and play in the Demo which also carries your progress over to the main game.

Also one extra neat thing in regards to having friends or not. This game is actually two entire different experiences combined. If you play offline solo mode, you essentially get a Touhou Roguelite with a story mode. If you play online with randoms or friends, it then morphs into the MMO Raid style of combat with a heavy emphasis on mechanics instead of dodging bullets. Play it alone or together, both are fun for their own reasons!

They fixed it, they turned it all around and fixed it and the game is glorious once again.

However, Sony's rearing it's ugly head around about PSN again. Hopefully it won't affect Helldivers II, but we'll see.

What a love letter to Risk of Rain this is.

As someone who loved the original Risk of Rain many years ago, I couldn't have asked for a better remake/remaster. The beautiful end credits song made me tear up, Hoppo games has come a long way, but so have I in my own life.

Thank you for bringing this experience into the world.

I used to play this game, it was fun, lots of good looting, lots of good shooting, lots of funny memes.

Then the split happened and everyone was excited and happy for Bungie to be away from Activision.

But let's be honest, that split was a PR move and Bungie has still been Activision Bungie this whole time.

Content being removed, the game constantly getting more and more microtransaction heavy, new players being tossed into the deep end of the pool with no explanation on pretty much anything from both purchasing editions and in game lore, new cosmetics that are earnable look like garbage compared to payed sets, the list goes on.

The only reason why people still keep playing this is because of lost cost fallacy as well as hopes and prayers for it to just, stop being so crap since the core gameplay experience still exists. You just have to eat a mountain of Bungo's excrement to reach it. If you've been enjoying this game since the start, you'll likely keep enjoying it. But if you're a new player? You might as well forget it. God forbid the worst offense a player can make, NOT PLAYING THE GAME! If you're a returner or someone who took a break, you're now just as lost as a new player as well as likely missing all the content you paid for due to the baffling amount of FOMO they put into this game.

With the recent wake up calls from games like Elden Ring, Tears of the Kingdom, and Baldur's Gate 3. Paired with the extreme bashing of OW2's Steam Release, more and more "AAA" corporations need a kick in the balls to realize that their short term profit business strategies are just that, short term, and now it's time to reap the seeds of consequence that they've all sown.

I initially came to Naraka due to the NieR Collab and also it being a BR game that just lets you play against Bots with your friends without having to do any special to access bot matches.

I ended up falling in love with how the game handles and plays and spent many nights labbing combos, watching tutorial videos on things like movement techs and grapple combos. While I'm mostly a PvE player, if my buddies are on Naraka, I'll occasionally queue for PvP with them.

Then we found out about the Showdown mode which is basically like a PvE Campaign Story Mode that has objectives and Boss Fights. The game feel there is like a mix between Souls/Sekiro, Monster Hunter, and Remnant. It's a shame that Showdown is only open on weekends but the silver lining of it being featured this way is that you don't burn out on grinding the mode for levels and loot.

All and all, even though the game is generally considered difficult and newbie unfriendly due to the fighting game neutral->combo->tech chase blood it has, Naraka has a surprisingly casual friendly side thanks to it's different modes like Capture the Spirit Well and Blood Bath for those who want a more traditional PvP setting instead of being dumpstered once in BR and having to quit out into matchmaking again. As well as Bot Mode and Showdown for less competitive or PvE players to just play the game at their own pace or wind down after a long day at work without having to try hard in a PvP setting.

I hope the devs decide to include even more modes in the future as well as allow for a Bot Mode for each different match type because in the end, gaming's about having fun, and there's nothing wrong with letting the less hardcore PvPers enjoy your game as well. The more the merrier!

It's like a Vampire Survivors run if your character was split into 16 different smaller characters that then slowly get more powerful. Then as everyone starts to come together throughout the run, you reach that same level of VS endgame OPness where you dumpster everything and can't see anything.

I love it. Who could've predicted a Kusoge like Ikki suddenly pop back in and fit very well with a new genre?

The game is an early Fat Shark release, so all the caveats that come with that are here in full. Missing QoL from previous titles, connection issues, repetitive grind-mill content to hold you over until they make new stuff, etc etc.

They are currently on double duty; cleaning up the mess they made as well as trying to produce new content, so the entire thing is a little chaotic right now. They've fixed up the Cover Mechanic so now it just works like FPS cover across the board and no longer functions like an odd "less chance to get hit" SRPG Wall. There are however, still a litany of smaller issues that will hopefully be ironed out, such as no ammo indicator for the player themselves, and lack of full support for IPv6 connection types. At least it's not a constant error 2006 anymore, but the lag is sometimes unbearable on IPv6.

Aside from that, the stellar Melee System from Vermintide is still here, and they've managed to make it mesh decently well with the newer focus on ranged combat, being the Sci-Fi settings VS Vermintide's Fantasy setting. If you're looking for a meat mashing flesh burning head shooty horde game, this one fits the bill nicely.