Recent reviews by Slag

Easily the best game Zeboyd has has ever made. Very impressive creation for a 2 man studio.

There aren't many games out there that take inspiration from Chrono Trigger which always surprises me, but this is one of the best of them.

Zeboyd has made massive improvements in 3 areas versus their previous retro pixel JRPGs. The music, the look of the game and the scope of the game.

Zeboyd wisely farmed out the music this time to a group called the Hyperducks (Dust Elysian Tale soundtrack) and they got one of the better thumpin' JRPGs soundtracks I've heard in ages in return. It's full of pulsing 80's synth that really fits the retro future space aesthetic of the game. They really nailed the oh so critical battle and boss battle themes. "Critical Juncture" in particular is one I find myself re-listening frequently years after playing the game. Shockingly there's also even a great vocal track featuring Laura Shigihara (Rakuen's developer and seemingly super talented person in general).

This time Zeboyd went more 16 bit/32 bit with their chosen look for the game and it really paid off. Their character designs are still pretty simplistic and a bit flat for my tastes, but the greater pixel density allows them for far greater variety and expressiveness than they've showed previously. Where the improvement is most noticeable is in the backgrounds and settings which I'd now put on par with decent-good JRPGs. In previous Zeboyd games, their environments were pretty bland.

And the scope now is about the perfect size for me. 15-20 hours is a great length of content for a 2d JRPG, not too brief that it doesn't get to do or show you anything interesting, not too long where it gets grindy and overstays its welcome. So welcome change there, their previous games felt like heavily rushed affairs that they were trying to hustle the player through as fast as possible.

If you've played Zeboyd games before you know that the battle systems are where their games shine and also main the reason they have their fans. They're quick, challenging and give the player a ton of control as to how often you interact with them. A pretty dang good mix of the best of old design with modern convenience. And they've got another good one here, their best yet easily. The basic gist of it is you spend rounds trying to plan your attacks for when you are going to have your big offensive round (when your hyper maxes out), so you are usually thinking 2-3 turns ahead constantly whilst managing cooldowns on abilities and managing health. Sounds simple and it pretty much is, but it adds enough variety and uncertainty to keep you engaged.

And the battle system is where you see the Chrono Trigger influences most clearly, like CT each encounter is scripted and unique, with battles themselves occurring in the field as opposed to a discrete Battle screen. There's other little nods to CT in the game, such as how the game handles its version of an overworld and field screens and some of the aesthetic (although that seems to be more Phantasy Star-esque). But the game wisely stays away from leaning on that nostalgia crutch too hard.

Now for the bad, there isn't a whole lot in the game that is, but the story and character development is still pretty lacking for what you'd expect out of a RPG. Unfortunately that's a pretty big flaw. It's definitely better than it's ever been in previous Zeboyd games, but there's still no depth to it and little charm. Other than Alyssa, the titular character, nobody else really ever gains any dimension beyond being a loose archetype. I would have preferred a much smaller cast, if it meant we actually got characters we got to know a little. They tried to address this by having vignettes for each recruitable character, but those aren't very well fleshed out and don't compensate for many characters essentially being non-participants in the main storyline. There's only so much than can be achieved in 15 hours, which is another area where the large cast size may be more negative than a positive.

as for the Steam port, I personally experienced zero performance problems whatsoever, so hopefully the bugs and issues some people seem to have had at launch are completely fixed. As with anything on PC YMMV.

Overall it's a pretty good game and given its length the story issues aren't enough to become a real drag before its over. If anything it makes the length once again, seem too brief for a Zeboyd game (though it's a fair length for the price). If it had managed to release in a year that wasn't 2017 and in a month that wasn't so close to Persona 5, I think a lot more people would be talking about this one. If you like 2d JRPGs, give this one a look.

4/5

Everytime I play one of the Steamworld Dig games I seem to almost instantly enter a flow state, similar to that "just one more turn" phenomenon so many people experience playing Civilization games. The difficulty and content pacing are just so expertly tuned that I never feel like I run into excessive challenges or new content lulls, and yet it's also not too easy or a content flood either. It might be a touch on the easy side, especially once you get upgrades (most Metroidvanias have this problem though) but overall it achieves a balance that's a really rare thing to experience in a platformer.

The second game here is an improvement in every way over the first. Better look (the art design is top notch), better sound, better protagonist, significantly better story, significantly more content, better mechanics and most importantly vastly better level design due to its embrace of metroidvania style progression. I didn't envision a Steamworld Dig game leaning so hard into the Metroidvania route with its digging mechanics (figured a Rogue-like was the more likely evolution despite some of the nods in the first game), but boy am I glad they did as it really fits with what they've built. You'll quickly enter a loop of going digging to find upgrades and currency and then scrambling back to town to cash your findings in. Each subsequent foray into the underground becoming longer and longer in duration with your haul becoming bigger and bigger as your upgrades permit. It's one of those games you'll will want to find 100% of collectibles, simply because the act of doing so is so fun and rewarding. Doesn't hurt that there's a simple yet charming story to witness to boot.

If you like 2d metroidvanias platformers, give this a look. This is about as close to perfect one of those as they come.

Rogue Legacy is incredible. While it visually doesn't look like much, the mechanics make the most addictive old school game I've played in a very long time.

Essentially what Cellar Door Games ahs done is fuse the most fun mechanical elements of multiple 2d genres into a delightful play loop that can last you dozens of hours. Rogue Legacy has very tight 2d platformer controls coupled, roguelike permadeath, lots of loot with light metroidvania exploration randomized dungeons. But the real secret sauce is the inclusion of RPG leveling mechanics that allow your progess to pass onto your "descendents", making their run a little easier than yours. This really helps take the brutal edge of dejection off the roguelike gameplay as now each death/failed run into the castle now has long term benefits. Throw in the game's whimsical sense of humor in heritable traits and you'll never have so much fun failing hundreds of time in a game.