Recent reviews by Solawk

Kaizen feels like a breath of fresh air after Opus Magnum to me. The gameplay mechanics might be not as difficult or as deep, but the game certainly feels more down to Earth: instead of made up, sophisticated alchemy the concepts of welding, cutting and moving are much easier to grasp. I'd say Kaizen is a great entry point in the genre of Zachtronics-likes. Hardcore players, however, seem to fall outside its target audience, judging by their reaction.
The story and the atmosphere have its own charm. They are nothing special but are at least on par with what I've seen in Opus Magnum.
I would, although, expect the difficulty to be traded for quantity of the puzzles with this price tag, at least 3-4 more assemblies per chapter would probably make the game perfect in its niche, even if they were optional. Despite that, I can recommend Kaizen if you are into this genre or are willing to test its waters

Putting the summary in the beginning: Ratatan already plays well, but there are tweaks and improvements crying to be made. I can surely recommend trying the demo, though the potential of the game to become a great successor to the classics, not just somewhat decent, is yet to be fulfilled.

So, Patapon goes roguelite mode. The tempo and the gameplay loop differ greatly from the original, since your subjects are now expendable and revive on their own. The hero also moves independently and can quickly relocate the army back and forth, but actually plays the role of its vital and weak flag bearer, like hatapon, instead of being the powerful main character, like the Patapon 3 uberhero. Hence, the gameplay consists of maintaining momentum together with your forces, but retreating and waiting for reinforcements when enough beating is taken. Not exactly worse than Patapon, but substantially different, and I find it important for those who've probably been waiting for a direct heir to the old series.

Therefore, you can certainly say that Ratatan is less skill-dependent than Patapon, since the cost of ignoring an alarm and taking major damage is, most of the time, just having to wait for your forces to respawn. Frankly, it is more difficult to avoid damage in this game, since many attacks are telegraphed really late.
In Patapon preparations for major attacks are properly visualized, allowing you to react without rush. This allowed learning the patterns and avoiding heavy damage entirely, if the rhythm is maintained. On the other hand, losing momentum caused a desynchronization between your commands and enemy movements, punishing the player greatly.
Ratatan, despite having a strictly timed rhythm (you can not shift commands a beat back or forth from the predetermined pattern), does not employ this properly. The game EXACTLY knows the timings of the player's beat and when the commands are put in, so the attacks, in theory, can be telegraphed a precise amount of time before the command the player should react with to it. But I see the exact opposite, it nearly doesn't give you any time to react. Where Patapon gives you seconds to react, Ratatan barely gives fractions.

The developers seem to also misunderstand the underlying structure of Patapon’s commands.
In Ratatan, all six commands are strictly divided into three categories: movement (fall in, jump), action (attack, defend) and strong attacks (hustle techs). This is conveyed through their starting drum. As soon as you start an action command, you cannot do movement, and vice versa. Simply speaking, you cannot dodge if you miss the incoming attack’s sign.
In Patapon, both the charge and attack commands started with “Pon”. As did the retreat command, allowing to dodge. The onward command started with “Pata”. So did the party command, which at least forced the attacking patapons to retreat to the hatapon, allowing them to avoid strikes at the frontline.
It is even more important to mix the command structure in Ratatan, since the warnings are shown very late and the first note is often played by the time you notice and process them. At the very lazy least, you can just swap the jump and guard commands. This way, you can start a dodge jump after planning an attack, avoiding a strike but losing the next input.

But that doesn’t mean the game is bad. It still needs a lot of tweaks but is nevertheless very fun to play. Even after completing the demo’s content I still find myself replaying it, just for the sake of enjoying the exterior of the game. Unlike Patapon, you are not required to constantly score perfect beats, so it’s even kind of meditative. But the powerups and arsenal should definitely be improved. Customization was a great deal in Patapon: armor, weapons, evolutions, skills. So I expect a roguelite game like this to reach the same level, through both in-run upgrades and inventory items.
The game’s looks are great, enough said. It still reminds of its predecessor’s designs but embellishes them with a colorful and vibrant style.

It would be great to see modding in Ratatan, there’s a great potential for it in my opinion. Since ratatans don’t do much themselves on the battlefield, they don’t require many animations, hence drawing and adding even your own custom characters would be relatively simple.
Also plays awesome on Steam Deck, just like Patapon did back on PSP. Even the demo already has cloud saves. As a roguelite, it has a lot of potential to be a good time killer for those who have portable devices.

It's back, it's as good, it delivers as much as you would expect after such a long waiting and gets much deeper than before. A good example of how a properly action-packed and polished game takes long to make, compared to big budget blockbuster annual conveyors, and why they are much more touching, tapping into the soul, yearning for new adventures and characters, never getting old. Giving birth to new experiences, art and memes. If you feel open to embracing this universe, Deltarune will not disappoint

Honestly, it would be better off as a Minecraft mod.

Despite providing the player with a full-on third dimension of factory building, Foundry does little to back it up. Building in this game feels very awkward and uncomfortable. There are many cases, small and big, that contribute to me saying that it is by far one of the worst implementations I've experienced. Even on PC, with a keyboard and a mouse I get frustrated whenever I need to set up a new production line. And on Steam Deck building takes on average three times longer. This is how I progressed to a point when I realised the game is not fun so slowly I've lost my refund privilege.

Compared to the other factory builders, I just don't feel any flow in Foundry. For example, in the 2D representatives of the genre the conveyor handling feels like a fun minigame, since the layout is right before the player's eyes, easy to modify and traverse. In Foundry, however, it feels like I'm battling not my conveyor spaghetti, but rather the voxel grid itself.

Immersiveness of Satisfactory, coming at a cost of time-consuming building, has the potential to reward the player with beautiful results, if enough effort is put. Not everyone can immediately merge large factories into the game's beautiful scenery, but everyone is given the opportunity. Foundry is obviously lacking in terms of immersion and realism, trading it for a voxel world that it doesn't properly utilize.

Speaking of voxel worlds, Minecraft industrial mods provide a much more fun experience. Whether it's progressive IC2, pushing you towards new milestones without forcing you to set up another production line, which all look the same in the end, as in, frankly, many factory builders. Whether it's sophisticated Create, where every production line feels natural and unique due to a variety of crafting recipes, utilizing fans, presses, drills, combined into proper sequences and not just “input conveyor-input device-building-output device-output conveyor” for every item.

Utilizing the third dimension in Foundry feels like quite a challenge as well. Not only the size of conveyor slopes makes changing depth annoying, but also the added difficulty of traversing the factory with multiple layers, including the loss of transparency for lower levels.

But you can just rebuild anything you are not comfortable with in your factory? I'm not comfortable with building itself there. I'm not even talking about how cheap forcing the player to build foundations everywhere is. You are put into a vast living world and your objective is to properly cover it all in foundations so you can build somewhere. I'd rather play the electric poles minigame, even early on.

In terms of other content, the player is greeted with a large research tree, feeling more like a burden to unlock rather than a mountain to climb, considering the weird first building experience. The station management mechanics and commerce not only feel unfitting so early into the game, but also look detached from what the player does most of their time – it's like if you put stock trading into Terraria, just so it exists for some reason. I'm not forcing myself to progress further, where supposed fun stuff might be, if I can't have fun in the first two hours.

After a year in development the robotic companion of questionable usefulness still only has one voiceline, while the talking AI still feels annoying, as if I'm watching a kids cartoon. Factory builders are not supposed to be friendly and soothing, it’s about players making work fun. ADA in Satisfactory handles it well, while the narrator in Dyson Sphere Program at least keeps the explanations strict. When interacting with creatures, your only feedback for the “Pet” action is… I don't know, a sound? The world doesn’t seem lively despite the wrapping.

To summarize, I've purchased Factorio, Satisfactory and Dyson Sphere Program for prices twice as low as Foundry and had much more fun there. If you are into putting blocks onto a voxel grid, try Minecraft mods, such as Create, IndustrialCraft 2, Modern Industrialization etc. If you want to express your 3D-building skills in a more live world, try Satisfactory. If you are into mechs, planets and long-range logistics, try Dyson Sphere Program. And if you just want to have a guaranteed good experience with factory builders, try Factorio.

There are just so many games that do almost anything Foundry does better, and whatever content the competitors don't cover (like commerce) doesn't seem to be worth it at the moment.

I’ve traversed the forest, fished some junk, roasted a bunch of critters, felt an evil presence watching me, bought a knife off an old merchant, forced a guy into living in an isolated room, planted deadly traps at my friends’ places, drank questionable fluids and ate a bunch of spaghetti found by a corpse, killed god with a yo-yo, twice, then hopped onto Terraria and it was just like real life! So cool!

Laika: Aged Through Blood is certainly one of the games I’ve ever played.

It was a breath of fresh air after playing a lot of factory builders that feel like work more than entertainment after a while. Its captivating gameplay loop, becoming progressively more interesting to master as you upgrade your gear, might remind you of how in the Devil May Cry series the combat is more about style than result, even when initially you feel like you are fighting the controls more than the enemies. Challenging and tricky at first, it requires the player to learn multitasking very early into the game, frightening newcomers with so many enemies, so little ammo and so unique gimmicks to keep in mind. However, despite some players claiming the controls to be difficult and unresponsive, you familiarize with them several hours into the game and realize they are quite good for this energetic combination of precision shooting and motocross.

Speaking of difficulty, I allowed the internet to explain to me how hard and demanding Laika is, watched the walkthrough and deeply regretted it. DO NOT drop this game if you felt the demo was challenging for you. Trust me, it really does get better. Not only is there a lot of gear to upgrade and employ, the tricks you learn to pull off over the course of several hours will really humble you in the end. After taking on the bosses of the game, I realized how large is the gap between me and Reddit users saying the boss battles are unforgiving and require replaying multiple phases after a single mistake. Skill issue, I suppose.

The problem with bosses is on the other side of the spectrum. I’d say, it is a single big weakness of this game – they don’t feel like bosses at all. Surely, some boss battles feel epic and immersive, but the movements and mechanics are largely separated from the rest of the game. Out of the roster, I can only name one boss I actually enjoyed fighting, since it maintained the game’s mood, provided just enough tension and fun mechanics and felt like a perfect culmination to exploring the location. So, yeah, after the epic bosses of Armored Core 6, Laika really felt devoid of good boss fights to me.

That said, at least it didn’t interrupt the storytelling, trapping you in difficult encounters. The story, maybe not a masterpiece, full of unexpected twists and brilliant characters, is greatly enhanced by the atmosphere, entangling you into believing this world – where people don’t live, but rather where they die. The neverending conflict you are the hero of, requiring you to dive into gunfights, one after another, knowing every fired bullet might be your demise, constantly fills you with desperation and the will to change everyone’s lives, somehow. To protect those around you while you can, even if it means killing so many for it it becomes a routine. At least Laika’s beautiful soundtrack will always keep you company. If, like me, you find its soothing and distracting nature fitting your job in the Wastelands, it will never bore you with repetitiveness, even outside the game.

So, Laika: Aged Through Blood is a great choice for anyone seeking unusual action experience mixed with elaborate world building and a frankly well-written story. In a game where constant dying is literally a plot element, do not be overwhelmed with difficulty at first – it becomes second nature over time, if you give all those possible tricks and techs a shot. It is a full-fledged, fun game I’ve enjoyed fully exploring the possibilities of, as I’m sure you will too.

Atlyss is my favourite game to reference realistic female body proportions from

That dealer didn't lie, those beers, cigarettes and expired medicines can save your life.

Despite some slight controversies in its history, it is a great fun for the players, a huge technical feat for the developers and an inspiration to many games released and to come

Satisfactory's Early Access was to me a great journey of development and improvement from update to update. It is a beautiful game with largely fine-tuned game design, great graphics and immersion.
Obviously, the most significant changes would be reserved to the release of the game, which would become a major turning point and a reason to end old saves and start a new one, so these are my thoughts on how Satisfactory feels now.
Mainly, the gameplay loop is intact, some ores have changed locations but are pretty much the same. The resource distribution now has less "perfect" spots, like the north-west of the Northern Forest in the past. Makes me want to try new places to build factories at.
The game feels easier than before, many challenges have been resolved. Some, like Mk.6 conveyors to support overclocked Mk.3 miners or depots for remote inventory access, are solving old problems that had to be resolved eventually. I might sound like some old geezer talking about how it's been harder in my days, but:
Some new alternate recipes make the game extremely easy. For example, you can make steel pipes directly from iron. I've unlocked advanced steel processing without even establishing steel production at all!
Energy is much easier to produce now. Fuel generators have been massively buffed, alien technologies provide constant free boosts to the energy network and, finally, nuclear is now devoid of a huge choice – more energy but waste or wasteless but less energy. You can now achieve wasteless nuclear energy while generating it in huge amounts with all three types of fuel. Granted, the expanded production due to unlocking the full potential of Mk.3 miners needs more energy now, but the change is significant in quality apart from quantity.
So, to the older players Satisfactory might seem less challenging now, in my opinion. But apart from that, it's a fantastic game about not only building FACTORIES, but also about BUILDING factories. Being a 3D factory builder allows for much more artistic freedom than in its alternatives. It surely uses more of your time, especially in the late game, where there are just lots and lots of the same buildings needed to process the entirety of the world's resources, which is, too, a significant problem left untouched. But why would you really complain about playing and building more in a good game like this, on the other hand?
To conclude my opinion as an older player, the release of the game is okay, with changes I agree with and with changes I don't entirely, it's a milestone to really consider "now I can start over in a version of the game that will not be significantly affected by the updates".
To the potential buyers, it's a great game, especially if you had no experience in factory builders before. It's much more understandable and "readable" than Factorio to the newcomers in my opinion, allows for more freedom in building stuff, exploring its beautiful handcrafted world. Finally, Satisfactory feels more relaxed with its unlimited resources not bothering you with the need to constantly expand. You are not surviving using the limited ore veins, instead you are meditating, linking streams of resources in and between factories. I've only started a new save with all the new plot and story stuff, so I guess there is even more for me to explore in 1.0.
It's nice. The game and its developers are certainly worth the praise