Recent reviews by Supic

Same artstyle, evolved gameplay. Instead of a tile-based puzzle game with a slight pivot towards bullet hell near the end, you get that last part the whole time, no tiles needed. Starts out fairly easy, but later on there's a big difficulty spike. Memorize the attacks, figure out a strategy to kite your ghost(s) of the week, fix some shield machine thingies, and maybe you'll kiss a ghost. Or eat some pudding pies.

Looking at my library, I realized I didn't actually have any cozy games. This one's fine, I guess.

Like the YIIK you know and love, but overhauled so normal people can also know and love it.

Many of the changes to the game impact the atmosphere and presentation, which is now more surreal than anything you would've seen in the original game, and is around much more often too. In general, the visuals have been given major upgrades and additions. The worst visuals of the demo are comparable with the best that the current game has to offer.

The plot of the original game is unchanged but repackaged, and also has more plots added on top. If you care about the story, you have everything the original game had and more, and if you don't, then you can probably enjoy the visuals and wait for the plot to move on.

The new tutorial sequence and intro cutscene set the stage much differently than the original game. On a fundamental level you're given very different expectations and views on the game than you would have if you played YIIK as is at the time of writing.

The battle system has been completely replaced, a major improvement so far. This could get better or worse as you level up and gain party members, but in the demo it works perfectly well. The battles move smoothly and only stop when you need to choose an action, which is the only time it should stop in normal gameplay.

If you like the demo and haven't played the main game, it is not going to feel nearly as impactful as this version until the big update comes out and makes it this version. YIIK is currently a much more mundane experience than diehard fans will act like, and while there's still a good story present, your enjoyment will depend more on interacting with that story than anything else. Wait for the update to come out in late April or May, and then play it.

High speed, high impact gameplay. Very fun, but I'd argue that (easy) techs play a huge role in maintaining the flow during fights, enough to where just using the weapons normally would be either boring or suffocating.

I think each weapon has at least one tech that can be actively used by the average player as soon as they learn about it, and that only happens if they hear about it from someone else or stumble across it on their own.

The latter can happen by accident in a few scenarios, but in most cases I don't think anything short of screwing around in sandbox mode for a while would help. Even then, you'd also need to know that there's a tech you don't know about, which might be difficult to figure out on your own.

Still, the game's fun once you know, so if you're willing to look up a guide or two to do cool things, ULTRAKILL offers a densely packed FPS experience you'll have trouble finding anywhere else.

good

Unlike a certain game with a 4 in the title, 6 years (or more if you count the browser version) didn't pass between my start and finish of this game. I remember opening this after I bought it with the coupon and doing the loading screen achievement before closing the game for about a year. I started playing a day or two after finishing the last one, got a decent way in, and stopped playing for a month or two before resuming and en- completing it. Yes, completing it. 115.6 hours in the past two weeks.
For what actually happened, before I start complaining, assume anything I don't mention I liked and remember that I recommend this game.

Spoilers, but any of the big stuff will be hidden with the spoiler text.
So the beginning of the game was good, no real complaints as I went through it (on Epic because that is the only difficulty), spared Nolegs by accident and found how to spare Natz because Nolegs is made out of feathers and needed lovable to not die every other turn in most of the fights. Went on to get run over and lose Natz before I loaded my save and killed the enemies guarding chests before I strategically got run over a second time. Got Anna to hopelessly surrender before she died of poison (still got both achievements) immediately after (didn't know much about status effects and capturing enemies at this point), and headed into the fortress.

Skip ahead a bit, and I'm fighting the totems. They were the first arcade fight that I managed to finish, though I did attempt and fail the chair fight beforehand. The arcade fights were hard, but a lot of them were only really difficult from the gimmicks. The snakes and phoenixes respawn if you don't kill them all on the same turn, which felt really artificial, especially since it was a free action for whatever reason. Also the phoenixes auto revive was better than the type that the player gets and revives it at full health for some reason, which really extends the fight to 3x the length, mostly because equipment auto skills and counters tended to kill them at bad times (I refuse to turn them off). The Maw's fight was extremely hard the first time through, but then during the arcade boss rush I used a summon that gave brave to the party and it became as disappointing of a fight as Godcat was after I grinded those two levels, though I guess this can be more considered as a solved puzzle rather than a hard fight since it isn't the final boss. The bushes, chairs, pumpkins, and maybe even Coralia were pretty straight forward.

The dark player fights were all difficult in their own special way, and they were all fights I enjoyed, partially from the nostalgia of the EBF4 fights, partially because they were challenging. Except the Nolegs fight why does he have no resistances, 5 million health, a song with lyrics that loops every two minutes, and I was there for so long the whole fight was Rainbow Rafflesia 2.0. Good thing there isn't a dark player rush, because then it would have to include that fight.

The marathons for the most part were pretty easy to breeze through. The monster marathon was easy to get past since every golem has no resistance to freeze and the dragons are downgraded from the last game. In EBF4 the stronger dragons that appeared later on threatened to wipe the front line if you didn't handle their elements and exploit their weaknesses. Maybe I was the one that changed, and not the dragons, but by comparison the ones in this game felt like pushovers (except for the Origami Dragon, whose strength rivaled my expectations). The monsters were randomly grouped too, which probably made the fight that much easier since 5 dragons at once would still probably be extremely hard to fight against.
The mini-boss and boss marathons were pretty easy and straightforward to beat, and the mega boss marathon was a good challenge, and it could've been annoyingly hard if I didn't search for a Neon Valhalla strategy. The boss itself was a good fight to endure as I kept making sure to deal more damage than it healed, but in a boss rush? No, I'm not suffering any more than I have to, which is not at all.
The endless battle was mostly just a test of patience, since I already finished the marathon where the monsters are predetermined, so it wasn't that much harder.

The Battle Arena was a bit difficult, but ended up as another test of patience since equipping the flairs that give auto revive, refill health to max upon reviving, and give regenerate pretty much just mean that I could spam defend until auto revive activated and I could attack without having to worry. The only risks were attacking without it and hoping I could tank the enemies attacks, which I did a lot.
The Data Bunker was a nice challenge, the two player fights made sure to have mostly single target attacks while the three player fights turned the difficulty up with normal bosses, adding the extra challenge of not being able to rely on backup being able to hop in after the front line gets wiped and revive everyone.
I looked up a strategy for the Glitch since I had absolutely no clue how to fight something that absorbed all elements, and eventually fine tuned a one turn kill to a one turn capture after 6 fights (I saw the cutscene every time and had to wait for it to be over to try again).
Snowflake was a lot easier than I anticipated, a friend told me how annoying it was for him to apply all the status effects to capture him, but I just did that throughout the fight because I couldn't do much else (no elemental weaknesses to attack or resistances to avoid at all), so at the end the boss just had practically max debuffs and status effects.

Some of the biggest challenges were getting some of the medals. Retaliation and New Strats needed their respective modifiers active but didn't require I turn on scaling foes, so I just went to early areas and grinded the fights until I got the achievements, which was probably a lot less trouble than beating enemies my level in the final area. Extreme Difficulty noted in the description that it didn't have to be done on Epic, so I headed to the Data Bunker, set the difficulty to Zero, and turned on a few cheats before starting the first EBF1 simulation and killing the boss there. Getting a triple crit was annoying for a few minutes, but was ultimately over pretty quickly. Finishing off Card Shark was relatively easy because I already had about 45 cards and didn't have to do that much backtracking. The Sixth Sense achievement took a LOT of backtracking since I was at the final area and already explored the optional areas when I noticed that I was only at ~150 secrets found, so I had to run around most of the map looking for secrets that I missed. The achievement for capturing foes I got naturally because I impulsively captured almost every enemy I could except for the dark player Natalie and The Maw, which I could probably go back to now that I know to equip capture equipment on before fighting them. The Adventure Remix achievement has ridiculous requirements, start a custom game to get ALL THE WAY TO GREENWOOD? That's like halfway through the game, and maybe it's because you have all the party members by that point, but compared to EBF4 you take a really long time getting all of them, to the point where you've cleared three or four entire areas just to get there.

The hardest fight in the game, IMO, was the final boss. Wow, who would've thought that The Devourer would live up to both his title and name, huh? There's no gimmick either, he's just plain strong. I tried to fight him three or four times before giving up and looking at a guide or two for strategies, because I have to get all the way through the Cosmic Gigalith , which has like 5 or 6 million health to burn through, just to get to him, and way too much of my time would be taken if I did that every time I wanted to test a new strategy.

Good game, nice challenges on Epic. 4/5

short game

Nearly six years.
That's how long it took me to beat this thing.
I bought EBF5 with the coupon and haven played it beyond the loading screen, for fear that the experience would be similar to Paper Mario 64 vs. TTYD, where once I got used to the latter, I didn't want to downgrade.
I've seen the worst this game has to offer, from stupid super plants (yes, THAT upgraded boss), spammy status effects (including but not limited to insta-death, stun, and syphon), a final boss I COULDN'T beat with any strategy (even including Anna), giving up and grinding an extra two levels to make it a joke, and at it's worst, (3 times this has happened) the game straight up not saving to the files and forcing me to redo parts I just completed after restarting.
If you think I recommended this game on accident, remember I came back, time and time again to beat this thing. That counts for something, and it isn't just spite.
No, I didn't go at this for six years STRAIGHT. I took breaks that lasted months each because I stopped playing and forgot about the game entirely the next day. Definitely my fault, but if I went at the hardest challenges this game had to offer 5 years ago, I'd probably have double the hours I do now.
Most of these complaints are just from the end-game, since I really don't remember the rest of it that clearly (I beat Rafflesia in the story back in 2015 according to my achievements, take that as you will). I think I had fun at the earlier parts, with the difficulty not making the game impossible, but difficult enough to be fun.
The final boss was exclusively harder than the rest of the game due to being at level 33, as the damage multiplier from the difficulty is applied twice once above level 32, increasing the bosses damage output from 2x to 4x the normal amount while on Epic. With the party at level 32, this fight was practically impossible, even after finishing all Battle Mountain had to offer. I grinded for bigger numbers, killing the zombie hydra until I was level 34 because I wanted to make sure no single mistake (or bad RNG) could end my entire team in one turn.
When I returned to the game in August (this year), I found out I just happened to be at the perfect level for Battle Mountain, level 32, as that whole quadruple damage thing wouldn't apply until one level later. Of course, this didn't mean I was in for a FUN first battle upon returning, as it was the plant, and the plant was only weak to wind, had healing, a OHKO rainbow beam, and tiny versions of itself. Of course, after this, Battle Mountain was an actual fun experience, the enemies guarding chests being reasonably difficult for the extra hard area they were in, the dark players being a, strange change of pace, but ultimately bringing a good challenge.
Then there were the marathons. The monster marathon wasn't really challenging until the pseudo-mini bosses appeared (those being enemies with immunities to stun, syphon, and freeze), with the dragons specifically being the scariest part, while the river squid, limit break in hand, came in a close second. The other three marathons each gave a good challenge, but remember that I kept Anna on backup until the team got wiped, making the game that much easier. I had to redo the upgraded boss marathon because of the aforementioned "game not saving" glitch, of course I knew it wouldn't be more difficult to do it a second time, but man, bosses having limit breaks really puts the hurt on you.
The dark player marathon. two bosses, at once, each can heal if they FEEL like it, which gives them bless on top of extra health, meaning their biggest weaknesses, poison and fire, couldn't be inflicted for like 4 turns. On top of that were the limit breaks. This means the dark player marathon is the area for Anna's third highest time on screen, with the second being desperate strategies with the final boss, and the first being the beginning of the game. (Seriously, she had to go through a bunch of lines when I tried to use her with the final boss.) The dark players limit breaks being an important factor, due to being able to use so many, made deciding whether to attack or buff more important. Do I attack with Matt, buff the party's defense, give auto-revive, or buff Matt's attack for next turn? Sure, I ask these questions to myself with every boss, but the answer isn't as obscured in those as it is in this fight, where I can reference one dark player's health to another to estimate how close they are to their next limit break, and act accordingly.
The endless battles was more RNG dependant than anything else, I got wiped on wave 30 by a dark dragon the first time and had a laughably easy time with a giant slime and two satellite towers, as the giant slime ISN'T immune to stun, and the towers are only partially immune to syphon.
There's also an ultimately minor problem of refunded specials, as you don't get the points back once you do so. I put a bunch of buff specials on Matt and made it through the game despite this, so the only important factors of the fights were in my playstyle and strategy. RNG was important too, but that's a given in this game.
One last question.
Who the am I writing this for? It isn't people who want to buy the game, because most of what I remember is from the end-game and Battle Mountain. It's not for people looking through reviews, because who's looking through a several year old games reviews? In the end, this rambling is only for myself, because this game has left me annoyed, the final boss being a disappointment in both character and difficulty, that being impossible a level under and easier than expected a level above. Sure, if I knew that at level 33, I probably could've won by the skin of my teeth, I would've stopped there, but the only expectation I had was quadruple damage to the party. I can't help but compare it to Battle Mountain's challenging but possible fights. Hell, the fight may have been difficult, party members died plenty of times, and Anna even had to come out of backup once, but it never felt like I was in actual danger of a game over. After level 34, it took me two tries to beat the final boss, with the first one being ended early from the game freezing. Maybe that's just how much better I, or rather, my strategies became because of Battle Mountain, but I don't know. Maybe I was (and still am) just too tired to fully realize the difficulty, but I do know that I underestimated Matt's damage output, as while crits and the RNG in general weren't on my side, Matt was making his way through the final boss's health faster than I expected.
If, for some reason, you want an actual review:
The best way to play, for me, is on Epic and to strategize accordingly, using armors that protect against your enemies' elements. The difficulty is part of the fun in and of itself, as one of the benefits of turn-based combat is how you have the time to choose your next action. Always take the alternate path or guarded chest, the reward is usually worth it. Make sure you stop yourself at level 32 for your biggest advantage at Battle Mountain, not having to deal with quadruple damage on Epic.

I should REALLY get to playing EBF5 soon....

It was..... a fun ride to say the least. Easily 8 or 9/10 even with the small problems present.
Pros: The story takes place as a fun journey before getting serious, and the jokes always at least get a smile out of me. Enemies didn't feel repetitive because unless you die (which you shouldn't), you can only fight each enemy once, making grinding impossible.The fact that enemies can be talked to and bribed makes them feel more like characters.It feels like all of the characters(excluding random enemies)have a role to play, none of them end up feeling unimportant by the time the game is over. It SHOULD be a con that hit detection sometimes isn't that great, but it's biased towards the player, so it ends up feeling like I did something great through pure ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ despite all odds.
The bosses all have unique fights, making you utilize the area gimmick to win, as it's a split between the overworld and the actual 'fight' portion. Level ups allowed me to have a generous amount of health (attempted to evenly split the three options, but realized later on that health was the last thing I needed), so I didn't worry about getting killed (despite that I used all of my potions almost every time I fought a boss). I don't really want to say much about the game, since I might reveal something or set up expectations for someone who hasn't played it.
And I tend to hover over spoiler text without thinking, so I don't really trust it to stop someone from seeing actual spoilers.
Cons: My problems are mostly nitpicks, like how the game isn't able to handle 144 fps (thanks for nothing, Vsync), collectibles weren't that hard to find, but there was no way of knowing if I got everything in an area, and only one was in a 'bad' spot.I avoided an enemy that happened to have a cassette, despite the encouragement of not encountering them. One of the lava rooms.There should be some kind of hint system for collectibles in completed worlds, or maybe just for cassettes exclusively, to avoid having to aimlessly backtrack in areas that might not have them. World One is the only 'slow' world,specifically, backtracking in World One (whether going to the cave or backtracking to the tree for missed collectibles) feels slow because you have to walk through two empty screens to get to where you want to go.Other worlds DO NOT have this problem, and it's really the only time the game ever felt repetitive (outside of me backtracking to the hub in the middle of an endgame area, only for it to have a way to travel to the hub at the end, so that doesn't count). Also, there's no option to run awaydespite the fact that some enemies have no intention of fighting or blocking you. Maybe it's a story reason, as most enemies also aren't able to run away or even move, despite not even knowing they're in a fight before you make the first move.
I don't have any problems with the story, characters, or themes of the game, and while I do have questions lingering, this isn't the place to put them. Except for one and that'swhy did Stitches have those creepy paintings made?
Also, something I didn't realize until I looked through the steam forums for this game: You can load your save file after the point of no return and be put back in the hub's save station, by selecting load instead of continue. I mean, I copied my save file before hand to make sure I could go back, but it was about an hour behind where I was. It was fun going througha certain hallway the second time and avoiding the surprise enemies.I did use my original save to get the last cassette though.
I left the game running listening to the soundtrack (cassettes) and didn't close it, I did not take 27 hours to finish.

EDIT: removed spaces