Recent reviews by codeorange

This is the UFO 50 of visual novels.

Some people are complaining that there are not enough barriers and the maps are too big and open and so the game is impossible to play. They are wrong. You've traded in the ability to purchase 1000 barriers for 22 (on single player) that are a part of your basic starting kit and are FREE. Instead of creating elaborate deathmazes that can handle absolutely everything, you've gotta use your wits and your limited barriers to funnel the enemies into chokepoints where your traps are most effective. And if you're nice, there's some seriously gross optimisations you can make.

It's a nice reprieve from the tried and tired formula that OMD had been sticking with for the past 3 games, though I can see why diehard fans would be soured by the new roguelite format, it is a pretty different game overall. While the same traps are there from the previous games, this feels more like a spiritual successor by a new studio seeking to replicate the feel and style of OMD while putting their own spin on things.

If there's one major issue with the game right now, it's that the first level is a little too easy (contrary to what some may complain with), while being as long as every other level. The game gets real tricky later on for sure, but veteran players like me are going to go in feeling mighty bored sitting through level 1 over and over again. It's the drawback of roguelikes in general, where the first level is either feast or famine in terms of difficulty. But I'd rather the first level be nice and chill instead of immediate punishment for sure.

Maybe an option to skip straight to stage 2 and getting all the threads you would have gotten, at the cost of losing out on the skulls you could have earned would be nice to speed things along. The developers have shown that they're listening and are implementing balance and qol changes based on player feedback, so I wouldn't be surprised if this gets added in a later patch.

EDIT: actually disregard that, there's an option to handicap yourself by increasing the enemy stats early. It really does make the game hell to complete solo esp in the longrun lol, so I'm still not a fan. Great for challenge co-op runs for sure. Also the curse that makes your next mission a bossfight is actually completely terrible, since it works like normal bossfights and ends the mission early and you earn NO threads for it, while giving you the option to continue playing. Your powerlevel as a result is much lower than what it's supposed to be on the next mission, which will brick your run potentially and screw you out of skulls. All other curses are fine, just this one is borked.

Yeah this games good. Also the bear is cute.

Really good game. Clearly still in early access though, but they aren't saying that. It's got a limited roster, a bland placeholder UI with some elements clearly showing jagged unaliased pixels and it's missing a ton of features from RoA 1.

This is also a retail price game that ties cosmetics to exploitative monetisation schemes. Sure you can earn ingame currency, but the rate is beyond abysmal (think 100 hours to unlock one (1) skin for one character), and the storefront for ingame currency constantly rotates out skins from a limited selection. You are practically forced to spend even more money on a retail priced game to speed it up by a pitiful 20% with the "starter pack", or purchase the premium currency to spend to get in the premium currency store that'll have everything (there's a ton of crap recycled from their Creatures of Aether game as well). It's not going to be as egregious as other games (looking at you fortnite) but it really makes me yearn for a less disruptive, more transparent monetisation system, that also gives the player more than enough freedom to customise own experience.

I'm saying go play RoA 1 instead for now, it's currently on sale for 50% off which is a steal. It's a fully fleshed out version of this that has a tutorial, multiple gameplay modes and options including a story mode, a full roster of characters and the option to set and share custom palettes. Oh and you can freely mod in an infinite number of characters, stages and cosmetics from the steam workshop. If you haven't already purchased it it's a much better way to support the developers, and a much better use of your money than an unfinished game and a few overpriced palette swaps and skins.

Game should get a mixed review for now, but steam is bad so negative it is.

its like eating grey paste

strong visual style and fun character who only appears during the tutorial. after that its like they forgot to put a game in their game. you just go from room to room pressing attack. and yeah other autobattlers or other genres like rpgs do the same thing but they have a story. there are decisions that you make in building your party. here, you really do just hit attack over and over again.

fill out your class's item bonuses. give your guys high level items. thats it, asides from your even the upgrades are largely boring, stuff like 5% lifesteal, or +10 armour for a class. and they're largely generic too, get the same upgrades but for a different class. oh but then a floor will suddenly have an enemy that can teleport behind your backline, having your slightly suboptimal backliners get chewed up. no room for error, but its so easy to build your stuff well. hard to keep track of what floors have what enemies. everything looks the same every thing feels the same. like nothing.

i mean there is a challenge in having to wait for your guys to sloooooooowly run into place every time you enter a new room before you can do anything. like 10 seconds of waiting every time.

felt nothing.

PSA: Advice for anybody new or returning to actually find games

1. Turn crossplay on. A big chunk of the userbase are on console apparently lol. If you're playing with crossplay off, you'll literally never queue into anybody instead of on occasion.

2. Queues seem to be bugged right now if you're solo. Pairing up with even just one other person makes you find games far more consistently.

3. Get the hell off of the steam forums. It's just an unmoderated cesspit of concern trolls at this point. The Gigantic discord is a whole lot more honest and accomodating (i.e. people talk about more than just "game dead" over and over again). There's also plenty of people looking for extra party members or to do scrims so you can find games that way too.
https://discord.gg/uTmAqczR

This game is incredibly fun, don't let a handful of hypocritical doomers who "really want to play this game" but seem to do everything in their power to make sure they and everyone else don't play it.

Hey remember that one point in that one game where it turned into a pixel art autobattler CCG all of a sudden and it seemed cool but was kinda half baked? What if somebody did that but the gameplay, artwork and music were all really strong?

Fantastic presentation that takes the single player roguelike experiences you've seen in f2p games like Hearthstone and Runeterra, but without the predatory monetisation and all of the character and effort that comes from a dev team that really cares about what they're making. There's even a really nice tutorial that quickly teaches you how the game works and pops in and out when a new mechanic gets introduced. It should be a knockout success, but it's a little more on the casual side of things (my preference) with no hardmode yet which means that the Gamers™ have to give it a thumbs down. Not their fault, Steam doesn't have a mixed review option.

As a card game it emphasises interesting interactions, seamless deck drafting and having a blast instead of grinding your balls against a run-ending wall made of RNG. I don't get it, but if you're like me and you play card games to have fun, this is a must play.

It's still in early access, so there's some stuff that needs to be ironed out. I encountered a bug in the story mode that didn't let the enemy end their turn (got hardlocked when I forfeited lol), and there's no option to refund/revert mercenary levels in the roguelike mode. Once there's difficulty options (hoping it's player's choice like Hades's heat handicaps and not Slay the Spire's dogwater ascensions), there's gonna be no reason not to pick this up. Doubly so if it's on portable platforms like Steamdeck or Switch.

Edit: ACTUALLY playing the game shows that the roguelike mode does have both a hardmode and player's choice difficulty settings. Which rules. Only gripe is that picking hardmode doesn't carry over your progress from normal difficulty which is annoying.

Dunno if story mode has a difficulty option yet, but it really makes me wonder what the reviews complaining about difficulty are talking about. Must be all outdated ig

Monster Hunter RPG story mode. Morrowind emergent exploration but with actually good combat. Amazing game, got that characteristic Dragon's Dogma jank and quality in spades. Your pawns are adorable idiot toddlers who won't shut the ♥♥♥♥ up AND they're actually useful now. There's a bit of that DD1 magic missing, but it more than makes up for it with the flaws that made DD1 a pain to play being ironed out. The dungeons are just as fun and interesting to traverse and with an actual budget, there's far more than 5 this time with most of them not being tied to quests so you're free to explore to your heart's content.

I might go back and give a proper review once I'm done with the game. But yeah the whole stuff about "MTX RUINED THE GAME" (actually 0 impact thanks to the devs who included the bare minimum because some idiot executive told them to, just like the last several Capcom games but only now the nerds rally at this one, still predatory but completely irrelevant otherwise) or "GAME HAS TERRIBLE PERFORMANCE" (slight framerate loss just in the main town, only on PC and they're working on a fix right now; my toaster PC runs the game completely fine everywhere else, turn your settings down) is completely overblown.

It's honestly kinda characteristic of DD2 to be an underdog that gets lambasted by people who didn't even play the game. It's always been a niche title that appeals to a specific audience and most people (esp for those who hyped themselves into a froth expecting Skyrim but with waifus) aren't going to have the patience for it. It's sad that the few real flaws that the game have amount to "game needs more time and money put into it" but when the Average Gamer™️ complains about easily disprovable rumours they're never going to be happy with how the game expects you to just sit there and play it. No gimmicks, no jingling keys it's just a game that's unashamed to be itself. And so Capcom is in a way right to never give this series the budget it deserves.

It's too bad Capcom has idiot execs who forced the inclusion of MTX in the first place. Ah well, maybe the execs will wisen up to the devs chicanery and put in some actually game ruining stuff in their next release.

The UI is unbelievably bad. Like REALLY bad.

Mods might help, but we'll see about that.

They made you gain cards much faster and they took off the progression restriction for playing 1v1 against friends. This game has now become flawless!

This game used to be a solid idea but low in content. This is no longer the case.

After a long hiatus, the dev returned with style and grace and with three monthly major updates they've turned this around into one of the best survivor/arcade roguelites out there right now. The formula right now is pretty damn robust and can only get better as they finish off the game and add more stuff.