Recent reviews by Packets Inc.

Very obvious that they learned from years of development time and feedback on Conan Exiles. Game looks good, runs well, and has the same Funcom attention to lore and worldbuilding as Conan Exiles. The game just feels great to play, especially in ranged and vehicle combat, with a lot of playstyle variety between weapons, powers, and suspensor modes. There's a lot of attention to detail in the larger landmarks and a surprising amount of variation in environments for a game set entirely in a desert.

A few nitpicks. There have been some server issues during the advanced access period but most of them were resolved quickly during rolling restarts. Many of the small bandit camps on the map are copy/pasted layouts with randomly selected enemies. Melee combat can feel janky sometimes and the mechanics are somewhat unclear, but this mostly goes away as you get the hang of it.

game of the year

This is a visual novel about relationships and trauma as well as "meaning" in the philosophical sense. Despite this, it does a good job of very simply showing or telling you what it's trying to convey through art and dialogue and doesn't waste time talking circles around the point. Ironically, though, the structure of the game means it WILL waste time repeating the same things over and over and some conversations can drag out especially if you've heard them before.

I could assault your eyeballs with a bunch of words about what I think about the game's handling of its chosen themes, but unfortunately this is a game that really benefits from you just finding out by yourself. All I'll say is that I don't even like visual novels and still came back to buy the supporters pack after just a couple hours.

cool and good

Game smells pretty good.

It's Ace Combat with the serial numbers filed off for half the price. It's very good. Buy it immediately

I won't sugarcoat it, Bloodstained is a clone of Symphony of the Night. It's a metroidvania that's all about classic lock-and-key dungeon design where you kill your way to a new power or movement ability and use it to access parts of the dungeon you could previously see but not reach. The dungeon is significantly larger than Symphony of the Night and has some really fresh level design for the genre, even though most of the areas are visually uninspired and a few are seriously held back by the game's "PS2 but HD" visual design. There are one or two sections where it's easy to get completely lost, having seemingly exhausted your options for exploration only to find the way forward in some really stupid location. No metroidvania would be complete without at least one (except maybe Hollow Knight).

The relatively small number of enemy types manage to stave off boredom by introducing progressively tougher palette swaps with different abilities, most of which the player can learn a version of by defeating them. The bosses are, like most in this genre, a blast to beat. They have distinct attack patterns that can be learned and avoided, but aren't too punishing for the average player. Some of them can drag on in the time department if the player's build is weak or they're using weaker weapons, but none of them really feel like they're too time consuming.

On builds: this game includes a large number of abilities and equipment to choose from. The player has several slots for spells and passive abilities that can be learned by repeatedly defeating the enemies that use them, allowing for a large variation in skill builds that can be switched between quickly by a loadout system unlocked relatively early in the game. Weapons fit into a number of archetypes with different (but small) movesets and specific weapons can also have special attacks (similar to weapon arts in Dark Souls 3). Armor and accessories offer stat bonuses and sometimes special abilities or cosmetic changes to the main character.

I can't comment on the game's story or sound design because I'll be honest, I skipped almost all of the dialogue and played through 90% of the game on mute for reasons unrelated to the game. David Hayter does voice a magic samurai, though.

If you like metroidvania-style games at all, I can't recommend this one enough. Play time will vary depending on whether or not you tackle higher difficulties, boss rush, or randomizer mode, but the game itself is solid. Whether or not it's worth full price probably depends on how thorough you plan on being in your completion of the game and how much you like metroidvanias to begin with.