Recent reviews by zephyrean

This is the game I've wanted to play since I found out there were games on the computer.

There's never been a game more worthy of the Labor of Love award than Stardew Valley. Do your civic duty.

Originally posted by description:

No, the Princess isn't a “cosmic horror,” whatever that is supposed to mean.

Yes, she is.

It's not a terrible game. There are a few interface bugs and a few spelling mistakes (mistakes, of the sort people who don't do much reading make, not typos). Lots of original art, lots of workmanlike voice work for those who care for that sort of thing. However, even the game itself can't take its shoddy unoriginal premise seriously. You romance a cosmic horror and that's it. You probably can write a better story in your head.

Pretty but grindy.

You get a double jump at the end of the tutorial. Excited yet? Every single gap going forward is wide enough that you need to use the double jump, and some are wide enough that you need to use the double jump perfectly, and yet some are just a tad too wide.

See how screenshots 7 and 8 have character level 33 in them? You get there when you're 18 if you're really thorough. If not, more like 5. These bosses are grindy and have three phases. The real fight starts at phase 3, but even phase 1 or 2 will kill you very dead as soon as you get bored and greedy. Go grind and raise your attack to have the fight go somewhat faster.
* Oh, you think you're good? Good job breaking it, hero, you kill a boss and "world level" rises. The area immediately after is assrape. Back to the grind.
* Oh, you think you're bad and leveling can help you? It won't, the character stays fragile. You can't tank trash mobs and you can't tank a boss.

Spirit upgrades are where it's at. However, there's no respec. Resources for upgrades are technically unlimited, but after you found the secret caches, all that's left is a trickle of random drops, not enough to try different strategies for boss fights. You can copy a save and play around, but once you've hit on the best strategy and won, you're stuck with the upgrades you picked. Only a few spirits are also useful for exploration. Did you pick poison and whirlwind? Too bad. When trash mobs start shooting, you need to be shooting back.
- get the bird
- upgrade the bird
- get the shooty lady
- upgrade the shooty lady

Other reviewers complained about the map. The map is ok, something you'd draw by hand but here it is provided. It shows all exits from a room and highlights rooms you didn't "clear" (collect everything) and exits you didn't yet take. A bit misleading by omission, w.r.t. the information it doesn't provide -- an exit that's currently inaccessible, or the yet-uncleared part of a room that can only be accessed from a cleared room -- but never maliciously so.

Monsters respawn on save and there's no penalty for death, this rewards plunging ahead. I don't like this, I like games that reward reaching the next checkpoint or getting back in one piece. (That said, that type of game requires a more detailed map. Ender Lilies is ok for what it is.)

The plot is the one you've seen a thousand times already, it's Taint. One small respite is it's called "Blight" here, but it's Taint again. Please stop. Characters are interesting but I'd have liked some interaction with them.

The first island is broken, the tutorial ghost is more misleading than it used to be, worker/villager/vagrant sprites are indistinguishable, the queen sprite looks armless like Venus, and the oracle lies. Unplayable now and will be bad after fixes.

update: tried it again after today's full patch (restarted the Olympus campaign): same ♥♥♥♥, still softlocked. Requested a refund.

It used to be a fun and chill game to casually play while thinking of something else, as a sort of ooh shiny interactive screensaver. The new update/expansion is broken and terrible, and the main game now features a prominent ad for the optional and thematically inappropriate cosmetic DLC. I have over 500 hours in this on Steam alone and Zeus knows how many hours on GOG in New Lands. Sad!

Worth your time on a deep discount.

Mechanically, there's no real exploration of the map and no platforming: the game is a series of one-on-one battles with enemies. Occasionally, an enemy may be bypassed by simply going around it (there are no instances when this requires platforming skill) -- do this every time you can, there are no secrets to be found in such dead ends. The few times the path branches mean more boring backtracking and may cost you achievements -- tragically so, because the replay value of the game is nonexistent.

Battles are easy if you found the healing ability but will grind down imperfect players if you didn't (you can always backtrack, but it's not even called "healing", good luck). If you've seen one monster of a type, you've seen them all. The game goes into "battle mode" when you touch an enemy, so there's no way for enemy attacks to interact and no danger of getting swarmed.

Pixel art is pretty, with no weebshit. Characters are well-proportioned and beautifully animated.

Despite how ridiculously overhyped the writing is on the store page, it's not actually terrible and only goes full ♥♥♥♥♥♥ once, in a scene that does not impact the story. The "living, breathing world" is unfortunately a lie.

No bugs. Works great with my xbox controller.

Most importantly the game doesn't punish you for playing, which is apparently something of a novelty these days. The protagonist's principal good deed is never taken away in a bout of drama!!!1!!, despite several convenient plot opportunities to do exactly that. Two thumbs up.

I play puzzle games for the plot, it provides the motivation to go forward.

Here, I was acutely feeling every wasted minute.

Just how has a child launched a solo expedition to decipher ancient monoliths? Such premises work when that's all it is, we aren't questioning Billy Blaze's grasp of general relativity or Mario's plumbing skills. But when you're working toward a "deep and poignant" -- i.e. stupid -- twist, this is utterly mentally exceptional. It's like if the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything was "55378008" but you were supposed to feel sad.

It gets worse, there's shades of To the Moon, Stein's Gate, Angels and Demons (the book where they blow up the pope with antimatter), the good old cat hair puzzle, and the Sherlock 4chan copypasta (they even do the "Sherlock winks at the screen" bit), with an extra helping of sick sadism. Just read the other reviews, or watch a playthrough.

I'm not getting those 0.7 hours back. Let's see if I can get back the money.

Doesn't run on Linux (Ubuntu 22.04 LTS).

it was fun -- never had to use a hint or a skip -- until I hit 4 almost-identical puzzles in a row and got stuck. There are no hints for the sokoban puzzles or even the semblance of a learning curve for that section.