Recent reviews by Tiake

Fix your ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game.

This game is the perfect example of its fine and why i wish steam had a "Mid" option.

Its zombies boiled down to its bones, you shoot enemies coming at you out of walls you can repair and the goal is to survive 10 rounds. The game supports you in giving Exp, money, and magic bullets that fire out of your gun.

The magic bullets are the main draw of the game, and i honestly have to say this is why i give the game an okay, for the game advertising its systems outright they are all...whelming at best.

none of the bullets have any flair or specific effects that make them unique outside of a few like earthquake, or acid bomb, the rest like chain lightning you just have to use your imagination, and honestly for me thats a big downside of the game, you read you're shooting boulders, inferno shots, blizzards and shatter effects, but just bang, damage, thats it nothing special, and not many specific sound effects associate with them either, making it so for 10 rounds, outside of what bullets you pick you just shoot your gun until the damage isnt enough so you upgrade your spells to bigger numbers.

Enemy design is just outright obnoxious. enemies that explode ONLY if you are in their radius has to be the most silly design for that enemy type, and it boils down to if you dont have enough damage you'll eventually just get swarmed and detonated 100's of times because the only counterplay in the game is "kill them harder" and since all the spells essentially function the same, you pick ice and lighting simply because they say "Kill them harder" leaving poison, earth, and fire as extremely mediocre options.

The maps are fairly barebones with nothing really to explore or uncover, outside of achievements, the roguelike meta progression just feels tacked on as a way to extend playtime and doesnt really add or detract, its just there.

For a single player zombies experience, its just fine. grab it on sale if you're interested. but it drops the ball on what its presenting as its main mechanic and i overall feel thats worth the thumbs down.

Mini healer is the only type of its genre I want to say first and foremost, I cannot find another game like it, and the ideas it presents to the table are great, and innovative, Boiling down mmo combat to a structured video game feels great, without the folly of gathering parties or dealing with people who never read a tool tip in their lives.

you're the healer, the title implies and you are in charge of 3 idiots, 2 dps and a tank. its your job to heal them swap them, move them and other mechanics as they see fit, while healing, dealing with boss mechanics, and dpsing as well depending on your build. The boss design is fantastic, all presenting interesting puzzle solving opportunities, with semi familiar mechanics if you've played MMO's before. such as "Dispel the thing"
"Walk away from the party"
"Use the time swap button to swap the bosses form around to make sure you dont get one shot wh-" maybe not that one.

The games skill trees, equipment system and crafting are fantastic, bordering a path of exile lite system with tons of ways to customize equipment to cater to exactly what you want to do, and theres tons of Healer playstyles available as well. Druids, paladin, Aura, generic healer, Regen healer, burst healer, siphon healer. shield healer, its all freaking here, if there is an mmo healer that you want to re-create, the game will pretty much let you while progressing which is fantastic.

oh yeah the game also just comes with a roguelike part attached too, build your healer while fighting bosses from the plot, its a tad barebones but is getting much much better. its a real nice way to learn other healing styles.

The developers are also fantastic. i had an issue with a bugged value on a boss and it was fixed literally 5 minutes later.

This is a core example of early access done right, and i highly recommend this game at full price if you have any mmo experience, or hell want to get into mmos and want to get your feet splashed on, this game helps with that as a mmo player myself for several years, seeing mechanics and essentially blind progging on your own i feel is an experience that only this game provides.

TL:DR at bottom

i have to say, as a team building roguelike with a story on the side, it does the job really well, but the game honestly needs some quality of life features for me to want to continue running again and again versus going "god i dont wanna build a whole other team"

Theres no pre-sets or templates, none. it is absolutely bonkers to me how many characters, options, relics, combinations there are but there is no way to save it and go back to it. this really makes me not want to make more teams as re-setting everything up or writing down the team comp and idea on paper to re-set up everything, asss to my second complaint.

there are a lot of characters, but there are also a lot of redundant and or characters that need a lot of work for a payout. the big issue in this game overall to me is the supportive role overall. Seb the bard with the proper relic setup takes 3 turns to cap out all the relevant stats you want, granted, he is squishy and weak to AoE the payout versus the risk is worth it. Lets vs lets say, the banker. who requires a lot of management of his debt mechanic for a fairly reasonable payout, its hard for me to want to build around the banker when Seb just does everything i want, and leading back to my first point, i have to make a whole build around the banker, and the headache that entails.

my only last complaint is some relics are just way too specific, or just way too boring, the majority of relics provide new skills, fill niches, or bolster your current strategy. there are some that are generic stat buffs which have their place, but there are others that provide say, channeling buffs, when channeling is a fairly niche ability amongst the cast.

For the singularity mode, or the "roguelike mode" i'd say it almost serves the purpose i want out of this experience, being able to meld several teams, thinking of the future and longevity with the stamina mechanic and overall playing with items that are provided to the player makes a lot of my point 3 less of an issue, unless.

The cast is not made equal, and im not even going to tell anyone reading this that balancing such a wide and diverse cast of characters is hard, and i feel like every single character with relics involved serves their purpose and can be used if you want. its just when characters like Maximus running around in singularity mode its really hard to turn down his sheer utility and buffs, and i find that the case with a lot of the characters in that mode. and the harder i go up the floors the more i want to take these characters.

TLDR: Overall, for the early access idea of "Final fantasy 5 meets a roguelike" concept, I really enjoy it, it needs some things ironed out, but if that description is what you want out of a game, Time break chronicles provides, albiet, a bit rough around the edges.

This game suffers from very game of this genre's issue, where everyone is more concerned about the "us versus them" argument rather than playing the actual game, most content created will be heavily biased towards demon or survivor, and has created a toxic stew even rougher than DBD.

The game part, i find very fun. Survivor is extremely interesting and varied, allowing players to tweak and cater to their own playstyle with characters, and skill points, which for me personally creates a lot of longevity and fun experimenting.

Demon, is the same way, though the starting curve for the game is akin to a brick wall rather than a steady curve, it took me a while to get the hang of it but demon is very fun and satisfying to play correctly, and allows for a lot of player expression as well, being an entity rather than being "man who walk fast with machete" i find much more engaging.

There are frustrating things in the game for sure, Hunter dodges are pretty obnoxious, some vaults cant be vaulted by your demon units creating silly situations, and some characters are defintely more annoying to deal with than others, hunter ash being a big example.

My advice, if you are really interested in the game, just buy it, play it, experience it for yourself until you get a max character, then go hunting for builds/information/other things after you have your own feelings and thoughts, rather than 100% bandwagoning everything the community says for either side, and i really wish the "Us versus them" was less encompassing for asym's overall but it simply takes over everything the community has to talk about.

This game has 100% ruined all other JRPG/RPG/Turn based collect/whatever you wanna call it forever, mechanically.

The level of depth, classes, creatures, and everything unless someone is using the internet or a discord sanctioned team/whatever you will never -ever- find someone using the same setup or preferences. thats absolutely amazing to me and what makes RPG's and those experiences unique outside of their story. the building of characters, seeing your machine spin, and tweaking and optimizing to the point where every battle is trivialized.

if you want a game that goes hard, the absolute hardest this genre can go, i highly, highly reccomend this game. outside of maybe some repeititive enviroments after a while. and sometimes some enemy compositions just outright one shot you before t1 [unless you got a mimic of course] does make the experience frustrating at times. but i feel like since the battlefield is equal between enemies and players its totally fine.

my only other qualm is i wish Skins/customizing your creatures/demons was a -bit- more in depth. I wish i could swap between all palletes in the same race and or skin up my demons however i want them to look, as the superficial part of my brain wants all my creatures to be pretty instead of a big sloshin stank monster. but thats nitpicking.

TLDR:
Good team builder creature collectathon that goes on for as long as you want, its pokemon and SMT had a baby with path of exile. with the plot ripped out.

This DLC fundamentally broke PD2. period. and all because of the poison gas grenades.

I recommend this DLC from a pure stance of power, the poison grenades have broken all difficulties. including death sentence. if someone is running these in normal through DW and actually knows how to use the effectively, hitting spawn areas, dealing with chunky specials etc. the maps are barren and there is nothing to shoot, combine it with turrets and you have the ultimate "nobody else gets to play" build. its obnoxious, i kick people who use it in overkill/mayhem/Deathwish lobbies simply because i want to shoot things in my wave based shooter.

The LMG is good. its fun. does LMG things, can ADS with it. overall pretty fun.

The sniper. while not as bad as a culprit as the poison grenades, also presents a gigantic impasse on build making. the ability to conceal this pretty well combined with having the option to take graze in a secondary slot really makes a lot of "Dealing with shields" weapons moot. of course weapon variety is always an argument, but if i had this sniper vs other options that penetrate and are not explosive. its pretty fantastic.

Just based off of the developers of death road to canada this title is very half baked and just generally feels like it isnt trying at all.

DR2C is hilarous, the events and characters are very memorable and provides that "Hey ive got a goofy story about how i got 4 jojo characters to Canada" Where Cannibal crossing provides an extremely stale and boring experience from the get go, there isnt any witty writing, just half baked joke establishments. the entire town feels stale and empty and simply exists to loot for the gameplay. All of the playable characters lack personality and stakes except "oh no, zombies"

The gameplay is extremely generic base building/crafting/gathering/literpgelements/etc. you've seen it before. Gather, build, attempt to complete your goal before dying. The melee and gunplay just feel awful, Ever get an infinite cleave weapon in DR2C and just go HAAAAAAAMBONEY with max stats? not here, it doesnt feel even pretend satisfying even with max tier weapons. The boss design is rather neat, taking a bite off of Enter the Gungeon, which i enjoyed if i didn't have to spend experience to get a normal dodge roll smiley face.

For the price go buy death road to canada, its a much better, and realized product i feel. this just feels like a cash grab afterthought and its sad.

Valdis story:Abyssal city is an experience, and with a plethora of 4 characters, rich story, plenty of items, collectables, and just enough replayabilty with gobinu mode [Leaderboards!] And the high capability to speedrun the game [With an achievement incentivizing this] This game is a must buy to those metroidvania purists out there for sure.

EDIT: I am now the person who runs the Valdis story abyssal city speedrun thread on speedrun.com
http://www.speedrun.com/Valdis_Story_Abyssal_City I also wrote a guide as to how to speedrun as vladyn on speedrun.com check it out, we could use more runners for this amazing game