Recent reviews by Wykstromius

I want to recommend the game but I cannot. Loose jump controls that feel too limiting couples with outright horrible weapon upgrades (a laser that doesn't travel with you vertically? A grenade that doesn't explode when hitting walls and has the slowest movement I've seen?) just makes the game unrewarding to progress.

I've held off reviewing this game, having played it briefly during development and not wanting to ruin the experience when the game was unfinished. Now that it is released, however, I can say without any exaggeration that Crosscode, in my view, will become one of the true classics like Secret of Mana or Final Fantasy 6.

In fact, I honestly believe CrossCode is BETTER than Secret of Mana, and that is one of my all-time favorites. Allow me to explain why.

The art style, unlike many modern 'retro' games, does not fail to evoke the sense of playing a classic console game. The colors have the right hue and contrast and the pixel art style maintains consistency. As a pixel artist and developer I cannot begin to describe how frustrating it is to see games that purport to be 'retro' yet fail to maintain pixel resolution consistency or quality. The visuals in this game are some of the most convincing I've seen, and were it not for the fact that the game has far too much visual variety I could easily imagine this being a Super Nintendo title.

The gameplay, however, is where a game like this either stands or falls, and CrossCode doesn't fail to deliver. The combat is fast, the variety of upgrades is refreshing and impressive, and you get the sense that your decisions with the different Circuit upgrades really impact how well you can fight and your tactics. Want to take it to the enemy directly? Invest in a Circuit branch that goes for up close attacks. Want to keep your distance? Activate some of the ranged moves like the flamethrower skill. Want to go on the defense? Well you can do that, too, or all three. I'm absolutely certain I have not even come close to the maximum combat potential in the game and I still have loads of fun choosing my own road! The controls are responsive, fun, and as the story progresses you unlock new Circuits that give you different elemental attacks and ways to solve the various puzzles in the game. I won't lie to you, some of the puzzles can be frustrating, but the payoff is there and I found myself usually saying 'Ohhh' when I figured it out. Likewise, the world of CrossCode is built through a succession of rooms that are tiered like a cake, requiring some clever backtracking to reach the higher levels and obtain the various chests. For the completionist this becomes a real challenge.

But even the most beautiful and engaging game can fail if the story is terrible. As the mute protagonist Lea, I found myself developing a real sense of protectiveness for her that I have not felt for a protagonist in a long time. She begins the game an innocent, wowed and intrigued (and scared) by the world around her, and as the story builds you see CrossCode through her eyes. It helps to build a connection with Lea, her struggle, and I really appreciate how she was written as a truly sweet, scrappy character in a gaming climate crowded with cynical, jaded 'heroes'. As the plot develops, your patience with Lea is paid in full as she learns, grows, but maintains the basic humanity she began with. I found the unlocking of new words to be particularly clever.

All I can say is that any and all success the developers receive for CrossCode is WELL DESERVED. Having grown steadily more cynical as more and more of these games are barfed out by people looking for a quick buck at the expense of your nostalgia, CrossCode provides you with a game built competently from the ground up with a story that may seem familiar in the beginning but will offer some surprises.

CrossCode IS the new standard for rpg platformers.

The Unbalanced enemy AI tarnishes an otherwise delightful gem.

Why do I say this?

Example 1: You perform an elaborate stealth insertion, avoiding all notice. You place your agents strategically around the map but suddenly one is spotted by an enemy agent! No problem, you think, your other agents are...COMPLETELY EXPOSED? Yes. When one of your agents is found the enemies know where EVERY ONE of your agents are on the map and will follow, corner, and shoot you. They get INSTANT see-through walls ability and it has caused more than one of my agents operating under disguise to be cornered away from others and shot up. How do they have this mystical see through walls ability? Because bad AI.

Example 2: You get the drop on an enemy agent. You are literally behind them without their notice, so like a smart agent you break out your silenced pistol. You fire...AND HE DODGES IT EVERY TIME. I'm serious. In 6 attempts to assassinate an agent from behind I've had it miss all six times including reloads to test it. The enemy agents are given plot armor so you can't just put them out of action (but knocking them out is still okay).

Example 3: You get in a pitched firefight, moving your agents to hard cover upstairs. You clearly have the advantage...until the guards two flights down around a corner turn and fire at you with impossible accuracy through the corner of a window and around a flight of stairs.

The enemy AI is positively ridiculous. That's the only issue I have with this game. The AI feels like it was constructed to follow loose instructions like 'shoot player' then given no limitations on when it could see the player or aim at the player in combat situations. It severely drags the game down in my view and I'm one of those people who enjoys a challenge.


Apart from the glaring issues of getting into a firefight it's a solid game. Going full stealth is very enjoyable, the document investigation is fun if completely linear (there's no way to fail at making connections), the customization is great, although to be honest I think the player should be able to pick from any of the agencies at the start since some of them have really fun abilities. The graphics are on par with what you'd expect from an X-COM/Jagged Alliance hybrid, the sense of intrigue is immersive and the voice acting feels straight out of the 80s.

If the AI in combat performed less like Agent Smith in the Matrix this would be a 10. Giving it an 8 as is.

Why I issued a refund:

The game has a wild lack of balance that puts you in no-win scenarios over and over. I found that the most difficult part of the game is managing hunger, which depletes at an insane rate for everyone but the girl and turns the game from an interesting story driven adventure into an exercise in futility.

That said, I think the game has great atmosphere and potential. I'd love to give it a thumbs up but it goes beyond punishing into hitting you in the face. At first I was hoping each area would have a safe zone to replenish but no, you just deteriorate from zone to zone, and in my experience you just keep running out of food. Eventually, one of my characters fell over and starved, and before I could help him the girl fell over too. It pretty much sums up how the game goes.

Response to developer: If satiation and stamina are set to drop more slowly (even as an option) and you add checkpoints to the zones where the players can refresh themselves I'll happily try it again.

To think that I was once a defender of this company. How times change.

Let's rewind a bit.

Once upon a time, Reality Pump Studios made a game called Two Worlds. I had eagerly followed their mailers as they
were very open to backer input and so I backed the game. On release, the game was fun but a bit problematic with visuals that didn't measure up to its chief competitor TES: Oblivion. Taking in the criticism, within a short time they produced a 4 GB patch that overhauled the graphics and, I must say, improved them considerably.

I was impressed by this company and their desire to simply make a fun game that their backers enjoyed.

Two Worlds II was promised to be even more of this, but even as I watched the development it seemed like some of that energy RP put into the first game had diminished. They started chopping out content, but it's understandable to a degree. When the game released, multiplayer wasn't integrated into the full game as we were led to believe but was confined to a small island area. I accepted this because I wasn't really interested in the multiplayer, but this illustrates some of the changes at the company that leads to Call of Tenebrae.

Call of Tenebrae is a cash in. It was originally marketed as a free update to existing owners of Two Worlds II and Pirates of the Flying Fortress, but they forgot about that and charged us anyway. I figured, okay, if it is at least as improved as the first game after updates it will be worth it. Here's what we get:

1. A side-mission on the island of Tenebris. The updates do not, as yet, extend in any way to the main game.

2. The graphics in Tenebris are somewhat improved. It's not nearly as drastic as the 4 GB patch for Two Worlds was, and honestly it looks more like a texture pass and some added filters.

3. Microtransactions. This, in itself, doesn't bother me, but when taken with the rest of this dlc it's pretty sad.

4. Not the console. They took the console out of the game to subvert people getting around the microtransactions. That doesn't bother me; what DOES bother me is that they haven't fixed the bugs that made people like me use the console, like getting stuck in mountainsides.


So, Tenebrae plays like a player modded island separate from the base game with the same bugs as the original (and likely more), and a thin veneer of graphic improvements to convince you in screenshots it's something special.

As a former supporter of the company, I refunded it. I cannot stand by what appears to me on every level like a cash grab rather than true support for their product.

For those who will inevitably be driven to comment on the play time, I loaded into Call of Tenebrae from the base game.

Initially, I was excited for this game as it sounded like a send up to Star Control II and Starflight.

It's not.

What it is, sadly, is a game with frustrating, unintuitive controls that are worse in some ways than the Lunar Lander game from the 80s that clearly inspired it. Overuse of thrust can send you spinning, fuel is used up way too rapidly, the lander tips over easily and receives random component damage....But that's just the Lander, surely? No. The ship itself handles like a brick with a thruster attached. The entire gameplay revolves around you colliding with objects to receive damage states, many of which you won't be able to repair unless you get very lucky.

And here it is. Roguelike. The authors claim on several steam posts that it's a 'gentler' roguelike but I disagree; if anything it's a more callous because the sheer amount of status injuries and ship and vehicle damage states each have to be handled and approached with different repair methods that don't all show up at the few stations you encounter. What ends up happening is a gradual wear down of your crew as the injuries and damage mount up until you either die or throw up your hands in frustration.

Here are 3 key problems with the game in my first hour:

1. Trying to gather fuel is an exercise in futility. You have to hover constantly with the lander, using up fuel while trying to gather it. Every single time I went out to get fuel I ended up with a net loss.

2. Ship and crews have lots of damage states that are applied randomly (having a clogged pollen filter from tipping over) and often have no way to fix them, especially early on.

3. Controls that I would call broken were it not so obvious they were intentionally made to be bad. Understand, these controls were designed to make you hit objects in the ship, have navigation issues and flop around and hit things in the Lander. I just can't see how it wasn't intentional to have the controls be so loose and sloppy.

My guess is they thought this would all create challenge and something to drive you, but it's heavyhanded and frustrating with the way the ship and lander controls work and you often have to concede that the game is designed for your ship and crew to sustain needless injuries from a lander tipping over or hitting an asteroid because your ship turns like a brick.

So what's the problem with that, really? None if you enjoy games that punish you for playing them. I thought The Long Journey Home was going to be about discovering aliens, trading, finding secrets on our way home. What it turned into was a triage simulator, and I'm not pretending it isn't frustrating and disappointing.

Since my previous review was removed I'm probably missing some other issues I encountered with the game, but I will continue posting my honest thoughts on this game until they stick.

And the one point that is clear is that I cannot recommend this game at all in its present state. I'm not sure they will drastically overhaul the controls to make them worthwhile and not intentionally obtuse, but if they do I will consider altering my review.

I recommend this game with a couple caveats:

1. It is TOO good to be anything less than a proper Metroidvania, and I hope the devs consider making a true Metroidvania.

2. The insta-warp elites that one shot you has GOT to go. It's ridiculous and in no way balanced. I've been killed several times by this cheapshot attack because they can phase through the ground and immediately strike you.

3. The upgrade system is flawed in a very strange and unrewarding way. You level up weapons, but there's no guarantee you'll find them on a playthrough. I believe this should be addressed by allowing you to spawn any weapon you've upgraded for a cost, either orbs or gold.


Aside from these issues, I think it's a brilliant game that falls just short of amazing. If there was less focus on roguelike, which to be honest is a baffling trend with platformers, and more focus on a metroidvania with a strong narrative, I strongly believe this game could be GOTY material. It has the graphics, the smooth gameplay, and for the most part the right level of challenge and discovery to make this title shine.

This is an amateur crashfest. Visuals are pretty much stripped from rpgmaker assets, music is over the top, controls have input lag...

But the worst is that the menus have a tendency to lock up, forcing you to reboot if you're in fullscreen (you can't even pull up the task manager) and it's a repeatable issue.

It's another one of those rpgmaker games made by someone with little to no game design experience but a lot of ideas. Ideas I appreciate; bad game design I do not. This should not be on steam in its current state.

Your first five minutes:

A statement about socialized health care and it's importance
A statement eco-shaming people for throwing out trash
A dissertation on how to make a game the 'right' way by eliminating deaths and dead ends.

Seriously, if this is what Ron Gilbert has to turn to in order to voice his political and social opinions then I'm simply not interested. I LOVED his earlier games, but his motivations are just TOO heavy handed in the dialogue, and as others have mentioned, the sheer amount of fourth wall shenanigans wears thin fast, leaving you with an indie game that, were it not for Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick's involvement, likely would be received much more poorly.

Half the dialogue seems to be trying to bank on earlier games he worked on with callback after callback, reference after reference, and frankly, it plays out as desperate rather than nostalgiac.

I just can't recommend a game with so much soapboxing and back-slapping in it. An entertainment title is NOT the place for it.

I must preface this review with the following statement: I love this game. Not only does it capture the feeling of the original River City Ransom, it improves on it in many ways, from expanding the very narrow plot to having more intrigue, adding a greater variety of characters to choose from, and varied environments that change a bit based on time of day AND story progression.

That said, this game has some serious problems. First of all, the characters.

The only character I can honestly ENJOY playing as right now is Paul. Why? Because he's BALANCED. He has a good set of moves that allow for juggles, crowd control, and dealing with downed enemies. Let's take Rudy as a contrast. He's a wrestler that doesn't even start with wrestling moves, he's ponderously slow to the point of being interrupted on moves, and his specials rely on almost pinpoint precision to hit targets -- though that's not limited only to Rudy.

Why is Bruno a Luchador? He doesn't even fight like a wrestler!

Most of the playable characters seem to suffer from flash vs. substance, where their special moves, WHEN THEY WORK, tend to have such a narrow margin you find yourself in turns frustrated and exhilarated when they fail repeatedly only to land a hit once. A great example of this is Paul's Dash punch, where it has such a narrow chance of hitting an enemy that 40% of the time you pass THROUGH them (harmlessly), and the other 30% you fall short of hitting them.

This problem is pervasive with many of the specials, and believe me, I've tried most of the characters at this point, from Bruno to Mike to Glen to Alex and Ryan, their specials (when they trigger at all) often have really, REALLY bad collision radii. Add to that the preternatural ability of the enemies to detect when you're going to do one and you end up relying on basic punches, kicks, and counters A LOT. Which is unfortunate as the specials can be cool.

I really wanted to play as Rudy and Alex from the trailers, and sadly they fall well short of balanced characters, often getting their asses handed to them on the high difficulties, which is all I'll play at since I get the most value when there's a real challenge. With that in mind, the main new characters (Provie, Glen, Paul and Bruno) have clearly had the lion's share of focus by the developers. They are more balanced, more varied, and more survivable than the backup characters and it shows, unless you want to count Wes who is more of a cheat code than a character :).

The other major issue I have with the game as it stands are the platforming elements that want to borrow from sidescrollers but with PIXEL PRECISION. The log jumping is atrocious because of the per-pixel vertical motion, when what they SHOULD have done was make the logs snap points you jump between.

Another little problem is transitioning between rooms. I believe you should have to hold down a button to avoid accidentally moving off-screen or being punched off-screen, because while it's funny to punch enemies out of the area, it's not funny at all to clear most of the enemies and then stumble out of the screen or get thrown and have to go back.

Aside from that, I find it a highly accessible and largely victorious sendoff to the original. If they would take some time to digest some of the criticism leveled at the playable characters and IMPROVE the balance of the rest of the characters rather than GIMP the few that ARE balanced, I think this game would be a blast to build up all the characters in.

As it stands, I just play as Paul and spin punch the ♥♥♥♥ out of enemies because it's fun, feels good, and the challenge is there without me feeling like half the moves are useless or broken.

As far as the multiplayer, my friends and I haven't had any issues so I can't say much about it.

I recommend this game, but I do hope the devs take another look at Rudy, Mike, Alex and Ryan as well as address the precision issues with the specials and skills that don't actually trigger at all.