Recent reviews by Shalazah

Review is written after obtaining S++ on every level for Normal/Hard without Assist Mode, along with obtaining all achievements.


Fantastic game overall, and the first Ninja Gaiden I've played. The levels are replayable, and you'll want to replay them constantly to do better and complete optional objectives for better rankings.

The game's difficulty is extremely adjustable. You can enable talismans that make you take triple damage or disable checkpoints on one end - on the other, you could enable options where you take 0 damage and knockback from everything. Ragebound is as hard or as easy as you want it to be, and I love that.

The music is fire as are the visuals, giving you that sense of an 80s arcade game in all the best ways. The death animations are sick as hell for a 2D game, too.


There are some bugs and oddities that I'm certain The Game Kitchen is going to iron out over time, but I thought I should point them out. None of them are game breaking.


-I've had the boss on stage 3-2 deactivate its AI and do nothing after attacking it.

-There is a screen shaking effect on stage 3-5 that, if you transition screens at the wrong time, will not stop until you finish or exit the level, aside from one section.

-On stage 4-1, some enemies who exploded left their explosive "outline" as still being on the screen.


-The boss of stage 4-3 has attack animations that will start up even after he's knocked away. It looks extremely unusual when a boss is being knocked to the other side of the room, yet his flamethrower comes out from in front of you still.

-The Hard mode feels like it was well-designed for the first act, but is spottier the further you progress. I was delighted to see the changes made to the first boss, but most bosses after that felt similar to their normal mode versions. Stages usually just have additional spikes added to them rather than mixing things up. The upgraded regular enemies are total bastards though, I love them.

-The game features a boss rush, but only one of your two characters is able to clear it with an S++ rank and no Assist mode. The requirements for it should be changed for the other character, whose DPS (damage per second) is much lower.


Ninja Gaiden Ragebound rules. It's absolutely worth the price, just be aware that there's a few minor things being ironed out still, like many games these days. The Game Kitchen delivered on a great game!

Easily Game of the Year material

The best Star Ocean game ever made, and updated to be a Game of the Year contender. You won't go wrong playing this!

This or Romancing SaGa 3 are the two best SaGa games I've tried so far. If you like open-ended RPGs, give this one a spin!

Game is a tad railroady but it's a fun way to find out about the Vampire setting in World of Darkness. Give it a try!

Having never played Divinity before and having played Baldur's Gate and Planescape, I was impressed at this. Definitely worth picking up!

Hundreds of hours worth of content. Wonderful design. Potential for rage untold. There's no better way to spend a Friday night than rolling around a game board with friends. Especially with friends, because you wouldn't want to play against a cheating AI, would you? No.

UPDATE: Hard mode beaten.

UPDATE 2: Debug mode unlocked. See bottom of review.

This is the worst game I have ever played, and given other Unity games I've played lately, that is saying a lot.

There's no storyline to speak of. The voices are in Russian despite picking English, which normally wouldn't be that big of a problem, because there's subtitles. Except...halfway through the game, the majority of the game's subtitles switch to Russian regardless. Maybe the story picks up then? I can't say, I don't speak Russian.

The HUD is obnoxious. It moves with you and is constantly in your way. Your stamina meter depletes ridiculously quickly, and will even deplete if you're attempting to run while caught in a bear trap. There are a ridiculous amount of bear traps in this game by the way.

The jumping mechanics are beyond awful, and you have to go through a very, very long platforming segment. There's a checkpoint about halfway through (but no save point until it's all finished), but it is still brutal.

If you make it through that, you go to another obnoxious laser grid section, and this is followed by actual enemies appearing. You have to pick up a gun nearby (if you can find it) and mow them all down with the worst shooting physics I have ever seen. If an enemy reaches you, you're screwed. It'll bounce you through the air over and over until you're dead, and you can't just aim down at them. On the plus side, they frequently glitch out and get stuck on terrain or dead bodies.

It's difficult to describe what comes after. It's a glitchfest nightmare. At one point you can hop on a train to take you to the end of a long, long tunnel, but if you hit Escape and then resume game it'll propel you infinitely forward to the end of the area where you randomly are given a minigun with infinite ammo to massacre toaster spiders (I'm not kidding). The textures also really start to glitch out around this time badly.

The last area of the game is a maze, and you're on a timer - only the timer doesn't affect anything at all. If it reaches 0, it just counts into the negatives. Whatever.

EDIT: I have now beaten this game on Hard mode. It is frustratingly difficult in all the wrong ways. You get 4 minutes 30 seconds to complete the first laser grid section and the platforming section. If time runs out, you're back to the first laser grid segment. You need to really nail down how the jumping works in this, and trust me, it is not at all intuitive. You'll make it to the end with maybe 20 seconds left. The section after that is annoying, but you've got 5 minutes to do it which is way more than enough. The train section, insultingly, is 10 minutes and 2 seconds. It's stupidly easy.

For those curious, I did not get a 4-letter word upon completing Hard mode (which is supposed to unlock the Mods menu). I assume it must be hidden somewhere in-game, but there's no way I'm going to replay this to find out what it is. What a load of awfulness. UPDATE: The 4-letter code is actually 2057, rather than a word like I'd thought. See below.

Even closing and loading this game is difficult. I frequently have to Alt+F4 just to get out of it, and about 50% of the time when I load a game the game just hangs. Alt tabbing out will sometimes crash it, and this game causes major slowdown on other applications I have running. The max resolution isn't even 1080p either.

Do not buy this game, even at $2. It's not worth your time or money whatsoever.

The debug and labyrinth modes can be unlocked by using the code 2057. The Labyrinth mode is beyond awful, with crusher blocks that you simply cannot seem to get by and clocks to increase your timer. Unlike the actual game, you'll die if the time runs out here. Additionally, if you do die, hitting Play Again will start a whole new game for you - and all of the menu choices/dialogue will be in Russian. Awful.

The debug mode is as you'd expect - developer tools. The menu is in Russian when you enter it. Whatever. This game is still bad.

UPDATE: Game completed, see below.

I like to start any review with the positives, so let's get that over with: the game's got two genuinely creepy jumpscare deaths.

The bad: This is one of the most trial-and-error horror games I have ever played. There are no checkpoints, no save points, nothing. You have no health; any enemy that attacks you will defeat you instantly. And any time you die, you are going all the way back to the start of this game. This is obnoxious enough in and of itself, but this gets far worse. Twice I have had the game glitch out and keep me from being able to move. One of these times was, no joke, about 10 seconds from the end of the game.

The story is nonexistent, and there is no proper ending either. The physics are strange. Just try using the numberpads that come up with a 360 controller. I dare you. There's a meter that shows how...in trouble you are, or something, but I have no idea if it actually does anything. It has no effect on the actual monsters, certainly.

The price is out of this world for this game. When you actually know what you're doing, it takes about 10 minutes to finish. That's if you make it past all of the trial-and-error and glitches. I am very disappointed in this game.

UPDATE: I managed to finish the game now. I ended up getting stuck at the elevator literally 4 more times before I figured out the trick to bypass this game-breaking glitch. When you get on board the elevator and it's descending, press yourself right up against the elevator door and keep moving forward against it. You'll hop off the elevator into the morgue room without getting stuck. You have to get on/off the elevator twice more but I was able to do that without my game breaking.

As one can expect, with no checkpoints and a consistent game-breaking glitch so close to the end, I still cannot in good faith recommend this game, especially as it is a consistent issue. I will edit my review if further updates arrive, but having to play around a glitch like that is absolutely ridiculous.